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The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) secretively seconded a military officer to Yemen in 2019, it can be revealed. The officer was attached to the office of the then UN special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths.  

Declassified has shown that Griffiths’ is a founder of, and adviser to, a private conflict resolution company, Inter Mediate, that works with the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6.

The MOD has told Declassified the military officer “works directly with and provides advice to the UN Special Envoy for Yemen regarding security and military issues relevant to the conflict in Yemen.”

The MOD added: “The military officer is not based in Yemen but has visited with the UN Special Envoy.”

The officer visited the Yemeni capital Sana’a on nine occasions, Declassified was told. But the UK government did not publicly announce the secondment, and there is no mention of it on the government website. Sana’a is currently under the control of Iran-backed Houthi rebel forces.

Griffiths, a British expert in conflict mediation, was appointed as UN special envoy in 2018 after a campaign by the UK government. He held the position until August 2021 when he became the UN’s Under-secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs.

The secondment of the military officer raises further questions about the undermining of the appearance of impartiality crucial to the role of the UN special envoy. UK special forces are believed to have played a role in the war while the British military is maintaining the Saudi warplanes which have long operated over Yemen.

‘UN request’

The information was obtained by Declassified following a freedom of information request. It is not known if the military officer had a relationship with British special forces in Yemen or UK military personnel based in Saudi Arabia.

The defence section at the British embassy in Sana’a was evacuated to its embassy in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, in March 2015 as the Saudi air campaign—which has been paused for several months in 2022 due to a truce—began.

An MOD spokesperson told Declassified: “The UN requested a military adviser in order to support the planning and negotiation of a ceasefire in Yemen. The UK filled this role as part of our efforts to support the peace process.”

The MOD added that since 2015 the only other UK military personnel who had been in Yemen was the Defence Attaché, who accompanied the then foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt on a visit to the southern city of Aden in March 2019.

However, the MOD refused Declassified’s request for a list of the locations of Defence Intelligence personnel around the world, and special forces are not covered under freedom of information laws.

In July 2021, Declassified revealed that Britain has a secret detachment of up to 30 troops at Al-Ghaydah airport in Mahra province of eastern Yemen, where they are training Saudi forces.

Maritime Security Adviser

Declassified has also found that the UK military created a “Maritime Security Advisor” position in Yemen in 2015. Costing between £80,000 and £90,000 per year, some of which comes from the aid budget, the postholder was based temporarilywith the UK Yemen Office Network at the British embassy in Riyadh.

The government states that this role focused on “improving Maritime Security to sustain humanitarian access and legitimate trade into key ports, as well as service delivery and improved governance”.

The position raises questions in light of Saudi Arabia’s naval embargo on Yemen’s Red Sea coast, which UN experts have described as violating international humanitarian law. Human Rights Watch says the blockade has “severely restricted the flow of food, fuel, and medicine to civilians” during the war.

The UK is a strong supporter of the Saudi navy and has provided training on naval tactics that could be used for blockading Yemen, Declassified previously revealed.

The first Maritime Security Advisor was Kevin Stockton, who served from October 2015 to May 2016 in “Defence Section Yemen”, based in Riyadh. Stockton took up the position directly from being an advisor to the Saudis, as the Royal Navy’s Liaison Officer to the Saudi Naval Forces headquarters.

The government stated that “the maritime position in particular has been an excellent value add for the UK Government”. It added, “There should be strong consideration by MOD to transition this from a six month deployment to 12 months to build on access and influencing opportunities.”

The Royal Navy’s current Maritime Security Advisor to Yemen is Commander James Edwards, who is also based in Riyadh. He describes his role as involving “Delivery of timely maritime security advice, guidance and analysis to the FCDO and MoD on the maritime security of the southern Red Sea, Bab al Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden”.

An MOD spokesperson told Declassified: “A Maritime Security advisor provides the UK government with analysis and advice on threats to maritime security in the Gulf, helping promote regional security and the protection of UK shipping in one of the busiest commercial shipping lanes in the world.”

UK special forces in Yemen

The UK government maintains it is not a party to the war in Yemen but the British military and arms corporation BAE Systems, which works under contract to the MOD, maintains Saudi aircraft that have conducted thousands of airstrikes against Houthi forces.

The Yemen Data Project documents that these air raids have contributed to nearly 9,000 civilian deaths.

Britain is also training Saudi pilots on Typhoon fighter jets and UK military personnel are based in the Saudi Air Operations Centre.

In 2019, it was reported that “at least five British special forces commandos had been wounded in gun battles as part of a top-secret UK military campaign in Yemen”. The men were from the Royal Navy’s special forces, the Special Boat Service (SBS), and received the injuries following battles in the Sa’dah area of northern Yemen, where “up to 30 crack British troops are based”, it was claimed.

The SAS has also operated inside Yemen. In January 2019, a 12-man US/UK special forces task force, comprising the SAS and the US Green Berets, was reportedly flown into Yemen from Djibouti, ostensibly on an “humanitarian mission”.

Martin Griffiths did not respond to Declassified’s request for comment.

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A video promoting a fictional EctoLife facility recently went viral.  It featured pods in which babies could be grown from conception to birth.  Most people, having watched The Matrix, find it profoundly creepy.

Some reproductive experts were quick to point out that, of course, this is just science fiction and that anyone worrying about this is getting ahead of themselves.  Other experts, however, say that it really isn’t far off.  Our reproductive technology is getting better all the time, and moral qualms about tampering with the conception and birth process have mostly disappeared.

The dystopian novels and movies weren’t that far off.

Technology does move quickly.  When I was a kid, I thought the future would look like The Jetsons.  Sure, they predicted cell phones and video chatting.  But facial recognition tech?  The elimination of cash?  Changing birth from an organic process to a mechanical one?

Well, these things have been predicted too.  In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the first indicator society is about to turn upside down is when the main character’s credit card won’t work, and she finds she has to depend on her husband for all financial transactions.  We saw the human pods in The Matrix, but nearly 100 years ago Aldous Huxley described a similar baby-growth facility in Brave New World.

The Jetsons was a silly kids’ show; The Handmaid’s Tale and Brave New World were dystopian novels meant to provoke reflection about the direction in which our society has been moving.  Growing babies in pods is something most of us find instinctively disgusting; yet wealthy and influential people are attempting to sell us on the safety, convenience, and how it really isn’t so bad after all.  Why?

Fertility levels are low and still dropping.

The EctoLife video begins advertising as a way to help infertile couples conceive, and there is a need for this.  In November, Israeli scientists reported a worldwide sperm count decrease of 62% since 1973.  The same scientists had released a study in 2017, reporting that sperm counts from America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand had dropped by 50% since 1973 https://www.timesofisrael.com/sperm-counts-worldwide-fell-by-62-in-under-50-years-israeli-led-study-finds/  These world-class researchers have been monitoring these data for some time now and are finding that not only is sperm count decreasing, but it’s decreasing at an accelerated rate.

Fertility is low worldwide, for a variety of reasons.  Increased educational opportunities for women and the ability to plan families is a good thing; however, true infertility is tragic, and it’s becoming more common.

But why would we immediately jump to expensive, high-tech solutions?

Fertility may be dropping worldwide, but not at the same rate.  The EU’s birth rate was 1.5 as of 2020, far below the replacement level, while the birth rate for sub-Saharan Africa was 4.7. (See this) One can argue whether or not this is a good thing.  I’m not passing judgment; just stating that some populations are still, on average, having larger families.

It is similar to what’s going on with Covid.  While developed nations have been experiencing wave after wave of Covid, it is largely gone from Africa.  While Africans deal with a host of other health issues, as Dr. John Campbell points out in this video featuring an African doctor practicing in Africa, Covid is not one of them.

Africans are clearly able to still have babies as nature intended and are not getting sick from a disease making citizens of developed nations severely ill.  Isn’t this at least worth looking at?  Before looking for ever more expensive and technically complicated solutions to our First World problems, can we at least look at the Third World and ask some honest questions about what they do differently?  Is it not possible that they’re doing something better?  Technological innovation is a sign of progress; it’s also entirely possible to progress in the wrong direction.

And what about genetically engineered infants?

While wanting to help infertile couples is a noble cause, the rest of the video devolves into building your perfect baby, like infants are some kind of toy set.

EctoLife pods will be designed to replicate the exact conditions of the mother’s uterus, though they also claim to offer “germ-free” environments.  Uteruses aren’t germ-free so there’s an inherent contradiction.  Another selling point is the EctoLife app so that you can monitor your baby’s development from your phone.  Parents would be able to watch the baby’s development and pick out songs for the baby to listen to, all from their phones.  Parents could also sing into the baby’s pod, if they so choose.

Genetic engineering will be a possible feature.  They plan to use CRISPR technology to edit genes.  This will let parents not only weed out genetic defects, but also customize hair color and skin tone.  It’s important to note that nearly 80 years ago, Chronicles of Narnia author CS Lewis warned of genetically modified babies. Mothers will no longer have to confront the pain of childbirth; the process will occur with a push of a button.  And at the end, EctoLife will offer a free paternity test so you know the baby you take home is yours.

Many technical issues are not addressed.

The “germ-free” environment statement is significant, not only because it’s inherently false, but because it would be damaging.  All of us need regular exposure to a variety of substances for our immune systems to develop; any high school or college level biology textbook will tell you that.

And think about the last time you got an X-ray.  If you’re of reproductive age, they probably made you wear a lead apron.  Many medical imaging techniques will, after repeated exposures, have some effect and fetuses are particularly sensitive.  And yet EctoLife will let you look at your baby at any time?  This doesn’t make sense. There’s a reason people don’t get ultrasounds every single day.  But no thought seems to have been given to potential effects of imaging equipment.

Nowhere is there a discussion of how the mother’s body will be hormonally prepared to nurture a baby.  Motherhood isn’t a switch you just turn on. It’s a process, and shortly after giving birth most women will experience let-down, when milk starts flowing and the mother’s body is ready to feed the baby.  Maybe EctoLife assumes all babies will use formula?

Some of the claims are just silly to anyone that has actually given birth.  There’s no comparison between a lab setting with earbuds and the life of a pregnant woman. Most women are either working or taking care of other children while pregnant, which means the baby in utero is getting talked to and patted by Mom, her coworkers, and/or family for many hours a day.  Nothing can make up for the physical interactions with dozens of other people.

Our incubator technology has gotten good, and EctoLife sees itself as an extension of that.  Incubators are a blessing, for parents and babies that truly need them.  I’ve had a few close friends that have relied on incubators, though every parent I’ve known sees incubators as an emergency device, not something preferable.  A mother who wants to hold her baby will not be sold on convenience.  She won’t be sold on anything, other than the immediate need of the baby.

What about the philosophical issues of this?

And this touches on some extreme philosophical issues.  The minds putting effort into EctoLife differ profoundly from many actual parents.   They state, “Our goal is to provide you with an intelligent offspring that truly reflects your smart choices.”

I have a household full of intelligent offspring, and I have a very happy home.  But my first child was conceived in a vehicle when I was in my early 20s, and no, I’m not married to the father anymore.  My offspring most certainly do not reflect any “smart choices” on my part.  They reflect the impulsivity typical of young adults.

However, despite some rocky years, painful drama, and financial struggles, we found ways to meet our children’s needs.  By owning our mistakes and focusing on the needs of the kids, the stupid decisions of our young adulthood have led to incomparable emotional rewards of our more mature adulthood.

And that’s life.

Real life, not fake, ultra-planned artificial laboratory life.  We grow through struggle, and the struggles of pregnancy prepare you for parenthood.  The lack of control over your own body, the physical discomfort, the weird cravings, the inability to sleep all prepare you for parenting.

You don’t parent via app. Why pretend, in pregnancy?  None of this seems desirable to most parents, which leads us back to why?  Why put so much thought into these creepy baby pods?

Money’s the first, most obvious answer.  There are people in the world who want to commodify absolutely everything.  People in the most poverty-stricken parts of the world can and do have children.  All it takes is two reasonably healthy parents.

But there are an increasing number of potential parents who want everything to be absolutely perfect, and are willing to pay if they think that’ll happen.  And for anything someone is willing to pay for, there will be other people trying to provide it.

For a long time, couples conceived, gave birth, and nursed babies on their own.  Humans survived a long time without incubators and formula.  Again, incubators and formula are great when they’re truly needed, but EctoLife would take emergency equipment and make it standard.  Parents are happy when an incubator lets their preemie live, but I’m pretty sure they’d all just prefer healthy babies.  Same with formula.  It’s great for those who need it, but especially with all the formula shortages, I can’t imagine most people prefer it.

However, it isn’t the life that the powerful have reimagined.

I think this leads us to another, darker reason behind this effort to make something instinctively repulsive seem like the choice for smart people.  The past three years have seen enormous efforts on the part of worldwide governments and supra-national organizations to push everyone onto digital platforms, where they can be endlessly monitored.  It’s no secret that some very wealthy, powerful people want to completely reimagine society. This kind of technology would certainly influence who was able to “have” babies sheerly due to the price.

But of course, many of us plebes liked life before lockdowns.  We liked eating meat and conceiving children the old-fashioned way.  So these technocrats have taken it upon themselves to change our minds.  Since the publication of the book Nudge in 2008, there have been increasing efforts to nudge people’s behaviors, without them realizing it.  The Mercury Project has over $25 million in grant available to people researching how to increase vaccine uptake.  Changing behavior patterns is big business.

There are a lot of rich, powerful people out there who want us to overcome our disgust mechanisms and simply do what we’re told.  Overcoming our disgust toward baby pods, like our disgust toward eating insects, is just another part of that.

Our alarm bells should go off when we see ourselves being sold on something we would normally find disgusting.  Listen to your gut.  We’re being constantly bombarded with messaging, most of which is not good for us, and we need to be conscious of who is trying to sell us on what.

And maybe this should be a wake-up call, too, about our own health.  I’ve already had children; I want grandchildren, and hopefully, the healthy food and lifestyle I’ve tried to impart to my kids will make that possible.  A mentally, physically, and spiritually healthy population wouldn’t want or need baby pods.

What do you think of all this?

What are your thoughts on this technology? Is this just a creepy sci-fi video, or is it a glimpse of what the future might hold? Share your thoughts about it all in the comments.

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A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her.

Featured image is from The Organic Prepper

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It is noted that the decree has not been officially published as it contains personal information. But according to the publication’s sources, Zelensky suspended the citizenship of 13 clerics of the UOC (MP).

In particular, it is about Metropolitan Ionafan of Tulchyn and Bratslav, who has been charged with treason.  According to available information, he also holds a Russian passport.  Also on the list is the vicar of the Tulchyn diocese, Bishop Serhiy of Ladyzhyn, who is Ionafan’s close contact, LB.ua wrote, promising to publish the full list of 13 persons as soon as it is verified.

It is also noted that the State Migration Service received a corresponding notification about the loss of citizenship by the said persons.  According to the current regulations, they may be deported.

As reported by Ukrinform, the SBU raided a number of UOC (MP) dioceses in various regions of Ukraine.  Many clergymen were found to hold Russian citizenship, store pro-Russian propaganda literature and millions in cash.

In Ukraine, 74% of the population supports the President’s decision to impose sanctions on the higher clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (in unity with the Moscow Patriarchate), a recent poll says.

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Featured image is from Ukrainian President’s Office

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The Taliban administration in Afghanistan has criticised Prince Harry after the British royal said in his memoir that he had killed 25 Afghans when serving as a military helicopter pilot, describing them as “chess pieces removed from the board”.

“The western occupation of Afghanistan is truly an odious moment in human history and comments by Prince Harry is a microcosm of the trauma experienced by Afghans at the hands of occupation forces who murdered innocents without any accountability,” Abdul Qahar Balkhi, spokesperson for the Taliban-led Afghan foreign affairs ministry, said.

