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May 21, 2021 – Hartford, CT – 17 year old Gregory Hatton developed pericarditis three days after his second dose of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine (click here)

“Gregory is now out of work, on medication and hooked up to a heart monitor”. His mother says: “He basically has a heart conditions now”.

Aug. 2021 – Australia – 24-year old journalist Georgia Clark had pericarditis after her second COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. After being hospitalized she said: “I would get the jab again”. Doctors OK’d her to get booster (click here) 

Aug. 2021 – 38-year old volleyball champion Francesca Marcon developed pericarditis after second Pfizer mRNA dose that took her out of competition (click here)

Nov. 2021 – 29-year old professional mountain bike racer Kyle Warner developed pericarditis & other injuries after second Pfizer mRNA jab. (click here)

Dec. 2021 – 33-year old C.M.Boling was injured after her third Pfizer jab, with pericarditis which left her on bed rest for seven months & in wheelchair

Dec. 31, 2021 – 18-year old Runa Cody, an Italian boy who was studying in the UK, died suddenly on Dec. 31, 2021 from pericarditis one month after second COVID-19 vaccine. (click here)

Jan. 2022 – Toronto lawyer Adam Goodman had pericarditis and cardiac tamponade after second dose of Pfizer but insisted on getting a booster (click here)

Feb. 2022 – BC Musician “Nate Timesamillion” developed pericarditis three days after his COVID-19 mRNA booster shot & was hospitalized

March 2022 – 27-year old Australian 1500m record holder Stewart McSweyn was dramatically pulled out of a 5000m race and was diagnosed with pericarditis (click here)

Dec. 22, 2022 – 26-year old Swiss Olympic Sprinter had a Pfizer mRNA booster shot on Dec. 22, 2022 and five days later developed pericarditis (click here)

March 20, 2023 – Japan – 14-year old girl Japanese girl died suddenly two days after third Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine dose. Cause of death: myopericarditis (click here)

March 2023 – British Columbia – In his 20s, Ayden Thane, a basketball player, developed pericarditis after COVID-19 vaccine in Sep. 2021. He has not recovered. (click here)

April 2023 – Kemptville, ON – 17-year old hockey player for the U18 Kemptville Royals, Vinnie Delorme had COVID-19 vaccines in 2021 & got pericarditis in Apr. 2023 (click here)

My Take…

Pericarditis is an inflammation of the pericardium, which is a thin, protective membrane surrounding the heart.

Myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) is very common after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination, as common as 1:30 per one mRNA dose. One study suggests post COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis is 2.5 times as common as pericarditis (click here).

WHO’s VigiAccess database lists 28,328 reports of myocarditis and 23,173 reports of pericarditis for ALL COVID-19 vaccines (click here)

Here are some key points:

  • COVID-19 vaccine pericarditis affects young men and young women;
  • Pericarditis is slightly less common than myocarditis;
  • Pericarditis can result in long term permanent disability;
  • Those who suffer long term due to pericarditis can’t find treatments;
  • Pericarditis can also be fatal, as happened in 2 cases here: a 14 year old Japanese girl and an 18 year old Italian boy studying in the UK.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page.

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*** 

Several foreign ministers of states belonging to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) Summit visited Cape Town beginning on June 1 to hold discussions on the future plans of the economic alliance.

Much speculation occurred among the imperialist states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) over the issues related to the United States proxy war in Ukraine and the possibility of the attendance of President Vladimir Putin at the BRICS Summit in July.

South African Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, Dr. Naledi Pandor, responded to questions from the media regarding a recent measure implemented by the African National Congress (ANC) government which provides diplomatic immunity to all heads-of-state visiting the country. She emphasized that South Africa was a sovereign state which makes its own decisions as it relates to visitors.

This imperialist generated controversy over the legal status of President Putin in countries whose governments are signatories to the Rome Statute further exposes the hypocrisy of the West, particularly the United States. Washington has never been a signatory of the Rome Statute and therefore is not subject to the edicts of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Nonetheless, the White House and State Department often evoke the ICC as a propaganda tool in their attempts to wage political and economic attacks on governments which they do not agree with on critical issues.

None of the BRICS countries have either taken sides with the U.S. or condemned the position of the Russian Federation which characterizes its involvement in Ukraine as a “special military operation.” The current phase of the war has been going on since February 24, 2022, resulting in the imposition of unprecedented draconian sanctions against Moscow by the western capitalist states in Europe and North America.

Almost all corporate and government-sponsored news stories emanating from Western Europe and North America are antagonistic towards Russia and its allies. Major networks operating from these geopolitical regions through their coverage of the developments over the last 15 months have falsely predicted the economic collapse of the Russian Federation due to the sanctions. The general editorial tone of the corporate and western-controlled media advances the notion that Moscow is isolated from most people and governments around the world.

Yet the BRICS states represent 3.27 billion people, some 44% of the global population. At the same time, more countries are seeking to enter the BRICS Summit as full members and as allies.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sent a representative to the recent BRICS ministerial meeting in Cape Town. They have expressed an interest in joining the alliance—which since the escalating Cold War by the imperialist states against Russia and the People’s Republic of China—appears to be evolving into a political coalition against the western industrialized states.

BRICS states have called for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict in Eastern Europe where the NATO governments have poured well-over $115 billion to bolster the armed forces of Ukraine. In recent weeks, a much-anticipated counter-offensive by the Ukrainian military is being promoted daily in the western media in order to justify the massive spending on war when–due to inflation and the decline in real wages among workers—these resources should be going towards social spending to meet the needs of the proletariat and the oppressed peoples.

The state-owned Deutsche Welle media outlet in Germany—which is the largest economy on the European continent–recently said of the BRICS Summit:

“Since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine, the BRICS countries have only distanced themselves further from the so-called West. Neither India, Brazil, South Africa or China are taking part in sanctions against Russia. This has become increasingly clear with near-historic levels of trade between India and Russia, or in Brazil’s dependence on Russian fertilizer.

‘Diplomatically, the war in Ukraine appears to have drawn a stark dividing line between an eastern-backed Russia and the West,’ political scientist Matthew Bishop from the University of Sheffield wrote for the Economics Observatory late last year. ‘Consequently, some European and U.S. policymakers worry that the BRICS may become less an economic club of rising powers seeking to influence global growth and development, and more a political one defined by their authoritarian nationalism.’” 

Bourgeois Democracy and Imperialist War

This term utilized in the article, “authoritarian nationalism”, is designed to draw a line between the leading capitalist-imperialist states and the emerging economies. The label placed on the BRICS Summit members suggests that they are not democracies. However, these countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, all encompass deliberative and legislative bodies which debate issues and make decisions. Elections are held in all the BRICS states and simply because some of the countries have political systems which diverge from the western model does not mean that they are undemocratic and authoritarian.

In fact, the current U.S. bankrolling of the war in Eastern Europe has never been debated openly in the corporate media or within both Houses of Congress. Despite the consistent misrepresentation of the war in Ukraine within the U.S. media, recent polls indicate that support for this imperialist adventure aimed at weakening the Russian Federation has lost significant support over the last year.

According to a report published by Brookings, it grapples with the question of the decline of support for the Ukraine war in the U.S. by noting that:

“What explains such a drop? Perhaps the realization that there is no end in sight for the war at its first anniversary was sobering to some. But there is one variable that we have been measuring that could account for at least some of the drop. As we have shown in previous polls, the degree of support for Ukraine is highly correlated with the public’s evaluation of Ukraine winning or Russia losing. In the October poll, we noted stories stressing Ukrainian successes and Russian failures, which may have accounted for higher confidence in the outcome. In the newest poll, there is a marked drop in the assessment that Ukraine is winning, and Russia is losing — a drop that echoes the decline in the public’s preparedness to pay a price for supporting Ukraine: Overall, the assessment that Russia is losing fell from 48% in October to 37% in April, and the assessment that Ukraine is succeeding went from 43% in October to 26% in April. It is also notable that there were parallel drops in the assessments of both Republicans and Democrats.”

By dismissing all governments which oppose U.S. military interventions as being undemocratic, they are implicitly saying that these geopolitical regions involved in BRICSS and others in the Global South are not worthy of the diplomatic consideration of Washington and its allies. Sanctions are utilized as acts of war which have in the past resulted in the deaths of millions in countries such as Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Afghanistan.

BRICS represents an attempt to breakaway and even delink from the hegemonic system of western imperialism controlled by Washington and Wall Street. Considering that the status of the U.S. is at stake in this struggle, it is inevitable that military clashes between the Pentagon and other geopolitical centers will impact the reconfiguration of the international relations of production and economic power.

BRICS Foreign Ministers Closing Statement Defy Imperialist Militarism

There was agreement among the BRICS foreign ministers to continue the efforts of the organization. Dilma Rousseff, the former President of the Republic of Brazil, was appointed to lead the New Development Bank at its 8th Annual Meeting in China, a BRICS initiative, whose objective is to provide alternative financing for projects within its member-states.

The NDB has sustainable development and national infrastructure capacity as some of the main objectives of the institution. This financial entity is specifically geared towards what they say are “emerging markets”, which indicates that its thrust will be channeled towards the states of Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean.

In specific reference to the security situation in Eastern Europe, number 18 in the 30 points closing document, upholds the necessity of ending the Ukraine war through diplomatic channels along with ensuring the flow of agricultural products from Russia and Ukraine to the other geopolitical regions of the world.

The language of the document reads as follows:

“The Ministers recalled their national positions concerning the situation in and around Ukraine as expressed at the appropriate fora, including the UNSC and UNGA. They noted with appreciation relevant proposals of mediation and good offices aimed at peaceful resolution of the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy. They called for the full and effective implementation of both the Black Sea Grain Initiative and the Memorandum of Understanding between the Russian Federation and the Secretariat of the United Nations on promoting Russian food products and fertilizers to the world markets and stress the importance of allowing grains and fertilizers to continue to reach those most in need.”

Therefore, if six governments representing far more people than exist in the North America and Western European regions are publicly calling for an end to the war–in reality–it is the U.S. and its imperialist allies which are becoming more isolated internationally. What is the major danger to the BRICS countries and others within the Global South is the determination by the imperialist states to maintain their hegemony even despite the threat of world war. Consequently, the struggle for genuine independence and sovereignty is also a question of war and peace.

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

All images in this article are from the author

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Extreme Events Are Normal

June 6th, 2023 by Karsten Riise

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*** 

Here is a big lesson for all those studying international politics, security, economics, finance, and social developments. 

Those events so unlikely that they never should happen even in the history of the Universe, happen more than once in a lifetime.

Those events that only should happen once in a lifetime happen regularly.

That is an interesting discovery by some financial traders. And they make billions of dollars betting on these events.

Consistently. Their bets on catastrophic events only pay off big, because everybody else believes these events are either impossible or extremely rare – which they aren’t. Crucially for everybody is, that this insight is not confined to finance – it is a general truth in the world we live in.

Market crashes. Pandemics. Terrorist attacks. Riots. Megafires. Superstorms. Extreme, destructive, often deadly events seem to be happening across the planet with greater frequency—and greater harm.

They happen suddenly and strike widely.

A chillingly perverse result of their increasing frequency is that such events are becoming more predictable in certain ways.

They aren’t black swans that sweep in out of the blue.

They’re what Taleb calls gray swans—devastating events that are all too foreseeable. Taleb has argued that our increasingly unstable world is the paradoxical result of humankind’s efforts to control it with technology, quantitative models, and ubiquitous just-in-time optimization, resulting in an ever-more-complex, human-built, fragile society susceptible to shocks. Extreme events “are necessarily increasing as a result of complexity, interdependence between parts, globalization and the beastly thing called ‘efficiency’ that makes people now sail too close to the wind.” As globalization expands, connectivity accelerates. Complexity breeds complexity, and speed breeds speed. Social networks spread news—and conspiracy theories—like a virus.

See this.

This requires Strategic Leadership.

The extreme events require another kind of leadership.

We cannot expect our plans to come true too often.

We can expect chaos to intervene.

But many of the types of chaos are foreseeable as types.

  • Extreme weather events.
  • Wars.
  • Raw material price volatility.
  • Currency breakdowns.
  • Pandemics.
  • Sanctions, both their effects and backlash.
  • Self-made political crises like Brexit, 6 January, and debt ceiling. Computer virus. Upheavals.
  • Coups.
  • Boycotts.
  • Technological breakthroughs and severe disruptions.
  • Bank failures.
  • Political failures.
  • Financial meltdowns.

This requires constant rethinking – continuous scenario development – preparations – quick and adequate leader-reaction.

Strategic Leadership is something I studied very early. It was developed as a result of the Nixon shock in 1971 and the end of Bretton Woods with stable exchange rates when the dollar left the gold standard, and the oil-crisis two years later in 1973. Currencies and oil which had been stable for decades suddenly became shocks that destroyed companies. Long-Term Planning was just not possible, not the solution it was thought to be. Even Strategic Planning was not good enough. Strategic Leadership was needed.

Strategic Leadership later became somewhat overlooked. Only a few people like Prof. Roberto Vassolo in Argentina have stuck to it. But the need for Strategic Leadership never disappeared, as extreme events have continued ever since. We had the shock of inflation in the1970s. We have had extreme swings in the dollar. We had the “Volker shock” in the 1980s when Paul Volker, the chair of the US central bank, implemented very high interest rates and stopped inflation. We had the Fall of the Berlin Wall. The sudden disappearance of the world’s second strongest military power, the Soviet Union, which the leader of that country didn’t see coming. We had the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s, the dotcom bubble of 2000, the Greek Euro-crisis, the 2008 subprime crisis and global meltdown, the economic crisis of 2020, the 6 January upheavals in the US, the Ukraine war, sanctions-induced spikes in energy and food prices, and the looming specter of a Taiwan-war and a West-China decoupling. Or what about a nuclear war involving the USA in Europe or East Asia? Soon, AI will wipe out many types of jobs and create a new global power for the USA. The list of unforeseen and upheaving events goes on.

Extreme events are normal.

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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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India’s Brutal ‘Operation Blue Star’ Revisited

June 6th, 2023 by Sajjad Shaukat

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India’s brutal ‘Operation Blue Star’ was the military operation which occurred between 3–8 June 1984, ordered by  then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to get control over the Golden Temple complex (Harmandir Sahid), the holiest shrine of the Sikhs in Amritsar, Punjab, and to arrest Sikhs’ spiritual leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, including his followers from the complex buildings. Bhindranwale had earlier taken residence in the Harmandir Sahib and made it his headquarters in April 1980. Bhindranwale was the only leader who had boldly been fighting for the genuine rights of the Sikhs.

The Indian Army led by General Kuldip Singh Brar, supported by troops and armoured vehicles, broke all records of state terrorism and extra-judicial killings through that barbaric operation.

However, at that time, there were only 251 Sikhs inside the complex to protect the Harmandir Sahib, and to resist the well-trained Indian army, equipped with sophisticated weaponry. In those days, the majority of the Sikhs were coming to the temple complex to celebrate the Martyr Day of Guru Arjun Dev.

The Indian regime used tanks and destroyed the Akaal Takht Sahib which is right in front of the Harmandir Sahib. On June 6, when all Sikh fighters were martyred along with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Indian troops entered the temple complex with their shoes, deliberately ignoring the holiness of the place, showing utter indecency. When the Indian Army felt that only 251 men had prevented them from entering the Golden Temple for so many days, they started killing innocent Sikhs who had come there to visit the temple. The only purpose was to hide their humiliation.

In this regard, in their book, The Sikh Struggle, Ramnarain Kumar and George Sieberer write:

“The army killed every Sikh who could be found inside the temple-complex. They were hauled out of rooms, brought to corridors on the circumference of the temple and with their hands tied behind their back, were shot in cold blood. Among the victims were many old men, women and children….However, all visitors were locked up in rooms for two days without any food, water, or electricity and were starved to death. Besides, the Harmandir Sahib remained under the army control for many months.”

The brutality of the ‘Operation Blue Star’ was not confined to the Harmandir Sahib. Indian armed forces simultaneously attacked 40 other historic gurdwaras all over East Punjab.

When Sikhs in other states came to know about the desecration of the Golden Temple and the massacre of their brethren, they quickly left for Punjab. New Delhi tried to stop them before they could reach Punjab. Many Sikhs were murdered on the way and many others were arrested.

According to an estimate, about 50,000 Sikhs were killed within a few days. The whole of Amritsar city was sealed and was burnt. A number of tourists either were murdered or arrested. Shops belonging to Sikhs were looted and their houses were set ablaze by Hindu mobs. In most of the cases, Sikh women were molested and some persons of their community were also burnt.

Another tragic dimension of the operation is that historical Sikh artifacts as well as all the literature written by the gurus were also set ablaze by the Indian army. But New Delhi fabricated a false story by claiming that these were burnt, while bombing the Harmandir Sahib.

In the same year of November, two dedicated Sikhs named Beant Singh and Satwant Singh, policemen who were posted at Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s residence in New Delhi, assassinated her. Then Hindu riots erupted in the capital and other cities in which more than 15,000 Sikhs were murdered in broad daylight by the supporters of Indira Gandhi, while police watched silently so as to provide the Hindus with a free hand to massacre Sikhs.

Meanwhile, after the ‘Operation Blue Star’ and the Sikh genocide, the Sikhs’ struggle for independence continued, but the Indian government made every effort to crush it with the state machinery. To maintain its control over the Harmandir Sahib, another attack was launched on the Temple in 1987, called ‘Operation Black Thunder’.

This time only Sikh resistance, which was the natural outcome of the tragedy, was the main target. In that respect, quite a number of people of the community were killed and dead bodies lay inside the sacred place for many days.

A report disclosed, many trucks were loaded with dead bodies and all were burned with kerosene oil. Afterwards, ‘Operation Woodrose’ and ‘Operation Black Thunder-II’ were conducted against the Sikh community, which also assassinated them extra-judicially.

Nevertheless, the attack on the Harmandir Sahib and genocide of Sikhs accelerated the liberation movement for Khalistan as Bhindranwale became a folk hero.

After these barbaric operations, Sikhs organised themselves into an armed power in order to fight the Indian state terrorism. Many Sikhs left India to escape further genocide. Sikhs have spread out all over the world to keep the movement of Khalistan alive. In this connection, their struggle is still going on.

In this connection, participation of almost 208,000 Sikhs in the Khalistan referendums held in the recent years in four western countries—the huge number of Sikhs who voted in favour of an independent Khalistan reflected that their demand for an independent homeland is gradually being accepted globally.

In the meantime, India launched a strict crackdown against the Sikh community. On March 18, prior to launching crackdown by the Indian police and paramilitary forces, section-144 was imposed, and mobile phone service was suspended in Sri Muktsar Sahib and Fazilka districts of the Indian Punjab. Ever since Amritpal Singh Sandhu took over as the head of ‘Waris Punjab De’, Indian Police arrested a large number of Sikhs as well as members of ‘Waris Punjab De’ and Amritpal Singh.

The Sikh diaspora has expressed serious concerns over this crackdown harassing Sikh population in the Indian Punjab, elsewhere in India, including those living abroad. Various Sikh entities living in India and abroad have strongly condemned Indian crackdown and emphasised to stop persecution of the Sikh community.

Particularly, the World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO) condemned the security operations in Punjab, stating: 

“Indian authorities have announced the mass suspension of internet services across Punjab citing a threat to “public order by incitement to violence. State-wide cordon and search operations are currently underway across Punjab”.

In a press release, WSO also said:

“We are also deeply concerned that the Bhai Amritpal Singh’s arrest…may be used to orchestrate a false encounter and facilitate his extrajudicial murder…This tactic was commonly used by the Punjab police through the 80’s and 90’s to eliminate Sikh activists. We call on the Canadian Government to demand accountability from India and call for the immediate restoration of civil rights and internet services in Punjab.”

Tim S. Uppal Canadian Conservative Party deputy leader, Gurratan Singh, former Member of the Provincial Parliament, Author and poet Rupi Kaur as well as renowned Sikh persons living in Canada expressed serious concern over crackdown against Sikhs in India-gross human rights violations, remarking:

“Very concerned about reports coming out of Punjab, India…We are closely following the situation…mass arrests of Sikh activists…shut down of internet and text… crackdown on public gatherings…mass censorship of media. Let the Indian Government know that we condemn this repression. The whole world is watching”.

It is mentionable that EU Sikhs held an anti-India protest demonstration in front of the Brussels Parliament in Brussels on March 27, 2023, calling on European Commission to challenge India’s massive security crackdown. The speakers on the occasion strongly denounced the Narendar Modi’s government for harassing the Sikh community in India.

Similarly, the California state assembly passed a resolution on April 10, this year, which said that the Sikh community in the US had not yet recovered from the physical and psychological trauma of the riots, urging the US Congress to formally recognise the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India as ‘genocide’, and to condemn the violence.

Notably, participation of almost 208,000 Sikhs in the Khalistan referendums held in the recent years in four western countries—the huge number of Sikhs who voted in favour of an independent Khalistan, have shown that Sikhs have intensified their struggle in this regard.

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Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: The army used seven Vijayanta Tanks during the operation (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 in)

This article was first published in December 2007.

One thing Microsoft founder Bill Gates can’t be accused of is sloth. He was already programming at 14, founded Microsoft at age 20 while still a student at Harvard. By 1995 he had been listed by Forbes as the world’s richest man from being the largest shareholder in his Microsoft, a company which his relentless drive built into a de facto monopoly in software systems for personal computers.

In 2006 when most people in such a situation might think of retiring to a quiet Pacific island, Bill Gates decided to devote his energies to his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest ‘transparent’ private foundation as it says, with a whopping $34.6 billion endowment and a legal necessity to spend $1.5 billion a year on charitable projects around the world to maintain its tax free charitable status. A gift from friend and business associate, mega-investor Warren Buffett in 2006, of some $30 billion worth of shares in Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway put the Gates’ foundation into the league where it spends almost the amount of the entire annual budget of the United Nations’ World Health Organization.

So when Bill Gates decides through the Gates Foundation to invest some $30 million of their hard earned money in a project, it is worth looking at.

No project is more interesting at the moment than a curious project in one of the world’s most remote spots, Svalbard. Bill Gates is investing millions in a seed bank on the Barents Sea near the Arctic Ocean, some 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole. Svalbard is a barren piece of rock claimed by Norway and ceded in 1925 by international treaty (see map).

On this God-forsaken island Bill Gates is investing tens of his millions along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway, among others, in what is called the ‘doomsday seed bank.’ Officially the project is named the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard island group.

The seed bank is being built inside a mountain on Spitsbergen Island near the small village of Longyearbyen. It’s almost ready for ‘business’ according to their releases. The bank will have dual blast-proof doors with motion sensors, two airlocks, and walls of steel-reinforced concrete one meter thick. It will contain up to three million different varieties of seeds from the entire world, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future,’ according to the Norwegian government. Seeds will be specially wrapped to exclude moisture. There will be no full-time staff, but the vault’s relative inaccessibility will facilitate monitoring any possible human activity.

Did we miss something here? Their press release stated, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future.’ What future do the seed bank’s sponsors foresee, that would threaten the global availability of current seeds, almost all of which are already well protected in designated seed banks around the world?

Anytime Bill Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto and Syngenta get together on a common project, it’s worth digging a bit deeper behind the rocks on Spitsbergen. When we do we find some fascinating things.

The first notable point is who is sponsoring the doomsday seed vault. Here joining the Norwegians are, as noted, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the US agribusiness giant DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred, one of the world’s largest owners of patented genetically-modified (GMO) plant seeds and related agrichemicals; Syngenta, the Swiss-based major GMO seed and agrichemicals company through its Syngenta Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation, the private group who created the “gene revolution with over $100 million of seed money since the 1970’s; CGIAR, the global network created by the Rockefeller Foundation to promote its ideal of genetic purity through agriculture change.

CGIAR and ‘The Project’

As I detailled in the book, Seeds of Destruction1, in 1960 the Rockefeller Foundation, John D. Rockefeller III’s Agriculture Development Council and the Ford Foundation joined forces to create the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, the Philippines. By 1971, the Rockefeller Foundation’s IRRI, along with their Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center and two other Rockefeller and Ford Foundation-created international research centers, the IITA for tropical agriculture, Nigeria, and IRRI for rice, Philippines, combined to form a global Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR).

CGIAR was shaped at a series of private conferences held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s conference center in Bellagio, Italy. Key participants at the Bellagio talks were the Rockefeller Foundation’s George Harrar, Ford Foundation’s Forrest Hill, Robert McNamara of the World Bank and Maurice Strong, the Rockefeller family’s international environmental organizer, who, as a Rockefeller Foundation Trustee, organized the UN Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972. It was part of the foundation’s decades long focus to turn science to the service of eugenics, a hideous version of racial purity, what has been called The Project.

To ensure maximum impact, CGIAR drew in the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Development Program and the World Bank. Thus, through a carefully-planned leverage of its initial funds, the Rockefeller Foundation by the beginning of the 1970’s was in a position to shape global agriculture policy. And shape it did.

Financed by generous Rockefeller and Ford Foundation study grants, CGIAR saw to it that leading Third World agriculture scientists and agronomists were brought to the US to ‘master’ the concepts of modern agribusiness production, in order to carry it back to their homeland. In the process they created an invaluable network of influence for US agribusiness promotion in those countries, most especially promotion of the GMO ‘Gene Revolution’ in developing countries, all in the name of science and efficient, free market agriculture.

Genetically engineering a master race?

Now the Svalbard Seed Bank begins to become interesting. But it gets better. ‘The Project’ I referred to is the project of the Rockefeller Foundation and powerful financial interests since the 1920’s to use eugenics, later renamed genetics, to justify creation of a genetically-engineered Master Race. Hitler and the Nazis called it the Ayran Master Race.

The eugenics of Hitler were financed to a major extent by the same Rockefeller Foundation which today is building a doomsday seed vault to preserve samples of every seed on our planet. Now this is getting really intriguing. The same Rockefeller Foundation created the pseudo-science discipline of molecular biology in their relentless pursuit of reducing human life down to the ‘defining gene sequence’ which, they hoped, could then be modified in order to change human traits at will. Hitler’s eugenics scientists, many of whom were quietly brought to the United States after the War to continue their biological eugenics research, laid much of the groundwork of genetic engineering of various life forms, much of it supported openly until well into the Third Reich by Rockefeller Foundation generous grants.2

The same Rockefeller Foundation created the so-called Green Revolution, out of a trip to Mexico in 1946 by Nelson Rockefeller and former New Deal Secretary of Agriculture and founder of the Pioneer Hi-Bred Seed Company, Henry Wallace.

The Green Revolution purported to solve the world hunger problem to a major degree in Mexico, India and other select countries where Rockefeller worked. Rockefeller Foundation agronomist, Norman Borlaug, won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work, hardly something to boast about with the likes of Henry Kissinger sharing the same.

In reality, as it years later emerged, the Green Revolution was a brilliant Rockefeller family scheme to develop a globalized agribusiness which they then could monopolize just as they had done in the world oil industry beginning a half century before. As Henry Kissinger declared in the 1970’s, ‘If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population.’

Agribusiness and the Rockefeller Green Revolution went hand-in-hand. They were part of a grand strategy which included Rockefeller Foundation financing of research for the development of genetic engineering of plants and animals a few years later.

John H. Davis had been Assistant Agriculture Secretary under President Dwight Eisenhower in the early 1950’s. He left Washington in 1955 and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Business, an unusual place for an agriculture expert in those days. He had a clear strategy. In 1956, Davis wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review in which he declared that “the only way to solve the so-called farm problem once and for all, and avoid cumbersome government programs, is to progress from agriculture to agribusiness.” He knew precisely what he had in mind, though few others had a clue back then— a revolution in agriculture production that would concentrate control of the food chain in corporate multinational hands, away from the traditional family farmer. 3

A crucial aspect driving the interest of the Rockefeller Foundation and US agribusiness companies was the fact that the Green Revolution was based on proliferation of new hybrid seeds in developing markets. One vital aspect of hybrid seeds was their lack of reproductive capacity. Hybrids had a built in protection against multiplication. Unlike normal open pollinated species whose seed gave yields similar to its parents, the yield of the seed borne by hybrid plants was significantly lower than that of the first generation.

That declining yield characteristic of hybrids meant farmers must normally buy seed every year in order to obtain high yields. Moreover, the lower yield of the second generation eliminated the trade in seed that was often done by seed producers without the breeder’s authorization. It prevented the redistribution of the commercial crop seed by middlemen. If the large multinational seed

companies were able to control the parental seed lines in house, no competitor or farmer would be able to produce the hybrid. The global concentration of hybrid seed patents into a handful of giant seed companies, led by DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred and Monsanto’s Dekalb laid the ground for the later GMO seed revolution. 4

In effect, the introduction of modern American agricultural technology, chemical fertilizers and commercial hybrid seeds all made local farmers in developing countries, particularly the larger more established ones, dependent on foreign, mostly US agribusiness and petro-chemical company inputs. It was a first step in what was to be a decades-long, carefully planned process.

Under the Green Revolution Agribusiness was making major inroads into markets which were previously of limited access to US exporters. The trend was later dubbed “market-oriented agriculture.” In reality it was agribusiness-controlled agriculture.

Through the Green Revolution, the Rockefeller Foundation and later Ford Foundation worked hand-in-hand shaping and supporting the foreign policy goals of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and of the CIA.

One major effect of the Green Revolution was to depopulate the countryside of peasants who were forced to flee into shantytown slums around the cities in desperate search for work. That was no accident; it was part of the plan to create cheap labor pools for forthcoming US multinational manufactures, the ‘globalization’ of recent years.

When the self-promotion around the Green Revolution died down, the results were quite different from what had been promised. Problems had arisen from indiscriminate use of the new chemical pesticides, often with serious health consequences. The mono-culture cultivation of new hybrid seed varieties decreased soil fertility and yields over time. The first results were impressive: double or even triple yields for some crops such as wheat and later corn in Mexico. That soon faded.

The Green Revolution was typically accompanied by large irrigation projects which often included World Bank loans to construct huge new dams, and flood previously settled areas and fertile farmland in the process. Also, super-wheat produced greater yields by saturating the soil with huge amounts of fertilizer per acre, the fertilizer being the product of nitrates and petroleum, commodities controlled by the Rockefeller-dominated Seven Sisters major oil companies.

Huge quantities of herbicides and pesticides were also used, creating additional markets for the oil and chemical giants. As one analyst put it, in effect, the Green Revolution was merely a chemical revolution. At no point could developing nations pay for the huge amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They would get the credit courtesy of the World Bank and special loans by Chase Bank and other large New York banks, backed by US Government guarantees.

Applied in a large number of developing countries, those loans went mostly to the large landowners. For the smaller peasants the situation worked differently. Small peasant farmers could not afford the chemical and other modern inputs and had to borrow money.

Initially various government programs tried to provide some loans to farmers so that they could purchase seeds and fertilizers. Farmers who could not participate in this kind of program had to borrow from the private sector. Because of the exorbitant interest rates for informal loans, many small farmers did not even get the benefits of the initial higher yields. After harvest, they had to sell most if not all of their produce to pay off loans and interest. They became dependent on money-lenders and traders and often lost their land. Even with soft loans from government agencies, growing subsistence crops gave way to the production of cash crops.5

Since decades the same interests including the Rockefeller Foundation which backed the initial Green Revolution, have worked to promote a second ‘Gene Revolution’ as Rockefeller Foundation President Gordon Conway termed it several years ago, the spread of industrial agriculture and commercial inputs including GMO patented seeds.

Gates, Rockefeller and a Green Revolution in Africa
With the true background of the 1950’s Rockefeller Foundation Green Revolution clear in mind, it becomes especially curious that the same Rockefeller Foundation along with the Gates Foundation which are now investing millions of dollars in preserving every seed against a possible “doomsday” scenario are also investing millions in a project called The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

AGRA, as it calls itself, is an alliance again with the same Rockefeller Foundation which created the “Gene Revolution.” A look at the AGRA Board of Directors confirms this.

It includes none other than former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as chairman. In his acceptance speech in a World Economic Forum event in Cape Town South Africa in June 2007, Kofi Annan stated, ‘I accept this challenge with gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and all others who support our African campaign.’

In addition the AGRA board numbers a South African, Strive Masiyiwa who is a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. It includes Sylvia M. Mathews of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Mamphela Ramphele, former Managing Director of the World Bank (2000 – 2006); Rajiv J. Shah of the Gates Foundation; Nadya K. Shmavonian of the Rockefeller Foundation; Roy Steiner of the Gates Foundation. In addition, an Alliance for AGRA includes Gary Toenniessen the Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation and Akinwumi Adesina, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation.

To fill out the lineup, the Programmes for AGRA includes Peter Matlon, Managing Director, Rockefeller Foundation; Joseph De Vries, Director of the Programme for Africa’s Seed Systems and Associate Director, Rockefeller foundation; Akinwumi Adesina, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation. Like the old failed Green Revolution in India and Mexico, the new Africa Green Revolution is clearly a high priority of the Rockefeller Foundation.

While to date they are keeping a low profile, Monsanto and the major GMO agribusiness giants are believed at the heart of using Kofi Annan’s AGRA to spread their patented GMO seeds across Africa under the deceptive label, ‘bio-technology,’ the new euphemism for genetically engineered patented seeds. To date South Africa is the only African country permitting legal planting of GMO crops. In 2003 Burkina Faso authorized GMO trials. In 2005 Kofi Annan’s Ghana drafted bio-safety legislation and key officials expressed their intentions to pursue research into GMO crops.

Africa is the next target in the US-government campaign to spread GMO worldwide. Its rich soils make it an ideal candidate. Not surprisingly many African governments suspect the worst from the GMO sponsors as a multitude of genetic engineering and biosafety projects have been initiated in Africa, with the aim of introducing GMOs into Africa’s agricultural systems. These include sponsorships offered by the US government to train African scientists in genetic engineering in the US, biosafety projects funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank; GMO research involving African indigenous food crops.

The Rockefeller Foundation has been working for years to promote, largely without success, projects to introduce GMOs into the fields of Africa. They have backed research that supports the applicability of GMO cotton in the Makhathini Flats in South Africa.

Monsanto, who has a strong foothold in South Africa’s seed industry, both GMO and hybrid, has conceived of an ingenious smallholders’ programme known as the ‘Seeds of Hope’ Campaign, which is introducing a green revolution package to small scale poor farmers, followed, of course, by Monsanto’s patented GMO seeds. 6

Syngenta AG of Switzerland, one of the ‘Four Horsemen of the GMO Apocalypse’ is pouring millions of dollars into a new greenhouse facility in Nairobi, to develop GMO insect resistant maize. Syngenta is a part of CGIAR as well.7

Move on to Svalbard

Now is it simply philosophical sloppiness? What leads the Gates and Rockefeller foundations to at one and the same time to back proliferation of patented and soon-to-be Terminator patented seeds across Africa, a process which, as it has in every other place on earth, destroys the plant seed varieties as monoculture industrialized agribusiness is introduced? At the same time they invest tens of millions of dollars to preserve every seed variety known in a bomb-proof doomsday vault near the remote Arctic Circle ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future’ to restate their official release?

It is no accident that the Rockefeller and Gates foundations are teaming up to push a GMO-style Green Revolution in Africa at the same time they are quietly financing the ‘doomsday seed vault’ on Svalbard. The GMO agribusiness giants are up to their ears in the Svalbard project.

Indeed, the entire Svalbard enterprise and the people involved call up the worst catastrophe images of the Michael Crichton bestseller, Andromeda Strain, a sci-fi thriller where a deadly disease of extraterrestrial origin causes rapid, fatal clotting of the blood threatening the entire human species. In Svalbard, the future world’s most secure seed repository will be guarded by the policemen of the GMO Green Revolution–the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, Syngenta, DuPont and CGIAR.

The Svalbard project will be run by an organization called the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT). Who are they to hold such an awesome trust over the planet’s entire seed varieties? The GCDT was founded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Bioversity International (formerly the International Plant Genetic Research Institute), an offshoot of the CGIAR.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust is based in Rome. Its Board is chaired by Margaret Catley-Carlson a Canadian also on the advisory board of Group Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, one of the world’s largest private water companies. Catley-Carlson was also president until 1998 of the New York-based Population Council, John D. Rockefeller’s population reduction organization, set up in 1952 to advance the Rockefeller family’s eugenics program under the cover of promoting “family planning,” birth control devices, sterilization and “population control” in developing countries.

Other GCDT board members include former Bank of America executive presently head of the Hollywood DreamWorks Animation, Lewis Coleman. Coleman is also the lead Board Director of Northrup Grumman Corporation, one of America’s largest military industry Pentagon contractors.

Jorio Dauster (Brazil) is also Board Chairman of Brasil Ecodiesel. He is a former Ambassador of Brazil to the European Union, and Chief Negotiator of Brazil’s foreign debt for the Ministry of Finance. Dauster has also served as President of the Brazilian Coffee Institute and as Coordinator of the Project for the Modernization of Brazil’s Patent System, which involves legalizing patents on seeds which are genetically modified, something until recently forbidden by Brazil’s laws.

Cary Fowler is the Trust’s Executive Director. Fowler was Professor and Director of Research in the Department for International Environment & Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. He was also a Senior Advisor to the Director General of Bioversity International. There he represented the Future Harvest Centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in negotiations on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. In the 1990s, he headed the International Program on Plant Genetic Resources at the FAO. He drafted and supervised negotiations of FAO’s Global Plan of Action for Plant Genetic Resources, adopted by 150 countries in 1996. He is a past-member of the National Plant Genetic Resources Board of the US and the Board of Trustees of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, another Rockefeller Foundation and CGIAR project.

GCDT board member Dr. Mangala Rai of India is the Secretary of India’s Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), and Director General of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR). He is also a Board Member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which promoted the world’s first major GMO experiment, the much-hyped ‘Golden Rice’ which proved a failure. Rai has served as Board Member for CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), and a Member of the Executive Council of the CGIAR.

Global Crop Diversity Trust Donors or financial angels include as well, in the words of the Humphrey Bogart Casablanca classic, ‘all the usual suspects.’ As well as the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, the Donors include GMO giants DuPont-Pioneer Hi-Bred, Syngenta of Basle Switzerland, CGIAR and the State Department’s energetically pro-GMO agency for development aid, USAID. Indeed it seems we have the GMO and population reduction foxes guarding the hen-house of mankind, the global seed diversity store in Svalbard. 8

Why now Svalbard?

We can legitimately ask why Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation along with the major genetic engineering agribusiness giants such as DuPont and Syngenta, along with CGIAR are building the Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic.

Who uses such a seed bank in the first place? Plant breeders and researchers are the major users of gene banks. Today’s largest plant breeders are Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and Dow Chemical, the global plant-patenting GMO giants. Since early in 2007 Monsanto holds world patent rights together with the United States Government for plant so-called ‘Terminator’ or Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT). Terminator is an ominous technology by which a patented commercial seed commits ‘suicide’ after one harvest. Control by private seed companies is total. Such control and power over the food chain has never before in the history of mankind existed.

This clever genetically engineered terminator trait forces farmers to return every year to Monsanto or other GMO seed suppliers to get new seeds for rice, soybeans, corn, wheat whatever major crops they need to feed their population. If broadly introduced around the world, it could within perhaps a decade or so make the world’s majority of food producers new feudal serfs in bondage to three or four giant seed companies such as Monsanto or DuPont or Dow Chemical.

That, of course, could also open the door to have those private companies, perhaps under orders from their host government, Washington, deny seeds to one or another developing country whose politics happened to go against Washington’s. Those who say ‘It can’t happen here’ should look more closely at current global events. The mere existence of that concentration of power in three or four private US-based agribusiness giants is grounds for legally banning all GMO crops even were their harvest gains real, which they manifestly are not.

These private companies, Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Chemical hardly have an unsullied record in terms of stewardship of human life. They developed and proliferated such innovations as dioxin, PCBs, Agent Orange. They covered up for decades clear evidence of carcinogenic and other severe human health consequences of use of the toxic chemicals. They have buried serious scientific reports that the world’s most widespread herbicide, glyphosate, the essential ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide that is tied to purchase of most Monsanto genetically engineered seeds, is toxic when it seeps into drinking water.9 Denmark banned glyphosate in 2003 when it confirmed it has contaminated the country’s groundwater.10

The diversity stored in seed gene banks is the raw material for plant breeding and for a great deal of basic biological research. Several hundred thousand samples are distributed annually for such purposes. The UN’s FAO lists some 1400 seed banks around the world, the largest being held by the United States Government. Other large banks are held by China, Russia, Japan, India, South Korea, Germany and Canada in descending order of size. In addition, CGIAR operates a chain of seed banks in select centers around the world.

CGIAR, set up in 1972 by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation to spread their Green Revolution agribusiness model, controls most of the private seed banks from the Philippines to Syria to Kenya. In all these present seed banks hold more than six and a half million seed varieties, almost two million of which are ‘distinct.’ Svalbard’s Doomsday Vault will have a capacity to house four and a half million different seeds.

GMO as a weapon of biowarfare?

Now we come to the heart of the danger and the potential for misuse inherent in the Svalbard project of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller foundation. Can the development of patented seeds for most of the world’s major sustenance crops such as rice, corn, wheat, and feed grains such as soybeans ultimately be used in a horrible form of biological warfare?

The explicit aim of the eugenics lobby funded by wealthy elite families such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman and others since the 1920’s, has embodied what they termed ‘negative eugenics,’ the systematic killing off of undesired bloodlines. Margaret Sanger, a rapid eugenicist, the founder of Planned Parenthood International and an intimate of the Rockefeller family, created something called The Negro Project in 1939, based in Harlem, which as she confided in a letter to a friend, was all about the fact that, as she put it, ‘we want to exterminate the Negro population.’ 11

A small California biotech company, Epicyte, in 2001 announced the development of genetically engineered corn which contained a spermicide which made the semen of men who ate it sterile. At the time Epicyte had a joint venture agreement to spread its technology with DuPont and Syngenta, two of the sponsors of the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault. Epicyte was since acquired by a North Carolina biotech company. Astonishing to learn was that Epicyte had developed its spermicidal GMO corn with research funds from the US Department of Agriculture, the same USDA which, despite worldwide opposition, continued to finance the development of Terminator technology, now held by Monsanto.

In the 1990’s the UN’s World Health Organization launched a campaign to vaccinate millions of women in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines between the ages of 15 and 45, allegedly against Tentanus, a sickness arising from such things as stepping on a rusty nail. The vaccine was not given to men or boys, despite the fact they are presumably equally liable to step on rusty nails as women.

Because of that curious anomaly, Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization became suspicious and had vaccine samples tested. The tests revealed that the Tetanus vaccine being spread by the WHO only to women of child-bearing age contained human Chorionic Gonadotrophin or hCG, a natural hormone which when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier stimulated antibodies rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy. None of the women vaccinated were told.

It later came out that the Rockefeller Foundation along with the Rockefeller’s Population Council, the World Bank (home to CGIAR), and the United States’ National Institutes of Health had been involved in a 20-year-long project begun in 1972 to develop the concealed abortion vaccine with a tetanus carrier for WHO. In addition, the Government of Norway, the host to the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault, donated $41 million to develop the special abortive Tetanus vaccine. 12

Is it a coincidence that these same organizations, from Norway to the Rockefeller Foundation to the World Bank are also involved in the Svalbard seed bank project? According to Prof. Francis Boyle who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by the US Congress, the Pentagon is ‘now gearing up to fight and win biological warfare’ as part of two Bush national strategy directives adopted, he notes, ‘without public knowledge and review’ in 2002. Boyle adds that in 2001-2004 alone the US Federal Government spent $14.5 billion for civilian bio-warfare-related work, a staggering sum.

Rutgers University biologist Richard Ebright estimates that over 300 scientific institutions and some 12,000 individuals in the USA today have access to pathogens suitable for biowarfare. Alone there are 497 US Government NIH grants for research into infectious diseases with biowarfare potential. Of course this is being justified under the rubric of defending against possible terror attack as so much is today.

Many of the US Government dollars spent on biowarfare research involve genetic engineering. MIT biology professor Jonathan King says that the ‘growing bio-terror programs represent a significant emerging danger to our own population.’ King adds, ‘while such programs are always called defensive, with biological weapons, defensive and offensive programs overlap almost completely.’ 13

Time will tell whether, God Forbid, the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Bank of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation is part of another Final Solution, this involving the extinction of the Late, Great Planet Earth.

Notes

1 F. William Engdahl, Seeds of Destruction, Montreal, (Global Research, 2007).
2 Ibid, pp.72-90.
3 John H. Davis, Harvard Business Review, 1956, cited in Geoffrey Lawrence, Agribusiness, Capitalism and the Countryside, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1987. See also Harvard Business School, The Evolution of an Industry and a Seminar: Agribusiness Seminar, http://www.exed.hbs.edu/programs/agb/seminar.html.
4 Engdahl, op cit., p. 130.
5 Ibid. P. 123-30.
6 Myriam Mayet, The New Green Revolution in Africa: Trojan Horse for GMOs?, May, 2007, African Centre for Biosafety, www.biosafetyafrica.net.
7 ETC Group, Green Revolution 2.0 for Africa?, Communique Issue #94, March/April 2007.
8 Global Crop Diversity Trust website, in http://www.croptrust.org/main/donors.php.
9 Engdahl, op. cit., pp.227-236.
10 Anders Legarth Smith, Denmark Bans Glyphosates, the Active Ingredient in Roundup, Politiken, September 15, 2003, in organic.com.au/news/2003.09.15.
11 Tanya L. Green, The Negro Project: Margaret Sanger’s Genocide Project for Black American’s, in www.blackgenocide.org/negro.html.
12 Engdahl, op. cit., pp. 273-275; J.A. Miller, Are New Vaccines Laced With Birth-Control Drugs?, HLI Reports, Human Life International, Gaithersburg, Maryland; June/July 1995, Volume 13, Number 8.
13 Sherwood Ross, Bush Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons for Offensive Use,’ December 20, 2006, in www.truthout.org.

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The US has gained the initiative over China in the Taiwan question.

Officially, defense secretary Austin at the Shangri-la meeting commits to the “one-China principle”. But everybody knows that this is a US lie.

Biden has already verbally committed the US to defend Taiwan’s independence. The reality is that the US is stepwise increasing the pressure on China all the time.

  • Building up Taiwan militarily.
  • Gradually moving Taiwan towards independence.
  • Sanctioning technologies against China and hindering tech-cooperation with China and blocking Chinese scientists and Ph.D. researchers in the USA.
  • Banning more and more types of investments in China. And so on.

Chinese defense minister Li’s response at the Shangri-la meeting gave a weak impression, warning that any conflict between the two nations would bring “unbearable disaster for the world”. Frankly, this only exhibits that a confrontation with the US would be catastrophic – for China. And the comments in Global Times were weak as well. The Chinese are verbally moving back and forth and getting nowhere.

While the US increases pressure over China on Taiwan, the US also increases pressure on China by drawing Japan, S.Korea, the Philippines, Australia, New Zeland, and Germany, France and the EU into the Taiwan question. With a new agreement, the US has even managed to draw Papua New Guinea over to the US side. Papua New Guina has a strategic forward location on the Second Island Chain between Australia and China.

Moreover, the US is actively courting India to join NATO+, something which definitely will bring sweat on the foreheads of the Chinese leadership. And should the Modi government resist US temptations of arms supplies and training, the US is for the sake of good order courting Modi’s opposition, Rahul Gandhi, who recently got a warm welcome by George Soros and US-Indian liberals on a tour to the USA.

Soros and the US NED will have millions of dollars to donate secretly through various Indian diaspora channels in the US to support Rahul Gandhi and smear Modi, if Modi doesn’t follow the US line. And if Rahul Gandhi declares something “nasty” about Modi, it will be followed up by US media and “NGOs”. India shouldn’t believe it is impenetrable to the normal US modus-vivendi of “color revolution”.

In the mid-term, things look even more bleak for China. The US is right now executing a disruptive AI revolution, which will strengthen the West immensely over China in all areas – economics, military, research, diplomacy, media, and global public manipulation. The US is already moving to the next disruption, superiority over China in Quantum Computing. This will  enable the US to break all Chinese codes and do extreme damage to China militarily and in civilian life. Third, the US is about to gain complete dominance in Space with SpaceX.

The US is losing Ukraine bitterly

The strategy of the US is now reversed. At first, the US perceived Russia as the “weaker part”. The US wanted to destroy Russia first in order to take on China next. But the US has found out the painful way, that Russia was granite, too hard to bite.

The US has therefore reversed strategic priorities. The US has not given up on taking down Russia, but the US has given up on taking Russia in a quick direct move. Instead, the US now concentrates on taking on China with an increasing strangulation of both China and Russia.

“Derisking” China is just a name for gradual decoupling and preparation of sanctions.

On top, the US is successfully turning Taiwan into a double tool of

(1) arming an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” right off China’s coast, 

(2) using the case of Taiwan as clarion-signal to gather US friends and allies and tighten US control over them.

Strategy is much about initiative. China is successful in the Middle East and expanding BRICS. But it is the US which alone controls the pace of events dictating China’s immediate strategic environment.

Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan have managed to gain the initiative over China.

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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

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Foods that Contain the Highest Amount of Pesticides

June 5th, 2023 by Jordan and Kyla

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Much of the produce that is sold today in supermarkets is supplied from farmers who practice conventional farming methods. In other words, the produce has been grown using chemical fertilizers as well as pesticides and herbicides. Many scientific studies suggest that the effects of synthetic pesticides can be detrimental to our health; one study suggests that the consumption of pesticides may lead to ADHD in children; in some other cases, exposure can lead to many forms of cancers, infertility problems and birth defects.

Along with the many other poor ‘food like’ products we are eating, there is an array of foreign substances that are entering our bodies. As we expose ourselves to these synthetic substances over the years, our bodies become overloaded, and our ‘cleaning’ mechanisms fail to work. As a result, many of us develop sickness and disease because our bodies cannot efficiently remove these toxins anymore. In order to help give your body a break from this chemical onslaught, we have suggested what foods should be eaten organically.  The foods listed below are some of the most toxic to our bodies if eaten from conventional sources. Based on the Environment Working Group (EWG), they contain the most pesticides, both on and within them, compared to other foods; so, if you are considering switching to organic, we would suggest taking account of the foods below as a first propriety in your transition.  

Top 12 Foods You Should Eat Organically (From lowest to highest amount of pesticides)

1. Apples: They contain 42 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 42 pesticide residues, there are 7 known carcinogens, 19 suspected hormone disruptors, 10 neurotoxins, 6 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 17 honeybee toxins.

