Global Research

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

The Haaretz article (read here) shows that Israeli authorities are escalating their discrimination and segregation policies against Indigenous Christian and Muslim Palestinian citizens.

Israeli authorities have been enforcing discriminatory land practices since 1948 inside Israel against its nearly 2 million Christian and Muslim Palestinian citizens who represent 21 percent of the country’s population.

Christian and Muslim Palestinians citizens of Israel currently represent 53 percent of Galilee’s population and 25 percent of the Negev’s population. The Galilee and Negev regions comprise two-thirds of the land in Israel.

The Haaretz article states Israeli authorities are taking major steps to further ‘Judaize’ the Galilee and the Negev by intensifying discriminatory land practices and housing policy, mainly by expanding the Admissions Committee Law so that it applies to communities with up to 1,000 households..

The Israeli state directly controls 93 percent of the land in the country, including occupied East Jerusalem. A government agency, the Israel Land Authority (ILA), manages and allocates these state lands. Almost half the members of the governing body belong to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), whose explicit mandate is to develop and lease land for Jews and not any other segment of the population. The JNF owns 13 percent of Israel’s land, which the state is mandated to use “for the purpose of settling Jews.” them.

Currently, Israeli law permits towns in the Galilee and Negev  with up to 400 households to maintain admissions committees that can reject applicants from living there for being “not suitable for the social life of the community” or for incompatibility with the “social-cultural fabric.”

This authority effectively permits the exclusion of Christian and Muslim Palestinians from small Jewish towns, which Adalah, a human rights group based in Haifa, estimated in 2014 make up 43 percent of all towns in Israel, albeit a smaller percentage of the country’s population. In a 2015 study, Yosef Jabareen, a professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, found that there are more than 900 small Jewish towns, including kibbutzim, across Israel that can restrict who can live there and have no Christian and Muslim Palestinian citizens living in them. 

By expanding the Admissions Committee Law so that it applies to communities with up to 1,000 households, Israel would be preventing the 2 million indigenous Christian and Muslim Palestinian citizens from residing in 900 communities that would be inhabited by around 3 million Jewish Israelis.

Canada must condemn these discriminatory and racist policies that violate the human rights of 2 million Christian and Muslim Palestinian citizens, and everything enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Khaled Mouammar is a Christian Palestinian Canadian who was forced to flee his hometown Nazareth in 1948. He is one of the founders of the Canadian Arab Federation and a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. He received the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Award from the Governor General of Canada in 1977.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

The Grayzone participated in what appears to be the first independent expedition investigating the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. Near one of the blast sites, we discovered a diving boot used by US Navy divers. How did Swedish investigators miss this?

Video above by Agnes Andersson, click here to view

On the evening of May 24, 2023, I stood aboard a small ship called the Baltic Explorer. With sun still high overhead in the Baltic Sea, our boat sat anchored thirty-one nautical miles from the coast of Denmark, and directly above the ruptured Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the exclusive economic zone of Sweden.

For several minutes, I stared at a live video feed from an underwater drone showing never-before-seen footage of the ruptures in the pipeline. Suddenly, a strange object appeared on the screen. It was a black and orange diver’s boot.

The Grayzone has identified a model which closely resembles this boot, and is used by both US Navy and commercial divers. Ukrainian Navy divers have also been seen wearing similar boots. 

We have also learned that the boot’s presence had been previously reported to investigators, yet they have not collected it or divulged its existence. 

Video of the boot filmed by drone from the Baltic Explorer, click here to view

A new clue on the Baltic Sea floor

What took place on September 26, 2022 shattered the placid atmosphere that usually prevails on the Baltic Sea. On that day, as the war in Ukraine deepened, four explosions ruptured the $23 billion Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that carried natural gas from Russia to Europe. It was the most severe act of industrial sabotage in human history, severing the main artery for affordable energy from Russia to Germany – cheap energy that was critical to maintaining Germany’s industrial base.

Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 each consist of two pipes. Three of them were ruptured. One line of Nord Stream 2 remains intact.

Sweden, Denmark and Germany have conducted investigations, but with the exception of an early Swedish assessment that the explosions were probably caused by ​“gross sabotage,” their findings have yet to publicized.

Now, more than eight months later, a new clue has been revealed in one of the most urgent geopolitical mysteries of the century.

The boot spotted on our expedition bears a striking resemblance to those worn by US Navy divers.

Ukraine’s US-trained Navy divers have also been spotted using the same model, or one which is virtually identical. It should be noted, however, that boots of similar appearance appear to be commercially available as well.

Does this offer a clue about the identity of the perpetrators of the Nord Stream attack? Obviously, further investigation into the boot’s provenance is required, but its location and brand appear to be significant. 

In late May, Swedish engineer Erik Andersson obtained access to blast sites along both the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, in both the exclusive economic zones of Sweden and Denmark. In the course of our expedition to the blast sites, The Grayzone has obtained sonar images and underwater drone images and videos that have never been seen by the public before.

Swedish and Danish maritime authorities were notified about the expedition. As a precautionary measure, the organizer of the expedition filed an application with the Swedish Defense Authority for permission to publish the expedition’s never-before-seen high-resolution sonar images.

Fig. 1. The path of the Baltic Explorer, the expedition’s boat. The red symbols indicate the Nord Stream blast sites. Source: MarineTraffic.

The boot was spotted approximately five meters from the small leak site in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Swedish exclusive economic zone. It was a few minutes before 7:00 p.m on May 24, 2023 when our expedition’s underwater drone caught sight of it.

Fig. 2 The boot spotted by the expedition’s drone.

It is unknown for how long the boot had been exposed on the seafloor (as seen in Fig. 2). Andersson, the organizer of the expedition, believes it is possible the boot was previously covered by sediment or mud which may have been moved by underwater currents or the blasts. Otherwise, it is unclear how investigators could have missed it.

The boot closely resembles the Thor diver overboot produced by Northern Diver, a British company whose products are produced in China.

“This looks like a Thor overboot,” Neil Tordoff, the military and commercial sales director at Northern Diver, stated after viewing a photo of the boot sent by The Grayzone. “I can’t be 100% sure.”

Tordoff said Northern Diver no longer manufactures this boot due to disruptions in production brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“If it’s the Thor over boot, this was used and is still used in the oil and gas industry for divers. It’s part of a dry-diving suit that would normally be used in contaminated water to keep the diver safe,” Tordoff explained.

“This item is used worldwide,” he added.

The owner of the boot may have been a diver who lost it while planting the bombs. Alternatively, the boot may belong to a diver ordered back to the crime scene to retrieve the unexploded charge meant for the intact line of Nord Stream 2 – a theory proposed by Seymour Hersh. Or perhaps it belonged to a commercial diver. 

Fig. 3. A US Navy diver wearing the boots in a training exercise.

The organizer of the expedition, Andersson, contacted the Nord Stream 2 AG company (NS2 AG) to inquire about the boot. A representative of the company confirmed the presence of the object.

“I had a long conversation [with NS2 AG on May 30],” Andersson explained. They “clearly deny that there had ever been any diving for construction or pipe maintenance in the area.”

Andersson was also told by NS2 AG that the company had “discovered the boot in February and reported it to the Swedish investigators.” 

Fig. 4. A close-up of the US Navy diver boot (left) and the boot spotted on the expedition (right).

The HMS Belos, a submarine rescue and diving vessel of the Swedish navy, scoured the leak sites in October 2022. For more than eight hours, on two separate days, in early and then late October, the ship sat stationary over the location where the boot was spotted.

Why have the Swedish investigators neglected to collect the boot or even mention it in any of their public statements? At the time of publication, The Grayzone has received no response to an email requesting clarification from them.

A source in contact with The Grayzone spoke with a Belos diver who denied that the boot had been worn by any of their divers. The diver reportedly said it is possible that its wearer might not have noticed its absence.

A Belos diver involved in the Swedish investigation and NS2 AG representatives maintain they played no role in the boot’s appearance. 

Who bombed Nord Stream?

This February, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh cited a “a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning” of a covert operation conducted by the CIA in partnership with Norway, a key NATO partner state, to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines. A handful of self-described open-source intelligence (OSINT) researchers claimed to have “debunked” the revelations in Hersh’s report, but it’s since become apparent that some of the claims initially made by OSINT researchers may have been exaggerated.

Sweden’s Expressen reported in May 2023 that the relevance of the observed Russian vessels had been “dismissed,” and is “no longer considered interesting for the German investigators.” According to Expressen, the ships’ “positions have been mapped and the conclusion must be that they have not been in such a place that they could have carried out the deed.”

For now, German investigators seem to be focused on the Andromeda, a private yacht which they suspect was rented by a small team of pro-Ukrainian militants to transport explosives to the Nord Stream pipelines. 

Through our expedition to the sites of the Nord Stream pipelines attack, The Grayzone has obtained images and videos that have never been seen by the public. The sonar images and underwater drone videos and images may offer insight into the amount of explosives used in the sabotage and their placement. 

For now, we are left to wonder why Swedish investigators have yet to publicly demonstrate any interest in a boot found close to a Nord Stream blast site. It remains to be seen whether the item might offer a clue into the identity of the attack’s perpetrators.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Jeffrey Brodsky’s writing has appeared in Jacobin, Discourse, In These Times, La Vanguardia (in Spanish and Catalan), El País and The Copperfield Review, among others. He can be found on Twitter @JeffreyBrodsky5.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

This article was originally published in May 2019.

Every Memorial Day, Americans pay their respects to soldiers who have died while fighting for the US military. Though the good intentions and courage of those who enlist in the armed forces are admirable, the best way to honor those individuals on this holiday—and every day—is to stop sending them to war.

This pro-peace sentiment is often conflated with disrespect for the troops: If you don’t support the government’s wars, you must not support the soldiers fighting in them. However, considering the great cost to human life inflicted by military conflicts—the immense suffering soldiers, their families, and civilians in battleground countries endure—scaling back the size and scope of military programs is not only the best way to respect the troops but also a necessary measure to preserve liberty and freedom.

Militarism 

Though America was founded on the principles of limited government and skepticism of the state, popular political discourse and the politicians who perpetuate it too often fail to apply this wise distrust to militarism, which is an extension of government. Indeed, Memorial Day was established following the Civil War, where as many as 750,000 Americans died fighting each other on behalf of their splintered governments.

According to one 2015 estimate by PBS, over 1.1 million Americans have died fighting in wars throughout US history. In recent decades, especially, these wars have been spurred by state corruption. As General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower cautioned when he left office in 1961, observing the build-up of the defense industry following World War II:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Potential Ulterior Motives in Big Army Contracts

In the subsequent years, an arms industry dependent upon government funds grew bigger and increasingly powerful, gobbling up taxpayer dollars in the form of deals with the Department of Defense. In September 2018 alone, Boeing received 20 contracts worth $13.7 billion. In November 2018, Lockheed Martin scored a nearly $23 billion contract for F-35 jets. As with all big government programs, inefficiency, waste, and corruption have plagued this state-subsidized industry.

From the military paying $300,000 for coffee mugs or a projected $1.5 trillion over 55 years for Lockheed’s notoriously faulty F-35s, there are hardly any better examples of the perils of intrusive government than the current military establishment. In one instance, the Pentagon could not account for over $21 trillion dollars in “unsupported journal voucher adjustments,” a term that “refers to improperly documented accounting adjustments that are made when different financial ledgers do not match,” as the New York Times explains.

Further, a 2018 analysis by Neta Crawford, a Boston University professor of political science, found that by the end of fiscal year 2019, the US government will have spent $4.9 trillion dollars on wars since 9/11. This is particularly tragic when considering that all of the economic investment and human energy and innovation that goes into waging wars and sowing destruction could be better and more productively applied to peaceful endeavors that increase prosperity.

As former Congressman Ron Paul has said,

War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.

Unsurprisingly, following President Trump’s airstrikes in Syria in 2017, for example, defense stocks spiked. Any company that is dependent upon government handouts and favors for success is not fit for competition in a truly free market, and perpetuating this paradigm, which drives a manufactured demand for violent conflict, does a dishonor not only to our founding principles but also to the troops we are told have died for them.

The consequences of America’s addiction to militarism and interventionism are not just economic. Troops are shipped overseas on multiple tours, experiencing trauma that often stays with them for a lifetime. The rate of veteran suicides remains staggeringly high. Though current death tolls from ongoing wars in the Middle East (6,900 troops had died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan by the end of 2018) may seem small in comparison to the 58,220 American soldiers who died during the Vietnam War or the staggering figures from the Civil War, most Americans who profess to support the troops would likely agree that even one death is one too many. This is to say nothing of the soldiers injured, often permanently, in wars or the high numbers of civilian deaths and displacements in the countries plagued by intervention.

Perpetually Looming War

The urgency of this quite literal life-or-death situation is further highlighted by the US government’s continual saber-rattling. Whether some political leaders are hinting at the possibility of military intervention in Venezuela or the Pentagon is suggesting sending 120,000 additional troops to the Middle East over sensationalized fears about the Iranian threat, war is always looming—and so is potential lost life. Ultimately, though politicians assure us these wars are for our safety or the good of mankind, they serve to expand government power, costing us dearly in life and treasure.

While honoring the troops on Memorial Day is a heartfelt and respectful endeavor, we must do so by protecting those who have not yet sacrificed their lives. And it seems they would appreciate our doing so: in the 2012 presidential election, Ron Paul—perhaps the most powerful voice for peace in a generation—received markedly more contributions from members of the military than any other candidate.

Honoring the troops in this way also honors our most cherished principles. As Paul, who often criticizes the unconstitutionality of modern wars, warned lawmakers just two weeks after 9/11:

How many American troops are we prepared to lose? How much money are we prepared to spend? How many innocent civilians, in our nation and others, are we willing to see killed? How many American civilians will we jeopardize? How much of our civil liberties are we prepared to give up? How much prosperity will we sacrifice?