Harry’s highly personal book Spare went on sale in Spain days before its global launch on 10 January. In one section of the memoir, the 38-year-old recounts his two tours in Afghanistan, first as a forward air controller in 2007/08 and again in 2012, when he was an Apache helicopter pilot in the British Army Air Corps deployed to Camp Bastion in the south of the country.

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On the anniversary of the “assessment” blaming Russia for interfering in the 2016 election there is still no evidence other than showing the media “colluded” with the spooks, Ray McGovern wrote on Jan. 7, 2019.

The banner headline atop page one of The New York Times print edition [now six] years ago today, on Jan. 7, 2017, set the tone for two years of Dick Cheney-like chicanery: “Putin Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Says.”

Under a media drumbeat of anti-Russian hysteria, credulous Americans were led to believe that Donald Trump owed his election victory to the president of Russia, whose “influence campaign” according to the Times quoting the intelligence report, helped “President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton.”

Hard evidence supporting the media and political rhetoric has been as elusive as proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2002-2003. This time, though, an alarming increase in the possibility of war with nuclear-armed Russia has ensued — whether by design, hubris, or rank stupidity. The possible consequences for the world are even more dire than 16 years of war and destruction in the Middle East.

If It Walks Like a Canard…

The C.I.A.-friendly New York Times in 2017 led the media quacking in a campaign that wobbled like a duck, canard in French.

A glance at the title of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which was not endorsed by the whole community) — “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections” — would suffice to show that the widely respected and independently-minded State Department intelligence bureau should have been included. State intelligence had demurred on several points made in the Oct. 2002 Estimate on Iraq, and even insisted on including a footnote of dissent.

James Clapper, then director of national intelligence who put together the ICA, knew that all too well. So he evidently thought it would be better not to involve troublesome dissenters, or even inform them what was afoot.

Similarly, the Defense Intelligence Agency should have been included, particularly since it has considerable expertise on the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence agency, which has been blamed for Russian hacking of the DNC emails.

But DIA, too, has an independent streak and, in fact, is capable of reaching judgments Clapper would reject as anathema. Just one year before Clapper decided to do the rump “Intelligence Community Assessment,” DIA had formally blessed the following heterodox idea in its “December 2015 National Security Strategy”:

“The Kremlin is convinced the United States is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in Ukraine. Moscow views the United States as the critical driver behind the crisis in Ukraine and believes that the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-established pattern of U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts.”

Any further questions as to why the Defense Intelligence Agency was kept away from the ICA drafting table?

Handpicked Analysts

With help from the Times and other mainstream media, Clapper, mostly by his silence, was able to foster the charade that the ICA was actually a bonafide product of the entire intelligence community for as long as he could get away with it. After four months it came time to fess up that the ICA had not been prepared, as Secretary Clinton and the media kept claiming, by “all 17 intelligence agencies.”

In fact, Clapper went one better, proudly asserting — with striking naiveté — that the ICA writers were “handpicked analysts” from only the F.B.I., C.I.A., and NSA. He may have thought that this would enhance the ICA’s credibility. It is a no-brainer, however, that when you want handpicked answers, you better handpick the analysts. And so he did.

Why is no one interested in the identities of the handpicked analysts and the hand-pickers? After all, we have the names of the chief analysts/managers responsible for the fraudulent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October 2002 that greased the skids for the war on Iraq. Listed in the NIE itself are the principal analyst Robert D. Walpole and his chief assistants Paul Pillar, Lawrence K. Gershwin and Maj. Gen. John R. Landry.

The Overlooked Disclaimer

Buried in an inside page of the Times on Jan. 7, 2017 was a cautionary paragraph in an analysis by reporter Scott Shane. It seems he had read the ICA all the way through, and had taken due note of the derriere-protecting caveats included in the strangely cobbled together report. Shane had to wade through nine pages of drivel about “Russia’s Propaganda Efforts” to reach Annex B with its curious disclaimer:

“Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents. … High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.”

Small wonder, then, that Shane noted: “What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. That is a significant omission…”

Since then, Shane has evidently realized what side his bread is buttered on and has joined the ranks of Russiagate aficionados. Decades ago, he did some good reporting on such issues, so it was sad to see him decide to blend in with the likes of David Sanger and promote the NYT official Russia-gate narrative. An embarrassing feature, “The Plot to Subvert an Election: Unraveling the Russia Story So Far,” that Shane wrote with NYT colleague Mark Mazzetti in September, is full of gaping holes, picked apart in two pieces by Consortium News.

Shades of WMD

Sanger is one of the intelligence community’s favorite go-to journalists. He was second only to the disgraced Judith Miller in promoting the canard of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S. invasion in March 2003. For example, in a July 29, 2002 article, “U.S. Exploring Baghdad Strike As Iraq Option,” co-written by Sanger and Thom Shanker, the existence of WMD in Iraq was stated as flat fact no fewer than seven times.

The Sanger/Shanker article appeared just a week after then-CIA Director George Tenet confided to his British counterpart that President George W. Bush had decided “to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” At that critical juncture, Clapper was in charge of the analysis of satellite imagery and hid the fact that the number of confirmed WMD sites in Iraq was zero.

Despite that fact and that his “assessment” has never been proven, Clapper continues to receive praise.

During a “briefing” I attended at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington several weeks ago [in 2018], Clapper displayed master circular reasoning, saying in effect, that the assessment had to be correct because that’s what he and other intelligence directors told President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump.

Image: McGovern questions Clapper at Carnegie Endowment in Washington. (Alli McCracken)

I got a chance to question him at the event. His disingenuous answers brought a painful flashback to one of the most shameful episodes in the annals of U.S. intelligence analysis.

Ray McGovern: My name is Ray McGovern. Thanks for this book; it’s very interesting [Ray holds up his copy of Clapper’s memoir]. I’m part of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.  I’d like to refer to the Russia problem, but first there’s an analogy that I see here.  You were in charge of imagery analysis before Iraq.

James Clapper: Yes.

RM: You confess [in the book] to having been shocked that no weapons of mass destruction were found.  And then, to your credit, you admit, as you say here [quotes from the book], “the blame is due to intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help [the administration make war on Iraq] that we found what wasn’t really there.”

Now fast forward to two years ago.  Your superiors were hell bent on finding ways to blame Trump’s victory on the Russians.  Do you think that your efforts were guilty of the same sin here?  Do you think that you found a lot of things that weren’t really there?  Because that’s what our conclusion is, especially from the technical end.  There was no hacking of the DNC; it was leaked, and you know that because you talked to NSA.

JC: Well, I have talked with NSA a lot, and I also know what we briefed to then-President Elect Trump on the 6th of January.  And in my mind, uh, I spent a lot of time in the SIGINT [signals intelligence] business, the forensic evidence was overwhelming about what the Russians had done.  There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever.  The Intelligence Community Assessment that we rendered that day, that was asked, tasked to us by President Obama — and uh — in early December, made no call whatsoever on whether, to what extent the Russians influenced the outcome of the election. Uh, the administration, uh, the team then, the President-Elect’s team, wanted to say that — that we said that the Russian interference had no impact whatsoever on the election.  And I attempted, we all did, to try to correct that misapprehension as they were writing a press release before we left the room.

However, as a private citizen, understanding the magnitude of what the Russians did and the number of citizens in our country they reached and the different mechanisms that, by which they reached them, to me it stretches credulity to think they didn’t have a profound impact on election on the outcome of the election.

RM: That’s what The New York Times says.  But let me say this: we have two former Technical Directors from NSA in our movement here, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity; we also have forensics, okay?

Now the President himself, your President, President Obama said two days before he left town: The conclusions of the intelligence community — this is ten days after you briefed him — with respect to how WikiLeaks got the DNC emails are “inconclusive” end quote.  Now why would he say that if you had said it was conclusive?

JC: I can’t explain what he said or why.  But I can tell you we’re, we’re pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks got those emails.  I’m not going to go into the technical details about why we believe that.

RM: We are too [pretty sure we know]; and it was a leak onto a thumb drive — gotten to Julian Assange — really simple.  If you knew it, and the NSA has that information, you have a duty, you have a duty to confess to that, as well as to [Iraq].

JC: Confess to what?

RM: Confess to the fact that you’ve been distorting the evidence.

JC: I don’t confess to that.

RM: The Intelligence Community Assessment was without evidence.

JC: I do not confess to that. I simply do not agree with your conclusions.

William J. Burns (Carnegie President): Hey, Ray, I appreciate your question.  I didn’t want this to look like Jim Acosta in the White House grabbing microphones away.  Thank you for the questioning though.  Yes ma’am [Burns recognizes the next questioner].

The above exchange can be seen starting at 28:45 in this video or watch below.

Not Worth His Salt

Having supervised intelligence analysis, including chairing National Intelligence Estimates, for three-quarters of my 27-year career at C.I.A., my antennae are fine-tuned for canards. And so, at Carnegie, when Clapper focused on the rump analysis masquerading as an “Intelligence Community Assessment,” the scent of the duck came back strongly.

Intelligence analysts worth their salt give very close scrutiny to sources, their possible agendas, and their records for truthfulness. Clapper flunks on his own record, including his performance before the Iraq war — not to mention his giving sworn testimony to Congress that he had to admit was “clearly erroneous,” when documents released by Edward Snowden proved him a perjurer. At Carnegie, the questioner who followed me brought that up and asked, “How on earth did you keep your job, Sir?”

The next questioner, a former manager of State Department intelligence, posed another salient question: Why, he asked, was State Department intelligence excluded from the “Intelligence Community Assessment”?

Among the dubious reasons Clapper gave was the claim, “We only had a month, and so it wasn’t treated as a full-up National Intelligence Estimate where all 16 members of the intelligence community would pass judgment on it.” Clapper then tried to spread the blame around (“That was a deliberate decision that we made and that I agreed with”), but as director of national intelligence the decision was his.

U.S. Marine patrols the streets of Al Faw, Iraq, 2003. (U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 1st Class Ted Banks.)

Given the questioner’s experience in the State Department’s intelligence, he was painfully aware of how quickly a “full-up NIE” can be prepared. He knew all too well that the October 2002 NIE, “Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction,” was ginned up in less than a month, when Cheney and Bush wanted to get Congress to vote for war on Iraq. (As head of imagery analysis, Clapper signed off on that meretricious estimate, even though he knew no WMD sites had been confirmed in Iraq.)

It’s in the Russians’ DNA

The criteria Clapper used to handpick his own assistants are not hard to divine. An Air Force general in the mold of Curtis LeMay, Clapper knows all about “the Russians.” And he does not like them, not one bit. During an interview with NBC on May 28, 2017, Clapper referred to “the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique.” And just before I questioned him at Carnegie, he muttered, “It’s in their DNA.”

Even those who may accept Clapper’s bizarre views about Russian genetics still lack credible proof that (as the ICA concludes “with high confidence”) Russia’s main military intelligence unit, the G.R.U., created a “persona” called Guccifer 2.0 to release the emails of the Democratic National Committee. When those disclosures received what was seen as insufficient attention, the G.R.U. “relayed material it acquired from the D.N.C. and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks,” the assessment said.

At Carnegie, Clapper cited “forensics.” But forensics from where? To his embarrassment, then-FBI Director James Comey, for reasons best known to him, chose not to do forensics on the “Russian hack” of the DNC computers, preferring to rely on a computer outfit of tawdry reputation hired by the DNC. Moreover, there is zero indication that the drafters of the ICA had any reliable forensics to work with.

In contrast, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, working with independent forensic investigators, examined metadata from a July 5, 2016 DNC intrusion that was alleged to be a “hack.” However, the metadata showed a transfer speed far exceeding the capacity of the Internet at the time. Actually, all the speed turned out to be precisely what a thumb drive could accommodate, indicating that what was involved was a copy onto an external storage device and not a hack — by Russia or anyone else.

WikiLeaks had obtained the DNC emails earlier. On June 12, 2016 Julian Assange announced he had “emails relating to Hillary Clinton.” NSA appears to lack any evidence that those emails — the embarrassing ones showing that the DNC cards were stacked against Bernie Sanders — were hacked.

Since NSA’s dragnet coverage scoops up everything on the Internet, NSA or its partners can, and do trace all hacks. In the absence of evidence that the DNC was hacked, all available factual evidence indicates that earlier in the spring of 2016, an external storage device like a thumb drive was used in copying the DNC emails given to WikiLeaks.

Additional investigation has proved Guccifer 2.0 to be an out-and-out fabrication — and a faulty basis for indictments.

A Gaping Gap

Clapper and the directors of the C.I.A., F.B.I., and NSA briefed President Obama on the ICA on Jan. 5, 2017, the day before they briefed President-elect Trump. At Carnegie, I asked Clapper to explain why President Obama still had serious doubts.  On Jan. 18, 2017, at his final press conference, Obama saw fit to use lawyerly language to cover his own derriere, saying: “The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked.”

So we end up with “inconclusive conclusions” on that admittedly crucial point. In other words, U.S. intelligence does not know how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks. In the absence of any evidence from NSA (or from its foreign partners) of an Internet hack of the DNC emails the claim that “the Russians gave the DNC emails to WikiLeaks” rests on thin gruel. After all, these agencies collect everything that goes over the Internet.

Clapper answered: “I cannot explain what he [Obama] said or why. But I can tell you we’re, we’re pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks got those emails.”

Really?

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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-year C.I.A. career he supervised intelligence analysis as Chief of Soviet Foreign Policy Branch, as editor/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief, as a member of the Production Review Staff, and as chair of National Intelligence Estimates. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Featured image: Clapper: Showing handpicked evidence? (White House Photo)

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President Biden’s recent decision to permit the CIA to continue keeping its 59-year-old records relating to the Kennedy assassination secret from the American people has brought about a public backlash that has not been seen since the enactment of the JFK Records Act in 1992. This major shift is a tremendously positive development in the JFK assassination. 

You will recall that a couple of years ago, Biden used the Covid crisis as an excuse to give the CIA another extension of time for secrecy. Biden has now returned to the tried-and-true “national-security” excuse for, once again, letting the CIA get away with another secrecy extension. Apparently the idea is that if the CIA’s 59-year-old secret assassination-related records are released to the public, the United States will fall into the ocean or be taken over by the Reds.

The backlash to Biden’s decision has been substantial.

There is Tucker Carlson’s monologue on Fox News in which he expressly stated his belief that the CIA was involved in Kennedy’s assassination. Given that Carlson is the most popular commentator on Fox News, that monologue is obviously a huge breakthrough.

Robert Kennedy, Jr., is the son of Robert Kennedy, the president’s brother, who himself was assassinated. Kennedy, Jr., sent out a tweet that included a link to Carlson’s monologue. Kennedy’s tweet stated,

“The most courageous newscast in 60 years. The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered.@Tucker Carlson.”

In his online show System Update, the noted political commentator Glenn Greenwald has also now weighed in on the JFK assassination. You can see his presentation here (go to 43:00). Greenwald doesn’t specifically state his conviction that the CIA helped carry out the JFK assassination but there is no doubt in my mind that, based on his presentation, that is what he believes. In his presentation, he features Carlson’s monologue and Robert Kennedy’s tweet. He also recommends David Talbot’s book The Devil’s Chessboard. For a written summary of Greenwald’s presentation, see here.

The libertarian Reason magazine published an article which, while refraining from taking a position on whether the assassination was, in fact, a national-security-state regime-change operation, called for the release of the CIA’s long-secret assassination-related records.

Even though he is skeptical of claims that November 22, 1963, was a regime-change operation, federal judge John Tunheim is exhorting President Biden and Congress to order the release of the CIA’s long-secret assassination-related records. Tunheim served as chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s. The ARRB was the agency whose job it was to enforce the JFK Records Collection Act. You can see his presentation here at a press conference at the National Press Club.

Biden’s decision to extend the time for secrecy also generated a large number of articles in the mainstream press criticizing his decision. A fascinating aspect of these articles is that some of them did not limit their criticism to the continued secrecy of the records. Like Carlson and Kennedy, Jr., they went one important step further and actually stated their conviction that Kennedy was felled by his enemies within the government. See this article by Jefferson Morley that recaps many of the articles in the mainstream press regarding the controversy.