2. Cherries: They contain 42 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 42 pesticide residues, 7 known or probable carcinogens, 22 suspected hormone disruptors, 7 neurotoxins, 8 development or reproductive toxins, and 18 honeybee toxins.

3. Green Beans: They contain 44 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 44 pesticide residues, there are 8 known carcinogens, 22 suspected hormone disruptors, 11 neurotoxins, 8 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 18 honeybee toxins.

4. Collard Greens: They contain 46 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 46 pesticide residues, there are 9 known carcinogens, 25 suspected hormone disruptors, 10 neurotoxins, 8 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 25 honeybee toxins.

5. Spinach: It contains 48 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 48 pesticide residues, there are 8 known carcinogens, 25 suspected hormone disruptors, 8 neurotoxins, 6 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 23 honeybee toxins.

6. Sweet Bell Peppers: They contain 49 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 49 pesticide residues, there are 11 known carcinogens, 26 suspected hormone disruptors, 13 neurotoxins, 10 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 19 honeybee toxins.

7. Lettuce: It contains 51 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 51 pesticide residues, there are 12 known carcinogens, 29 suspected hormone disruptors, 9 neurotoxins, 10 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 21 honeybee toxins.

8. Blueberries: They contain 52 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 52 pesticide residues, there are 8 known carcinogens, 24 suspected hormone disruptors, 14 neurotoxins, 7 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 21 honeybee toxins.

9. Strawberries: They contain 54 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 54 pesticide residues, there are 9 known carcinogens, 24 suspected hormone disruptors,11 neurotoxins, 12 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 19 honeybee toxins.

10. Kale: It contains 55 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 55 pesticide residues, there are 9 known carcinogens, 27 suspected hormone disruptors, 10 neurotoxins, 10 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 23 honeybee toxins.

11. Peaches: They contain 62 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 62 pesticide residues, there are 10 known carcinogens, 29 suspected hormone disruptors, 12 neurotoxins, 11 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 25 honeybee toxins.

12. Celery: It contains the most at 64 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 64 pesticide residues, there are 13 known carcinogens, 31 suspected hormone disruptors, 12 neurotoxins, 14 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 20 honeybee toxins.

Honourable Mentions 

  • Broccoli: It contains 33 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program.
  • Cucumbers: They contain 35 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program.
  • Grapes: They contain 34 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program.
  • Potatoes: They contain 37 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program.
  • Tomatoes: They contain 35 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program.

5 Foods that Contain the Lowest Pesticide Residues

Bananas: They contain 12 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 12 pesticide residues, there are 4 known carcinogens, 7 suspected hormone disruptors, 2 neurotoxins, 5 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 2 honeybee toxins.

Grapefruit: It contains 11 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 11 pesticide residues, there are 4 known carcinogens, 4 suspected hormone disruptors, 4 neurotoxins, 4 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 2 honeybee toxins.

Almonds: They contain 9 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 9 pesticide residues, there are 1 known carcinogens, 4 suspected hormone disruptors, 3 neurotoxins, 0 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 4 honeybee toxins.

Asparagus: It contains 9 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 9 pesticide residues, there are 1 known carcinogens, 7 suspected hormone disruptors, 4 neurotoxins, 3 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 5 honeybee toxins.

Onion: It contains 1 known pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program. Out of the 9 pesticide residues, there are 0 known carcinogens, 0 suspected hormone disruptors, 0 neurotoxins, 0 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 0 honeybee toxins.

When buying produce always consider buying organic. Better yet, to ensure freshness, buy local as much as you can. When you can buy both local and organic, you can guarantee that the product is both free of pesticides, and full of nutrients. Further to this, you will also avoid any potential foods that may have been genetically modified. To check out pesticide residues on other sources of food, you may visit this. By substituting the top 12 pesticide laden foods with organic, you can eliminate up to 80% of pesticides from your diet.

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*** 

 

 

 

 

The geostrategist Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928-2017), security adviser to President Jimmy Carter and co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, describes in his book The Grand Chessboard (1997) the challenges of the American empire as the only remaining superpower after the fall of the Soviet Union. Not least this is about the Middle East and Russia. In the book the control of Ukraine gets a lot of space. The country is considered to have great strategic importance as it is part of the Eurasian heartland and forms a bridge between Europe and Russia. According to British geostrategist Halford MacKinders (1861-1947) Heartland-theory, this area is the key to controlling the world.

Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island controls the world. (Halford Mackinder)

It was also a reason for Hitler’s aspiration to take control and dominate parts of the Russian sphere of interest (an aspiration that the Germans also had during the First World War and their idea of ​​”Central Europe”). According to Brzezinski’s analysis, it was of the utmost importance for the US to increase its influence in Ukraine in order to achieve this goal.

Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an Eurasian empire.

This is about building closer cooperation between Ukraine and Europe. If instead Russia gained control, the balance of power would tip over in their favor. For the United States, it was also about preventing a rapprochement between Germany and the Kremlin, which in the long run would risk leading to a loss of the American bridgehead in Europe. According to Brzezinski, America’s geostrategic goals for Europe were to:

…consolidate through a more genuine transatlantic partnership the U.S. bridgehead on the Eurasian continent so that an enlarging Europa can become a more viable springboard for projecting into Eurasia the international democratic and cooperative order.

In the book’s conclusions, Brzezinski writes that the United States’ time as the only superpower, within a generation, is coming to an end. The goal is to create a geopolitical structure in the face of this that can handle “inevitable shocks and stresses”.

This should ultimately lead to a new global “peaceful” management system, with an upgraded UN, able to shoulder the former regent’s mantle.

This coincides with the emergence of the G20 (1999), the World Economic Forum as the leading public-private partnership organization (2015), the partnership between these global corporate interests and the United Nations (2019) and the ongoing reform efforts to create an effective multilateral world system (UN Our Common Agenda) with an “emergency platform” that can handle “extreme global shocks”.

Emergency Platform to manage “extreme global shocks”

Emergency Platform to manage "extreme global shocks"

The ongoing war in Ukraine appears to be the final phase of this work. The conflict has also helped to create the kind of shocks and problems that the new system is meant to deal with. This is somewhat reminiscent of the situation during the Second World War when negotiations on the creation of a new world organization, which would replace the League of Nations, took place behind the scenes, behind the theaters of war.

The Moscow Declaration of 1943 reads as follows:

That they [the governments of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and China] recognize the necessity of establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international organization, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states, and open to membership by all such states, large and small, for the maintenance of international peace and security.

The new world organization took its name from the alliance of nations, the United Nations, which defeated Germany and Japan in 1945. Shortly before the end of the war, the 46 countries that had declared war on Germany and Japan gathered in San Francisco to adopt the United Nations Charter. In October of the same year, the UN was launched as an organization.

Brzezinski also mentions that Sweden and Finland could conceivably seek NATO membership after the Baltic states join. Here, however, Brzezinski was not completely in line with the course of events. It would take almost 20 years.

Undeniably, a lot has happened since the book was written 25 years ago. Not least in relation to the large neighbor to the east.

In addition to preventing Russia from growing too strong, there has also been work to influence Russia from within and to include the country in the international sphere of cooperation.

The relationship is complex and contains several dimensions. Not least the collaborations that exist with Russian institutions and networks in both the G20 and the World Economic Forum. Russia is also one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council.

In part two I will analyse the connections that has evolved.

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*** 

Sadly, the poor souls at Homeland Security have to spend their hours to carry out these classified “anti-disinformation” actions against those who try to speak the truth, or, God forbid, try to organize effective and meaningful resistance to the imposition of effective martial law clothed in the sheep skin of pandemics, cyber-security, and economic stimulus. The money passed around to those in the know to keep everyone else from figuring out what is happening is astonishing. I wish I could disclose to you how your tax dollars are used against you.

But if there is any doubt as to the relevancy of this particular political campaign, “Fear No Evil,” let me post again for you our demand from June 12, 2021 for the release of the true number of American soldiers killed, or taken as prisoner of war, in the foreign wars of the last twenty-one years.

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Demand for immediate release of true numbers of casualties and POWs in the foreign wars of the last 20 years 

June 12, 2021

“We demand that the Department of Defense, all branches of the military, and the entire intelligence community, disclose immediately the true number of American soldiers, and other personnel, killed and wounded in the foreign wars from October 7, 2001 (the launch of the invasion of Afghanistan) through the present day. That includes those killed while working for military contractors and those killed in top secret missions.

All classified material related to the true number of men and women killed and wounded must be made public and we prohibit the use of classification system to hide causalities, or corruption, from this day forward.

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It is a sad state of affairs that all the political figures trying to run for political office by bowing before the false gods of global finance, promising to mislead the American people about the drive for world war, are, by their very nature and their very role, incapable of addressing politics. In a sense, if they cannot demand the truth about the number of Americans killed or taken prisoner abroad, then they cannot practice politics in any meaningful way—except as a sort of slave politician so indebted to his patrons as to be incapable of uttering anything but harmless rhetorical puzzles.  

Does anyone seriously believe a nation could wage war for over twenty years in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and another dozen countries with casualties under 10,000 and no prisoners of war?

I ask, I demand, that all other candidates for president stand with me in upholding this commonsense demand. If they cannot do so, then I think we are entitled to question what their motivations are. Truely, the truth shall set you free.

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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*** 

Call me crazy; but sometime during US House s recent trip to Israel, a different Speaker emerged –  perhaps it was the appearance of a Speaker who had been predicted to betray his Republican caucus or prove his allegiance to the elite globalist neo-con crowd without a backward glance. 

Or perhaps it had more to do with the energy in Israel; McCarthy went to Israel on top of the world; obviously impressed as hell with his position and his relationship with the Israelis never recognizing how easily they exploit him.  

It was no surprise when McCarthy, who is Constitutionally third in line for the Presidency, announced a trip to Israel, having visited that country often over the years.  He frequently accompanied newly elected House Members to that middle east country which has been fleecing US taxpayers since after WW II and, more importantly, have played an integral role, if not central component to US foreign policy – which raises the question why newly Electeds are expected to make pilgrimages to Israel, other than to inculcate them with an expected level of sustenance, with AIPAC picking up the tab.   

Image is from speaker.gov

Kevin McCarthy meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel

Previously, McCarthy had been successfully holding his thin Republican margin intact, adopting a “No blank check“ for Ukraine had become a sort of mantra after Republicans won the House in 2022,  his official position until his visit to Israel.

Now, gung ho, McCarthy’s speech before the Knesset revealed an off-centered grasp with a loss of perspective on reality; as if there is no accountability for one’s actions; immunity from public shaming and oblivious to Israel’s decades of war against a defenseless people, theft of their homes and abuse of their children, and especially Israel’s benefit from the US as obedient toadies.  

That role is about to dramatically shift as the increasing influence of the BRICS nations adding new member states in late August with Iran and Saudi Arabia (among others) expected to join.  The new BRICS makeup will irrevocably alter the geopolitical game board decisively impacting the Russia-China-Iran Euroasian axis including the US-Israel relationship.  The BRICS are expected to adopt a common currency; thus fracturing the US grip on independent federated states as they shuck off US sanctions and its dependence on The Dollar.  The level of anticipated geopolitical upheaval with foreign policy implications are, however,  not part of McCarthy’s job description.

The Speaker’s visit was more than recognition of a seventy five year anniversary of an unparalleled US – Israel collaboration as the world’s largest recipient of US foreign aid at $150 Billion according to the CRS.  Even in an era of debt ceiling debates, reliable bi-partisan Congressional generosity to protect Israel from stone-throwing Palestinian teenagers is rarely debated.  Even the Trump administration’s $900 Billion coronavirus legislation contained substantial support for Israel with no real deliberation.    

US aid has included decades of political patronage, economic aid and predominately miliary assistance; such as the Iron Dome all-weather defense system at $3 billion since 2011 as well as a ten year (fy 2019-2028) military assistance package worth $38 Billion (subject to Congressional Appropriations) that was signed in 2016.  In addition, Israel is accumulating a quantity of Lockheed’s F35 stealth fighter jets at $90 million a pop with a purchase agreement of fifty by 2024 for an unspecified purpose.

The first US Speaker to address the Knesset since 1998, McCarthy was inordinately pleased with the distinct honor as something was lost in translation, no longer a Speaker of historic proportions. His speech was personal and enthusiastic, inspiring to the Israeli parliament as it was full of condescending, patronizing bombast asserting that Israel had achieved “faith and freedom, those values worth fight for or dying fo,r especially today” with no acknowledgment of a massive infusion of American weapons and financial benevolence.

Image: Kevin meets with Ambassador David Friedman, who has helped strengthen the relationship with Israel. (Source: Speaker.gov)

Clearly enthralled with the US-Israeli ‘special bond’ as ‘more personal and powerful’, McCarthy suggested that only two countries in history were “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are equal” except the Palestinians who have never known liberty or equality under Israeli rule. 

Citing Israel’s success today that once relied on rationing food and oil, the Speaker praised “today’s Israel ranked as the fourth best performing economy among developing nations, its market economy is dynamic” and “its remarkable people are bursting with talent and ideas” including a “thriving innovative economy” all of which is more than can be said for today’s US economy. 

With a notable lack of diplomacy, there were troubling elements with McCarthy’s remarks as he addressed anticipated foreign policy provocations including potential US military participation: 

“Threats to peace have one primary cause: the rogue Iranian regime. Most of the turmoil in this region, of violence and instability can be traced back to that source which continues to fund terrorism, arms its proxy militias and pursues nuclear weapons. Iran seeks to destabilize Iraq. It wants to entrench missiles in Syria. It empowers the terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon and it is fueling a brutal civil war in Yemen. And among all this aggression, it seeks to encircle Israel with hostile forces. We cannot allow the Iran regime evil campaign to succeed.

To deter Iran’s dangerous behavior, our nation’s must continue to stand together. We the United States integrated Israel into our Central Command and are continuing to carry out military exercises together. As long as I am Speaker, America will continue to support fully funding for security assistance in Israel. Together, we will defeat Iran’s precision guided missiles, their drones, their terror tunnels and cyber attacks as we stand shoulder to shoulder against Iran’s regional aggression. We must always remain resolute in our commitment that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon.”

McCarthy apparently missed the memo that since 1968 Israel has steadfastly refused to sign the Nuclear Non ProliferationTreaty with a purported stash of perhaps two hundred-plus nuclear weapons in its possession.

 His “final priority” was to ‘end efforts to delegitimize and discrimination against Israel, the toxic boycott divestment and sanctions movement or the constant attacks of Israel at the UN with prejudice against Israel on world stage is damaging and destructive” citing the UN’s Human Rights Council which has passed  “over ninety anti israel resolutions” since 2006.  

Assuming his right as Speaker, McCarthy announced establishing a House-Knesset Parliamentarian Friendship Group to work as “close together as possible, in collaboration” to continue “the strength of our bonds as elected representatives and work better together; democracy to democracy.  We will engage more directly with the Knesset.”  The idea would be that the US House would  “host Knessset members to participate in Congress beginning a new chapter in US Israel relations.”  

Perhaps Speaker McCarthy has not read the Constitution lately but the US House of Representatives is a Constitutionally mandated office (Article I, Section 2) requiring each Member to be a United States citizen.  At no time did the country’s founders anticipate the co-mingling or dual citizenship with any foreign government certain to dissipate American principles and askew intent of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.  McCarthy’s Friendship Group would transform the Congress from an American-made legislature into an alien force with a foreign membership of split allegiance and divided loyalties. There are already a significant number of dual citizenship  House Members, almost all include dual Israeli citizenship which challenges the concept of a Congress totally devoted to American institutions.

There is however, the pending Dual Loyalty Disclosure Act (HR 946) which would require political candidates to reveal if they hold any dual citizenship with another country.

Immediately after his Knesset speech, McCarthy flipped his position on Ukraine in sharp contrast to his earlier stated position.   “I vote for aid for Ukraine, I support aid for Ukraine,” Mr. McCarthy said to a reporter who had prefaced his question with, “We know that you don’t support the current unlimited and uncontrolled supplies of weaponry and aid to Ukraine.”  McCarthy advised the reporter “I do not support what your country has done to Ukraine; I do not support your killing of the children either and we will continue to support, because the rest of the world sees it just as it is.”

Yet McCarthy, like the majority of Congress, have failed to exhibit any awareness  of Israel’s sordid history of attacks on civilians and especially its children.

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As anyone in a position of authority comes to realize, there is more to leadership than being anointed with a prestigious title that may presume to confer essential qualities of trust and respect.  It is when the chips are down that truly gifted leadership emerges and trust is earned; the willingness to speak one’s own truth in the face of opposition and derision brings validation and public recognition. 

It all comes down to the spiritual components of character and integrity, without which the inner gifts of virtue, vision, wisdom and generosity may lead to massive misjudgment or a zealous overreach where leadership fails to enshrine its place in history.

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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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*** 

It wasn’t that long ago that Mitt Romney was threatening former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for suggesting the US was funding biolabs in Ukraine.

Back in March 2022, RINO Senator Mitt Romney accused former Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of spreading ‘treasonous lies’ for simply talking about the US-funded biolabs in Ukraine.

“There are 25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release and spread deadly pathogens to US/world.” Gabbard said at the time.

“We must take action now to prevent disaster. US/Russia/Ukraine/NATO/UN/EU must implement a ceasefire now around these labs until they’re secured and pathogens destroyed,” she added.

Tulsi Gabbard made her statement based on testimony from the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in Eurasia, Victoria Nuland.

Victoria Nuland admitted during testimony before a US Senate committee the existence of biological research labs in Ukraine.

Less than 24 hours later, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that reports of biolabs in Ukraine were fake news propagated by Russia.

The Democrat-fake news-media complex then attacked anyone who brought up the biolabs in Ukraine.

Mitt Romney lashed out at Tulsi Gabbard, saying,

“Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.”

Then this happened– Russia released alleged captured documents from Ukraine exposing evidence of US Military Biolabs in Ukraine.

Russia made the accusations in front of the United Nations General Assembly.

The Pentagon in June 2022 finally admitted in a public statement that there are 46 US-funded biolabs in Ukraine.

This is after months of lies and denials by Democrats, the Biden regime and their fake news mainstream media!

The Pentagon FINALLY came clean.

Now Russia is accusing the US of experimenting with Avian flu pathogens at a US biolab in Ukraine with a lethality rate up to 40% in humans.

Russian officials announced their findings on Friday.

The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation continues to analyse the military and biological activities of the U.S. and its allies in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world.

We noted earlier that during the special military operation, documentary evidence was obtained confirming that employees of the Biosphere Reserve in Askania Nova, Kherson region, were studying the migration routes of migratory birds and selecting and transferring biological material abroad.

The task force of the Russian Ministry of Defence together with officers of the Federal Security Service and Rosselkhoznadzor have confirmed the collection and certification of avian influenza virus strains with a high potential for epidemic spread and the ability to cross the species barrier, particularly the H5N8 strain, whose lethality in human transmission can reach 40%. Remember that 1% of new coronavirus infections result in death. 

Despite efforts by the Reserve’s staff to destroy the biomaterials by cutting off the power to the refrigeration units and destroying the cryopreservoir with liquid nitrogen, specialists from the 48th Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defence found traces of genetic material of highly pathogenic avian influenza, Newcastle disease virus, and avuloviruses even in the samples that had undergone decomposition.

According to the employees who remained in the Reserve, the Ukrainian side offered them a large cash reward for removing or destroying the research results.

Documents seized in the Reserve’s veterinary laboratory confirm the involvement of the Kharkov Institute of Veterinary Medicine in the work of the American UP-8 and P-444 Projects and preparations for the Flu-Fly-Way project.

Their goal was to evaluate the circumstances in which the transmission of diseases associated with economically significant infections may become uncontrollable, result in economic harm, and constitute a threat to food security.

It is necessary to emphasize that once more that the U.S. Department of Defense, an organisation that has nothing to do with the research of bird migratory routes, commissioned the projects.

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Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.

Featured image: U.S. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard speaking with attendees at the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention at the George R. Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Credit: Gage Skidmore/ Flickr) 

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Sinking Zelensky

June 5th, 2023 by Karsten Riise

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*** 

US President Biden and Secretary General Stoltenberg of NATO together with the CIA “Institute for the Study of War” and all US mainstream media repeat that Russia has lost and Ukraine is winning.

However, in a video-interview released today 3 June 2023 by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Zelensky is clearly a worn man who is not winning. The headline of the WSJ is “Ready for Counteroffensive”, but the content reveals that the contrary is the case.  Zelensky has tensions in the face. Just a few weeks ago, Zelensky’s top general Zaluzhnyi reportedly suffered a Russian air strike. We don’t know exactly what happened to Zaluzhnyi, but looking at the latest video released, Zaluzhnyi clearly does no longer radiate the strength to command soldiers in war. Just a few days ago, Ukraine’s top military security chief Budanov may have suffered the same or a worse fate as Zaluzhnyi, as Russia hit Ukraine’s security HQ with a big missile strike in Kiev. With this and the big purges in Kiev’s top at the beginning of 2023, Zelensky does not have people around him which he used to have. After Ukraine’s attempt to hit Putin with a drone-attack on the Kremlin, Zelensky himself may not even be really safe anymore.

As the ex-comedian starts his stage-speak, Zelensky feels more at ease. But when Zelensky then says ”We strongly believe we will succeed” his eyes make a flicker to the side. Intermittently playing some archive pictures, the journalist’s voice-over adds: ”Zelensky says he did not have enough firepower to defend his whole country.”

Repeatedly, Ukraine postpones its much touted ”biggest counteroffensive”.

First, the explanation was that “weapons have not arrived”.

Soon after, Sec. Gen. Stoltenberg invalidated Zelensky’s excuse for postponement by announcing, that all promised NATO weapons had been delivered.

Ukraine then used the explanation that “the ground is muddy” due to the thaw of snow and the rain of the Spring. As the WSJ explains, “Western officials said they thought Ukraine’s counterattack was imminent, and that Kyiv was waiting for the ground to dry out.We are now in June, and the “muddy” excuse is clearly no longer valid either.

Zelensky now postpones the “counteroffensive” with a third explanation that Ukraine is hoping for 48 more Patriot air defense batteries for a total of 50 batteries, which Zelensky knows NATO does not have the stockpile or the production capacity to deliver without seriously compromising NATO countries’ own security.

Due to the “Pentagon leaks”, it was announced and expected even in US media, that Ukraine by end of May would run out of air defense missiles. Now beginning of June, we see the devastating consequences of Russian air power hammering Ukraine.

Zelensky admits that Russia has air superiority and even admits that “everyone knows perfectly well that any counteroffensive without air superiority is very dangerous.” Because Ukraine postpones its “biggest counteroffensive” several months more, worse is to come: By late Summer 2023, Ukraine will run out of artillery shells too.

Ukraine is already at a serious disadvantage in artillery firepower, but in 1-2 months, Ukraine will be dead at the front for lack of artillery support. We also see at the front, that Ukraine is holding back its forces to reduce losses, and currently the Ukrainian loss of armored vehicles is down from over 30 units per day to 10-15 units per day plus a couple of tanks and artillery pieces. Even at that “lower” loss-rate, Ukraine will still lose 600-900 armored vehicles the next two months, while Ukraine waits for the Godot-missiles, the 50 Patriot batteries that will never come. For context, Ukraine received around 1,200 armored vehicles from NATO. Before late Summer 2023, Russia will just roll-over Ukraine.

In the interview, we also see Zelensky getting nervous that NATO seemingly hasn’t sent Zelensky signals that NATO will promise membership to Ukraine after the war. Asked directly by the journalist, whether Zelensky believes he will get a NATO guarantee for Ukrainian membership, Zelensky’s face flickers repeatedly, and Zelensky’s words stumble when he answers “I…I don’t know.” Saying so, Zelensky cringes his hands. Zelensky is clearly scared, that Ukrainian neutrality could be held as a bargaining chip by NATO for later talks with Russia.

Ukraine and Zelensky are sinking now.

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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

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*** 

The UK government is facing renewed pressure to shut its Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) after the unit was accused of tracking the activities of vocal critics of COVID-19 policies when flagging so-called disinformation.

The government has denied targeting individuals, saying the unit was banned from flagging journalists and MPs to social media platforms.

The CDU, which was set up on March 5, 2020, monitors online narratives and trends, and has worked “closely with social media platforms to quickly identify and help them respond to potentially harmful content on their platforms,” including “removing harmful content in line with their terms and conditions, and promoting authoritative sources of information,” according to government ministers.

The Telegraph on June 2 accused the unit of secretly monitoring the activities of critics of the government’s COVID-19 policies such as lockdowns, school closures, mask mandate, and the proposed vaccine passport.

According to the report, documents released through Freedom of Information and data protection requests showed the CDU had flagged 24 social media comments by Molly Kingsley, who founded the children’s welfare campaign group UsForThem in response to school closures, and one post on Twitter by Dr. Alexandre De Figueiredo, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who opposed the mass COVID-19 vaccination of children.

The report said De Figueiredo’s tweet was first flagged by Logically, an artificial intelligence firm the CDU used to trawl the internet. Another government unit, the now-defunct Rapid Response Unit (RRU), was said to have “logged” articles written by Carl Heneghan, director of Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine.

The report also said the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, in which the CDU was embedded at the time, had a “trusted flagger” status on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, meaning the companies would fast-track their requests for content moderation.

The RRU, which also was set up in March 2020, was closed last year, while the CDU operates now within the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology.

A government spokesperson denied that individuals had been targeted.

“The unit’s purpose is to track narratives and trends using publicly available information online to protect public health and national security,” the person said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

“It has never tracked the activity of individuals and has a blanket ban on referring journalists and MPs to social media platforms. None of the people named in this report were ever referred to social media platforms by the government and any claim otherwise is objectively false,” they added.

Meta, which owns Facebook, hasn’t responded to an Epoch Times request for comment. The same request emailed to Twitter was returned with an automated response consisting of a poop emoji. Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, announced on the platform in March that the emoji would be sent automatically when journalists sent requests for comment.

Civil Liberty group Big Brother Watch, which dubbed the government’s counter-disinformation units the “Ministry of Truth” after the propaganda department in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” renewed its call for the CDU to be “suspended immediately [and] investigated.”

Former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg called on the continuing COVID-19 Inquiry to investigate “the oppressive methods used to override dissent.”

“It is clear from [Former Health Secretary Matt] Hancock’s messages that steps were taken to manipulate public opinion and now it appears underhand[ed] methods may have been employed to stop free speech,” he told The Telegraph.

Rees-Mogg was referring to Hancock’s WhatsApp communications with officials during the COVID-19 pandemic, which were published in March. One of the messages on how to communicate with the public about the emergence of the Alpha variant of the virus reads, “We frighten the pants off everyone with the new strain.”

The call to investigate the CDU comes after Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed to hand over “all unredacted WhatsApp” messages to the COVID-19 inquiry.

Lady Hallett, chair of the official inquiry, requested the messages last month, saying they were significant for their insight into core political and administrative decision-making by the UK government during the pandemic.

The Cabinet Office has argued that the messages are unambiguously irrelevant to the inquiry, although Hallett dismissed the argument.

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Digital Pound: Have Your Say on CBDCs in the UK

June 5th, 2023 by OffGuardian

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This month marks the close of the UK government’s “consultation” on the planned digital pound. This is your chance to have your say on plans to introduce a Central Bank Digital Currency to the UK.

According to the UK government’s website:

The way we use money is changing. This Consultation Paper sets out our assessment of the case for a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) – a so-called ‘digital pound’. It has been overseen by the joint Bank-HM Treasury CBDC Taskforce that was announced in April 2021.

At this stage, we judge it likely that the digital pound will be needed in the future. It is too early to decide whether to introduce the digital pound, but we are convinced preparatory work is justified.

We have covered the rise of CBDCs – and the concomitant dangers to personal freedom – in detail for a while now.

As a quick refresher, or for the uninitiated, CBDCs are a form digital money that would allow both surveillance of every transaction as well potentially Orwellian control through a function they call “programmability”.

Essentially, CBDC would hypothetically allow either the state or your employer to control where and how you spend your money.

If that sounds like a bad idea to you, well then good news – you get to make yourself heard.

Part of the UK’s consultation process leaves an opportunity for members of the public to submit their feedback on the proposal. The orginal deadline for this was June 7th, but just today it was pushed back to June 30th, apparently because they added a new question at the last minute.

To respond to the original form [click here].

Or to respond to the brand new question 9 [click here]

NOTE: For some reason you have to do both separately. Question 9 is not included on the main form.

They are also accepting written responses both by email: [email protected]

…and post:

Digital Pound Consultation
CBDC Unit
Bank of England
Threadneedle Street
London
EC2R 8AH

If that’s you’re preferred option, Big Brother Watch have prepared a template you can use.

Honestly, we all know how the world works, and orders to implement CBDCs come from someone way above the UK government’s pay grade. Whatever the inclination of the bureaucrats or politicians in Westminster, the digital currency will almost certainly be pushed through. But apathy only greases the wheels of that machinary, while civil objections from an informed populace will hold up and stall and irritate the process.

They will probably ignore it, but we can still make it really really hard to ignore.

Let’s make sure the man behind the curtain knows we can see him.

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*** 

Allowing Ukraine to join NATO is akin to pulling the pin on a grenade and waiting to see what happens. The threat of Ukraine’s admittance to NATO was one of the stated reasons that prompted Russia to invade Ukraine. Pro war advocates claimed this was nonsense and there was no plan to admit Ukraine into NATO. That claim was dubious at best.

Still, if there were discussions and negotiations taking place regarding Ukraine’s admittance into NATO, that discussion ended when Russia invaded Ukraine. If Ukraine’s admittance into NATO was one of the issues that caused the war to begin, threats to allow admittance would only prolong the war or end any future peace treaties. It became a moot point.

Well, that actually isn’t true. While Russia and Ukraine are at war, there are those that are still advocating that Ukraine be admitted to NATO. A Neocon organization called the Atlantic Council just released an article discussing security options for Ukraine, including admittance into NATO.  

No, seriously.

It appears that those holding this view give absolutely no credence to NATO expansion as provocative rather than a deterrence. The Obama backed Ukrainian color revolution lead to the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. It would appear that this was provocative rather than a deterrence. At the very least an equal focus on avoiding provocation should be employed.

The Atlantic Council argues its case for Ukraine joining NATO:

There is a strong case for Ukrainian membership in NATO. The most obvious argument is that deterrence based on assurances, partnerships, threat of sanctions, and military assistance has failed Ukraine twice. For the long-term security of Europe, deterrence cannot be allowed to fail again. This is especially true with regard to a country that has sacrificed so much for its freedom. It has fulfilled most of the criteria of the Membership Action Plan, including the economic, political, and military requirements. Ukraine deserves NATO’s full protection. With the guarantee of long-term security, Ukraine will be able to participate in any future negotiation with Russia with greater confidence. In addition, during the past fifteen months of conflict, Ukraine has built firm cultural, political, and security bridges with all NATO members and with the European Union. Importantly, NATO membership for Ukraine would not be a one-way street. Ukraine’s military is one of the most capable and certainly the most battle tested in Europe. They are fully trained on a wide array of NATO munitions and thus interoperable with NATO forces. Their knowledge of how Russia fights would be of incalculable value to the alliance.

Let’s unpack this paragraph starting with an examination of what exactly the ‘deterrence’ would be?. The deterrence would be military conflict. Article 5 of the NATO treaty essentially says an attack on one member of NATO is considered an attack on all. While it may be true that there is a little wiggle room in the wording that a military response is not required, it is a high probability, and not doing so would likely crumble the alliance. If the deterrence is a military response, then inclusion of Ukraine in NATO would be another provocative action. Furthermore, it creates a tripwire for escalation of any future military conflict.

At NATO’s July summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, there are a few paths toward NATO membership for Ukraine being considered. One is to fast track membership immediately upon a ceasefire with Russia. There are other options that would not be so quick. There are also non NATO membership alliances being discussed. One is admittance into the European Union. The European Union does not have the defense clause that NATO has, but it does require aid and assistance by all means in their power in the event of military aggression. Other proposed actions would be possible unilateral initiatives by the United States. This would call on Congress to ‘Pass a concurrent resolution pledging to continue to provide necessary weapons to Ukraine after a cease-fire to ensure that Russia does not have the advantage to attack Ukraine again.”

The authors conclude:

NATO membership would provide the strongest long-term deterrence against renewed Russian aggression, but the difficulty Sweden is having in securing Turkish and Hungarian approval of NATO accession indicates the difficulty that Ukraine might have. Seeking immediate NATO membership amid armed conflict would probably not succeed since it would create an immediate Article 5 situation.

Well, at least they think it would be dangerous to include Ukraine into NATO while they are at war with Russia….Yet, the idea that military aid would be provocative rather than a deterrent is lost…

It is irrelevant which side is right and which side is wrong in the conflict. There are three sides to every coin. My side, your side, and then the truth. The truth is the narrow side of the coin. The rest is BS. The reality is that a series of events were set in motion that eventually led to this conflict.

There were those that warned back in the 1990s that NATO expansion was provoking Russia and damaging the U.S. Russian relationship. At the start of the current war many of us felt that we should have immediately sought to deescalate the war. Instead, the opposite approach was utilized and a policy that only escalated the situation was pursued. This of course included billions of dollars in aid and arms to Ukraine. The policy of deterrence is not working. It is creating a much more dangerous war and weakening the U.S. economy.  

Should we consider attempting to deescalate the situation or continue to use the provocative ‘deterrence’ approach?

Besides the countless Russians and Ukrainians that are dying, there is another reason to not continue to escalate the situation any further. Russia has the most nuclear weapons in the world and supersonic missiles that apparently can’t be shot down. If this war escalated into an all out war between the United States and Russia, well, that’s game over. We would have a global nuclear war. Nobody would win and everybody on the planet would lose.  

When you have a bad hand in poker and get caught bluffing, you fold. You don’t go all in. The ‘deterrence’ strategy has not worked for decades. It has not worked in this current conflict. It has only escalated the situation to a very dangerous point. At some point the people creating the problems ought to stop offering solutions.

Let’s not pull the pin on the grenade to see what happens….   

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*** 

Citizen activism to bring about changes in how brutal wars are conducted is extremely difficult, but not impossible. Citizens have successfully pushed through the United Nations General Assembly treaties to abolish nuclear weapons and to ban the use of landmines and cluster munitions.

Of course, countries that want to continue to use these weapons will not follow the lead of the vast majority of countries in the world and sign those treaties. The United States and the other eight nuclear armed countries have refused to sign the treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. Likewise, the United States and 15 other countries, including Russia and China, have refused to sign the ban on the use cluster bombs. The United States and 31 other countries, including Russia and China, have refused to sign the treaty on the ban on land mines.

However, the fact that “rogue,” war mongering countries, such as the United States, refuse to sign treaties that the majority of the countries of the world want, does not deter people of conscience and social responsibility from trying to bring these countries to their senses for the sake of the survival of the human species.

We know that we are up against rich weapons manufacturers that buy the favor of politicians in these war nations through their political campaign donations and other largesse.

Up against these odds, the latest citizen initiative for banning a specific weapon of war will be launched on June 10, 2023 in Vienna, Austria at the International Summit for Peace in Ukraine.

One of the favorite weapons of war of the 21st century has turned out to be weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles. With these automated aircraft, human operators can be tens of thousands of miles away watching from cameras onboard the plane. No human must be on the ground to verify what the operators think they see from the plane which may be thousands of feet above.

As a result of imprecise data analysis by the drone operators, thousands of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine and Russia have been slaughtered by the Hellfire missiles and other munitions triggered by the drone operators. Innocent civilians attending wedding parties and funeral gatherings have been massacred by drone pilots.  Even those coming to aid victims of a first drone strike have been killed in what is called “double tap.”

Many militaries around the world are now following the lead of the United States in the use of killer drones. The U.S. used weaponized drones in Afghanistan and Iraq and killed thousands of innocent citizens of those countries.

By using weaponized drones, militaries don’t have to have humans on the ground to confirm targets or to verify that the persons killed were the intended targets. For militaries, drones are a safe and easy way to kill their enemies. The innocent civilians killed can be chalked up as “collateral damage” with seldom an investigation into how the intelligence that led to the killing of the civilians was created. If by chance an investigation is done, drone operators and intelligence analysts are given a pass on responsibility for extra-judicially assassinating innocent civilians.

One of the most recent and most publicized drone strike on innocent civilians was in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan in August 2021, during the botched U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan. After following a white car for hours that intelligence analysts reportedly believed to be carrying a possible ISIS-K bomber, a U.S. drone operator launched a Hellfire missile at the car as it pulled into a small residential compound. At the same moment, seven small children came racing out to the car to ride the remaining distance into the compound.

While senior U.S. military initially described the deaths of unidentified persons as a “righteous” drone strike, as media investigated who was killed by the drone strike, it turned out that the driver of the car was Zemari Ahmadi, an employee of Nutrition and Education International, a California-based aid organization who was making his daily routine of deliveries of materials to various locations in Kabul.

When he arrived home each day, his children would run out of the house to meet their father and ride in the car the remaining few feet to where he would park. 3 adults and 7 children were killed in what was later confirmed as an “unfortunate” attack on innocent civilians. No military personnel were admonished or punished for the mistake that killed ten innocent persons.

Over the past 15 years, I have made trips to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Gaza to talk with families who have had innocent loved ones killed by drone pilots who were operating drones from hundreds if not thousands of miles away. The stories are similar. The drone pilot and the intelligence analysts, generally young men and women in their 20s, misinterpreted a situation that could have been sorted out easily by “boots on the ground.”

But the military finds it easier and safer to kill innocent civilians than put its own personnel on the ground to make on site evaluations. Innocent persons will continue to die until we find a way to stop the use of this weapons system. The risks will increase as AI takes over more and more of the targeting and launch decisions.

The draft treaty is a first step in the uphill battle to rein in long distance and increasingly automated and weaponized drone warfare.

Please join us in the International Campaign to Ban Weaponized Drones and sign the petition/statement which we will present in Vienna in June and ultimately take to the United Nations.

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Featured image: MQ9 Reaper Drone. US Air Force Photo/Staff Sargent Brian Ferguson.

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*** 

Apparently, some internal disputes are taking place in Kiev. Amidst the scenario of rising tensions and a disastrous military campaign, no official seems to be completely sure of the permanence of his position in the regime. There are rumors about replacement of President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, with the Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valeri Zaluzhnyi being the main name to become the new head of state.

Ukraine’s bad situation on the battlefield generates collective dissatisfaction with the government team, demanding changes and rearrangements. In this sense, Zaluzhnyi has often been seen as an official possibly more skilled than the current president in dealing with the conflict. However, there is also a race for Zaluzhnyi’s current position, that of head of the armed forces.

One of the options to replace Zaluzhnyi would be the current Commander-in-Chief of Ground Forces Alexander Syrsky, who is becoming an increasingly popular personality among the authorities. Syrsky is a very controversial person. He was primarily responsible for Bakhmut’s “meat grinder”. It was Syrsky who convinced the Ukrainian authorities of the supposed feasibility of holding positions in the city despite the Russian advance, which resulted in the (unnecessary) deaths of thousands of Kiev’s soldiers.

The problem is that Syrsky’s performance somehow pleased the regime’s leaders, for whom, as well known, the lives of Ukrainians do not seem to matter much. The fight in Bakhmut was enough to elevate Syrsky’s status and popularity, launching him not only into the race to become head of the armed forces, but into higher positions as well.

In fact, things are not going well for Zelensky. The president is already beginning to be criticized inside and outside Ukraine. His recent long international tour, supposedly in search of diplomatic support, was felt as a kind of “flee”. As expected, the fact that the leader was not in Ukraine in the most difficult days of the conflict – those last days of the Battle of Bakhmut – generated discomfort and repudiation.

Obviously, for a country at war, the worst-case scenario is for the national leader to be seen as a coward or deserter. So, considering that Zelensky was unable to raise big international support with his trip, nor was he in Kiev to welcome and reward his soldiers after the battle, the chances of him remaining in power for long seem questionable.

In this regard, it has long been speculated that Zaluzhnyi would replace Zelensky. The military commander is seen as a stronger and more capable leader, both for dealing with the challenging moments of the conflict and for eventually seeking negotiations, if there is no other alternative. However, Zaluzhnyi does not appear to be alone in the dispute.

As mentioned, Alexander Syrsky has gained prestige among Ukrainian authorities, so it is indeed possible that he is in the presidential race – despite his responsibility for what happened in Bakhmut. But he is certainly not Zaluzhnyi and Zelensky’s only rival either.

The head of Ukrainian intelligence, Kirill Budanov, is also a name that some insiders suggest as a future president. Obviously, his position grants him a very privileged status among the country’s authorities, which is why he enjoys great prestige, appearing alongside Zaluzhnyi and Syrsky in the race. In a country at war, the armed forces and intelligence sectors are certainly the most likely to take command if the civilian leader is removed, so it is possible that Budanov has a chance in this challenge.

As we can see, disputes are on the rise. Zelensky increasingly seems threatened by those who should be his close allies. Some media outlets are describing the situation as a war of “all against all“. Zaluzhnyi remains the favorite to replace Zelensky. Syrsky, though respected among officials, is a notoriously cruel and unreliable personality, as was evident in Bakhmut’s meat grinder. On the other hand, Budanov often damages the West’s own image with his controversial statements in the press, as on the recent occasion when he admitted Ukrainian participation in the murder of Russian civilians. In this sense, Zaluzhnyi still sounds like a more “sober” and realistic leader. But this could change at any time, depending on the interests of Western sponsors when choosing a replacement.

However, in parallel to the presidential dispute, there is still the race for the command of the armed forces. Syrsky also aspires to this position, even more so if the prediction of Zaluzhnyi’s rise to the presidency is confirmed. In the same vein, if Budanov eventually becomes president, there will be a race to head Ukraine’s intelligence. The scenario is really one of widespread and uncontrolled dispute. And Zelensky does not seem to have enough power to control the crisis or to prevent his eventual removal from power.

Indeed, while the mainstream media tries to make it appear that Moscow is divided in internal disputes, in the real world it is Kiev that seems increasingly immersed in a war of “all against all”. Russian troops often use psychological warfare techniques to show disunity, when they are actually working cohesively in their strategies. On the other hand, Ukraine and the West try to demonstrate unity and cohesion, when in fact they have serious problems of internal administration.

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Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

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*** 

The non-binding resolution for Hungary not to preside over the European Council is another attack on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban by the European Parliament. Five of the seven parliamentary groups of the European Parliament support the proposal for Hungary not to take over the presidency of the European Council in the second half of next year, as the country supposedly systematically violates the principles and values ​​of the EU.

According to the text of the resolution, the EU legislature “questions how Hungary will be able to credibly fulfil this task in 2024, in view of its non-compliance with EU law.” The nonbinding statement calls on member states to “find a proper solution as soon as possible.” It also warns that “Parliament could take appropriate measures if such a solution is not found.”

Dutch MEP Sophie In’t Veld said in the debate that the presidency of the EU Council is an opportunity for the presiding country to put its political priorities first, and therefore the stage should not be left to Orban, and rather “a podium to those who have been silenced in Hungary” should be given instead.

Effectively, Veld is demanding that the opposition represents Hungary, and thus she is interfering in the internal processes of the country.

“It’s about time we start to play hardball,” added the Dutch MEP, who belongs to the liberal Renew Europe group. She explained that the proposal includes ways to “reduce cooperation to the bare minimum” during the Hungarian presidency.

The European Parliament cannot influence the order of the presidency of the European Council because that is the exclusive competence of the member states. All member states preside over the Council for six months in a predetermined order. This was last done in 2016 when the order of the presidency until 2030 was determined.

This provocation by Brussels towards Hungary will not harm Orban’s government in the slightest. In fact, it will only confirm the correctness of his policy among his voters. Although the resolution is motivated by Hungary’s position on Ukraine because Orban is not aligned with Brussels, he is also targeted because of value issues.

The resolution raises “serious threats” against LGBT+ rights in relation to a new amendment to the Whistleblower Protection Act that MEPs say will “legitimise open discrimination.” Targeting Hungary for its values is contradictory given that Eastern Europe generally resists the Istanbul Declaration, a human rights treaty of the European Council opposing violence against women and domestic violence but which many say is now hijacked by the homosexual lobby. However, many of these countries, such as Poland, are tolerated because they are involved in the war effort against Russia.

Because Hungary does not comply with the war propaganda and war efforts against Russia, in addition to not aligning with the liberal value criteria, thereby setting a bad example for member states, a vicious attack is being orchestrated at the EU parliamentary level. This move is overly audacious and will only further destroy the already shaken foundations of the EU, which Orban does not mind at all.

By talking about “silenced” voices, the EU Parliament is making a direct call for interference in Hungary’s internal affairs, and this only confirms what Orban and other Hungarian officials are saying.

With the resolution, Brussels irritated the Hungarians and the political forces of other countries, which could be potential targets of similar resolutions in the future. This primarily applies to Eastern European countries with strong conservative forces, where ideological struggle and cultural wars exist. 

In 2022, the EU Parliament passed a non-binding resolution declaring that Hungary was no longer a fully-functioning democracy and should instead be considered a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.” At the same time, the European Commission is withholding nearly €28 billion in EU funds from Hungary over unresolved rule-of-law concerns like those raised by MEPs.

Although the aforementioned actions are provocative, they do not compare to the attempts to stop Orban’s Hungary from taking over the European Council presidency, even though such a move has no basis anywhere in European history. It also raises the question of whether the European Parliament could interfere with a process that is decided exclusively by member states.

In this way, Hungary is virtually a solitary voice in the EU. Although other Eastern European countries might share Hungary’s conservative values, they differ in positions regarding Ukraine and Russia. This is why Orban will continually be targeted, even with unprecedented attempts to stop Hungary from taking over the presidency of the European Council next year.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

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*** 

In the Blindman’s Buff variation of tag, a child designated as “It” is tasked with tapping another child while wearing a blindfold. The sightless child knows the other children, all able to see, are there but is left to stumble around, using sounds and knowledge of the space they’re in as guides. Finally, that child does succeed, either by bumping into someone, peeking, or thanks to sheer dumb luck.

Think of us, the American public, as that blindfolded child when it comes to our government’s torture program that followed the 9/11 disaster and the launching of the ill-fated war on terror. We’ve been left to search in the dark for what so many of us sensed was there.

We’ve been groping for the facts surrounding the torture program created and implemented by the administration of President George W. Bush. For 20 years now, the hunt for its perpetrators, the places where they brutalized detainees, and the techniques they used has been underway. And for 20 years, attempts to keep that blindfold in place in the name of “national security” have helped sustain darkness over light.

From the beginning, the torture program was enveloped in a language of darkness with its secret “black sites” where savage interrogations took place and the endless blacked-out pages of documents that might have revealed more about the horrors being committed in our name. In addition, the destruction of evidence and the squelching of internal reports only expanded that seemingly bottomless abyss that still, in part, confronts us. Meanwhile, the courts and the justice system consistently supported those who insisted on keeping that blindfold in place, claiming, for example, that were defense attorneys to be given details about the interrogations of their clients, national security would somehow be compromised.

Finally, however, more than two decades after it all began, the tide may truly be turning.

Despite fervid attempts to keep that blindfold in place, the search has not been in vain. On the contrary, over these last two decades, its layers have slowly worn away, thread by thread, revealing, if not the full picture of those medieval-style practices, then a damning set of facts and images relating to torture, American-style, in this century. Cumulatively, investigative journalism, government reports, and the testimony of witnesses have revealed a fuller picture of the places, people, nightmarish techniques, and results of that program.

First Findings

The fraying of that blindfold took endless years, starting in December 2002, when Washington Post writers Dana Priest and Barton Gellman reported on the existence of secret detention and interrogation centers in countries around the planet where cruel, unlawful techniques were being used against war-on-terror captives in American custody. Quoting from a 2001 State Department report on the treatment of captives, they wrote, “The most frequently alleged methods of torture include sleep deprivation, beatings on the soles of the feet, prolonged suspension with ropes in contorted positions and extended solitary confinement.”

Less than a year later, the American Civil Liberties Union, along with other groups, filed a Freedom of Information Act request (the first of many) for records pertaining to detention and interrogation in the war on terror. Their goal was to follow the trail leading to “numerous credible reports recounting the torture and rendition of detainees” and our government’s efforts (or the lack thereof) to comply “with its legal obligations with respect to the infliction of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Then, in 2004, the blindfold began to show some initial signs of wear. That spring, CBS News’s 60 Minutes II showed the first photographs of men held at Abu Ghraib, an American-controlled prison in Iraq. They were, among other things, visibly naked, hooded, shackled, and threatened by dogs. Those pictures sent journalists and legal advocates into a frenzied search for answers to how such a thing had happened in the wake of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. By that fall, they had obtained internal government documents exempting any war on terror captives from the usual legal protections from cruelty, abuse, and torture. Documents also appeared in which specific techniques of torture, renamed “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs), were authorized by top officials of the Bush administration. They would be used on prisoners in secret CIA locations around the world (119 men in 38 or more countries).

None of this, however, yet added up to “Tag! I found you!”

Senator Feinstein’s Investigation

Before George Bush left office, Senator Dianne Feinstein began a congressional investigation into the CIA interrogation program. In the Obama years, she would battle to mount a full-scale one into the torture program, defying most of her colleagues, who preferred to follow President Obama’s advice to “look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

But Feinstein refused to back down (and we should honor her courage and dedication, even as we witness the present drama of her insistence on remaining in the Senate despite a devastating process of aging).  Instead of retreating, Feinstein only doubled down and, as chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, launched an in-depth investigation into the torture program’s evolution and the grim treatment of those prisoners at what came to be known as “CIA black sites.”

Feinstein’s investigator, Daniel Jones, spent years reading through six million pages of documents. Finally, in December 2014, her committee issued a 525-page “executive summary” of his findings. Yet his full report — 6,700 pages with 35,300 footnotes — remained classified on the grounds that, were the public to see it, national security might be harmed. Still, that summary convincingly laid out not just the widespread use of torture but how it “proved not to be an effective means of obtaining accurate information.” In doing so, it dismantled the CIA’s justification for its EITs which rested on “claims of their effectiveness.”

Meanwhile, Leon Panetta, Obama’s director of the CIA, conducted an internal investigation into torture. Never declassified, the Panetta Review, as it came to be known, reportedly found that the CIA had inflated the value of the information it had gotten with the use of torture techniques. For example, in the brutal interrogation of the alleged mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Agency claimed that those techniques had elicited information from him that helped thwart further terrorist plots. In fact, the information had been obtained from other sources. The review reportedly acknowledged that EITs were in no way as effective as the CIA had claimed.