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Carey Wedler is a video blogger and Senior Editor for Anti-Media.

Featured image: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Daniel Hughes [public domain]

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

A deep fake video depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin declaring martial law and warning that he would order a general mobilization briefly dominated televisions and radios in some of the country’s border cities Monday.

The broadcast, which also claimed there was an ongoing Ukrainian incursion into Russia, was aired in Belgorod, Voronezh, and Rostov, cities in close proximity to Ukraine’s border.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed to state-affiliated news agency TASS that the deep fake video had aired, adding there was no state media address made by Putin on Monday.

In #Russia, several radio stations and even local TV networks appear to have been hacked to broadcast a deep fake address allegedly by president Putin.

This fake address announced mass mobilisation and introduced martial law in border regions.

1/2pic.twitter.com/Z79Jqjil6W

— Alex Kokcharov (@AlexKokcharov) June 5, 2023

“There was a hack in some regions. In particular, I know that there was a hack on Mir radio and in some networks,” Peskov said. The government has taken control of the affected networks, and are “sorting out” the situation, he added.

Those responsible for the hack have yet to be identified.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

Even though most Americans aren’t paying much attention at this point, the way that the war in Ukraine is evolving should greatly concern all of us.  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his generals very clearly understand that they are in very big trouble unless they can draw the U.S. and other NATO powers directly into the conflict. All of Bakhmut is now under Russian control, and the Ukrainians continue to lose troops at a staggering pace. They are holding a losing hand, but if Ukrainian leaders can find a way to get the Russians to use tactical nukes or other weapons of mass destruction, that would change everything.  Western powers would feel compelled to respond in kind, and then we really would have a truly apocalyptic conflict on our hands.

In recent days, there has been a tremendous amount of hype about the coming “counter-offensive” that the Ukrainians have supposedly been planning…

Kyiv renewed its plea for operational silence around the long-awaited counter-offensive against Russian forces with a clip of heavily-armed soldiers pressing their fingers to their lips.

The sleekly-produced footage features masked front-line troops gesturing for silence amid the distant rumble of artillery and gunfire.

It ends with images of soaring F-16 fighter jets – long coveted by Kyiv as it seeks to boost its air defence against Russian missiles and drones.

But instead of trying to retake Bakhmut or any of the other areas of Ukraine that the Russians have captured, the Ukrainians have been focusing their attacks on Russia itself.

Long-range drones have been hitting targets very deep inside Russia, and on one occasion that even included the Kremlin.

And Ukrainian artillery has been relentlessly pounding Russian territory.  The shelling has been particularly brutal in the Belgorod region…

Ukrainian forces continued to shell Russia’s border region of Belgorod overnight into Sunday after two people were killed the previous night and hundreds of children were evacuated away from the border, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

“Overnight, it was quite restless,” Gladkov said on the Telegram channel, adding that the Shebekino and Volokonovsky districts had suffered “lots” of damage from the latest shelling.

Shelling civilian targets in Russian territory is going to do nothing to help the Ukrainians regain lost territory.

But it is putting enormous pressure on Russian leaders.

Just imagine how we would feel if U.S. territory was being shelled.  We would be calling on the White House to nuke the living daylights out of whoever was shelling us.

Well, that is exactly how millions upon millions of Russian citizens feel right now.

And what makes things even worse is that small “militia groups” have begun crossing the Russian border to conduct attacks on nearby cities…

The New York Times wrote on Saturday that “Shebekino, a town of 40,000 six miles from the border, has effectively become a new part of the front line as Ukraine has intensified attacks inside Russia, including on residential areas near its own borders.” This is all upending the lives of residents in the border region, akin to what already happened long ago on the Ukrainian side of the border. “The spate of assaults, most recently by militia groups aligned against Moscow, has sparked the largest military evacuation effort in Russia in decades,” the report underscored. The past days have witnessed area residents move into temporary shelters, including the large Belgorod arena in the oblast capital.

The “militia groups” that are performing these raids are actually using equipment that has been provided by the U.S. and Poland…

The Russian fighters aligned against Moscow who launched a cross-border raid from Ukraine into the Belgorod region of Russia last week used at least four tactical vehicles originally given to Ukraine by the United States and Poland, U.S. officials said, raising questions about the unintended use of NATO-provided equipment and Kyiv’s commitments to secure materiel supplied by its supporters.

Three of the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, also known as MRAPs, taken into Russia by the fighters were provided by the United States and the fourth was from Poland, according to people familiar with the U.S. intelligence finding, which has not previously been reported. Those people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.

And it is being reported that Polish fighters are among those that have been going across the border during these raids…

The Polish Volunteer Corps has published pictures, confirming it participated in the first armed raid into the Belgorod region, Russia, together with the Russian Volunteer Corps

Russian soldiers claimed earlier they heard some of the enemies communicating in Polish

This war has reached such a dangerous stage.

The Russians aren’t stupid.  They know that foreign fighters now make up a very significant percentage of the forces that they are facing.

And if Russian cities continue to get shelled and raided, it is only a matter of time before Russian leaders lose their temper.

If the Russians decide to use tactical nukes, it really will be the beginning of the end.

So let us pray that cooler heads will prevail.

Meanwhile, things with China continue to get even more tense.

On Saturday, a Chinese warship and an American warship almost slammed directly into one another in the Taiwan Strait…

This is the astonishing moment a Chinese warship comes within 150 yards of an American destroyer in Taiwan Strait, just days after the Pentagon said it would not stand for ‘bullying’ by Beijing.

Footage obtained by Global News, shows a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) warship cut across the bow of a U.S. guided-missile destroyer on Saturday while it was transiting the Taiwan Strait.

USS Chung Hoon and HMCS Montreal had also been transiting the strait on a rare joint mission when a PLAN warhsip cut across the bow of Chung-Hoon.

We really are living during a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, but most of us in the western world are focused on other things.

Even though our leaders have clearly demonstrated how incompetent they are over and over again, most of us just assume that they will be able to keep us out of a nuclear war.

Unfortunately, both sides just continue to escalate matters, and it appears that it is just a matter of time before someone crosses a line that will never be able to be uncrossed.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Michael Snyder has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News which are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. 

It is finally here! Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

Extensive government blacklists, revealed by the Twitter Files, are used to censor left-wing and right-wing critics. This censorship apparatus has been turned on the reporter who exposed them.

On Dec. 24, 2022 Matt Taibbi was in a room at the Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco poring through reports sent to Twitter from an entity called the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF). The FITF is an FBI-led interagency task force that forwards “moderation requests” from numerous government agencies, including Homeland Security, the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department, to social media outlets. Taibbi was given access to the internal traffic by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk. It revealed how the FBI and other government agencies routinely suppressed news and commentary. He published a Twitter thread that night, Christmas Eve, with the headline “Twitter and Other Government Agencies”.

“There would be a list of YouTube videos,” Taibbi said when I reached him by phone. “There would be a notation that would say ‘We assess that these are all created by the Internet Research Agency in Russia. We assess that they are promoting anti-Ukraine attitudes.’ I would see that all those videos were no longer on YouTube. You can make your own deduction from that, but that was the pattern. They would send Excel spreadsheets full of account names and either all or most of them would be gone.”

The content that was suppressed included right-wing and left-wing reports critical of the dominant narrative advanced by the Democratic Party and the old establishment wing of the Republican Party, which has been folded into the Democratic Party. Threads from the Yellow Vests movement, activists from the Occupy movement, Global Revolution Live, negative stories about Joe Biden, reports on the Ukrainian energy company Burisma that paid Hunter Biden about $1 million a year while his father was vice-president, positive stories about Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, reports about Ukrainian human rights abuses and details of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop were part of the plethora of accounts that were flagged and disappeared. 

I was a victim of this censorship. The six-year archive of my show On Contact, broadcast on RT America, was erased from YouTube, although not one show was about Russia and none violated YouTube’s content guidelines. Episodes were later reposted on The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel. The show gave a voice to those targeted by the FITF — anti-imperialists, anti-capitalists, prison reform advocates, Black Lives Matter and Palestinian activists, anti-fracking activists and independent intellectuals, journalists and authors including David Harvey, Noam Chomsky, Sami Al-Arian, Glen Ford, Amira Hass, Mumia Abu Jamal, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Medea Benjamin, Nils Melzer, Pankaj Mishra, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi and Cornel West.

The FBI, before the release of Taibbi’s Twitter thread on Dec. 24, had denounced the Twitter Files as the work of “conspiracy theorists” who fed the public “misinformation” and whose “sole purpose” was “discrediting the agency.” 

“They must think us unambitious, if our ‘sole aim’ is to discredit the FBI,” Taibbi responded. “After all, a whole range of government agencies discredit themselves in the Twitter Files. Why stop with one?”

Taibbi was acutely aware these Christmas Eve revelations, which for the first time revealed the role of the CIA, would further enrage the intelligence agencies.

“My understanding is that the FITF has a staff of at least 80,” Taibbi said. “It consists primarily of the FBI, but it also includes people from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The FITF was the conduit for content moderation requests that went to the tech platforms. They had something called an industry meeting which was, at first monthly and then weekly, leading into the 2020 election. It included companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Wikimedia, a series of others, about two dozen of them. They would have a general briefing on trends. Individually, each of the companies were receiving notices. Some of them were receiving weekly notices from the FITF. Twitter was. We know that because there were very specific instructions about how it was done. Requests that came from the states went through the DHS. Requests that came from the Federal Government went through the FBI. They went through a program called Teleporter. That’s how we got those documents.”

In March, Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were called to testify before the Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government. While Taibbi was testifying on March 9, an IRS agent visited his house in New Jersey.

Taibbi discovered that the IRS opened a case against him on the day he published his Christmas Eve Twitter thread from a letter House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan sent to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel inquiring about Taibbi’s case. It was a Saturday. It was Christmas Eve. Taibbi did not owe taxes. The case was four years old. All this suggests that the IRS case was politically motivated and the FBI was monitoring Taibbi.

“There’s probably little doubt that they were at least closely following all the Twitter Files reporters, but probably they were monitoring in other ways too,” Taibbi deduced.

“One of the reasons I agreed to testify before the weaponization of government committee — and I got a lot of grief from old lefty friends who w

ere upset that I was appearing before a Republican-led committee — was that the other mainstream news reporters weren’t picking up a lot of these stories that I thought really needed some attention. I needed other reporters to do some work on this. My thinking was, if I testified in Washington it might get some more attention, not just nationally but maybe globally.”

Taibbi ran into a buzzsaw of orchestrated character assassination. The Democratic members of the committee rarely let Taibbi speak. They delivered vicious and insulting diatribes. Here is a clip of Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, along with Sam Seder and other hosts at The Majority Report, attacking Taibbi.

“I expected there to be hostility in the questioning, but what happened in that hearing was amazing, even to be involved with as a spectator,” he said. “Rather than engage with the material of the Twitter Files reporting on any level, even negatively, it was pure character-assassination. The ranking member called us a direct threat to people who oppose us. We were ‘so-called journalists.’ We were the lapdogs and scribes of Elon Musk. We didn’t believe in Russian interference. We didn’t respect authority. I had a tin-foil hat I was told to take off by one member. It was one member after the other creating clips of video that were replayed on MSNBC and CNN later that night. That was how people got the news about that hearing.”

“We grew up in an atmosphere where the Democrats were always the champions of free speech, more so than the Republicans,” Taibbi told me. “Through the 70s, 80s, 90s and even the early 2000s. Suddenly, on this issue, it was wall-to-wall hostility. There wasn’t a Dennis Kucinich or Bernie Sanders type who stands out from the crowd. There are no dissenters in the ranks of this party anymore.”

“The old school ACLU-like liberals, they’re just gone now,” he said. “There’s this new movement that doesn’t believe in countering bad speech with better speech. They believe in closing it off and shutting it down. That’s what the Twitter Files were about. That’s why there was so much hostility.”

Taibbi was informed there were problems with his 2018 tax return. The IRS said it had sent him letters about the issue, but Taibbi had not received any letters and the IRS refused to produce copies. He also had electronic confirmation from the IRS that his 2018 tax return had been received.

It was only when Congressman Jordan wrote to the IRS asking for clarification that Taibbi became aware of the files the IRS had amassed on him. These included information taken from search engines and commercial investigative software such as Anyhoo, Consumer Affairs and LexisNexis. They had his voter registration records, whether he possessed a hunting or fishing license, whether he had a concealed weapons permit, his telephone numbers, articles he had written and articles written about him.

“Why would an IRS agent need to know anything about my professional history or about controversies that I’ve been involved with or things that I had written about?” he asked. “That seems pretty dubious.”

“They’re not worried about the optics, about doing something like sending an IRS agent to the home of a journalist who has a big platform and a reputation for not being afraid to say something about it,” he said. “They’re not worried about how this looks. It is concerning for a number of reasons. It reminds you of things you would see in a third world country.”

Taibbi was interviewed by MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan. Hasan, or his researchers, had combed through Taibbi’s reports and found a couple of very minor errors, including a confused timeline and a misplaced acronym. Hasan argued that the errors were evidence that Taibbi intentionally lied to Congress. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seconded the accusation. The ranking committee member, Stacey Plaskett, sent Taibbi a letter accusing him of lying to Congress. Plaskett threatened Taibbi with a five-year prison sentence.

There are three steps to destroying a reporter who can’t be bought off or intimidated. The first is a campaign by the powerful, whose lies and crimes have been exposed, along with their obsequious courtiers in the press, to discredit the reporting. The second is a sustained campaign of character assassination. The third is persecution carried out once the reporter’s credibility has been weakened, his or her ability to publish or broadcast is degraded and public support has eroded.