In fact, Morley, who is a former investigative reporter for the Washington Post, deserves the credit for having brought much of the recent publicity to the CIA’s continued cover-up. Longtime supporters of FFF will recognize Morley as the author of FFF’s book CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files. He was also a speaker at our 2021 conference “The National Security State and the JFK assassination,” which was, in my opinion, the best conference ever on this topic. In fact, if you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend doing so.

In fact, another fantastic conference we held was in 2017, which featured Oliver Stone and many other great speakers. It was entitled “The National Security State and JFK.”

There is also a federal lawsuit that has recently been brought by the Mary Farrell Foundation against the National Archives to force compliance with the JFK Records Act. Read about that lawsuit here.

The genesis of the JFK Records Act is a testament to the power of public opinion. For 30 years, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Secret Service, and other federal agencies were steadfastly keeping their assassination-related records secret. “National security,” they said! Needless to say, that was a weird claim, given their official narrative that a lone nut with no ties to U.S. intelligence had killed the president. 

In 1991, Oliver Stone came out with his movie JFK, which posited that the assassination was a U.S. national-security state regime-change operation, no different from regime-change operations that were carried out against other regimes, such as Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1960-present), and Chile (1970-73). At the end of the movie, Stone included a blurb informing people that federal officials were still keeping their assassination-related records secret. 

Stone’s blurb produced a public outcry that forced Congress to enact the JFK Records Act. That can happen again. Biden extended the CIA’s secrecy deadline to June 2023, which I think was a dumb move because there is a good chance that there will be more publicity surrounding that upcoming deadline. From the CIA’s standpoint, Biden would have been much better off extending the deadline for 25 years or forever.

There is no doubt that the records that the CIA continues to steadfastly keep secret have nothing to do with “national security,” no matter what definition one puts on that nebulous, meaningless term. But in the final analysis, the real issue is not what’s in those secret records, but rather that the CIA and the Pentagon did, in fact, orchestrate the assassination of a U.S. president, just as they orchestrated the assassination of foreign leaders who they felt posed a grave threat to “national security.” 

As far as I’m concerned, the CIA should never have come into existence. As I state in my most recent book on the JFK assassination, An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, which I consider the best work I’ve done in the 33-year history of The Future of Freedom Foundation, once the CIA’s evil program known as MKULTRA came to light, the CIA should have been abolished at that point. But I am more convinced than ever that the day of reckoning is getting closer for the CIA, the day that a critical mass of Americans finally reach the conclusion that John F. Kennedy was, in fact, assassinated by the U.S. national-security establishment for his decision to move America in a direction different from that of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

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A group of University of Florida medical-school faculty members challenged controversial guidance by state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on COVID-19 vaccinations, but a university official said Wednesday the guidance is outside the scope of Ladapo’s work with the school.

Ladapo, who holds a faculty position in the UF College of Medicine, was tapped in September 2021 by Gov. Ron DeSantis to serve as surgeon general and secretary of the Florida Department of Health. Ladapo has become a controversial national figure because of his positions on issues such as COVID-19 vaccines and mask requirements.

In October, Ladapo issued guidance advising males ages 18 through 39 to avoid getting shots with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. The Department of Health published an analysis that showed an increase “in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death” among males in that age group roughly a month after receiving the shots.

The report by the UF College of Medicine’s Faculty Council Committee, first reported by The Washington Post, was shared with medical-school faculty Tuesday. It outlined seven “major critiques” of Ladapo’s vaccine guidance.

Among the critiques was an assertion that Ladapo’s analysis committed “reporting bias by cherry-picking results; focusing only on evidence that supports his stance, ignoring contradicting evidence, and failing to appropriately acknowledge the limitations of his own data set.”

The committee said it has “concerns” that Ladapo violated UF’s research integrity policy and that the issue had been referred to the school’s research integrity officer. But David Norton, vice president for research at the university, said in a statement Wednesday that UF’s research integrity office has “no standing” to look into the committee’s accusations.

“As this work was done by the Dr. Joseph Ladapo in his role as the state of Florida Surgeon General and not in his role as a UF faculty member, the UF Office of Research Integrity, Security and Compliance has no standing to consider the allegations or concerns regarding research integrity set forth in the Faculty Council task force report,” Norton said.

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The open white supremacy and fascism exhibited in Ukraine are conveniently swept under the rug. Nazis are bad, unless they serve the interests of the U.S. state.

The accuracy of this commentary’s title is borne out by statements made and actions taken by the Ukrainians themselves. In 2020 millions of people around the world protested against racism in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd. Ukrainians made it clear that they were not to be included amongst that mass of humanity and in fact expressed their support for white supremacy.

In June 2020, a group of football fans at a match in Ukraine unfurled a banner reading, “Free Derek Chauvin .” Chauvin is the man who murdered George Floyd. Not to be outdone, members of the neo-Nazi group Nazionalny Sprotyv, National Resistance, marched on October 14, 2020 with a banner that made the point very clear. The words “White Lives Matter ” were written in English and in much larger type than the name of the organization which appeared in small type below. October 14 is celebrated as the Day of the UPA, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought alongside Nazi Germany after it invaded Ukraine during World War II. The words in the pink graphic on the video read, “On the march of UPA Nazis carefully burned the poster of BLM.” Nazionalny Sprotyv is known for its racist, anti-Russian, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-Communist beliefs.

The war propaganda disseminated by the Biden administration and its friends in corporate media tells us to ignore the swastikas, Hitler salutes, and other clear indicators of Nazi sympathies when they appear in Ukraine. Suddenly symbolism which we were told to abhor as indisputable signs of hate speech are now to be accepted or explained away as figments of our collective imagination.

Nazi regalia and symbolism should make assistance to the Ukrainian government an automatic deal breaker. But the U.S. has always been rather flexible in its approach to Nazism. After World War II an intelligence program known as Operation Paperclip brought more than 1,600 German scientists to the U.S. to fight in the new cold war against the Soviet Union. Their links to the Nazi party were covered up so that they might be of assistance to the U.S. Werner von Braun and other Nazi linked scientists were instrumental in creating the U.S. space program.

Ukraine was a divided nation from its very beginnings after World War I, with half of the country hating the Soviet Union so much that they sided with and fought alongside the Germans. January 1 is officially celebrated not just as the first day of the year but as the birthday of Ukraine’s chief Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera. The 2023 celebration was no exception but not without embarrassment. The Ukrainian parliament was forced to delete a Twitter post featuring a photo of army commander General Valerii Zaluzhny juxtaposed with an image of Bandera. Bandera massacred thousands of Poles during the war and the Ukrainians had to be reminded through diplomatic channels that everyone isn’t as forgiving as clueless Americans. Just as Operation Paperclip is an inconvenient and rarely discussed truth, Ukraine’s continuing Nazi and white supremacist connections are now hushed up by the U.S. state and its media partners.

It is indeed awkward for Joe Biden to greet president Zelensky at the white house and for him to speak in congress if these facts are openly discussed. Of course Zelensky is president because the Obama administration helped to engineer a coup against an elected Ukrainian president in 2014. Members of congress like senator Chris Murphy and the late John McCain are among those who traveled to Kiev and addressed rallies sponsored by the right wing Svoboda and Right Sector parties and aided in the coup effort.

The Biden administration invitation to Zelensky was an effort to ensure that an additional $45 billion was allocated to Ukraine before the congressional session ended. The standing ovations and blue and yellow flags and cries of “Slava Ukraini!” were orchestrated to get more buy-in at a time when many Americans are asking why their needs go unmet and why Ukraine can’t resume the negotiations it was holding months ago with Russia. It has been reported that the U.S. sent the then prime minister of the UK, Boris Johnson, to tell Zelensky that any talk of peace had to end. Russia was ready to withdraw in exchange for security guarantees and an end to Ukraine’s efforts to secure NATO membership. But Ukraine is the latest U.S. forever war and its people have to suffer and die because of its dictates.

Perhaps the saddest sight of the night of Zelensky’s congressional speech was the adulation he received from some members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). CBC members Sheila Jackson-Lee and Barbara Lee eagerly sought to shake his hand. Perhaps they are unaware of Ukraine’s white supremacist leanings. But that can’t be true. After all, in 2015 their CBC colleague, the late John Conyers, co-sponsored an amendment that would have barred U.S. funding to the Azov battalion and other Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups. The amendment was ultimately removed from the final spending bill.

CBC member Gregory Meeks is Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee and said, “This war is about Russian aggression against Ukraine and the security of Europe, and it is also about democracy over tyranny, and freedom over oppression.” Ukraine has banned left wing parties and collective bargaining rights. Its people are openly racist. Barbara Lee, now elbowing her colleagues to get a little Zelensky facetime, was the only member of congress to have voted against the authorization to invade Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Now she brags about her role in securing more funding for a white supremacist state.

White lives matter just as much in the U.S. as they do in Ukraine. Even Black politicians go along with supremacist ideology. As the war grinds on, and casualties and public spending go ever upward, it is wise to remember that there are very few anti-racists in positions of authority anywhere in the world. Apparently the war propagandists are right. The U.S. and Ukraine are united in every way.

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Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on Twitter and on Telegram. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley(at)blackagendareport.com.

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***

 

Churches in East Jerusalem are constantly concerned about the rise in Israeli extremist attacks on Christian property in the city.

Current and former church officials told Anadolu Agency that the frequent attacks on Christian property ended in most cases without punishing the perpetrators.

On Sunday, Israeli extremists destroyed and toppled 30 graves with crosses at a Christian cemetery belonging to the Evangelical Episcopal Church in East Jerusalem.

“The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemns the act of vandalism at the Protestant Mount Zion Cemetery in Jerusalem,” the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a tweet on Wednesday.

History of assault

On 27 December, 2022, dozens of settlers stormed the 5,000-square-meter (53,820-square-feet) plot of land in Silwan, south of Jerusalem’s Old City, under Israeli police protection.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate decried the settler raid as a “clear encroachment” on its properties in Jerusalem.

“This radical group has no right or judicial backing in their favour to allow them to enter or occupy the land,” it said in a statement.

The Patriarchate referred to the fact that, two years ago, a settlement association tried seizing the Imperial and Little Petra hotels located in Omar Ibn Al Khattab Square in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Conviction awaiting punishment

The former Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Holy Land, Munib Younan, said: “The attack on a cemetery that tells the history of Lutherans since the 19th century is evidence of the hatred of the attackers.”

During his interview with Anadolu Agency, Younan said the attack on the cemetery “is unacceptable and should not only be condemned but the perpetrators must also be punished.”

He stressed that the aggressors “aimed to seize the Hebron Gate by seizing the Imperial and Petra Hotels, which would lead to control of the local and international Christian pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City.”

Intentional narrowing

The recent attacks were not limited to the property of the Lutheran Church, but also included the property of other Christian denominations, including those owned by the Greek Orthodox Church.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate’s spokesman, Father Issa Musleh, said, “Extremists attack churches and monasteries, just as they attack the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

“Our Muslim brothers are exposed to the same attacks we are exposed to, our cause is the same,” he added.

He attributed the increasing decline in the numbers of Christians in the Holy Land in part to Christians feeling targeted by extremists.

Father Musleh called on Christians to return to their lands to confront the “targeting of settlers”, noting that “they are harassing us to displace us, but we will remain until the Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital is established.”

Musleh said “the presence of an extremist right-wing government in Israel does not scare only us but the whole world.”

Against unknown

Over the years, Wadih Abu Nassar, spokesman for the Council of Heads of Catholic Churches in Jerusalem, along with Israeli authorities, followed up on many attacks.

“We are not talking about singular attacks but rather dozens of attacks over the past few years, most of which were recorded against unknown persons,” he noted.

“This matter cannot be accepted,” Abu Nassar added. “Advanced security services must be used to stop hate crimes and bring perpetrators to justice.”

He warned against the development of attacks in the future and their transgression of cemeteries.

“The continuation of the attacks will lead their perpetrators to believe that they are untouchable, their attacks will not end with graveyards,” Abu Nassar noted.

He also pointed out that “hate crimes stem from an educational problem,” adding: “A radical solution is needed.”

Aggravating attacks

Abu Nassar narrated examples of how the Israeli authorities deal lightly with hate crimes.

“In the case of the attack on the Church of the Grotto of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, the assailant was arrested, then declared abnormal,” he stressed, explaining: “The Israeli authorities behave strangely with such mentally abnormal crimes. If the assault is documented through cameras, authorities say the faces are blurred, and when aggressors are arrested, they are always mentally ill.”

“I do not rule out that the Christian presence is targeted, according to some Jewish fundamentalists, the Christian is an enemy. There are ideological dimensions, not just political ones, just as I do not rule out hatred among some,” he added.

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Featured image: This is a photo of a place that is recognized as a heritage site by the Council for Conservation of Heritage Sites in Israel. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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The Iraqi supreme court has issued an arrest warrant for former U.S. President Donald Trump for the assassination on Iraqi soil of Iran’s Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani, IraqiNews reports, citing a Baghdad news agency. 

The warrant was issued on Thursday in connection both with the killing of Soleimani and of another Iraqi militia leader, chief of staff of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq–both of whom were killed in a drone strike in January 2020 near the Baghdad airport.

That assassination operation led to Iranian strikes on the Aia Al-Assad U.S. base in Iraq.

The arrest warrant charges Trump with premeditated murder. While the warrant is clearly symbolic, a conviction of this nature carries the death penalty.

The court said the investigation into the killings was still ongoing, AP reported.

Citing Baghdad Today news agency, IraqiNews quoted Supreme Judicial Council head Faiq Zaidban as calling on Baghdad to hold Trump “accountable for this heinous crime”.

At the same time, in November, Iraq’s parliamentary speaker confirmed that hundreds–and possibly thousands–of people had been kidnapped and killed by Iran-backed militias from 2014 to 2016.

Iraq, the second-largest oil producer in OPEC, is caught between rivals Iran and the United States, while Iran’s influence has grown exponentially since the toppling of Saddam Hussein following the 2003 U.S. invasion.

In October, ending a long-running stalemate, Iraq’s parliament named a new pro-Iranian prime minister and pro-Iranian parties now dominate, having sidelined Shi’ite rival Moqtada al Sadr, who had been paralyzing the government with anti-Iranian protests.

The PMF figure assassinated in a Trump-ordered military operation represented the head of an umbrella group that brought together pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, which enjoyed government support as a loosely defined element of the Iraqi armed forces.

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Charles is a writer for OilPrice.com.

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

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American presidential candidate and international relations expert Emanuel Pastreich discusses the events of 2020 and how it was really an attempted totalitarian takeover of local and central governments around the world by billionaires and bloodline families working through IT companies, and private intelligence firms. We talk about the perversion and marxification of academia and how students are “mind raped” into a worship of authority by the very people that have been learning how to corrupt minds from earlier experiments at DARPA and Guantanamo Bay.   

Transcript

John Cooper: Welcome to another episode of Raising the Bar with myself, John Cooper. Today I’m joined by Emanuel Pastreich who serves as the president of the Asia Institute and is director general of the institute for Future Urban Environments. Emanuel declared his candidacy for president of the US as an independent in February of 2020. Emanuel welcome to the show.

Emanuel Pastreich: It’s an honor to be with you.

John Cooper: I presented a little bio there, but could you explain for the audience what brought you to where you are at this moment, about your candidacy for president, and also about being brave enough to speak the truths that you do?

Emanuel Pastreich: Well, first I’m an American And you could say that I was a card-carrying member of The establishment, in the sense that my father went to Yale and I went to Yale, I grew up in an upper middle class environment, became a professor at University of Illinois, and I was 22 years ago a prominent figure in Asian studies—and I thought I would end up with a very illustrious career. But then I was forced by 9/11 and the build up to 9/11 to face ugly aspects of American culture; it was a change, a negative mutation, in American culture and I watched people being cleared out of government, out of academics, and other places and I felt we’d crossed the Rubicon, and that therefore, as an intellectual, I had a responsibility to take a stand and to oppose this. It was not just me, but it was a small group in America of people who felt we had to take a stand back then in 2001–even before the 911 incident.