The Cultural Sphere

In those years, bits of light from the cultural world began to illuminate the dark horror of those enhanced interrogation techniques. In 2007, after President Bush had acknowledged the use of just such “techniques” and had moved 14 detainees from the CIA’s black sites to Guantánamo, his infamous offshore prison of injustice in Cuba, award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney directed Taxi to the Dark Side. It told the story of Dilawar, a taxi driver in Afghanistan who died in American custody after severe mistreatment. That film would be one of the earliest public exposés of cruelty and mistreatment in the war on terror.

But such films didn’t always yield doses of light. In 2012, for instance, Zero Dark Thirty, a movie heavily influenced by CIA advisers, argued that those harsh interrogations had helped keep America safer — specifically by leading U.S. authorities to bin Laden, a meme often repeated by government officials. In fact, reliable information leading to bin Laden had been obtained without those techniques.

Increasingly, however, films began to highlight the voices of those who had been tortured. The Mauritanian, for example, was based on Guantánamo Diary, a memoir by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a tortured Mauritanian held at that prison for 14 years. Slahi, never charged, was finally released and returned to Mauritania. As New York Times reporter Carol Rosenberg summed up his experience, “The confessions he made under duress [were] recanted [and] a proposed case against him [was] deemed by the prosecutor to be worthless in court because of the brutality of the interrogation.”

Abu Zubaydah

Last year, Gibney once again gave us a film on torture, The Forever Prisoner, focused on a Guantánamo detainee, Abu Zubaydah, whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Husayn. On him, the CIA first tested its harsh interrogation techniques, claiming he was a leading member of al-Qaeda, an assumption later disproved. He remains one of only three Gitmo detainees neither charged by the military commissions at that prison, nor cleared for release.

Nothing captures the futility of the blindfold — or sometimes even the futility of lifting it — more than Zubaydah’s story, which was at the heart of the story of torture in these years. The Senate Select Committee’s 525-page executive summary referred to him no less than 1,343 times.

Captured in Pakistan in 2002 and first taken to a series of black sites for interrogation, Zubaydah was initially believed to be the third highest-ranking member of al-Qaeda, a claim later abandoned, along with the allegation that he had even been a member of that terrorist organization. He was the detainee for whom enhanced interrogation techniques were first authorized by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, relying in part on the Justice Department’s greenlighting of such techniques as “lawful” rather than as torture (legally forbidden under both domestic and international law). Joe Margulies, Zubaydah’s lawyer, summarized the horrific techniques used on him this way:

“His captors hurled him into walls and crammed him into boxes and suspended him from hooks and twisted him into shapes that no human body can occupy. They kept him awake for seven consecutive days and nights. They locked him, for months, in a freezing room. They left him in a pool of his own urine. They strapped his hands, feet, arms, legs, torso, and head tightly to an inclined board, with his head lower than his feet. They covered his face and poured water up his nose and down his throat until he began to breathe the water, so that he choked and gagged as it filled his lungs. His torturers then left him to strain against the straps as he began to drown. Repeatedly. Until, just when he believed he was about to die, they raised the board long enough for him to vomit the water and retch. Then they lowered the board and did it again. The torturers subjected him to this treatment at least eighty-three times in August 2002 alone. On at least one such occasion, they waited too long and Abu Zubaydah nearly died on the board.”

In addition, as Dexter Filkins reported in the New Yorker in 2016, Zubaydah lost his left eye while in CIA custody.

As the Feinstein committee’s torture report makes clear, CIA personnel present at that black site cabled back to Washington the importance of erasing any information about the nature of Zubaydah’s interrogation, implicitly acknowledging just how wrongful his treatment had been. The July 2002 cable asked for “reasonable assurance that [Abu Zubaydah] will remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.” CIA higher-ups assured the agents that “all major players are in concurrence that [Abu Zubaydah] should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life.”

Sadly enough, that promise has been kept to this very day. In 2005, CIA officials authorized the destruction of the tapes of Zubaydah’s questioning and, never charged with a crime, he is still in Guantánamo.

And yet, despite the promise that he would remain incommunicado, with each passing year we learn more about what was done to him. In October 2021, in fact, in the United States v. Zubaydah, the justices of the Supreme Court for the first time openly discussed his treatment and Justices Sonia Sotomayer, Neil Gorsuch, and Elena Kagan publicly used the word “torture” to describe what was done to him.

Elsewhere as well, the blindfold has been shredded when it comes to the horror of torture, as ever more of Zubaydah’s story continues to see the light of day. This May, the Guardian published a story about a report done by the Center for Policy and Research at Seton Hall University Law School that included a series of 40 drawings Zubaydah had made and annotated at Guantánamo. In them, he graphically depicted his torture at CIA black sites and at that prison.

The images are beyond grotesque and, like a cacophonous symphony you can’t turn off, it’s hard to witness them without closing your eyes. They show beating, shackling from the ceiling, sexual abuse, waterboarding, confinement in a coffin, and so much more. In one picture that he titled “The Vortex,” the techniques were combined as Zubaydah — in a self-portrait — cries out in agony. Attesting to the accuracy of the scenes he drew, the faces of his torturers have been blacked out by the authorities to protect their identities.

As the Guardian‘s Ed Pilkington reported, Helen Duffy, Mr. Zubaydah’s international legal representative, highlighted how “remarkable” it was that his drawings had ever seen the light of day even though he hasn’t “been able to communicate directly with the outside world” in all these endless years.

Calls for Action

In the years of the Biden presidency, the international community has focused on Guantánamo in unprecedented ways. In January 2022, “after 20 years and well over 100 visits,” the International Committee of the Red Cross (the ICRC) called for the release of as many of the remaining prisoners there as possible and, more recently, raised alarm over the failing health and premature aging of its 30 aging inmates.  

Recently, the United Nations carved out new ground as well. In April, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion condemning the brutality long used against Mr. Zubaydah and called for his immediate release. That group further noted that the continued detention of the prisoners at Guantánamo could potentially “constitute crimes against humanity.”

With each passing year, ever more details about Washington’s torture programs have come to light. Yet, even now, ferocious attempts are still being made to keep the blindfold in place. As a result, to this day we’re left searching, arms extended, while those who have crucial information about this country’s nightmarish commitment to torture do their best to avoid us, hoping that the endless passage of time will keep them out of reach until we pursuers finally run out of energy.

To this day, much still remains in darkness, while Congress and American policymakers continue to refuse to address the legacy of such wrongdoing. But as the constant dribble of information suggests, the story simply won’t go away until, someday, the United States officially acknowledges what it did — what, if others were now doing it, would be instantly denounced by the same lawmakers and policymakers. That history of torture won’t go away, in fact, until this country apologizes for it, declassifies as much of the Feinstein report as possible, and provides for the rehabilitation of Abu Zubaydah and others whose physical and psychological health was savaged by their mistreatment at American hands.

It’s one thing to say, as Barack Obama told Congress a month into his presidency, that the United States “does not torture.” It’s another to expose the misdeeds of the war on terror and accept the costs as deterrence against it ever happening again.

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Karen J. Greenberg, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law. Her most recent book is Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump, now out in paperback. Kevin Ruane and Claudia Bennett contributed research for this article.

Featured image: Shepard Fairey Sign at Guantánamo Bay by Justin Norman is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 / Flickr

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The government had a secret unit that worked with social media companies to monitor and prevent speech that was critical of Covid lockdown policies, it has been revealed.

The Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) was set up by ministers to deal with individuals or groups who criticised policies such as the mass vaccination of children or lockdowns during the pandemic.

Critics of government policies were routinely monitored and an AI firm was used to search social media posts, according to FOI and data protection requests reported by The Daily Telegraph.

Campaigners have described the revelations as “truly chilling” and Jacob Rees-Mogg has called for the Covid inquiry to investigate the claims, the newspaper said.

“The inquiry clearly ought to investigate the oppressive methods used to override dissent,” he said.

Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, said: “The very concept of ‘wrong information’ dictated by a central authority is open to abuse and should be considered far more critically, lest we mirror Chinese-style censorship.”

Large parts of the government’s work on disinformation during Covid is still redacted but the papers do reveal that Professor Carl Heneghan, an Oxford epidemiologist who has advised Boris Johnson, was monitored by disinformation units.

Click here to read the full article on The Independent.

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Featured image is from Reclaim the Net

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When technicians got a look at one U.S. Army howitzer set to ship to Ukraine, it wasn’t pretty. The M777 cannon, which an Army contractor was presenting for inspection, “would have killed somebody” if it were fired, the technicians said, according to a recent report by the Defense Department’s inspector general. 

The investigation details numerous failures by an Army unit and a contractor that could have endangered the lives of Ukrainian or U.S. troops if the faulty equipment had been fielded. The report also exposes problems with a program designed to help soldiers deploy quickly across the world. 

Nor is it the first time the inspector general faulted the Army’s 401st Army Field Support Battalion and Amentum Services: a report in June 2018 cited similar problems. 

Near the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, the Army requested that the 401st send all six of its M777 howitzers stored in Kuwait to Europe. The cannons were part of the Army’s prepositioned stock program, which stores vehicles and weapons abroad to speed and simplify the process of deploying units from the United States. 

The commander in charge of the stores told his superiors that the M777s were not fit to be sent to Ukraine, the inspector general report said. According to the report, the contractor had skipped the quarterly and annual services for the cannons for 19 months.

In response, the Army sent out a field repair crew that found the M777s in a sorry state. Four of the six cannons had breech-blocks that could not properly lock, meaning that firing could result in misfires that would kill soldiers manning the gun. On all the cannons, old hydraulic fluid had been recycled, which threatened further malfunctions. 

Even when the issues were fixed and the guns shipped to Europe, problems persisted. Staff in Europe found worn firing pins and faulty firing mechanisms that forced the Army to yet again delay the howitzers’ shipment to Ukraine. 

The cannons weren’t the only problem, though. 

The 401st’s logisticians in Kuwait had previously rated 28 of their 29 M1167 Humvees as fit for use. The M1167 is an up-armored version of the Army’s standard utility vehicle that carries an anti-tank missile launcher. 

When the military ordered the 401st to send all 29 vehicles, though, the unit found that 26 of the vehicles were non-functional. Among the vehicle problems were dead batteries, fluid leaks, and faulty gauges. 

After fixing the problems, the 401st sent the vehicles to Europe, only for the Army to find other issues. A Europe-based unit had to replace the tires on 25 of the 29 vehicles due to dry rot. 

One vehicle had a tire shred due to dry rot in the middle of delivery to Ukraine’s military, according to the report. When the Europe-based unit replaced the shredded tire with the spare, the spare also failed “due to dry rot” the report said. 

The vehicles should have been kept in condition such that they would be operational with little or no major repairs, a standard known as Technical Manual 10/20, the report said. 

With little time to spare, one vehicle that was missing an non-essential part was eventually sent to Ukraine with a note for Ukrainian forces to request a replacement part later. 

The commander of Army Materiel Command, Gen. Charles R. Hamilton, told inspector general auditors that maintenance had been funded at 30 percent of its requirement in fiscal year 2023, or $27.8 million of the $91.3 million requirement. 

Both Army Material Command and the 401st disputed some of the inspector general’s findings, launching yet another rebuke from the inspector general. 

Army Materiel Command claimed the contractor was not contractually obligated to maintain the equipment in a state such that it was immediately ready to go. Auditors shot back that this was untrue, citing the agreement with the contractor. 

Army Materiel Command and the 401st commander in charge of the Kuwait stores also said that auditors picked the wrong service manual to evaluate the rot in the tires. Again, inspector general auditors weren’t having it, noting that whatever the manual might say, the vehicles’ tires were so poorly maintained that they shredded under use. 

The 401st has not sent faulty equipment since these errors arose, thanks to increased inspections by their staff, the report said. Auditors cautioned, however, that the 401st had not written these checks into its policy, meaning that the next commander may not enforce the same inspection standards. 

The contractor responsible for maintaining the supplies is Amentum Services, according to USASpending, a government-run database of federal contracts. The inspector general report did not name the contractor in its own report.

Amentum has held the contract since 2016 and will continue until January 2024, charging $947.6 million for its services so far. The company is among the largest providers of government services, employing more than 20,000 workers. 

It’s not the first time the inspector general has cited 401st and Amentum for a failure to maintain equipment. 

In 2018, an inspector general report found that the 401st was not ensuring that its contractor was properly maintaining prepositioned equipment. Consequently, auditors found that 314 of 433 vehicles they inspected were not on the correct maintenance schedule. 

The contractor at that time was URS Federal Services, later acquired by a firm named AECOM, which in 2020 spun out Amentum as a separate business. 

The chief of the land-based prepositioned stocks at Army Sustainment Command did not respond to the 2018 inspector general report. 

In a bleak prediction that was eventually fulfilled, the 2018 inspector general report warned that “vehicles and equipment that are not properly maintained are less likely to be operable and combat-ready for deploying units.”

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Since the launch of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine last February, there has been much debate within the southern Irish state on Dublin’s relationship with NATO, with many establishment politicians in favour of joining the military alliance, a view not shared by the majority of the Irish public.

With each NATO member expected to contribute a minimum of 2% of their GDP towards defence spending, the appetite for the 26 County Irish state to join the alliance amidst rising costs due to two years of lockdowns, just simply isn’t there, with the only possible event that could change this view being a false flag attack intended to radically alter the Irish public’s attitudes towards Russia and NATO membership. Something that has almost been grimly foreshadowed over the past year.

Last January, a month before the launch of Russia’s operation in Ukraine, Russian naval exercises in international waters 240km from the Irish coast would draw widespread condemnation from the 26 County political establishment, something that would garner worldwide media attention.

Since then, a point has constantly been raised by establishment voices that key communication infrastructure in the form of undersea cables would become a target for the Russian navy, the reasoning for Moscow to launch such an attack never being sufficiently explained.

Recent events however, indicate that a false flag attack on these cables, intended to implicate the Kremlin, may be imminent.

Two weeks ago, despite little publicity, the Chiefs of European Navies (CHEN) meeting – a summit composed of any EU or NATO country with a Navy – was held in Ireland for the first time since 2001, the same year that Leinster House allowed US warplanes to land at Shannon Airport en route to Afghanistan, an arrangement that remains in place two decades on.

In spite of the 26 County state’s supposed ‘neutrality’, senior US Naval commanders were present at the meeting, something which drew absolute zero criticism from the Dublin establishment, in stark contrast to their response to last year’s Russian naval exercises.

In coincidental follow-up timing, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, speaking at the European Polticial Community summit in Moldova on Thursday, announced that strong consideration was being given to the 26 County state joining any EU or NATO-led mission to enhance undersea security.

Hours later, it emerged that the Virginia Ann, an advanced US Navy ship capable of the deployment of deep-sea divers, had spent the past four months traversing between the southern Irish coast where the aforementioned undersea cables are located, and the southernmost point of Britain, the location of the Royal Navy’s Devenport base, home to Britain’s submarine fleet.

In further suspect behaviour, the transmitter of the Virginia Ann has been mostly turned off during these journeys, a move usually only taken when a ship wants to conceal its movements.

The close timing of these developments suggests that a joint US-Anglo operation involving the planting of explosives on undersea cables off the Irish coast, in a bid to blame Russia on the ensuing explosion and thus, fast-track Ireland towards full NATO membership, is either planned or has already been put in place.

Indeed, the exact same script played out last September when, during a referendum held in Donbass, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia on rejoining Russia, explosions would destroy the Russian-owned Nord Stream 1 pipeline in the Baltic Sea.

In the weeks following the Nord Stream explosion, strong evidence would emerge linking the British government to the attack, and in February of this year, acclaimed US journalist Seymour Hersh would publish a piece outlining Washington’s role in the blast.

US President Joe Biden himself ominously declared in early February 2022 that should Russia launch an intervention in Ukraine – which happened less than three weeks later – that the US government would ‘bring an end’ to the Nord Stream pipeline, with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and chief Ukraine regime-change architect Victoria Nuland making a similar threat several weeks beforehand, one that now likely looks set to be repeated off the Irish coast in the not too distant future.

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Gavin O’Reilly is an activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism. Secretary of the Dublin Anti-Internment Committee, a campaign group set up to raise awareness of Irish Republican political prisoners in British and 26 County jails. His work has previously appeared on American Herald Tribune, The Duran, Al-Masdar and MintPress News. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. Support him on Patreon.

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Rockefeller: Controlling the Game

June 5th, 2023 by Jacob Nordangard

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*** 

 

 

 

 

The same day as Greta Thunberg was appointed Person of the Year by Time Magazine, the English edition of my book Rockefeller – Controlling the Game was released. Here you can read, among other things, about the close links between Time Magazine and the Rockefeller family.

Time-Life Building is part of the Rockefeller Center and Time-Life founder Henry Luce was included in one of the panels for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s ”Special Studies Project” in the 50s (in this very ambitious report, led by Henry Kissinger, the seed was sown to make climate change to the most critical issue for humanity).

If it becomes possible to interfere actively in the big processes with the atmosphere, the results are likely to transcend national boundaries. The problems that will then arise must be handled on an international basis. (RBF Special Studies Project)

Svante Arrhenius’s disciple, meteorologist Carl-Gustaf Rossby, graced the cover of Time Magazine in 1956 and foretold a time to come. The book, Rockefeller: Controlling the Game, analyses the Rockefeller Family’s surprisingly important role in building up the climate issue internationally.

The Rockefeller family’s long-standing battle against climate change contains elements of sophisticated propaganda techniques, futurism, and New Age philosophy, aiming at a complete transformation of the whole earth system, including economy, ecology, culture, and humanity itself. (from the backside of the book)

Order directly from Pharos Media Productions. Spread the book to friends and acquaintances.

The English edition (386 pages) contains unique imagery, clarifying conclusions and a comprehensive index. The book is hardcover and of very high quality.

Som opinions about the book:

“The presentation is based on a solid effort to produce data on the family’s commitment, from the beginning of the 20th century. The author Jacob Nordangård is a researcher and the writing is exemplary. ” (Ulf Karlström, BTJ)

”Jacob Nordangård’s book is exciting as a detective story and at the same time one of the most important books of the decade.” (Staffan Wennberg, Chairman WTA 2014–2016)

”Jacob’s research into the impact of Rockefeller philanthropy on public policy is the best I have seen in a long career of profiling the power elite in factual terms, not in conspiracy theory terms.” (Ron Arnold)

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Nuclear Brinkmanship in Ukraine

June 5th, 2023 by Donald Monaco

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President Biden’s decision to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine after promising not to do so is an act of criminal recklessness that further escalates the US/NATO proxy war with Russia. The F-16s are produced by General Dynamics Corporation. Biden authorized European puppet governments to deliver the American-manufactured F-16s to the Ukrainian military.

The commander-in-chief’s behavior violates the norms of international law but remains consistent with a “rules-based order” that allows the United States to issue edicts as a unipolar hegemon. 

Unbeknownst to many, the U.S. military and CIA have waged 17 secret/proxy wars between 2017 and 2020 in Libya, Syria, Somalia, Niger, Kenya, Tunisia, Yemen, and beyond.

In ruthless fashion, the United States has imposed sanctions on 44 countries as part of a pattern of economic warfare waged against governments that demand political sovereignty.

The problem for the United States is that a multipolar world is emerging, led by China and Russia, that rejects the dictates of belligerent imperialist politicians in Washington. Hence the fanatical drive to arm Ukraine.

Biden’s action on the F-16s follows White House decisions to provide Ukraine with 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems; 2,00 Javelin and 1,000 light anti-armor weapons; 6,000 AT-4 anti-armor systems; 100 tactical unmanned aerial systems; 31 M-1 Abrams tanks; 20 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS); satellite imagery and analysis capability; secure communications and electronic warfare detection systems; along with vast quantities of additional military weaponry.

Congress allotted an astonishing $113 billion in aid to Ukraine in 2022. In 2023, the United States will apportion an additional $46.6 billion and counting to finance its proxy war and keep the corrupt Zelensky regime in power.

Not only is the United States arming Ukraine. It is providing intelligence that helps the Ukrainians target Russian forces. It is an active participant in the war.   

Despite American involvement, both the economic and proxy wars have failed to deter the Russians from neutralizing the Ukrainian security threat, prompting the United States to up the ante.   

At each step along an increasingly precarious path, the United States has deliberately crossed Russia’s “red lines” in its fanatical drive to depose President Putin, fracture the Russian Federation, rape Russia’s vast energy resources, and isolate China.   

What red lines?

The first red line is Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Historically, Russia has opposed the expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe.  Opposition hardened significantly after the US/NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Furthermore, the Russians view Georgian and/or Ukrainian membership in the organization as an existential threat to their security as a sovereign nation. The United States and its NATO vassals are acutely aware of the Russian position on NATO expansion but forged ahead with plans that integrated former Warsaw Pact countries into the alliance and made Ukraine a de facto member by militarizing the nation in the aftermath of the U.S.-sponsored coup in 2014.          

The second red line, closely related to the first, is the US/NATO militarization and nazification of Ukraine. In 2014 and 2015, Russia attempted to reach a diplomatic solution to the civil war between Washington’s puppet government in Kiev and separatist republics in the Donbass by negotiating the Minsk agreements. Despite these efforts, the United States conspired with Germany and France to sabotage the settlements while building a formidable Ukrainian military with a far-right neo-Nazi Azov regiment, in the face of strenuous Russian objections.

The third red line involves Ukrainian missile attacks that hit a Russian airbase located on the Crimean peninsula in August 2022.  Russia considers Crimea to be part of the Russian Federation, having annexed the territory after a local plebiscite in 2014.  

The fourth red line is the U.S. delivery of HIMARS long-range mobile missile systems and M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. On September 15, 2022, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that the United States had become a party to the conflict by supplying advanced missile systems to Russia’s adversary. On February 12, 2023, the Russian envoy to the United Nations said that NATO countries are “pouring oil onto the fire” by continuing to supply Ukraine with military aid and weapons.

The fifth red line involves direct attacks on Russia. The United States destroyed the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea on September 26, 2022, with a series of underwater detonations. Seven months earlier, on February 7, 2022, Biden had promised to end Nord Stream 2 if Russia invaded Ukraine, which it did on February 24, 2022. He made good on his threat in an act of state terrorism. 

Further attacks ensued. Evidence points to a Ukrainian drone attack on the Kremlin that Russia claims was an attempt to assassinate President Putin on May 3, 2023. Ukraine does nothing of military significance without the permission of its American overlord, denials notwithstanding.   

The drone strike follows the assassinations of Russian journalist Daria Dugina and blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, which took place in August 2001 and April 2003, respectively. Most recently, Ukraine launched a cross-border raid into Russia on May 22, 2023; a drone attack on Russian pipeline installations on May 27, 2023; and drone strikes on residential buildings in Moscow on May 30, 2023.   

The crossing of “red lines” must be seen within the following context. Bush Junior withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. Obama engineered a fascist-led coup d’état that removed a democratically elected Ukrainian government from power in 2014, authorized the transfer of $53 million in non-lethal military aid to Ukraine that same year, and placed Aegis anti-ballistic missile weapons systems in Romania and Poland in 2016. Trump withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019 and allocated $250 million in lethal military aid to Ukraine in 2019.

Furthermore, the stated objectives of the United States in Ukraine are to degrade the Russian military in a war of attrition and engineer regime change in the Kremlin. In a speech delivered in Poland in March 2022, Joe Biden openly called for the removal from office of Vladimir Putin by stating, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” On April 12, 2022, Biden accused Putin of committing genocide in Ukraine. On a trip to Kiev on April 25, 2022, Lloyd Austin stated that Washington wanted to see Russia weakened by losing military capability and troops.

The political establishment represented by President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Senator Lindsay Graham does not seem to understand that if their strategy approaches success, it would create the exact scenario that might provoke a Russian nuclear strike.

Instead, the imperialists blame enemy states for crimes they have committed. The warmongers in Washington want the world’s people to remain blissfully ignorant of the fact that the United States brought about regime change in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), South Vietnam (1963), Indonesia (1965), Chile (1973), Panama (1989), Iraq (2003), Honduras (2009), Libya (2011), and beyond. With constant reference to the struggle for “democracy” and “human rights,” they airbrush from history the U.S. genocidal wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, and Iraq. Imperialists are only concerned about giving fascist orders to other governments, which, if disobeyed, have terrible consequences.  

As for the Russians, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they escalate military operations to resolutely demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, they run the risk of provoking a direct military response from the West. If they do not achieve their objective, Western provocations will continue to brazenly cross red lines with ever-growing intensity. The United States has placed Putin in an impossible situation where Western intentions to weaken and exhaust Russia bring about the very scenario U.S. and NATO leaders seem not to believe will occur, namely, Russian use of nuclear weapons.      

The game of power politics is becoming incredibly dangerous as the risks of miscalculation grow exponentially greater with every incremental escalation of the conflict, whose end result might be catastrophic as the Biden regime continues to back Russia and itself into a corner.     

For Russia, the expansion of NATO, America’s desire for regime change in the Kremlin, and the prosecution of Putin as a war criminal constitute an existential threat.  

For the United States, a Russian victory in the Ukrainian proxy war is an existential threat to the existence of NATO and to American global hegemony.     

The neocon-infested Biden administration wants to do with the Russian Federation what the Clinton regime did with Yugoslavia: dismember it. They want to deal with Putin as the Bush gang dealt with Slobodan Milosevic: try him for war crimes in the Hague.  When they finish with Putin, they want to plunder Russia’s resources as they did under Yeltsin.  And the Russians know it.

Russian leaders also see the savagery of the West as demonstrated by its callous disregard for the thousands of injured, maimed, and dead Ukrainians, the millions of Ukrainian refugees, the dozens of cities turned to rubble, and the thousands of Russian lives lost in the war. Russia’s limited military operation was meant to achieve its security objectives while limiting the loss of life in Eastern Ukraine, a goal that became impossible to achieve due to Ukrainian military tactics.  What is on full display in Ukraine is Western barbarism posing as democracy.

Biden’s recent announcement of F-16 deliveries to Ukraine came at a G-7 meeting in Hiroshima, Japan. Was the location of this declaration a not-so-subtle message to Putin indicating that the United States is willing to use nuclear weapons if Russian forces defeat the Ukrainian army and NATO countries are unwilling or unable to reverse the loss? Or did the Americans not recognize the significance of announcing the escalation of the war in a city they annihilated with a singular atomic bomb? Do the Americans not understand the horror of nuclear war? Do they not comprehend what they did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with crude atomic weapons? Can they not fathom the destructiveness of thermonuclear war? Are they so incredibly blinded by hubris that they blithely threaten life on the planet Earth by prolonging and deepening the Ukraine conflict in defense of empire? 

In the fall of 2022, Biden, in a moment of unusual clarity, said the world faces the prospect of “Armageddon” for the first time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The facile manner in which Biden made his remark is shocking to the conscience. The implications of his matter-of-fact statement are so incomprehensible as to make them seem unrealistic and therefore all the more dangerous. Is he serious? Or is he posturing? Does he want to call Putin’s hand? How about Xi Jinping in China?

Absent a vigorous and sustained anti-war movement capable of disarming the maniacs in Washington, Biden’s observation may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Donald Monaco is a writer and political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War.  He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective.  His most recent book is titled, The Politics of Empire, and is available at amazon.com. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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Another Look at the Financial Transactions Tax

June 5th, 2023 by Ellen Brown

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The debt ceiling crisis has again brought into focus the perennial gap between what the government spends and what it accumulates in taxes, and the virtual impossibility of closing that gap by increasing taxes or negotiating cuts in the budget.

In a 2023 book titled A Tale of Two Economies: A New Financial Operating System for the American Economy, Wall Street veteran Scott Smith shows that we would need to tax everyone at a rate of 40%, without deductions, to balance the budgets of our federal and local governments – an obvious nonstarter. The problem, he argues, is that we are taxing the wrong things – income and physical sales. In fact, we have two economies – the material economy in which goods and services are bought and sold, and the monetary economy involving the trading of financial assets (stocks, bonds, currencies, etc.) – basically “money making money” without producing new goods or services.

Drawing on data from the Bank for International Settlements and the Federal Reserve, Smith shows that the monetary economy is hundreds of times larger than the physical economy. The budget gap could be closed by imposing a tax of a mere 0.1% on financial transactions, while eliminating not just income taxes but every other tax we pay today. For a financial transactions tax (FTT) of 0.25%, we could fund benefits we cannot afford today that would stimulate growth in the real economy, including not just infrastructure and development but free college, a universal basic income, and free healthcare for all. Smith contends we could even pay off the national debt in ten years or less with a 0.25% FTT.

A radical change in the tax structure may seem unlikely any time soon, due to the inertia of Congress and the overweening power of the financial industry. But as economist Michael Hudson and other commentators observe, the U.S. has reached its limits to growth without some sort of debt write down. Federal interest expense as a percent of tax revenues spiked to 32.9% in the first quarter of 2023, and it will spike further as old securities at lower interest rates mature and are replaced with new ones at much higher interest. A financial reset is not only necessary but may be imminent. Promising proposals like Smith’s can lead the way to a much-needed shift from serving “capital” to serving productivity and the broader public interest.

A Look at the Numbers

The material economy is roughly measured by the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which for the U.S. had reached $25.6 trillion by the third quarter of 2022. (Michael Hudson observes that even GDP, as currently measured, is largely composed of non-productive financial services.) GDP is defined by spending, which depends on income. Collectively, Americans earned $21 trillion in 2021. The monetary economy is defined as the total amount of money that changes hands each year. Smith draws his figures from data that the Federal Reserve publishes annually in the Bank for International Settlements’ Red Book. The Red Book is not all-inclusive; it leaves out such payments as commodity trading, various options, crypto currency trades, and exchange-traded funds. But even its partial accounting shows $7.6 quadrillion in payments – more than 350 times our national collective income. Smith includes this chart:

Bank for International Settlements, (Data on cashless payments, payment systems, service providers, counterparties, clearing houses, and central security depositories. Click on the United States, https://www.bis.org/statistics/rpfx22.htm?m=2617 (Data on OTC FX and IR derivative), https://stats.bis.org/statx/srs/table/d1 (Data on XT futures and options), https://stats.bis.org/statx/srs/table/d11.2. (Data on OTC FX Instruments), Federal Reserve Bank of New York, (Data on XT Derivatives), Cboe Global Markets, https://www.cboe.com/us/equities/market_statistics/historical_market_volume/ (Data on stock market volumes). All data is the latest available. Most categories are for 2020, some categories are for 2021 and 2022.

 

Smith comments:

Most of these payments have little to do with what we regard as the real economy— the purchase of goods and services and the supply chain. Our GDP represents less than 0.33% of the payments in our economy. Once we see the big picture, the solution is obvious. We should tax payments instead of our income.

He calculates that U.S. spending by federal, state and local governments will total around $8.5 trillion in 2023. Dividing $7,625 trillion in payments by $8.5 trillion in government spending comes to a little more than 0.001, or a tenth of a percent (0.1%). Taxing payments at 0.1% could thus eliminate every tax we pay today, including social security (FICA) taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, gift taxes, excise taxes and customs taxes. With a 0.25% FTT, “If you have a net worth of $20 million or less, you would come out ahead. And if you make $500 million per year, you will finally be paying your fair share of taxes – $1.25 million!”

Bridging the Wealth Gap

The financial transaction tax is not a new concept. The oldest tax still in existence was a stamp duty at the London Stock Exchange initiated in 1694. The tax was payable by the buyer of shares for the official stamp on the legal document needed to formalize the purchase. Many other countries have imposed FTTs, including the U.S. — some successfully and some not. In January 2021, U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio reintroduced The Wall Street Tax Act, which was accompanied in March 2021 by a Senate bill introduced by Sen. Brian Schatz. According to a press release on the Schatz bill, the tax “would create a 0.1% tax on each sale of stocks, bonds, and derivatives, which will discourage unproductive trading and redirect investment toward more productive areas of the economy. The new tax would apply to the fair market value of equities and bonds, and the payment flows under derivatives contracts. Initial public offerings and short-term debt would be exempted.” Schatz stated:

During the pandemic, Wall Street has cashed in on high-risk trades that add no real value to our economy and leave working families behind. We need to curb this dangerous trading to reduce volatility in the markets and encourage investment that can actually help our economy grow. By raising the price of financial transactions, we can make our financial system work better while bringing in billions in new revenue that we can reinvest in our workers and our communities.

Scott Smith concurs, noting that millions of people were forced into poverty during the first two years of the pandemic. In the same two years, the 10 richest men in the world doubled their fortunes and a new billionaire was minted every 26 hours. Much of this disparity was fueled by fiscal and monetary policy aimed at relieving the effects of the pandemic and of the 2008-09 banking crisis. Smith writes:

Our burgeoning monetary economy has fueled the rise of securitization, private equity, hedge funds, the foreign exchange market, commodity trading, cryptocurrency, digital assets, and investments in China. Quantitative easing further fanned these flames, driving up the price of financial assets. All such assets are monetary equivalents, and, thus, inflating the price of such assets balloons the money supply.

What many lauded as a robust economy was really monetary inflation. This makes it more difficult for the next generation to start life. Monetary inflation moves a select few out of the middle class, making them newly rich, while relegating many more to being poorer.

… The trading of financial assets in the monetary economy represents the majority of the payments in the economy, eclipsing payments related to wages or the purchase of goods or services. Thus, it would be wealthy individuals and institutions, such as hedge funds, that would shoulder most of the burden of a payment tax.

Predictably, the Wall Street Tax Act has gotten pushback and has not gotten far. But Smith says his proposal is different. It is not adding a tax but is replacing existing taxes – with something that is actually better for most taxpayers. He has asked a number of hedge fund managers, day traders, private equity fund managers, and venture capital managers if a quarter-point tax would impact their businesses. They have shrugged it off as not significant, and have said that they would certainly prefer a payments tax to income taxes.

Responding to the Critics: The Sweden DebacleAmong failed FTT attempts, one often cited by critics was undertaken in Sweden in the 1980s. As reported by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA):

There were negative capital markets impacts seen in the great migration of trading volumes across multiple products to London, equity index returns fell, volatility increased and the interest rate options markets essentially disappeared.

But as argued by James Li in a podcast titled “The Truth About a Financial Transaction Tax“:

Sweden’s tax policy … had an obvious, massive loophole, which is that Swedish traders could migrate to the London Stock Exchange to avoid the tax — which they did, until it was eventually abolished. On the other hand, the UK’s financial transaction tax has been much more successful. In 1694, King William III levied a stamp duty on all paper transactions, and a version of that levy still exists today, taxing many stock trades at 0.5 percent. Unlike the defunct Swedish tax, it applies to trades of shares of any UK company, regardless of where traders are based.

Again, Smith argues that the challenges met by other transaction tax proposals have arisen because they were being proposed as an additional tax. A payment tax in lieu of personal and corporate income taxes takes on a whole different character. He argues that big firms, rather than moving offshore to avoid a payments tax, would move to the U.S., since the tax rate in other nations would be much higher. Without a corporate or income tax, the U.S. would be the most favored tax haven in the world.

He adds that an exit tax could be a good idea: any money leaving the U.S. could be taxed at a 5% rate. That would discourage people from wiring money to an offshore exchange. But incoming money would not be taxed, encouraging foreign money to come to the U.S. to stay long-term, where it would be taxed less than elsewhere.

The Alleged Threat to Retirees

James Li’s favorite myth about a financial transactions tax is that it would be devastating for Main Street investors. He cites a report from the Modern Markets Initiative on the effects of the tax on savings and retirement security. A Business Wire headline on the report warns, “Latest Data from Modern Markets Initiative Shows the Financial Transaction Tax Would Threaten the Retirement Savings of Millions of Americans.” Among other claims is that a financial transactions tax would cost “$45,000 to $65,000 in FTT over the lifetime of a 401(k) account, or the equivalent of delaying the average individual’s retirement by approximately two years.” How that calculation was made is not included in the article, which refers the reader to the report. Li looked it up, and says on his podcast that it was highly misleading:

[T]he study stated that under this type of tax, for every $100,000 of assets in a 401(k) plan, the saver would owe $281 dollars in FTT taxes in a given year; and then over a 40-year time horizon paying in at $281 a year at 7% annual growth – the average for pension funds – that this would yield a total value of $64,232 after 40 years.

… [What they were] actually saying is, “If you put $100,000 a year into your 401(k), you would be paying approximately $281 in taxes for that $100,000; and if you had instead invested that money every year in a fund with 7% interest, that amount would add up to about $64,000 after 40 years.”

… I don’t know about you, but I can’t put $100,000 in my 401(k) plan every year. Very few people can. A more accurate estimate on how this would actually impact the average retirement savings is to look at the median income, which is around $52,000 a year, with an estimated $5,000 contribution into a 401(k) annually, which is around 10% of your gross pay based on commonly accepted financial planning advice. So the average person would only pay about $13 in FTT taxes in a given year.

These people are extremely tricky and their logic is also extremely flawed, because we pay taxes all the time. It’s like saying, “Oh, if I didn’t have to pay an income tax, I would be able to put all that money away and be up like a million bucks when I retire.”

Similar arguments are made concerning potential losses from FTTs to pension funds and the stock market. SIFMA contends, “What’s bad for the capital markets is bad for the economy,” stating “The capital markets fund 65% of economic activity in the U.S.” Perhaps, but the money paid for shares of stock traded in the stock market does not go to the corporations issuing the stock. It goes to the previous shareholders. Only the sale of IPOs – initial public offerings – generates money for the corporation, and this money is typically exempted from FTTs. Trades after that are simply gambling, hoping to sell at a higher price to the “greater fool.”

Killing the Parasite That Is Killing the Host

In the 2015 book Killing the Host – How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy, Michael Hudson calls “finance capitalism” a parasite that is consuming the fruits of “industrial capitalism” – the goods and services traded in what Smith calls the material economy. Pam Martens writes in a review of Hudson’s book that this “blood-sucking financial leech [is] affixed to your body, your retirement plan, and your economic future.”

But it is not actually the pension funds that are doing most of the financialized trades or that would get taxed on those trades. It is their asset managers – including BlackRock and Vanguard, both of which lost money overall in 2022. If the asset managers can’t make money in the financialized economy, perhaps it would be better for the pension funds to move to more productive investments – from “finance capitalism” to “industrial capitalism.”

Publicly-owned banks mandated to serve the public interest would be good options if we had them. As the economy falters, the public banking movement is picking up steam, part of a much-needed shift towards an economy that puts the public interest above private profits.

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This article was first posted on ScheerPost.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of DebtThe Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

El declive económico de Alemania

June 5th, 2023 by Hedelberto López Blanch

Preparing to Wage a Nuclear War? Nuclear Attack F-16 Fighters to Ukraine

By Manlio Dinucci, June 03, 2023

The United States has begun a training programme for the Ukrainian Air Force in the use of F-16 fighters. Several European NATO countries participate in this programme: Denmark, Holland, Poland, Norway, Belgium, and Portugal. Other countries have offered to help with the training. The same countries will supply Ukraine with F-16 fighters. They are conventional dual-capable and nuclear fighters.

Ticketing Woes in Australia: The Patchy Record of Myki

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, June 05, 2023

What is it about government contracts that produces the worst results and poorest returns? Those clods behind such deals, notably in the poison chaliced field of public transport, seem so utterly incapable at even modest competence.

Recent News on Pilots: Co-pilots Dying Suddenly Is Now “Normal”, Top EU Court Ruled

By Dr. William Makis, June 05, 2023

I find it interesting that EU’s top court has just ruled, two weeks ago, that co-pilot sudden deaths are now considered “normal” because “any person may, at any time, unexpectedly fall ill or die.” That’s quite the legal argument from EU’s top judges.

The WHO’s New Partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation: Birds of a Feather Sticking Together

By Paul Anthony Taylor, June 04, 2023

A recent press release announces a new partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO) and the multibillion-dollar Rockefeller Foundation. Stating that the aim is to strengthen the WHO’s so-called ‘Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence,’ it describes how the Rockefellers are investing $5 million in “partners working with the WHO,” apparently with the goal to “cultivate global networks for pathogen detection and strengthen pandemic preparedness capabilities.”

“Just War” and Just War Theory

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, June 04, 2023

One of the most disputed topics with regard to the concept of war is the idea of a Just War – a war held to be founded on the principles of justice in principle caused and conducted in the name of humanity like, for instance, self-defense or protection of minority groups, etc.

Terminator-style Synthetic Covering for Robots Mimics Human Skin and Heals Itself

By Study Finds, June 04, 2023

If you’ve seen the “Terminator” movies, you probably remember the terrifying robots that could repair themselves after gruesome injuries. Now, real life scientists have developed a synthetic skin for robots that “heals” itself and possesses a human-like sense of touch.

The “Black Sites” of Guantanamo: UK Spy Agencies Under Scrutiny Over Torture of Saudi Men by CIA

By Simon Hooper, June 04, 2023

British intelligence agencies are facing a new investigation over their alleged complicity in the torture of two Saudi men at CIA “black sites” prior to their detention at Guantanamo Bay.

All Vaccines Are Safe and Effective… Or Are They?

By Dr. Gary Null, June 04, 2023

If there is one overarching message that has come from the scientist and physician whistleblowers who have informed and warned us about the Covid-19 vaccines over the last three years — from people who were formerly esteemed within the medical establishment and who believe in vaccines and used them in their medical practices — it is that the Covid-19 vaccines have been shown to be neither safe nor effective.

“In a Nuclear War the Collateral Damage would be the Life of All Humanity”. Fidel Castro

By Fidel Castro Ruz and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 03, 2023

In the light of recent developments in Ukraine, Global Research is reposting this article first published in November 2010 which includes Fidel’s statement on the dangers of nuclear war, which are now imminent in relation to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Sanctions Against Russia Failed. I Saw It Firsthand. Scott Ritter

By Scott Ritter, June 02, 2023

Biden called the increase in cost “Putin’s Price Hike”, but the American people saw through the subterfuge, as the sticker on the pump proved. If anything, the increase in gas prices prompted many Americans to look at the sticker after examining the bill, and sarcastically proclaim, “Thank you, Joe Biden.”

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Ticketing Woes in Australia: The Patchy Record of Myki

June 5th, 2023 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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What is it about government contracts that produces the worst results and poorest returns? Those clods behind such deals, notably in the poison chaliced field of public transport, seem so utterly incapable at even modest competence.

In public transport, muddles, bungling and oh so much fumbling are common; the whole show comes into view when public money is thrown at a project, and the planners get enthusiastic about a contractor they favour. In the Australian state of Victoria, this seems to be of a particularly advanced order. When it comes to paying for public transport, things always seem to be untidy and inchoate.  With the plastic transport card known as Myki – be wary when government officials call them “smart” – a triumph of clumsiness and ineptitude came into being.

The list of problems, tweaks, and aberrations afflicting the soon-to-be-reformed myki system, covering trams, buses and trains, is lengthy. From the time the contract was made in 2005 with Kamco, subsequently acquired by NTT Data, it seemed that it was a system designed to create problems. In June 2008, it was reported that the new Myki ticketing system had failed 10% of the tests it had been subjected to. The system, projected to cost A$500 million, had already been running three years behind schedule, leading the Labor Brumby government to put A$350 million into the scheme to cover the burgeoning blowout.

In May that year, Transport Minister Lynne Kosky was forced to concede that the government had underestimated the problems that would come with the introduction of the new “smart card” across the transport network. But she still insisted, as the provincially minded always do, that Australia’s second most populous state would be receiving the “world’s best” system by early 2010.

As a result of such delays, both myki ticketing, and the pre-existing Metcard ticket system would be run parallel to each other for up to 18 months, adding twelve months to what had originally been planned. Not exactly the world’s best solution.

Then came the information pamphlet fiasco, where 500,000 booklets of 28 pages were scrapped for being out of date. The then opposition public transport spokesman, Terry Mulder, asked the sensible question: “Wouldn’t you think number one, you get the system working properly, number two, you get the brochure printed and you send it out.” Too logical; too tidy.

Victoria’s Transport Ticketing Authority was defensive on the issue. “[The] project schedule is different to what was expected then, and in particular there has been a change to the way Myki is going to be used on trams,” explained the TTA’s Bernie Carolan.

Once the system came into operation, more hiccups followed. In 2011, 20,000 seniors received, according to The Age, “a new smartcard that does not give them the travel benefits they are entitled to, including free weekend travel and discounted weekly fairs.” The ticketing authority had to broadcast a fat, full-voiced mea culpa: the error had arisen because the cards in question were marked “Seniors” but still charged the full fare.

As the years have gone on, other cities have pushed ahead, giving travellers other options of payment. The Victorian approach has, however, become schizophrenic. In July 2022, the Guardian Australia could only poke fun at the fact that Sydney has given its transport users the option of not even using their version of Myki – the Opal card – excepting concession travellers. Travelling in Sydney on light rail, ferries, buses, and trains was a simple matter of using a credit card or relevantly linked smart device.

In Melbourne, travellers have yet to be availed of that option. Those with Android devices could opt for using Myki’s mobile version. The same could not be said for the iPhone, despite the state government’s A$1 million allocation in 2019 to resolve that issue. All this time, NTT Data, the company maintaining the system, could hardly be said to be a paragon of efficiency.

As is often the case, getting a provider of a workable, faultless system can prove to be a challenge. The government in question finds the company or entity willing to provide services. A deal follows, often to the least suitable candidate. At times, soft corruption serves to garnish the arrangements, cushioned by a history of friendship, political ties, and sometimes, a family bond.

In 2016, NTT Data convinced the Andrews government that it was still the best custodian of the transport system. At the sum of A$700 million, its contract was renewed for seven years. This did little to impress the state’s auditor, which had found “significant issues with the system, which precipitated six major amendments to the original 2005 contract.” It noted, for instance, the time taken to design and deliver Myki: the original plan of two years ballooned to nine, leading to “significant unanticipated costs – a $A550 million (55 per cent) increase on the project’s original budget of almost A$1 billion.”

In the case of updating the current Myki system, the US-based Conduent has been entrusted with the grave task, to the whistling tune of A$1.7 billion, to operate the ticketing system from December this year. Two others failed to convince: NTT Data had finally lost its favourable standing, and Cubic, responsible for the Opal system in Sydney, Melbourne’s perennial nemesis in terms of childish city rivalry, was fobbed off.

The contract with Conduit is for 15 years and will do what the Opal system in Sydney currently does: move card ticketing to a platform based on accounts where smart devices, debit and credit cards may be used.

Following the script given to all transport ministers, Ben Carroll was boisterous about the ordinary and unremarkable. “This is a very important moment for Victoria and public transport. For the past 16 years, we have had a card-based ticketing system under Myki. We now reach the 21st century with account-based ticketing.”

At least the minister resisted the temptation this time to make claims about a revolutionary system that would place Victoria as the forefront of ticketing nirvana. Gone was the bushy-tailed enthusiasm of the world beaters: Melbourne was merely leading from the middle. “We aren’t the test bed. This is an off-the-shelf system.” It just might work.

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

Featured image: Newer myki gate at Blackburn station made by Vix Technology (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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NEWS: Did the co-pilot die before your flight? You can be compensated, EU’s top court rules (click here) 

Airlines should be forced to pay compensation for a canceled flight when a co-pilot dies, the EU’s top court ruled Thursday, May 11, 2023.

Under previous EU rules, airlines could refuse to pay compensation to travelers if a flight was canceled due to “extraordinary circumstances.

The case in question involves a 2019 flight to Lisbon which was due take off from Stuttgart at 6:05am but at 4:15am the co-pilot was found dead in his hotel bed and the flight was cancelled. The airline refused to pay compensation, arguing that the co-pilot’s unexpected death qualified as an “extraordinary” circumstance.

But the EU top court disagreed, saying that “whilst tragic,” the death was not extraordinary “since any person may, at any time, unexpectedly fall ill or die.”

NEWS: Brace yourselves: AI could co-pilot planes, reveals Emirates Airline president (click here)

With the rising sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI), airlines are exploring the possibility of computing prowess replacing at least one of the humans in the cockpit. Doing so would allow them to overcome crew shortages and lower expenditures.

Artificial intelligence is set to have a big impact on the aviation industry, with one-pilot planes a possibility,” according to Emirates President Tim Clark, CNBC reported on Tuesday.

The two-pilot mandate in flights is crucial for bringing redundancy into the flying operation in case one of the pilots becomes incapacitated to fly the plane. With improving technology, though, artificial intelligence could be used to even land the plane at a preselected airport in case of an emergency.

The U.S. military trialed AI-piloted flights earlier this year.

NEWS: American Airlines CEO says it can’t deploy 150 regional jets because of pilot shortage (click here)

American Airlines can’t fly about 150 of its regional aircraft because of the ongoing pilot shortage, the Fort Worth-based carrier’s CEO said Wednesday.

“We would deploy properly to markets that aren’t being served,” Robert Isom, CEO of American Airlines said. “We would do that today. It’s just we don’t have the pilots.

The shortage of pilots and parked planes comes as airlines are facing record demand for travel this summer without the capacity to take advantage of high ticket prices. That’s even more jets on the ground than a year ago.

The airline industry faces an ongoing shortage of pilots, which will grow to a shortfall of nearly 80,000 by 2032 worldwide.

NEWS: Southwest CEO Bob Jordan believes pilot shortage will last for three years (click here) 

The CEO of the world’s largest low-cost carrier, Southwest Airlines, expects the global pilot shortage to drag on for at least another three years.

With current staffing shortages, Southwest Airlines has had to ground 40 of its aircraft until they have additional pilots to fly them. This equivocates to around 200 flights a day or 8% of operations the airline currently has paused.

Analysts have estimated that the United States of America is short at least 10,000 pilots, and with post-pandemic travel in full swing, it wouldn’t be surprising to see that number rise.

Before the pandemic, there was already a widespread pilot shortage in the United States; however, with the pandemic pulling up the handbrake on aviation, many veteran pilots decided to retire early.

American Airlines has parked around 50 mainline jets and 150 regional aircraft while limping through the pilot shortage.

Australia is another nation feeling the pinch of a pilot shortage.

NEWS: ‘Enough is enough’: Canadian pilots weigh in on the shortage, wages, and FDT regulations (click here)

The Canadian aviation industry is going through a painful, but necessary, reset. A number of factors are coming together to create today’s pilot shortage.

Students are struggling to afford their pilot training, the lack of funding is another contributor to the pilot shortage – people simply can’t afford their training anymore.

He compared being a pilot to being a lawyer. While lawyers see a return on their education relatively promptly, pilots can spend $100,000 on their training only to be stuck on a dock, making poverty-level wages. There’s just no sense in that, he said.