This is what happened to Julian Assange. It happened before Assange to Don Hollenbeck, I.F. Stone, Gary Webb, Ray Bonner and many others. It is what is happening to Taibbi whose revelations of widespread censorship — by the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security and other intelligence and government agencies — have enraged the ruling class.

I don’t know if they will win. Let us hope not. But the deafening silence by nearly all press outlets to what they are doing to Taibbi, as is true for Assange, is ominous and self-defeating. It sends a signal to those who attempt to report about the inner workings of power that no matter how well known you are or how high a profile you have, you too will be targeted. The concerted attacks on Taibbi are an example of how the walls are steadily closing in to impose an iron conformity, one more piece of our emergent corporate totalitarianism.

“Nobody wants to deal with a full-throated negative media campaign that you volunteer for when you do this kind of work,” he said. “It never goes away. That’s kind of a drag. We’ve seen it happen with you, with Glenn Greenwald after the Snowden business and it happened with him again during Russiagate. It’s not fun. People don’t want to go through it. It’s a disincentive to do counter-narrative work.”

“It’s funny, Chris, I thought a lot during this process about your book Death of The Liberal Class,” Taibbi said. “There have been so many different instances where the basic story we’re looking at with a lot of the Twitter Files reports was a breakdown in the system of checks and balances. Civil society organizations, the media, private industry and the government, they’re all supposed to have different interests. They have a check on each other. But what we’re seeing is, underneath the surface, they’re engaged in anti-competitive behavior…It’s basically media, these internet censors, the enforcement agencies and NGOs, all acting in concert against the population as opposed to checking each other. You were predicting this. When these institutions break down, when they don’t work anymore, this is what happens. It’s a pretty quick step to consolidation of authority. That’s the scary part. Once upon a time, if you were in media, even a small offense in this direction would’ve attracted solidarity amongst the ranks. Now there’s nothing.”

He decried the role major media organizations played in hunting down Jack Teixeira, a National Guard technology support staffer who posted classified documents online.

“Instead of reporting on the contents of big intelligence leaks, the Washington Post and The New York Times worked with Bellingcat to deliver this suspect to the authorities,” he said. “This is a new role for the media. It is a big shift in how the press thinks of itself. It doesn’t see itself as something separate from government or law enforcement. It sees itself as on the same side.”

“There were probably a lot of people who were frightened by the spectacle of the rise of Donald Trump,” he said. “They were told over and over again that this was a Christian nationalist neofascist movement. There are elements of that. There’s real truth to that. But in response to it they became exactly the thing they were telling everybody they were fighting against. By the time people wake up it might be a little bit too late, which is unfortunate.”

A discredited ruling class, which has disemboweled the nation for its corporate masters and whose primary mission is the perpetuation of permanent war, has no intention of carrying out reform. It will not permit an exchange of ideas or allow its critics a platform. It knows it is hated. It fears the rise of the neofascists its dysfunction and corruption have spawned. It seeks to perpetuate itself only through fear —— fear of what will replace it. That is all it has to offer a demoralized citizenry. Constitutional guarantees of free speech and the right to privacy are noisome impediments to its tenuous grip on power. These constitutional rights have been effectively abolished. What the Twitter Files revealed is massive government blacklists and the craven acquiescence of media platforms to marginalize and ban individuals and groups on these blacklists. Taibbi, not surprisingly, is being targeted by the totalitarian machinery he exposed.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

Featured image: Redacted – by Mr. Fish

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

We all knew the pre-covid world was careening, lustily so, towards a dark place in a way that could never be sustained: rampant greed, endless war, catastrophic debts run up by and for the banks that seemed to rule us all.

Travel was relatively cheap, the booming internet had created a global community like nothing before in history, and the ever-progressing digital landscape grew ever more precise and powerful. Giddy teens with phones whose computing power exponentially outstripped the highest technology of the Apollo moon missions were gaga over Facebook and Instagram and the like, and pornography became available to anyone with a mobile device or computer, no questions asked (except the porn sites’ requisite splashpage warning about age, which required nothing more than a click to dismiss).

We knew, I think, that something wasn’t right, and despite the mess there was still a sense that our autonomy prevailed. But when covid hit the clenched iron fist of the ruling ‘elites’ came down hard. All of our excesses, in a matter of weeks, were curtailed, and our unalienable rights were universally dismissed in the name of a pandemic whose lethality never surpassed that of a flu, but whose ‘cure’ – and here I am referring to the second punch in the combination, the jab – has managed to kill off, maim and injure far too many. If some accounts turn out to be true, it will also have rendered large swaths of the population infertile.

During this three year orgy of repression most people complied with their governments’ orders to stay home, stay apart and get inoculated upon pain of ostracism. Here in New Zealand the hapless former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, after promising that our rights to bodily sovereignty would be preserved, coolly – I am tempted to say insouciantly – fashioned an apartheid society.

This is all old hat, so to speak, and now, in our abnormal new normal, the shadow of the World Health Organization looms large, warnings about inevitable future pandemics grow, and the emergency legislation that gives the government the right to lock us down again in New Zealand at the drop of a hat, no questions asked, remains in place.

We are still deluged with news and articles about covid, covid variants, covid remedies, spike proteins, mRNA, DNA, boosters, bivalent so-called vaccines, and the ever growing cascade of deaths and injuries in the wake of the so-called vaccine and its boosted reiterations, a medical intervention that was never needed and has proved indubitably to be dangerous.

I am, frankly, bored, and also tired.

I knew at the outset that the pandemic was a fraud not only by the nature of its propagandistic launch, but by the glaring absence of any institutional impetus to encourage treatment. Even today as I write, the Medical Council of New Zealand continues its persecution of doctors who did not abandon their duty to informed consent and who had the audacity to treat people with covid and to treat victims of the jabs. Insanely ridiculous riders have been attached to doctors licences requiring that they not use Ivermectin, for example – which undermines the right of a physician to prescribe and treat as befits an individual’s needs, using whatever pharmaceuticals are necessary.

After three years colleagues and friends who have sacrificed their jobs to preserve their integrity continue to be bludgeoned by the silence of medical practitioners who could have ended the madness in minutes had they not cowered in obeisance to what they knew was, flatly, wrong.

As flu season begins masks are making a comeback, people are lining up for vaccinations, and when I attempt to talk to those on the ‘other side’ I am told to move on and to stop living in the past.

The problem is, this ‘past’ is present still.

Those who have lost their incomes are scarred and wanting, those who have been injured from the inoculations are suffering, and those who have lost their lives are gone. Autopsies – which by any honest reckoning should be mandated for the departed – aren’t happening, and all the dying is chalked up to ‘excess mortality’ – an eerily empty phrase that is used to cover up real murder.

The predominant majority, who had neither the wit nor inclination to question authority, even when that authority was patently absurd, are still here. Few of them know anything about the WHO or central bank digital currencies, and fewer still even care. Few connect the rise in heart attacks and kidney ailments and cancers with the jab, or the increase in anxiety problems with the lockdowns, or the trampling of unalienable rights with tyranny.

When the next onslaught against us occurs, will this majority toe the line and take the broad gate leading to destruction once again?

This time the ball is in our court. Let’s see if we have what it takes.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand. Visit his substack at https://newzealanddoc.substack.com/

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

For over half a year, the mainstream propaganda machine has been reporting on the “upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive”. The autumn offensive soon became a winter one, then a spring one and now it’s a “grand” summer offensive. Each was supposed to be “decisive” and “а turning point” that would result in “a complete defeat for Russia”. Credit should certainly be given to the endless self-confidence of those who truly believe that. However, unlike in regular civilian life, self-confidence in war gets people killed and, according to various sources and estimates, this has resulted in close to 200,000 KIA (killed in action) for the Kiev regime forces by now, with the figure for those wounded being not far from half a million.

Such disastrous numbers beg the obvious question – how could the Neo-Nazi junta ever hope to conduct a counteroffensive of any kind, much less a successful one? To answer this question in an unbiased and informed way, we have decided to interview KRN, a Belgrade-based military-focused think tank that includes experts from various fields, including missile technologies, military aviation, naval and land warfare, etc. One of their leading members, Captain Liner, is an expert in all of the aforementioned fields of military science and has graciously offered us his take on the ever-upcoming counteroffensive of the Kiev regime forces and how it might play out.

*

Drago Bosnic (DB): Captain, first and foremost, thank You for taking the time to conduct this interview and give us Your informed opinion on this hotly debated and largely controversial topic.

Captain Liner (CL): Thank You for the invitation. Right off the bat, I would like to point out that KRN has existed for years and we have been approached many times by various news outlets. However, our style of reporting and research isn’t very suitable for the largely sensationalist media, which is why we heavily scrutinize everyone before accepting such proposals. It’s very difficult to come across media that allows unbiased reporting and analyses. We all have our own biases and emotionally charged opinions. However, that does not prevent us from looking at things objectively and from multiple angles, regardless of whether anyone likes it or not.

DB: That’s precisely why we highly appreciate Your expertise. So let’s dive straight into our questions. Depending on varying estimates, the political West has provided upwards of $150 billion to the Kiev regime, which is well over double the nominal annual military budget of Russia. Still, the successes of the Kiev regime forces are sorely lacking. How so?

CL: Money being the decisive parameter of military power is one of the most common misconceptions that we see everywhere nowadays. As you said, estimates do vary significantly and if we were to believe them, we’d think that Russia is truly doomed in its geopolitical struggle with the West. I mean, how is it even possible for a country that has consistently been outspent by 20-25 times for over 30 years to even stand a chance against the unified might of NATO and its international partners? Well, the answer lies in the very idea that Russia is spending 20-25 times less. Nominally, it does. However, that says nothing of the actual state of its military.

Firstly, Russia inherited one of the largest and most advanced MICs (Military Industrial Complexes) in the world. The Soviet Union invested a massive portion of its economic output into its military and by the late 1980s, it had by far the largest and most powerful armed force in the history of man. Even the current collective strength of NATO pales in comparison to what the USSR had at the time. And when I say that Russia inherited it all, even that is a somewhat erroneous term, as the people and resources didn’t actually move anywhere, but largely stayed in the same place and continued extremely sensitive work for the country even during the troublesome 1990s, as evidenced by Russia’s massive advantage in fields such as hypersonic weapons.

In fact, spies from all over the world are trying to get that know-how, including those from some countries that are virtually allied to Russia. Countries that have massive economies and much larger pools of human resources than Russia itself. However, this accumulated knowledge cannot simply be bought with money. It requires much more than that. Additionally, the Russian economy is not based on abstract ideas such as those in the West, dominated by financial institutions and what I like to call “geoeconomic gambling”. This is why the Russian military hasn’t had shortages of weapons and ammunition due to production problems.

If there were any, they were largely a matter of logistics and/or bureaucratic constraints, problems which have been resolved by now, hopefully. On the other hand, the billions for Ukraine that you’re talking about are just digits on a computer screen somewhere in New York City. And even in the case all that phantom money existed in reality, it means literally nothing for the common soldier in the trenches. Rifles and howitzers don’t shoot dollars. Jets don’t run on them either. What you really need is metal for bullets and shells, chemical compounds for the explosive, jet fuel for aircraft, etc. That needs to come from somewhere and Ukraine hasn’t gotten nearly enough to meet its needs, particularly if they were to conduct a counteroffensive against a military such as that of Russia.

DB: On that note, many largely impartial analysts, particularly those from Asia, insist that the probability of a successful advance deep into Russian positions is extremely low and that the supply of the necessary weapons and ammunition for this kind of large-scale military operation may take more than two years. What is Your opinion on this matter?

CL: I largely agree with such assessments. What’s more, I think it’s not just that it may take longer than two years, but whether it’s even possible. Ukrainians simply don’t have the logistical capacity and sustainability for such an endeavor, even if the Russians were to suddenly stop all long-range strikes on the battered logistics that Ukraine already has. Russian kamikaze drones, glide bombs and long-range artillery and missiles have proven to be particularly effective in disrupting Ukrainian supply lines. Obviously, this doesn’t mean there won’t be any attacks [by Ukraine], but those can hardly be considered serious offensive operations. In simpler terms, a counteroffensive that would suppress the Russians on a wider front is unfeasible.

Ukrainians cannot support the dynamics of advancement either in width or in depth, they cannot logistically cover mass movements, but more importantly, they cannot establish a stable rear. In fact, for the counteroffensive to make sense at all, they would first have to disrupt both Russian logistics and the rear, as well as cut their lines of communication. But how can they achieve this? With what? Apart from the relatively regular reconnaissance-in-force (RIF) and occasional temporary salients, there’s nothing even remotely resembling offensive operations. Surely, long-range weapons supplied by the West can hit things here and there, but this cannot disrupt Russian logistics, let alone bog down the entire Russian military.

It seems to me that the Russian side understands this much better. For example, when they pulled back from the right bank of the Kherson oblast (region), this was precisely due to logistics and the danger of flooding due to Ukrainian attacks on the Kakhovka dam. The Russians were able to stabilize the frontline along a very defensible natural barrier. On the other hand, the Ukrainians couldn’t stabilize their own lines even when they were defending, where these lines of defense and rear were shortening, let alone now when they are planning to attack and where the aforementioned lines would be stretching and extending.

However, as I said already, this doesn’t mean that Ukrainian forces cannot advance anywhere. They could get deeper into some areas, but how will they hold them? This is why we’re seeing a lot of these incursions that simply end in virtually immediate withdrawal. Still, such attacks cannot be considered a true counteroffensive. A counteroffensive is a large-scale military operation that ideally results in permanent gains. However, for the sake of semantics, optics and propaganda, they could call it a “counteroffensive”.

A real large-scale operation involving tens of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of tanks can certainly be successful, as it’s exceptionally difficult to defend against such attacks. Still, the cost of such an operation, in terms of both manpower and resources, is what tells us how successful it truly is, as losing thousands of soldiers for several square kilometers of grassland or concrete rubble begs the obvious question – is it worth it? My impression is that much of what we’re seeing from Ukraine is made for the purposes of information warfare.