But the institutional decay and contradictions went back to Oklahoma, it went back to the Kennedy assassination in some respects it went back to the end of the second World War. At the end of the Second World War we had this very sad experience —and equally true in London as it is in Washington DC–which is that during the Second World War there was an effort in Washington DC or in London to move away from the imperialist financial system and to get back to something closer to a republic, something based upon representation of the interests and the needs of the average citizen, to move away from global finance.

But that effort, that effort to maintain healthy institutions, started to fall apart at the end of the Second World War. It took another 30 years to weave the spider’s web in which American and British corporations set up their Headquarters, in the Virgin Islands and other places, and thereby created a parallel alternate universe that is not subject to the rule of law, that is not overseen by anything; just trusts, corporations, offshore holdings.

And today that “spider’s web economy” has become the dominant paradigm. So we live in the terrarium economy—you, me, our friends– and then there’s this “Untouchable” Brahmin class of people who have accumulated billions and billions of dollars. They make up money, they control money, and they inhabit the the leftovers of the British Empire. They have become the dominant mode for economic interaction for both the United States and Great Britain, and other countries as well. We’ve signed, unbeknownst to Ourselves, a sort of death pact to have our societies torn apart, sold off at fire sale prices, to benefit this tiny handful the super-rich. Now it’s no longer just in London and New York, but also includes wealthy individuals from around the world—from Japan, from Germany, from China, from Russia, etc. It is a disturbing world and so I decided we had to take a stand against them, not just me of course. The result was that I ended up spending 14 years in Korea. This is my second time trying to come back to the United States I don’t know how it will end, and I’m not totally sure that it’s a viable campaign, but at least I will try.

I say let’s go back to real politics. Politics was not a bad word originally. We need a politics of truth, a politics of ethical commitment, and we need to say that those of us who had the benefit of receiving good educations have a responsibility to the common man, the common woman the working women and men of our country, of our Earth. Intellectuals must recognize that our interests do not lie with the billionaires, not with Goldman Sachs and BlackRock. Perhaps this point seems obvious to some of you, but that this is not common sense in London and Washington. The vast majority of the privileged intellectuals, those who have had these opportunities for good educations in a supportive environment, find themselves siding with the billionaires, not the working people.

I mean the will of the billionaires as articulated through their cardboard Messiahs, their pay-to-play NGOs, their fake organizations that are supposedly trying to abolish poverty or address the environmental crisis—but they are in fact following their directives from private intelligence agencies that work for the for billionaires, for BlackRock, for Microsoft, for Cisco, and for other multinationals. These multinationals are a combination of financial, Technological, and intelligence Services that are engaged in the mass manipulation of public opinion and are creating a radical class society.

John Cooper: What do you mean by “radical class society”?

Emanuel Pastreich: So class is the issue that is critical for us to understand in order to take political action, and also must be understood for the sake of self-awareness so as to start real change. We must be aware that there are radical class gaps between this small group of billionaires, and their immediate associates, who live in their own precious world, winging around the world on private jets. They are people for whom there was no pandemic and there has been no economic crisis. They never wore masks or were forced to take vaccines. If anything, they’ve gotten richer and they’re insulated on every side. If you grow up in one of these families will you’re not be aware of of what is going on in the world, or what’s happening to those around you.

Unfortunately, the term “class” is associated with Marxist thought which has led some people to dismiss it. The argument advanced in the corporate-funded media is that anyone who’s talking about class is a leftist, a socialist, and they cannot be taken seriously. There are two problems with that assumption. First, Marxist analysis, although it has serious problems, it is accurate in many respects and deserves to be at least explored as one perspective on the world. The billionaires have paid off a lot of people to pursue the argument that if you’re a socialist, if you’re sympathetic to Marxist or Leninist analysis, then you are the enemy and so we can’t even listen to anything that you say. So most people have never even looked at what Marx actually wrote. The other part of the problem is that people like John Stewart Mills, who wrote on social and political issues in the 19th century, used the word class and they used the framework of class interests for understanding the world. The emergence of dominant classes who control the money, control the means of production, distribution, education, and ideology is not a Marxist concept.

Somehow, by branding discussion of class as socialist or Marxist, we take away from the common people the most valuable form of analysis for understanding the world: class interests.

John Cooper: Thank you for that explanation. I think that what’s happened is that we have moved from class as the source of socio-economic disparity to a state in which “class” is being transposed over categories like race, sexual identity, sexual orientation. We end up with neo-Marxism, or cultural Marxism. A lot of people have a problem with this analysis that because it feels like yet another divide and conquer strategy.

Emanuel Pastreich: That is exactly what it is. What we’re looking at (I don’t have access to the classified files of private intelligence firms like Booz Allen Hamilton) is how the billionaires paid off a group of people to push this neo-progressive neo-Marxist ideology of identity politics. This ideology does not come from working people but it’s being force fed to us by these same groups. The same people at BlackRock, or Cisco, or Facebook, or Google who are funding the corrupt parts of Black Lives Matter, ordering them to push this gender blending, race-based, fake ideological struggle, are the same people who are funding the Trump people and their MAGA (Make America Great Again) groups, those who are attacking immigrants as the threat to America without identifying the real problem of global finance. The Trump people are not any more right, or wrong, than those on the other side. They’re totally right to see how immigration is used to destroy the lives of ordinary Americans. Where they’re wrong, or where they miss the point, is that they don’t see how global financial institutions are investing in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina so as to destroy the local economies of those countries and to force people to move to the United States as part of this strategy to destroy the lives of workers in both places so that the billionaires can emerge all-powerful.

Both sides, the left and the right, have become part of a puppet show these days.

John Cooper: These big companies work through academia, they work through the education system so as to   capture the so-called intellectuals. It is a paradox that the people who have abdicated their critical thinking skills ARE the intellectuals themselves. Whereas the common working class people, your typical man on the street, seems to be able to acknowledge the evil when he sees it, and to identify government overreach. Why is it that these intellectuals were captured in the first place, and why is it that they can’t think for themselves?

Emanuel Pastreich: I came from that background and so I have an intimate knowledge of this process of seduction. To some degree it’s a standard strategy. You can read about mass manipulation and there are strategy books they’re being passed around at Boston Consulting, and other private consulting firms, about how do you take over a country and thereby seize control of the decision-making process. This high level manipulation goes back to the Phoenix Project of the 1960s that set down the groundwork for what we see being done here today. Originally the Phoenix Project was carried out in Vietnam by the US government, and the corporations hiding behind government, as a means to take over Vietnam. The files for the Phoenix Program are pretty explicit. They are a handbook for controlling society.

Doug Valentine writes about how the United States then imported this Phoenix Project system for seizing control of politics from the Vietnam back in to the United States. Seizing control of the intellectuals was a big part of the Phoenix Program. There was a carrot and a stick for the educated (then in Vietnam, now in DC). The carrot is how intellectuals are flattered, are made to feel like they’re part of the establishment.

Rich people take them out to dinner and feature them in the media as experts. The intellectuals who go along with the plan get to be famous in a way that they wouldn’t normally. It is a seduction.    Eventually it becomes a form of sort of sexual abuse, almost like rape, in which intellectuals are so compromised by these elicit relationships with global finance that they themselves can no longer face the reality and fall into a cycle of denial. The stick is punishment for those who wander off the reservation. That is to say that the professors, journalists, lawyers, doctors, this class of the educated (more educated than billionaires who are their bosses) start to see their interests as being aligned with those of the wealthy. But, they also know that they can be cut off, they can lose their tenure, not get those opportunities to show up on CNN, to be invited to think tanks. That threat then leads them to self-censor. I should just add that this has been true for a while, but it’s gotten much worse.

I mean, the most clear example was Drew Faust, an American historian and professor at Harvard who wrote an excellent study of the Civil War. Faust became president of Harvard and then, when she retired, she was invited to become a member of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs. I think that 20 years ago it would have been inconceivable that the president of Harvard would have stepped down and joined the board of directors of Goldman Sachs.

But Harvard has changed fundamentally in its nature. It was never perfect, but whereas there was a clear wall, a policy that Harvard would take money from wealthy individuals that it had an enormous endowment of 30, now more than 40, billion dollars that there remained a brain-blood barrier that said, we will keep out these most corrupting parts of global finance so that Harvard will be able to be independent, relatively. But that this is gone now and that is why people say that Harvard today is “an investment fund with a little university attached on the side.” And so those 40 billion dollars is what’s important, not Harvard the university. And so, by extension, Harvard has become just a brand, like Adidas or Google.

which multinational corporations can use to brand their psych ops. We see this happening increasingly. The Harvard brand is used promiscuously to mask or to rebrand disturbing activities. Nor is that strategy limited to Harvard. We see that happening across the board.

John Cooper: Thank you for that. All universities seem to be captured to some degree and also the students that are coming out of them.   I don’t just mean the intellectuals, I mean every university graduate, they are the products of their professors who were probably activists at one point in the past. It’s a kind of a follow-on, a domino effect in which an ideology is passed down. I want to know why these students are like that. It seems that they are not taught how to think; they’re told what to think. They’re whipped up into sort of a frenzy. It’s all very kind of tribal within the universities.

They feel that they’re almost militarized at university, given their ideological training. Then, when they come out, they go out in the world, into media, into the HR Departments of companies. And that is how the ideology spreads. Is that a fair assessment, and how do we change that? If there is someone watching this broadcast, someone who at the university, taking one of these feminist or sociology courses, whatever it is, Then they are given these very militant ideas about everything. What could we say to encourage them to break out of that “ideological calcification?” You know what I’m trying to say, right?

Emanuel Pastreich: Well, it’s extremely difficult to break out and I think we’re going to have to be increasingly independent. We are going to have to say that some of these institutions are so corrupt that they are not about learning and they’re not about education. You get this degree, whether a high School degree, or college degree, or graduate degree, and that allows you to get a job. So it’s a qualification; it’s not about learning how to think. It’s not about understanding the world. It’s not even about science. It is just following a set of prescribed rituals that will give you a qualification that allows you to be employed. So that’s not education. I think the first step is just to be brave enough to say that this is not education to put your foot down and say these schools do not have the legitimacy to be called “education,” to serve as a real education. We must admit to ourselves this fact.

As I said before, the abuse of the citizen is like rape or incest, in that the individual, the victim, is so corrupted and compromised by this process that he or she is no longer able to identify the violence and the exploitation for what it is.   So we fall back these rituals, these rites, at the Universities, and continue them even as journalism, education, governance have become but corrupt means for the super wealthy to control us and the best way to control us.

As we know from the experiments at DARPA and at Guantanamo Bay abuse is used to permanently alter the capacity of individuals to respond to authority. They become so compromised by the system they can no longer oppose anything. I think that’s the ultimate goal here, to compromise us using education and media to form a relationship with the power elite like sexual abuse, so that we can no longer stand up and say, “this is wrong” to say that we have our own perspective. It does come back to self-awareness. That is why I appreciate your efforts, your focus on the individual and the self-confidence and awareness that is necessary. If we lack at the most basic level, the ability to say “this is who I am,” “these are my values,” “this is where I stand” then we’re going to be incapable of articulating our opposition to this outside multinational force.

John Cooper: Absolutely. That is why I believe we need to bring everything back to the individual, and to really take care of yourself, to nurture yourself and to curate your own life in a way that then cascades outwards reflecting your beliefs, your values, and your integrity. I

I read in one of your articles that this hasn’t always been the way. We were better critical thinkers 60 or 70 years ago. What’s changed? And how did we think back then?

What’s missing now? You often reference philosophers and stuff like that. Are there things that we can do that will help us with our critical and rational faculties?

Emanuel Pastreich: There have been many changes that took place. The promotion of this consumption culture, a sort of narcissism that takes control of our aesthetics is in our entertainment, in movies. Above all, we see the intentional confusion, pushed by multinational corporations and the rich, of science with technology. If we’re going to look for one major Factor, the origin of the current crisis, the cause for the collapse of medicine, the collapse of journalism, the collapse of academics, then this intentional confusion of science with technology is key. I would just start with what the philosopher and essayist of the 1960s Paul Goodman said famously,

“Whether or not it draws a new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy not of science.”

That is to say that technology should be ultimately concerned with the moral, the ethical, and that science is the process by which one investigates, one searches, for truth. These two realms are fundamentally different: science is a philosophical demand to discover the truth through the scientific method. That means that you observe things around you, you speculate as to possible explanations for what you observe using your imagination–so it’s a humanistic creative process–and then you compare the explanations that you imagine with what You observe over time. You start with five theories, you get them down to four, three, and eventually you’re able to come up with a thesis to explain what you observe, the reality based on truth. That process, that intellectual philosophical process, that science of understanding the truth might tell you to stay away from your smartphone, right? that you should not have AI cartoon characters talking to your kids when they’re developing–that would be science.

We need to erect a wall, to say that we only use technology when it’s helpful and we reject it when it’s not helpful to us. If it’s better to grow your own food because the food is organic, it gives jobs to people in your community, it puts you in charge of what you eat, making you self-sufficient and not subject to the whims of multinational corporations, and import-export logistics firms, then, yeah, that’s what you should be doing. Technology by contrast are processes for an effect. That can be good, but it can easily be used in a negative way to control people and technology can be used as a means to diminish and to undermine the capacity of the individual, or the community, to think independently. That is what has happened over the last 20 Years.

The smartphone, the internet, the search engine, social media all these things which could theoretically be used in a positive sense have been transformed into covert operations whose primary goal today is to diminish and undermine, to degrade the capacity of the individual to think for herself or himself, to compromise the individual’s role in the community through these relationships with so-called friends who are actually enemies of the ordinary citizen and through that process to create a economic, social, political environment in the United States, or for that matter in other countries, in which it is no longer possible to resist the authority from above and to be critical. These technologies end up compromising the individual so that the individual feels somehow that he or she is part of this process. That compromise leads us into things like the wearing of masks.

John Cooper: Absolutely. But before you go into masks, I just want to thank you for that explanation, and to say that it does seem that because we’re depending more and more on technology, and eventually it’s going to get to the stage where the technologies community guidelines will become the law. Because when everyone’s on these platforms they will have no choice but to comply with them—especially if technology connects you to the local supermarket and you won’t be able to get a loaf of bread, unless you comply.

I definitely see that’s what is happening and you’re right, they’re having conversations about how the general scientific line of inquiry is just investigating something, but then you’ll find out that the technology will character assassinate you, delete you, ban you, turn you against your friends online. That is what becomes so difficult, to know how to play the system, and to beat the system.

Emanuel Pastreich: Well, I had the experience last week of having 280 videos deleted from Vimeo. Suddenly they decided that I had gotten too popular I think and so they deleted me. They sent me a letter of explanation and I responded, saying that I want to talk to them and I have scientific proof for everything I wrote. “Let’s have a dialogue?” They sent me this response stating that these authority figures, whether it’s at Harvard, or in the American government, or in the media, they decide what is true. It is not based on a rigorous questioning through the scientific method. Rather these authority figures decide. This is the ideology that has been accurately described as science-ISM.

It’s not science but rather this ideology that holds that if you’re a Harvard professor, if you work at the Center for Disease Control, if you have this stamp of approval of graduating from a good high school or college, then you have the authority to dictate to the people what is true.

By contrast, if I’m unemployed or I’m just a blogger, or whatever, even if I base everything on a close scientific investigation of things, still I don’t have any authority because I don’t have that stamp of approval. That’s not science; that’s scienceism.

John Cooper: Yeah sciencism. I call it scientism. it’s a perversion of the actual truth because it’s just following orders; it’s being compliant. It’s the old “8 out of 10 cats prefer this cat food” or “97% of climate scientists have said this therefore trust the science.” Anytime you hear “trust the science” you know it’s not science.