Experience is the quality that’s lacking in the Canadian pilot pool right now.

“There are a lot of individuals like myself trying to get out of Canada because of how horrendous the pay scale is here,” he said. “The vast majority of us want to go somewhere where we can get paid well and have a good lifestyle.”

To work in the U.S., Canadian pilots must have a high level of experience and be sponsored by an American employer. It’s not an easy feat, so other Canadian pilots opt to work with recruitment agencies that help them find employment in the Middle East or Asia.

Pilots are out there, but they simply want to be paid what they are worth.

My Take…

I find it interesting that EU’s top court has just ruled, two weeks ago, that co-pilot sudden deaths are now considered “normal” because “any person may, at any time, unexpectedly fall ill or die.” That’s quite the legal argument from EU’s top judges.

In the past three months there have been at least ten pilot incapacitations inflight and at least five pilot deaths. The timing of this court decision is very suspect, as it normalizes the sudden deaths of co-pilots just as these deaths are skyrocketing.

The push for artificial intelligence to co-pilot planes is new and the idea of AI “replacing at least one of the humans in the cockpit” is frightening and not something that I’m looking forward to.

I also find it curious that the US Army has already been testing AI flights earlier this year.

Pilot shortages are not surprising, especially since COVID-19 vaccinated pilots are collapsing with heart attacks inflight, in airports or in hotel rooms between flights. Pilots who were mandated COVID-19 vaccines are also likely suffering from all kinds of other post-vaccination injuries we are seeing in the broader population.

Southwest Airlines has had to ground 40 of its aircraft and American Airlines has parked around 50 mainline jets and 150 regional aircraft, due to lack of pilots. The United States currently has a shortage of over 10,000 pilots.

Each of the mainstream media stories on pilot shortages avoids any mention of the elephant in the room, which is pilot cardiac damage or other injuries caused by COVID-19 vaccine mandates that were forced on them by the airlines.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page.

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Mission Creep: “Disease X”

June 4th, 2023 by Michael Bryant

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First published on May 31, 2023

*** 

Hot on the heels of the Covid Emergency being declared over, The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) issued a call for eternal vigilance against future viral invasions  forecasting that  “future outbreaks of ‘Disease-X’ are inevitable.”

Echoing this Cassandra-esque pronouncement WHO director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at the recent 76th World Health Assembly, warned of lurking pathogens “even deadlier” than Covid-19.

Amidst this latest flurry of fatalistic prognostications it’s worth asking a few questions: Who is CEPI and what is this amorphous ‘Disease-X’?

Who is CEPI?

Advertising itself as, “an innovative global partnership working to accelerate the development of vaccines against epidemic and pandemic threats”, CEPI developed its original business plan in November of 2016 and was formally launched at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos by a consortium that included the governments of Norway, Japan, and Germany, The Wellcome Trust, and the Gates Foundation. 

Early on CEPI alluded to Disease X noting that Covid-19 was its first such candidate:

“When CEPI was established in 2017 we classed Disease X as a serious risk to global health security, for which the world needed to prepare. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, CEPI had initiated a rapid response programme—including mRNA vaccines—against novel pathogens. [Bold added] Our goal was to be able to start safety testing of vaccines within months of a new pathogen being genetically sequenced.”

CEPI’s role of bringing together players in biotechnology, Big Pharma, governmental agencies, and University Research and Development departments is paired with a focus on global immunization as it works “to accelerate the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases.”

Another of CEPI’s stated goals is, “to be able to start safety testing within months of a new pathogen being genetically sequenced” employing innovative “vaccine platform technologies” so that we can rapidly manufacture vaccines against many different types of disease.”

These slippery ambitions require a potential foe to vaccinate against- enter ‘Disease X’.

In February of 2021 Senior Communications and Advocacy Manager for CEPI Tom Mooney said that preparing for the next “Disease X” will require that, “we can produce vaccines against Disease X in a matter of months instead of a year or more, we could revolutionize the world’s ability to respond to epidemic and pandemic diseases.” 

Not to be left behind on the fear-mongering bandwagon Mooney added, “Disease X and other emerging infectious diseases pose an existential threat to humanity. But for the first time in history, with the right level of financial commitment and political will, [emphasis added] we could credibly aim to eliminate the risk of epidemics and pandemics.”

By March of 2021 CEPI had laid out its ambitious 5 year vaccine program for 2022-2026, which became known as CEPI 2.0, with a stated goal of reducing future vaccine development to 100 days:

“CEPI believes 100 days from the time of pathogen characterisation to availability of clinical data for deciding emergency use listing should be the aspiration. This “moon-shot” target focusses on shortening timelines by advancing vaccine platforms so that during outbreaks, the world can specifically channel resources towards generating sufficient safety data related to the specific pathogen before vaccines can be deployed.”

CEPI CEO Richard Hatchett affirmed these ambitions, “We’ve got to compress the timelines for development radically over even what was accomplished last year, which itself was a radical compression of anything that had ever been accomplished before.”

CEPI’s star has risen as it has become the driving force in orchestrating a well connected and well funded ‘forward looking’ plan designed to hasten the ‘speed of science’ in order to combat future threats such as ‘Disease X.’

What is “Disease X?”

According to CEPI’s  list of priority diseases, Disease X, “represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.” 

In February 2018, Disease X was added to the WHO’s updated list of priority diseases. It currently sits at the bottom of the list, the only disease noted with an asterisk, utilizing the same ambiguous definition as conceived by CEPI while adding, “The R&D Blueprint explicitly seeks to enable early cross-cutting R&D preparedness that is also relevant for an unknown “Disease X”.

As far back as 2018 CEPI’s CEO Richard Hatchett was chirping about this ephemeral future contagion stating, “It might sound like science fiction, but Disease X is something we must prepare for”, adding that, “preparation requires investment.”

Parroting former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous gaffe, Pranab Chatterjee, a researcher at the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, released a glossy powerpoint presentation titled, One Health, “Disease X” and the Challenge of “Unknown” Unknowns” and subsequently told the National Post,”it is not an exaggeration to say that there is the potential of a Disease X event just around the corner.”

If we are to understand the lessons of history we might wish to remind ourselves that the “unknown unknown’s” was in reference to a lack of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of WMD’s to terrorist groups but used nevertheless as a phony justification for the invasion of Iraq.

With that in mind we might also wish to consider that the techniques utilized to implant Disease X in the media landscape are intended to perpetuate fear and anxiety in the public mind.

It is universally understood that fear and anxiety are two of the most powerful components of the human psyche and are regularly used as a means for social control. The annals of history are replete with examples of dictators and totalitarian societies deviously manipulating these primal emotive forces to exploit entire populations.

The best storytellers understand that invisible menace has the potential to be more terrifying than violence as it can last longer- you can draw it out for a long time- even an eternity- the thing you can’t see. This is why the perpetuation of the invisible virus which can strike anyone at any time is particularly effective as a control mechanism. 

To create that atmosphere of imperceivable dread CEPI and the WHO have produced the perfect disease, ‘Disease-X’, an everywhere-and-nowhere, ill-defined invisible terror that could strike at any given moment in the foreseeable future- eternally justifying the Biosecurity State as well as perpetual profits for the Health Industrial Complex. 

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Michael Bryant is a freelance journalist/activist and researcher who presently focuses primarily on issues surrounding health freedom. His work has appeared on HealthFreedomDefense.org. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SHTFplan.com

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*** 

A recent press release announces a new partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO) and the multibillion-dollar Rockefeller Foundation. Stating that the aim is to strengthen the WHO’s so-called ‘Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence,’ it describes how the Rockefellers are investing $5 million in “partners working with the WHO,” apparently with the goal to “cultivate global networks for pathogen detection and strengthen pandemic preparedness capabilities.”

Adding to the $27 million the Rockefeller organization has already pumped into the WHO over the past two decades, the tie-up illustrates how the global health body has become dependent on funding from corporate and philanthrocapitalist sources.

Founded in 1913 by oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, his son John D. Rockefeller Jr., and their chief philanthropic and financial lieutenant Frederick T. Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation claims to be seeking “a better use of science and data…through collaboration with broad and diverse partners.” Its reliance on the word “better” is controversial, however, as in 2020 it committed to spending $1 billion on pandemic recovery projects that included channeling money into COVID-19 vaccines.

During the pandemic, the Rockefeller Foundation openly celebrated the announcement, emergency use authorization, and approval of Pfizer’s experimental mRNA vaccine. In reality, however, not only can mRNA vaccines have potentially devastating side effects, including death, some of the study data claimed to have been obtained from trials testing the Pfizer vaccine are alleged to be falsified.

He who pays the piper calls the tune

Using words echoing those of the notorious Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, has openly asserted that “There’s no going back to the past, to before-Covid.” Just as they were in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when John D. Rockefeller built Standard Oil into one of the world’s largest multinational corporations, the Rockefellers today remain closely wedded to the idea that corporate and private wealth can be a major influence on government policy.

In recent years this influence has been extended to include international non-governmental organizations, such as the WHO and other agencies of the United Nations. For the year ended 31 December, 2021, the WHO’s General Fund received a total of almost $1.4 billion in donations from the multinational corporate sector, private foundations, and related non-state bodies. The Rockefeller Foundation itself has a 75-year history of involvement with the WHO.

The largest donor to the WHO’s General Fund is currently Germany, a major drug and vaccine exporting country, which gave a whopping $605 million for the year ended 31 December 2021. The fund’s second largest donor was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which gave $375 million. When it comes to dictating global health policy, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

German drug and vaccine makers set to benefit from next pandemic

With its open mention of “partners working with the WHO,” the Rockefeller press release illustrates that the global health body is no longer even trying to hide its relationship with the corporate world. The release specifically describes how the WHO’s ‘Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence’ facilitates “a global collaboration of partners from multiple sectors to address future pandemic and epidemic risks.”

Not by accident, therefore, the hub turns out to be established in Berlin, Germany. Home to pharmaceutical multinationals including Bayer, Merck, and Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany is one of the world’s largest drug exporting countries. As and when the much-trumpeted ‘next pandemic’ arrives, German drug and vaccine makers will be ideally situated to benefit from it.

The people of the world deserve better

The Rockefeller family has a long history of wanting to ensure medicine principally serves capitalist society and that it is controlled by wealthy foundations independent from governments. As E. Richard Brown describes in his classic 1979 book, ‘Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America,’ the organizing of US healthcare into a business controlled by powerful interest groups would not have happened without the money and influence of wealthy industrialists such as John D. Rockefeller and steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.

Seen in this light, the Rockefeller Foundation’s recent tie-up with the WHO is nothing new. It is simply the latest episode in a more than century-long history of corporate and philanthro-capitalist interests putting human diseases at the mercy of profit. After three years in which they have been confined to their homes, forced to wear face masks, and injected with experimental vaccines, the people of the world deserve better.

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This article was originally published on Dr. Rath Health Foundation.

Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. You can find Paul on Twitter at @paulanthtaylor

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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“Just War” and Just War Theory

June 4th, 2023 by Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović

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*** 

One of the most disputed topics with regard to the concept of war is the idea of a Just War – a war held to be founded on the principles of justice in principle caused and conducted in the name of humanity like, for instance, self-defense or protection of minority groups, etc.

That was  a phenomenon which is an inherent aspect of politics and foreign affairs, recognized even by Antique authors like classical Greek writers, as represented mostly by Thucydides and his famous History of the Peloponnesian War.

In the course of The Antiquity, the early Christians have been pacifists and, in fact, practiced abstention from the policy in general. At that time, the authorities of the almighty Roman Empire, once converted to Christianity in the 4th century A.D., in fact, have been forced to reconcile the pacifist philosophy of Jesus Christ with the demands of everyday real politics, war, and power on the ground from Britain to Egypt. A Christian philosopher and theologian St. Augustine (354−430) argued in De Civitate Dei that day-to-day acceptance of political realities was inevitable for all Christians living in the fallen world of the Roman Empire.

This topic was further developed by another Christian (Roman Catholic) philosopher and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225−1274), who made a distinction between Just and Unjust War by using two groups of criteria: 1) Jus ad bellum – the justice of the cause; and 2) Jus in bello – the justice of the conduct. By definition, Jus ad bellum is a just resource to war. It has to be based on certain principles that restrict the legitimate use of force. Jus in bello is the just conduct of war. It has to be founded on certain principles that stipulate how war should be fought.

These two elements of the Just War theory – just cause and just conduct – continued later up today to dominate the debate over the concept of war.

In the 20th century, “just” cause became narrowed to the issue of self-defense against aggression and helping the victims of aggression. Basically, the theoretical doctrine of just cause is concentrated on discrimination between combatants (soldiers) and non-combatants (civilians) and proportionality between the injustice suffered and the level of retaliation. However, the Total war, as both world wars have been, has strained, in effect, to the breaking point of the doctrine of Just War.

During the time of the Cold War, nuclear deterrence added an additional dimension to the debate for the reason that two opposite groups of thinkers became formed:

  1. The biggest number of political scientists and military experts on the concept of Just War have condemned nuclear war as Unjust War on several grounds: discrimination, proportionality, and no prospect of a successful outcome.
  2. However, some Christian thinkers considered the factor of deterrence: the threat to use nuclear weapons is morally acceptable. Some Roman Catholic clergy like the US Bishops have distinguished between 1) the mere possession of nuclear weapons, constituting a so-called existential deterrent (being acceptable); and 2) the real intention to use those weapons (being not acceptable).

In principle, the Just War theory is founded on the general idea that war can be justified and has to be understood and/or judged within the framework of fixed ethical criteria. In other words, a Just War is a war in which both final purpose and conduct meet certain ethical standards, and, therefore, can be (allegedly) treated as morally justified. Concerning such a definition of Just War, it is, basically, fluctuating between two theoretical extremes:

1) Realism, which is understanding war through the prism of realpolitik – the pursuit of power or self-interest.

2) Pacifism, which denies the existence of any war and violence which can be morally justified.

The Just War theory is, in fact, much more a topic of ethical and/or philosophical reflection and studies, rather than fixed political doctrine. Historically, the philosophical origins of the Just War theory are going back to the Roman philosopher Cicero. However, it became first systematically developed by philosophers and theologians St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Francisco de Vitoria (1492−1546), and Hugo Grotius (1583−1645).

In the Just War theory, concerning the idea of Jus ad bellum, there are six basic principles to be respected regarding just resources for war:

  1. Last resort. It means that all sides have to try and exhaust all non-violent options (like diplomacy) before one of them decides to go to war in order that the use of force is going to be justified. This principle is, basically, the principle of necessity.
  2. Just cause. According to this principle, the purpose of war has to be to redress a wrong that has been suffered. Therefore, this principle is usually associated with the principle of self-defense as a response to a military attack (aggression). It is historically understood as the classic justification for war.
  3. Legitimate authority. This principle is understood that lawful war can conduct only legally constituted government (state’s authority) of a sovereign state, rather than a private individual or group (like a political movement). It means that the war in principle can be conducted only between sovereign states while all other „wars“ are going, in fact, to the category of military conflicts.
  4. Right intention. It requires that any war has to be conducted on the foundations of aims that are morally acceptable rather than revenge or the desire to inflict harm. Nevertheless, those morally acceptable aims of the war may or may not be the same as the just cause.
  5. Reasonable prospect of success. Accordingly, war has not to be conducted if the cause is, basically, hopeless, in which life is expended for no purpose or real benefit (for instance, the Phyric victory).
  6. Proportionality. This last principle of Jus ad bellum requires that warfare should result in more good than evil. In other words, any response to aggression should be measured and proportionate. For example, a wholesale invasion is not a justifiable response to a border incursion. From that viewpoint, for instance, the 2001 Afghanistan War was an unjustifiable response to the 9/11 attack. Nevertheless, the principle of proportionality is understood by many experts as macro-proportionality for the sake to distinguish it from the Jus in bello

In the case of warfare, however, there are three principles to be respected concerning Jus in bello or just conduct in war:

  1. Discrimination. Accordingly, the force has to be directed only at military targets, on the very grounds that civilians (non-combatants) are innocent. The injury or death inflicted on the civilian population is, however, and therefore, acceptable only if they are the accidental and unavoidable victims of deliberate attacks on legitimate targets. This phenomenon in war is usually nowadays called to be collateral damage – unintended or incidental injury or damage caused during a military operation. In practice, nevertheless, the term is used as a cynical euphemism in order to justify war crimes (for instance, ethnic cleansing can be a euphemism for genocide).
  2. This principle in overlapping with Jus ad bellum holds that the force used must not be greater than that needed to achieve acceptable military aims, and must not be greater than the provoking cause.
  3. Humanity. It requires that any force or torture must not be directed ever against captured enemy personnel (prisoners of war), wounded, or being under control. This principle is a part of formalizing the so-called Laws of War. One of the pioneers of international law who drew up conditions for a Just War that remained influential until today was Francis Suarez (1548−1617), a Jesuit theologian and philosopher of law, and in particular international law, called the last of the great scholastics.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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*** 

If you’ve seen the “Terminator” movies, you probably remember the terrifying robots that could repair themselves after gruesome injuries. Now, real life scientists have developed a synthetic skin for robots that “heals” itself and possesses a human-like sense of touch. Researchers say this material could potentially make people more comfortable with artificial intelligence in homes and workplaces. It may also contribute to the development of more realistic humanoid robots.

“We’ve achieved what we believe to be the first demonstration of a multi-layer, thin film sensor that automatically realigns during healing,” says Ph.D. candidate Chris Cooper, a co-author of the study, in a media release. “This is a critical step toward mimicking human skin, which has multiple layers that all re-assemble correctly during the healing process.”

Human skin has extraordinary qualities, such as sensing temperature, pressure, and texture, stretching and recovering repeatedly, and serving as a protective barrier against environmental threats. The researchers at Stanford University aimed to replicate these features by using layered synthetic materials.

“It is soft and stretchable. But if you puncture it, slice it, or cut it each layer will selectively heal with itself to restore the overall function. Just like real skin,” explains co-author Dr. Sam Root.

synthetic robot layers

A depth-profiled digital microscope photograph of a 5-layer alternating laminate film of immiscible dynamic polymer films which have been damaged, autonomously aligned, self-healed and then pulled apart on a non-self-healing subject (to show the location of the damage). CREDIT: Bao Group, Stanford U.

The team aspires to develop multi-tiered synthetic skin, with each layer being less than a micron thin. A stack of 10 or more layers would be no thicker than a sheet of paper.

“We reported the first multi-layer self-healing synthetic electronic skin in 2012 in Nature Nanotechnology. There has been a lot of interest around the world in pursuing multi-layer synthetic skin since then,” notes lead author Professor Zhenan Bao.

The current study represents a significant advancement in science and robotics. The synthetic skin layers self-recognize and align with each other, restoring functionality as they heal. Existing versions still require manual repair by humans and even minor alterations can hinder the bot’s recovery.

image of two glass jars filled with clear liquid and small black magnets

Pieces of synthetic skin are drawn together magnetically; electrical conductivity returns as they heal, and the LED lights. (credit: Bao Group, Stanford U.)

The scientists used silicone and polypropylene glycol (PPG), both of which exhibit mechanical, rubber-like properties and biocompatibility. Minute particles incite conductivity. When warmed, both polymers soften and flow, solidifying as they cool. When heated to about 70°C (158°F), self-alignment and healing occur within approximately 24 hours. At room temperature, the process may take up to a week.

“Combining with magnetic field-guided navigation and induction heating, we may be able to build reconfigurable soft robots that can change shape and sense their deformation on demand,” says co-author Prof. Renee Zhao.

She suggests that these developments could also revolutionize warfare with the deployment of indestructible robots. The next steps for the team include making the synthetic skin layers as thin as possible and of varying function. The current prototype was designed to sense pressure, but additional layers could potentially sense changes in temperature or strain. Future applications could even include robots that self-assemble inside the body for non-invasive medical treatments, or multi-sensory, self-healing electronic skins that give robots a sense of touch.

The researchers say the long-term vision is to create devices that can recover from extreme damage autonomously.

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The study is published in the journal Science.

South West News Service writer Mark Waghorn contributed to this report.

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*** 

British intelligence agencies are facing a new investigation over their alleged complicity in the torture of two Saudi men at CIA “black sites” prior to their detention at Guantanamo Bay.

In separate legal cases, the two men accuse British intelligence agencies of conspiring with US officials in a CIA-run “secret detention, torture and interrogation programme” in the aftermath of the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks in the US in 2001.

Lawyers representing the two men, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, have filed complaints with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a court that hears allegations of wrongdoing by the UK’s security services.

In a key judgment, judges last week unanimously agreed that the tribunal would consider Hawsawi’s complaint, rejecting arguments by the British government that it did not have jurisdiction in the case. They said the case raised issues “of the gravest possible kind”.

“If the allegations are true, it is imperative that that should be established. If they are not true, it is just as important that that should be made clear, so as to maintain public confidence,” the judgment said.

Lawyers for Nashiri have called on the tribunal to also consider his complaint which accused UK agencies of having “aided, abetted, encouraged, facilitated and/or conspired with the US authorities in his mistreatment”.

Hawsawi is among five detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, a US military detention facility in Cuba, who have been charged over their alleged involvement in the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks in the United States in September 2001.

They face potential death sentences if convicted. But none of the cases have yet gone to trial, in part because of ongoing pre-trial legal arguments over the interrogation and torture of the five men at Guantanamo and CIA black sites.

‘Credible evidence’

Hawsawi was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003 alongside alleged 9/11 ringleader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and handed over to the CIA. He was then held in a number of black site prisons where he was interrogated and tortured.

According to a US Senate report into the CIA torture programme, at one detention facility in Afghanistan, Hawsawi was subjected to rectal examinations conducted with such “excessive force” that he was left with severe injuries and ongoing health issues.

The report noted that Hawsawi was among detainees subjected to other CIA “enhanced interrogation techniques, despite doubts and questions surrounding their knowledge of terrorist threats and the location of senior al-Qaeda leadership”.

US authorities did not acknowledge his detention until after he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006.

Hawsawi’s complaint to the tribunal said there was “credible evidence” that British agencies had provided questions or information to US officials interrogating him, and received information obtained during interrogations despite knowing he was being subjected to torture.

The tribunal’s judgment was welcomed by Redress, an international organisation bringing legal cases on behalf of survivors of torture which is representing Hawsawi.

Redress believes it is the first full investigation to be undertaken by the tribunal relating to the CIA black sites programme.

Chris Esdaile, a legal advisor at Redress, said:

“The serious allegations of collusion in his torture by the UK intelligence services deserve a proper investigation, and we are pleased that the tribunal has robustly rejected the UK government’s attempts to prevent the tribunal from doing so.”

MEE understands the UK government could still appeal against the judgment.

Mounting pressure

Nashiri was captured in the United Arab Emirates in October 2002 and detained over his alleged involvement in an al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole, a US Navy warship, in Aden, Yemen, in 2000.

According to the Senate torture report, Nashiri was repeatedly subjected to torture and mistreatment despite assessments by interrogators that he was compliant and cooperative.

These included being placed in a “standing stress position” with his hands tied above his head for two-and-a-half days, and having a pistol held to his head and a cordless drill operated near his body while naked and hooded.

Nashiri’s lawyers argue that he was of “specific interest” to British intelligence and allege that British authorities allowed a private jet used by the CIA to render Nashiri from Thailand to Poland in December 2002 to use Luton Airport to refuel.

“There is an irresistible inference that the UK agencies participated in intelligence sharing in relation to the complainant and were complicit in his torture and ill-treatment,” Nashiri’s lawyer, Hugh Southey, said in court documents presented to the tribunal.

The European Court of Human Rights has previously ruled that Poland, Lithuania and Romania violated the rights of Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, another suspected senior al-Qaeda figure, by allowing the CIA to torture them at black sites on their territory.

An inquiry in 2018 by the British parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee found that the UK’s intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, were aware at an early stage that their US counterparts were torturing and mistreating detainees.

It said the UK agencies had been involved in the rendition and torture of hundreds of detainees, mostly in cases in which it had supplied information used in interrogations, and accused government ministers of turning a blind eye to concerns.

Moazzam Begg, a former British Guantanamo Bay detainee, told MEE the UK government was facing mounting pressure to come clean about the full extent of British involvement in the CIA torture and rendition programme.

He cited a judgment by the Court of Appeal last year which ruled that Abu Zubaydah could sue the UK government in England over the alleged passing of questions by British intelligence agencies to his American interrogators.

“Britain’s role in torture is incontrovertible – I know that from my own ordeal,” said Begg, who is now a senior director at Cage, an advocacy organisation representing people affected by counter-terrorism policies.

“But I also know, after personally engaging with government-appointed judge-led inquiries, parliamentary investigation committees, and even the Metropolitan Police, the British government will find a way to avoid accountability at any cost.”

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson told MEE: “It would be inappropriate to comment due to ongoing litigation.”

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Featured image: Mustafa al-Hawsawi spent several years at CIA black sites before being taken to Guantanamo Bay in 2006 (Twitter)

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All Vaccines Are Safe and Effective… Or Are They?

June 4th, 2023 by Dr. Gary Null

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If there is one overarching message that has come from the scientist and physician whistleblowers who have informed and warned us about the Covid-19 vaccines over the last three years — from people who were formerly esteemed within the medical establishment and who believe in vaccines and used them in their medical practices — it is that the Covid-19 vaccines have been shown to be neither safe nor effective.

All the so-called original science used to justify their rapid release and mandate for the world’s entire population has now been shown to contain faulty and inaccurate information.

At this time, we’re seeing many peer-reviewed articles published by independent scientists showing that virtually everything that we were instructed to do and which we obeyed was incorrect.i ii iii iv v vi vii viiiix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii

The latest count of those injured or dead, from Edward Dowd and a group of PhDs and scientists associated with him, indicates that about twelve million people have been injured by the Covid-19 vaccines; over 1.2 million had serious injuries, some permanent; and three hundred thousand people are dead.xix xx xxi

In 1976, with the promotion of the swine flu epidemic and the rush for a vaccine, there were twenty people dead out of forty million vaccinated, and the vaccines were immediately halted and taken off the market.xxii xxiii

But now we have a very unusual phenomenon. The VAERS system (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System), reporting to which is voluntary, has been grossly understating injuries and mortalities with respect to the Covid-19 vaccines.xxiv xxv xxvi xxvii

Therefore, there is no accurate government accounting on those figures. How do we know that?

Besides the revelations from the Harvard Pilgrim study, Dr. Jessica Rose and others who have reported on the shortcomings of VAERS, the media has been unwilling to interview nurse and physician whistleblowers from the medical system, including those in emergency rooms, hospitals and nursing homes, who have witnessed and are continuing to witness injuries and deaths that have not been reported to VAERS or the reporting systems of other countries.xxviii xxix xxx xxxi xxxii xxxiii xxxiv xxxv xxxvi xxxvii xxxviii xxxix xl xli These people have bravely spoken out about this, risking their jobs and livelihoods.

Many of these whistleblowers tell us that they were threatened and actually lost their jobs for reporting these injuries and deaths.xlii They tell us there have been widespread sanctions for medical professionals who want to report accurate data to VAERS.

The CDC, the FDA, the NIAID, and the WHO have refused to provide in-depth, accurate information on injuries and deaths.

Indeed, the government continues to act as if none of the hundreds of independent studies showing the dangers of the Covid-19 vaccines and their lack of efficacy were ever published.xliii xliv xlv xlvi

And all of us who have known what is happening have been horrified to see it go on before our eyes. It has been an awakening for many of us, to see the corruption and greed that can overtake an otherwise altruistic profession, which exists to help people and save their lives. It has been chilling to see our friends and colleagues deceived, people we trust, whom we have known to be good people trying to do good work, participate in what is now apparent are crimes against humanity.

But is this really the first time this story has been told? Many of us may think that it is. Many of us believe that vaccines are generally safe and effective. We are inclined to think that this is the exception. The story of vaccine safety and efficacy, of vaccines’ role in saving lives, has been told to us repeatedly, often by the same voices now promoting the Covid vaccines, trying to assuage us that they really are safe and effective, trying to convince us that the mounting tally of deaths and injuries does not exist.

Many of us may think that the tragedy unfolding as a result of the authorization of the Covid-19 vaccines is an aberration in an otherwise clean and successful history of the use of vaccines to promote and protect public health.

But is this true? As it turns out, a great deal of evidence suggests otherwise. What if the massive atrocity committed through the global use of Covid-19 vaccines were just one more chapter in a long history of the misrepresentation of the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and the cover-up of the deaths and injuries that have followed in their wake?

If you follow the trail of evidence left in the peer-reviewed science, in lawsuits, in FOIA-released documents, in whistleblower, physician and personal testimonials, it starts to look as if this scenario is not new at all, but has played itself out over and over again. The question we should be asking ourselves, as we cope with the weight of the problem we are facing, is: was it true that the vaccines we had accepted before were safe and effective? Did they do good, or did they do harm?

We believe it is time for the pediatricians, obstetricians, family doctors, and groups who have historically supported the use of vaccines to do comprehensive, honest and objective research into the results of the use of other vaccines, including those on annual vaccine schedules for children.

They’re all touted as “safe and effective.” They’re all recommended, including the flu vaccine.xlvii xlviii

What we’re about to share represents more than 30 years of research on this topic, including an in-depth examination of the toxicological data and a look at how many vaccines have undergone clinical trials evaluating active vaccine against a placebo, in which the placebo was a saline solution instead of another vaccine.

This is not to embarrass anyone. We have been told a story that wasn’t true, and we believed it. This is not a crime, but now that we have seen what can happen when a set of false beliefs guides decision-making for global public health, we need to look more deeply to discover the whole truth about all vaccines. The following information is meant to offer a broader understanding of the way the collective hubris which has taken root within the medical and scientific community has blinded us from seeing the truth hidden beneath deceptive scholarship, elevated through tenacious marketing to the position of the gold standard in medicine.

What we are presenting are just a few examples from what has become a mountain of evidence that vaccines, now and throughout history, are not and have not been safe or effective.

Whooping Cough

Let’s begin with just one, the diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus vaccine and its safety and efficacy in controlling pertussis, or whooping cough. Has it been effective?

The late Vincent A. Fulginiti. M.D., a noted pediatrician and spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, wrote,

“Prior to the widespread use of pertussis vaccine, both the incidence of pertussis and the case-fatality ratio declined. A 50-fold reduction in incidence and an 84 percent reduction in case fatality were recorded in Great Britain in the years between 1947 and 1972…. These data suggest that pertussis virulence was declining before the pertussis vaccine and that the incidence of the disease continued to fall… both before and after the introduction of the vaccine. To further complicate the analysis [of the efficacy of the vaccine], several studies… have shown results varying from no effect through 20 percent protection to 80 percent protection.”

Vaccine researcher Harris Coulter points out that the decline in fatalities from pertussis parallels declines in other infectious diseases — scarlet fever, measles, influenza, tuberculosis, and typhoid. Coulter notes that these declines occurred alongside improved sanitation, nutrition and housing, resulting in overall health, and cannot be attributed to mass vaccination programs. In addition, antibiotics, which were successful in controlling secondary infections such as pneumonia and bronchitis, improved a child’s likelihood of surviving whooping cough.xlix

So there is doubt about the efficacy of the DPT vaccine; it may not have been responsible in controlling pertussis at all. But what about its safety?

In the late 1940s, doctors and government health officials campaigned strongly for mass immunization against pertussis. There had been no studies on its safety or efficacy, so the push to vaccinate America’s children was an entirely experimental undertaking.

In the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s there were reports of pertussis vaccine toxicity. All along, the reports were there, and vaccination continued. In 1933 a doctor reported two infants had died immediately after vaccination; other reports were of children who developed high fevers, convulsions and collapse. In 1948, two Harvard researchers followed fifteen children who had severe reactions within 72 hours of vaccination, who had all been normal prior. Over eight months, of the fifteen children, only one recovered during the period of observation. Among the symptoms suffered by the other children were convulsions; blindness; deafness; spasticity; helplessness; damaged nervous systems and “a long downhill course ending in death.”l But what of other children all over America who were not studied? What happened to them? How had the state of their health been altered, months or years later, from the course it would have naturally taken without vaccination? This is unknown.

According to vaccine researcher Harris Coulter, author of A Shot in the Dark, while severe reactions such as mental retardation, convulsive seizures and paralysis may affect only a small minority, other reactions may go unrecognized: children may develop chronic infections, behavioral problems, such as hyperactivity; they may be slow to develop and have learning disabilities.li

The reports and studies of DPT toxicity grew over the years. In 1953, a list of 82 cases of pertussis vaccine damage was put together. In 1958, 107 such cases were documented in the medical literature. Thirty-one of these showed signs of permanent damage. Between 1946 and 1957, large-scale studies conducted in Britain showed that a significant number of children suffered from convulsions after receiving the vaccination, though a connection to the vaccines was denied by the medical establishment. From this study, the British and American medical communities both concluded that the vaccination was safe.lii

In 1960, a Swedish researcher stated “the incidence of neurological complications after pertussis does not appear to be as high as that after vaccination,” noting the decrease in the severity of the disease itself. He concluded, “It is questionable whether universal vaccination against it is justified.”liii

In 1961, an American physician recognized a reluctance on the part of parents to bring their children in for further DPT vaccinations because of violent reactions to previous shots. He collected data from 52 cases, and found six had collapsed, 14 had persistent vomiting, and 13, uncontrollable screaming. These reports did not stop the American medical establishment and government health authorities, and by the mld-1950s, the vaccination program was in full swing.liv

In 1974 British physicians released a report on their study of 36 cases of neurological illness thought to be attributable to the vaccine. Of these cases, two died, four recovered completely, one was permanently paralyzed on one side, four were mentally retarded, three had epilepsy, and 22 were retarded and had epilepsy. The report was the basis of a television program and is believed to have triggered the dramatic decline in vaccination from 80 percent to 30 percent of British schoolchildren over the succeeding four years. That same year another British researcher estimated that an average of 80 cases of severe neurological damage resulted from the pertussis vaccine annually. It was not until 1978 that the Food and Drug Administration, the agency responsible for monitoring the safety of drugs in this country, commissioned its first study of the effects of the DPT shot — some 30 years after it had been in wide use here and a good ten years after most states had passed legislation requiring pertussis vaccination for entry into school.lv

The two-year study, conducted at U.C.L.A. was like so many other medical investigations in that it was riddled with statistical manipulations, misleading statements. and unwarranted conclusions. The U.C.L.A.-F.D.A. study showed a significant number of adverse reactions to the DPT vaccine, but through the magic of statistical manipulation, downplayed the importance of these often severe reactions and concluded that “this study supports the conclusion of others that the benefits of pertussis immunization far outweigh the risks.”lvi

The flaws in this study were easily detectable. The data was compiled in terms of numbers of vaccinations, not numbers of children who received them (DPT is a multiple injection). This resulted in a much larger denominator against which adverse reactions were measured. Children in the study were prescreened for any conditions that might predispose them to such responses. In doing so, the study failed to replicate normal distribution of the vaccine in the general population. The study did not recognize high-pitched screaming as an adverse reaction, even though many physicians consider it a symptom of central-nervous-system irritation. Follow-up on children who showed severe reaction was limited to just a few weeks, and the F.D.A. did not recognize reactions that occurred more than 48 hours after the actual injection.lvii

In attempting to estimate the total number of children who have been damaged by the vaccine, Harris Coulter said,

“We concluded that a number of children die from the vaccine. There are about 8,000 or 9,000 cases of sudden infant death (S.I.D.) per year in the United States. The vaccine authorities admit that they can’t tell the difference between the case of a child dying from vaccination and the case of a child dying from some other cause. So they are both classified as Sudden Infant Death from unknown causes. So the question is how many of these cases of S.I.D. might be due to the vaccine. We estimated, and it is really difficult to tell how accurate the estimate is, that probably a quarter to a half were caused by a vaccine. The same may be true for children with epilepsy. There are 25,000 children born every year in the United States who are diagnosed as being epileptic from birth. But those children are first diagnosed after each has had four DPT shots already. Since it has been reported that the DPT vaccine can cause seizures or epilepsy, how many cases of infant epilepsy are congenital, and how many really are caused by the vaccine? Nobody really knows.”lviii

1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act

But these red flags did not slow down the vaccine manufacturers or medical establishment in the drive to vaccinate America’s children. Instead, the vaccination lobby grew. The lobby persuaded Congress to fund the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which assigned the financial responsibility for illnesses caused by the vaccine to the U.S. government rather than vaccine manufacturers. Anthony Morris, PhD, a research scholar who spent more than 30 years studying vaccines at the National Institutes of Health and the FDA testified to a House subcommittee prior to its being passed, saying

“My urgent plea to the members of this subcommittee is: do not fund the compensation program of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. This program, in my judgment, will be found to be a black hole for tax-payers’ dollars, to be an escape from just responsibility by manufacturers and medical practitioners for their product and their practices, and to be an injustice to children who will be irreparably harmed by mandated vaccine injections.”lix 

Despite his warnings, it was passed.

Swine Flu

Swine flu vaccine for kids - Your Health

The swine flu vaccine mentioned earlier — that was in 1976, ten years before it was legislated that American taxpayers would foot the bill for vaccine companies’ malfeasance. The Justice Department reported that six years after the end of the swine-flu program, 1,571 lawsuits had been filed against the federal government for compensation, which it agreed to provide when the insurance industry deemed it too bad a risk. 290 suits were settled for $57 million and an additional 693 were still pending with total compensation of over $1 billion being sought by plaintiffs.lx And was this vaccine administered to millions of Americans justified by panic over a visible public-health onslaught of an extremely dangerous and deadly disease? How deadly was the swine flu of 1976?

The swine flu struck America when, in 1976, Private David Lewis collapsed and died in a matter of hours at Fort Knox, New Jersey. His death was traced to a virus that was related to the swine flu. Some medical authorities feared that this was just the first case of what could turn out to be a new epidemic of the disease. In the years after Lewis’ death, no other similar fatalities were reported. A nationwide search turned up a few isolated cases.lxi Does this sound familiar?

Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System

As we’ve seen, lawsuit payouts were accumulating in the ledgers of vaccine-makers, and this was handily transferred to the American taxpayer through the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. What happened after the establishment of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act? Did this slow down the rate of injuries?

One of the stipulations of this law was for injury surveillance, to behave as an early warning system, which resulted in the establishment of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Monitoring of injuries through VAERS began in 1990. And one might think that vaccine injuries must have been very low then, or childhood vaccination could not have continued and grown as it has until today.

Well, actually, between 1991 and 1994, 38,787 adverse reactions following vaccination were reported to VAERS according to an October 1997 article in the Journal of Pediatrics. Most of these reports occurred within 2 weeks after vaccination.

These reactions included less serious reactions as well as deaths. This is what the early warning system told us, and we paid it no heed. Not only are these numbers a fraction of the actual numbers—since all along, VAERS has been found to under-report, with between 3 and 10 percent of injuries being reported—but these are only acute, short-term reactions. This data does not account for long-term complications, or illnesses with a delayed onset. A recent review of VAERS data conducted by Columbia University estimated that there were upwards of 187,000 vaccine-related deaths during a seven-month period between February and August 2021. This is a twenty-fold increase over the CDC’s figures. The Columbia researchers expressed their greatest concern about vaccinating children. The report states, “the risks of Covid vaccines and boosters outweigh the benefits in children, young adults and older adults with low occupational risk or previous coronavirus exposure.” They also concluded that VAERS is unsuited for estimating life-threatening events or vaccine-induced fatality rates.

On the CDC’s webpage for VAERS, among all the written text, only two phrases are highlighted in bold:

A report to VAERS does not mean that a vaccine caused an adverse event;”

“VAERS data alone cannot determine if the vaccine caused the reported adverse event.”lxii 

This is the relationship CDC chooses to emphasize regarding the role a vaccine may have played in causing an injury. But if the sum of these reports means nothing conclusive, what is the system for?

Autism and Adjuvants

Of course, VAERS data is not the only sector from which emerges evidence that vaccines are causing harm. Another source of information is the vaccine lawsuit awards: according to the records of the vaccine court set up under the 1986 act, as of 2019, over $4 billion had been paid out since its launch.lxiii

But there is another early warning system that has been entirely ignored by the arbiters of public health. The push to “believe all women” when they speak of their experiences of sexual assault has, for some reason, not taken hold with respect to their accounts of their children regressing into autism after vaccination. Over 2 million mothers have watched as their beautiful, healthy, vibrant children — babies and toddlers who were curious, speaking and learning new words, making eye contact, smiling and laughing, in other words, who were developing normally — suddenly, shortly after a routine appointment with their pediatricians, stopped speaking, stopped making eye contact, stopped responding to external stimuli, had low affect, seemed uncomfortable and unhappy; and were subsequently diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Why is it that it has been so difficult for us to believe these women — not even a lobby, not an organized group of political activists with an agenda, but individual women having the same experience all over our country? Why do we feel skeptical, feel a barrier go up inside us when someone begins to say the words autism and vaccine in the same sentence? The science doesn’t support a connection, we’ve been told. But what does the science actually show?

According to the CDC, as of March 2023, the rate of autism is 1 in 36 children. In 2018, the rate was 1 in 44.lxiv But even decades ago, in June 2000, autism rates were skyrocketing, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was trying to find out why. He came upon a transcript, released through a Freedom of Information Act request, of the secret Simsponwood conference for Scientific Review of Vaccine Safety Datalink Information, held in 2000 in Norcross, Georgia.

This conference included top officials from FDA, CDC, the British health ministry and top pharmaceutical executives, and was held to discuss the results of a major study evaluating the negative effects of thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in vaccines, present in over 30 US-licensed vaccines.lxv To put things in perspective, these were not trace amounts of ethyl-mercury which were being injected into children; if a mother followed the vaccination schedule recommended by CDC, depending on the manufacturer of the vaccines, infants were receiving doses of between 0.0 to 187.5 mcg of ethyl mercury; total exposure over 18 months could be as high as 237.5 mcg. The EPA advised .1 mcg per kilogram per day as a maximum dose of ethyl mercury; so if an 11 pound infant received all thimerosal-containing vaccines at a 2 month visit, her exposure on that day would be 62.5 mcg of ethyl mercury, 125 times the EPA guidelines.lxvi

At the Simpsonwood conference, Dr. Tom Verstraeten, an epidemiologist from CDC, presented his findings to the group, concluding: “the screening analysis suggests a possible association between certain neurologic developmental disorders. Namely tics, attention deficit disorder, speech and language disorders and exposure to mercury from Thimerosal containing vaccines before the age of six months.”lxvii

And what happened next? Did the experts in attendance say,

“We have to take these off the market immediately. If this is true, we’ve made a terrible mistake and we owe the public an apology and reparations.”

Actually, no. The conference transcript documents that the people in attendance speak over one another with questions, try to minimize the results; that WHO director John Clements expresses doubt that the study should have been conducted at all since

“the outcome of it could have, to some extent, been predicted… how we handle it from here is extremely problematic.” Then the doctors agree to “embargo”

the information until a meeting scheduled for later that month; and they never released it at all. Verstraeten’s study wasn’t published until three and a half years later in 2003, but only after the conclusion was re-written. His original conclusion had pointed to a causal link between ethyl mercury from thimerosal containing vaccines administered in the first month of life and neurologic development impairment in children, and called for further confirmatory studies;lxviii but the rewritten conclusion states, “No consistent significant associations were found between thimerosal containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes. Conflicting results were found at different HMOs for certain outcomes. For resolving the conflicting findings, studies with uniform neurodevelopmental assessments of children with a range of cumulative thimerosal exposures are needed.”lxix

But that’s just one study, right? Actually, those data were from Verstraeten’s fourth attempt to conduct a study that would produce results showing no correlation between thimerosal and childhood neurological problems. The first three studies, stubbornly, also showed a correlation. In an email to a colleague, Verstraeten wrote: “I do not wish to be the advocate of the anti-vaccine lobby and sound like being convinced that thimerosal is or was harmful, but at least I feel we should use sound scientific argumentation and not let our standards be dictated by our desire to disprove an unpleasant theory.” lxx

A report by SafeMinds published in October 2003 documents how the CDC developed and modified the protocol for its vaccine safety datalink study between 1999 and 2003, so that by the end of 2003, four generations of modifications had been made. Each time “subtle but powerful changes” were made to its original study protocol so that “troubling findings were obscured or made less significant.”lxxi The evidence of foul play in the case of thimerosal was also documented by Brian Hooker and his colleagues in their 2014 article titled “Methodological Issues and Evidence of Malfeasance in Research Purporting to Show Thimerosal in Vaccines Is Safe.”lxxii

In attendance at the conference, Dr. David Johnson, the State Public Health Officer in Michigan and a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) expressed a reservation at having his new-born grandson vaccinated with a thimerosal-containing vaccine; but only his grandson seemed to concern him, not the rest of the country’s children, who continued to be vaccinated with thimerosal until public protest grew to a degree that the substance was removed from most childhood vaccines. Sadly, thimerosal could have been removed from these vaccines as early as 1999, when the pharmaceutical companies that manufactured them offered to remove it in September; but the CDC opted to wait until 2002 after all thimerosal-containing vaccine lots had expired to officially end its use.lxxiii

Around the same time as the Simpsonwood conference, private medical consultant Barry Rumack, MD, medical toxicologist and pediatrician, was hired by the FDA to review the mercury levels in children with an eye toward childhood vaccines. According to his findings,

“There was no point in time from birth to approximately 16-18 months of age that infants were below the EPA guidelines for allowable mercury exposure…. In fact, according to the models, blood and body burden levels of mercury peaked at six months of age at a shocking high level of 120 ng/L. To put this in perspective, the CDC classifies mercury poisoning as blood levels of mercury greater than 10 ng/L.”lxxiv 

Dr. Rumack notes that the FDA chose to hide this finding from the public and higher health officials.lxxv

By the time Kennedy published his book Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak in 2015, thimerosal in childhood vaccines was dwindling, but was and is today still present in multi-dose flu vaccines given to pregnant mothers. Today, any mother who takes the flu vaccine is still impacting the development of her growing child, essentially without her consent, as the risks have been belittled in public discourse. A 2012 Australian study published in the journal Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry concluded that there is a direct maternal transfer of ethyl mercury from pregnant mothers to the embryo/fetus.lxxvi It remains American federal health policy for pregnant women to receive the flu shot, which may contain 25 micrograms of mercury. CDC still claims that thimerosal is “very safe.”lxxvii Kennedy’s book documents over 400 peer-reviewed studies on the toxicity of thimerosal.lxxviii lxxix

We know that autism continued to rise even after thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines. As mentioned, the numbers have risen even since 2018. Then was it misinformation that thimerosal was causing autism?

If thimerosal had been the only toxic ingredient in childhood vaccines, perhaps we could draw that conclusion. But it isn’t.

Another culpable ingredient now used in most childhood vaccinations, and also associated with adverse neurological effects, is the adjuvant aluminum. Because the viruses in vaccines have been weakened or killed, they are unable to trigger a sufficient immune response in the body. Therefore, an adjuvant is used to hyperstimulate the immune system to start producing antibodies. Without an adjuvant, vaccines would largely be ineffective.

Since 2000, as thimerosal was being phased out, children’s aluminum adjuvant burden has increased, with more vaccines being added to the CDC’s vaccination schedule.lxxx Aluminum compounds — either as aluminum hydroxide or aluminum phosphate — are the most used adjuvants found in vaccines, including the hepatitis A and B vaccines, DTP, Hib, Pneumococcus, and the HPV vaccine or Gardasil. Each is given to children, the HPV now starting at 10 years. In the mid-1980s, a fully vaccinated child would have received 1,250 mcg of aluminum before turning 18 years of age. Today, that same fully vaccinated child would be injected with over 4,900 mcg, a four-fold increase.lxxxi A child’s actual aluminum exposure is likely much greater because aluminum sulfate is used in the purification of municipal water. Drinking water may contain levels up to 1,000 mcg/L. An early 1996 study published in the American Academy acknowledged aluminum toxicity and adverse effects in premature infants receiving intravenous fluid therapy.lxxxii

A common argument against vaccine opponents, who blame aluminum for a variety of health conditions, including autism, is that the metal is the third most prevalent element on earth. What they fail to acknowledge is our gastric-intestinal system is rather impervious to aluminum absorption.

About 2% of orally consumed aluminum from the environment is actually absorbed and much of this is later expelled from the body by other means. However, injectable and intravenous aluminum compounds directly entering the bloodstream are a completely different matter. This is why the use of aluminum adjuvants in vaccines carries a high neurodegenerative and autism risk. Aluminum neurotoxicity in preterm infants after intravenous feeding, which then contained alum, was observed back in 1997 and reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.lxxxiii Thirty-nine percent of infants receiving aluminum-containing solutions developed learning problems upon entering schools compared to those receiving aluminum-free solutions.

Similar to thimerosal, aluminum is a heavy metal that contributes to oxidative stress leading to neuroinflammation and microgliosis, an intense adverse reaction of the central nervous system microglia that leads to a pathogenic results characteristic in some autism spectrum disorder conditions.lxxxiv The National Library of Medicine lists over 2,000 references about aluminum’s toxicity to human biochemistry. Aluminum’s dangers, often found as alum or aluminum hydroxide in vaccines and food preparations, have been known since 1912, when the first director of the FDA, Dr. Harvey Wiley, later resigned in disgust over its commercial use in food canning; he was also among the first government officials to ever warn about tobacco’s cancer risks back in 1927.lxxxv

Flu Vaccine

New Influenza Vaccine Recommendations for 2021-2022 Season | AAFP

Let’s look at the record of another vaccine we hear about and are encouraged to take every year. Is the flu vaccine effective?

According to the CDC’s current statements, the flu vaccines are 40-60% effective.lxxxvi However, actual yearly reports of flu vaccine effectiveness have fallen significantly short of this generalization, and can vary depending on who analyzes the data. During the 2014-2015 flu season, the CDC reported that the vaccine was only 23% effective.lxxxvii The 2017-2018 flu vaccine was claimed as 40% effective by the CDC. However, an independent study from researchers at Rice University predicted that it would be only 19 percent effective, and found that the vaccine of 2016-2017 had been 20 percent effective.lxxxviii

To our knowledge, only one randomized controlled trial of the flu vaccine compares vaccinated to unvaccinated subjects, rather than vaccinated subjects with those who received another vaccine, or who received the adjuvant alone without the virus. Researchers at the University of Hong Kong conducted a double-blind placebo controlled trial of the seasonal flu vaccine in children ages 6 to 15, following them for 9 months. Their results were published in 2012 in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. Out of a total of 69 vaccinated subjects, there were 20 cases of non-influenza virus, while out of 46 subjects in the placebo group, only 3 such cases were observed.lxxxix

In January 2020, The prestigious journal Vaccine, published a study conducted by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Researchers investigated viral interference due to receiving the flu shot; in other words, does the flu vaccine make a recipient more susceptible to certain other non-influenza respiratory viral infections? The study’s conclusions state “Vaccine derived virus interference was significantly associated with coronavirus and human metapneumovirus.”xc

In 2019, researchers at Kaiser Permanente Northern California reviewed 45,000 medical records of patients tested positive for influenza. They charted a trend that indicates that the “risk of contracting the flu climbs about 16 percent for every 28 days after vaccination.”xci

So there are some questions about the flu vaccine’s efficacy. But is the flu vaccine safe?