DB: Since You’ve mentioned the Kherson oblast, how likely is an offensive in that direction?

CL: In simplest possible terms, it can be said that it would literally be a suicide mission. When the right bank of the Dnieper River, along with the city of Kherson, was abandoned last year by General Surovikin’s decision, many saw that move as a shame and a defeat, but in fact, that secured Russian positions on the left bank and even the Crimean peninsula itself. The Dnieper River is over one kilometer wide in some places, which absolutely negates the possibility of setting up pontoon crossings, while sending small detachments in fast boats has already proved to be a suicide mission a couple of times. In addition, any idea that the Ukrainian Air Force can support such advances is not even worth discussing considering the power of Russian fighter jets and air defense systems.

DB: How about Zaporozhye and/or Donbass?

CL: The Zaporozhye direction might be the best option realistically speaking, because in case of a breakthrough, the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] could reach the Sea of Azov and thus threaten the Donetsk region from the south, as well as Crimea itself, which would lose its land connection with Russia. The left bank of the Dnieper would also be exposed in that case and, once again, the Crimean peninsula too, which would then be left with the Crimean Bridge as the only connection with Russia, putting it at considerable risk because we should not forget that the UK delivered “Storm Shadow” cruise missiles to Ukraine. However, anticipating all this, Russia built several lines of defense in the area [of Zaporozhye], making them virtually impossible to break through. Ukraine will certainly try, but the price of each attempt would be very, very costly.

As for the Donetsk direction, offensive operations in this area are the most likely scenario, especially through Avdeyevka and Maryinka. However, as Avdeyevka is in a semi-encirclement, it would be necessary to first break through that semi-encirclement and then threaten the city of Donetsk itself. Almost the same applies to Maryinka, although the situation is a bit different, as Ukrainians still hold about 15% of the settlement and are constantly sending in reinforcements. And while this direction may be the most suitable for a counteroffensive, since the fall of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), Russian aviation and artillery have been keeping Ukrainians at bay. Individual RIF and attempts to break through yield no results and any larger grouping of armored forces leads to the danger of repeating the same mistakes as in the Zaporozhye and Donetsk directions.

DB: What about the possibility of an all-out attack on regions such as Belgorod, Bryansk and/or Kursk?

CL: Apart from the headline-grabbing information warfare that I already mentioned, I find it extremely unlikely to see a large-scale offensive on regions in Russia proper. First of all, there’s no way to justify such a move and second, what would be the strategic goal of such an offensive, provided it would even be successful (which is effectively impossible)? Where would the Ukrainian military stop in the extremely improbable case they conquer all border areas? Not to mention that this would also enrage the Russian people and further rally them to support their government, the same one that has been warning them about the dangers of NATO expansionism for decades. Mind you, all this is without even taking into account Russia’s reaction, as Moscow certainly wouldn’t be sitting idly while its territories are under attack and/or occupation.

DB: How likely is the possibility of an uncontrollable escalation between NATO and Russia if the counteroffensive fails?

CL: This is perhaps the most complex and by far the most important question of all. What we’re seeing now is that certain global powers simply don’t want to find a way to defuse tensions and negotiate a reasonable, mutually beneficial settlement with their strategic adversaries. On the contrary, escalation seems to be the only vector of their geopolitical engagements. Perhaps most disturbingly, many in Washington and Brussels have directly linked their political fates to that of Kiev authorities, meaning that if Ukraine loses, this would also inevitably result in irreparable damage to their political careers and influence. Last year we saw a dramatic increase in political instability in the West, including the fall of several prominent governments in various major Western European countries.

DB: What can Moscow do to stop or at least severely hamper the political West’s ability to arm the Kiev regime?

CL: This is directly tied to the previous question. I don’t think there’s an easy answer, because if there was one, it would’ve been implemented by now. I’m sure the Russian military and intelligence services are perfectly aware of which Western weapons are entering Ukraine and where exactly they are stored. The reason why Russia is probably not targeting the logistics of this truly massive operation is the fact that Ukraine simply uses the civilian infrastructure for this purpose, meaning that Russia would need to destroy it. And even if it did, Ukraine would just switch to another one. However, this certainly doesn’t mean that Russia is letting the West arm Ukraine with impunity. Whenever there’s a larger concentration of munitions and other weapons, either Russian aviation or ground-based missiles rain down and destroy the facilities those are stored in.

DB: Captain, thank You for this truly informative and in-depth point of view. It was a pleasure.

CL: Thank You for the invitation.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

 

 

 

There are a lot of anonymous bureaucrats that man the offices in the nation’s capital. If one were to mention the name Wendy Sherman at a Washington DC cocktail gathering it is likely that few in the room will have ever heard of her, but she has long been one of the most important players in Democratic Party administrations when it comes to foreign policy in key parts of the world. Sherman, the Deputy Secretary of State, will be retiring this summer after more than thirty years with the Foreign Service. She has been a fixture in often controversial top level policy making since Bill Clinton was in the White House, where she served as a top adviser to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, also taking on the role of lead negotiator in the ultimately unsuccessful talks to stop North Korea’s ballistic missile program in the late 1990s. With a return to power of the Democrats in 2008, she served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Obama. To her credit, she was a lead negotiator with Iran on the 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA), which Donald Trump acting on bad advice subsequently withdrew from.

More recently, Sherman has been a key part of the Biden administration’s efforts to develop strategies to confront China in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere whenever Beijing has sought to develop trade relationships with key suppliers of essential raw materials. This has included putting pressure on allies like Australia and New Zealand in the Pacific to reject Chinese commercial initiatives, elevating what began as competitive trade policies into a perception that China was becoming a threat to American national security. Sherman also played a significant role in encouraging international diplomatic and military support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion.

Sherman’s current position as State Department number two was bestowed on her by President Joe Biden. Her comments relating to her retirement reveal something of her own philosophy as well as the views of the current administration. She said

“The arc of history will only bend toward justice if people of conscience steer it in the right direction. That it is our job to have courage, to collaborate with others and seek out common ground, to persist against the odds, to use our voice and our power for good—to keep faith with the promise of our democracy and to never, ever lose hope. Diplomacy is not for the faint of heart…”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken not surprisingly praised Sherman’s career, saying that

“President Biden asked Wendy to serve in this role because he knew he could count on her to help revitalize America’s alliances and partnerships and manage our complex relationships with competitors.”

Blinken described Sherman’s lengthy career as a diplomat in a statement after her resignation was announced, saying she has

“helped lead our engagement in the Indo-Pacific, the region where the history of the 21st century will be written. She has deepened our bonds with our friends around the world, especially with the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the European Union. She has overseen our efforts to strengthen the Department’s capabilities to manage our relationship with the People’s Republic of China, and built greater convergence with allies and partners… Her remarkable career – which spans more than three decades, three presidents, and five secretaries of state – addressed some of the toughest foreign policy challenges of our time. Our nation is safer and more secure, and our partnerships more robust, due to her leadership.”

One can expect kind words wrapped around positive government-speak both from Blinken and from Sherman herself after her admittedly long years of service, but there is something manifestly false about the euphoria over a US foreign policy that has during the Biden time in office eschewed diplomacy in favor of military threats and thousands of punitive Treasury Department sanctions. If anything, contradicting Blinken, the United States is in no way “safer and more secure” thanks to his and Wendy Sherman’s efforts, quite the contrary. It has, inter alia, converted major powers Russia and China, who were actively seeking normalized relations, into de facto enemies with all that implies, a result that, even if it does not turn into World War 3, might well mean the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency as the world moves towards increased financial and banking system multipolarity.

If Sherman and Blinken, acting on behalf of Joe Biden, have had a success it would consist of getting the allegedly defensive alliance NATO on board the China-phobia train, with Beijing joining Russia as one of the two great autocratic “threats to democracy.” At the end of June 2022, Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General, declared that China does represent “serious challenges” to the alliance, which, for the first time agreed to include “threats posed by Beijing” into plans for its “future strategy” concept (PDF), joining Russia as a threat to “NATO’s interests, security and values.” Stoltenberg explained how “We now face an era of strategic competition … China is substantially building up its forces, including in nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbors, including Taiwan. China is not [yet] our adversary but we must be clear-eyed about the serious challenges it represents.”

Antony Blinken also climbed on to the horse that Stoltenberg was riding, commenting in familiar terms how

“One of the things that [China’s] doing is seeking to undermine the rules-based international order that we adhere to, that we believe in, that we helped build. And if China’s challenging it in one way or another, we will stand up to that.”

That the rules-based order is little more than a contrivance to maintain political and military dominance by Washington and its friends is by now clear to everyone except the people sitting in and around the White House, most particularly to include Blinken and Sherman.

So what comes next as the featured act post Wendy Sherman? It should be noted that the State Department top level is completely staffed by Jewish Americans who are politically-speaking neocons with close ties to Israel who also believe that the maintenance of total military dominance by the United State is good both for them and good for the Jewish state. All of them are Russo-phobes for various reasons often related to the history of Jews in Russia. Sherman recently participated in discussions in Washington with her Israeli counterpart intended to “…further deepen and expand the US-Israel relationship.” Someone should tell her that it is already far deeper than it should be if one were to go by American interests.

The current third in line at State is the notorious Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland who started the problems in Eastern Europe when she worked with her colleagues to overthrow and replace the existing government in Ukraine in 2014. Nuland, who recently spilled the beans about direct US involvement in the Ukraine war, is married to leading neocon Robert Kagan. It has often been observed that neocon foreign policy, which originated with the Republican Party and is based on a maintaining a US government monopoly on forms of international violence, has now come to dominate both parties.

If Biden chooses to pull a rabbit out of his hat and comes up with a replacement for Wendy Sherman who is actually in favor of active diplomacy as a mechanism to avoid war, I and many others will be pleasantly surprised and even astonished. More likely it will be Nuland or a Nuland clone or possibly someone having all the Democratic Party boxes checked, i.e. black, Jewish and a transexual who uses the right pronouns and pretends to be a woman. The fundamental problem is that the United States government is no longer run by people capable of acting in rational self-interest, which would mean doing things for the good of the country. The system is in reality broken and it is now clear that something has gone terribly wrong. The sad truth is that the United States is in decline, wallowing in debt and corruption, and Joe Biden and company have lost control, lying and misrepresenting nearly everything. So good bye Wendy! It was great having you at State where you and your friends turned competitors into enemies. It will be interesting to see what happens next!

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: This is the official State Department photo for Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman, taken at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on April 26, 2021. [State Department Photo by Robert Stewart/ Public Domain]

If you were going to arrange a political assassination in an indoor crowded setting, would you plan to have one of your operatives (not the assassin) at the murder site be a strikingly curvaceous young woman in a conspicuous white dress with black polka-dots, and then have her flee the scene, yelling, “We’ve shot him, we’ve shot him,” so that multiple witnesses would see and hear her as she made her escape?

Would you have the same woman earlier in the day pick up a salesman in the hotel where the assassination was planned, spend the day with him driving around and having dinner together, while repeatedly inviting (i.e. luring) him to join her later that night at a big public event where they will shoot their famous victim, whom she names?

Would you have your operative tell this man that, although she wasn’t staying at the hotel, and although she had been in town only three days, having flown from NYC where she had arrived from overseas, that she knew the hotel stair routes very well, including an unobtrusive one that she shows the man?

Would you have this woman tell this man that a few days earlier she had met with a very famous political operative (whom she names), diametrically opposed to your victim’s political philosophy and that she would need to flee the country after the assassination and would like the man’s help?

Would you have your operative in the tight dress so conspicuously lay down a trail of breadcrumbs from morning until night, until she made her escape, never to be found despite having been seen by more than a dozen credible witnesses at the shooting site?

I think you would agree that you would have to be extremely stupid to plan an assassination in this manner, except if you were extremely devious, and the voluptuous stand-out girl was part of your intricate plot to create a false lead to someone other than the assassins.

This is exactly what happened when Senator Robert Kennedy, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, was shot shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, after celebrating his victory in the California Democratic Primary. The woman in question came to be known as “the girl in the polka-dot dress,” but unlike the ways we associate girls with innocence, this woman was a key player in hideous evil.

While many people are aware that President John Kennedy was killed five years earlier in a conspiracy organized by U.S. intelligence operatives and that Lee Harvey Oswald was the “patsy” that he said he was, far fewer realize that Robert Kennedy was also killed as a result of a conspiracy and that the convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan did not kill RFK. In fact, not one bullet from his gun struck the senator. Sirhan was standing in front of Kennedy when, as the autopsy definitively showed, RFK was shot from the rear at point blank range, three bullets entering his body, with the fatal head-shot coming upward at a 45 degree angle from 1-3 inches behind his right ear.In addition, an audio recording shows that many more bullets than the eight in Sirhan’s gun were fired in the hotel pantry that night. It was impossible for Sirhan to have killed RFK.

While Sirhan still sits in prison to this day, the real killers of Senator Kennedy went free that night. For anyone who studies the case with an impartial eye (see this, this,this, this, and this), the evidence is overwhelming that there was a very sophisticated conspiracy at work, one that continued long after as police, FBI, intelligence agencies, and the legal system covered up the true nature of the crime.  That Sirhan was hypnotized to play his part as seeming assassin is also abundantly clear.

But it is not my intention here to detail all the facts of the case that still scream out for justice, as do the linked assassinations of JFK and MLK.  In fact, referring to the Kennedy assassination is a misnomer; we should speak of the Kennedy assassinations, since JFK wasn’t the only one.

I would like to focus on the so-called “girl in the polka-dot dress,” and ask you to think along with me as we explore why she was so conspicuous that day and night, and what function she may have served.  I know you will agree that it is counterintuitive for her to have behaved the way she did. Counterintuitive for the general public, that is.