Emanuel Pastreich: I read many articles on policy in the United States in which the first thing they state is that the public supports this according to our recent surveys. Eighty percent of Americans think that we should do this about health care. Now as an American who has never been called by any public opinion research polling company, all of which are run for profit and their shares are owned by multinational investment banks, I assume these statistics are fabricated.

I wouldn’t say that they have no basis in in reality. They follow the propaganda strategy: a 30 70 mix. You take 30% truth and you mix it with 70% lies, and then you plant it in different mouths, which have different ideological flavors to them. That gives the impression that, “Oh if this part of it’s true, then rest must be true. And it’s being repeated by people from the left or from the right (you know Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump, those cardboard Messiahs) so somehow it must be true because it’s being recognized by people with all these different perspectives.”

John Cooper: We’ve something similar with the Twitter files. In the Twitter dump it was clear that  The White House was dictating to Big Tech, to Twitter execs.  They were just making sure that the company and the algorithms and the AI Bots were filtering out anything that contradicted the mainstream narrative of the World Health Organization, and they would de-platform and cancel anyone who had any opinions, any alternative views on anything. That is scientism, as you say, isn’t it? That’s the technological monopoly.

Emanuel Pastreich: Twitter is a perfect example.  The debate is controlled. The question is whether Elon Musk owning Twitter will somehow make it better, or whether letting Donald Trump, and a few of these perverse false Messiahs, get an account on Twitter will somehow improve things. But Twitter is basically a platform for controlling public opinion that is run for profit and is co-owned by a series of global funds, which they tend to hide behind multinational corporations, funds like BlackRock, or Goldman Sachs, or Vanguard. But behind that they are basically funds belonging to extremely wealthy individuals and families. The primary goal of Twitter is to control opinion.

What we really should have had was a debate in which we could say that we don’t  want Twitter at all, or that Twitter should be owned by its users, that all the people who use Twitter should be shareholders in Twitter and get a payment every week based upon their contribution to Twitter.  But the system is set up such that Twitter is controlled a hundred percent by these multinational Banks (behind them wealthy families) and it’s used to manipulate us.  We have no say. Nobody in this debate on Twitter, Trump or Musk, or whoever, nobody said that maybe the people who use Twitter should own Twitter or that maybe they should have the right to determine what its policies are. No one suggested that we should be able to propose policy to Twitter and to vote on what Twitter’s policy should be.

To my mind, the revolutionary change that we need is to hold that Facebook, Twitter, all social media can play a positive role, and that they’ll be positive when they’re owned by their users—who are the ones who contribute all the value to them. We write for Facebook and “Facebook Incorporated” uses that information and makes billions of dollars off of it. They pay you nothing. All they do is give you the special privilege of using it for free.

John Cooper: So you used the the term “cardboard messiah.” So is your opinion of Elon Musk that he is just he’s a false savior?

Emanuel Pastreich: I would not rule out the possibility that in the controlled environment in which Elon Musk lives that he may have more thoughtful views than some of his associates do. So I  I’m not ruling out the possibility that he as an individual may have some positive characteristics, and I have nothing personally against him. But within the larger system of things this man, who is pushing trans-humanism and who has been a central figure in the push for technology, the push for geo-fencing, and the control of the citizen. He has no legitimacy and I would say he should be in jail. I think that his role in the global takeover over the last four or five years has been central and he has tens of billions of dollars invested in this project.

This fact has been proven by the many anti-democratic, techno-fascist policies that he pushes through various holding companies. I’m not expert enough on Elon Musk to say exactly how he does it, but I’m quite familiar with how you set up sock puppets to push your agenda from the right and from the left. Elon Musk has been a card-carrying member of this elite group for a long time.

John Cooper: So how does he benefit from it? What exactly is his game; what’s his end goal?

Emanuel Pastreich: Well his main game is using public Funding to make billions and billions of dollars. He comes up with these schemes like “we’re all going to drive electric cars.” The he gets local and central governments around the world to give him tens of billions of dollars to develop his Tesla cars even though they don’t even exist yet. He gets all this funding. And then and he pushes AI.   It is all similar, he says we have to go to this next stage of our development and that we need all this funding to develop AI. That money comes from our tax dollars, or from the inflation resulting from overspending by government.

So he is basically funded by the government even though he’s a profit-seeking individual.  I think he’s worse than many people in that respect the degree to which he was willing to take this enormous amount of money from central governments and central banks to finance these pie in the sky projects like Tesla that do nothing.

Tesla is a scam. You see all these big signs for electric cars and these charging stations that nobody uses, and these Tesla cars parked in strategically visible locations to publicize how somehow we’re going to go to electric cars. But, in fact, almost nobody has them and they’re priced out of the range of normal people. And electric cars don’t help the environment in most cases—it’s just a transfer. You’re taking the pollution and putting it somewhere else and transferring it as electricity. But it’s not helping the environment. If anything you’d be better off going back to riding horses.

John Cooper: Absolutely! It seems to me that Elon musk’s role is to get us all on board with him as this renegade that’s going into something like Twitter and then cleaning out of all the “fascist liberals” – you know the ones who are kicking us all off Twitter. And then we all are supposed to get behind him and then we will all sympathize with his ideas about climate change and building these electric cars which are not helping the environment.

It all seems to me that he’s a well-packaged WWF character brought in as a pro-wrestling “baby-face” to make us buy into some of the things that we might not have if it wasn’t for him coming in.

Emanuel Pastreich: It’s created an enormously difficult situation because people now assume that any discussion of the destruction of the climate, of the environment, is a fraud because it’s become fraudulent.  I personally base my opinion on considerable amount of research on the environment. I don’t think it’s a fraud. It is just that the time scale is off. Destroying the environment is not going to lead to human extinction in 20 years. But within 500 years? Totally conceivable.

And it’s not just about carbon-dioxide. It is a whole range of destructive activities that are going on: the destruction of the oceans, micro-plastics, the spread of deserts, the destruction of fresh water, etc. It is a complex process.

But because so many people have degraded the debate and made it into a tool for banks to control you and limit your activities, now if I even just mentioned the words “environment” or “climate Change” people think I’m a sock puppet of the World Economic Forum.

This discourse has problematized, and maybe intentionally degraded, our ability to even discuss the environment.

John Cooper: Well it works both ways. You can’t have any view that goes outside of the central narrative. Otherwise,  you’ll be called a conspiracy theorist or their favourite is “a climate denialist” (pernicious term to associate you with a Holocaust “denier”). It seems to me that there’s certain things that you can’t talk about, which always me ask, why is that?

I find that it’s probably the other way around.  In my experience it is the people that you’re not allowed to question who are the ones that rule over you. It I think Voltaire who said that. It is things you can’t talk about, or the things that if you have an opinion about them that is contrary to the mainstream narrative, you’re immediately shot down, those make me think, well maybe there’s something in this.

Emanuel Pastreich: That’s why I think the analogy to incest is so valuable, especially when you talk about intellectuals. In the case of incest in a family things are different. If a parent gets in a fight with a child, then people recognize as a problem in the family. But in the case of incest there are times when these damaging relations go on for decades, everyone knowing that something is wrong but nobody being able to talk about it.

The reason is that the incestuous relationship is so compromising to everybody that it’s no longer possible to even discuss it. It is a taboo and that’s the process right from the Kennedy assassination, to 9/11, and then on to what we have now, this “health crisis” in which an enormous number of intellectuals, people who are knowledgeable, were so profoundly compromised by these incidents that they were no longer able to express any form of resistance, and they became pawns of the system.

John Cooper: I definitely see that, the agent Smiths I call them from the Matrix. Whereas the Neos were sort of bringing new ideas, a new way of thinking.

Quickly would you mind, just as a spoke from that hub, would you mind just saying what was Covid-19 all about?

Emanuel Pastreich: Covid-19 probably it goes back far in time. There were these efforts to find some way of creating mass control, and for using technology for global domination. We have parts of some DARPA and RAND studies from back in the 70s in which this plan is discussed. Some things are even declassified. But this discussion was going on for a while. The idea was to achieve a sort of ideological control whereby citizens would no longer be able to articulate an alternative position and would fall in with this corporate-dominated worldview.  The ultimate purpose was the creation of a new class.  The move towards action in the Covid-19 operation was aided by the massive concentration of wealth that took place over the preceding 10 to 15 years.

So, if you have the difference in wealth of 100 times, the average people making forty thousand and rich people making 4 million that is a different society than the one in which the ordinary people make sixty thousand and the rich own 100 billion. This new society is so different that you are left with a radical gap. You have these super-rich groups who are pursuing their interests, and then you have this terrarium economy in which you hold the people from working class, up to those who hold five to ten-million dollars in assets.  They are all in this little contained ball. And so this terrarium economy leads to a profound misunderstanding wherein people think, “Oh I have five million dollars so I’m rich.”

From the perspective of the billionaires, however, the difference between having five million dollars in assets and being homeless is the difference between being an ant and a cockroach. I mean it’s it’s nothing to them. And so a system came into being in which at the highest levels the Brahmin class, beyond your reach, they come up with policies that they enact in manner that transcends not only local government, but also national governments, and even supra-national, global organizations. As a result, all these governments are essentially run by their pets.

That is why it’s so hard to conceive of how this small group of people would engage in policies which are meant to degrade your ability to think. Basically everybody, 95% of the population 95,  or more, is their target. They destroy your bodies, your ability to reproduce. They introduce chemicals into your body that’ll cause cancer and other diseases and that will over time kill you off in the what they call “the slow kill.”

Most people could not conceive of something like that, partially because it’s just so evil. People can’t conceive of evil. So that is one barrier. More importantly, we’re thinking that things are being done by the president, or the senator, or the head of our local Lions Club, or our mayor, or the rich guy in our neighborhood who’s a real estate agent.   Somehow we thought that these guys are the authority figures. And now we see that they are like us, basically in the same position, and so we think “Oh well, they must know what’s going on. It’s not on their interest to promote a fraud that damages them. Obviously they’re not going to do it.”

We’re unable to conceive of the fact that all of these people, all the way up to Joe Biden or Donald Trump, all of them are basically in the same lobster pot in which we are being slowly cooked, and that there is another class of people above them who are willing to kill all of us, or turn us into slaves according to whatever proportion fits their latest algorithm. They don’t care if we live or die.  The people we see on TV for the most part are not the people making the real decisions.

John Cooper: So this class that you talk, that top 0.0001%, how many are in that class? What kind of people are we talking about? The billionaire philanthropist types?

Emanuel Pastreich: There’s a lot of debate about this topic and I have gotten into arguments with fellow travelers about where we cut it off. There is a book by Peter Phillips entitled Giants: The Global Elite that gives a useful analysis of who the major players are in investment Banks, and other places, who has large amounts of wealth. I think the analysis is quite good. But there are theories out there. And that is where we get into trouble.  Certain groups will say it’s the Zionists, or it’s the Rothschilds, or it’s the Freemasons, or it’s the Vatican.  These accusations are not untrue, but that lack scientific clarity, and they tend to spill over into emotional and cultural baggage that clouds the mind. I sometimes get into disputes with fellow Travelers who embrace what I think are oversimplified visions of who’s actually making the decisions.

What I see as the most likely scenario is you have maybe a couple thousand people in  these very wealthy families who  got these intelligence reports telling them how much of a crisis we’re going to be facing economically and environmentally and they embraced this plan to create a class society made up  of slaves and the super-rich (with a lot of people marked to disappear over the next 20 years).   But the actual planning is not done by the super-rich, but rather by this class of advisors, often ex-military and intelligence—not just the U.S but from other countries as well. These guys advised them on how to carry out this agenda and they wrote up classified plans.

Someone forwarded me an email a couple of months ago which was from the CIA, a call for  Asia experts. The advertisement said that basically all the positions had been outsourced to Facebook, Cisco, Microsoft, and Google. Basically these government organizations are no longer government organizations at all. There no is government in the sense that in an engine you have a governor. There’s only the parts of government, whether in the UK or the United States, or in Japan Germany, China, or Russia, that have been outsourced to for-profit organizations pursuing their own narrow short-term interests.  That is why we’ve been rendered blind.  The government cannot govern. The university cannot educate. The newspaper cannot practice journalism. In the land blind, the one-eyed man is King. But it’s worse than that. It’s a one-eyed psychopath who is King.

John Cooper: It is terrifying when you put it like that. It is a reality check. It’s sobering to hear you say That, but it makes sense that the people in power, those that we think are in power, are merely the puppets. They’re just follow the teleprompters. They are there to give the impression that they’re looking after their people. In reality they’re just relaying a message given to them directly from those core companies, or intelligence agencies, that are running the show.

Emanuel Pastreich: Donald Trump is the best example of that role. People have this impression that Donald Trump is one of the members of that elite. That is not true. Having a couple billion dollars (and even more in debt) not nearly enough. He does not count as one of those the super elite. The concentration of wealth has created a radical divergence. Our minds have not been able to keep up with the radical shifts in our society over the last 15 years.  The COVID-19 crisis is not the cause, but rather the consequence, of that concentration of wealth.

We reached the point at which the concentration of wealth was so extreme, the control of technology, of information, so profound, that it became possible for the first time in history to take over everything.

That is what the super elites thought to themselves, in any case: “We can just take over everything and  destroy humanity.”  If the gap hadn’t been so great, I don’t think that plan would have been adopted.  Of course this plan for a total takeover existed before.   Back before 2019, if Bill Gates and his friends were shooting the breeze at the club, they would have said to Bill, “Nice idea, but you couldn’t possibly pull it Off.”  The question is, why was it that in 2019 that suddenly they thought that “Yeah, we can pull it off. We’re gonna go for it!”  The operation is extremely risky.  Obviously they’re taking a lot of risk too. We’re at risk, but they’re at least as much risk. Bill Gates and friends may not survive this –the risks is that high.  But somehow we got to such a place in terms of the collapse of values, the decay of ideology and culture, and the concentration of wealth that these people really thought that could pull it off, could destroy most of humanity.

They are following, basically, the model for the colonization of the new world which was to destroy all the native populations of North and South America. Same strategy for the project of 1940s to destroy millions in Europe. Most people describe it as “destroying the Jews” which I think is not entirely accurate. Most of the people who were killed off systematically in death camps were Russian POWs. The basic plan was to kill off a large number of people in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and throughout Europe to create this “living space” which would then be settled by Germans following the American model: destroy the native peoples and take the land.

Now we find ourselves in the position where we (establishment upper middle-class Americans) are the ones, we who thought WE were the elites, who are being treated like the Navajos or the Iroquois: slated for extermination.

John Cooper: It’s not over yet; That’s the thing. This part is the first wave of something, and there is a swell. And then another wave will come crashing in. Classic “Art of War” stuff.

I think that they stood back and thought “I can’t believe how much the people bought into that.”  They’re probably having a whale of a time thinking, “God they did all that, the social distancing, wearing the masks, they even took the anal swabs. We could tell them anything and they would do it because they’re in a state of hysteria and fear.” They cannot believe how compliant everyone was.

Emanuel Pastreich: Maybe I could say a word about masks. so Masks are an extremely important part of this operation. Not because they block viruses—which they don’t—but because masks have been usedin torture and re-education for centuries. It’s not a new technology.

So, by creating an environment in which the individual is forced by circumstances, by social pressure, to put on the mask VOLUNTARILY the individual is forced into this unnatural violation of her or his conscience, her or his sense of what’s right. After being forced to do repeat that ritual (wearing the mask) over and over again the individual loses the capacity to resist.

That is how profoundly they are compromised by this act of participation in the destruction of their free will.

Most of the people wearing these masks, at some level, know that these masks are not scientifically meaningful. But they do it anyway. They participate in their own mental violation. It is form of mental rape, what Joost A.M. Meerloo calls “The Rape of the Mind.”

They just repeat this ritual until the individual, the community, is no longer capable of organized intellectual resistance.