In a study by Dr. Danuta Skowronski in Canada, individuals who had received the prior year’s seasonal flu shot had an increased risk of becoming infected with H1N1 swine flu.xcii Skowronski commented on her findings that “policy makers have not yet had a chance to fully digest them [the study’s conclusions] or understand the implications.”xciii She continued,

“Who knows, frankly? The wise man knows he knows nothing when it comes to influenza, so you always have to be cautious in speculating.”xciv

Spontaneous abortion has been associated with influenza vaccination in the preceding 28 days, when a woman has been vaccinated the prior year with pH1N1-containing vaccine.xcv After receiving GlaxoSmithKline’s Pandermrix influenza vaccine in 2010 during the swine flu, within weeks, Joshua Hadfield could barely wake up, sleeping up to nineteen hours a day, and would have seizures when he laughed. He was diagnosed with narcolepsy, “an incurable, debilitating condition” associated with acute brain damage.xcvi Pandermrix was associated with a 1400% increase in narcolepsy risk;xcvii a team of Finnish scientists at Finland’s National Institute for Health and Welfare, recorded 800 cases of narcolepsy associated with this vaccine. Although Pandermrix was pulled from the market, the British government has paid out over 63 million GBP pounds to cover lawsuits to Pandermrix victims. 

Glaxo has never admitted its flu vaccine caused brain damage. And this begs the question as to why it was withdrawn since it was the corporation’s single flagship vaccine against the swine flu.xcviii xcix But it should never have been approved and released in the first place. This is a classic case of regulatory negligence by health officials and the WHO which promulgates flu vaccines around the world. Like all vaccines, which are now commonly fast-tracked through government health regulatory bodies for rapid release upon the public, it should have been tested more thoroughly and more rigorously reviewed.

Sarah Behie was 20 years old after receiving the flu shot. Three weeks later her health deteriorated dramatically. Diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a not uncommon adverse effect of influenza vaccination, four years later Sarah remained paralyzed from the waist down, incapable of dressing and feeding herself, and confined to in hospitals and nursing homes.c

In November 2014, five senior citizens at an assisted living facility in Dacula, Georgia, died within a week after all residents were vaccinated with the flu vaccine.ci During the previous year’s flu vaccine trials, Sanofi Pasteur’s Fluzone was associated with the deaths of 23 elderly participants during the vaccine trial.

Nevertheless, the vaccine was approved and continued to be marketed towards senior citizens.ciiBetween mid-August and mid-November of 2013, according to a December 2013 report from the Department of Justice, Health and Human Services settled 139 claims for vaccine-related injury or death and compensated 70 of these. The vaccine associated with the greatest number of cases receiving compensation was the flu vaccine.ciii During every annual quarter, the CDC’s Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines meets, and the Department of Justice releases its report on settlements made for vaccine injuries and deaths. Not just in the final quarter of 2013, but for a number of years, the flu vaccine topped the charts. In June 2016, 85 of the 116 cases, and 2 of the 3 deaths, settled by the vaccine court over a three month period were associated with the flu vaccine, more than all the other vaccines put together.civ While this might appear to be a small and insignificant number compared to the millions of vaccines administered, we have to keep in mind the vast underreporting of vaccine injuries as noted by the Harvard Pilgrim study.cv Many people who become unwell acutely or chronically as a result of an injury from a vaccine are unlikely ever to consider that their symptoms may be as a result of that vaccine and would therefore never report it, especially if it happens some time after the time of vaccination; if you believe what you are told by the media and health authorities, and you think vaccine injuries are extremely rare and usually mild, you would not have any reason to suspect a connection.

While vaccine-makers abandoned the use of the adjuvant thimerosal, some flu vaccines still contain it.cvi The CDC claims that thimerosal is safe and that ethyl mercury is easily eliminated from the human body.cvii A survey of all published medical research from two of the worlds largest medical databases found that neurotoxic activity of low dose thimerosal in isolated human and animal brain cells in all studies is consistent with the neurotoxic activity of mercury in general.cviii A study of boys given the triple series of Hepatitis B vaccine when it contained thimerosal found that they were more susceptible to developmental disability than were unvaccinated boys.cix In poorer communities, flu vaccines containing thimerosal have been distributed to mothers and small children. A study looking at embryonic exposure to thimerosal discovered that the mercury adversely affects early stage development of serotonergic neurons.cx Primate studies found mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines affected the brain and contributed to microgliosis and neuroinflammation. These are conditions documented in an autistic brain.cxi A biological study looking at the effects of thimerosal in childhood vaccines given to rhesus primates found pathological evidence in the brain’s amygdala that contributed to abnormalities similar to autism.cxii Thimerosal disrupts the respiratory functions in the mitochondria of astrocytes, the most common brain cell. The mercury’s deterioration of the mitochondria eventually leads to cell death.cxiii Thimerosal‐exposed mice were shown to retain higher levels of inorganic mercury in their kidneys that contributes to later renal failure.cxiv

Polio

Global leaders commit $US2.6 billion at World Health Summit to end polio

When faced with a barrage of peer-reviewed scientific facts confirming vaccine failures and their lack of efficacy and safety, people who have not done comprehensive research and who by default support vaccination due to being brought up in an environment which lauds them and never questions their life-saving importance to public health, will inevitably attempt to make the case that vaccines’ success in eradicating polio and smallpox from the US are modern medical miracles. Yet in neither case has there been scientific confirmation that the demise of these two infectious diseases were the result of mass population vaccine campaigns.

Vaccinology does not follow a one-size-fits-all theory as the pro-vaccine industry would like us to believe. For any coherent public debate, it is necessary to critically discern each vaccine on its own terms, including its unique properties, viral infection and immune response, rates of efficacy, adverse effects, and the long term risks that may not present symptoms until years after inoculation.

Fast-tracking unsafe and poorly researched vaccines was certainly the case for one of the first polio vaccines in 1955. In fact the polio vaccine received FDA approval and licensure after two hours of review – the fastest approved drug in the FDA’s history. Known as the Cutter Incident, because the vaccine was manufactured by Cutter Laboratories, within days of vaccination, 40,000 children were left with polio, 200 with severe paralysis and ten deaths. Shortly thereafter the vaccine was quickly withdrawn from circulation and abandoned.cxv

The CDC’s website still promulgates a blatant untruth that the Salk vaccine was a modern medical success.cxvi cxvii To the contrary, officials at the National Institutes of Health were convinced that the vaccine was contributing to a rise in polio and paralysis cases in the 1950s. In 1957 Edward McBean documented in his book The Poisoned Needle that government officials stated the vaccine was “worthless as a preventive and dangerous to take.” Some states such as Idaho where several people died after receiving the Salk vaccine, wanted to hold the vaccine makers legally liable. Dr. Salk himself testified in 1976 that his live virus vaccine, which continued to be distributed in the US until 2000, was the “principal if not sole cause” of all polio cases in the US since 1961. However, after much lobbying and political leveraging, private industry seduced the US Public Health Service to proclaim the vaccine safe.cxviii Although this occurred in the 1950s, this same private industry game plan to coerce and buy off government health agencies has become epidemic with practically every vaccine brought to market during the past 50 years.

Today, US authorities proudly proclaim the nation is polio-free.cxix Medical authorities and advocates of mass vaccination defend the polio vaccine as an example for eradicating a viruscxx and proof of the unfounded “herd immune theory.” Dr. Suzanne Humphries, a nephrologist and one of today’s most outspoken medical critics against vaccines has documented thoroughly that polio’s disappearance was a game of smoke and mirrors.cxxi By 1961, the polio vaccine should have been ruled a dismal failure and abandoned since more people were being paralyzed from the vaccine than wild poliovirus infection.

The 1950s mark a decade of remarkable medical achievement; it also marks a period of medicine’s elevated naiveté and unwarranted idealism. 

Paralysis was not only associated with polio infections but also a wide variety of other biologic and toxic agents: aseptic meningitis, Coxsackie and Echo viruses, arsenic, DDT and other industrial chemical toxins indiscriminately released upon millions of Americans.

In addition, paralytic conditions were given a variety of names in an attempt to distinguish them, although some, such as paralytic polio, aseptic meningitis and Coxsackie, were indistinguishable. One of the more devious names was Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP), a class of paralyses indistinguishable from the paralysis occurring in thousands within the vaccinated population. It was therefore incumbent upon health authorities to transfer polio vaccine-related injuries to non-poliovirus causation in order to salvage vaccination campaigns and relieve public fears. Dr. Humphries and her colleagues have noted a direct relationship between the increase in AFP through 2011 and government claims of declining polio infectious rates parallel with increased vaccination.cxxii

In 1960, the Illinois Medical Society reviewed the polio vaccination campaign and noted an average of 30,000 cases of paralysis annually that were not be reported by the federal government. The review, which became known as the Ratner report, noted that vaccine-caused paralytic cases were being given different labels by the CDC. This included renaming some cases as viral or aseptic meningitis. By modern standards, this rate of polio cases would have been defined as an epidemic.

One of the largest and most devious medical scandals in the history of American medicine also concerns the polio vaccine. In an excellent history about the polio vaccine, Neil Miller, a medical research journalist, natural health advocate and author,cxxiii shares the story of Dr. Bernice Eddy, a scientist at the NIH who in 1959 “discovered that the polio vaccines being administered throughout the world contained an infectious agent capable of causing cancer.” 

As the story is told, her attempts to warn federal officials resulted in the removal of her laboratory and being demoted at the agency.cxxiv It was only later that one of the nation’s most famous vaccine developers, Maurice Hilleman at Merck identified the agent as a cancer causing monkey virus, SV40, common in almost all rhesus monkeys being used to culture the polio virus for the vaccine. This contaminant virus was found in all samples of the Sabin oral polio vaccine tested. The virus was also being found in Salk’s killed polio injectable vaccine as well. No one knows for certain how many American’s received SV40 contaminated vaccines, but some estimates put the figure as high as 100 million people. That was greater than half the US population in 1963 when the vaccine was removed from the market.

Many Americans today, and even more around the world, continue to be threatened and suffer from the legacy of this lethal vaccine. Among some of the more alarming discoveries since the discovery of the SV40 in Salk’s and Sabin’s vaccines and its carcinogenic footprint in millions of Americans today are:

  • Loyola University Medical Center identified SV40 in 38% of bone cancer casescxxv
  • 58% of mesothelioma cases, a life threatening lung cancer, had SV40 present
  • A later analysis of a large national cancer database found mesotheliomas were 178% higher among those who received the polio vaccines

A study published in Cancer Research found SV40 in 23 percent of blood samples taken and 45% of semen samples studied, thereby confirming that the monkey virus can be sexually transmitted.cxxvi

Osteosarcomas are 10 times higher in states where the polio vaccine contaminated with SV40 was most used, particularly throughout the Northeastern states.cxxvii

Two 1988 studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine discovered that SV40 can be passed on to infants whose mother’s received the SV40 tainted vaccines. Those children later had a 13 times greater rate of brain tumors compared to children whose mothers did not receive the polio vaccines. This would also explain why these childrens’ tumors contained the SV40 virus present, even though the children themselves did not receive the vaccine.cxxviii

After almost sixty years of silence and a federally sanctioned cover up, the CDC finally admitted several years ago that the Salk and Sabin vaccines indeed were contaminated with the carcinogenic SV40 monkey virus.cxxix

There is a large body of scientific literature detailing the catastrophic consequences of SV40 virus infection. As of 2001, Neil Miller counted 62 peer-reviewed studies confirming the presence of SV40 in a variety of human tissues and different carcinomas. Although the killed polio vaccines administered in developed countries no longer contain the SV40 virus, the oral vaccine continues to be the vaccine of choice in poorer developing countries because it is cost-effective to manufacture.

Neither have modern polio vaccines been proven to be safe. In 2011, Bill Gates launched a polio eradication campaigns in rural India. This particular polio vaccine had an increased dosage of the polio virus. In the April-June 2012 issue of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, a paper reported the incidence of 47,500 new cases of what was being termed “non-polio acute flaccid paralysis,” or NPAFP, following Gates’ polio campaign.cxxx The following year, there were over 53,500 reported cases. NPAFP is clinically indistinguishable from wild polio paralysis as well as polio vaccine-induced paralysis. The primary difference is that NPAFP is far more fatal.cxxxi

Smallpox

Scientists Confirm Smallpox Vaccine Also Teaches T Cells to Fight Mpox | Today's Clinical Lab

It was Edward Jenner who first popularized the vaccine program with his smallpox vaccine. A close look at history reveals that the procedure never worked, however. In England, compulsory vaccination against smallpox was first introduced in 1852. Yet, from 1857 to 1859, the smallpox epidemic killed 14,244 people.

From 1863 to 1865, a second outbreak claimed 20,059 lives. A more stringent compulsory vaccination law was passed in 1867, and those who evaded inoculation were prosecuted.

An intensive four-year effort to vaccinate all people between the ages of 2 and 50 resulted in 97.5% of the population being vaccinated. The following year, though, England experienced its worst-ever smallpox epidemic; 44,840 lives were lost.

Overall, from 1871 to 1880, during this period of compulsory vaccination, the death rate from smallpox leapt from 28 to 46 per 100,000.

Neil Miller, who also authored Immunization Theory Vs. Reality: Exposé on Vaccinations,cxxxii recounts a different history of the smallpox vaccine than is taught in school.

“In 1796, Jenner came on the scene saying that when dairy maids caught cowpox they could no longer catch smallpox. His medical colleagues disputed his claims, as the research of the times indicated numerous cases of dairy maids and other individuals catching cowpox and coming down with smallpox. Yet Jenner persisted, and he published a treatise on this idea in 1798. He called his treatise Inquiry, and became famous for it.”cxxxiii

The smallpox vaccine was given to infants in the US until 1972. At that time, the global incidence of this disease was well under control, and routine vaccination against smallpox ended. According to the National Network for Immunization Information, it was believed then that the risk of serious adverse events from the smallpox vaccine, including death, outweighed the risk of contracting the disease itself in the US.12 The World Health Organization (WHO) certified that smallpox was eradicated worldwide in 1980.

After the terrorist threats of 2001, the US developed a plan to reintroduce the smallpox vaccine, if necessary,cxxxiv to counter a potential attack using the virus as a biological weapon. In State of Immunity, author James Colgrove reports that the Bush Administration announced an ambitious plan in 2002 to vaccinate emergency personnel, health care workers, and adults in the general public on a voluntary basis. The administration failed to win the support of the program from health care providers, however, and less than a year later, the smallpox vaccination plan was ceased.cxxxv Approximately 39,000 civilian health care and public health workers received the smallpox vaccine in 2003.cxxxvi

The modern smallpox vaccine does not contain the smallpox virus itself, but rather a virus called “vaccinia” whose origins are unknown. The CDC states,

“The vaccinia virus is the ‘live virus’ used in the smallpox vaccine. It is a ‘pox’-type virus related to smallpox. When given to humans as a vaccine, it helps the body to develop immunity to smallpox. The smallpox vaccine does not contain the smallpox virus, and it cannot cause smallpox.”cxxxvii 

The University of Florida College of medicine information page adds this:

“Vaccinia is the virus that was used for vaccination against smallpox. Its exact origin is unknown, however, as it does not appear to be related to any other known pox virus. Some people think that it is a recombinant of smallpox and cowpox, while others think that it may be a derivative of horsepox, a virus that no longer exists (if it ever did).”

The CDC reports that while the smallpox vaccine is safe for most people, serious and life-threatening reactions do occur in rare cases. Serious reactions include a rash or outbreak of sores in one area of the body (the virus may be spread from the vaccination site to other parts of the body or to other people); a widespread vaccinia rash that occurs when the virus spreads from the vaccination site through the bloodstream; and a toxic or allergic reaction to the vaccine. Life-threatening reactions to the smallpox vaccine include eczema vaccinatum (a serious rash involving widespread infection of the skin in people with conditions such as eczema or atopic dermatitis), progressive vaccinia (an infection of the skin with tissue destruction that often leads to death), and postvaccinal encephalitis (inflammation of the brain).cxxxviii

Another potential complication of the smallpox vaccine is myopericarditis, or inflammation of the heart. The CDC says that while the link between the smallpox vaccine and this condition is not proven, data from recent smallpox vaccinations are “consistent with a causal association” between the two.cxxxix In 2005 the FDA added a new black-box warning to Dryvax (the smallpox vaccine produced by Wyeth) regarding the increased risk of cardiac problems experienced by some recipients of the smallpox vaccine.cxl

What might the consequences of mass smallpox vaccination be? That was the question addressed in a 2002 article. Using historical data on adverse reactions to the vaccine, the authors estimated that, after excluding high-risk people and their close contacts, a vaccination strategy targeting people one to 29 years old would result in approximately 1,600 serious adverse events and 190 deaths. Vaccination of people from one to 65 years old would result in approximately 4,600 adverse events and 285 deaths. The researchers note that the smallpox vaccine “has a higher complication rate than any other vaccine currently being used.” They conclude that a mass vaccination campaign would have to be careful to exclude high-risk people and their contacts to minimize the complications, but that this approach would leave some people susceptible to the disease.cxli

In a 2006 paper, researchers estimated the expected frequencies of post-vaccinal encephalitis and death from smallpox vaccines containing two different strains of vaccinia virus: the New York City Board of Health (NYCBH) strain and the Lister strain. They note that other studies of the consequences of smallpox vaccination commonly have used an incidence of approximately one death per million vaccinations. However, these analyses “may give serious underestimates of the number of deaths resulting from vaccination.” This study estimates that vaccination with the NYCBH strain (stockpiled in countries such as the US) would lead to an average of 1.4 deaths per million vaccinations. Vaccination with the Lister strain (stockpiled in countries such as Germany) would lead to an average of 8.4 deaths per million vaccinations.cxlii

Measles

MMR vaccine: Safety, efficacy, and who should have it

Dr. William Thompson was a former Merck scientist who became a senior epidemiologist at the CDC’s Immunization Safety department in 1997. He is listed as an author or co-author on the studies that are most often used to debunk the connection between autism and vaccines: Thompson, et al. 2007,cxliii Price, et al. 2010,cxliv Destefano, et al. 2004.cxlv In 2014, after a conflict of conscience, Dr. Thompson came forth with material evidence proving that the CDC had known for almost fifteen years that a causal relationship exists between the MMR vaccine, the vaccine preservative thimerosal (which is still included in the flu vaccine administered to pregnant women and children) and autism. This information was shared during numerous taped conversations with molecular biologist Professor Brian Hooker, who in the past has testified before Congress and has diligently attempted to get the CDC’s scientific data through repeated Freedom of Information Acts. In addition, Thompson turned over 10,000 copied pages he privately retained of research documents, statistical data, meeting notes, internal CDC emails and correspondence to Congressman Bill Posey under legal whistleblower protection. He admitted that many of the most damning documents and data records were destroyed in his presence by his colleagues to assure they never reach the light of day. At the time, he agreed to testify under oath and confess his personal participation in perpetuating the CDC’s frauds and lies before Congress.cxlvi

A New York Times article identified Thompsoncxlvii as a “former center employee.”cxlviii Since it has become standard protocol at the Times to get its facts wrong, Thompson in fact remains at the Center. Following his blowing the whistle, he was put on administrative leave of absence, chastised for breaching CDC protocol and threatened with termination. While on leave, Thompson shopped around for a university position.

During a recent Progressive Radio Network conversation with Professor Hooker, he believes the CDC realized Thompson was far more dangerous outside the Immunization Safety Office. He would have had more freedom to further expose the CDC’s obstruction of justice and the extent of scientific fraud that could jeopardize the entire agency and perhaps warrant prison sentences for many of its former and current rank and file officials.

The pharmaceutical industry would also suffer dramatically. If the media had reported on the urgently important story that the documentary Vaxxed recounts, there would be nationwide public outrage and vaccine rates would likely plummet. Consequently, the CDC retained and awarded Thompson with a $24,000 retention bonus and promotion. Today he remains silent somewhere within the CDC’s halls.cxlix

Professor Hooker is also familiar with censorship and has personally encountered CDC vengeance. In 2014, he submitted a research paper based upon the CDC data provided by Thompson to the peer-reviewed journal Translational Neurodegeneration. Using the CDC’s own research, the paper shows a 350% increase of autism among African American boys who received the MMR vaccine according to the national vaccination schedule compared to boys who received it after 3 years of age. The journal approved it for publication but immediately confronted CDC demands for its removal. Hooker’s paper was suspended and never published due to fabricated claims of a conflict of interest.cl

Dr. Poul Thorsen is a Danish scientist who coauthored 36 CDC studies, two of which are widely cited to disprove an autism-vaccine link. From 2004 to 2010 Thorsen laundered over $1 million in federal grant money allocated for research. The studies regarding the MMR and thimerosal have now been thoroughly debunked after independent analysis and represent a classic case of scientific fraud. Thorsen is currently a fugitive. Attempts by the Department of Justice and FBI to extradite him have been continuously thwarted by the CDC and Thorsen continues to walk openly as a free man.cli

In 2016, the CDC blocked testimony by Dr. Thompson in a medical malpractice case, so he could not tell his story on behalf of a vaccine-injured, now autistic, boy named Yates Hazlehurst.clii

The Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trialcliii

How did it happen that drugs that routinely cause injuries are considered the gold-standard of medicine in caring for our us, our aging parents and grandparents and our children? How did these drugs make it onto the market in the first place? This relates to matters of study design.

On its website, the FDA assures the public that “Vaccines, as with all products regulated by the FDA, undergo a rigorous review of laboratory and clinical data to ensure the safety, efficacy, purity and potency of these products.”cliv 

However, not a single one of the pharmaceutical company Merck’s vaccines has ever been tested in a scientifically viable double-blinded placebo controlled trial. In each case, the placebo in the control group was not inert, such as the use of sterile saline. Rather Merck only tested its vaccines with the viral component against a faux placebo containing the same ingredients, including aluminum, but minus the virus. Known as a “carrier solution,” the standard scientific protocol does not designate it as a proper placebo for measuring the efficacy and disease risks of a drug. And in the case of Gardasil, the trial was statistical trickery to mask Gardasil’s adverse effects. One placebo group received the company’s proprietary adjuvant amorphous aluminum hydroxyphospate sulfate (AAHS), a known neurotoxin. The adjuvant has yet to be properly tested for safety. One of the more serious risks of aluminum adjuvants is the triggering of an extreme autoimmune response, what Israeli immunologist Yehuda Schoenfeld has called “autoimmue/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants.”clv

In the Cochrane Database Collaboration’s 2016 analysis of Merck’s Gardasil, the investigators were so alarmed they filed a complaint against the European Medical Agency for failing to adequately assess the vaccine’s neurological harms. More recently, a meta-analysis published in Systemic Reviews journal concluded “HPV vaccines increased serious nervous system disorders and general harms.”clvi

For those of us who have been enthralled with the narrative that vaccines are one of the foundational aspects of good public health policy, this information is meant to introduce you to the idea that there is more, a great deal more, to the picture than has been presented to us, just as the “success story” of the life-saving Covid vaccines that was hypnotically promoted by the medical establishment and the captured media isn’t exactly the whole story.

The information we’ve presented is just a fraction of all the information that exists on this subject, which can be found in testimonials, in legal records, in peer-reviewed publications, in books and research articles and films. There is more to the story than can be told in a day or a week. It requires deep research to understand this history of hubris, crime and cover-up, but more than that, it takes an open mind and the desire to know. These qualities are fundamental to any learning, to the development of any enlightened point of view. This is what many of us have found lacking in the people we know and love, but with whom we were not able to communicate about what we saw happening over the last three years, who could not hear our warnings about the Covid-19 vaccines, who took them as we watched helplessly in dismay. If we can be truthful with ourselves about what we do and do not know, if we have, over the last three years, gained an open mind and desire to know the truth, let us look honestly at the research underlying all vaccines, and correct our course according to what we find.

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Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Notes

i Alexander P. More than 150 Comparative Studies on Mask Ineffectiveness and Harms. December 20, 2021. https://www.rilegislature.gov/Special/comdoc/House%20Health%20and%20Human%20Services%202022/04-05-2022–H7674–C%20Lima.pdf

ii Bhattaram S, Shinde VS, Lamba I, Gladwin RS, Sharma KVS. Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on self-harm and violence among patients presenting to the emergency department. Am J Emerg Med. 2022 Jan;51:262-266. doi: 10.1016/j.ajem.2021.11.008. Epub 2021 Nov 8. PMID: 34781152; PMCID: PMC8574082.

iii Yanovskiy M, Socol Y. Are Lockdowns Effective in Managing Pandemics? Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jul 29;19(15):9295. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19159295. PMID: 35954650; PMCID: PMC9368251.

iv Muzyamba C. Lockdowns aimed at fighting COVID-19 causing more harm than good in sub-Saharan Africa. Pan Afr Med J. 2021 Jun 3;39:102. doi: 10.11604/pamj.2021.39.102.26023. PMID: 34512838; PMCID: PMC8396380.

v Ilesanmi O, Afolabi A, Kwaghe A. A scope review on the global impact of COVID-19 lockdown on adolescents’ health. Afr Health Sci. 2021 Dec;21(4):1518-1526. doi: 10.4314/ahs.v21i4.4. PMID: 35283972; PMCID: PMC8889810.

vi Joffe AR. COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink. Front Public Health. 2021 Feb 26;9:625778. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.625778. PMID: 33718322; PMCID: PMC7952324.

vii Chiesa V, Antony G, Wismar M, Rechel B. COVID-19 pandemic: health impact of staying at home, social distancing and ‘lockdown’ measures-a systematic review of systematic reviews. J Public Health (Oxf). 2021 Sep 22;43(3):e462-e481. doi: 10.1093/pubmed/fdab102. PMID: 33855434; PMCID: PMC8083256.

viii Chang YR, Kim KM, Kim HJ, Kim DH, Kim J, Noh D, Ma DS, Yun J, Yun JH, Lee SW, Choi SH, Heo Y, Chang SW. Impacts of Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Outbreaks in Korea: Level 1 Trauma Center Data of Domestic Incidents and Intentional Injury. Osong Public Health Res Perspect. 2020 Dec;11(6):345-350. doi: 10.24171/j.phrp.2020.11.6.02. PMID: 33403197; PMCID: PMC7752146.

ix Fraiman J, Erviti J, Jones M, Greenland S, Whelan P, Kaplan RM, Doshi P. Serious adverse events of special interest following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in randomized trials in adults. Vaccine. 2022 Sep 22;40(40):5798-5805. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2022.08.036. Epub 2022 Aug 31. PMID: 36055877; PMCID: PMC9428332.

x Yuniar CT, Pratiwi B, Ihsan AF, Laksono BT, Risfayanti I, Fathadina A, Jeong Y, Kim E. Adverse Events Reporting Quality of Randomized Controlled Trials of COVID-19 Vaccine Using the CONSORT Criteria for Reporting Harms: A Systematic Review. Vaccines (Basel). 2022 Feb 17;10(2):313. doi: 10.3390/vaccines10020313. PMID: 35214773; PMCID: PMC8875800.

xi Bardosh K, de Figueiredo A, Gur-Arie R, Jamrozik E, Doidge J, Lemmens T, Keshavjee S, Graham JE, Baral S. The unintended consequences of COVID-19 vaccine policy: why mandates, passports and restrictions may cause more harm than good. BMJ Glob Health. 2022 May;7(5):e008684. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2022-008684. PMID: 35618306; PMCID: PMC9136690.

xii Fortea A, Fortea L, Gómez-Ramiro M, Fico G, Giménez-Palomo A, Sagué-Vilavella M, Pons-Cabrera M, Radua J, Vázquez M, Baldaquí N, Colomer L, Fernández TM, Fernandez M, Gutierrez-Arango F, Llobet M, Pujal E, Lázaro L, Vieta E, Baeza I. The aftermath of COVID-19 lockdown: Self-harm and suicide-related behavior among children and adolescents admitted to the Psychiatric Emergency Department. Neuroscience Applied. 2022;1:100966. doi: 10.1016/j.nsa.2022.100966. Epub 2022 Dec 24. PMCID: PMC9789415.

xiii Schippers, Michaéla & Ioannidis, John & Joffe, Ari. (2022). Aggressive measures, rising inequalities, and mass formation during the COVID-19 crisis: An overview and proposed way forward. Frontiers in Public Health. 10. 10.3389/fpubh.2022.950965.

xiv Favas TT, Lall N, Joshi D, Singh VK, Pathak A, Chakravarty K, Mishra VN, Chaurasia RN, Kumar A. Thrombotic and Thromboembolic Complications After Vaccination Against COVID-19: A Systematic Review. Cureus. 2023 Apr 7;15(4):e37275. doi: 10.7759/cureus.37275. PMID: 37182082; PMCID: PMC10167937.

xv Matar RH, Than CA, Nakanishi H, Daniel RS, Smayra K, Sim BL, Beran A, Danoun OA. Outcomes of patients with thromboembolic events following coronavirus disease 2019 AstraZeneca vaccination: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Blood Coagul Fibrinolysis. 2022 Mar 1;33(2):90-112. doi: 10.1097/MBC.0000000000001113. PMID: 34980833; PMCID: PMC8815637.

xvi Garg, R.K., Paliwal, V.K. Spectrum of neurological complications following COVID-19 vaccination. Neurol Sci 43, 3–40 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-021-05662-9

xvii Mohseni Afshar, Z., Sharma, A., Babazadeh, A. et al. A review of the potential neurological adverse events of COVID-19 vaccines. Acta Neurol Belg 123, 9–44 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13760-022-02137-2

xviii Hosseini, R., Askari, N. A review of neurological side effects of COVID-19 vaccination. Eur J Med Res 28, 102 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40001-023-00992-0

xix https://www.theyliedpeopledied.com/

xx https://phinancetechnologies.com/HumanityProjects/Humanity%20Projects.asp

xxi Dowd E. “CAUSE UNKNOWN” THE EPIDEMIC OF SUDDEN DEATHS IN 2021 & 2022. Skyhorse (November 9, 2022).

xxii Keil U, Schönhöfer P, Spelsberg A. The invention of the swine-flu pandemic. Eur J Epidemiol. 2011 Mar;26(3):187-90. doi: 10.1007/s10654-011-9573-6. Epub 2011 Apr 9. PMID: 21479615; PMCID: PMC7087555.

xxiii SHARI ROAN. Swine flu ‘debacle’ of 1976 is recalled. APRIL 27, 2009. LA Times. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-apr-27-sci-swine-history27-story.html

xxiv What is underreporting and why it matters? April 21, 2022. OpenVaers. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.openvaers.com/faq/what-is-underreporting-and-why-it-matters

xxv Rose J. The Under Reporting Factor in VAERS. November 16, 2022. Unacceptable Jessica Substack. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://jessicar.substack.com/p/the-under-reporting-factor-in-vaers?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2Funderreport&utm_medium=reader2

xxvi Profile on Jessica Rose. Totality of Evidence. August 6, 2022. Accesed May 25, 2023. https://totalityofevidence.com/dr-jessica-rose/

xxvii Svab P. The Epoch Times: Researcher Calls Out Censorship After Journal Pulls COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events Analysis . January 20, 2022. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20220119164146/https://www.theepochtimes.com/researcher-calls-out-censorship-after-journal-pulls-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-events-analysis_4221081.html

xxviii Seven nurses speak out about the rate of vaccine injury among their peers. stkirsch Rumble Channel. June? 2022. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://rumble.com/v193o8o-seven-nurses-speak-out-about-the-rate-of-vaccine-injury-among-their-peers.html

xxix Calcified Placentas: A Nurse Midwife’s Disturbing Testimony. April 14, 2023. DailyClout.io. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://dailyclout.io/calcified-placentas-a-nurse-midwifes-disturbing-testimony/

xxx Fired for Freedom: Doctors, nurses, and attorneys expose civil rights abuses. December 8, 2021. DailyClout.io. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://dailyclout.io/fired-for-freedom/

xxxi ‘Covid-19’ WhistleBlower Nurse In ‘Canada’ “Exposing Crimes Against Humanity In Canadian Hospitals.” November 6, 2022. AndreCorbeil Rumble channel. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://rumble.com/v1s3mlc-covid-19-whistleblower-nurse-in-canada-exposing-crimes-against-humanity-in-.html

xxxii Maryland Nurse Reports On Vaccination Catastrophe. Health Ranger Reportbrighteon.com 2021. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.brighteon.com/82932c26-9234-4057-b283-6d458d3107df

xxxiii Nurse turned whistleblower speaks out on health care corruption. [Gail Macrae] April 18, 2023. Alpha News Youtube Channel. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuw-Ap8OQHE

xxxiv WHISTLEBLOWER NURSE IN WASHINGTON DESCRIBES VACCINE INJURIES FROM EMPLOYMENT MANDATE. [Prada] August 10th, 2022. HealthImpactNews Bitchute Channel. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.bitchute.com/video/mw5YOnElQmnU/

xxxv Brian Shilhavy. Nurse Shortages in Canada Lead to ER Closures – Whistleblower Nurse in Washington Describes Vaccine Injuries from Employment Mandate. August 10, 2022. Health Impact News. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://healthimpactnews.com/2022/nurse-shortages-in-canada-lead-to-er-closures-whistleblower-nurse-in-washington-describes-vaccine-injuries-from-employment-mandate/

xxxvi “NOBODY NEEDS TO DIE” – FRONTLINE DOCTORS STORM D.C. – “THOUSANDS OF DOCTORS” ARE BEING SILENCED. [Simone Gold, Bob Hamilton, America’s Frontline Doctors] July 27th, 2020. HealthImpactNews Bitchute Channel. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.bitchute.com/video/PZLBQoi0vD9G/

xxxvii CANADIAN DOCTOR: 62% OF PATIENTS VACCINATED FOR COVID HAVE PERMANENT HEART DAMAGE [Dr. Charles Hoffe]. HealthImpactNews Bitchute Channel. July 14, 2021. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.bitchute.com/video/ChQwQBggc8TL/

xxxviii CNA NURSING HOME WHISTLEBLOWER: SENIORS ARE DYING LIKE FLIES AFTER COVID INJECTIONS! SPEAK OUT!!! [James DeValan (spelling?)] January 27th, 2021. HealthImpactNews Bitchute Channel. https://www.bitchute.com/video/cpQ7dnqu0Sos/

xxxix Israeli Doctor Kobi Haviv: ‘Fully vaccinated account for 85-90% of hospitalizations.’ Posted 2022. MegillahGuerrilla Rumble Channel. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://rumble.com/vlbddq-israeli-doctor-kobi-haviv-fully-vaccinated-account-for-85-90-of-hospitaliza.html

xl Australian Nurse Speaks Out: Vaccine Carnage In The ER. Sunfellow On COVID-19 Bithute Channel. June? 2022. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://rumble.com/v1912p6-australian-nurse-speaks-out-vaccine-carnage-in-the-er.html

xli https://rumble.com/v193o8o-seven-nurses-speak-out-about-the-rate-of-vaccine-injury-among-their-peers.html

xlii AUSSIE DOCTOR RISKS MEDICAL LICENSE TO TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT COVID VACCINE INJURIES AND DEATHS. [Dr William Bay]. August 8th, 2022. HealthImpactNews Bitchute Channel. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.bitchute.com/video/hurhcOld4G6f/

xliii Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Updated Mar. 7, 2023. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/safety-of-vaccines.html

xliv COVID-19 Vaccines. US Food and Drug Administration. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/covid-19-vaccines

xlv Coronavirus Vaccines and Prevention. National Institute of Allergy and Infections Disease. Content last reviewed on July 18, 2022. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/coronavirus-vaccines-prevention

xlvi Covid-19 Vaccines. “Everyone, everywhere, should have access to COVID-19 vaccines.” World Health Organization. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/covid-19-vaccines

xlvii What Vaccines are Recommended for You. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last Reviewed: May 19, 2023. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/adults/rec-vac/index.html

xlviii Child and Adolescent Immunization Schedule by Age: The Immunization Schedule. 2023. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html#birth-15

xlix Coulter HL, Fisher BL. 1985. DPT: A Shot in the Dark. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

l Coulter HL, Fisher BL. op cit.

li Coulter HL, Fisher BL. op cit.

lii Coulter HL, Fisher BL. op cit.

liii Coulter HL, Fisher BL. op cit.

liv Coulter HL, Fisher BL. op cit.

lv Coulter HL, Fisher BL. op cit.

lvi Coulter HL, Fisher BL. op cit.

lvii Coulter HL, Fisher BL. op cit.

lviii Coulter HL, Fisher BL. op cit.

lix Null G. Medical Genocide, Part 17. December 1987 PENTHOUSE. https://garynull.com/vaccines-vaccine-victims-medgen17/

lx Null G. Medical Genocide, Part 17. December 1987 PENTHOUSE. https://garynull.com/vaccines-vaccine-victims-medgen17/

lxi Null G. Medical Genocide, Part 17. December 1987 PENTHOUSE. https://garynull.com/vaccines-vaccine-victims-medgen17/

lxii Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Page last reviewed: September 8, 2022. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/vaers/index.html

lxiii Wolfe, Eli. “Federal Vaccine Court Quietly Pays Billions.” Fair Warning. 12 Dec 2018. https://www.fairwarning.org/2018/12/vaccine-court-pays-billions/

lxiv Autism Prevalence Higher, According to Data from 11 ADDM Communities. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last Reviewed: March 22, 2023. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2023/p0323-autism.html

lxv Hurley, AM et.al. “Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism: A Review of Recent Epidemiologic Studies.” Journal of Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics. 2010 Jul-Sep; 15(3):173-181. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3018252/

lxvi Redwood, Lyn. Poisons in Our Vaccines: INVESTIGATING MERCURY, THIMEROSAL, AND NEURODEVELOPMENTAL DELAY. Mothering NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2002. p. 36-39. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/Redwood-Poison-in-Our-Vaccines-Mothering-Mag-Nov-Dec-2002.pdf

lxvii Scientific Review of Vaccine Safety Datalink Information (transcript). 7-8 Jun 2000. http://thinktwice.com/simpsonwood.pdf Retrieved 18 Jan 2019

lxviii Verstraeten, TM et.al. “Increased risk of developmental neurologic impairment after high exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccine in first month of life.” (original abstract submission). 1999. http://mercury-freedrugs.org/docs/00mmdd_EISAbstractSubmission_IncreasedRiskOfDevelopmentalNeurologicImpairmentAfterHighExposureToThimerosal-containingVaccine_.pdf Retrieved 18 Jan 2019.

lxix Verstraeten, TM et.al. “Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases.” Pediatrics. 2003 Nov;112(5):1039-48. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14595043

lxx Null G. Buyniski H. Autism, Made in the USA: the Undeniable Connection Between Vaccines and Autism Spectrum Disorder. https://garynull.com/autism-made-usa-undeniable-connection-vaccines-autism-spectrum-disorder/

lxxi ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE OF THE CDC’S HANDLING OF THE THIMEROSAL EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT BASED ON VACCINE SAFETY DATALINK (VSD) INFORMATION Safe Minds October 2003. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/Analysis-and-Critiques-of-VSD-SafeMinds-2003.pdf

lxxii Hooker, Brian et.al. “Methodological Issues and Evidence of Malfeasance in Research Purporting to Show Thimerosal in Vaccines Is Safe.” BioMed Research International. 2014; Article ID 247218. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2014/247218/

lxxiii Hurley, AM et.al. “Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism: A Review of Recent Epidemiologic Studies.” Journal of Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics. 2010 Jul-Sep; 15(3):173-181. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3018252/

lxxiv MERCURY IN MEDICINE REPORT. HON. DAN BURTON of Indiana in the house of representatives. May 20, 2003. Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 21, 2003. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2003-05-21/html/CREC-2003-05-21-pt1-PgE1011-3.htm

lxxv Richard Gale and Gary Null. New Vaccines Still Cause Autism and Our Government Knows. Progressive Radio Network, November 5, 2018. https://garynull.com/new-vaccines-still-cause-autism-and-our-government-knows/

lxxvi Gallagher CM, Goodman MS. Hepatitis B vaccination of male neonates and autism diagnosis, NHIS 1997-2002. Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry. Volume 94, Issue 8, 2012

lxxvii Thimerosal: Questions and Concerns. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Page last reviewed: August 25, 2020. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/index.html

lxxviii Kennedy RF. Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury—a Known Neurotoxin—from Vaccines. 2015. Skyhorse Publishing.

lxxix Kennedy RF. Vaccines, mercury and thimerosal: let the science speak! 7th February 2017. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://theecologist.org/2017/feb/07/vaccines-mercury-and-thimerosal-let-science-speak

lxxx Brown IA, Austin DW. Maternal transfer of mercury to the developing embryo/fetus: is there a safe level?

lxxxi Handley, JB. How to End the Autism Epidemic.

lxxxii Aluminum Toxicity in Infants and Children Pediatrics March 1996, VOLUME 97 / ISSUE 3 114(4):1126 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/97/3/413

lxxxiii Bishop NJ, Morley R, Day JP, Lucas A. Aluminum neurotoxicity in preterm infants receiving intravenous-feeding solutions. New England Journal Medicine. May 29, 1997 336(22):1557-61

lxxxiv Seneff S, Davidson RM, Liu JJ. Empirical Data Confirm Autism Symptoms Related to Aluminum and Acetaminophen Exposure. September 24, 2012

lxxxv http://www.fda.gov/aboutfda/whatwedo/history/centennialoffda/harveyw.wiley/default.html

lxxxvi How Well Flu Vaccines Work: Questions & Answers. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last Reviewed: February 8, 2023. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm

lxxxvii Influenza: 2014-2015 Season Summary Reports. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Page last reviewed: February 11, 2019. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pastseasons/1415season.htm

lxxxviii Melia E Bonomo , Michael W Deem, Predicting Influenza H3N2 Vaccine Efficacy From Evolution of the Dominant Epitope, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 67, Issue 7, 1 October 2018, Pages 1129–1131, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciy323

lxxxix Benjamin J. Cowling and others, Increased Risk of Noninfluenza Respiratory Virus Infections Associated With Receipt of Inactivated Influenza Vaccine, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 54, Issue 12, 15 June 2012, Pages 1778–1783, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/cis307

xc Wolff GG. Influenza vaccination and respiratory virus interference among Department of Defense personnel during the 2017-2018 influenza season. Vaccine. 2020 Jan 10;38(2):350-354. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.10.005. Epub 2019 Oct 10. PMID: 31607599; PMCID: PMC7126676.

xci G Thomas Ray and others, Intraseason Waning of Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 68, Issue 10, 15 May 2019, Pages 1623–1630, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciy770

xcii Skowronski DM, De Serres G, Crowcroft NS, Janjua NZ, Boulianne N, Hottes TS, Rosella LC, Dickinson JA, Gilca R, Sethi P, Ouhoummane N, Willison DJ, Rouleau I, Petric M, Fonseca K, Drews SJ, Rebbapragada A, Charest H, Hamelin ME, Boivin G, Gardy JL, Li Y, Kwindt TL, Patrick DM, Brunham RC; Canadian SAVOIR Team. Association between the 2008-09 seasonal influenza vaccine and pandemic H1N1 illness during Spring-Summer 2009: four observational studies from Canada. PLoS Med. 2010 Apr 6;7(4):e1000258. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000258. PMID: 20386731; PMCID: PMC2850386.

xciii https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/flu-vaccine-paradox-adds-to-public-health-debate-1.2912790

xciv https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/flu-shot-linked-to-higher-incidence-of-flu-in-pandemic-year-1.1287363

xcv Donahue JG, Kieke BA, King JP, DeStefano F, Mascola MA, Irving SA, Cheetham TC, Glanz JM, Jackson LA, Klein NP, Naleway AL, Weintraub E, Belongia EA. Association of spontaneous abortion with receipt of inactivated influenza vaccine containing H1N1pdm09 in 2010-11 and 2011-12. Vaccine. 2017 Sep 25;35(40):5314-5322. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2017.06.069. PMID: 28917295; PMCID: PMC6501798.

xcvi LYDIA WARREN. Did swine flu vaccine give boy’s sleeping sickness that causes him to lose control of his body? Updated April 1, 2011. The Daily Mail. Associated Newspapers. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1372574/Swine-flu-vaccine-given-boy-sleeping-sickness-causes-lose-control-body.html

xcvii Artikkeli on julkaistu aikaisemmin PLoS ONE -verkkojulkaisussa (Partinen M, Saarenpää-Heikkilä O, Ilveskoski I ym. Increased incidence and clinical picture of childhood narcolepsy following the 2009 H1N1 pandemic vaccination campaign in Finland. PLoS ONE 2012;PONE-D-11- 23381R1) ja julkaistaan tässä alkuperäisen julkaisijan luvalla.

xcviii Porter Tom. Brain-Damaged UK Victims of Swine Flu Vaccine to Get £60 Million Compensation. March 2, 2014. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/brain-damaged-uk-victims-swine-flu-vaccine-get-60-million-compensation-1438572

xcix Lilley Jennifer. If Vaccines Don’t Cause Brain Damage, Why Is GlaxoSmithKline Paying Out $63 Million to Vaccine Victims? Global Research. July 21, 2015. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.globalresearch.ca/if-vaccines-dont-cause-brain-damage-why-is-glaxosmithkline-paying-out-63-million-to-vaccine-victims/5463716

http://sharylattkisson.com/woman-paralyzed-after-flu-shot-receives-11-million-for-treatment/

ci http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/6-seniors-die-after-flu-shot-at-assisted-care-center-in-georgia/

cii http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/23-seniors-died-after-receiving-this-years-flu-shot-sold-by-pharmacies/

ciii https://healthimpactnews.com/2014/flu-vaccine-is-the-most-dangerous-vaccine-in-the-united-states-based-on-settled-cases-for-injuries/

civ https://vaccineimpact.com/2016/vaccines-injuries-and-deaths-increase-in-government-vaccine-court-june-2016-report/

cv Lazarus, Ross; Klompas, Michael; Bernstein, Steve. Electronic Support for Public Health–Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (ESP:VAERS). Inclusive dates: 12/01/07 – 09/30/10. Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://digital.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/docs/publication/r18hs017045-lazarus-final-report-2011.pdf

cvi Thimerosal and Vaccines: Questions and Concerns. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Page last reviewed: August 25, 2020. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/index.html

cvii Thimerosal and Vaccines: Questions and Concerns. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Page last reviewed: August 25, 2020. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/index.html

cviii Dorea JG. Integrating experimental (in vitro and in vivo) neurotoxicity studies of low-dose thimerosal relevant to vaccines. Neurochem Res. 2011 Jun;36(6):927-38.

cix Carolyn Gallagher and Melody Goodman. Hepatitis B Triple Series Vaccine and Developmental disability in US Children Aged 1-9 Years. Toxicological & Environmental Chemistry Vol. 90, No. 5, September–October 2008, 997–1008

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cxi Burbacher TM, Shen DD, Liberato N, Grant KS, Cernichiari E, Clarkson T. Comparison of blood and brain mercury levels in infant monkeys exposed to methymercury or vaccines containing thimerosal Environmental Health Perspectives. 2005 Aug;113(8):1015‐21.

cxii L. Hewitson B. Lopresti , C. Stott, J. Tomko , L. Houser , E. Klein , G. Sackett , S. Gupta , D. Atwood , L. Blue , E. R. White , A. Wakefield. Pediatric vaccines influence primate behavior, and amygdala growth and opioid ligand binding. IMFAR (May 2008)

cxiii Sharpe MA, Livingston AD, Baskin DS. Thimerosal-derived ethylmercury is a mitochondrial toxin in human astrocytes: possible role of Fenton chemistry in the oxidation and breakage of mtDNA. Journal of Toxicology vol. 2012, (2012)

cxiv Grazyna Zareba, Elsa Cernichiari, Rieko Hojo, Scott Mc Nitt, Bernard Weiss, Moiz M Mumtaz, Dennis E Jones, Thomas W Clarkson. Thimerosal distribution and metabolism in neonatal mice: comparsion with methylmercury. Neurotoxicology. 2007 Feb 23; : 17382399

cxv Miller, N.  “The polio vaccine: a critical assessment of its arcane history, efficacy, and long-term health-related consequences” Medical Veritas. Vol. 1 239-251, 2004

cxvi Polio (Poliomyelitis): Why Are We Involved. The Early Years of CDC’s Fight Against Polio. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Updated October 19, 2022. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/polio/why-are-we-involved/index.htm

cxvii Polio (Poliomyelitis): Why CDC Is Involved: The Early Years of CDC’s Fight against Polio. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Page last reviewed: July 25, 2017. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/polio/why/index.htm

cxviii McBean E. The Poisoned Needle.Mokelumne Hill, California: Health Research,1957

cxix Polio (Poliomyelitis): Why Are We Involved. The Early Years of CDC’s Fight Against Polio. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Updated October 19, 2022. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/polio/why-are-we-involved/index.htm

cxx Polio (Poliomyelitis): Why Are We Involved. The Early Years of CDC’s Fight Against Polio. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Updated October 19, 2022. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/polio/why-are-we-involved/index.htm

cxxi Humphries, S.  “Smoke, Mirrors and the Disappearance of Polio,” International Medical Council on Vaccination. November 17, 2011

cxxii Humphries, S. and Bystrianyk, R.  Dissolving Illusions: Disaese, Vaccines and the Forgotten History. Self-published. 2013, pp 222-292

cxxiii Miller, N.  “The polio vaccine: a critical assessment of its arcane history, efficacy, and long-term health-related consequences,” Medical Veritas. Vol. 1 239-251, 2004

cxxiv Miller, N.  op cit.

cxxv Carbone, M., et al. “SV-40 Like Sequences in Human Bone Tumors,”Oncogene, 13 (3), 1996, pp. 527–35

cxxvi Miller, N. op cit.

cxxvii Lancet, March 9, 2002

cxxviii Miller, N. op cit.

cxxix Mihalovic, D.  “CDC Admits 98 Million Americans Received Polio Vaccine in an 8 Year Span When It Was Contaminated with Cancer Virus.”  Prevent Disease, July 17, 2013

cxxx Vashisht, N. and Puliyel J. “Polio Program: Let Us Declare Victory and Move On,” Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. April-June 9:2, 2012  pp 114-117

cxxxi “53,000 Paralysis Cases in India from Polio Vaccine in a Year”  Child Health Safety. December 1, 2014

cxxxii Miller NZ. Immunization Theory Vs. Reality: Exposé on Vaccinations. New Atlantean Press. 1995.

cxxxiii Miller NZ. Immunization Theory Vs. Reality: Exposé on Vaccinations. New Atlantean Press. 1995.

cxxxiv Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Vaccines timeline. Available at:www.cdc.gov/nip/vaccine/vacc-timeline.htm. Accessed September 21, 2007.

cxxxv Colgrove J. State of Immunity: The Politics of Vaccination in Twentieth-Century America. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; 2006:245-247.

cxxxvi Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adverse events following civilian smallpox vaccination – United States, 2003. MMWR. 2004; 53(05):106-107.

cxxxvii Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Smallpox fact sheet: The live virus smallpox vaccine. Page last reviewed February 21, 2006. Available at:www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/vaccination/live-virus.asp. Accessed September 21, 2007.

cxxxviii  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Smallpox Fact Sheet: Reactions after smallpox vaccination. March 28, 2003.

cxxxix Ibid.

cxl National Network for Immunization Information, op. cit.

cxli Kemper AR, Davis MM, Freed GL. Expected adverse events in a mass smallpox vaccination campaign. Eff Clin Pract. 2002; 5(2):84-90.

cxlii Kretzschmar M, Wallinga J, Teunis P, et al. Frequency of adverse events after vaccination with different vaccinia strains. PLoS Med. 2006; 3(8)

cxliii Thompson WW, Price C, Goodson B, Shay DK, Benson P, Hinrichsen VL, Lewis E, Eriksen E, Ray P, Marcy SM, Dunn J, Jackson LA, Lieu TA, Black S, Stewart G, Weintraub ES, Davis RL, DeStefano F; Vaccine Safety Datalink Team. Early thimerosal exposure and neuropsychological outcomes at 7 to 10 years. N Engl J Med. 2007 Sep 27;357(13):1281-92. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa071434. PMID: 17898097.

cxliv Price CS, Thompson WW, Goodson B, Weintraub ES, Croen LA, Hinrichsen VL, Marcy M, Robertson A, Eriksen E, Lewis E, Bernal P, Shay D, Davis RL, DeStefano F. Prenatal and infant exposure to thimerosal from vaccines and immunoglobulins and risk of autism. Pediatrics. 2010 Oct;126(4):656-64. doi: 10.1542/peds.2010-0309. Epub 2010 Sep 13. PMID: 20837594.

cxlv DeStefano F, Bhasin TK, Thompson WW, Yeargin-Allsopp M, Boyle C. Age at first measles-mumps-rubella vaccination in children with autism and school-matched control subjects: a population-based study in metropolitan atlanta. Pediatrics. 2004 Feb;113(2):259-66. doi: 10.1542/peds.113.2.259. PMID: 14754936.

cxlvi Brian Hooker Interview. http://dev.prn.fm/progressive-commentary-hour-03-29-16/

cxlvii The Statement of William W. Thompson, August 27, 2014. FEBRUARY 13, 2020. Children’s Health Defense. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/child-health-topics/whistleblowers/the-statement-of-william-w-thompson/

cxlviii “Pulled from Festival, Anti-Vaccination Film Will Run in Theater,” New York Times, March 30, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/movies/pulled-from-tribeca-film-festival-vaccination-film-vaxxed-will-run-in-theater.html

cxlix Brian Hooker interview, op. cit.

cl Brian Hooker interview, op. cit.

cli https://sharylattkisson.com/researcher-who-dispelled-vaccine-autism-link-most-wanted-fugitive/

clii https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/cdc-blocks-testimony-vaccine-whistleblower-medical-malpractice-case-2/

cliii  Richard Gale and Gary Null. Merck’s History of Crimes and Misdemeanors. Progressive Radio Network, March 18, 2021. https://garynull.com/mercks-history-of-crimes-and-misdemeanors-2/

cliv Vaccines. US Food and Drug Administration. https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines

clv Gale , Null G. Merck’s History of Crimes and Misdemeanors. Progressive Radio Network, March 18, 2021. https://garynull.com/mercks-history-of-crimes-and-misdemeanors-2/

clvi Gale , Null G. Merck’s History of Crimes and Misdemeanors. Progressive Radio Network, March 18, 2021. https://garynull.com/mercks-history-of-crimes-and-misdemeanors-2/

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First published on June  1, 2023

*** 

The World Health Assembly (WHA) is a meeting of over 190 WHO Member States where health decisions are made that impact the global population. The 2023 WHA conference started on 21 May and closed officially on 30 May 2023.