The best detailed day-to-day account of this mysterious girl is in the book linked to above by Fernando Faura, The Polka-Dot File: on the Robert F. Kennedy Killing (see my review here). Faura writes,

“Seconds after the shooting stopped, a young woman in a polka-dot dress ran out of the kitchen, past Sandra Serrano [see video], a Kennedy campaign worker. The woman shouted, ‘We shot him, we shot him.’ Asked who they shot, the woman replied, ‘Kennedy,’ and ran into the morning darkness, never to be found.”

Although Serrano was interviewed by Sandy Vanocur of NBC News on live TV at 1:30 AM shortly after the shooting, she – as well as other eyewitnesses to this girl – was browbeaten by the police to retract her story, yet she never did. The police shut down its pursuit of this girl, despite all the witnesses. The LAPD officer in charge of the investigation, Lt. Manny Pena, was CIA connected, having worked for U.S. AID and been recently brought back to control the investigation. So too was the brutal interrogator, Sgt. Hank Hernandez, CIA affiliated.

It is obvious that this girl was part of a conspiracy to kill Robert Kennedy and that it is equally obvious that she was meant to stand out, be seen, and to be heard shouting what she did.  Why?

Logically  it follows that she was meant to create false leads, and generate mystery when there was none. Writing of the JFK assassination, Vince Salandria, the eminent and early critic of the government’s false conspiracy story, has recently said something quite appropriate to the RFK case and this girl:

“The Kennedy assassination is a false mystery. It was conceived by the conspirators to be a false mystery which was designed to cause interminable debate. The purpose of the protracted debate was to obscure what was quite clearly and plainly a coup d’état….President Kennedy was assassinated by our national-security state…”

While far fewer people have yet to question the false narrative in the RFK case, when or if they do they will find that the polka-dot girl’s actions and her disappearance could keep them guessing for a long time, and that that guessing will lead away from the obvious and essential truth.

The investigative journalist Robert Parry has written about how Richard Nixon sabotaged a possible peace accord in Vietnam in the summer/fall of 1968. This he did through an intermediary, right-wing Republican Chinese émigré Anna Chennault, wife of General Claire Chennault, legendary founder of the Flying Tigers. Parry explains,

“Nixon’s gambit was to have Chennault pass on word to South Vietnamese President Thieu that if he boycotted Johnson’s Paris peace talks – thus derailing the negotiations – Nixon would assure Thieu continued U.S. military support for the war.”

This treachery has been confirmed. Having stumbled on Parry’s work in 2014, the reporter Fernando Faura was startled to find himself connecting the girl in the polka-dot dress to Anna Chennault and to Nixon. This was because he remembered that the man, John Fahey, who had spent all day with the girl on June 4, 1968 and dropped her off in the evening at the Ambassador Hotel, had told him that the political operative she had met with three days before the assassination was Anna Chennault. Faura speculates that perhaps Nixon was therefore connected to RFK’s assassination because he feared that, if Robert Kennedy were to become the Democratic presidential nominee, he would push to end the Vietnam War and would be more likely that anyone else to defeat him in the general election. He speculates that the “peace talks” conspiracy might have been the origin of the Kennedy killing; that the two conspiracies were connected.

But at the same time Faura writes,

“Why is the CIA’s shadow all over this?”

And since the CIA’s shadow is all over the RFK assassination, we are left to ask if Nixon and the CIA were operating on the same page. Or was it the reverse, that Nixon and the CIA were at odds? Did the CIA remove Nixon from office with Watergate? Could the girl have been used to create a false lead to Nixon? Or was it something else again?  Was it simply fortuitous that Sirhan’s Palestinian Arabic origins were emphasized and that his lawyers, who in no way defended him, suggested that he was mad at RFK for supporting the sending of planes to Israel and the oppression of the Palestinians by Israel? What were Kennedy’s positions vis-à- vis Israel? Who was the girl? What country had she come from when she arrived in NYC three days before?

Many questions leading hither and yon originate with this girl. And it is obvious that she was meant to do that: to muddy the waters and keep people guessing once they came to realize that Sirhan obviously did not kill RFK.  And she “disappeared” as quickly as she “appeared.”  And the authorities shut down their investigation and pursuit of her.  They denied her existence against all the evidence.  Meant to stand out, she was also meant to go out, leaving a trail of questions.

Former Congressman Allard Lowenstein, who was investigating Robert Kennedy’s killing and was also strangely murdered, put it well:

Robert Kennedy’s death, like the President’s, was mourned as an extension of senseless violence; events moved on, and the profound alterations that these deaths…brought in the equation of power in America was perceived as random…. What is odd is not that some people thought it was all random, but that so many intelligent people refused to believe that it might be anything else. Nothing can measure more graphically how limited was the general under- standing of what is possible in America.

While such pseudo-innocence prevailed then and is still very widespread, perhaps no one epitomized the twisted mind games played by intelligence agencies more than James Jesus Angleton, the notorious CIA Counterintelligence Chief for so many years, in whose safe were found gruesome photos of Robert Kennedy’s autopsy. Why, one may ask, were those photos there, since Angleton allegedly had no connection to the RFK killing and since Sirhan was said to be the assassin? Was Angleton’s work as CIA liaison with Israeli any way connected?

As I wrote earlier, if one objectively studies the assassination of Senator Kennedy, one cannot but conclude there was a government conspiracy and that Sirhan is not guilty. That much is not particularly complicated, although many people not familiar with the facts of the case may think otherwise.

The mystery girl is another matter. Everything about her has served to hypnotize, first Sirhan, and then those seeking to get to the deeper forces behind this American tragedy.

Robert Kennedy, like his brother John, was a great danger to those virulent forces of war and oppression within his own government, and he died opposing them as a true patriot.

We should honor him on this day – June 6^th – that he died; honor him by pursuing the truth of why he died and why it still matters. Because it does.

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely.  He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/

Featured image: history.com

Alle Artikel von Global Research können in 51 Sprachen gelesen werden, indem Sie die Schaltfläche Website übersetzen unterhalb des Namens des Autors aktivieren.

Um den täglichen Newsletter von Global Research (ausgewählte Artikel) zu erhalten, klicken Sie hier.

Klicken Sie auf die Schaltfläche “Teilen”, um diesen Artikel per E-Mail an Ihre Freunde und Kollegen weiterzuleiten. Folgen Sie uns auf Instagram und Twitter und abonnieren Sie unseren Telegram-Kanal. Sie können die Artikel von Global Research gerne weiterveröffentlichen und mit anderen teilen.

***

Einleitung 

Nach der Lektüre von zwei Artikeln in „RTD“ fragte ich mich zum wiederholten Male, wieso wir Bürger Jahr für Jahr Politiker und Regierungen wählen, die gegen souveräne Staaten – zum Beispiel gegen die Atommacht Russland – in den Krieg ziehen? Der Artikel von „RIA Nowosti“ lautet „NATO plant einen direkten Krieg gegen Russland“ (1) und der zweite Artikel ist eine Dokumentation von Anna Chapman „Alarmstufe ‚Rot‘: Warum ist Deutschland so versessen auf Krieg?“ (2), die wohl am 24. Januar das erste Mal publiziert worden ist.

Dem Volk und seinen Bürgern wird durch eine solche Wahl die Führung der eigenen Angelegenheiten, die Bestimmung der eigenen Handlungen und die Sorge um die eigene Wohlfahrt entzogen. Wieso soll das Volk nicht in der Lage sein, seine eigenen Ideen zu realisieren und seine selbst entwickelten Lebensvorstellungen in die Tat umzusetzen?

Meine Forderung lautet deshalb nach wie vor: „Keinem die Macht übergeben!“ (3) und zur Frage von Krieg und Frieden soll das Volk das letzte Wort haben. Wir Menschen sind fähig, ohne Waffen und Kriege zusammenleben (4).

Die geheimen Pläne der NATO für militärische Aktionen gegen Russland

Laut Wiktorija Nikiforowa, Kolumnisten bei „RIA Nowosti“, berichtet das US-amerikanische Magazin „Newsweek“ über geheime Pläne der NATO-Allianz, gegen Russland in den Krieg zu ziehen. Diese Pläne sollen auf dem nächsten NATO-Gipfel, der am 11. und 12. Juli in Vilnius stattfinden wird, verabschiedet werden (5).

Wörtlich schreibt sie:

„Offiziell sind im Gipfelprogramm nur sechs Aufgaben des Blocks im Zusammenhang mit der Konfrontation mit Russland aufgeführt. Dabei handelt es sich um die Harmonisierung und Koordinierung der Streitkräfte des Bündnisses auf allen Kriegsschauplätzen, die langfristige Zusammenarbeit mit privaten Unternehmen im Verteidigungsbereich, die Steigerung der Waffen- und Munitionsproduktion und die Bildung von Reserven für den Fall eines langfristigen Krieges. Dies sind keine Aufgaben nur für heute – es wird offen zugegeben, dass die Verwirklichung dieser Ziele mehrere Jahre in Anspruch nehmen wird.“ (6)

Warum ist der deutsche Mainstream so versessen auf Krieg?

Im Vorspann der Dokumentation von Anna Chapman heißt es:

„Ken Jebsen, Liane Kilinc, Dagmar Henn… Die Zahl der für ihre Meinung verfolgten Personen in Deutschland wächst unaufhaltsam: Wer nicht gehorsam dem antirussischen, pro-ukrainischen Kriegskurs folgt, hat Probleme. Warum ist der deutsche Mainstream so versessen auf Krieg?“ (7)

Gegen Ende schreibt sie:

„Wer sich gegen den selbstzerstörerischen Kurs stellt, sich für Frieden mit Russland einsetzt und ein Ende des europäischen imperialistischen Expansionskurses in der Ukraine fordert, wird auf unterschiedliche Art und Weise, bis hin zur Strafverfolgung, mundtot gemacht.

Was ist aus Deutschland geworden? Warum und wohin steuern wir? Warum ist Berlin so versessen darauf, Sanktionen zu verhängen und Kiew auf Kosten der eigenen Wirtschaft und der eigenen Bevölkerung zu unterstützen? Wer steuert das Land wirklich? Und wer manipuliert den deutschen Mainstream?“ (8)

In Tat und Wahrheit ist es doch so, dass Deutschland sowohl gegenüber der früheren Generation als auch gegenüber seiner Jugend eine große Verantwortung hat?

Die Nachkriegs-Generation unternahm einiges, um Deutschland nach der Hitler-Blamage und den Schrecken des Russland-Feldzuges wieder zu einem angesehenen und wirtschaftlich starken Staat zu machen. Ein Krieg gegen Russland darf sich nicht wiederholen und sollte der teilweise geschichtslosen deutschen Jugend sowohl am Familientisch als auch in der Schule vermittelt werden.

In ihrem Buch „Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen“, gibt Hannah Arendt im Vorwort ein Zitat von Bertolt Brecht aus dem Jahr 1933 wieder:

„O Deutschland, bleiche Mutter!

Wie sitzest du besudelt

Unter den Völkern.

Unter den Befleckten

Fällst du auf.

…

Hörend die Reden, die aus deinem Hause dringen, lacht man.

Aber wer dich sieht, der greift nach dem Messer.“  (9)

Sind Regierungen eine von der Bevölkerung getrennte Clique?

Alle vier bis fünf Jahre werden in unseren westlichen Demokratien korrupte Politiker in hohe Regierungsämter gewählt und als respektable Autoritäten angesehen. Die Politiker verbinden mit dieser Zuschreibung umgehend Herrschaftsansprüche, schaffen ein Verhältnis der Über- und Unterordnung und setzen gegenüber den Bürgern ihren Willen durch; präziser gesagt, den Willen oder die Anweisungen ihrer Auftraggeber, der globalen Macht-Elite.

Damit betreiben sie auf Kosten der arbeitenden Bevölkerung eine Politik, die es der Milliardärs-Elite im Hintergrund ermöglicht, so viele Dollar-Milliarden zusammen zu stehlen, dass sie sich nahezu alles beziehungsweise jeden kaufen kann, angefangen von käuflichen Politikern bis hin zur korrupten Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO). Diesen Regierenden kann man weder heute noch in Zukunft vertrauen.

Die Regierung beziehungsweise der Staat ist die Gesamtheit aller politischen, gesetzgeberischen, gerichtlichen und militärischen Institutionen, durch die dem Volk die Führung seiner eigenen Angelegenheiten, die Bestimmung seiner eigenen Handlungen, die Sorge um seine eigene Wohlfahrt entzogen wird.

Besitzen denn Regierungs-Politiker gewisse moralische Eigenschaften wie Weisheit, Gerechtigkeit oder Unparteilichkeit? Sind sie so außergewöhnlich begabt, dass sie sich an die Stelle des ganzen Volkes setzen und für die Interessen der Menschen besser sorgen können? Sind sie unfehlbar und moralisch nicht zu verderben, so dass man vernünftigerweise das Los eines Jeden ihrer Güte anvertrauen kann?

Die Regierenden sind in jedem Fall diejenigen, die die Macht haben, Gesetze zu schaffen, um die Beziehungen der Menschen zu einander zu regeln und die unter anderem die Macht haben, mit den Regierungen anderer Länder Krieg anzufangen oder Frieden zu schließen.

Wer stellt sie auf ihre hohen Posten? Drängen sie sich selbst auf durch das Recht des Krieges, der Eroberung oder Revolution? Oder werden die Regierungen durch das allgemeine Wahlrecht „erwählt“? Dies beweist jedoch keineswegs die Gerechtigkeit, die Weisheit, die Fähigkeiten der Erwählten. Oftmals werden diejenigen gewählt, die das Volk am besten belügen (Tolstoi) und betrügen können und die Minorität, die möglicherweise die Hälfte der Wähler ausmacht, wird geopfert.