John Cooper: It inculcates a state of fear that lingers on in the minds of people, even if they’re just seeing other people wearing masks. This pandemic is still going on. It is a visual performance, a kind of trickery of the mind that keeps people locked into a certain mental state.

I definitely can see that rape of the mind—I agree 100% with that.

So when did the pandemic end? Why are people suddenly, now, taking off their Masks?

I think that it’s because they took the funding out of certain channels, like the funding for the mainstream media. The designated propaganda money ran out. Now the people on TV aren’t talking about it as much. So the pandemic went away in the eyes of people. It is a perception thing.

Emanuel Pastreich: At this moment we see an interference pattern: on the one hand there are those at the top who are following their own strategy, who are saying to themselves, “Well, we got all our money out of the pandemic, so now let’s push forward with a risk of nuclear war, or food shortages, or destroy banks and

money etc. They want to start plan B, C and D.

So that’s part of it. But there is another part. Some people really were organized and we saw the beginning of real resistance. That also played into it. We are seeing a combination of the two

I want to conclude NOT by saying “Oh it’s all planned out,” but rather to stress that our conversation, and of course I include those listening to us, means that we’re starting to organize a real resistance, not follow a bogus “cardboard messiah” Donald Trump or

Bernie Sanders type. We are making an effort to actually launch a real flesh and bones opposition in which we the people start to engage in our own governance.

This conversation, our meeting today, that it to say John and Emanuel speaking the truth. What do we have? We have the Constitution. We have morals. What we have is justice and we have legitimacy. We are creating our own form of governance so that we can stand up and say,to those who are supposedly in power, that “we are legitimate and you are not legitimate.” Although we start with nothing, if we look at history we see that in the past there have been numerous times in history when it was possible, starting with a tiny minority who are willing to stick to principles and take risks, to flip things so that the whole equation was reversed.

John Cooper: A message of hope is possible, that is not top-down.

We don’t need a great reset; we need a grassroots reset, a grassroots change. We the people to stand up, based on their individual morality and integrity, and to hold the governments accountable. That’s what we need isn’t it?

Emanuel. Do you have a few closing words?

Emanuel Pastreich: I really appreciate everybody joining us today. I think that our own self-awareness, mindfulness, and practice is where we should start because if we can’t identify who we are, and we cannot separate ourselves from the poisonous toxic environment around us, then we can’t start this process in a constructive way.  I would be happy to engage and to help all of you. We have to assume that the entire system out there for governance, for corporations, for economic interaction, is so corrupt that we must create real alternatives. That has to start with a debate, a discussion, about how we’ll do so.

We have a research institute, the Asia Institute, for which the website is not working now, but you can email me directly at [email protected].

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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 Silent Crow News

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***

One of the fascinating aspects of the war in Ukraine has been the extreme reluctance of the mainstream press and Pentagon-CIA supporters to acknowledge, much less condemn, the Pentagon for its role in bringing about this war. After all, the two concepts — the Pentagon’s bringing about the crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — are not mutually exclusive. You can have both things happening — the Pentagon gins up the crisis with the aim of “degrading” Russia and then Russia falls into the trap by getting mired down in a deadly and destructive war against Ukraine.

But when one raises the first part of this equation — that is, the Pentagon’s role in ginning up the crisis — the mainstream press and Pentagon-CIA supporters go ballistic. For them, it’s heresy to point out what the Pentagon did to gin up the crisis. For them, the Pentagon and the CIA are innocent, virtuous babes in the woods that would never do such a thing. For them, the Pentagon and the CIA are nothing but a “force for good” in the world. 

But we know that the Pentagon and the CIA do engage in these types of evil machinations. In fact, they did the same thing to Russia in 1979. They lured the Russians into invading Afghanistan, with the same goal they had with their Ukraine machinations — to give the Russians their own “Vietnam,” which meant “degrading” Russia through the killing of massive numbers of Russian soldiers. 

“Conspiracy theory”? Well, not exactly. That’s because National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, in a remarkable degree of candor, admitted that they had knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally done it. He was proud of it. He was bragging about how they had gotten the Russians to fall into their trap. The entire national-security establishment loved the fact that tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were being killed in the process. The more soldiers being killed, the more Russia was being “degraded.”

That’s why they are so ecstatic every time more Russian soldiers are killed in Ukraine. With each dead soldier, Russia is “degraded” a bit more. The more soldiers killed, the more Russia is“degraded.”

Ginning up a new Cold War with Russia was the whole idea behind keeping NATO in existence after the ostensible end of the original Cold War. The Cold War had been a great big cash cow for the U.S. national-security establishment. They weren’t about to let go of it that easily. So, they used NATO, which by this time was just an old Cold War dinosaur, to begin absorbing former members of the Warsaw Pact. That would enable the Pentagon and the CIA to install their military bases and nuclear missiles ever closer to Russia’s border. 

Throughout this process, Russia was objecting, and Pentagon and CIA officials knew it. Moreover, Russia consistently made it clear that absorbing Ukraine into NATO was a “red line” for Russia, one that would cause Russia to invade Ukraine to prevent that from happening. 

Once Russia made that declaration, the Pentagon and the CIA had Russia right where it wanted it. The Pentagon then sprung the trap by simply announcing that NATO intended to absorb Ukraine. Not surprisingly, Russia ended up invading Ukraine, which has given Russia another “Vietnam,” just like what happened back in 1979 with Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

There is nothing new about this type of thing. Back in 1964, the Pentagon knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately ginned up a fake and fraudulent crisis in the Gulf of Tonkin near North Vietnam. The goal? To embroil the United States in the Vietnam War. The strategy worked. President Lyndon Johnson used the fake and fraudulent Pentagon-induced crisis in the Gulf of Tonkin to secure a congressional resolution that authorized him to embroil the United States in a war that ultimately took the lives of more than 58,000 American soldiers and more than a million Vietnamese. 

Why do Pentagon-CIA supporters get so bent out of shape when one points to these types of Pentagon-CIA machinations? Because the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA are a triune god to these people. And they don’t like it when someone exposes the evil actions of their triune god. After all, look at how much they love what U.S. officials have done to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden for disclosing the evil actions of their triune god.

There is something important to keep in mind about this strategy of “degrading” Russia. Every one of those Russian and Ukrainian soldiers who have been killed in this war had families or friends, just like American soldiers do.Those families and friends are grieving the loss of those soldiers, just like families of American soldiers grieve over the loss of their loved ones. 

That is what makes the Pentagon and the CIA’s machinations so evil. When a regime is celebrating the deaths of massive numbers of people who are dying as a result of a strategy that is designed to “degrade” a foreign regime, that is an excellent sign that there is something fundamentally wrong, from a moral standpoint, with that regime.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

Featured image: Russian president Vladimir Putin (Illustration by TPYXA_ILLUSTRATION/Shutterstock)

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***

The World Health Organization shared a video on Twitter promoting the claim that anti-vaccine activism is deadlier than global terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and gun violence.

Yes, really.

The video quoted Baylor College of Medicine’s Dr. Peter Hotez, who stated, “We have to recognize that anti-vaccine activism, which I actually call anti-science aggression, has now become a major killing force globally.”

Hotez went on to assert that 200,000 Americans died from COVID because they refused to get the vaccine, a claim that isn’t backed up by any source.

“And now the anti-vaccine activism is expanding across the world, even into low and middle income countries,” added Hotez.

“Anti-vaccine activism, which I actually call anti-science aggression, has now become a major killing force globally."
– @PeterHotez, Professor and Dean @BCM_TropMed, on the devastating impact of #misinformation and disinformation. pic.twitter.com/ZluiMGJ2gX

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) December 14, 2022

Once again with providing any source for his dubious claims, Hotez asserted that “anti-science now kills more people than things like gun violence, global terrorism, nuclear proliferation or cyber attacks.”

The doctor went on to complain about how anti-vaccine skepticism had now become a “political movement” linked to “far-right extremism” in both the United States and Germany.

Hotez ominously called for “political solutions to address this.”

Unsurprisingly, respondents to the tweet completely savaged the WHO for sharing the video, with one pointing to stats that suggest, “Doctors and “medicine” kill more people than car accidents and guns.”

Doctors and “medicine” kill more people than car accidents and guns. YOU are killing people with “science” and dangerous untested drugs and vaccines. pic.twitter.com/sSGnxXNr8A

— Henrik Palmgren 🇸🇪 ᛟ (@Henrik_Palmgren) December 23, 2022

“The biggest anti-science dissemination has come from the @who when you tried to shut the world down over a mild virus with a 99.97% survival rate and for which even the most dire mortality rate was fraudulently reported (ie ‘positive test’). You only have yourselves to blame,” remarked another.

The biggest anti-science dissemination has come from the @who when you tried to shut the world down over a mild virus with a 99.97% survival rate and for which even the most dire mortality rate was fraudulently reported (ie ‘positive test’). You only have yourselves to blame.

— banthebbc (@banthebbc) December 18, 2022

“You are an absolute menace to society, Peter. Not just wrong in medicine. A menace to civilized society,” commented lawyer Viva Frei, posting screenshots of how Hotez has continually called for the masking and vaccination of children.

You are an absolute menace to society, Peter. Not just wrong in medicine. A menace to civilized society. pic.twitter.com/n99LlCwVrc

— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) December 23, 2022

Despite his vehement enthusiasm for face coverings and vaccines, which he claimed stopped transmission of COVID, Hotez himself caught COVID in May last year and, of course, responded by thanking the vaccine.

Looks like I've tested positive for COVID, moderate symptoms of fatigue, headache, sore throat, isolating at home doing zoom meetings. I'm grateful to have been vaccinated/boosted, which certainly prevented more severe illness. Just started Paxlovid. Transmission up, be careful.

— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) May 9, 2022

Meanwhile, as we document in the video below, diehard advocates for the vaccine are now going full Jonestown with their rhetoric.

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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

 

 

 

 

 

What to make of it?  History is filled with the deeds of blood-thirsty princes bold in ambition and feeble of mind.  Massacres make the man, though there is often little to merit the person behind it.  The Duke of Sussex seemingly wishes to add his name to that list.   In what can only be described as one of his “Nazi uniform” moments, Prince Harry has revealed in his memoir Spare that he killed a number of Taliban fighters. (In the same memoir, the weak-willed royal blames his brother for the uniform idea, though not for organising the Afghan shooting party.)

The prince, wishing to show that he was no toy soldier or ceremonial ornament of the British Army, puts the number of deaths at 25.  “It wasn’t a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it make me ashamed.”  He recalls being “plunged into the heat and confusion of battle”, and how he “didn’t think about those 25 people.  You can’t kill people if you see them as people.”  Doing so from the security of a murderous Apache helicopter certainly helps.

The prince continues to show that he is nothing if not unworldly.  “In truth, you can’t hurt people if you see them as people.  They were chess pieces off the board, bad guys eliminated before they kill good guys.”  Then comes a bit of cod social theory.  “They trained me to ‘other’ them and they trained me well.”  A dash of Meghan; a smidgen of postcolonial theory.

There it is: the killer aware about his Instagram moment, the social media miasma, the influence of cheap Hollywood tat via Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.  He killed but was merely performing his duty as conditioned by the Establishment or, to put it another way, the army of his late grandmother.

The response from the Establishment was not one of praise.  Adam Holloway MP, writing in The Spectator, did not find the statistic distasteful or troubling, but the fact that Prince Harry had mentioned it at all.  Good soldiers did not publicise kills.  “It’s not about macho codes.  It’s about decency and respect for the lives you have taken.”

Retired British Army Colonel Tim Collins also seethed.  “This is not how we behave in the Army,” he tut-tutted to Forces News, “it’s not how we think.”  That’s Prince Harry’s point: more a doer than a thinker.

That doing involved, as Collins put it, “a tragic money-making scam to fund the lifestyle he can’t afford and someone else has chosen.”  Harry had “badly let the side down. We don’t do notches on the rifle butt.  We never did.”

Collins became something of a poster boy for revived wars of adventurism in the Middle East with his speech to the 1^stBattalion The Royal Irish Regiment (1 R IRISH) battle group in March 2003.  It was the eve of an international crime: the invasion of a sovereign country by colonial powers old and new.  As with any such crimes, notably of vast scale, it was justified in the name of principle and duty, otherwise known as the civilisational imperative.  “We go to liberate,” declared Collins with evangelical purpose, “not to conquer.  We will not fly our flags in their country.  We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own.”

In the Middle East, and elsewhere, such gifts of imposed freedom by armed missionaries tend to go off.  In July last year, the BBC news program Panorama reported that, “SAS operatives in Afghanistan repeatedly killed detainees and unarmed men.”  The report disturbed the amnesiac effect of two investigations by military police that saw no reason to pursue prosecutions.  But the allegations were sufficiently publicised to prompt the launching of an independent statutory inquiry by the Ministry of Defence last December.  “This will take into account the progress that has already been made across defence in holding our Armed Forces personnel to account for their actions, and the handling of allegations that were later found to have insufficient evidence for any prosecutions.”

Collins must also be aware that commencing a prosecution against British army personnel operating overseas for war crimes, let alone succeeding in one, is nigh impossible.  It’s all marvellous to claim that the armed forces play by the book and operate to the sweet chords of justice, but it is rather easier to do so behind sheets of protective glass and exemptions.

Australia, as one of Britain’s partners in military adventurism, has also done its bit to bloat the war crimes files in its tours of Afghanistan.  The four-year long investigation culminating in the Brereton Report identified at least 39 alleged murders of captured Afghan troops and civilians, and cruel mistreatment of two more locals by SAS personnel.  To date, however, the Office of the Special Investigator has made no referrals to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, a tardiness that is likely to be repeated by British counterparts.

The war criminality theme was bound to be picked up by Afghanistan’s Taliban officials.  Anas Haqqani, a senior Taliban figure, suggested to the prince via Twitter that those he had slain “were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return.”  But astute enough to sense a public relations moment for his government, Haqqani heaped mock praise. “Among the killers of Afghans, not many have your decency to reveal their conscience and confess to their war crimes.”

In this whole affair, Prince Harry did perform one useful function.  He removed the façade of decent soldiery, the mask of the supposedly noble liberator.  On this occasion, it took a prince to tell the emperor he had no clothes.  “The truth is what you’ve said,” continued Haqqani, “[o]ur innocent people were chess pieces to your soldiers, military and political leaders.  Still, you were defeated in that ‘game’ of white & black ‘square’.”

We can certainly agree with Haqqani on one point: no tribunal will be chasing up the royal.  “I don’t expect that the ICC [International Criminal Court] will summon you or the human rights activists will condemn you, because they are deaf and blind for you.”  Some of that deafness and blindness might have been ameliorated.

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

Featured image: Harry in New South Wales, May 2015 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

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***

The super-secret International Health Regulations Review Committee (IHRRC) is scheduled to meet January 9-13, 2023. They plan to submit the amendments on January 15, 2023. THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT.

For five (5) days, from Monday January 9, 2023 to Friday January 13, 2023, the super-secret International Health Regulations Review Committee (IHRRC) will be conducting face-to-face meetings in Geneva, Switzerland. The purpose of these meetings will be to finalize their report regarding the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations.

The work done by the IHRRC is “confidential” and they answer directly to the Director General ONLY. Their work is likely to involve editing the 46 page proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations to eliminate the many typographical errors and redundancies that can be found in the current version.

Download the proposed amendments here.

These meetings will NOT be live streamed. The proceedings will not be available to the public. NO public comment period is scheduled. YOUR opinion regarding these amendments is NOT going to be considered. These rules are being negotiated by the members of the International Health Regulations Review Committee, who were chosen, not elected.

January 15, 2023

The self-imposed deadline for the IHRRC to submit its report to the Director General is January 15, 2023. The Director General is then expected to communicate it without delay to the Working Group for amendments to the International Health Regulations (WGIHR) and also to the 194 member nations. By submitting the secretly negotiated document by January 15, 2023, the IHRRC will provide the Director General with at least 6 days to forward the submitted documents to the 194 member nations by the deadline of at least 4 months in advance to the 76th World Health Assembly.