Despite all expectations that crucial decisions would be taken during these ten days on the revised International Health Regulations (IHR), plus the appended “Pandemic Treaty” – an absolute WHO Power Grab never heard of in recent civilization – no such decisions have been taken, yet.

The reasons are presented purposely in a confusing fashion, so that people may not quite understand what is really brewing behind the monster scenario, behind the elite’s lies and manipulations.

At the outset, it appears like there would have been enough votes to make the WHO’s constitutionally needed two-thirds majority for this type of decisions.

Yet, there was “insecurity”.

What if WHO is suddenly considered as an “under-agent” of the UN and does not have the power to implement what they truly want to embrace as their constitutional right… a Health Tyranny, abolishing all 194 member countries’ health sovereignty?

What if the overarching body that may have this power, though neither written in any of the international nor UN laws, is the United Nations themselves?

What if some countries, notably the United States, have been “smelling a rat” over the last year, while the non-mainstream media were relentlessly reporting of the dangers of the WHO deadly power grab?

Some politicians in the US did wake up to the ever-stronger light shining on the crimes of the “underworld” – responsible for the COVID fraud; for the worldwide election frauds; for the genocidal agenda of massive worldwide population reduction; for the “vaccination” murders; for the demolition of western economies, notably that of the US and the European Union; for the plan of rebuilding it under a newly introduced all-digital panorama; for converting surviving humanity to “transhumans” to be directed by Artificial Intelligence (AI); for the abolition of international laws to be replaced by the elite-invented so-called “rules-based orders”.

Yes, some people did wake up. Notably US Republican Senators, who are basically nationalists, anti-globalists, who in their healthy conservatism worship personal freedom, free-speech, free-expression, and private entrepreneurship.

They have noticed that under their so-called “left-leaning” Dems, a small insanely wealthy elite, would run the world – with the surviving, chipped-transhumans as disposable slaves. They say: no way!

Sounds horrifying?

Yes, people. Wake up. It is horrifying.

That is their Plan.

Read the “Great Reset” and the “Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, both by Klaus Schwab, WEF (both available on Amazon); take the time and study “UN Agenda 2030” profoundly, not just at the surface; read and talk to each other about your new discoveries, make it known to colleagues, friends and foes alike, BEFORE it is too late.

It is a monstrous plan.

The worst our civilization has known.

It spans the entire globe.

There is nowhere to escape.

This is not to scare but to make aware. Those aware do not need to be scared. Awareness is stronger than the evil underworld of lies and fear.

*

You must know that the single most self-assumed “powerful” group within the United States, the official Democratic Party of the United States, led by front-man President Joe Biden, but really directed by the overarching, financial establishment behind him, have been pushing this WHO tyranny-surveillance agenda from the start.

Washington is one of the main “powers” behind the Great Reset and the treacherous UN Agenda 2030, to culminate in a One World Order (OWO) – which, in turn, would be led by the assumed “kingpins”, the “New Left” – the globalist-corrupted US Democratic Party, as the mastermind behind the OWO. They are equivalent to the worldwide globalist (World Economic Forum – WEF)-corrupted Socialist Parties.

Republicans have a Senate majority in the US Congress. They are filing motions to stop this WHO onslaught. If they succeed, the WHO plan may fail worldwide since the driving force behind the WHO “Power Grab” plan is the US, the Biden Administration.

That is why President Trump had to go, was booted out by suspected election fraud.

That is why the corrupted west and their corrupted mainstream media (MSM) will do whatever they can to smear former President Trump, to diminish his chances of winning the US elections in 2024.

That is also why Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of assassinated President Kennedy (JFK) and the son of also assassinated JFK’s brother and Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, who recently declared his candidacy as a candidate for the Democrats in the 2024 elections is literally ignored, if not smeared, by the MSM.

It is time that we all understand, in the “Globalist World” there is no “left” and “right”. There are only Globalists. They are an all-embracing any subordinate party structure.

For the common people, who have known “democracy” as a system of different parties, it is difficult to understand that suddenly the traditional party system is silently oppressed for a “Globalist Super-Power” (GSP). So, this assumed GSP gets away with it.

*

What may have woken up some Republicans is Health and Human Services Secretary, Xavier Beserra’s White House proposal for the 2024 Health Budget: US$ 1.6 billion for “Global Health Actions”, meaning supporting the newly revised WHO International Health Regulations (IHR) and the intimately related “Pandemic Treaty”.

In addition to this extra budget, there are another US$ 250 million proposed for a ”global pandemic fund” (not further defined), plus the previously committed funds of US$ 450 million, totaling US$ 2.3 billion.

No wonder, US Republican Parliamentarians started smelling a rotten fish.

By the way, Xavier Beserra is a non-elected US government official; he is also one of the US delegates to the World Health Assembly. He is not accountable to the people.

*

Further analyzing the revised WHO’s IHR indicates that Article 18, Communication and Public Awareness, is language in disguise for high-ranking censoring. This would be “legalizing” from a WHO point of view, what has been going on for the last three+ years in WHO’s absolute censoring of anything and any science that does not match the going MUST narrative.

In this context, you may also want to know that WHO allegedly eliminated or censored about 60,000 pieces of information and texts since the beginning of 2020. This data once available on internet under “fact-checkers” has since been eliminated. Since “proof” has gone, let us call it, WHO allegedly eliminated or censored

*

Under the new IHR Article 34 — Protocol WHO — there would be no way out, worldwide, for any (tyrannical) “measures”, once WHO’s WHA has a two-third majority.

It represents an unheard-of global overreach by a “specialized” UN agency, an agency under the aegis of the UN system. Nobody seems to ask how that fits within the overall UN Constitution.

This new measure, or self-given power, contrasts drastically with the 2005 original IHR, which was “giving advice” but leaving actual measures up to sovereign countries.

The Biden Administration is now proposing reopening the IHR and drafting new “packaged” texts that would facilitate and lend WHO powers to declare “public emergencies” at global and regional levels, bestowing WHO’s Regional Directors with similar powers for their respective regions, as the WHO DG, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, may assume.

But even that is not “power grab”-secure enough. There is an ever-growing opinion and sentiment in the US Senate to exit WHO. Indeed, there are several movements already around the world of www.exittheWHOnow.com. Such movements exist already in Canada, Australia, are in the process of being initiated in the US, as well as a People’s Initiative to this effect is being launched in Switzerland. Other countries are also gradually waking up to this new reality.

Then what? Should such movements succeed, the entire WHO “Power-Grab” plan is worthless, down the drain.

Globalists in the US (and elsewhere) are nervous about ever growing anti-tyranny, anti-WHO movements. For starters, in the US they do not call the “Pandemic Treaty” a treaty anymore because treaties must be ratified by the Senate. Looking for ways around it, they are calling it “instrument” — just imagine, from the Pandemic Treaty to the Pandemic Instrument.

George Orwell would be flabbergasted about how humanity has overtaken his brilliant “1984” vision of the future. Yes, humanity is even more deranged than author Orwell foresaw it to be in “1984”.

This confusion, risk of WHO disappearing, may have been a key reason for not voting now, during the WHA that closed on 30 May 2023. Instead, it may be postponed to a year from now, to the next WHA, most likely with invented interim occasions for votes or adjustments.

Some WHA delegates are already talking about September and even October 2023 – as new dates for debate — though, not mentioned specifically, target dates could be during the 2023 UN General Assembly (UNGA 78) from 12-29 September 2023.  

During that period, a 2023 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) high-level political forum is foreseen for 18-19 September under the auspices of the UNGA.

These would be perfect dates for discussing “emergency health measures”. Because, first, SDGs are basically identical with UN Agenda 2030; and second, it would provide the power elite behind the WEF – the Death Cult – with the opportunity for choosing a fallback, in case the faltering WHO could no longer guarantee a set of “emergency health measures” – namely, the UN itself.

However, the UN has its one fallacy, when it comes to declaring “emergency situations” and emergency measures. This falls under the auspices of the UN Security Council (UNSC).  

The UNSC is a delicate mechanism as it consists of 15 members, of which five are permanent members with veto power. The western OWO gamblers would not likely trust Russia and China not vetoing the west’s dictatorial emergency measures.

The UN Director General has, therefore, vaguely suggested, creating an Emergency Platform, just in case there is what they would call a “Global Shock”, which has also been vaguely described as

  • Climate change calamities
  • Pandemics
  • Biological warfare
  • Supply chain disruptions
  • Cyberspace disruptions
  • Event in outer space
  • Unforeseen “Black Swan” events.

Such an Emergency Platform, NOT YET CREATED, or whatever they may call it, would be superseding the UN Security Council, at least in power. That is the vague idea. How well that would fly with ever-more alert UN members is far from being clear.

No doubt, the powers behind the UN want the right to declare such emergencies for anything that suits the occasion to call a dictatorial tyranny — in other words, anything might suffice.

With or without WHO, they will not let go. Not voluntarily. The powers and money that rule the world, they believe, are almighty so that this nefarious, criminal plan MUST be implemented by those bought human stooges who implement it being part of the “selected” favorites, assumed to be sufficiently liked by the elite, to be bestowed with privileges to escape the hangman of the common folks.

Maybe. But look at history, the elite has never stuck to their promises, implied or otherwise. 

Be sure, We, the People, will not allow the monster plan to be executed.

In their usual “Dark Cult” practice, they tell us what they are going to do.

We must listen – and we may not stay silent. Silence equals consent”. 

The modified International Health Regulations and the Pandemic Treaty contain the most egregious breaches of our human rights. Increasing number of people becomes aware.

There is a growing pushback from countries around the globe. This may well be the reason for not voting officially on the revised IHR and the Pandemic Treaty during the 2023 WHA.

And remember the ongoing and growing movement of www.exittheWHOnow.comConsider this a “win” for the people.

Let us NOT give up – EVER.

For more details, you may want to watch and listen to the debate at Children’s Health Defense (CHD) with Dr. Meryl Nass, Dr. Valerie Borek and Dr. James Roguski, see this video (1 hour and 7 min).

*

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Featured image is from WHO

Gli Stati Uniti hanno iniziato un programma di addestramento delle forze aeree ucraine all’uso dei caccia F-16.  Partecipano a tale programma diversi paesi europei della NATO: Danimarca, Olanda,. Polonia, Norvegia, Belgio, Portogallo. Altri si sono offerti di contribuire all’addestramento. Gli stessi paesi forniranno all’Ucraina gli F-16. Sono caccia a duplice capacità convenzionale e nucleare. Un F-16 è stato usato nei test di lancio della bomba nucleare B61-12, che gli USA stanno già schierando in Italia, Germania, Belgio e Olanda. Con tutta probabilità le B61-12 vengono fornite dagli USA anche alla Polonia: caccia F-16 polacchi partecipano dal 2014 alle esercitazioni NATO di attacco nucleare.

Vladimir Kozin – esperto capo del Centro Studi Politico-Militari di Mosca – dichiara, in. una intervista a Grandangolo, che vi è il profondo sospetto, basato su precisi fatti, che le armi nucleari statunitensi siano state dispiegate anche in Lettonia, Lituania ed Estonia, o possano essere rapidamente inviate nei loro territori e anche in quello della Polonia. Questi paesi partecipano al “pattugliamento aereo del Baltico”, a ridosso del territorio russo, con aerei a duplice capacità convenzionale e nucleare. Inoltre, bombardieri strategici statunitensi, certificati per il trasporto di armi nucleari,  sono impegnati in “esercitazioni” sul Baaltico e altre zone limitrofe al territorio russo,

Dopo aver inutilmente proposto a USA e NATO un negoziato per ridurre il rischio di un conflitto nucleare in Europa, Mosca sta schierando, in accordo con  Minsk, armi nucleari tattiche in Bielorussia,  in posizione ravvicinata rispetto alle basi nucleari USA-NATO in Europa. Alla domanda “Le armi nucleari tattiche schierate dalla Russia in Bielorussia hanno un raggio d’azione che va oltre la Polonia e quindi costituiscono un deterrente per le armi nucleari statunitensi schierate in Italia e in altri Paesi europei?”, Vladimir Kozin risponde: “Sì, le armi nucleari tattiche russe che saranno dispiegate in Bielorussia e, eventualmente, nella regione di Kaliningrad e nella penisola di Crimea, possono raggiungere diversi obiettivi militari in Polonia, Italia e in molti altri Paesi europei membri della NATO”.

L’escalation USA-NATO contro la Russia avvicina sempre più l’Europa alla soglia della guerra nucleare. Su tutto questo il complesso politico-mediatico cala una cortina di silenzio per non allarmare l’opinione pubblica europea ed evitare che reagisca.

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First published on November 15, 2022

***

The electoral victories of Gustavo Petro and Inacio Lula da Silva this year in Colombia and Brazil have raised hopes for a new strong impulse towards the full emancipation of Latin America and the Caribbean. The recent reopening of relations between Colombia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has reinforced that optimism, along with the likely early abandonment of failed impostor Juan Guaidó by his American owners, who in practice already accept the legitimacy of the government of President Nicolás Maduro. Likewise, Lula da Silva’s new government in Brazil is expected to adopt policies that more actively promote regional economic development and integration.

But generally in Latin America and the Caribbean, the reactionary imperialist influence of the US corporate elites and their government continues to stifle the region’s free development, both through aggressive direct interference and too via sinister indirect economic control. In relation to this neocolonial economic power of the United States, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has explored in its Trade and Development Report this year the implications of the end of the low interest rates of Western central banks that lasted more than a decade until the end of 2021.

During that period, the governments of many developing countries took on relatively high levels of debt. Some governments took on even more debt between 2020 and 2022, mainly so as to better manage the difficulties caused by the international measures implemented against COVID-19 and also to buy vaccines. Now, Western central banks are raising their interest rates, supposedly to control inflation. However, the likely success of such measures is in question given that the main causes of inflation at the international level this year have not been an excess of demand or wage increases, but limitations in the global supply of goods.

Also contributing to higher inflation has been the increase in the profit margins of large companies both nationally and internationally, inflating prices by as much as 40% or even 50%. These problems in the global economy have been further complicated by the Russian military special operation in Ukraine and the counterproductive Western coercive measures against the Russian Federation, which have seriously affected the very Western economies that applied them. In general, countries with relatively high debt levels are going to have problems due both to higher interest payments and to capital flight, especially to the financial markets of the United States.

By the end of October this year the value of the US dollar had gained 22% against the Japanese yen and 13% against the Euro. The increase in the value of the dollar on international markets further complicates the situation of the national economies of developing countries. This reality is another expression of how Western domination of the world economy and its financial order drastically limit the possibilities of majority world countries to develop their economies successfully. Despite advances towards a multipolar world with more diverse commercial and financial options, thanks mainly to China, the nations of regions such as Africa or Latin America and the Caribbean remain subject to the neocolonial domination of the United States and its allies.

This causes a dilemma for the social democrat leaders of Latin America and the Caribbean. It may be that they favor progressive policies of regional integration that allow economic activity on a larger scale and greater commercial exchange within the region. But they always feel that they have to be attentive to what the US and European authorities and the corporate owners of those governments want. This reality is reflected to a greater or lesser degree in the behavior of leaders such as Lula da Silva, Andres Manuel López Obrador, Alberto Fernández, Gustavo Petro and Gabriel Boric, for example in the reckless, incoherent and untimely invitation by Gustavo Petro to the US Southern Command and even NATO to intervene to protect the Amazon.

Within this regional context, multiple contradictions at the national level in countries such as Argentina and Brazil also tend to affect the external policies of their governments. Argentina has applied to join the BRICS group while remaining subject to the neoliberal conditions accompanying the debt agreement with the US controlled International Monetary Fund negotiated by the corrupt previous government of Mauricio Macri. At the same time that relations of Latin American and Caribbean countries with China have advanced very positively, those countries’ governments continue to participate in the Organization of American States despite its nature and role as a neocolonial tool of the United States. Only Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela have rejected it.

The regional policy of the United States consists very clearly of using multiple types of interference to weaken the capacity of the region’s nations to defend their national sovereignty. The US goal is to provoke crisis and polarization across Latin America and the Caribbean so as to facilitate its economic, cultural, political and even juridical control and influence. This constant multifaceted interference by the United States, whether directly through its military, diplomats, corporations and bankers or by means of its various local allies, has caused insecurity, violence and political instability in many countries of the region.

In Ecuador and Haiti, there is acute violence and a collapse of the authority of those countries’ governments. In Peru, the government of Pedro Castillo has been paralyzed by an institutional and legal war waged relentlessy by the political opposition. Brazil is also highly polarized. Lula da Silva won the recent election with a very small margin of votes, supported by a coalition with many internal differences. Upon assuming office, he will have to face an opposition-dominated legislature in a country where most of its component states will also be governed by the opposition.

Argentina will have national elections next year in an atmosphere of great uncertainty favoring the right wing, which achieved an important advance at the end of 2021 by winning control of the senate in that year’s legislative elections. In Bolivia, the violent racist opposition in Santa Cruz continues to promote conditions for a new coup attempt against the government of Luis Arce. In Chile, Gabriel Boric has been unable to formulate a national project capable of confronting and overcoming the endless class war of the country’s right wing, a political failure expressed in the defeat in the recent referendum of the proposal for a new constitution. With different nuances, these same patterns of polarization, instability and insecurity characterize Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Cuba continues to stand as an indomitable model of the defense of national dignity, but its population experiences extreme hardship as a result of the ruthless, genocidal US blockade. The bolivarian government of President Nicolás Maduro and the Venezuelan people have overcome the worst effects of the innumerable illegal coercive measures, sabotage and assassination attempts by the United States, the European Union and the Colombian government of Iván Duque. But it will take time to achieve the full recovery of its economy and society after more than a decade of savage Western aggression, still in force, as demonstrated by the recent renewal by the European Union of its illegal coercive measures against Venezuela.

Few countries in the region are politically, economically and socially stable. In the countries of the Central American system, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Panama and, especially, Nicaragua show the highest levels of stability. Nicaragua has achieved this despite the persistent aggression of the United States and its allies. The country’s society and economy assimilated in an unexpectedly short time the serious economic consequences of the violent failed coup attempt of 2018, organized by the United States and some countries of the European Union. They had practically overcome the effects of that failed coup attempt when Covid-19 appeared in 2020, a challenge which Nicaragua’s government under President Ortega also overcame with exceptional success

Similarly, Nicaragua has managed to adjust its economy to successive North American and European illegal coercive measures over the last five years, achieving GDP growth this year of more than 5%, among the highest in Latin America and the Caribbean. The municipal elections last November 6th proved that Nicaragua has achieved levels of political and social cohesion and unity, of peace and citizen security that remain a distant dream for the rest of Latin America. Together with the revolutionary processes of Cuba and Venezuela, the People as President in Nicaragua defend the country’s national sovereign dignity, actively promoting the region’s emancipation and integration in a multipolar world, with no illusions that the West’s genocidal elites are going to give up voluntarily one iota of their economic power.

*

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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal, translated from Spanish.

Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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War for Profit: A Very Short History

June 3rd, 2023 by Brad Wolf

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First published on May 9, 2023

*** 

The senseless slaughter of World War I began with the murder of a single man, a Crown Prince of a European empire whose name no one was particularly familiar with at the time. Archduke Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria was the presumptive heir to the Austrian-Hungarian empire in June of 1914. 

His assassin was a young Bosnian Serb student and the murder of the Crown Prince set off a cataclysmic series of events resulting in the deaths of more than 20 million people, half of whom were civilians. An additional 20 million people were wounded. 

Entire generations of young men from England, France, Russia, Austria, and Germany were lost. National economies were ruined. In economic terms, World War I caused the greatest global depression of the 20th century. Debts by all the major countries (except the USA) haunted the post-war economic world. Unemployment soared. Inflation increased, most dramatically in Germany where hyperinflation meant that a loaf of bread cost 200 Million Marks.

World War I ended a period of economic success. Twenty years of fiscal insecurity and suffering followed. It is thought that veterans returning home from World War I brought with them the Spanish Flu, which killed almost one million Americans. The war also laid the groundwork for World War II. 

Was it simply the murder of the Crown Prince that caused a world war or were other factors at work? Why did the United States get involved in a European conflict, particularly when an overwhelming number of Americans were against the United States being involved? 

Despite major public opposition to the war, Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of it: 373 To 50 in the House of Representatives, 82 to six in the Senate. The politicians defied the wishes of the people they were supposed to represent. What happened? Was something else driving their votes?

J.P. Morgan and Company was one of the largest investment banking firms in the world. J.P. Morgan himself was the official business agent in the United States for the British government and the main contact for Allied Loans during the war. Similarly, E.I. du Pont Company was the largest chemical firm in America. These two phenomenally wealthy and powerful companies along with other US manufacturers, including US weapons manufacturers, were closely aligned with President Woodrow Wilson. 

When World War I began, JP Morgan had Extensive Loans to Europe which would be lost if the allies were Defeated. Du Pont and other US weapons manufacturers stood to make astronomical profits if the United States entered the war. Historian Alan Brugar wrote that for every soldier who died in battle, the international bankers made a profit of $10,000. As J.P. Morgan wrote to Wilson in 1914, “The war should be a tremendous opportunity for America.” 

When the war concluded and the dead and wounded were counted, suspicions grew in the United States that nefarious business interests had propelled US involvement into the great slaughter. Investigative reporting and congressional hearings were initiated. 

In 1934 a book written by Helmuth Engelbrecht called The Merchants Of Death became a bestseller. The book exposed the unethical business practices of weapons manufacturers and analyzed their enormous profits during World War I. The author concluded that “the rise and development of the arms merchants reveals them as a growing menace to World Peace.” While not the only reason for the US entering the war, it became clear the Merchants of Death lobbied both Congress and the President for war. 

The American public was incensed. In 1934 almost 100,000 Americans signed a petition opposing increased armament production. Veterans paraded through Washington DC in 1935 in a march for peace. And Marine Major General Smedley Butler, two-time Medal of Honor winner, published his book War is a Racket, claiming he had been “a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism.” His book too became a bestseller.

The growing wave of public outrage led Senator Gerald Nye to initiate Congressional Hearings investigating whether US corporations, including weapons manufacturers, had led the United States into World War I. In two years, the Nye committee held 93 hearings and called more than 200 witnesses to testify, including JP Morgan and Pierre S. DuPont.

The committee conducted an extensive investigation searching the records of weapons manufacturers. They uncovered criminal and unethical actions including bribery of foreign officials, lobbying the United States government to obtain foreign sales, selling weapons to both sides of international disputes, and the covert undermining of disarmament conferences.

“The committee listened daily to men striving to defend acts which found them nothing more than international racketeers, bent upon gaining profit through a game of arming the world to fight itself,” Senator Nye declared in an October 1934 radio address.

The Senate Nye Committee recommended price controls, the transfer of Navy shipyards out of private hands, and increased industrial taxes. Senator Nye suggested that upon a declaration of war by Congress, taxes on annual income under $10,000 should automatically be doubled and higher incomes should be taxed at 98 percent. A journalist wrote at the time, “If such policies were enacted, businessmen would become our leading pacifists.”

The American public was outraged at the committee’s findings and so created some of the largest peace organizations the country had ever known. Committed to staying out of all future European wars, American college campuses in the 1930s had thousands of students taking Oaths swearing they would never fight in a foreign war. 

Farmers, laborers, intellectuals, ministers, people from all walks of life declared they would never again participate in a war fought to increase the profits of corporations.

And then, business fought back. They lobbied those in Congress to cut off funding for the Nye committee, which they soon did. A smear campaign was orchestrated against Senator Nye. The committees’ days were numbered.

In the end, the Nye Committee demonstrated that “these businesses were at the heart and center of a system that made going to war inevitable. They paved and greased the road to war.” With World War II, the Military Industrial Complex would explode and come to dominate American economic and political life.

Today, the Merchants of Death thrive behind a veil of duplicity and slick media campaigns. They have assimilated mainstream media and academia into their conglomerate. But their crimes are clear, and the evidence is overwhelming. Wherever they go, suffering and death, war crimes and atrocities, profits and stock buybacks follow.

Ninety years after the original Merchants of Death hearings, the 2023 Merchants Death War Crimes Tribunal will hold United States weapons manufacturers accountable for aiding and abetting the United States government in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This Tribunal will shine a light on those who profit from war and will seek to end their bloody franchise. Let this time be the last time. We may not have another chance.

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Brad Wolf, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a former community college dean, lawyer, and current executive director of Peace Action Network of Lancaster as well as a Team Organizer for the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal.

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U.S. Debt: Visualizing the $31.4 Trillion Owed in 2023

June 3rd, 2023 by Julie R. Peasley

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First published on April 27, 2023

*** 

Can you picture what $31.4 trillion looks like?

The enormity of U.S. government debt is hard for the average person to wrap their head around. For instance, compared to the median U.S. mortgage, the current level of federal debt is 230 million times larger.

In this graphic, Julie Peasley shows how many one-dollar bills it would take to stack up to the total U.S. debt of $31.4 trillion.

How Did U.S. Debt Get So High?

U.S. national debt is how much money the federal government owes to creditors. When the government spends more than it earns, it has a budget deficit and must issue debt in the form of Treasury securities.

The U.S. has run a deficit for the last 20 years, substantially increasing the national debt. In fact, according to the Department of the Treasury, the current debt is $31.4 trillion.

Stacked up in one-dollar bills, the U.S. debt would be equivalent to almost eight of Chicago’s 110-story Willis Tower.

Click here to read the fiscal data.

The size of U.S. Debt in 2023 visualized using $1 bills

The last time the government had a surplus was in 2001, when debt rose only 2% due to interest costs. Since then, the largest jumps in U.S. debt have been during the Global Financial Crisis—which saw three straight years of double-digit growth rates—and in 2020 due to trillions of dollars of COVID-19 stimulus.

U.S. federal debt rises during recessions because government revenue, primarily composed of taxes, decreases. At the same time, the government increases spending to help stimulate an economic recovery.

And in today’s case, the U.S. is facing additional financial issues. As the country’s senior population grows and people live longer, this puts pressure on programs that serve older Americans such as Social Security. Healthcare is becoming more expensive and is the second-fastest growing part of the U.S. budget.

The Pros and Cons of Debt

U.S. debt helps fund critical programs for Americans, including retirement and disability benefits, healthcare, economic security, and national defense.

As one example of the impact of these programs, income security nearly halved the percent of the population living below the poverty line in 2019 from 22.8% to 12.2%.

Of course, U.S. debt also comes with challenges. A chief concern is the ability to pay the interest costs on U.S. debt, especially as interest rates rise.

Before rate hikes began, interest costs amounted to 6% of the U.S. budget in the 2021 fiscal year. Fast forward to December 2022, and interest costs amounted to 15% of total government spending since the start of the fiscal year in October.

Addressing the Problem

In January 2023, the U.S. hit its debt ceiling, also known as its borrowing limit. While some countries tie their debt to GDP, the U.S. sets an exact limit in dollar terms.

The government would run out of money to pay its debts this summer if the ceiling is not raised, though policymakers have historically agreed to debt ceiling increases in the past to avoid a default. In 2011, the U.S. narrowly avoided default due to a last-minute debt ceiling negotiation and the country’s credit rating was downgraded as a result.

Tackling U.S. debt is simple in theory: raise taxes or the debt limit, reduce spending, or a combination of all three. However, it’s much more difficult in practice. Which taxes should be raised? Which programs should be cut? What happens the next time the debt limit is reached?

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First published on April 20, 2023

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First published on November 28, 2022

Most developing countries are experiencing famine.

The food crisis is engineered.  Global debt is the driving force. The article below describes what is happening in Sri Lanka. The debt is owned by Western financial institutions. 

The creditors are behind this process. 

The policy mechanism described in this article affects ALL the countries of the Global South. 

***

With the collapse of its economy in June, the situation is dire in Sri Lanka.

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), Sri Lanka faces a “serious food crisis,” with 6.3 million people—close to 30% of the 22 million population—being food insecure. Food inflation has reached a record-high of 90%, making staples such as rice unaffordable for millions of people. Overall, inflation is running at 60%.

“What we are really worried about now is the food crisis—we are looking at even the dangers of a famine in the near future,” says Ahilan Kadirgamar, a political economist and senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna, located in the capital city of the Northern province of Sri Lanka.

“Starvation is already hitting some sections of the population.”

Sri Lanka, which is very import-dependent, ran out of foreign exchange in April, leaving it unable to import food supplies, fuel, medicines and fertilizer. Buses, trains, ambulances and many cars cannot be driven and electricity power cuts have become common, crippling farming, fishing and factory production.

Sri Lanka defaulted on its $56 billion external debt in May, its first default. The country has obtained 16 loans from the International Monetary Fund and tried to obtained a 17th loan in May but was not able to come to an agreement.

Widespread public protests against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government drove him out of the country in July. Rajapaksa appointed political rival Ranil Wickremesinghe prime minister before leaving. Wickremesinghe then took over as president, swiftly cracking down on protests by tear-gassing and jailing dozens of demonstrators under draconian counterterrorism laws.

The immediate causes of the Sri Lankan crisis were the unsustainability of its $56 billion external debt when faced with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in a drop in tourism and migrant worker remittances from abroad, as well as tax cuts carried out by the Rajapaksa regime.

The pandemic disrupted supply chains for Sri Lanka’s main exports of textiles, garments and tea, resulting in reduced revenues.

Worker remittances, which were a major source of foreign exchange, hit a 10-year low in 2021, partly due to COVID-19.

Bomb blasts in 2019 in Colombo (Sri Lanka’s capital), along with COVID-19 both reduced tourism revenue, from $5 billion in 2018 to only $200 million in 2021. This compounded the pressures on Sri Lanka.

In 2019, the government implemented massive tax cuts, causing its revenue to plummet. The value-added tax was reduced from 15% to 8% and seven other taxes were eliminated. As a result, the state lost vital tax revenue from a million taxpayers.

Eighty-one per cent of Sri Lanka’s external debt is owed to Western financial institutions as well as Japan and India. The financial institutions are mainly commercial banks and vulture funds, namely: BlackRock, JP Morgan Chase, Prudential (all three U.S.), Ashmore Group, HSBC (both U.K.), Allianz (Germany), UBS (Switzerland). These corporations own 47% of Sri Lanka’s debt, the largest portion. The Asian Development Bank owns 13% of Sri Lanka’s debt, the World Bank 9%, Japan 10%, China 10% and India 2%.

There are, however, deeper reasons for Sri Lanka’s collapse. Kadirgamar blames colonialism, neocolonialism and neoliberalism:

“The economic trajectory for this crisis was set in 1977 by the Junius Jayewardene government, which subjected Sri Lanka to neoliberal reforms, liberalizing trade and finance,” Kadirgamar says. “But this trajectory has to be contextualized in the long history of colonialism and neocolonialism.”

Sri Lanka was first colonized by the Portuguese, then the Dutch and the British, amounting to almost 450 years of colonialism. Kadirgamar says this made the country’s economy dependent on what colonial powers wanted: the exports of commodities—first spices and then coffee and tea.

These exports were aimed at fulfilling the demands of the colonial powers’ markets. This colonial strategy was continued by the World Bank in Sri Lanka after the country’s independence in 1948. The World Bank advocated primary production for export markets, “as opposed to even minimal forms of industrialization, so that Sri Lanka became dependent on agricultural exports to Western markets with declining terms of trade,” Kadirgamar emphasizes.

“Sri Lanka was the first economy in South Asia to go through neoliberalism and we have now had four-and-a-half decades of this strategy, which includes paying for our huge import bill through external debt, which became unsustainable—especially because Sri Lanka was borrowing from Western capital markets at very high interest rates,” Kadirgamar says.

That focus made Sri Lanka particularly vulnerable to economic collapse.

“This heavy borrowing was not balanced by income because Sri Lanka had only four sources of this that were inadequate: agricultural and garment exports, tourism and remittances from migrant workers” Kadirgamar says. “Other factors, such as the COVID pandemic and the authoritarian Rajapaksa regime, (which) completely mismanaged the economy, contrib- uted to the collapse but the primary reason for this was the dependent character of Sri Lanka’s economy.”

Balasingham Skanthakumar agrees with Kadirgamar, emphasizing neoliberalism’s disastrous effects on Sri Lanka. He is a researcher and member of the editorial collective of Polity Magazine of the Social Scientists’ Association of Sri Lanka.

As Skanthakumar told me,

“Neoliberalism is an extension of historical processes of exploitation and domination of poor countries by rich countries, in so far as it entrenches the colonial division of labour through which Sri Lanka began cultivating tea (a non-Indigenous crop) as its primary export to satisfy the tastes of Western consumers.”

Today, Skanthakumar says, Sri Lanka’s main export is ready-made garments, which is a result of the neocolonialism through which labour-intensive, low-value added apparel is produced by women workers. Capital-intensive, high-value added manufactured goods are imported from abroad.

“There is no space within neoliberalism for Sri Lanka to diversify its economic base, to promote import-substitution, nor to prioritize self-sufficiency in basic foods and other essential needs including pharmaceuticals,” says Skanthakumar.

In other words, low-income countries in the Global South cannot win in the neoliberal system because their manufactured imports are always much costlier than their raw material exports, which are all that they are allowed to send by the dominant Western powers that control the global trading system.

The attempt by southern countries to bridge this gap by taking on increasing debt only primes them for economic collapse, which also now threatens Pakistan, Bangladesh, Argentina, South Africa and Zambia.

Thirty-six countries are in a state of “debt distress,” according to the World Bank.

But there is something different about this international crisis, as it has ensnared not just poor countries but the Western enforcers of neoliberalism and neo-colonialism as well. European countries face spiralling energy costs. For example, energy costs in Germany have increased by 860% in this year alone.

According to geopolitical analyst Drago Bosnic, writing on the Infobrics website,

“The European Union is going through a tremendously difficult economic and financial crisis. Sanctions aimed at Russia are wreaking havoc in many…Western economies.”

Ten million people face poverty in the United Kingdom as it experiences its “sharpest economic contraction” in 313 years, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron has informed his compatriots that France is in a “series of crises, each more serious than the other” and warned of “the end of abundance and tough times ahead.”

“The collapse of Sri Lanka is not isolated,” says Sri Lankan writer Indrajit Samarajiva. “These are global trends going back to the 1980s. The broad logic is that if your economy is not productive and you don’t control your means of production, you’re in a debt trap—and sooner or later it will clang shut.

“Every country that hasn’t secured its energy, food, and productive capacity is vulnerable to shocks and COVID-19 was just the first of many to come this century. Climate collapse is already well advanced. We’re headed for global changes that will make the last century look like a cakewalk.”

Sri Lankans are not bereft of progressive solutions to extricate their country from its crisis.

“There has to be a focus on local agricultural production and, where possible, self-sufficiency in food,” Kadirgamar says, “but to be able to do that, we need to completely change the trajectory of our economy, which has been focused on agricultural production for exports.

“This change has to be tied to the creation of a public distribution system where the state takes responsibility to import essential foods that we cannot produce and to distribute them and then to also buy produce from farmers and possibly set prices.

“Marketing boards and cooperatives should be part of this distribution system. The government also needs to provide stimulus and relief to farmers. All of this can only happen if there is redistribution of wealth through a wealth tax on money accumulated over decades.”

Samarajiva calls for “a socialist or communist revolution in Sri Lanka and a dictatorship of the poor and working class.

“We have to seize the means of production. Sri Lanka is facing an energy, food, and foreign exchange crisis and the neoliberal consensus only offers more debt and monetary tinkering instead of doing the obvious. We need massive public works projects in renewable energy, agriculture, and industrialization.”

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This article was originally published on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor, (CCPA Monitor).

Asad Ismi is an award-winning writer and radio documentary-maker. He covers international politics for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor (CCPA Monitor), Canada’s biggest leftist magazine (by circulation) where this article was originally published. Asad has written on the politics of 70 countries. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. For his publications visit www.asadismi.info.

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First published on May 17, 2023

*** 

There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men.—Ludwig von Mises

Once again, the police state is up to its old tricks, stoking tensions over whether or not the government is forced to shut down, even partially, due to a default on the national debt.

Yet while these political games dominate news headlines, send the stock market into a nosedive, and put federal employees at risk of having to work without pay, nothing about these high-handed theatrics will diminish the immediate and very real dangers of the American Police State with its roadside strip searches, government surveillance, biometric databases, citizens being treated like terrorists, imprisonments for criticizing the government, national ID cards, SWAT team raids, censorship, forcible blood draws and DNA extractions, private prisons, weaponized drones, red light cameras, tasers, active shooter drills, police misconduct and government corruption.

Default or not, war will continue. Drone killings will continue. Surveillance will continue. Censorship and persecution of anyone who criticizes the government will continue. The government’s efforts to label dissidents as extremists and terrorists will continue.

Police shootings will continue. Highway robbery meted out by government officials will continue. Corrupt government will continue. Profit-driven prisons will continue. And the militarization of the police will continue.

Indeed, take a look at the programs and policies that will not be affected by a government default on its debt leading to a possible shutdown, and you’ll get a clearer sense of the government’s priorities, which have little to do with serving taxpayers and everything to do with amassing money, power and control.

Surveillance will continue unabated. On any given day, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. Police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike—including homes. Coupled with the nation’s growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Global spying will continue unabated. The NSA’s massive surveillance network, what the Washington Post refers to as a $500 billion “espionage empire,” will continue to span the globe and target every single person on the planet who uses a phone or a computer. The NSA’s Echelon program intercepts and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax and email message sent anywhere in the world. In addition to carrying out domestic surveillance on peaceful political groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and several religious groups, Echelon has also been a keystone to the government’s attempts at political and corporate espionage.

Egregious searches will continue unabated. Under the pretext of protecting the nation’s infrastructure (roads, mass transit systems, water and power supplies, telecommunications systems and so on) against criminal or terrorist attacks, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) task forces (comprised of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detection officers and explosive detection canine teams) will continue to do random security sweeps of nexuses of transportation, including ports, railway and bus stations, airports, ferries and subways. Sweep tactics include the use of x-ray technology, pat-downs and drug-sniffing dogs, among other things.

The undermining of the Constitution will continue unabated. America’s so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued since 9/11, has chipped away at our freedoms, unraveled our Constitution and transformed our nation into a battlefield, thanks in large part to such subversive legislation as the USA Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act. These laws—which completely circumvent the rule of law and the constitutional rights of American citizens, re-orienting our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the rule of law, our U.S. Constitution, becomes the map by which we navigate life in the United States—will continue to be enforced.

Militarized policing will continue unabated. Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge, police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers into heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, America’s law enforcement officials, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, will continue to keep the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

SWAT team raids will continue unabated. With more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans for relatively routine police matters and federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions, the incidence of botched raids and related casualties will continue to rise. Nationwide, SWAT teams will continue to be employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession.

Overcriminalization will continue unabated. The government bureaucracy will continue to churn out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, rendering the rest of us petty criminals. The average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to this overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal. Consequently, small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community will continue to have their farms raided.

The shadow government— a.k.a. the Deep State, a.k.a. the police state, a.k.a. the military industrial complex, a.k.a. the surveillance state complex—will continue unabated. This corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials will continue to call the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House or controls Congress. By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

These issues are not going away.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, they are the backbone of an increasingly aggressive authoritarian government, formed by an unholy alliance between the mega-corporations with little concern for the Constitution and elected officials and bureaucrats incapable or unwilling to represent the best interests of their constituents.

Whether or not the government runs out of borrowed money, it will remain business as usual in terms of the police state’s unceasing pursuit of greater powers and control.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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First published on April 29, 2023

***

Isn’t it always?

With the start of World War III by the United States “declaring” war against Russia by its actions in Ukraine, we have entered a time when the end of time has become very possible.  I am speaking of nuclear annihilation.

I look down at my great-uncle’s gold Elgin pocket watch from the 19th century.  His name was John Patrick Whalen, an Irish immigrant to the U.S. who fled England’s colonialist created famine in Ireland.  It tells me it is 5:15 PM on April 21, 2022, a date, coincidentally, with a history.  No doubt John looked at his watch on this date in 1898 when the United States, after the USS Maine exploded from within in Havana harbor (a possible false flag attack), declared war on Spain in order to confiscate Spanish territories – Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.  One colonial power replaced another and then proceeded over the long decades to wage war and slaughter these island peoples.  Imperialism never dies.  It is timeless.

One hundred-and twenty-four years go by in a flash and it’s still the same old story.  In 1898 the yellow press screamed Spanish devils and today it screams Russian devils.  Then and now the press called for war.  If the human race is still here in another 124 years, time and the corporate media will no doubt have told the same story – war and propaganda’s lies to an insouciant and ignorant population too hypnotized by propaganda to oppose them. This despite the apocalyptic sense that permeates our lives because of demonic technology and its use to transform humans into machines who can’t think clearly enough to perceive reality and realize the threat posed by that quintessential technological invention – nuclear weapons.

This is not uplifting, but it’s true.  The nuclear weapons are primed and ready to fly.  The U.S. insists on its first-strike right to launch them.  It openly declares it is seeking the overthrow of the Russian government.  Russia says it will use nuclear weapons only if its existence is threatened, which has become increasingly so because of U.S. provocations over a long time period and its current expanding arming of Ukraine’s government and its neo-Nazi forces.

The Russian President Vladimir Putin and its Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov have just warned the U.S. that such involvement has made nuclear war a “serious” and “real” risk, in Lavrov’s words “we must not underestimate it,” which is a mild form of diplomatic speech. Putin said that Russia has made all the preparations to respond if it senses a strategic threat to Russia and that response will be “instant, it will be quick.”  The U.S. response is to shrug these statements off, just as it has done so for many years with Putin’s complaints about NATO forces moving up to its border.  Incredibly, Biden has said,

“For God’s sake, this man (Putin) cannot remain in power.”

Despite endless media/intelligence anti-Russian propaganda – “a vast tapestry of lies,” to use Harold Pinter’s phrase – many fine writers have provided the historical details to confirm the truth that the U.S. has purposely provoked the Russian war in Ukraine by its actions there and throughout Eastern Europe, which the mainstream media avoid completely. This U.S. aggressive history against Russia is part of a much larger history of imperial hubris extending back to the 19th century.  I will therefore here follow Thoreau’s advice – “If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?” – since how many times do people need to hear lies such as “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction” in order to justify wars of aggression around the world.  The historical facts are very clear, but facts and history don’t seem to matter to many people. Pinter again, in his Nobel Address, bluntly told the truth about the U.S.’s history of systematic and remorseless war crimes: “Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.”  Which is still the case.

So time is my focus, for the last days have arrived unless there occurs a radical awakening to the obvious truth that the U.S. government is pushing the world to the brink of disaster in full awareness of the consequences.  Its actions are insane, yet insanity has become the norm.  Insane leaders and a catatonic, hypnotized public lead to disaster.

John Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev 1961.jpg

John F. Kennedy meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna. (Licensed under public domain)

I write these words with an old fountain pen, a high school graduation gift, to somehow comfort and remind myself that when we were this close once before in October 1962, Kennedy and Khrushchev miraculously found a solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis; and to find hope now, and that when my time is up and I join John Patrick in the other world, things will have changed for my children and grand-children.  It is admittedly the hope of a desperado.

The last few years of the Covid-19 propaganda have served to further distort people’s sense of time, a distortion years in the making through the introduction of digital technology with its accompanying numerical time clicks and its severing of our natural sense of time that is tied to the rising and falling of the tides and the turning of the days and seasons, a feeling that is being lost. Such felt sense of time’s texture could be slow or faster, but it had limits.  We now live in a world without limits, which, as the ancient Greeks knew, demands payback.

For years before Covid-19, the sense of speed time was dominant, supported by the politically-introduced state of a constant emergency after September 11, 2001 with the urgency to hurry and keep up or one would fall behind.  Keep up with what was never explained.  Hurry why?  Fast and faster was the rule with constant busyness that served the very useful social function of leaving no time for thinking, which was the point, but it made many feel as though they were engaged.  And constantly alert for “terrorists” to come knocking.  Thus the long wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc., all of which continue via various subterfuges.

Then, presto, all this frenzied time sense came to a stop with the 2020 lockdowns, when time got very slow, but not slow in the natural sense but an enforced slowness.  People were locked up.  Not only was it stupefying but stultifying and an existential drag.  This went on for two years with the prisoners allowed short respites only to be rounded back up and locked down again. Jabbed and jolted was the plan.  When will it ever end? was the common cry, as despair and depression spread and scrambled minds led to suicides and mindless screen entertainment.  This was planned education for a trans-human future in which the cell phone will be central to totalitarian control if people do not rebel.

Those behind the Covid-19 and war propaganda are fanatical technocrats who seek total control of the world’s population through digital technology.  Now they have temporarily let the people out of one type of cell and dramatically sped up time with frantic war propaganda against Russia.  The great English writer John Berger said it perfectly:

Every ruling minority needs to numb, and, if possible, to kill the time-sense of those whom it exploits. This is the authoritarian secret of all methods of imprisonment.

Everyone is now doing time while scrolling messages on the walls of their cell phones.  A twisted, convoluted, distorted, mechanical time in which it seems that there is no history and the future is an endless road of more of the same.

Some say we have all the time in the world.  I say no, that we have entered a new time, perhaps the end-time, when the world’s end is a very real possibility.  Hypnotized people can agree to anything, even mass-suicide, unless they snap out of it.  This can only happen with a return to slowness in the old sense, when people once felt time in their hearts’ rhythms attuned to the rising and falling of nature’s reality.  Time to think and contemplate the fate of the earth when nuclear war is contemplated.  Yes, “We must not underestimate it.”

It’s about time.

Isn’t it always?