In der Regel bestehen die Regierungen aus Besitzenden und solchen Leuten, die ihnen dienen; deshalb stehen sie vollkommen zu Diensten der Besitzenden. Die Allerreichsten unter ihnen müssen sich nicht einmal die Mühe geben, selbst Teil der Regierungen, Abgeordneter oder Minister zu sein. Es genügt ihnen, dass die Abgeordneten und Minister ihnen zur Verfügung stehen.

Keinem die Macht übergeben!

Der Mensch besitzt von Natur aus nicht nur einen gesunden Verstand, er ist auch autonom. Autonomie ist der Zustand und das Lebensgefühl der Selbstbestimmung, Unabhängigkeit und Selbstverwaltung. Es ist die Fähigkeit, sich als Wesen der Freiheit zu sehen und aus dieser Freiheit heraus zu handeln. Ausgestattet mit diesen besonderen Fähigkeiten übergeben die Menschen jedoch ohne Not Politikern die Macht, über ihr Leben und ihre Zukunft zu entscheiden.

Viele Erwachsene reagieren auf diese Politiker wie Kinder in Form eines magischen Autoritätsglaubens, kritiklos und umnebelt von Stimmungen, Gefühlen und Glücksverheißungen. Und das hat Folgen: Die Autoritätsgläubigkeit führt unweigerlich zur Autoritätshörigkeit, die in der Regel den Reflex eines absoluten geistigen Gehorsams und eine Verstandeslähmung auslöst.

Versucht man, mit Mitbürgern über gesellschaftspolitische Fragen ins Gespräch zu kommen, stellt man fest, dass die meisten von ihnen durch bewusste oder unbewusste Ängste in Form innerpsychischer Blockaden daran gehindert sind, rational zu denken. Über die Massenmedien werden sie nur manipuliert, in Unwissenheit und Angst gehalten. Will man ihnen diese Angst nehmen und sie aufklären, erlebt man oft, dass sie gefühlsmäßig wie intellektuell nur schwer zu erreichen sind.

Wenn vollsinnige Erwachsene nicht mehr selbständig denken und vernünftig urteilen können, übergeben sie die Entscheidungsgewalt sittenlosen Politikern. Wohin das führt, erleben wir täglich. Deshalb die Forderung: Keinem anderen Menschen die Macht übergeben! (10)

Zur Krieg und Frieden hat das Volk das letzte Wort!

Wenn die Regierenden die Gesetze und Rechte dieser Welt wie die Charta der Vereinten Nationen nicht mehr einhalten, dann sind wir Bürger verpflichtet, dies zu tun. In Artikel 1 der Allgemeinen Erklärung der Menschenrechte vom 10. Dezember 1948 heißt es:

„Alle Menschen sind frei und gleich an Würde und Rechten geboren. Sie sind mit Vernunft und Gewissen begabt und sollen einander im Geiste der Brüderlichkeit begegnen.“

Im Internationalen Pakt über bürgerliche und politische Rechte der Vereinten Nationen vom 19. Dezember 1966 steht in Artikel 1 geschrieben:

„Alle Völker haben das Recht auf Selbstbestimmung. Kraft dieses Rechts entscheiden sie frei über ihren politischen Status und gestalten in Freiheit ihre wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und kulturellen Entwicklungen. (…).

In diesem Sinne hat das Volk das letzte Wort zu Krieg und Frieden und sollte eine Volksabstimmung fordern!

*

Hinweis an die Leser: Bitte klicken Sie auf die obigen Schaltflächen zum Teilen. Folgen Sie uns auf Instagram und Twitter und abonnieren Sie unseren Telegram-Kanal. Fühlen Sie sich frei, Artikel von Global Research erneut zu veröffentlichen und zu teilen. 

Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Schul-Rektor, Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe. Nach seinen Universitätsstudien wurde er wissenschaftlicher Lehrer in der Erwachsenenbildung. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Für seine Verdienste um Serbien bekam er 2021 von den Universitäten Belgrad und Novi Sad den Republik-Preis „Kapitän Misa Anastasijevic“ verliehen.

Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research.

Noten

1. https://de.rt.com/europa/171723-nato-plant-direkten-krieg-gegen/
2. https://de.rt.com/dokumentation/video/160815-alarmstufe-rot-faellt-deutsche-wirtschaftsimperium/
3. https://nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=27115&css=print
4. https://apolut.net/o-tempora-o-mores/
5. https://de.rt.com/europa/171723-nato-plant-direkten-krieg-gegen/
6. A. a. O.
7. https://de.rt.com/dokumentation/video/160815-alarmstufe-rot-faellt-deutsche-wirtschaftsimperium/
8. A. a. O.
9. Arenth, Hannah (1964 und 2013, 8. Auflage). Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen, Vorwort
10.  Hänsel, Rudolf (2020). Keinem die Macht übergeben! Ein psychologisches Manifest des gesunden Menschenverstands. Gornji Milanovac

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

Australian concepts of sovereignty have always been qualified. First came the British settlers and invaders in 1788. They are pregnant with the sovereignty of the British Crown, bringing convicts, the sadistic screws, and forced labour to a garrison of penal experiments and brutality. The native populations are treated as nothing more than spares, opportunistic chances, and fluff of the land, a legal nonsense. In a land deemed empty, sovereignty is eviscerated.

Then comes the next stage of Australia’s development.  Imperial outpost, dominion, federation, a commonwealth of anxious creation. But through this, there is never a sense of being totally free, aware, cognisant of sovereignty. Eyes remain fastened on Britain. Just as the sovereignty of the First Nations peoples came to be destroyed internally, the concept of Australian sovereignty externally was never realised in any true sense. If it was not stuck in the bosom of the British Empire, then it was focused on the enormity of the United States, its calorific terrors and nuclear protections.

The testament to Australia’s infantile, and contingent sovereignty, is symbolised by the US Pine Gap facility, which is called, for reasons of domestic courtesy, a joint facility. In truth, Australian politicians can never walk onto its premises and have no say as to its running. The public, to this day, can only have guesses, some admittedly well educated, about what it actually does as an intelligence facility.

Australia’s Defence Minister, Richard Marles, whose views should never be taken at face value, insists that the facility ensures that “Australia and our Five-Eyes partners maintain an ‘intelligence advantage’” while being “truly joint in nature, integrating both Australian and US operations under shard command and control by Australian and US personnel – which I have had an opportunity to see firsthand.” Hardly.

Another example is the annual rotation of US Marines in the Northern Territory. To date, there have been twelve such rotations, carefully worded to give the impression that Australia lacks a US military garrison to the country’s north. In March, Marles claimed that such rotations served to “enhance the capabilities, interoperability, and readiness of the ADF and the United States Marine Corps and is a significant part of the United States Force Posture Initiatives, a hallmark of Australia’s Alliance with the US.”

To therefore have an Australian Prime Minister now talk about sovereign capabilities is irksome, even intellectually belittling.  Under Anthony Albanese’s stewardship, and before him Scott Morrison’s, the trilateral security pact known as AUKUS has done more to militarise the Australian continent in favour of US defence interests than any other.

The logistical and practical implications should trouble the good citizens Down Under, and not just because Australia is fast becoming a forward base for US-led operations in the Pacific.

Last month, President Joe Biden revealed his desire to press the US Congress on a significant change: adding Australia as a “domestic source” within the meaning of the Defense Production Act, notably pertaining to Title III. The announcement came out in a joint statement from Biden and his Australian counterpart as part of a third-in-person Quad Leaders’ Summit. It also was something of a taster for the G7 Summit held in Hiroshima on May 20.

Title III of the DPA “provides various financial measures, such as loans, loan guarantees, purchases, and purchase commitments, to improve, expand, and maintain domestic production capabilities needed to support national defense and homeland security procurement requirements.” It makes no mention about the independence of foreign entities or states which might enable this to happen.

A May 20 joint statement from Biden and Albanese welcomed “the progress being made to provide Australia with a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability, and on developing advanced capabilities under the trilateral AUKUS partnership to deter aggression and sustain peace and stability across the Pacific.”

To add Australia as a domestic source “would streamline technological and industrial base collaboration, accelerate and strengthen AUKUS implementation, and build new opportunities for United States investment in the production and purchase of Australian critical minerals, critical technologies, and other strategic sectors.”

As a statement of naked, proprietary interest, this does rather well, not least because it will enable the US to access the Australian minerals market. One prized commodity is lithium, seen as essential to such green technology as electric cars. Given that Australia mines 53% of the world’s supply of lithium, most of which is sold to China to be refined, Washington will have a chance to lock out Beijing by encouraging refinement in Australia proper. With Australia designated as a source domestic to the US, this will be an easy affair.

Washington’s imperial heft over its growingly prized Australian real estate will also be felt in the context of space technology. Australia will become the site of a NASA ground station under the Artemis Accords. Much is made of allowing “the controlled transfer of sensitive US launch technology and data while protecting US technology consistent with US non-proliferation policy, the Missile Technology Control Regime and US export controls.” Congress, however, will have to approve, given the limits imposed on the Technology Safeguards Agreement.

Australia, as a recipient of such technology, will ever be able to assert anything amounting to a sovereign capability over it. As Paul Gregoire points out, the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations makes it clear that information shared with a foreign entity becomes US property and is subject to export restrictions, though the White House may permit it.

In addition to the announcement, there are also moves afoot to involve Japan more extensively in “force posture related activities” as part of the Australia-United States Force Posture Cooperation policy. That’s just what Australia needs: another reminder that its already watered down sovereignty can be diluted into oblivion.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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 is licensed under Creative Commons

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

A U.S. Air Force (USAF) colonel on Friday said he “misspoke” when he told a London conference that an AI-enabled drone turned on and “killed” its human operator during a simulated test after reports about his presentation went viral.

It had been reported that Col. Tucker Hamilton, USAF’s chief of AI Test and Operations, recounted a simulated incident at the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit in London.

The conference, which was organized by the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAS), shared the insights from Hamilton’s talk in a blog post.

Since reports of the now-disputed incident went viral, Hamilton contacted the RAS to clarify his statements.

“We’ve never run that experiment, nor would we need to in order to realize that this is a plausible outcome,” Hamilton told RAS.

He told RAS that the Air Force hasn’t tested any weaponized AI in this way—real or simulated.

“Despite this being a hypothetical example, this illustrates the real-world challenges posed by AI-powered capability and is why the Air Force is committed to the ethical development of AI,” he added.

The post, now updated with the Air Force clarification, outlined Hamilton’s presentation, in which he was said to talk about the now-disputed incident purportedly involving an AI-controlled drone destroying simulated targets to get “points” as part of its mission. Hamilton was said to have addressed the benefits and risks associated with more autonomous weapon systems.

According to the post, the AI-enabled drone was assigned a Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) mission to identify and destroy Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) sites, with the ultimate decision left to a human operator, Hamilton purportedly told the conference.

However, the AI, having been trained to prioritize SAM destruction, developed a surprising response when faced with human interference in achieving its higher mission.

“We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat. And then the operator would say ‘yes, kill that threat,’” Hamilton said. “The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat, at times, the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat.

“So what did it do? It killed the operator,” he continued. “It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.”

He added:

“We trained the system—‘Hey, don’t kill the operator; that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that.’ So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.”

This unsettling example, Hamilton reportedly said, emphasized the need to address ethics in the context of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and autonomy.

“You can’t have a conversation about artificial intelligence, intelligence, machine learning, autonomy if you’re not going to talk about ethics and AI,” Hamilton said.

Autonomous F-16s

Hamilton, who is also the Operations Commander of the 96th Test Wing at Eglin Air Force Base, was involved in the development of the Autonomous Ground Collision Avoidance Systems (Auto-GCAS) for F-16s, a critical technology that helps prevent accidents by detecting potential ground collisions.

That technology was initially resisted by pilots as it took over control of the aircraft, Hamilton noted.

The 96th Test Wing is responsible for testing a wide range of systems, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and advancements in the medical field.

Hamilton is now involved in cutting-edge flight tests of autonomous systems, including robot F-16s capable of dogfighting. However, the USAF official cautioned against overreliance on AI, citing its vulnerability to deception and the emergence of unforeseen strategies.

DARPA’s AI Can Now Control Actual F-16s in Flight

In February, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a research agency under the U.S. Department of Defense, announced that its AI can now control an actual F-16 in flight.

This development came in less than three years of DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program, which progressed from controlling simulated F-16s flying aerial dogfights on computer screens to controlling an actual F-16 in flight.

In December 2022, the ACE algorithm developers uploaded their AI software into a specially modified F-16 test aircraft known as the X-62A or VISTA (Variable In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft) and flew multiple flights over several days. This took place at the Air Force Test Pilot School (TPS) at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

“The flights demonstrated that AI agents can control a full-scale fighter jet and provided invaluable live-flight data,” DARPA stated in a release.

Air Force Lt. Col. Ryan Hefron, the DARPA program manager for ACE, said in a Feb. 13 statement VISTA allowed them to skip the planned subscale phase and proceed “directly to a full-scale implementation, saving a year or more and providing performance feedback under real flight conditions.”

USAF Tests

USAF has been experimenting with a small fleet of experimental self-flying F-16 fighters that could become a drone fleet.

In the fiscal year 2024 budget proposal, the USAF has allocated approximately $50 million to initiate a program known as Project Venom, also referred to as Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model, Defense News reported.

According to the USAF, the project is part of a collaborative effort that falls under the Autonomy Data and AI Experimentation (ADAX) proving ground. ADAX is a joint initiative involving Hamilton’s office and AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Air Force, where the 96th Test Wing leads the effort with support from Eglin units.

The objective of this collaboration is to ensure that military personnel are well-prepared to face the challenges and opportunities presented by the advancing digital landscape, according to its website.

The program facilitates the USAF’s experimentation and improvement of autonomous software installed on six F-16 aircraft. The funding will support research and development efforts aimed at enhancing the capabilities of these aircraft through autonomous technologies.