International Health Regulations Review Committee (IHRRC) Schedule

Pandemic Treaty Negotiation Schedule

May 21-30, 2023

The “official” statements of the World Health Organization have consistently stated that they do NOT plan to adopt the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations until the 77th World Health Assembly in 2024. See this.

However, if the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations are submitted to the WHO by January 15, 2023, then they COULD be adopted by the 76th World Health Assembly as early as May 2023.

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***

Yawn. Another warmongering statist is elected to head up the “right” side of the corporatist uniparty in the House of Representatives. The other side of the uniparty—the “woke” contingent, segregated on the “left” side of the aisle—condemned his appointment as a victory for Trump.

The Kevin McCarthy Mess Is Peak Trumpism https://t.co/kwaulwe3Dx via @VanityFair

— Musa موسى‎‎ (@MusaKutiMalik) January 7, 2023

Well, maybe. Let me tell you what it really is.

More of the same. More war, more debt, more suffering for the American people and, above all, more death and destruction in faraway lands, thanks to the likes of Kevin McCarthy and most members of Congress.

It was mildly amusing to watch careerist politicians tussle. Mike Rogers, would-be chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, had to be restrained. He was prevented from attacking Matt Gaetz by Richard Hudson while assorted millionaires and K Street water carriers looked on.

I expected a repeat of the caning of Senator Charles Sumner during the late 1850s in the contentious lead-up to the War Between the States. No such luck. Gaetz didn’t have a cane.

It was an irrelevant, grandstanding three-ring circus of Brioni Vanquish clad warmongers. In regard to foreign policy, nothing will change, although the Republican faction of the uniparty has promised to “audit” the transfer of freebies to Ukraine.

It will not end the transfer, mind you. Congress will not close down this aspect of the pernicious neoliberal project. Moreover, it will refuse to bring the troops home. It will not close down more than 750 USG military bases in 80 nations.

Russia has three dozen foreign bases. China, five.

Sadly, there is less than a handful of folks in Congress opposed to funding the ultranats of Ukraine, assisting Saudis in the serial murder of helpless Yemenis, celebrating (and paying for) the slaughter of Palestinian children, journalists, and activists, and illegally occupying eastern Syria and stealing its oil, to name but three of its crimes.

Since the end of WWII, the USG and its enforcer military have intervened in dozens of nations, including but not limited to Greece, Italy (subverting elections), China (intervention in its civil war, establishing Taiwan), Syria (the first CIA coup), the Korean War (one of the most costly wars in terms of death and destruction on a per-capita basis), Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Lebanon, Cuba, the Vietnam War (more than 2 million Vietnamese killed, a million in Laos and Cambodia), two Iraq invasions (well over a million killed), Somalia, Haiti, Panama, Afghanistan, Syria again, Libya—on and on.

A thin slice of the uniparty voted against sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, most on the Republican side of the forever war uniparty.

This is little more than partisan politics. Recall McCarthy parading around the floor with a giant yellow and blue badge on his lapel. He supports killing Russians while “auditing” the irresponsible free flow of cash—not ending it, mind you, but going through the numbers because Republicans claim they want to reduce the debt. If you believe this, you may also be interested in a water slide park for sale in the Kalahari.

Sarcasm aside, there is little to no chance the USG will abandon the effort to kill Russian soldiers and, as the psychopath Lindsey Graham demands, assassinate Russia’s elected leader, Vladimir Putin.

No, this debt-fueled monstrosity will eventually run out of steam, Russia will conclude its SMO, and the USG will pull an Afghanistan cut and run, abandoning the overt war effort in Ukraine (while intensifying a clandestine guerrilla terror war, an amplification of a low-intensity war waged since the fall of the Soviet Union).

The other alternative is WWIII—a full-blown war, conscription, a demand by the state for submission and sacrifice (no opposition permitted, same as in any other autocratic state), and the eventuality of nuclear war threatening the very existence of all life on the planet.

Kevin McCarthy will not stop this. He is a dedicated follower of the malignant narcissist Donald Trump—the president who, like presidents before him, had no problem with war and organized mass murder. Trump violated the precepts of international law by killing people in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. He made a mockery of this by claiming he was against war.

Trump was undermined not for his wishy-washy supposed opposition to war, but because he was not selected by the ruling elite to carry out their control-freak agenda of global domination. He wasn’t invited to the party (or uniparty), so he, and the majority of Americans that voted for him (“deplorables”), must be punished evermore.

McCarthy as House Speaker is meaningless. The brawl on the House floor was partisan political theater, nothing more. The wars will continue, the neoliberal project will inch forward, and the state—its FBI, CIA, DOJ, DHS, and Pentagon, in collusion with Silicon Valley—will continue to demonize, de-platform, and otherwise “neutralize” (as J. Edgar Hoover characterized it) all voices in opposition to what may be an irreversible slide into a nuclear conflagration.

*

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Featured image is from the author

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***

Earlier today, I watched Col. Douglas Macgregor on Judge Napolitano’s podcast. Macgregor mentioned the child soldiers of Ukraine. The interview was posted on December 29.

Douglas Macgregor – Ukraine recruits child soldiers

Ukraine admitts 35000+ missing and more then 100000+ killed now forcing teenage boys in masses into the meatgrinder. pic.twitter.com/JJ7rCVEWuP

— Hawkeye1745 (@Hawkeye1745) December 29, 2022

As usual, it is difficult to find mention of this in the corporate war propaganda media. I was able to track down a single mention of child soldiers in Ukraine posted by the corporate media—remarkably, by none other than CNN. However, the information is seriously counter-narrative, so a “fact checker” was thrown into the mix to dispute the CNN tweet.

Not that it matters. For those interested in discovering the truth, there are plenty of videos showing the child soldiers of Ukraine (more directly, the child soldiers of the Azov Battalion, as I explain below).

Child soldiers in #Ukraine #UkraineRussianWar

Nothing to say @UNICEF ?@SavetheChildren ? pic.twitter.com/yPEnHjUk9Y

— colombinilaura (@Lauara_It) January 4, 2023

🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦The first confirmation of the liquidation of teenagers recruited into the Armed Forces of Ukraine

The first "rumors" about the creation of groups of Ukrainian militants, consisting of children, began to appear in the summer. pic.twitter.com/L4zFqz2VLd

— Тоби айоделе -Tboy🇷🇺 🇳🇬 (@TobiAyodele) December 27, 2022

For the civilized, the idea that children as young as 13 or 14 should be used as Russian bullet stoppers (and this is precisely what they are) is barbaric and inhumane, something usually found among the warring tribes of sub-Saharan Africa.

The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict states that warring parties “shall take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities.”

As noted above, most child soldiers are conscripted in Africa (Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Sierra Leone), although they are also exploited in Sir Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), and Colombia.

In Ukraine, children are indoctrinated (to hate Russians, Jews, Roma, and Poles) and taught military skills at an Azov Battalion “summer camp.”

Of course, there is virtually nothing about this in the tightly controlled and endlessly spun corporate war propaganda media. However, as they say, pictures are often worth a thousand words. The following photo was taken by a Romanian journalist.

In August 2015, a year after the USG-orchestrated coup in Ukraine, Prof Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research posted an article exposing “a Summer Camp military training project for young children as part of its broader training and indoctrination program.”

It was reported by the Kyiv Post that children as young as six years old participated in the program held at a location in the Vodytsya district outside Kyiv. The Post attempted to spin the story.

… this particular camp is run by the Azov Battalion founded by lawmaker Andriy Biletsky, its former commander. Located in the wooded area of Kyiv’s Pushcha Vodytsya district, kids at this summer camp aren’t just playing soldiers—they’re getting actual military training from soldiers who have fought on the front line in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Named Azovets, the camp has been the subject of negative coverage in the Russian media, pro-Russia websites and even U.K. tabloid The Daily Mail.

“Neo-Nazi summer camp: Ukrainian kids taught to shoot AKs by Azov battalion members (PHOTOS),” reads Kremlin-controlled RT’s headline for its story about the camp.

“Shocking pictures from inside neo-Nazi military camp reveal recruits as young as SIX are being taught how to fire weapons (even though there’s a ceasefire),” reads the headline in the Daily Mail’s sensationalized and inaccurate article. (Kyiv Post, August 29, 2015) (Emphasis added.)

Needless to say, the Daily Mail would not run this story today. The original post was scrubbed from the Kyiv Post website, lest the world understands the true character of the UAF and its embedded “national guard” neo-Nazi killers and child slavers.

When the Kyiv Post visited the Azovets camp on Aug. 19 the kids were busy with a range of activities, including stripping down and assembling AK-47 assault rifles, target practice (with air guns), tackling assault courses, and practicing combat poses and patrolling. They also take part in various sports and games, do rappelling and climbing, and practice other more traditional scouting and woodcraft skills like tying knots.

In addition to training in the use and handling of weapons, Ukronazi overseers indoctrinate impressionable minds in hate. “A boy who sits on a log softly whispers: ‘I want that this war will end and we will kill all the Russians.’”

Again, the article by Faina Nakonechnaya was posted well before the Russian SMO, thus demonstrating how neo-Nazi ultranats have brainwashed the next generation and are now feeding them into the Russian meat grinder on the Donbas front.

The takeaway on this is obvious—Ukraine is losing so many men, either at the front or through emigration, that it now believes it must sacrifice its children on the bloody altar of Stepan Bandera, Symon Petliura, Yevhen Konovalets, Andriy Melnyk, Mykola Lebed, and other vicious ultranats of yore.

It will require an extraordinary effort to deprogram these children. Unfortunately, like many of their fathers and grandfathers, thousands of them will no doubt end up in mass graves or left to rot in the field like so many Ukrainian (and foreign mercenary) adults, many forced at gunpoint into the slavery of conscription and rushed by the truckload to the front to in droves where they perish in the non-stop meat grinder of Russian artillery.

---

Supplemental reading:

Ukraine’s “Neo-Nazi Summer Camp”. Military Training for Young Children

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 30, 2022

---

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Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

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***

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, prime minister, and now deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, posted the following statement to Telegram on January 6.

Dmitry #Medvedev threatens to aim #Russia's #Zircon hypersonic missiles at Washington by placing the ship carrying them 100 miles from the #Potomac River #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/HiZXHzImCJ

— Diplomacy140 (@Diplomacy140) January 6, 2023

On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin deployed the frigate Admiral Gorshkov. It is armed with Zircon hypersonic missiles (3M22 Tsirkon). Admiral Gorshkov will travel “on a transoceanic cruise in a show of force as tensions with the West escalate over the war in Ukraine,” according to the LA Times.

Norwegian Navy's P-3 Orion reconnaissance plane took this photo of the Russian "Admiral Gorshkov" frigate carrying Russia's newest "Zircon" hypersonic nuclear-capable cruise missiles. January 6, 2023 pic.twitter.com/9FAakXwffC

— Venik (@venik44) January 7, 2023

The latest version of the Zircon missile is capable of screaming toward a target at Mach 8, around 7,000 miles per hour, and is reportedly unstoppable.

Russia: The warship Admiral Gorshkov, for the first time armed with hypersonic ballistic missiles of the "Zircon" type, has been put into operational mode. The ship successfully launched the missile at a target 1,000 km away in the northern Barents Sea. pic.twitter.com/hGmLI1xUm0

— Andrejs Eglitis (@falconnestorg) January 4, 2023

Parking hypersonic missiles 100 miles off the Potomac, which flows through DC, is an obvious warning that Russia has the ability to strike the neoliberal order where it hurts.

Medvedev doesn’t pull punches. He tells us, in language avoided by Putin, what he thinks of the USG and its continued exercise of the Wolfowitz Doctrine, that is to say, the belief all competitors must be confronted and destroyed if demonstrating intransigence or resistance. Competitors will be eliminated, similar to the way Slobodan Milošević, Saddam Hussein, and Moammar Gadaffi were eliminated.

From Medvedev’s Telegraph account:

The United States is spending tens of billions on the war in Ukraine, supplying its weapons on a gigantic scale, and exterminating thousands of people with other people’s hands. This is outrageous cynicism in the best traditions of the Nazis. Yes, in fact, the sons of bitches, who are such nonsense, are the true heirs of Reich propaganda minister Josef Goebbels.Only this stillborn nonsense has no effect on anyone. And the answer to it you will not get in official silence.

Indeed, the entire USG propaganda campaign takes cues from Goebbels, and the Big Lie formulated by Hitler in his memoir “Mein Kampf,” written while in prison after a failed coup, a putsch. Hitler knew that when a Big Lie is repeated over and over, day after day, week after week, the public eventually accepts it as reality.

The USG Big Lie portrays Russia as losing in Ukraine. However, according to journalists on the ground in eastern Ukraine (not corporate journalists ensconced in Kyiv hotels), it is Ukraine that is suffering slow-motion defeat, tens of thousands of its soldiers chewed up by constant Russian shelling. Russia’s strategic retreat from Kherson and Lyman is portrayed as an epic defeat, a turn in the war that will eventually tear apart the Russian Federation.

The goal of the ruling global elite is to prevent the emergence of all competitors, as stated in the Wolfowitz Doctrine, officially titled “Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–99 fiscal years,” formulated in 1992 under the direction of Dick Cheney. It eventually became known as the Bush Doctrine. The tenets of this doctrine are now being used to “weaken” Russia, considered a major competitor along with China.

Medvedev knows this. Putin knows this. Most Americans, thanks to endless propaganda, don’t know anything about this. The Big Lie corporate media feeds them fantasies, warning Russia is determined to reestablish the Soviet empire.

This rubbish is pushed by the former ambassador to Russia, and Deputy Secretary General of NATO, Alexander Vershbow, who said, “Putin wants to rebuild the Russian empire as his legacy… We have to figure out whether he can be stopped.”

This made-up excuse is nothing if not a raison d’être for the continued existence of NATO. Minus a manufactured or actual threat, NATO does not have an excuse for maintaining its existence. NATO is a tool for the destruction of targeted states—Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Somalia, and Libya. It has nothing to do with European security—and it certainly does not have a role in the security of America.

The unlikely prospect of unstoppable Zircon missiles striking DC will be exploited by the USG to further its propaganda campaign and instill fear in a malleable public. The fact the USG has sent the nuclear submarine USS New Mexico—armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles—into Russian territorial waters is left unmentioned.

“Currently, the nuclear submarine USS New Mexico is located about 500 km from the Russian territorial border and will quickly shorten this distance,” DefenceNewsreported a month before the Russian SMO.

Block V Virginia-class submarines can carry 40 cruise missiles, allowing the US to withdraw converted Ohio-class nuclear submarines, making up for the shortfall in long-range missile firepower in the “superpower competition” with Russia and China.

In addition, the ship is also equipped with 4 533 mm torpedo tubes, compatible with Mk 48 heavy torpedoes or AGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles…

The Wolfowitz Doctrine, and the hegemonic designs of the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, make it more than obvious—the USG will not tolerate competition for influence and resources, and it will go to war to retain the ability to kill people living in countries that reject the neoliberal looting and pillage agenda.

Increasingly, it appears that effort will result in WWIII, the final war terminating in nuclear winter, and the extinction of all living creatures.

*

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Kurt Nimmo 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.

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***

Please watch the video and follow along with the transcript below.

The World Health Organization is attempting a GLOBAL POWER GRAB by seeking to have the 194 member nations of the World Health Assembly adopt amendments to the International Health Regulations as well as adopt a completely new international agreement commonly referred to as the proposed “Pandemic Treaty.”.

The proposed amendments would make the WHO’s proclamations legally-binding rather than just advisory recommendations. The changes would institute global digital health certificates, dramatically increase the billions of dollars available to the WHO and enable nations to implement the regulations WITHOUT respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of people.