*

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Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 


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First published on February 27, 2023

***

Financial podcasts have been featuring ominous headlines lately along the lines of “Your Bank Can Legally Seize Your Money” and “Banks Can STEAL Your Money?! Here’s How!” The reference is to “bail-ins:” the provision under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act allowing Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs, basically the biggest banks) to bail in or expropriate their creditors’ money in the event of insolvency. The problem is that depositors are classed as “creditors.” So how big is the risk to your deposit account?

Part I of this two part article will review the bail-in issue.

Part II will look at the derivatives risk that could trigger the next global financial crisis. 

From Bailouts to Bail-Ins

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 states in its preamble that it will “protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts.” But it does this under Title II by imposing the losses of insolvent financial companies on their common and preferred stockholders, debtholders, and other unsecured creditors, through an “orderly resolution” plan known as a “bail-in.”

The point of an orderly resolution under the Act is not to make depositors and other creditors whole. It is to prevent a systemwide disorderly resolution of the sort that followed the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008. Under the old liquidation rules, an insolvent bank was actually “liquidated”—its assets were sold off to repay depositors and creditors.

In an “orderly resolution,” the accounts of depositors and other creditors are emptied to keep the insolvent bank in business. And even if you are getting only a few cents a month on your deposits, you are a creditor of the bank.  As explained in a December 2016 article in the University of Chicago Law Review titled “Safe Banking: Finance and Democracy:”

A general deposit is a loan made to a bank. This means that the bank is the general depositor’s debtor, but that the bank has legal title to the funds deposited; these funds may be commingled with the bank’s other funds. All the general depositor has is a general, unsecured claim against the bank …. [T]he bank is free to use the deposit as it sees fit. [Emphasis added.]

Fortunately, bail-ins do not apply to deposits under $250,000, which are protected by FDIC insurance. That is true in theory, but as of September 2021, the FDIC had only $122 billion in its insurance fund, enough to cover just 1.27% percent of the $9.6 trillion in deposits that it insures. The FDIC also has a credit line with the Treasury for up to $100 billion, but that still brings the total to just over 2% of insured deposits.

If just one or a few banks become insolvent, the FDIC fund should be sufficient to cover the insured deposits (those under $250K). But under the 2005 Bankruptcy Act, derivatives creditors (which are considered “secured”) are first in line to recover the assets of a bankrupt bank; and the Dodd-Frank Act followed that practice. So if a bank with major derivatives risk collapses, there might be no bank assets left for the non-insured creditors; and a series of major derivative cross-defaults could wipe out the whole FDIC kitty as well.

As of May 2022, according to the most recent data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the total notional amounts outstanding for contracts in the derivatives market was an estimated $600 trillion; and the total is often estimated at over $1 quadrillion.  No one knows for sure, because many derivatives are “over the counter” (not traded on an exchange). In any case it is a bubble of ominous size, and pundits warn it is about to pop. Topping the list of U.S. derivatives banks are J.P. Morgan Chase ($54.3 trillion), Goldman Sachs ($51 trillion), Citibank ($46 trillion), Bank of America ($21.6 trillion), and Wells Fargo ($12.2 trillion). A full list is here.

The FDIC and Disclosure

On Nov. 9, 2022, the FDIC held a 3.5 hour webcast discussing the bail-in process among other topics. In a clip raising alarm bells in the alternative media, Donald Kohn, former vice chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, said, “…it’s important that people understand they can be bailed in. But you don’t want a huge run on the institution. But they’re going to be…”

Richard J. Herring, co-director of The Wharton Financial Institutions Center said, “I would think your strategy ought to be to disclose as much as possible to people who professionally need to know about it …”

Gary Cohn, former director of the National Economic Council, said, “I almost think you’d scare the public if you put this out — like, ‘Why are they telling me this? Should I be concerned about my bank?’ … I think you’ve got to think of the unintended consequences of taking a public that has more full faith and confidence in the banking system than maybe people in this room do …we want them to have full faith and confidence in the banking system. They know the FDIC insurance is there, they know it works, they put their money in, they get their money out…”

This was followed by some laughter, which critics have interpreted as a cynical agency warning the wealthy while leaving the smaller investors to eat the losses, similar to the phone calls to the favored few before the 1929 stock market crash. But the clips have to be taken in context. Here is that whole section (taken from the video transcript beginning at 1 hr. 15 min):

SUSAN BAKER (Division of Complex Institution Supervision and Resolution): … So what we want to think about today is, “What should we be transparent about now that would help improve confidence in the event that we’re called to use our Title II authorities?”…

RICHARD J. HERRING (Co-Director, The Wharton Financial Institutions Center and Professor of Finance, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania): I would think your strategy ought to be to disclose as much as possible to people who professionally need to know about it, and that would certainly include the ratings agencies and the people within the banks who are responsible for these judgments, and simply have publicly available a place where people can go if they need to know more; because we’re dealing with a society where people are getting their information in tweets. There’s just no patience I think for going through the elaborate and careful planning that has gone on. It should be accessible when people need to know but I don’t think you have much hope of reaching a public that doesn’t have a professional need to know.

MEG E. TAHYAR (Partner and Co-head of Financial Institutions, Davis Polk LLP): … I do think there’s more that could be put out in the public … in a way that isn’t scary to folks. I mean … There’s a timing question, right? We’re at a delicate moment now, so if it goes out tomorrow it might have a different impact than if … it goes out as we’re moving out of the recession. But I’m very big on transparency. I think transparency leads to accountability.

DONALD KOHN (Former Vice Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and Senior Fellow, Economic Studies Program, Brookings Institution): … It’s a little bit conflicted, right? I mean it’s important that people understand they can be bailed in, but you don’t want a huge run on the institution. But … they’re going to be ….

MICHAEL J. HSU (Acting Comptroller of the Currency): … I think we have to sit down and talk to long-term debt investors and make sure that they as a stakeholder group fully understand. Bank debt today is not what it was before. It is not principal protected, by design.

The FDIC staff were engaged in the delicate act of balancing the need to inform the public against the risk that the disclosure itself could trigger a systemic collapse due to widespread bank runs. The “need to know” stakeholders were the long-term investors with more than $250,000 in the bank, whose funds would be at risk. But smaller depositors, who would be protected by FDIC insurance, might panic from mischaracterized tweets and precipitate the very run the FDIC staff were trying to avoid. To their credit, they were trying to be transparent and accountable; it does seem the public should know what risks are hidden in the economy. The first step to solving the problem is understanding what is going on.

Bank Runs and Systemic Risk

Not just the speculative investments of the SIFIs but bank runs themselves are systemic risks.  Nationwide bank runs were the sort of “disorderly resolution” seen in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In 1913, the Federal Reserve became the settlement agent for private banks, and settlement funds for clearing transactions were held in gold. The Fed was required to hold gold reserves valued at 40% of the Federal Reserve Notes (paper dollars) it issued, and to redeem withdrawals in gold at a fixed price. The reserves were sufficient to backstop withdrawals in normal times, but the years following the 1929 stock market crash were not normal times. Domestic and foreign depositors rushed to withdraw their gold; the banks ran out; and they had to close their doors.

In 1933, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a national bank holiday; and when the banks reopened, domestic deposits were no longer backed by gold. They were backed only by the “full faith and credit of the United States.” But that is actually quite solid backing, something neither gold nor cryptocurrencies can claim to have. You can’t pay your electric bill or your credit card bill with gold or cryptocurrency. People are willing to accept dollars in payment because they know vendors will take them, and so will the IRS.

After 1933, the funds held at the Fed for settling transactions became simply data entries called “reserves,” which were created by the Fed and held by the banks in Fed accounts. Most of the circulating money supply is now created by private banks by writing loans as deposits into the accounts of their borrowers. But banks cannot create the reserves needed to clear withdrawals through the central bank. Those reserves must be acquired from the Fed, either directly or from another financial institution that has acquired them. Besides the bank’s own incoming deposits, options include borrowing from other banks in the fed funds market, the Fed discount window, or the repo market. Until recently, depository banks could borrow from each other or the Fed at 0.25%. That rate has now gone up to 4.5-4.75%. The only cheap, readily available source of liquidity left to a bank today is its own pool of incoming deposits, from paychecks, credit card payments, mortgage payments and the like.

Traditionally, banks had to hold only about 10% of their deposits in reserve. That percentage was considered sufficient to cover transfers and withdrawals because most people left their money in the bank, and withdrawals were largely netted against incoming deposits. In March 2020, the Fed removed the reserve requirement altogether; but banks still need to hold enough reserves to meet withdrawals. With a reserve of only the standard 10%, however, they will not have enough liquidity (readily accessible funds) to meet a nationwide bank run of the sort seen in the early 1930s.

The FDIC is therefore right to be concerned about warnings that can be misinterpreted. Distrust of big banks is rampant today, but collapsing them suddenly through a “disorderly” nationwide bank run would be as catastrophic as it was in the 1930s. Before the FDIC was founded through the Banking Act of 1935, depositors routinely lost their money when their banks went bankrupt. But we don’t want to lose our deposits to a bail-in either. Better would be for the regulators to unwind the speculative SIFI bets in a “soft landing” if possible. More on that in Part II of this article.

Meanwhile, the banks clearly need our deposits, and today they are scrambling to compete for deposits and reserves. According to a Feb. 7 article on Wall Street on Parade, Goldman Sachs is now offering an interest rate on its savings accounts that is 350 times the interest rate being offered by JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. Why isn’t stated, but both of those major competitors have already amassed huge deposit bases. When the Global Financial Crisis hit in 2008, Goldman was an investment bank like Lehman Brothers, which barely escaped Lehman’s fate by becoming a bank holding company. This allowed it to acquire deposits and gave it access to the Fed’s discount window, but it obviously came in late to the deposit-collecting game.

How, Then, to Protect Your Deposits?

One popular alternative is to move your money to a credit union. With respect to deposit insurance, according to the FDIC, credit unions are no safer than banks, but they are also no less safe. Whether the institution is insured by the FDIC or by the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund (NCUSIF), your deposits are guaranteed up to the $250,000 limit per depositor. More to the point here, credit unions and other small local banks are not subject to bail-ins.

Some commentators recommend moving your money out of the banking system altogether – into cash, cryptocurrencies or precious metals. Having enough cash on hand to cover perhaps three months’ worth of expenses in a crisis is certainly a good idea. But many people don’t have even that much in savings, and people with large sums in the bank probably won’t be able to withdraw them all at once. Changing banks is also a slow and cumbersome process. Many people won’t do it or will be caught unaware when the next crisis hits.

In theory, the Federal Reserve could step in as lender of last resort to save the creditors and depositors if necessary, calling on the same emergency powers it exercised for the SIFIs in 2008-09. It could provide cheap liquidity for the banks in the form of quantitative easing, alleviating the need to bail in depositor funds. The Fed is not required to act – it is “independent” – but that means it does not need authorization from Congress, and it does not need taxpayer funds. It can create its own reserves.

The question is whether the Fed would see depositors as “systemically important,” but the rush to compete for deposits shows that they are. Arguably deposits are the people’s weapons of mass destruction: pull them and the banks go down. The banks need our deposits; and we need the sort of self-sustaining financial system in which money, credit and banks are treated as public utilities, accessible by and accountable to the people whose full faith and credit backs them.

Part II of this article will look at the systemic risks currently facing the banking system, and at how it could be reengineered to deal with those risks and restore the trust of the people sustaining it.

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This article was first posted on ScheerPost.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of DebtThe Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Author’s Introduction 

The 1999 financial sector reforms under the Clinton Administration had set the stage for the 2007-2009 depression as well as the current 2020-2023  engineered financial crisis. 

While the 1999 US Financial Services Modernization Act does not in itself break down remaining barriers to the free movement of capital, in practice, it empowers Wall Street’s key players to develop a hegemonic position in global banking, overshadowing and ultimately destabilizing financial systems in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe… 

“The “global financial supermarket” is to be overseen by the Wall Street giants; competing banking institutions are to be removed from the financial landscape.

State level banks across America will be displaced or bought up, leading to a deadly string of bank failures. In turn, the supervisory powers of the Federal Reserve Board (which are increasingly under the direct dominion of Wall Street) have been significantly weakened.” (quoted from Michel Chossudovsky’s text below) 

Free from government regulation, the financial giants have the ability to strangle local-level businesses in the US and overshadow the real economy. This process of destabilizing the real economy Worldwide through a string of bankruptcies is currently ongoing (2020-2023).

The 1999 legislation had repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, a pillar of President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” which was put in place in response to the climate of corruption, financial manipulation and “insider trading” which led to more than 5,000 bank failures in the years following the 1929 Wall Street crash. 

Effective control over the entire US financial services industry had been transferred to a handful of financial conglomerates – which are also the creditors and shareholders of high tech companies, the defense industry, major oil and mining consortia, etc.

Moreover, as underwriters of the public debt at federal, state and municipal levels, the financial giants have also reinforced their stranglehold on politicians, as well as their command over the conduct of public policy.

Rather than taming financial markets in the wake of the storm, Washington was busy pushing through the US Senate legislation, which was to significantly increase the powers of the financial services giants and their associated hedge funds.

Under the Financial Modernization Act adopted in November 1999, US lawmakers had set the stage for a sweeping deregulation of the US banking system.

In the wake of lengthy negotiations, all regulatory restraints on Wall Street’s powerful banking conglomerates were revoked “with a stroke of the pen”. Under the new rules – ratified by the US Senate and approved by President Clinton – commercial banks, brokerage firms, hedge funds, institutional investors, pension funds and insurance companies can freely invest in each others businesses as well as fully integrate their financial operations.

The following text reviews, in a historical context, the 1987, 1997 and 1998 stock market  meltdowns. 

The article was written 24 years ago in November 1999,  following the adoption of the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act. 

It was subsequently published as a chapter in the Second Edition of The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal, 2003.

The adoption of the Financial Services Modernization Act in 1999 is crucial to our understanding of the ongoing 2020-2023 financial crisis.

Today, the financial system is totally corrupt and so are the governments. Institutional speculators call the shots. The “regulators” are supervised and controlled by Wall Street financial speculators. 

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, June 2023


 

 

Global Financial Meltdown:

Sweeping Deregulation of the US Banking System

 

by Michel Chossudovsky

November 1999

Introduction 

A new global financial environment has unfolded in several stages since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates in 1971. The debt crisis of the early 1980s (broadly coinciding with the Reagan-Thatcher era) had unleashed a wave of corporate mergers, buy-outs and bankruptcies. These changes have, in turn, paved the way for the consolidation of a new generation of financiers clustered around the merchant banks, the institutional investors, stock brokerage firms, large insurance companies, etc. In this process, commercial banking functions have coalesced with those of the investment banks and stock brokers.1

While these “money managers” play a powerful role on financial markets, they are, however, increasingly removed from entrepreneurial functions in the real economy. Their activities (which often escape state regulation) include speculative transactions in commodity futures and derivatives, and the manipulation of currency markets. Major financial actors are routinely involved in “hot money deposits” in “the emerging markets” of Latin America and Southeast Asia, not to mention money laundering and the development of (specialized) “private banks” (“which advise wealthy clients”) in the many offshore banking havens. Within this global financial web, money transits at high speed from one banking haven to the next in the intangible form of electronic transfers. “Legal” and “illegal” business activities have become increasingly intertwined, vast amounts of unreported private wealth have been accumulated. Favoured by financial deregulation, the criminal mafias have also expanded their role in the spheres of international banking.2

The 1987 Wall Street Crash

Black Monday October 19, 1987 was the largest one-day drop in the history of the New York Stock Exchange overshooting the collapse of October 28, 1929, which prompted the Wall Street crash and the beginning of the Great Depression.

In the 1987 meltdown, 22.6 percent of the value of US stocks was wiped out largely during the first hour of trading on Monday morning. The plunge on Wall Street sent a cold shiver through the entire financial system leading to the tumble of the European and Asian stock markets…

The Institutional Speculator

The 1987 Wall Street crash served to “clearing the decks” so that only the “fittest” survive. In the wake of crisis, a massive concentration of financial power has taken place. From these transformations, the “institutional speculator” emerged as a powerful actor overshadowing and often undermining bona fide business interests. Using a variety of instruments, these institutional actors appropriate wealth from the real economy. They often dictate the fate of companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Totally removed from entrepreneurial functions in the real economy, they have the power of precipitating large industrial corporations into bankruptcy.

In 1993, a report of Germany’s Bundesbank had already warned that trade in derivatives could potentially “trigger chain reactions and endanger the financial system as a whole”.3 While committed to financial deregulation, the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board Mr. Alan Greenspan had warned that: “Legislation is not enough to prevent a repeat of the Barings crisis in a high tech World where transactions are carried out at the push of the button”.4 According to Greenspan “the efficiency of global financial markets, has the capability of transmitting mistakes at a far faster pace throughout the financial system in ways which were unknown a generation ago…”5 What was not revealed to public opinion was that “these mistakes”, resulting from large-scale speculative transactions, were the source of unprecedented accumulation of private wealth.

By 1995, the daily turnover of foreign exchange transactions (US$ 1300 billion) had exceeded the world’s official foreign exchange reserves estimated at US$ 1202 billion.6 The command over privately-held foreign exchange reserves in the hands of “institutional speculators” far exceeds the limited capabilities of central banks, – i.e. the latter acting individually or collectively are unable to fight the tide speculative activity.

The 1997 Financial Meltdown

The 1987 crisis had occurred in October. Almost to the day, ten years later (also in October) on Monday the 27th, 1997, stock markets around the world plummeted in turbulent trading. The Dow Jones average nose-dived by 554 points, a 7.2 percent decline of its value, its 12th-worst one-day fall in the history of the New York Stock Exchange.

Major exchanges around the world are interconnected “around the clock” through instant computer link-up: volatile trading on Wall Street “spilled over” into the European and Asian stock markets thereby rapidly permeating the entire financial system. European stock markets were in disarray with heavy losses recorded on the Frankfurt, Paris and London exchanges. The Hong Kong stock exchange had crashed by 10.41 percent on the previous Thursday (“Black Thursday” October 24th) as mutual fund managers and pension funds swiftly dumped large amounts of Hong Kong blue chip stocks. The slide at Hong Kong’s Exchange Square continued unabated at the opening of trade on Monday morning: a 6.7 percent drop on Monday the 27th followed by a 13.7 percent fall on Tuesday (Hong Kong’s biggest point loss ever)… 

Table 1

New York Stock Exchange: Worst Single-Day Declines (Dow Jones Industrial Average, percentage change)

Percentage Date Decline [1929-1998]

October 19, 1987 – 22.6%

October 28, 1929 – 12.8%

October 29, 1929 – 11.7%

November 6, 1929 – 9.9%

August 12, 1932 – 8.4%

October 26, 1987 – 8.0%

July 21, 1933 – 7.8%

October 18, 1937 – 7.6%

October 27, 1997 – 7.2%

October 5, 1932 – 7.2%

September 24, 1931 – 7.1%

August 31, 1998 – 6.4%

Source: New York Stock Exchange

The 1997 meltdown of financial markets had been heightened by computerized trading and the absence of state regulation. The NYSE’s Superdot electronic order-routing system was able to handle (without queuing) more than 300,000 orders per day (an average of 375 orders per second), representing a daily capacity of more than two billion shares. While its speed and volume had increased tenfold since 1987, the risks of financial instability were significantly greater.

Ten years earlier, in the wake of the 1987 meltdown, the US Treasury was advised by Wall Street not to meddle in financial markets. Free of government encroachment, the New York and Chicago exchanges were invited to establish their own regulatory procedures. The latter largely consisted in freezing computerized programme trading through the use of so-called “circuit-breakers”.7

In 1997, the circuit breakers proved to be totally ineffective in averting a meltdown. On Monday the 27th of October 1997, a first circuit breaker halted trading for 30 minutes after a 350 point plunge of the Dow Jones. After the 30 minute trading halt, an aura of panic and confusion was installed: brokers started dumping large quantities of stocks which contributed to accelerating the collapse in market values. In the course of the next 25 minutes, the Dow plunged by a further 200 points, triggering a second “circuit breaker” which served to end the trading day on Wall Street. 


Replicating the Policy Failures of the late 1920s

“Wall Street was swerving dangerously in volatile trading in the months preceding the Wall Street crash on October 29, 1929. Laissez-faire, under the Coolidge and Hoover administrations, was the order of the day. The
possibility of a financial meltdown had never been seriously contemplated. Professor Irving Fisher of Yale University had stated authoritatively in 1928 that “nothing resembling a crash can occur”. The illusion of economic prosperity persisted seeral years after the Wall Street crash of October 1929.

In 1930, Irving Fisher stated confidently that “for the immediate future, at least, the perspective is brilliant”. According to the prestigious Harvard Economic Society: “manufacturing activity [in 1930]… was definitely on the road to recovery” (quoted in John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929, Penguin, London).

Mainstream Economics Upholds Financial Deregulation 

Sounds familiar? In the wake of the 1997 crash, the same complacency prevailed as during the frenzy of the late 1920s. Echoing almost verbatim the economic slogans of Irving Fisher, today’s economics orthodoxy not only refutes the existence of an economic crisis, it denies outright the possibility of a financial meltdown. According to Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago, the decisions of economic agents are based on so-called “rational expectations”, ruling out the possibility of “systematic errors” which might lead the stock market in the wrong direction… It is ironic that precisely at a time when financial markets were in turmoil, the Royal Swedish Academy announced the granting of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economics to two American economists for their “pioneering formula for the valuation of stock options [and derivatives] used by thousands of traders and investors” (meaning an “algebraic formula” which is routinely used by hedge funds stock market speculators). (See Greg Burns, “Two Americans Share Nobel in Economics”, Chicago Tribune, October 15, 1997).

The 1997 Asian Crisis

When viewed historically, the 1997 financial crisis was far more devastating and destructive than previous financial meltdowns. Both the stock market and currency markets were affected. In the 1987 crisis, national currencies remained relatively stable. In contrast to both the crashes of 1929 and 1987, the 1997-98 financial crisis was marked by the concurrent collapse of currencies and stock markets. An almost symbiotic relationship between the stock exchange and the foreign currency market had unfolded: “institutional speculators” were not only involved in manipulating stock prices, they also had the ability to plunder central banks’ foreign exchange reserves, undermining sovereign governments and destabilizing entire national economies.

In the course of 1997, currency speculation in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines was conducive to the transfer of billions of dollars of central bank reserves into private financial hands. Several observers have pointed to the deliberate manipulation of equity and currency markets by investment banks and brokerage firms.8 Ironically, the same Western financial institutions which looted developing countries’ central banks, have also offered “to come to the rescue” of Southeast Asia’s monetary authorities. ING Baring, for instance, well known for its speculative undertakings, generously offered to underwrite a one-billion dollar loan to the Central Bank of the Philippines (CBP) in July 1997. In the months which followed, most of these borrowed foreign currency reserves were reappropriated by international speculators when the CBP sold large amounts of dollars on the forward market in a desperate attempt to prop up the Peso.

“Economic Contagion”

Business forecasters and academic economists alike had disregarded the dangers of a global financial meltdown alluding to “strong economic fundamentals”; G7 leaders were afraid to say anything or act in a way, which might give the “wrong signals”… Wall Street analysts continue to bungle on issues of “market correction” with little understanding of the broader economic picture.

The plunge on the New York Stock Exchange on October 27th 1997 was casually blamed on the “structurally weak economies” of Southeast Asia, until recently heralded as upcoming tigers, now depicted as “lame ducks”. The seriousness of the financial crisis was trivialized: Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, reassured Wall Street pointing authoritatively to “the contagious character of national economies, spreading weaknesses from country to country”. Following Greenspan’s verdict (October 28th), the “consensus” among Manhattan brokers and US academics (with debate or analysis) was that “Wall Street had caught the Hong Kong flu”…

The 1998 Stock Market Meltdown

In the uncertain wake of Wall Street’s recovery from the 1997 “Asian flu” – largely spurred by panic flight out of Japanese stocks – financial markets backslided a few months later to reach a new dramatic turning-point in August 1998 with the spectacular nose-dive of the Russian ruble. The Dow Jones plunged by 554 points on August 31, 1998 (its second largest decline in the history of the New York stock exchange) leading, in the course of September, to the dramatic meltdown of stock markets around the World. In a matter of a few weeks, 2300 billion dollars of “paper profits” had evaporated from the U.S. stock market.

The ruble’s August 1998 free-fall had spurred Moscow’s largest commercial banks into bankruptcy leading to the potential take-over of Russia’s financial system by a handful of Western banks and brokerage houses. In turn, the crisis had created the danger of massive debt default to Moscow’s Western creditors, including the Deutsche and Dresdner banks. Since the outset of Russia’s macro-economic reforms, following the first injection of IMF “shock therapy” in 1992, some 500 billion dollars worth of Russian assets – including plants of the military industrial complex, infrastructure and natural resources – have been confiscated (through the privatization programs and forced bankruptcies) and transferred into the hands of Western capitalists. In the brutal aftermath of the Cold War, an entire economic and social system was being dismantled

Financial Deregulation

Rather than taming financial markets in the wake of the storm, Washington was busy pushing through the US Senate legislation, which was to significantly increase the powers of the financial services giants and their associated hedge funds. Under the Financial Modernization Act adopted in November 1999 – barely a week before the historic Seattle Millenium Summit of the World Trade Organization (WTO) – US lawmakers had set the stage for a sweeping deregulation of the US banking system.

In the wake of lengthy negotiations, all regulatory restraints on Wall Street’s powerful banking conglomerates were revoked “with a stroke of the pen”. Under the new rules – ratified by the US Senate and approved by President Clinton – commercial banks, brokerage firms, hedge funds, institutional investors, pension funds and insurance companies can freely invest in each others businesses as well as fully integrate their financial operations.

The legislation had repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, a pillar of President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” which was put in place in response to the climate of corruption, financial manipulation and “insider trading” which led to more than 5,000 bank failures in the years following the 1929 Wall Street crash.9 Effective control over the entire US financial services industry (including insurance companies, pension funds, securities companies, etc.) had been transferred to a handful of financial conglomerates – which are also the creditors and shareholders of high tech companies, the defense industry, major oil and mining consortia, etc. Moreover, as underwriters of the public debt at federal, state and municipal levels, the financial giants have also reinforced their stranglehold on politicians, as well as their command over the conduct of public policy.


Clinton signs the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act, October 1999. Copyright NYT.

The “global financial supermarket” is to be overseen by the Wall Street giants; competing banking institutions are to be removed from the financial landscape. State level banks across America will be displaced or bought up, leading to a deadly string of bank failures. In turn, the supervisory powers of the Federal Reserve Board (which are increasingly under the direct dominion of Wall Street) have been significantly weakened .

Free from government regulation, the financial giants have the ability to strangle local-level businesses in the US and overshadow the real economy. In fact, due to the lack of competition, the legislation also entitles the financial services giants (bypassing the Federal Reserve Board and acting in tacit collusion with one another) to set interest rates as they please.

The Merger Frenzy

A new era of intense financial rivalry has unfolded. The New World Order – largely under the dominion of American finance capital – was eventually intent on dwarfing rival banking conglomerates in Western Europe and Japan, as well as sealing strategic alliances with a “select club” of German- and British-based banking giants.

Several mammoth bank mergers (including NationsBank with BankAmerica, and Citibank with Travelers Group) had, in fact, already been implemented and rubber-stamped by the Federal Reserve Board (in violation of the pre-existing legislation) prior to the adoption of the 1999 Financial Modernization Act. Citibank, the largest Wall Street bank, and Travelers Group Inc., the financial services and insurance conglomerate (which also owns Solomon Smith Barney a major brokerage firm) combined their operations in 1998 in a 72 billion dollar merger.10

Strategic mergers between American and European banks had also been negotiated bringing into the heart of the US financial landscape some of Europe’s key financial players including Deutsche Bank AG (linked up with Banker’s Trust) and Credit Suisse (linked up with First Boston). The Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), the UK based banking conglomerate – which had already sealed a partnership with Wells Fargo and Wachovia Corporation – had acquired the late Edmond Safra’s Republic New York Bank in a 9 billion dollar deal.11

In the meantime, rival European banks excluded from Wall Street’s inner circle, were scrambling to compete in an increasingly “unfriendly” global financial environment. Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) had acquired Société Générale de Banque and Paribas to form one of the World’s largest banks. BNP eventually aspires “to move into North America in a bigger way”.12

Financial Deregulation at a Global Level

While the 1999 US Financial Services Act does not in itself break down remaining barriers to the free movement of capital, in practice, it empowers Wall Street’s key players, including Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers, etc., to develop a hegemonic position in global banking, overshadowing and ultimately destabilizing financial systems in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe…

Financial deregulation in the US has created an environment which favors an unprecedented concentration of global financial power. In turn, it has set the pace of global financial and trade reform under the auspices of the IMF and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The provisions of both the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and of the Financial Services Agreement (FTA) imply the breaking down of remaining impediments to the movement of finance capital meaning that Merrill Lynch, Citigroup or Deutsche-Bankers Trust can go wherever they please, triggering the bankruptcy of national banks and financial institutions.

In practice, this process has already happened in a large number of developing countries under bankruptcy and privatization programs imposed on an hoc basis by the Bretton Woods institutions. The mega-banks have penetrated the financial landscape of developing countries, taking control of banking institutions and financial services. In this process, the financial giants have been granted de facto “national treatment”: without recourse to the provisions of the Financial Services Agreement (FTA) of the WTO, Wall Streets banks, for instance, in Korea, Pakistan, Argentina or Brazil have become bona fide “national banks” operating as domestic institutions and governed by domestic laws which are being remolded under IMF-World Bank jurisdiction. (See Chapters 21 and 22.)

In practice the large US and European financial services giants do not require the formal adoption of the GATS to be able to dominate banking institutions worldwide, as well as overshadow national governments. The process of global financial deregulation is, in many regards, a fait accompli. Wall Street has routinely invaded country after country. The domestic banking system has been put on the auction block and reorganized under the surveillance of external creditors. National financial institutions are routinely destabilized and driven out of business; mass unemployment and poverty are the invariable results.

Assisted by the IMF – which routinely obliges countries to open up their domestic banking sector to foreign investment – retail banking, stock brokerage firms and insurance companies are taken over by foreign capital and reorganized. Citigroup, among other Wall Street majors, has gone on a global shopping spree buying up banks and financial institutions at bargain prices in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. In one fell swoop, Citigroup acquired the 106 branch network of Banco Mayo Cooperativo Ltda., becoming Argentina’s second largest bank.

*

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The above text is contained in Chapter 20 of Michel Chossudovsky’s book: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order.

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca. He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Notes

  1. In the US, the division between commercial and investment banking is regulated by the Glass Steagall Act enacted in 1933 during the Great Depression to ensure the separation of securities underwriting from lending, to avoid conflicts of interest and prevent the collapse of commercial banks. The Banking Association has recently pointed to the importance of amending the Glass Steagall act to allow for the full integration of commercial and investment banking. See American Banking Association President’s Position, “New Ball Game in Washington, ABA Banking Journal, January 1995, p. 17.
  2. For detailed analysis on the role of criminal organizations in banking and finance, see Alain Labrousse and Alain Wallon (editors), “La planète des drogues”, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1993 and Observatoire géopolitique des drogues, La drogue, nouveau désordre mondial, Hachette, coll. pluriel-Intervention, Paris, 1993.
  3. Quoted in Martin Khor, ” Baring and the Search for a Rogue Culprit, Third World Economics, No. 108, 1-15 March 1995, p. 10.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Bank for International Settlements Review, No. 46, 1997.
  6. Martin Khor, SEA Currency Turmoil Renews Concern on Financial Speculation, Third World Resurgence, No. 86, October 1997, pp. 14-15.
  7. “Five Years On, the Crash Still Echoes”, The Financial Times, October 19, 1992.
  8. Philip Wong, member of the Beijing appointed Legislative Assembly accused the Manhattan Brokerage firm Morgan Stanley of “short-selling the market”. See “Broker Cleared of Manipulation”, Hong Kong Standard, 1 November 1997.
  9. See Martin McLaughlin, Clinton Republicans agree to Deregulation of US Banking System, World Socialist website, http://www.wsws.org/index.shtml, 1 November 1999.
  10. Ibid
  11. See Financial Times, November 9, 1999, p. 21.
  12. Jocelyn Noveck, “Deal would create largest bank”, http://sun-sentinel.com/, March 9 1999.

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Manlio Dinucci interviene a sostegno del Referendum Ripudia la Guerra. A seguito della giornata per il disarmo di Sanremo, è partita la campagna referendaria “L’Italia per la pace”, organizzata su due quesiti referendari volti ad impedire il continuo e dispendioso trasferimento di armi in Ucraina.

La campagna è sostenuta in modo coordinato e collaborativo dai promotori del comitato Ripudia la Guerra (portavoce Enzo Pennetta) e di Generazioni Future con Presidente Ugo Mattei.

La raccolta firme è partita il 22 aprile ed è essenziale che quante più persone possibili si mettano a disposizione di questo importante sforzo volto a certificare che la maggioranza del popolo italiano non è d’accordo con politiche guerrafondaie e preferisce usare diversamente i soldi pubblici.

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I just returned from a month-long visit to Russia, during which time I had the opportunity to see a dozen different cities covering nearly the entire expanse of the Russian Federation. Prior to my departure, I was filling up the tank of my car, when I noticed a sticker on the gas pump.

The sticker portrayed a smiling Joe Biden, the President of the United States, gesturing to his right. Underneath the image were printed the words, “I did this!”

Far from being a compliment, the sticker was a form of humorous protest against the Russia sanctions adopted last year after the start of the special military operation. Many of these sanctions involved Russian energy, and the resulting economic chaos in global energy markets prompted gas prices to surge. Biden was quick to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin, claiming on June 22, 2022, that “the simple truth is gas prices are up almost $2.00 a gallon because of Vladimir Putin’s ruthless attack on Ukraine.”

Biden called the increase in cost “Putin’s Price Hike”, but the American people saw through the subterfuge, as the sticker on the pump proved. If anything, the increase in gas prices prompted many Americans to look at the sticker after examining the bill, and sarcastically proclaim, “Thank you, Joe Biden.”

Upon my arrival to Russia, I expected to see a nation heavily impacted by the consequences of American-led sanctions. Instead, I saw a nation undergoing an economic revival, in large part thanks to the policies Russia was compelled to undertake because of Western sanctions. When I told my Russian hosts about the sticker at the gas pump and my sarcastic appreciation, they laughed. “Send us the stickers,” they said. “And we will thank Joe Biden with all the sincerity we can muster!”

The best way to judge a man is most often based upon the weight of his own words, and when it comes to sanctions and the Russian economy, Joe Biden is no exception. On March 26, 2022, Joe Biden spoke before an audience in Warsaw, Poland about the conflict in Ukraine. One of Biden’s main objectives for his speech was to engender a sense of confidence among the crowd that his administration had the situation under control. The heart of Biden’s argument was the detrimental impact the program of systemic economic sanctions championed by the US, the European Union, the G-7, and NATO were having on the Russian economy.

Military analyst and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter during his travel across Russia, May 2023. - Sputnik International, 1920, 01.06.2023

Image: Military analyst and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter during his travel across Russia, May 2023. © Photo : Scott Ritter

A little more than a year later, Biden’s words have come back to haunt him.

“As a result of these unprecedented sanctions,” Biden then crowed, “the ruble almost is immediately reduced to rubble. The Russian economy—that’s true, by the way, it takes about 200 rubles to equal $1.”

While I was in Russia, the exchange rate hovered between 79 and 81 rubles to the dollar. The Russian currency is stable, backed by a strong and vibrant economy. Moreover, unlike during the pre-sanction period, the ruble today is a convertible currency, used to pay for Russia’s international business transactions, especially in the field of energy, once the exclusive domain of the petrodollar. Far from being reduced to rubble, the ruble today serves as a foundational currency for global economic activity, part of a new “basket of currencies” that is responsive to the needs of a new multilateral reality that is rapidly supplanting the previous era of US economic hegemony.

“Thank you, Joe Biden!”

“The [Russian] economy is on track,” Biden then bragged, “to be cut in half in the coming years. It was ranked, Russia’s economy was ranked the 11th biggest economy in the world before this invasion. It will soon not even rank among the top 20 in the world.”

The Russian economy currently retains its rank as the 11th in the world, based upon standard gross domestic product (GDP) comparisons. However, when one converts Russia’s $1.78 trillion GDP using the “basket of goods” formulation of purchasing power parity (PPP) (i.e., what similar goods cost in the United States versus Russia), Russia’s actual economic strength converts to $4.80 trillion, making it the world’s sixth largest economy, surpassing all but China, the US, India, Japan, and Germany.

“Thank you, Joe Biden.”

“Taken together these economic sanctions,” Biden then pontificated, “a new kind of economic statecraft with the power to inflict damage that rivals military might. These international sanctions are sapping Russian strength, its ability to replenish its military, and its ability to project power. And it’s Putin, it is Vladimir Putin who is to blame. Period.”

In January and February 2023, Russia spent 2 trillion rubles ($26 billion) on defense, a 282% jump on the same period a year ago. Far from being unable to replenish its military strength and sustain the conflict in Ukraine, Russia is far outpacing NATO in terms of rushing military material to the frontlines by 4 to 1 in terms of tanks and armored fighting vehicles and 5 to 1 in artillery ammunition. When calculated with kill ratios that are overwhelmingly in favor of Russia, the fact is that Russia is sapping the strength of NATO and its Ukrainian proxy, while expanding its own. In addition to nearly tripling the size of its special military operation contingent, Russia is simultaneously building up the forces necessary to meet the expansion of its army from its pre-conflict size of 1 million, to a force of more than 1.5 million. Moreover, Russia’s increase in military production has not only softened the economic impact of the US-sponsored sanctions, but also helped reverse their impact across Russia’s industrial base.

Military analyst and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter during presentation of his book in Moscow, May 2023. - Sputnik International, 1920, 01.06.2023

Military analyst and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter during presentation of his book in Moscow, May 2023. © Photo : Scott Ritter

Everything I saw while touring Russia underscored the incontrovertible fact that, because of Western sanctions, the Russian economy has been compelled to undertake changes which have not only made it more resilient, but also more productive and efficient. Foreign investments are surging in, proving that there is a world that exists beyond that controlled by the American economic hegemon.

Moreover, because sanctions have curtailed the previous practice of Russian business tycoons sending their wealth abroad, there is a huge amount of domestic economic capital available for reinvestment into the Russian economy. This truth was evident in every city I visited, where there were unprecedented levels of infrastructure improvements and new construction taking place.

Image: Military analyst and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter during his travel across Russia, May 2023. © Photo : Scott RitterMilitary analyst and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter during his travel across Russia, May 2023. - Sputnik International, 1920, 01.06.2023

I thought about this upon my return to the US, contrasting my journey from JFK airport through New York City with a similar journey I made from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport into Moscow. My New York journey took me from a decaying airport, through decaying highways and bridges, into a decaying city. The Moscow equivalent was, by comparison, one of pristine facilities, roads, and a city that was not only composed of recently constructed buildings, but alive with new construction as well.

I still see the “I did this!” stickers on the gas pump, and I still mutter my words of thanks to the American President that I hold accountable for the high prices. And I laugh when I think of my Russian hosts making the same exclamation. The sarcasm is evident, whether uttered in the US or Russia, but for diametrically opposed reasons. Biden, a man who promised to revitalize the US economy, has done the opposite. And yet while he has pledged ruin in Russia, a revival has occurred.

“Thank you, Joe Biden!”

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*** 

The other day, I counted 20 copies of a book called Forbidden City (1990) in a library. I picked it up and looked at the cover, and I realized it was about the so-called Tiananmen Square massacre. It was written as an on-the-spot account by a CBC news team during that time. By reading the minutiae, it is revealed to be a fictionalized account, as almost all western monopoly media reports of a Tiananmen Square massacre are — fiction.

As I write this, June 4 is nigh upon us, and that means it is time for the western-aligned media to crank out their discredited myth of a massacre having taken place in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The photos of the Tank Man allegedly blocking tanks from entering Tiananmen Square will form a major part of the disinformation. The fact is that the tanks were leaving the city, and it was the day after the mythologized massacre. The tanks did all they could to avoid colliding with the citizen who placed himself in front of the tanks. (Read Jeff Brown’s setting the record straight regarding the western monopoly media account of the Tank Man.)

Alas, the monopoly media disinformation storm is already upon us.

Human Rights Watch, funded by the George Soros, published an article about a “bloody crackdown” that demands:

“The Chinese government should acknowledge responsibility for the mass killing of pro-democracy demonstrators and provide redress for victims and family members.”

The United States government-funded Radio Free Asia historizes, “Troops aligned with hardliners shot their way to Tiananmen Square to commit one of the worst massacres in modern Chinese history.” RFA was originally operated by the CIA to broadcast anti-Communist propaganda.

The CBC quotes

“Tiananmen Square survivor” Yang Jianli, now a resident in Washington, DC, who “was at Tiananmen Square in 1989” and spoke of how a “nationwide pro-democracy movement in 1989 ended in the bloodshed of Tiananmen Square massacre.”

Yahoo! News headlines with “Tiananmen Square Fast Facts,” such as:

In 1989, after several weeks of demonstrations, Chinese troops entered Tiananmen Square on June 4 and fired on civilians.

Estimates of the death toll range from several hundred to thousands.

One wonders which is the fact: several hundred or thousands? Assertions are a staple in western monopoly media, evidence is scant, but the evidence-free assertions persist year-after-year.

There are complaints of Chinese censorship. This raises the question of whether censorship can be justified and if so under what circumstances. Arguably, there is something more insidious than censorship, and that is disinformation. Professor Anthony Hall articulated the insidiousness of disinformation at the Halifax Symposium on Media and Disinformation in 2004 where it was held to be a crime against humanity and a crime against peace:

Disinformation originates in the deliberate and systemic effort to break down social cohesion and to deprive humanity of perceptive consciousness of our conditions. Disinformation seeks to isolate and divide human beings; to alienate us from our ability to use our senses, our intellect, and our communicative powers in order to identify truth and act on this knowledge. Disinformation is deeply implicated in the history of imperialism, Eurocentric racism, American Manifest Destiny, Nazi propaganda, the psychological warfare of the Cold War, and capitalist globalization. Disinformation seeks to erode and destroy the basis of individual and collective memory, the basis of those inheritances from history which give humanity our richness of diverse languages, cultures, nationalities, peoplehoods, and means of self-determination. The reach and intensity of disinformation tends to increase with the concentration of ownership and control of the media of mass communications.

In other words, people must not have a right to freely speak lies that reach the level of crimes against humanity or peace. The disinformation campaign about a Tiananmen Square massacre demonizes China and constitutes a crime against the humanity of the Chinese people. If people wish to allege a massacre by state forces against its citizens, then present the incontrovertible evidence. Where are the photos of soldiers killing citizens? There are plenty of photos of murdered soldiers mutilated by nasty elements outside Tiananmen Square.

So why does the disinformation persist? Because it works when people unquestioningly accept what their unscrupulous government and media tell them: China is Communist. China is bad.

Is such rhetoric compelling?

American expat Godfree Roberts, author of Why China Leads the World: Talent at the Top, Data in the Middle, Democracy at the Bottomanswered a Quora question: “There are people that claim nothing bad happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989 What happened to the pro democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square when the tanks and troops with the PLA showed up to suddenly put and end to the protests?” Roberts replied:

The tanks and troops with the PLA did not show up to suddenly put and end to the protests. Nor did they harm anyone in Tiananmen Square.

They waited at the railway station for three weeks but began moving into town when rioters–like those we see in Hong Kong today–began killing people in Chang’An Avenue. Even then, the first battalions were unarmed… [emphasis in original]

Roberts wrote another excellent Quora piece preserved at the Greanville Post.

Regarding the wider myth created of a massacre at Tiananmen Square, the go-to evidence-based account is the book Tiananmen Square “Massacre”?: The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence by Wei Ling Chua.

***

Tiananmen Square "Massacre"? - The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence by Wei Ling Chua | Goodreads

***

Kim Petersen: In 2014, I reviewed your important book Tiananmen Square “Massacre”?: The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence that threw a glaring light on what the monopoly media were saying about a massacre in Tiananmen Square versus the subsequent recantations by western-aligned journalists and the narratives of protestors and witnesses than were contrary to the western media disinformation. In other words, there was no massacre in Tiananmen Square. Nonetheless, people living in the western-aligned world can expect, for the most part, to be inundated with monopoly media rehashing their disinformation about what happened on 4 June 1989, omitting the nefarious roles played by the CIA and NED.

Recently, AB Abrams included a 29-page chapter, “Beijing 1989 and Tiananmen Square,” in his excellent book Atrocity Fabrications and Its Consequences (2023). It basically lays out what you did in your book (without citing it), but it does present more of a historical basis for the interference of US militarism in 20th century China because of American anti-communist prejudice. Thus, the US supported the Guomindang (KMT) led by the brutal Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-Shek). Abrams reads quite critical of paramount leader Deng Xiaopeng, quoting one student who complained of the increasing corruption under Deng that was not tolerated under chairman Mao Zedong. (p 125) Basically, however, Abrams buttresses what you had already written, pointing a stern finger at Operation Yellowbird’s NED, CIA, and Hong Kong criminal triads who inserted (and extracted) unruly (even bloodthirsty, notably Chai Ling) elements into Tiananmen Square who happened to find themselves well armed and supplied with Molotov cocktails, and who were not hesitant about using lethal force against remarkably restrained PLA soldiers.

Despite the several recantations by western journalists in Beijing who had reported a massacre and despite the narratives that seriously impugn the monopoly media narratives, why does the myth of a massacre in Tiananmen Square persist? How is it that this fabricated atrocity gets dredged up annually, and why do so many people buy into the disinformation proffered by a source serially revealed to be manufacturing demonstrably false narratives? How can this disinformation be exterminated?

Finally, massacres should not be forgotten, but if the narratives of massacres are meant to be revisited annually, then shouldn’t the massacres carried out — especially by one’s own side — also be memorialized, as an act of penance and atonement? In the US case, there would be yearly memorials to the massacres of several Indigenous peoples by the White natives of Europe. There are several massacres requiring atonement for the rampant criminality of the White Man. Wounded Knee, the Bear Creek massacre, the Sand Creek massacre, and the Trail of Tears spring readily to mind. There is the Kwangju massacre in South Korea, My Lai in Viet Nam, Fallujah in Iraq (and this is just skimming the surface). What does it say that the US-aligned media unquestioningly reports on fabricated atrocities elsewhere while being insouciant to the crimes of American troops against Others?

Wei Ling Chua: Since publishing the book Tiananmen Square “Massacre”? The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence (The Art of Media Disinformation is Hurting the World and Humanity vol. 2) in 2014, I began to use Google alerts to receive daily emails on any news or articles posted on the net with the term “Tiananmen Square Massacre”, and it is depressing to say that the Western media disregards their own journalists’ confessions and have continued to unrelentingly use the term frequently over the past 34 years.

The following description introduces the book.

Readers will notice from the table of contents that this book comes in 4 parts:

1) Screenshot evidence of journalists who confessed that they saw no one die that day (June 4th, 1989) at Tiananmen Square, CIA declassified documents, WikiLeaks, and Human Rights Watch decided not to publish their own eye-witnesses accounts that report that support the Chinese side of the stories… ;

2) Explanation, with examples, of how the Western media used the power of words to overpower the silent evidence (their own photos and video images) that actually shows highly restrained, people-loving PLA soldiers and the CCP government handling of the 7 weeks of protests.

3) Explanation of the 3 stage bottle-necks effect of the market economy and how Western nations respond to each stage of such economic hardship created by an uncontrolled market economy. The purpose of such analysis is to remind developing nations’ citizens not to destroy their own countries by allowing Western-funded NGOs to carry out covert operations in their countries to create chaos at times of economic hardship;

4) Comparing how the CCP handled the 1989 protesters with the US government handling of the 2011 anti-Wall Street protesters [Occupy Wall Street], the book draws a 6-point conclusion to explain why the Wall Street protesters should admire the Tiananmen protesters, and why the PLA deserves a Nobel Peace prize:

  • Freedom of protesters
  • The rule of law
  • The barricade strategy
  • Brutality of authorities
  • Media freedom
  • Government response

I encourage readers to read the book review by you: Massacre? What Massacre?

The US and other Western governments are notorious in promoting hatred, fake news, and misleading information about China. As a result, whenever foreigners went to China for the first time, they seemed to be shocked by how advanced, how wealthy, how safe, how green, how friendly, and how beautiful China is. A lot of YouTubers from all over the world voluntarily and passionately produce videos to share their daily impression of China or to defend China against any smear campaigns by the Western media. Below is just a quick pick of a dozen YouTubers:

As for getting at the truth, the best way to understand a country is to travel there and see it with our own eyes:

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a group of American athletes arrived at the Beijing International Airport with masks and later were shocked that the air quality was good and that they were the only ones wearing masks in Beijing. They were also shocked by how beautiful and modern Beijing is compared to American cities. In an embarrassment to America, these young Americans were spot on and held a press conference to publicly apologize to the Chinese people for their mask-wearing insult to China.

The same thing happened to many Taiwanese, many were so ignorant about China that they thought that the Chinese people were very poor. In 2011, a Taiwanese professor Gao Zhibin told his audience in a TV show that the mainland Chinese are so poor that they cannot even afford to eat a tea leaf egg. That video became a laughing stock and quickly circulated being viewed by hundreds of millions of Chinese people, and even made its way to the Chinese mainstream media across the country as a sort of entertainment. Now, the Taiwanese Professor has a nickname in China: “tea leaf egg professor“.

Hong Kong also has the same problem. So, after putting down the US-backed violent protests a few years ago, one of the education programs is to take the students for a free trip to the mainland to see by themselves how prosperous, green, clean, modern, friendly, and advanced their mother country is.

So, I think offering my Tiananmen book for a free 24-hour download in June (the month of Tiananmen’s 34th anniversary) as an important step towards understanding the real China.

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Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Arab Opinion Reflects Regional Changes

June 2nd, 2023 by James J. Zogby

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The Arab World has seen a significant juggling of relationships. After the debacle of Iraq and 20 years of dizzying, often incoherent shifts in American policy, the US is no longer the sole dominant player. Russia and China have entered the region’s calculus as global powers of influence. And Iran, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and UAE have emerged as local powers.

The region faces a number of unsettling challenges, particularly: De-stabilisation from several internal conflicts, threats from Iran’s sectarian meddling, and Israel’s brutality and acquisitiveness in occupied Palestinian lands.

With the US doing little to calm these troubled waters, or actually roiling them, Arab countries have had to establish their own paths forward to protect or project their interests.