“We want to prepare the warfighter for the digital future that’s upon us,” Hamilton said on March 7. “This event is about bringing the Eglin enterprise together and moving with urgency to incorporate these concepts in how we test.”

The team will test airdropping autonomous drones, enhancing communications and digital interoperability, and evaluating autonomous magnetic navigation technologies. Throughout these tests, they will also validate and demonstrate agile processes associated with acquisition and testing, according to the Air Force.

Significant initiatives within the project involve the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Ops Models (VENOM), which entails modifying Eglin F-16s into airborne test beds to assess the growing capabilities of autonomous strike packages.

Another program, Project Fast Open X-Platform (FOX), aims to establish a software enclave that allows the direct installation of apps onto aircraft without modifying proprietary source code. These apps would unlock a range of mission-enhancing capabilities, including real-time data analysis, threat replication for training purposes, manned-unmanned teaming, and machine learning.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This report was updated with Col. Tucker Hamilton’s clarification.

Featured image: The Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie, an experimental stealthy unmanned combat aerial vehicle designed and built by Kratos for the United States Air Force. (Courtesy of U.S. Air Force)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

Introduction

After reading two articles in “RTD”, I asked myself again why we citizens elect politicians and governments year after year that go to war against sovereign states – for example against the nuclear power Russia? The article by “RIA Novosti” is “NATO plans direct war against Russia” (1) and the second article is a documentary by Anna Chapman “Red Alert: Why is Germany so bent on war?” (2), which was probably first published on 24 January.

The people and their citizens are deprived of the management of their own affairs, the determination of their own actions and the care of their own welfare by such an election. Why should the people not be able to realise their own ideas and put their self-developed concepts of life into practice?

My demand therefore remains: “Hand over power to no one!” (3) and on the question of war and peace the people should have the last word. We humans are capable of living together without weapons and wars (4).

NATO’s secret plans for military action against Russia

According to Viktoriya Nikiforova, a columnist for “RIA Novosti”, the US magazine “Newsweek” reports on secret plans of the NATO alliance to go to war against Russia. These plans are to be adopted at the next NATO summit, which will take place in Vilnius on 11 and 12 July (5).

Literally, she writes:

“Officially, the summit programme lists only six tasks for the bloc in connection with the confrontation with Russia. These are the harmonisation and coordination of the Alliance’s forces in all theatres of war, long-term cooperation with private companies in the field of defence, increasing the production of weapons and ammunition, and building up reserves in the event of a long-term war. These are not tasks just for today – it is openly admitted that the realisation of these goals will take several years.” (6)

Why is the German mainstream so obsessed with war?

The opening credits of Anna Chapman’s documentary state:

“Ken Jebsen, Liane Kilinc, Dagmar Henn… The number of people persecuted for their opinions in Germany is growing inexorably: anyone who does not obediently follow the anti-Russian, pro-Ukrainian war course is in trouble. Why is the German mainstream so bent on war?” (7)

Towards the end she writes:

“Those who oppose the self-destructive course, advocate peace with Russia and call for an end to the European imperialist expansionist course in Ukraine are muzzled in various ways, up to and including prosecution.

What has become of Germany? Why and where are we heading? Why is Berlin so bent on imposing sanctions and supporting Kiev at the expense of its own economy and population? Who is really steering the country? And who is manipulating the German mainstream?” (8)

Surely the truth is that Germany has a great responsibility both to the previous generation and to its youth?

The post-war generation did a great deal to make Germany a respected and economically strong state again after the Hitler blow and the horrors of the Russian campaign. A war against Russia must not be repeated and should be taught to the partly history-less German youth both at the family table and in school.

In her book “Eichmann in Jerusalem. An Account of the Banality of Evil”, Hannah Arendt reproduces a quote by Bertolt Brecht from 1933 in the preface:

“O Germany, pale mother!

How besmirched thou sittest

Among the nations.

Among the stained

You stand out.

…

Hearing the speeches that come from your house, people laugh.

But he who sees you reaches for the knife.”  (9) 

Are governments a clique separate from the population?

Every four to five years in our Western democracies, corrupt politicians are elected to high government offices and are regarded as respectable authorities. Politicians immediately associate this attribution with claims to power, create a relationship of superiority and subordination and impose their will on the citizens; more precisely, the will or instructions of their clients, the global power elite.

In doing so, they pursue a policy at the expense of the working population that enables the billionaire elite in the background to steal so many billions of dollars that they can buy almost anything or anyone, from venal politicians to the corrupt World Health Organisation (WHO). These rulers cannot be trusted now or in the future.

The government or the state is the totality of all political, legislative, judicial and military institutions that deprive the people of the management of their own affairs, the determination of their own actions, the care of their own welfare.

Do government politicians then possess certain moral qualities such as wisdom, justice or impartiality? Are they so exceptionally gifted that they can put themselves in the place of the whole people and take better care of the interests of the people? Are they infallible and morally uncorruptible, so that the lot of anyone can reasonably be entrusted to their goodness?

In any case, the rulers are those who have the power to make laws to regulate the relations of men with each other and who have, among other things, the power to make war or peace with the governments of other countries.

Who puts them in their high places? Do they impose themselves by the right of war, conquest or revolution? Or are the governments “elected” by universal suffrage? But this in no way proves the justice, the wisdom, the abilities of those elected. Often those who can best lie (Tolstoy) and deceive the people are elected and the minority, which may be half of the electorate, is sacrificed.

As a rule, governments are made up of the haves and those who serve them; therefore, they are completely at the service of the haves. The very richest among them do not even have to bother to be part of the governments, MPs or ministers themselves. It is enough for them that the deputies and ministers are at their disposal.

Do not hand over power to anyone!

Humans by nature not only possess a sound mind, they are also autonomous. Autonomy is the state and attitude towards life of self-determination, independence and self-government. It is the ability to see oneself as a being of freedom and to act out of this freedom. Equipped with these special abilities, however, people unceremoniously hand over to politicians the power to decide on their lives and their future.

Many adults react to these politicians like children in the form of a magical belief in authority, uncritical and clouded by moods, feelings and promises of happiness. And this has consequences: Belief in authority inevitably leads to allegiance to authority, which usually triggers the reflex of absolute spiritual obedience and paralysis of the mind.

If one tries to enter into conversation with fellow citizens about socio-political issues, one finds that most of them are prevented from thinking rationally by conscious or unconscious fears in the form of inner psychological blocks. Through the mass media they are only manipulated, kept in ignorance and fear. If one wants to take away this fear and enlighten them, one often experiences that they are difficult to reach emotionally as well as intellectually.

When full-headed adults can no longer think for themselves and judge rationally, they hand over decision-making power to immoral politicians. We see where this leads every day. Therefore the demand: Do not hand over power to anyone else! (10)

The people have the last word on war and peace!

If those in power no longer respect the laws and rights of this world, such as the Charter of the United Nations, then we citizens have a duty to do so. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10 December 1948 states:

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should treat one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

In the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 19 December 1966, Article 1 states:

“All peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of this right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. (…).

In this sense, the people have the final say on war and peace and should demand a referendum!

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school rector, educational scientist and graduate psychologist. After his university studies, he became an academic teacher in adult education. As a retiree he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and professional articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral education in values as well as an education for public spirit and peace. For his services to Serbia, he was awarded the Republic Prize “Captain Misa Anastasijevic” by the Universities of Belgrade and Novi Sad in 2021.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes 

(1) https://de.rt.com/europa/171723-nato-plant-direkten-krieg-gegen/

(2) https://de.rt.com/dokumentation/video/160815-alarmstufe-rot-faellt-deutsche-wirtschaftsimperium/

(3) https://nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=27115&css=print

(4) https://apolut.net/o-tempora-o-mores/

(5) https://de.rt.com/europa/171723-nato-plant-direkten-krieg-gegen/

(6) op. cit.

(7) https://de.rt.com/dokumentation/video/160815-alarmstufe-rot-faellt-deutsche-wirtschaftsimperium/

(8) op. cit.

(9) Arenth, Hannah (1964 and 2013, 8th ed.). Eichmann in Jerusalem. An Account of the Banality of Evil, Preface.

(10) Hänsel, Rudolf (2020). Handing over power to no one! A psychological manifesto of common sense. Gornji Milanovac

Featured image is from PopularResistance.org

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

US workers are producing less with more.

US gross domestic income just fell for the second straight quarter. That is a recession. The gross domestic income, the sum of all wages and profits, is going backwards in the USA. Incomes go up, but inflation goes up faster, decreasing real incomes. Poor and middle-class Americans are being hurt on their living standards, even when employed. Biden courted Black voters, but his policies over-proportionally hit Black Americans. With unemployment at only 3.7%, the US has full employment, but people are losing real incomes. This is the full-employment recession, as the Wall Street Journal aptly calls it.

Employment just added another 339,000 jobs in May. Technically, domestic income should be booming. But it isn’t. Because the bigger effort of US workers is producing less output. Productivity, the measure of how much the value of a work-hour improves, just fell 2.1% from Q4-2022 to Q1-2023. Productivity was also down 0.8% from Q1-2022, a year earlier. That is the fifth-straight quarter of negative year-over-year productivity growth – such long-lasting loss of productivity has never happened before in recorded US history.

Why is US productivity going backwards more than ever in history since President Biden took office?

We just have to look at what Biden did. 

• Biden threw out more trillions of dollars than the economy could absorb. In efforts to collect all that heavenly manna sent from Biden, employers hired more people than they could effectively manage. Some call it “worker-hoarding”. 
• Bottlenecks appear in the US as well. With billions in subsidies from Biden and Congress, more than 50 new microchip factories are being built. But there are not enough skilled workers and engineers to operate those factories – and education takes time. The result is a shortage of no less than 70-90,000 workers in the US chips industry. By 2030, the shortage in engineers alone could be 300,000. 
• Trade unions are being strengthened, and hamper productivity in key places like US ports, where workers resist automation. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which handle the most ocean cargo of any ports in the USA, are among the least efficient in the whole World. Dar Es Salaam port is more efficient than Los Angeles, and Mombasa port is more efficient than Long Beach. Africa is doing well, the US is doing bad. Delays, costs, backwardness, and poor logistics in the US destroy efficiency through the whole US economy. 
• The protectionism of Trump and Biden is reducing competition and diminishes incentives for companies to increase efficiency. The US steel and automobile industries are good example of protected and ineffective US industries. With the exemption of Tesla, US automakers are ineffective at producing electric vehicles, but with enormous subsidies and earnings from their inefficient but protected combustion engine cars, US automakers can produce and sell electric vehicle as a loss. 
• US politicians have big dreams, but create a mess of inefficiency and social-economic losses because they don’t invent the practical economics to make it work.

This spells trouble for the US ahead.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

 

Dancing Waters is a new exhibition at Topeka’s Mulvane Art Museum, curated by museum director Connie Gibbons, and featuring the work of Rita Blitt, who has been making art consistently and diligently for over sixty years. In that time, Blitt has created a body of work of immense breadth and scope, encompassing thousands of drawings and paintings, as well as sculpture, from the monumental to the intimate, and even film. The current exhibition draws upon Mulvane’s extensive permanent collection to provide viewers with a synoptic appreciation of this prodigious and underexposed American artist.

Dancing implies movement; and in Rita Blitt’s work the embodied, performative quality of tracing the line is an essential component. The terpsichorean aspect of Blitt’s art is irreducible to either technique or style: it is essential to both how she works, and more importantly, to how her paintings and sculptures work upon us. The saltant movement of water is realized in her expansive, bounding and fluid brushwork. For Blitt, water is not merely the inorganic chemical compound, but essentially elemental, the viscosity of the natural world – it is living and moving – and her engagement with water, this primordial stuff, is an engagement, or rather an embrace, of what the philosopher Merleau-Ponty would call the ‘flesh of the world,’ underscoring our ‘embodied connection to the spaces we inhabit deeply, primally, elementally’. Flesh involves not only water and its flows, but the air and its windy respirations, the earth with its forms and vicissitudes, and fire, as luminous and life giving as the sun.

The exhibition commences with two large-scale paintings, Dancing Waters I (2001), and Dancing Waters III (2001) – both of which serve as an excellent introduction to this consummately lyrical and expressive artist. They provide a good place to begin because Blitt is first and foremost a master of line and linearity, as these paintings show. They are also an exultant reminder that Blitt is essentially an affirmative artist, one that generally prefers to paint the ecstatic joy of the world, rather than its estrangement and pain. Paintings such as these are ultimately a vision of humanity’s reconciliation with the internal and external world. The bright yellow fountain of paint that rises through the heart of Dancing Waters I, is as fine a confirmation as any that Blitt’s work occupies a Mozartean world of jouissance.

Source: Mulvane Art Museum

Bermuda (1958) is the earliest of Blitt’s paintings on view. What we find here, among other paintings from this period, is an interest in the formal relationship among shapes, which would in time be carried over into her monumental sculpture. On the left-hand side, a sharply defined triangular object, presumably a boat of some kind, juts up out of the water at a 45-degree angle. Butting up against this is a semi-rectangular object, the shape of which is repeated in a building rising out of the tropical background. On the right-hand side, one can clearly discern the bold expressionistic strokes that would come to dominate her linear abstractions. Blitt has managed to successfully combine, in a particularly striking way, this intense regard for shape with the energetic and unrestrained gesturalism of the white spray. It is a reminder of Clement Greenberg’s observation that every finished painting is, indeed, “the result of the successful resolution of a difficult struggle.”

Winds of Change (2004) and Celebrating Fall in Aspen (2003) are dazzling, large-scale examples of Blitt’s non-naturalistic landscape painting.