In 2020, to forestall a potentially imminent Israeli formal annexation of much of the Palestinian territories, the UAE launched the Abrahamic Accords. Other countries have since joined. Meanwhile, several Arab countries have met with and begun opening up to Iraq and normalising relations with Syria. While Israel and some US hawks thought Arab ties with Israel would establish a regional bloc against Iran, the UAE and now Saudi Arabia, with help from China, have moved toward normalising ties with Iran.

These regional shifts and independent Arab initiatives have caught the US off-guard. Its outmoded playbook stars Israel as the region’s center of gravity, and Iran and Syria as pariahs to be shunned and confronted. Following Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and China’s emergence as a threat to US global hegemony, the US has resurrected the Cold War’s cry of ‘democracy versus authoritarianism.’

To assess Arab views of these developments, Zogby Research Services has, in recent years, conducted polls in over a dozen Arab countries. Here’s what we’ve found:

Long alienated by the U.S. and its policies and despite blaming Russia for Ukraine, Arabs don’t want their governments becoming involved or following the US. They view the conflict as a European/US matter.

In most Arab countries China is seen as the emerging power. Acknowledging that today the US is more powerful, they see the gap closing in the next decade. In 20 years, majorities in every country see China emerging as the world’s power.

Important, but often overlooked by US policymakers, is that Arabs see America’s strong suit in competition with China as its “soft power”, cultural values and education. Arabs like the US and its values but feel the US doesn’t care about them.

Looking inward, Arabs in most countries rate Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE highest in favorability, regional role, and the importance of ties. Iran and Israel are seen as regional threats, with Israel seen as a greater threat than Iran in all countries except the UAE, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia, where Iran is slightly more threatening than Israel.

Notably, of all five Arab countries with peace agreements with Israel, only the UAE has warming attitudes, while favorability remains quite low in Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and Morocco. Despite the overwhelming Saudi majority who report negative attitudes toward Israel, a sizable minority says ties might still be beneficial.

Palestinians and Palestinian citizens of Israel have consistently favourable views toward the major Arab countries (UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt) playing a role in their region, and negative views toward Iran. Palestinian respondents also display mixed views toward the Abrahamic Accords and its impact, with Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians of East Jerusalem more favorably inclined toward the Accords than Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Among Palestinian citizens of Israel, a substantial majority say the Accords have either had a positive impact on their lives or could in the future.

These findings point to the clear reality that Arab opinion is mostly aligned with changes occurring across the region. Arabs no longer see the US as the only player in town. They are uninterested in following the US lead and a growing respect for China. With strong negatives for Iran and Israel, Arabs recognise a new regional dynamic unfolding requiring Arabs to define their own paths forward.

Other findings suggest that Iran and Israel should understand that current moves toward regional integration will only continue to grow if behaviours change, with Iran ending its meddlesome regional role and Israel advancing Palestinian justice and rights.

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Freedom of speech means a lot to us at the OP. However, that’s been fading fast, as Daisy has documented, and as though speech restrictions aren’t bad enough, most of us have been lab rats for central planners’ behavioral experiments longer than we probably care to realize. And now there are Nudge Units.

Huge amounts of money have been poured into “nudge research,” determining the best ways to get populations to change their behaviors without passing laws or using force.

What are Nudge Units?

Let’s look at how these “Nudge Units” got started, what they’ve been used for most recently, and what they’re likely to focus on next.

The concept of “nudging” people into making better choices became popular with the book Nudge—Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, authored by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and published in 2008. Their book defines a nudge as:

. . .any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.  To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid.  Nudges are not mandates.  Putting fruit at eye level counts as a nudge.  Banning junk food does not.  (p.6) 

(You may be interested to note that author Sunstein is married to Samantha Power, the administrator of Biden’s US Agency for International Development and previously Obama’s ambassador to the UN. Forbes listed Ms. Power as the 63rd most powerful woman in the world in 2014. Do you think she’s Nudging? ~ Daisy )

Individuals in government and industry quickly realized that the authors’ insights into the decision-making process could be used to manipulate that process in the minds of the general public, many of whom don’t have the time or mental energy for NYT bestsellers.

The British government established its first Behavioural Insights Team in 2010. It began as a seven-person team within a Cabinet Office nicknamed the “Nudge Unit” then became an independent social purpose company in 2014 before being purchased by Nesta, a larger social purpose company, in 2021. 

These social purpose companies employ experts in promoting desirable behaviors. So in Britain, for example, they want to cut obesity rates in half and reduce household carbon emissions by 28% by 2030.

I don’t know how successful they’ve been in cutting obesity rates, but the Nudge Unit did prove its effectiveness early on by helping the British government collect an extra £200 million (about $248 million) in taxes in 2017. Not surprisingly, the Nudge Unit has become so popular that they have worked with governments in over 50 countries and have opened subsidiary offices in the U.S., Singapore, Canada, Australia, Indonesia, Mexico, and France.

What does a Nudge look like in the States?

Within the U.S., Nudge Units have been employed by health care systems such as UPenn, and Blue Cross Blue Shield Massachusetts. In a way, this isn’t surprising; American and British citizens alike are known for high obesity rates and poor overall health.  

Promoting good health within the general population seems like a good government goal, and I think most of us would have found this largely uncontroversial before 2020.  We may not always have agreed with the FDA’s exact dietary advice, but most of us would have probably agreed that we, as a nation, don’t need quite so many candy bars.  

However, during 2020, this changed.  Public messaging around health care became far more intense, and some of the advice didn’t make sense.  At the very simplest level, what makes people healthy?  Exercise and proper diet.  Humans have known intuitively for a long time that sunshine is good for us. More recent research has shown that it kills viruses and bacteria. So why were people being forbidden to exercise and even, in some cases, to go outside?

This article isn’t really about the many possible reasons the public was given so much nonsensical advice during 2020 and 2021.  I am just pointing out that, in some ways, the public health messaging campaign during Covid was seen by various governments (particularly the British) as an opportunity to see how far Nudging could influence actual behavior, even when the nudges didn’t make logical sense.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), governmental Nudging didn’t influence people nearly as much as various government bodies had hoped. In fact, Nudge author Thaler himself said that, when it came to increasing vaccine uptake, it was time for “pushes and shoves” in the form of passports and more severe restrictions.

But the pandemic is officially over, right? Does this really matter now?

Yes, it still does. 

As we discussed before, the World Health Organization is set to ratify a new pandemic treaty in 2024. As discussed in our previous article as well as in Jose’s more recent article, we have plenty of reasons to believe that more pandemics will come along, and that the WHO will be taking precedence over local and even national governments to address them.  

The WHO has grown a lot since its inception in 1948. It has had its own Behavioral Insights Team since 2017. And some of their work, like their campaign to prevent the over-use of antibiotics, has been really important.  But just because they undertake some worthwhile projects doesn’t mean we can assume everything they do is benign.  

It’s crucial to understand that there are no neutral Nudges. Richard Thaler points this out himself in an interview with Sydney Business Insights. You will always be asked to choose between one thing and another. Thaler also says in this interview that, within the original British Nudge Unit, their mantra was, “If you want people to do something, make it easy.” Ask yourself, are people that constantly shoot for the lowest common denominator in a population the ones you want to take guidance from?

Perhaps more significantly, the WHO’s new Chair of their Technical Advisory Group on Behavioral Insights (their Nudge Unit), Prof. Susan Michie, is an active member of Britain’s Communist Party. Are you comfortable with an avowed communist being responsible for subliminal messaging regarding your health choices? If you’re a communist yourself, that might be great, but what about the rest of us?  

The people behind the Nudge messages matter. 

Do you want to get your relationship advice from Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate? It’ll make a difference.  

And health care is only one area of interest in Nudging. Right now, in the U.S., that has been the main area of focus. However, since the first Nudge Unit developed in Britain and then expanded outward, it is reasonable to look to the British to see what may be coming next. As speculated upon by Laura Dodsworth in her recent interview with Russell Brand, climate change rhetoric will likely ramp up.  

We’ve already seen some examples of it. The same tools they might have been using ten years ago to get people to choose fruit as opposed to candy bars are now being used to get us to choose insect products instead of meat. This has had limited effect, as we’ve reported before.

How do they work?

Nudges work best for behaviors that people know they should pursue anyway. It’s been difficult to Nudge people into doing things they find very unpleasant (like eating bugs) or may have moral qualms about (putting novel substances in their bodies).

So far, the usefulness of Nudging has been limited, but that may change within the next few years simply because messaging of all kinds is about to get so much cheaper, thanks to AI. ChatGPT and other similar programs will be able to churn out all kinds of little jingles useful not only for traditional companies but for social purpose companies and government programs, as well.  

And as messages of all kinds become cheaper and cheaper to produce, the demands to change our behavior for public health, or the climate, or whatever, will become more and more constant.

It’s going to take more individual effort on our part to sort out the real information from whatever convenient narratives are currently being promoted. This will apply, not only to current-events type information but also to things like health and self-improvement.  

I’ll say it again because it’s so important: There are no neutral Nudges. We are all constantly being Nudged in one direction or another. We can’t escape Nudges, but we can choose which ones we give our attention to.  

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A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her.

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After 530,000 Austrians signed a referendum petition calling for the right to cash payments to be enshrined in Austria’s constitution in 2022, Austria’s political class is refusing to move forward with adding this legal right, warns the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).

“Nowhere else in the world is an everyday life without cash so clearly rejected as in Austria. We see this justified desire of the population, which is reflected in the popular petition ‘For unrestricted cash payment,’ as a concrete work order to the parliament!,” said Finance and Budget Spokesman of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) Hubert Fuchs during a parliamentary debate.

Although the referendum is not binding, in a country of 8.9 million, the fact that over half a million signed the referendum petition shows a broad level of resistance against the push for digital currencies promoted by central banks across the world and institutions like the World Economic Forum (WEF). It was the 13th most popular referendum in the country’s history. However, the center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), which has long been said to have backed the right to cash, is now joining the left-wing parties of Austria and blocking all attempts to add this right to the country’s constitution.

FPÖ says ‘cash is freedom’

Fuchs sees the great support for the petition as a clear mandate to the National Council, which is one of the two houses in Austria’s parliament.

“The initiators and supporters of this petition do not just want words of thanks. Rather, it is a concrete request to the National Council to ensure that the federal government finally gets its act together. But let me report from the finance committee: Our motion for the preservation of cash was once again rejected by the ÖVP. So it’s all just lip service and fine words, while these are not followed by action,” said Fuchs.

The ÖVP is reportedly attempting to blame their coalition partners, the Greens, but the FPÖ rejects these claims. Fuchs argues that if “nothing can be brought forward in the country (through legislation), one should step soon again to the ballot box — the republic would be served thereby very much.”

The FPÖ, known for its stance against Russia sanctions and its calls to stop immigration by building “Fortress Austria,” is currently the most popular party in the country, with polls putting it at approximately 27 percent. The party, although conservative, takes a skeptical view of unbridled free market capitalism, and argues that the government must protect against real estate speculators and provide generous cash benefits to encourage Austrians to have more children.

The party has also made the right to cash payments an intrinsic part of its platform, arguing that they ensure freedom from government oversight and also protect Austrians from predatory banks and credit card institutions.

“We, the Freedom Party — in contrast to all other parties — have already been campaigning for years for the preservation of cash as well as for the anchoring of the right to cash payments in the constitution. This was also included in the ÖVP-FPÖ government program (of the previous government), but unfortunately could no longer be implemented. And I wonder why, if all parties are in favor of preserving cash, especially the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), they have not tabled a motion on this today?” asked Fuchs. “According to the current legal situation, there is no real obligation to accept cash. The relevant legal provisions need to be tightened up here.”

Fuchs also said in his speech that implementing a financial system where only digital currencies exist would lead to an increase in money laundering and covert financing of terrorism, as according to him, digital and cryptocurrencies are a hotbed for criminality.

“This freedom of choice must continue to exist in the future. Cash is data protection in action. Cash is printed freedom. And another aspect should not remain unmentioned: Without cash, how are children supposed to learn how to handle money and thus how to do business? Money at their fingertips is very important for children. But it is not only important for children, but also for adults in terms of their own spending control,” explained the FPÖ finance and budget spokesman.

Fuchs may be referring to the practice of many consumers reverting back to cash to better control spending, which is a trend seen in the United States this year. Experts argue that using physical cash instead of electronic payments helps people better control and track their spending.

However, the FPÖ also points to a new Marketmind study, which shows that 48 percent of women and 40 percent of men in Austria cannot get a credit card due to their low income and are therefore dependent on cash.

“That’s no wonder when you consider that in our country around 17 percent of the population must be classified as at risk of poverty. That is just one of the many reasons why we have to insist on (the right to) receiving cash with all our might,” said the FPÖ consumer protection spokesman, Peter Worm.

“In view of the fact that more than 530,000 citizens have signed the referendum entitled ‘For unrestricted cash payments’, it is more than opportune to recognize the importance of the issue. The unified opposition of the ÖVP, SPÖ, Greens and NEOS talk loudly about receiving the cash, but votes against every one of our proposals to ensure cash, including cent and euro coins along with notes in the current form, is preserved and to anchor cash in general in our constitution. Our application to establish a constitutionally stipulated obligation to contract for the movement of goods and services in connection with the basic acceptance of cash as a means of payment in the Austrian legal system also failed due to all four parties,” explained Wurm.

“But we Liberals will continue to comply with the will of the citizens. Cash means survival, freedom and self-determination. The transparent citizen has already become a reality to some extent, and only receiving cash in a constitutionally protected form can prevent even worse things from happening,” emphasized Wurm.

In Austria, 50 percent of all transactions are still conducted in cash, far above the European average of approximately 30 percent. Germans are also against digital transactions, with just 9 percent saying they would use mobile payments.

Why protect cash?

As Remix News previously reported, privacy and civil rights organizations have long advocated the right to cash with the argument that privacy, civil liberties, and finical security are at stake. Abolishing cash would force citizens to conduct all transactions through a digital medium, such as mobile payments, credit cards, or digital currencies. Banks and electronic mediums remain vulnerable to hacking attacks and even natural disasters, for example, if the power grid were to be knocked out. The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, which is a part of the Ministry of Justice, warned in one report that a totally cashless society would be extremely vulnerable if the country were attacked or exposed to a natural disaster

For those concerned about privacy, such as those in Germany and Austria, digital payments give law enforcement and government authorities a direct window into all transactions.

Even more worrying for some, digital money could one day be linked to political and social behavior in Western countries in a social credit system, as seen in China. Already, during the “Freedom Convoy” trucker protests against Covid-19 policies in Canada, the left-wing government of Justin Trudeau took the unprecedented step of freezing the bank accounts of protesters. Although civil liberty groups decried the authoritarian action as a flagrant abuse of power, many critics worry that the action could now serve as a template to deal with protesters and dissent in the future. If dissidents and those critical of the government cannot keep their money outside the digital space, then they will have nowhere to hide their finances should governments, like the one in Canada, take action against them.

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US Next Steps on China

June 2nd, 2023 by Karsten Riise

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*** 

G7 Running on Empty

The G7 is in a limbo.

Right now, the G7 is all about US asserting control of the other six to follow a full anti-China line. The rest of the World won’t care about G7 until the US can start a big move to “unify the world” against China.

The US got the rest of G7 behind it in Ukraine – the use of Russia as boogeyman achieved that. France, Germany, UK, and Brussels all wanted not only Russia kicked out of Ukraine, they wanted Russia permanently frayed to a degree that even Finland could turn over Russia.

They needed the US for that. Trump wouldn’t take that agenda, but Biden always wanted it. So France, Germany forgot their first month of hesitation about Biden and the US after Trump and came under Biden’s thumb.

Now they are all losing in Ukraine. But unless Germany changes position and starts dealing with Russia (which could later happen), they will continue to seek US “protection”.

The Ukraine gamble is lost. What happens next in Ukraine is purely a US effort in damage control. Try to stop Russian gains with a ceasefire (to later restart the war). Work to keep the US’ European allies together, especially Germany.

It’s About China!

The crucial point for the US is China. France and Germany desperately want to trade with China. But for the US, China was always the real issue. Destroying Russia was just seen as the easiest way for the US to take down China “from behind”. That is obviously no longer possible.

The US is right now losing power to Russia in Ukraine and to China on Taiwan. China’s military can beat the US around Taiwan. China has more purchase power than the US. BRICS has more purchase power than G7. Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and 10 other countries have applied to join BRICS. The world is de-dollarizing. China backed by Russia is the catalyst for a new Middle East, not the US. The US and the G7 are becoming more and more weak. Isolated.

US tech power in AI, chips, Quantum Computing, and Industrialization of Space will be immense. And it is coming now, but there are still two years until it will really be impactful. Two years is a very short time, especially for technologies where China is lagging up to over a decade behind. But for restless, impatient Neocons who are right now losing in Ukraine, two years feel like eternity. They want action against China now.

The US needs something to tie the G7 and the World together behind it again and go against China. The “Summit for Democracy” was a US humiliation. The US needs a stronger medicine.

Making China an outcast is needed for the US to sanction China. A Chinese take-over of Taiwan will be precisely that event, which the US needs to denounce China as a global pariah. China taking Taiwan will serve as the equivalent of how Russia’s takeover of Crimea was needed to decry Russia as a pariah and outcast.

Chinese “Aggression” Needed

The solution is simple. Declare Taiwan independent, and Beijing will be forced to react with a physical takeover of Taiwan. Place some targets in Taipei to make sure that Beijing needs to bomb a big city. Damage happens to civilians on Taiwan to present victims of China.

The US, not China, decides the timetable!

This will be what the US needs to press France and Germany to bear the pain of decoupling from China. This is what the US needs as excuse to coerce countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to cut ties with Beijing. That will be the excuse needed in the White House for either pressing Saudi Arabia to disengage with China, or stage a coup to replace the Saudi leader with one who will. It will also be the tool the US needs to draw India further to its side and reduce ties with Moscow and Beijing.

US War and Propaganda

Chinese “aggression” will be the tool to destroy BRICS and the Global South. It can be used to justify US intervention against Chinese shipping in contravention of international law. And it will be the tool for the US to say: “Let’s cut out China and build a better world without China!” – and say “Join us, the USA, the leader of the World – forget about China, forget BRI, build your industry and economies together with us, the USA.”

It will also be the tool needed as justification for violent US covert military actions against China. Bomb China’s undersea cables and installations. Blame it on a non-existent Chinese “resistance movement”, even if it happened 80 meters below the waves.

Declaring China an “aggressor”, a danger, and a dictatorship will be very handy when the technologies of especially AI and Quantum Computing in just around two years will make US aggression far more powerful. Then the US can uninhibited use these tools to destroy China utterly. Next, Industrialization of Space will enable total US militarization of Space as well.

Multi-front Conflict

Several fronts will be opened against China. Pressure of sanctions. Closing off China’s exports. Choking off China’s supplies of raw materials (other than what Russia can deliver). Steal China’s immense dollar reserves. Slow down China’s growth and create a deep economic depression and crisis in China instead. Create social suffering and dissatisfaction. Use dissatisfaction to stir up “popular demands for democracy”. Create groups inside China on newly taken Taiwan, in Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Use US superiority in submarine warfare to make life miserable for Chinese in their close waters. Do sabotage and deny it.

Then in two years, break Chinese codes with Quantum Computing, hack into and destroy China’s electronic infrastructure. With a huge crisis in China, even a major Western crisis from decoupling from China may look smaller in comparison. With AI, enormous productivity gains will happen, which will be used to speed up Western growth again and keep the Western population in check. Then make promises of participation in AI-progress (and suppression) to the rest of the World in order to get the backing of more Global South countries. Sanction or régime change countries which don’t comply.

With new US technologies, sanctions, coercion, media lies, bribes, manipulation, and a Space race unpayable for China, the US has a great chance to rule the World.

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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The Insanity that Rules the West

June 2nd, 2023 by Eric Zuesse

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*** 

On May 30th, Newsweek headlined “Russia ‘On Course’ for NATO Conflict, Commander Says”, and reported that Karel Rehka, the Commander of Chechia’s Armed Forces, said that,

“We view war between Russia and the North Atlantic Alliance as the worst-case scenario, but it is not impossible,” Rehka said. “It is possible.” Russia, the commander added, “is currently on a course towards a conflict with the Alliance.” … NATO deterrence, he added, is the solution to show Moscow that “it’s not worth it because it just can’t succeed” in defeating its Western rivals through military means.

The West’s unquestioned assumption is that Russia is currently engaged in an invasion of Ukraine for the purpose of “defeating its Western rivals through military means.” But that statement is blatantly false, as will here be documented via the links:

On 17 December 2021, Russia formally presented to NATO a proposal for negotiation:

“All member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States.”

This was proposed within a context that opened with:

“The Parties shall guide in their relations by the principles of cooperation, equal and indivisible security. They shall not strengthen their security individually, within international organizations, military alliances or coalitions at the expense of the security of other Parties.”

In other words: it entailed that each NATO nation would agree never to participate in an invasion of any nation that has not invaded it and that has agreed with it not to invade it unless that NATO nation, or any other NATO member-nation, has FIRST invaded it or another NATO-member nation.

In other words: it was a mutual non-aggression pact, which Russia was proposing to NATO; and, IN THAT CONTEXT, it entailed that Ukraine will not be allowed into NATO.

The reason why Ukraine was specifically mentioned in the proposal — and no other nation was — is that Ukraine is much closer to Russia’s command-center than is any existing NATO-member nation; it is only 317 miles or a 5-minute missile-flying time away from blitz-decapitating Russia’s ability to, first, recognize that a nuclear missile had been launched at The Kremlin, and, then, press the button to launch Russia’s retaliatory weaponry in response to that invasion by NATO.

Russia’s 17 December 2021 proposal was the latest and final request from Moscow reflecting Moscow’s many-times-repeated “Red Line” national-security need that if Ukraine will become a NATO member, then Russia will not accept this, and that this acceptance of Ukraine into NATO will start WW III: nuclear war between superpowers.

Back on 24 February 1990, the U.S. Government started secretly instructing its NATO allies that though they all (under instruction from the White House) had told Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO will not expand even “one inch to the east” (i.e., toward Russia’s border) that had been only a lie, and that NATO’s goal to capture Russia will continue even after Gorbachev dismantles the Soviet Union and ends its Warsaw-Pact military mirror-image of America’s NATO military alliance and ends its communism — all of which Gorbachev did do in 1991.

President Bush’s only recorded explanation of that secret instruction to his stooges was: “To hell with that [honoring the promise]! We prevailed; they didn’t.” In other words, he was telling them: Might makes right, and we will possess the might then even more than we do today — so: ‘Onward Christian soldiers!’, till ‘victory!’

If Russia were to accept that, then it would be allowing The West’s version of ‘Christianity’ (which Hitler likewise believed passionately) to emerge victorious over Russia’s — which rejects that viewpoint (the supremacist viewpoint — the demand to be supreme instead of to possess equal rights with all others).

Furthermore: whereas for The West this is all about ruling the entire world — it is about America’s becoming the global dictator — it is instead about something quite opposite from that for Russia: As the proposed document said at its opening:

“The Parties shall guide in their relations by the principles of cooperation, equal and indivisible security.”

It was a commitment to the exact opposite of what, for example, U.S. President Barack Obama had stated on 28 May 2014, to America’s future generals:

“The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation.”

Russia was demanding the rejection of that, the rejection of the idea that only the United States is indispensable and all other nations are dispensable. Russia was repudiating The West’s position — its ideological position: supremacism.

The Newsweek article continued by saying:

“Moscow has framed its disastrous invasion of Ukraine as a pre-emptive strike against NATO, which it has long accused of fomenting ‘Russophobia’ in the country, even while the Kremlin meddled in Ukrainian domestic politics, annexed Crimea, and seized swathes of the eastern Donbas region.”

Here is the actual history — not that myth — about that allegation. (Just click there, and you will see it.)

When America had won its Revolutionary War, it, too, had won its freedom and independence from its Master, the British dictatorship across the ocean. Russia, even now, is refusing to accept any less than that, for itself. This is what the 17 December 2021 Russian-proposed documents were offering, now to America’s NATO. Today’s America (and its colonies) rejected it.

That offer was, on 7 January 2022, contemptuously rejected by the United States and by its NATO. They wouldn’t even negotiate about anything in it. Russia had only one option left: to invade and take over Ukraine. This is, for Russia, a necessary defensive war against the United States’s ceaseless aggressions. Russia is demanding: Your aggressions to capture us will end here: “Give us liberty, or give us death!”

Russia is refusing to allow the U.S. to possess the capability to place its nuclear missiles a mere 317 miles away from The Kremlin.

That is the historical truth of the matter.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) is proposing a set of recommendations for “social listening surveillance systems” designed to address what it describes as a “health threat” posed by online “misinformation.”

The WHO’s Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET) initiative claims “misinformation” has resulted in an “infodemic” that poses a threat — even in instances where the information is “accurate.”

PRET has raised eyebrows, at a time when the WHO’s member states are engaged in negotiations on two controversial instruments: the “pandemic treaty” and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR).

The latest draft of the pandemic treaty contains language on how WHO member states would commit to “social listening.” Under article 18(b), WHO member states would commit to:

“Conduct regular community outreach, social listening, and periodic analysis and consultations with civil society organization and media outlets to identify the prevalence and profiles of misinformation, which contribute to design communications and messaging strategies for the public to counteract misinformation, disinformation and false news, thereby strengthening public trust and promoting adherence to public health and social measures.”

Remarking on PRET’s “social listening” proposals, Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom” and a former New York University liberal studies professor, told The Defender:

“The WHO’s PRET initiative is part of the UN’s attempt to institute global ‘medical’ tyranny using surveillance, ‘social listening’ and censorship. PRET is the technocratic arm of the WHO’s proposed pandemic treaty, which, if accepted by nation-states, would amount to the surrendering of national and individual sovereignty to this ‘global governance’ body.

“What better way to establish a one-world government than by using so-called global crises that must be addressed by nothing short of ‘global governance’? I remind readers that you cannot comply your way out of tyranny.”

WHO could use artificial intelligence to monitor social media conversations

A WHO document outlining the PRET initiative — “Module 1: Planning for respiratory pathogen pandemics, Version 1.0” — contains a definition of infodemic:

“Infodemic is the overabundance of information — accurate or not — which makes it difficult for individuals to adopt behaviors that will protect their health and the health of their families and communities.

“The infodemic can directly impact health, hamper the implementation of public health countermeasures and undermine trust and social cohesiveness.”

The document recommends that in response to the “infodemic,” countries should “incorporate the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

According to the WHO document, this can be done if governments “establish and invest in resources for social listening surveillance systems and capacities to identify concerns as well as rumors and misinformation.”

Such resources include “new tools and approaches for social listening … using new technologies such as artificial intelligence to listen to population concerns on social media.”

According to the document:

“To build trust, it’s important to be responsive to needs and concerns, to relay timely information, and to train leaders and HCWs [healthcare workers] in risk communications principles and encourage their application.”

Risk communications “should be tailored to the community of interest, focusing on and prioritizing vulnerable groups,” the WHO said.

“Tailored” communication was a hallmark of public health efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For instance, in November 2021, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council launched the Mercury Project, which aimed “to increase uptake of COVID-19 vaccines and other recommended public health measures by countering mis- and disinformation” — in part by studying “differential impacts across socio-demographic groups.”

Similarly, PRET states that it will “incorporate the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

These “tools and approaches” could be deployed during “acute respiratory events,” according to the document, which recommends that governments:

“Develop and implement communication and behavior change strategies based on infodemic insights, and test them during acute respiratory events including seasonal influenza.

“This includes implementing infodemic management across sectors, and having a coordinated approach with other actors, including academia, civil society, and international agencies.”

This is not the first time the WHO has addressed the so-called “infodemic.”

A WHO review published Sept. 1, 2022, titled “Infodemics and health misinformation: a systematic review of reviews,” found that “infodemics and misinformation … often negatively impact people’s mental health and increase vaccine hesitancy, and can delay the provision of health care.”

In the review, the WHO concluded that “infodemics” can be addressed by “developing legal policies, creating and promoting awareness campaigns, improving health-related content in mass media and increasing people’s digital and health literacy.”

And a separate, undated WHO document advises the public on how we can “flatten the infodemic curve.”

WHO, Google announce collaboration targeting ‘medical misinformation’

The WHO’s PRET proposals coincided with a new multi-year collaboration agreement with Google for the provision of “credible health-related information to help billions of people around the world respond to emerging and future public health issues.”

The agreement was announced on May 23 by Dr. Karen DeSalvo, Google’s chief health officer, on the company’s blog. She wrote:

“Information is a critical determinant of health. Getting the right information, at the right time can lead to better health outcomes for all. We saw this firsthand with the COVID-19 pandemic when it was difficult for people worldwide to find useful information online.

“We worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) on a range of efforts to help people make informed decisions about their health — from an SOS alert to surfacing locally relevant content about COVID-19 to YouTube policies on medical misinformation.”

One way Google will collaborate with the WHO is through the creation of more “knowledge panels” that will prominently appear in search results for health-related questions on the platform.

“Each day people come to Google Search looking for trustworthy information on various health conditions and symptoms,” DeSalvo wrote. “To help them access trustworthy information our Knowledge Panels cite content from reliable sources covering hundreds of conditions from the common cold to anxiety.”

“Working closely with WHO, we’ll soon expand to cover more conditions such as COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], hypertension, type 2 diabetes, Mpox, Ebola, depressive disorder, malaria and more,” she added.

Google will make these Knowledge Panels available in several languages, including English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.

DeSalvo’s May 23 post also addressed an ongoing collaboration between Google and the WHO, Open Health Stack (OHS), which “help[s] accelerate the digital transformation of health systems around the world” and “lower[s] the barrier to equitable healthcare.”

Google also awarded the WHO with more than $320 million “in donated Google Search advertising via ad grants” allowing the agency “to publish health topics beyond COVID-19, such as Mpox, mental health, flu, Ebola, and natural disasters.”

Google is slated to provide an additional $50 million in ad grants to the WHO this year.

According to Google, the ad grants to the WHO represent the company’s largest such donation to a single organization.

Separately, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tweeted on May 22 about the agency’s own efforts at combating purported “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

The tweet contains a 35-second video, which claims “misinformation” travels “six times faster than the facts,” while promoting the FDA’s “Rumor Control” initiative.

A top priority of FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf, “Rumor Control” was launched in August 2022 and joins other agency initiatives to fight “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

“The growing spread of rumors, misinformation and disinformation about science, medicine, and the FDA, is putting patients and consumers at risk,” according to the FDA’s Rumor Control webpage. “We’re here to provide the facts.”

The initiative asks the public to do “three easy things” to “stop rumors from spreading”: “don’t believe the rumors,” “don’t pass them along” and “get health information from trusted sources like the FDA and our government partners.”

“Rumor Control” appears to have been inspired by an initiative developed by the Virality Project, “a coalition of research entities” from six institutions “focused on supporting real-time information exchange between the research community, public health officials, government agencies, civil society organizations, and social media platforms.”

Documents released as part of the “Twitter files” in March revealed that the Virality Project, based out of the Stanford Internet Observatory, also called for the creation of a disinformation board just one day before Biden announced plans to launch his government-run Disinformation Governance Board.

Similar to PRET’s recommendations to target “accurate” information that nevertheless contradicts establishment public health narratives, the Virality Project worked with Twitter and other social media platforms, recommending they “take action even against ‘stories of true vaccine side effects’ and ‘true posts which could fuel hesitancy.’”

These censorship efforts included at least one tweet by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman on leave of Children’s Health Defense.

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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

Featured image is from CHD

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A Danish research letter by Max Schmeling published in Jan. 2023, examined Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 batch “safety” of Pfizer vaccines administered in Denmark during 2021. (click here)

Summary

  • Each dot represents a “vaccine batch” (each batch has a certain # of vaccine vials, each of which has a certain # of vaccine doses)
  • 4.2% of doses cause 71% of Pfizer jab adverse events & 50% of deaths
  • 32% of doses cause < 1% of Pfizer jab adverse events, serious events & deaths

French researcher Herve Seligmann confirmed the findings in May 2023 (click here).

There seem to be 3 distinct types of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine batches:

  1. The “high toxicity” batches – high frequencies of adverse events and deaths
  2. The “intermediate toxicity” batches – medium frequencies of adverse events
  3. The “low toxicity” batches – low frequencies of adverse events

Comments from retired drug safety expert Sasha Latypova (click here):

We saw clusterings, for example, by alphanumeric codes—both in Pfizer and Moderna. Depending on the letters used in the alphanumeric numbering—which should be just random, we knew that this set of letters would produce higher toxicity, and this set of letters would produce lower toxicity”

We also had clusterings by dates of manufacture. [That] also should not happen—you should not have a difference between the product on the first of the month or on the thirtieth of the month.”

Two young men get myopericarditis from same vaccine batch administered on the same day 

An Italian study published in March 2022 reported two young men who took a Moderna vaccine from the same batch on the same day. Both of them developed myopericarditis exactly 3 days after getting their mRNA vaccine. (click here)

This is more evidence that it’s the vaccine batch that’s the problem and not the individual’s health differences.

The Wyeth Scandal – Big pharma learned in 1970s to geographically disperse bad vaccine batches to avoid detection

In 1970s, Wyeth Pharmaceutical, bought by Pfizer in 2009, had a cluster of child SIDS deaths (sudden infant death syndrome) in Tennessee, from its DTP vaccine. (click here)

Wyeth Executives decided to split up the vaccine lots or batches to never again allow a cluster of vials from one lot to be sent to a single state or health department. Limiting the distribution of vials to no more than 2000 in one geographic region made it less likely for any cluster of injuries to be traced to the vaccine.

Instead of recalling “hot lots” of deadly vaccines, they dispersed the lots all over the country so no one would make the connection to adverse events.

How bad is my vaccine batch?

There are three websites where you can determine how bad your Pfizer or Moderna vaccine batch is:

  1. https://howbadismybatch.com
  2. https://vaersaware.com/toxiclot-search
  3. https://matchyourbatch.org/

My Take… 

The concept of Russian roulette continues to apply to Pfizer & Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. About 4% of Pfizer doses are quite lethal and account for 70% of the side effects and 50% of the deaths.

But what about the rest? 64% of Pfizer doses had intermediate levels of adverse events. That’s still bad news.

Even the remaining 32% of Pfizer “low toxicity” doses can’t be considered “safe”, as they cause about 1% of the side effects and 1% of the deaths.

Interestingly, the fact that there are three distinct patterns suggests that the components of the vaccine may be different in each type of batch, and that poor quality control or mRNA degradation alone can’t account for these stark differences.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from COVID Intel


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page.

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*** 

 

 

It was an ugly case lasting five years with a host of ugly revelations. But what could be surprising about the murderous antics of a special arm of the military, in this case, the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, which was repeatedly deployed on missions in an open-ended war which eventually led to defeat and withdrawal?

Ben Roberts-Smith was meant to be a poster boy of the regiment, the muscular noble representative who served in Afghanistan, a war with sketchy justifications. Along the way, he became Australia’s most decorated soldier, raking in the Medal of Gallantry in 2006, the Victoria Cross in 2010, and a Commendation for Distinguished Services for outstanding leadership in over 50 high-risk operations in 2012. He came to be lionised in the popular press, even being named “Father of the Year” in 2013.

A number of his colleagues, keen to take him down a peg or two, saw through the sheen. As did journalists at The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Canberra Times. The deployments by the special forces to Afghanistan had not, as the narrative would have it, been paved with heroic engagements of military valour. Roberts-Smith, it seemed, was less plaster saint than ruthless executioner and bully.

Some of the transgressions reported on by the papers were very much of the same type investigated by the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force. The findings were eventually made available in the stomach churning Brereton Report, released in 2020.

But even prior to that, a 2016 report by sociologist Samantha Crompvoets, commissioned by the Special Operations Commander of Australia (SOCAUST), noted  body count competitions and the use of the Joint Priority Effects List (JPEL) among special force personnel sent to Afghanistan. The JPEL became what effectively amounted to a “sanctioned kill list”. Unsurprisingly, the numbers that were put forth were cooked, often featuring the gratuitous torture and killing of unarmed villagers.

Roberts-Smith, incensed by the reporting, commenced defamation proceedings against the three papers in question, and the journalists Nick McKenzie, Chris Masters and David Wroe. The use of such a civil weapon is often odious, a measure designed to intimidate scribblers and reporters from publishing material that might enlighten. While the defamation laws have been mildly improved since the trial’s commencement, featuring a public interest defence, the publishers here could only really avail themselves of the truth defence.

In the proceedings, three groups of articles featured, sporting a ghoulish succession of allegations. The first, published on June 8 and 9, 2018,  are said to have conveyed three imputations: that Roberts-Smith “murdered an unarmed and defenceless Afghan civilian, by kicking him off a cliff and procuring the soldiers under his command to shoot him”; that he also breached moral and legal rules of military engagement thereby making him a criminal; and “disgraced his country Australia and the Australian army by his conduct as a member of the SASR in Afghanistan.”

The second group of articles, published on June 9 and 10 that year, were alleged to convey three imputations of murder, including the pressuring of a new, inexperienced SASR recruit to execute an elderly, unarmed Afghan as part of the “blood the rookie” ritual and the killing of a man with a prosthetic leg.

The third group of articles, published in August 2018, contain a whole medley of imputations including alleged domestic violence against a woman at Canberra’s Hotel Realm; the authorising of an unarmed Afghan’s execution by a junior member of his patrol; assaults on unarmed Afghans; bullying of one of the troops – one Trooper M – and threatening to report another soldier – trooper T – to the International Criminal Court for firing on civilians “unless he provided an account of a friendly fire incident that was consistent with the applicant’s”.

The trial ended in July 2022, after 110 days of legal submissions and evidence. During its course, Roberts-Smith, through his lawyers, dismissed the reliability of the eyewitness accounts. They were the bitter offerings of jealousy and mania, products of fantasy and fabulism.

On June 1, the Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko found against Roberts-Smith. The three papers, along with the journalists, had made out the defence of substantial truth of several imputations made under the Defamation Act 2005 of New South Wales. The defence of contextual truth was also successful on a number of claims.

Most damning for Roberts-Smith was the establishment of the substantial truth of the first three imputations: the murder of a defenceless Afghan in Darwan by means of kicking him off a cliff and ordering troops to fire upon him, breaching the laws of military engagement and disgracing the country’s armed forces. The newspapers had not, however, established the Particulars of Truth on two missions – that to Syahchow (October 20, 2012) and Fasil (November 5, 2012). Contextual truth was also made out on the allegations of domestic violence and bullying claims.

The net effect of the claims proven to be substantially and contextually true meant that the unproven statements had done little to inflict overall damage upon the soldier’s reputation. The plaster saint had cracked.

In the assessment of Peter Bartlett, law partner at the firm MinterEllison and also one of the lawyers representing the papers, “Never has Australia seen a media defendant face such challenges from a plaintiff and his funders. This is an enormous and epic win for freedom of speech and the right for the public to know.”

Fine words. Yet this murky case does little to edify the efforts of a unit that executed its missions with a degree of frightening zeal, let alone the commanders that deployed its members in the first place. Therein lies the uncomfortable truth to the whole matter. When trained killers perform their job well, morality beats a hasty retreat. Expectations of priestly judgment and pastoral consideration evaporate before the use of force. The ultimate saddling of responsibility must always lie higher up the chain of command, ending in the offices of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Even now, the journalists involved claim they can find gemstones in the gutter, better angels among depraved beasts. According to James Chessell, managing director at Nine, which owns the three newspapers, the ruling was “a vindication for the brave soldiers of the SAS who served their country with distinction, and then had the courage to speak the truth about what happened in Afghanistan.” But did it really do that?

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

Featured image: Ben Roberts-Smith speaking at the 2015 National Flag Raising and Citizenship Ceremony (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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As El Niño looms and fighting in Sudan rages on, a pair of United Nations agencies on Monday warned that “acute food insecurity is likely to deteriorate further in 18 hunger hot spots” across 22 countries from June to November.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) delivered that warning in a joint report.

“Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen remain at the highest concern level,” the report states. “Haiti, the Sahel (Burkina Faso and Mali), and the Sudan have been elevated to the highest concern levels; this is due to severe movement restrictions of people and goods in Haiti, as well as in Burkina Faso and Mali, and the recent eruption of conflict in the Sudan.”

“Pakistan, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Syrian Arab Republic are hot spots with very high concern, and the warning is also extended to Myanmar,” the publication continues. “Lebanon, El Salvador, and Nicaragua have been added to the list of hunger hot spot countries, since the September 2022 edition. Malawi, Guatemala, and Honduras remain hunger hot spot countries.”

The document stresses that worsening conditions in the hot spots occur in the context of a “global food crisis,” so “the countries and situations covered in this report highlight the most significant deteriorations of hunger expected in the outlook period” but do not represent all nations facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

“Conflict will disrupt livelihoods—including agricultural activities and commercial trade—as people are either directly attacked or flee the prospect of attacks, or face movement restrictions and administrative impediments,” the report states. “New emerging conflicts, in particular the eruption of conflict in the Sudan, will likely drive global conflict trends and impact several neighboring countries.”

“The use of explosive ordnance and siege tactics in several hunger hot spots continues to push people into catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity,” the document adds, “highlighting the critical role of humanitarian access in preventing the worst outcomes of hunger.”

The new report notably came as the WFP announced that on Saturday, six weeks since the fighting broke out in Sudan—displacing nearly 1.4 million people—the U.N. program was able to begin distributing food assistance to the thousands affected by the conflict in and around the capital Khartoum.

“This is a major breakthrough. We have finally been able to help families who are stuck in Khartoum and struggling to make it through each day as food and basic supplies dwindle,” said Eddie Rowe, WFP’s country director in Sudan, in a statement.

“We have been working round-the-clock to reach people in Khartoum since the fighting began,” Rowe added. “A window opened late last week which allowed us to start food distributions. WFP must do more, but that depends on the parties to the conflict and the security and access they realistically guarantee on the ground.”

Along with armed conflict, drivers of the deterioration in the report’s focal regions include economic issues and the climate emergency. The publication points out that last year, “economic risks were driving hunger in more countries than conflict was,” and “the global economy is expected to slow down in 2023—amid monetary tightening in advanced economies—increasing the cost of credit.”

“Weather extremes, such as heavy rains, tropical storms, cyclones, flooding, drought, and increased climate variability, remain significant drivers in some countries and regions,” the document explains, noting that experts anticipate El Niño conditions—or the warming of sea surface temperatures across the tropical Pacific Ocean—in the months ahead, “with significant implications for several hunger hot spots.”

The report emphasizes that “urgent and scaled‑up assistance” in all hot spots “is essential to avert a further deterioration of acute food insecurity and malnutrition,” and in some cases, “humanitarian actions are critical in preventing further starvation and death.”

Agency leaders echoed the publication’s call to action. Cindy McCain, WFP’s executive director, said in a statement that “not only are more people in more places around the world going hungry, but the severity of the hunger they face is worse than ever.”

“This report makes it clear: Ae must act now to save lives, help people adapt to a changing climate, and ultimately prevent famine,” McCain declared. “If we don’t, the results will be catastrophic.”

FAO’s director-general, Qu Dongyu, stressed that “business-as-usual pathways are no longer an option in today’s risk landscape if we want to achieve global food security for all, ensuring that no one is left behind.”

“We need to provide immediate time-sensitive agricultural interventions to pull people from the brink of hunger, help them rebuild their lives, and provide long-term solutions to address the root causes of food insecurity,” he said. “Investing in disaster risk reduction in the agriculture sector can unlock significant resilience dividends and must be scaled up.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

Featured image: Food is distributed to people displaced by Cyclone Freddy in Malawi on March 29, 2023. (Photo: Badre Bahaji/World Food Program)

Kissinger Explains How to Avoid a Third World War

June 2nd, 2023 by Marc Vandepitte

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Kissinger is one of the most important voices in U.S. foreign policy. He is a hardliner and undoubtedly a war criminal. He was directly involved in the 1973 coup d’état in Chile and also in the brutal Vietnam War. Therefore, he is anything but a pacifist, on the contrary. Yet, on key geostrategic issues such as China and Ukraine, he is on a different wavelength than the current warmongers within the U.S. elite. It is useful to consider the arguments of this important dissenting voice within the establishment.

Towards a confrontation between the US and China?

On the occasion of his centenary, Kissinger gave an extensive interview to The Economist. In it, he expressed his deep concern about the current world situation, and more specifically the possible confrontation between the two current superpowers: the US and China. Kissinger thinks “Both sides have convinced themselves that the other represents a strategic danger”.

Beijing has come to the conclusion that the US will do anything to keep China down and will never treat it as an equal. In Washington, in turn, there is a belief that China wants to supplant the US as world leader. Kissinger is particularly alarmed by the increasing competition between the two superpowers to gain technological and economic superiority. He fears that this rivalry will be further fuelled by artificial intelligence.

He notes how power relations and the technological basis of warfare are evolving very rapidly. As a result, there is no longer any fixed principle on the basis of which countries can create order. And if they do not find that order, they may resort to violence.

According to Kissinger “we’re in the classic pre-world War One situation where neither side has much margin of political concession and in which any disturbance of the equilibrium can lead to catastrophic consequences.” The difference with then and now is that in a current conflict, we will find ourselves in a situation of “mutually assured destruction”.

The fate of humanity depends on the US and China getting along. And there is not much time. Given the rapid advancement of AI and its potential military applications, he says we only have five to 10 years to find a way of coming to terms with each other.

Diplomacy

Definitely not an uplifting thought. But Kissinger is no doomsayer. The fear of war gives reason for hope. He thinks it is still possible for China and the United States to coexist without the threat of all-out war with each other, albeit that success is not guaranteed. 

His rich experience tells him that determined diplomacy is the only way to avoid ruinous conflict. Ideally, this is done on the basis of shared values. He is convinced that a world order can be created based on rules that Europe, China and India could endorse. Negotiations between the two superpowers can help build mutual trust. That trust will then lead to restraint on both sides.

So negotiating rather than going to extremes in a showdown, because “if you then rely entirely on what you can achieve through power, you’re likely to destroy the world.”.

A correct understanding of China

Kissinger warns against misinterpreting China’s ambitions. According to him, the Asian giant is “not heading for world domination in a Hitlerian sense. That is not how they think or have ever thought of world order.” War was inevitable for Nazi Germany because Adolf Hitler needed it, but that is not the case with China.

He views the Chinese system as Confucian, meaning the leaders do not seek domination but seek to achieve the maximum power their country is capable of. They also seek respect for their achievements.

Kissinger thinks the all-or-nothing attitude of the US towards China is dangerous. If the US wants to find a way to live with China, it should not seek regime change.

A collapse of the communist regime would lead to civil war for 1.4 billion people and only increase global instability. “It’s not in our interest to drive China to dissolution,” Kissinger says.

Taiwan and AI

Kissinger perceives two areas where the US and China can negotiate to promote global stability: Taiwan and artificial intelligence.

First, Taiwan. Kissinger was the architect of the rapprochement between the US and China in the 1970s. On the agenda of those talks, Taiwan was one of the important topics. Mao Zedong, China’s then number one, had indicated the necessity of leaving the issue alone for 100 years. The US recognised that Taiwan was formally part of China while Beijing would make no attempts to annex the island by force.

According to Kissinger, Trump blew up this understanding that had been forged between Nixon and Mao after only 50 years. With his incitement over Taiwan, Trump wanted to elicit trade concessions from China. Biden continues the incitement with more civilised rhetoric.

Kissinger thinks the US incitement over Taiwan is unwise because a war like today’s war in Ukraine would destroy the island and devastate the global economy.

The second area where the two superpowers need to talk to each other is artificial intelligence. “We are at the very beginning of a capability where machines could impose global pestilence or other pandemics, not just nuclear but any field of human destruction.”

Kissinger thinks AI will become a major factor in security within five years. Just as the printing press played a role in causing the devastating wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, AI will have the potential to cause great havoc.

To reduce the threat of nuclear weapons, the SU and the US negotiated to control arsenals. Something similar will be needed over AI: “I think we have to begin exchanges on the impact of technology on each other. We have to take baby steps towards arms control, in which each side presents the other with controllable material about capabilities.”

Ukraine

In Kissinger’s eyes the Russian invasion of Ukraine was “a catastrophic mistake of judgment by Putin”. But the West is also to blame: “I thought that the decision to leave open the membership of Ukraine in NATO was very wrong.” That was destabilising. There was a promise of NATO protection but no plan to realise it. Ukraine was therefore vulnerable while Russia had been infuriated.

Kissinger feels inclined to support China’s peace proposal. While this plan is not taken seriously in the West, Kissinger sees in it a serious intention that may complicate diplomacy around the war, but could also provide exactly the opportunity to build mutual trust between the major powers.

According to Kissinger, the Chinese are serious because they have every interest in Russia coming out of the war unscathed. He also believes that after the phone call between Xi and Zelensky, China does act as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine.

Advantages of the plan are China’s recognition that Ukraine should remain an independent country and its warning against using nuclear weapons. It is not even out of the question that Beijing would accept Ukraine joining NATO.

Kissinger wants to end the war quickly. To achieve lasting peace in Europe, in his view, the West must make two leaps of the imagination.

First, Ukraine must join NATO. This is to protect the country but also to keep it in check. He considers the current situation as dangerous: “We have now armed Ukraine to a point where it will be the best-armed country and with the least strategically experienced leadership in Europe.”

Secondly, Europe must seek a rapprochement to Russia and let it relate in order to create a stable eastern border. There must be a new security structure in central and eastern Europe in which Russia should also find a place.”

The media and politics

Kissinger does not have a good word for the media and the political world. He rates the judgement of the media low; they also have no sense of proportion.

When he was in office, the press was hostile to him, but there was dialogue despite this. Today, they have no incentive to be critical. “My theme is the need for balance and moderation”.

But it is especially in politics that things are going badly wrong today. When he was in office, there were friendly ties with leaders of the other party. The political opponent was treated decently. Today, all means are acceptable to floor the political opponent. 

Trump and Biden have greatly fuelled polarisation. Kissinger fears this could lead to violence. The US lacks leadership: “I don’t think Biden can supply the inspiration and (…) I’m hoping that Republicans can come up with somebody better. It’s not a great moment in history.”

The US urgently needs long-term strategic thinking: “That’s our big challenge which we must solve. If we don’t, the predictions of failure will be proved true.”

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Marc Vandepitte is a Belgian economist and philosopher. He writes on North-South relations, Latin America, Cuba, and China. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.