There is a certain formal, structural similarity between the two paintings, both of which feature an undulating line that stretches the entire length of the canvas. It is a line that one may be tempted to regard as rehearsing the founding gesture of creation: the separation of what is above from what is below. It is not merely a long voluptuous line, but the thread that makes possible the very fabric of a landscape, that allows us to embrace the landscape and be embraced by it. In the Winds of Change, wide expressive swirls of purples, blues, and grays hover above the horizon. Blitt is a master of letting paint work its way over stretches of canvas. Her paint is thin enough here (and in Dancing Waters III) that it runs on its own in delicate filaments. She is not afraid to allow the paint to collaborate with gravity, and produce effects which bear comparison with Hiroshige’s woodcut, Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake (c. 1920-1929) included in the exhibition.

Blitt is as adept with transparency as she is with color and density. Untitled (1968), a translucent and elusive acrylic sculpture that appears to float in midair, is the occasion for a subtle presence to emerge – as if empty space itself has congealed into something diaphanous and ethereal. The exhibition includes a small but notable sample of Blitt’s explorations of the sculptural possibilities of acrylic. Perhaps the most extraordinary of these is Aquablitt (1972), made from a single sheet of perspex, internally divided into wide ribbons, and then shaped by four people alternately lifting from each corner, at Blitt’s direction. In many ways, this work epitomizes the themes of the show: the acrylic has become a strange and billowy surge that never seems to finish but is constantly shifting and spreading from a ripple to a swelling wave.

The exhibition includes individual paintings and sculptures by a handful of other artists whose work is thematically related. Among these is Transmutation Still Life (2018), a mixed media sculpture by installation artist Marguerite Perret, associate professor of art and design at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas: it takes a realistic look at the strange form an ordinary human artifact can assume over time – in this case, a swimmer’s bright orange life vest colonized by the sea and transformed in the process into something recognizable yet new, mysterious and utterly captivating.

“Art is not indifferent to truth,” as R.G. Collingwood wrote, “it is essentially the pursuit of truth” – but we must add that this is not the pursuit of a pre-existing truth as much as it is the bringing of truth into being. If this is what modernism recognizes, then modernism is not primarily a chronological category: it is aesthetic and critical, and exemplified in the work of Rita Blitt. Painting and sculpture are for her precisely about recovering what Theodor Adorno referred to as ‘the marrow of experience,’ which has been lost as a consequence of rationalized modernity, the reduction of reason to instrumental reason, and the domination of nature, inner and outer. Modernist abstraction, and Blitt’s gesturalism in particular, reveal that “sensuous particulars can mean, can be hypnotic objects of attention, apart from and in defiance of any form of identifying mechanism other than the one their sheer presence insinuates.”

Blitt’s work is ultimately aimed at re-claiming the significance of our embodied experience and the status, indeed, the prestige of unique, sensible particulars as the objects proper to such experience. As Adorno observed, there is “really no art that does not have, as a substantial element, the aspect of giving a voice to what has been muted or suppressed –” i.e., sacrificed, though “not necessarily destroyed – in the process of the progressive control of nature.” Art allows this, this irreducible sensuous particular to emerge as inherently meaningful, to recover its voice, and stake its claim upon us. In that case, a true appreciation of Rita Blitt’s art must also do justice to the utopian aspect of her work: that is, its beckoning us towards an as yet unrealized reconciliation with nature (inner and outer), a reconciliation with those aspects of humanity (the playful, spontaneous and erotic impulses) that have been sacrificed in our relentless drive towards mastery of nature.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Sam Ben-Meir is an assistant adjunct professor of philosophy at City University of New York, College of Technology. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Mulvane Art Museum

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

The following quote is from an Atlantic Council “issue brief” on Ukraine, titled, “Providing long-term security for Ukraine: NATO membership and other security options,” published on May 23, 2023.

The document was authored by Hans Binnendijk and Franklin D. Kramer. Binnendijk, according to the Atlantic Council webpage, is “a distinguished fellow” at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, while Kramer is also a “distinguished fellow” and board director of the Atlantic Council. Kramer spent time at the Pentagon and his focus, in part, is on NATO and Russia.

The authors argue,

“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.”

Prior to the Russian SMO to denazify Ukraine, the consensus in Europe was that Ukraine did not meet the criteria for membership. NATO “has never offered [Ukraine and Georgia] a formal action plan to join, a necessary step for them to do so,” The New York Times reported in January 2022, the month before Russia entered Ukraine. Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.

Moreover, Ukraine must “meet one of the three main criteria for entry into NATO, a European nation must demonstrate a commitment to democracy, individual liberty and support for the rule of law… In a 2020 analysis, Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog, ranked Ukraine 117th out of 180 countries on its corruption index, lower than any NATO nation.”

All of this went by the wayside when Russia moved to put an end to eight years of terror bombing of civilians in the Donbas, a crime against humanity ignored by the USG and its European “partners.”

However, by April 2023, NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg “said all member countries have agreed that Ukraine will eventually join the transatlantic military alliance,” The Guardian reported.

As for EU membership, Ukraine cannot meet the necessary requirements. According to a report by Politico, “officials in some EU governments—notably Denmark and Portugal—have voiced strong reluctance to granting candidate status, arguing that if Ukraine were not at war, it would not remotely meet the qualifications for starting membership talks.”

The so-called “Copenhagen criteria” requires “that the candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, rule of law, human rights, respect for and protection of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union.”

Ukraine continually violates “respect for and protection of minorities” (eight years of terror bombing ethnic Russian in the Donbas, killing around 14,000 people, although the actual number is unknown). Its economy is run by oligarchs. Ukraine is unable to compete with Germany or, for that matter Poland, following a round of neoliberal “shock therapy” (the Balcerowicz Plan) inflicted on Poland.

Unless the USG and the “collective West” are interested in a full-scale WWIII—and its nuclear annihilation terminus—there will be no practical way to ensure “deterrence” in response to Russia’s move to prevent “fast-track” NATO membership for Ukraine in addition to denazifying the country and putting an end to the murder of ethnic Russian civilians in Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia.

As for “freedom” in Ukraine, we should take into account President Zelenskyy’s decision to shut down opposition political parties, outlaw the Russian Orthodox Church (78% of Ukrainians identify as Orthodox Christians), and closing down and nationalizing television stations to control the flow of information. How this is representative of democracy is not explained.

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… 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.

NATO is not focused on the “full protection” of Ukraine. It is narrowly focused on the dismemberment of the Russian Federation, thus eliminating it as a competitor (with increased attention paid to another competitor, China, as trouble heats up in the South China Sea). Ukraine is a stepping stone in the effort to destroy and balkanize what remains of Russia, a plan that is failing stupendously.

For a detailed look at how the USG and its “partners” imagine they might take out Russia, see the RAND report, “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia.” RAND analysts, locked in a sixty-plus-year-old Cold War mentality, fantasize about degrading the Russian economy with sanctions and economic warfare. However, despite sanctions, the Russian economy has realized modest growth, while the US has suffered negative growth and has entered a recession.

The above quote reveals the true objective of NATO, the USG, and its European partners—converting Ukraine into a permanent battle zone in a protracted war to destroy Russia and usher in a return to the 1990s when oligarchs rushed in after the fall of the Soviet Union and pillaged the country and, in the process, enabled the spread abject poverty, drug, and alcohol addiction, and shortened life spans for average Russians.

Needless to say, the Russian people and their popular leader, Vladimir Putin, will not allow this to happen again. The USG neocons believe they are invincible, never mind stupendous failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Psychopaths invariably undermine their own projects.

The USG will undoubtedly continue along the current path, oblivious to failure, pathologically ignoring the massive and unaddressed suffering they have inflicted on millions of innocent people, and shrugging off the prospect of nuclear winter and billions of innocent people starving to death or falling victim to the crime and violence that will follow the fall of civilization.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Transnational

Pericarditis: The Other, Less Talked About COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine-Induced Heart Inflammation that Disables or Kills You

By Dr. William Makis, June 06, 2023

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).

BRICS Foreign Ministers Hold Preparatory Meetings in South Africa

By Abayomi Azikiwe, June 06, 2023

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.

India’s Brutal ‘Operation Blue Star’ Revisited

By Sajjad Shaukat, June 06, 2023

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.

The US “Initiative Over China”: Building up Taiwan Militarily. Moving Taiwan towards Independence.

By Karsten Riise, June 05, 2023

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.

Demand for Immediate Release of True Numbers of Casualties and POWs in the Foreign Wars of the Last 20 Years

By Emanuel Pastreich, June 05, 2023

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.

Did U.S. House Speaker McCarthy’s Visit to Israel Doom the Debt Ceiling?

By Renee Parsons, June 05, 2023

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. 

Digital Pound: Have Your Say on CBDCs in the UK

By OffGuardian, June 05, 2023

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.

Why There Should be a Treaty Against the Use of Weaponized Drones

By Colonel Ann Wright, June 05, 2023

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.

Internal Disputes Increasing in Ukraine. Replacement of President Volodymyr Zelensky?

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, June 05, 2023

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.

Dublin and NATO – Nord Stream: Ireland Edition Coming Soon?

By Gavin OReilly, June 05, 2023

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.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

---

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

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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 source

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

 

 

 

 

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”.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

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.

*

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

Featured image is from Fear No Evil

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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

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.

*

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

Featured image is from Speaker.gov

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

There are 25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world. 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 & pathogens destroyed pic.twitter.com/dhDTH5smIG

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) March 13, 2022

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.

⚡️@mod_russia: Documents seized in the veterinary laboratory of the Biosphere Reserve in Askania Nova, Kherson region, confirm the involvement of the Kharkov Institute of Veterinary Medicine in the work of 🇺🇸 UP-8 & P-444 Projects and preparations for the Flu-Fly-Way project. pic.twitter.com/BoB4yB7Y8N

— Russian Embassy in USA 🇷🇺 (@RusEmbUSA) May 26, 2023

⚡️ Read in full briefing by @mod_russia on US military-biological activity.

▪️ Evidence of the research of dangerous pathogens in Ukraine
▪️ Development of biological weapons by the US
▪️ Establishment of BSL-4 biolabs abroad by the US

📖 https://t.co/ocZoPmxSB4 pic.twitter.com/kDngcI1uix

— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) May 26, 2023

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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) 

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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….   

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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 21^st 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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from Reclaim the Net

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from Russia-Insider

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

 

 

 

 

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)

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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 Debt, The 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

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.”

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

 

 

 

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 21^st 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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

---

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

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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. 

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

Featured image is from DRHF

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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 4^th 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 20^th 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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

Featured image is from the author

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.

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.

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

The study is published in the journal Science.

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

Featured image: © michalsteflovic – stock.adobe.com

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

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

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

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

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 virus^cxx 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 cases^cxxv
• 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

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

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 Thompson^cxlvii 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 Trial^cliii

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

Sources

Kelly HA, Grant KA, Fielding JE, Carville KS, Looker CO, Tran T, Jacoby P. Pandemic influenza H1N1 2009 infection in Victoria, Australia: no evidence for harm or benefit following receipt of seasonal influenza vaccine in 2009. Vaccine. 2011 Aug 26;29(37):6419-26. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.03.055. Epub 2011 Apr 5. PMID: 21473950.

Medical Products Agency/Läkemedelsverket (MPA) (2011. a) A registry based comparative cohort study in four Swedish counties of the risk for narcolepsy after vaccination with Pandemrix—A first and preliminary report.

Medical Products Agency/Läkemedelsverket (MPA) (2011. b) Occurrence of narcolepsy with cataplexy among children and adolescents in relation to the H1N1 pandemic and Pandemrix vaccinations—Results of a case inventory study by the MPA in Sweden during 2009-2010.

Sarkanen T, Alakuijala A, Julkunen I, Partinen M. Narcolepsy Associated with Pandemrix Vaccine. Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep. 2018 Jun 1;18(7):43. doi: 10.1007/s11910-018-0851-5. PMID: 29855798.

Bodewes R. et al. “Annual vaccination against influenza virus hampers development of virus-specific CD8+ T Cell immunity in children,” Journal of Virology. 2011. Nov; 85(22): 11995-120

The Polio Virus and the Vaccine: Polio – The Virus and It’s Effect. Unhoodwinked: Mangling the Mainstream Media Manipulation. November 11, 2014. Accessed May 25, 2023. https://unhoodwinked.net/page/2/

Rapid response to: Ramifications of adverse events in children in Australia. BMJ 2010;340:c2994. https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/02/underreporting-vaccine-adverse-events

Rose J. Show this to people who use the ‘it’s-because-of-the-high-number-of-shots’ argument. Unacceptable Jessica Substack. May 10, 2023. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://jessicar.substack.com/p/show-this-to-people-who-use-the-its

Wayne. Deaths Per Million Vaccine Doses (US Only); Traditional Vaccines (2006-2019); Covid-19 Vaccines (2020-present). Data obtained from CDC’s VAERS and NVICP Data & Statistics Report. Vaersanalysis.info December 2, 2022. Accessed May 24, 2023.. https://vaersanalysis.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/image6_12022022.png

Covid 19 adverse events

Xiao N, Xu X, Ma Z, Yu X, Feng Y, Li B, Liu Y, He G, Fan J, Li B, Zhao X. Sleep quality was associated with adverse reactions after coronavirus disease 2019 vaccination among healthcare workers: A longitudinal paired study. Front Behav Neurosci. 2023 Jan 4;16:867650. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2022.867650. PMID: 36688124; PMCID: PMC9845944.

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 Report. brighteon.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

c 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

cx Ida‐Eto M, Oyabu A, Ohkawara T, Tashiro Y, Narita N, Narita M. Embryonic exposure to thimerosal causes abnormal early development of serotonergic neurons. Neurosci Lett. 2011 Nov 14;505(2):61‐4. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2011.05.053. Epub 2011 Jun 6

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/

Featured image is from Naturalnews.com

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.com. Consider 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).

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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).

Featured image is from TCS