Agreement by a simple majority of the 194 member nations is all that is needed to adopt the amendments because, as amendments to an existing agreement, neither the advice and consent of the United States Senate, nor the signature of the President would be required.

These amendments are being negotiated in secret without any opportunity for comment by people from around the world.

Transcript

I encourage absolutely everyone to copy this recording (and article) and re-upload it on the platform of your choice. Spread it far and wide so that everyone you know has the opportunity to become aware of what the WHO is attempting to do.

If you have the ability to translate this into other languages, or to subtitle it, that effort would be very much appreciated.

What follows are 100 of the many reasons why we must stop the proposed “Pandemic Treaty”, we must stop the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations every nation on earth must #ExitTheWHO.

EVERYONE ON EARTH must be made aware that the World Health Organization is attempting a global coup. PLEASE share this article with everyone you know and feel free to contact me directly at any time if you have any questions or would like to help in a more substantial way. My name is James Roguski and you can reach me at 310-619-3055 via phone, text, Signal, WhatsApp or Telegram.

The WHO is currently overseeing negotiations that are designed to convince its 194 member nations to adopt amendments to the International Health Regulations as well as to adopt a legally-binding “Pandemic Treaty.”

The people behind these negotiations are hell-bent on creating a totalitarian dictatorship designed to enslave every human being within a digital prison that is lined with health certificates and continuous surveillance.

These agreements, if adopted, would surrender health related sovereignty over to the WHO, who would then, in their own words, be able to implement the regulations WITHOUT respect for human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms.

You all better wake up, and you better wake up right now. We need to work together to

#StopTheTreaty

#StopTheAmendments

#ExitTheWHO

I am going to break these 100 reasons down into seven categories:

PART I: Ten things that everyone needs to know about the World Health Organization’s proposed “Pandemic Treaty.” (1-10)

PART II: The proposed amendments would seek to remove 3 very important aspects of the existing regulations. (11-13)

PART III: The proposed amendments a would implement a great number of changes that everyone should absolutely disagree with. (14-50)

PART IV: There are glaring contradictions and flaws in the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations. (51-60)

PART V: The proposed amendments are absolutely ignoring many of the things that really do need to be addressed. (61-80)

PART VI: The proposed amendments would trample our rights and restrict our freedoms. (81-90)

PART VII: The Ten Main Reasons why every nation on earth should #ExitTheWHO (91-100)

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The first and most important point that I would like to make is that I am about to discuss two very different things. First, I will talk briefly about the proposed “Pandemic Treaty.” More people seem to be aware of the so-called “Pandemic Treaty,” but, while I see it as being an important issue, I believe that it is also functioning as a decoy that is designed to distract people from the much larger and more immediate threat to our rights and freedoms, which are the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations.

*

#StopTheTreaty

PART I: Ten things everyone needs to know about the World Health Organization’s proposed “Pandemic Treaty.”

1. Dramatically Expand the Role of the WHO

The proposed “Pandemic Treaty” is the World Health Organization’s attempt to convince the 194 member nations to agree to hand over their national sovereignty to the WHO via a legally binding framework convention that would hand over enormous additional, legally-binding authority to the WHO.

The WHO has published a 32 page document that they refer to as the “Conceptual Zero Draft” and on pages 10, 13 and 22 the WHO makes it very clear that the purpose of the document is to recognize the central role of the WHO in the prevention, preparedness, response and recovery from future pandemics. They want to be the directing and coordinating authority on global health and global governance over all health systems.

Clearly, the actions of the WHO point to the fact that they are not focused upon the health of people. Instead, they are focused on funneling billions of dollars into building health systems. Their true purpose is to help finance and build the Pharmaceutical, Hospital, Emergency Industrial Complex (PHEIC) by redirecting funds via crony capitalism to corporations that profit from the declarations of Public Health Emergencies of International Concern and the fear-mongering that naturally follows such emergency declarations.

2. Creating an Entirely New Bureaucracy (COP) 

In order to facilitate the growth of the Pharmaceutical Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex (PHEIC), the WHO would create an entirely new bureaucracy as defined in Article 19 of the Conceptual Zero Draft of the proposed “Pandemic Treaty.” It would create a governing body that is made up of a Conference of the Parties (COP), much like the system that has governed the discussion over climate change. Only nations that sign and adopt the treaty would become members of the Conference of the Parties. They would be directed by the Officers of the Parties which would include two presidents and four vice-presidents. There would also be an Enlarged Conference of the Parties (E-COP) that would include “relevant stakeholders” such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations and others, so long as they were approved by a 2/3 majority of the Conference of the Parties.

3. The WHO Is Seeking Tens of Billions of Dollars

This already enormous bureaucracy seeks to have a yearly budget that is many times as big as the current entire budget of the WHO. While the Conference of the Parties associated with the proposed “Pandemic Treaty” would be connected to the WHO, it would also act independently from it.

Article 18 of the Conceptual Zero Draft of the proposed “Pandemic Treaty” discusses the desire for sustainable and predictable financing. They seek collaboration between the health, finance and private sectors and they also want to establish new international mechanisms in order to ensure a stable source of financing on global, regional and national levels.

One of the things that is absolutely lacking in the proposed “Pandemic Treaty” is any discussion whatsoever of the means by which decisions would be made regarding how all of these billions of dollars would be spent. It would essentially set up an enormous candy store through which the bureaucrats of the WHO would control the means of production in the Pharmaceutical, Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex.

4. Expanding Censorship

Article 16 of the Conceptual Zero Draft would essentially set up a Ministry of Truth that would give the WHO the power to study the behavioural barriers and drivers of adherence to public health measures. The WHO would be empowered to analyze social media to identify misinformation and disinformation in order to counter it with their own propaganda. They want billions of dollars to enable them to clamp down on free speech, freedom of the press and freedom of expression because they know that their recommendations and guidelines cannot stand the true test of scientific inquiry and they do not want any of their dictates to be criticized by public comment.

5. Speeding Up the Approval for Drugs and Injections

In Article 7(2)(b) it is very clear that they want regulatory bodies in nations around the world to accelerate the speed at which new drugs and injectables are authorized and approved. As if the disaster caused by the rapid authorization of the COVID-19 injections was not bad enough, they seek to dramatically speed up the process by which products are authorized and brought to the market.

6. Support for Gain-Of-Function Research

Rather than outlaw what may very well be the greatest threat to the survival of mankind on planet Earth, Article 8 of the Conceptual Zero Draft actually seeks to ensure that none of the measures put forth would create any unnecessary administrative hurdles for gain-of-function research. We need to completely and totally ban gain-of-function research immediately, not protect it from “unnecessary administrative hurdles.”

7. More and More Tabletop Exercises (Simulations)

Article 12 of the Conceptual Zero Draft calls for an increase in funding for what are known as tabletop exercises or simulations, much like Agenda 201 or the more recent simulation that can be found on CatastrophicContagion.com. The WHO wants nations around the world to spend billions of dollars on biological war games rather than spend that money in ways that would actually improve the health of the general population.

8. Seeking to Implement the Concept of One-Health

Article 17 of the Conceptual Zero Draft would implement a complex system known as One-Health in which control over human health, pet health, domesticated animal, farm animal and wild animal health and agricultural plant health and the overall health of the natural environment would be strictly controlled. In short, they want to have control over every aspect of everyone’s life.

9. Whole-Of-Government, Whole-Of-Society Approach

The whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach would give authority to every agency of government and every non-governmental organization to be involved in the control of every single aspect of everyone’s life. Their long term goal is complete totalitarian dictatorial control over every aspect of life on the planet.

10. Global Review System to Oversee Health Systems

In Article 12 and in Article 20 of the Conceptual Zero Draft of the proposed “Pandemic Treaty” they call for a Global Review Mechanism whereby the WHO would actively stick its nose into the manner in which individual sovereign nations support and structure their public health care systems. The oversight mechanisms in Article 20 fail to clearly define the metrics and other criteria by which any compliance review would be based. These details would be left to be decided at the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties which would occur long after the proposed “Pandemic Treaty” had already been adopted, ratified and entered into force. This would include the ability to monitor the nation’s progress in complying with the treaty and would require the submission of periodic reports and reviews to suggest remedies and actions as well as advice and assistance. While it does not specifically mention economic sanctions, it also does not rule them out.

*

The above are just ten reasons why We, the People of the World, must #StopTheTreaty.

Now I will discuss the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations. Although the proposed “Pandemic Treaty” is very concerning and very important to pay attention to, I honestly feel that the amendments to the International Health Regulations are a much more immediate and direct threat to the sovereignty of every nation and the rights and freedoms of every person on earth.

*

#StopTheAmendments

PART II: The proposed amendments would seek to remove some very important aspects of the existing regulations.

11. Removing respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms. 

The most egregious, blatant and disgusting proposed amendment is to the first paragraph of Article 3 in the existing Regulations which describes the core principles of the International Health Regulations. The current version of the IHR does defend the unalienable rights of We the People. It currently states that the regulations must be implemented [with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of people], but the proposed amendment would cross out those 13 vitally important words. The proposal submitted by the delegation from India would replace those words with a focus on the transfer of wealth and would replace individual rights with inclusivity. This is a direct assault the rights and freedoms of every human being. This is a direct assault on humanity itself. (Page 3)

12. From “non-binding” to “legally binding.”

The proposed amendments would seek to remove the words “non-binding” from the definitions of temporary and standing recommendations that are made by the World Health Organization. When coupled with Article 42, (the Implementation of Health Measures) which says: “Health measures, including the recommendations made under Articles 15 and 16 shall be initiated and completed without delay by all States Parties.” That turns the WHO’s advisory role into a totalitarian dictatorship. The statements made by the WHO are currently recommendations, they are NOT commands upon the people of the earth. (Page 2)

13. Nations Shall, Must, Are Obligated and Have a Duty to Collaborate With and Assist other Nations

In a direct assault on national sovereignty, the proposed amendments to Article 43 state that “Recommendations made pursuant to… this Article shall be implemented… within two weeks from the date of [the] recommendation… and the decision made [by the Emergency Committee] on the request for [any] reconsideration shall be final.

Essentially, the WHO’s Emergency Committee would be given the power to overrule actions taken by sovereign nations. (Pages 21-22)

While the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations seek to remove some very important rights and freedoms, the vast majority of the document seeks to add in new language, giving new authority to the WHO.

*

PART III: The proposed amendments a would implement a great number of changes that everyone should absolutely disagree with.

So now, let’s turn to the many, many things that these proposed amendments would add to the International Health Regulations.

14. Drugs and Jabs = Health

In Article 1, the definition of “health products” fails to include the very things that were shown to be effective in double blind, placebo controlled, clinical studies that have been ignored by the world.

The definitions do not include vitamins, minerals, herbs and other beneficial nutrients that proved themselves to be supremely beneficial and truly safe. In lieu of using products that are truly safe and effective, the WHO seeks to redirect billions of dollars toward the Pharmaceutical Hospital, Emergency Industrial Complex for drugs and injections that are not proven to be safe and are only effective in increasing the risk of being diagnosed with the very dis-eases that these products are purported to protect people against. (Page 2)

15. Expanded Scope

The proposed amendments to Article 2 would dramatically expand the scope of the International Health Regulations from dealing with actual risks to dealing with anything that had the potential to be a risk to public health. This amendment would open up the doors wide to massive abuse beyond anything we have seen over the past 3 years. (Page 3)

16. Protecting Health Care Systems Instead of People

In the proposed amendment to the new second paragraph (bis) of Article 3, the focus of the WHO is subtly shifted away from the health of real people and would be guided to place primary preference upon the resilience of health care systems. We don’t need to focus upon the health of our health care systems so much as we need to focus upon the health of PEOPLE. Our health care facilities are no longer a place where people who are suffering from dis-ease go in order to regain their health. Our health care facilities have become killing fields to be feared. (Page 3)

17. Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities

In the proposed amendments to Parts 1 and 2 of Article 3, the repeated use of the phrase “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” is used to mask what is inherently discriminatory, racist, sexist and unequal treatment of people around the world under the guise of “equity and inclusivity.” Please note that the phrase “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” is NOT defined in Article 1. (Page 3)

18. All Powerful National Competent Authority

The proposed amendments to Article 4, would seek to establish a National Competent Authority who would be given great power to implement the obligations under these regulations, while having absolutely no accountability for any of the harm caused by any of their official actions. This without precedent. (Pages 4-5)

19. Developed Nations’ Obligation to Provide Assistance to Developing Nations

While the existing document fails to clarify which countries are considered to be on which list, in both Article 5 and in Annex 1, the proposed amendments would clearly obligate “developed nations” to assist “developing nations” to build their ability to detect, assess and notify the WHO regarding pathogenic, infectious outbreaks. (Pages 4 and 31)

20. Loss of Sovereignty

IF the proposed amendments to Articles 9, 10 and 12 were to be adopted, the WHO will no longer need to consult any sovereign nation in which an event may, or may not be occurring within that nation before declaring that there is a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) within the borders of that nation. (Pages 6-10)

21. Intermediate Public Health Alert

The proposed amendments to Article 12 would also enable the Director General of the WHO to declare a Intermediate Public Health Alert. (Pages 8-10)

22. World Alert and Response Notice

The proposed amendments to Article 12 would also enable the Director General of the WHO to declare a World Alert and Response Notice. (Page 10)

23. Public Health Emergency of Regional Concern (PHERC)

Also, the proposed amendments to Article 12 would also enable the Regional Directors of the WHO to declare a Public Health Emergency of Regional Concern (PHERC). (Pages 8-10)

24. The WHO Would Be Placed in a Position of Global Authority

The proposed amendments seek to create a new Article 13A which would have the world community recognize the World Health Organization as the guidance and coordinating authority during international emergencies. (Pages 12-14)

25. WHO Allocation Plan

The proposed new Article 13A would also empower the WHO to craft an “Allocation Plan” to mandate the manufacturing, donation and distribution of various pandemic response products. If these amendments were to be adopted, the WHO would effectively be placed in control of the means of production of any and all nations of the world. Upon the dictate of the WHO, formerly sovereign nations would be obligated to ensure that the manufacturers within their borders gear up production and donate their products as directed by the WHO. (Pages 12-15 and page 21)

26. Events That Are Only Potentially Dangerous Can Be Declared Emergencies

The proposed amendments to Article 15 would empower the WHO to declare emergencies and make legally-binding recommendations or commands based on situations that merely had the potential to cause Public Health Emergencies of International Concern. (Page 14)

27. The WHO Could be Empowered to Mandate Policy During Emergencies

The existing Article 18 lists a number of “recommendations” that the WHO could make but, if the proposed amendments are adopted, these non-binding recommendations would no longer merely be suggestions, but would be legally-binding upon the member nations. (Page 16)

1. Review travel history in affected areas;
2. Review proof of medical examination and any laboratory analysis;
3. Require medical examinations;
4. Review proof of vaccination or other prophylaxis;
5. Require vaccination or other prophylaxis;
6. Place suspect persons under public health observation;
7. Implement quarantine or other health measures for suspect persons;
8. Implement isolation and treatment where necessary of affected persons;
9. Implement tracing of contacts of suspect or affected persons;
10. Refuse entry of suspect and affected persons;
11. Refuse entry of unaffected persons to affected areas; and
12. Implement exit screening and/or restrictions on persons from affected areas.
13. Review manifest and routing;
14. Implement inspections;
15. Review proof of measures taken on departure or in transit to eliminate infection or contamination;
16. Implement treatment of the baggage, cargo, containers, conveyances, goods, postal parcels or human remains to remove infection or contamination, including vectors and reservoirs;
17. The use of specific health measures to ensure the safe handling and transport of human remains;
18. Implement isolation or quarantine;
19. Seizure and destruction of infected or contaminated or suspect baggage, cargo, containers, conveyances, goods or postal parcels under controlled conditions if no available treatment or process will otherwise be successful; and
20. Refuse departure or entry.

28. Traveler’s Health Declaration 

The proposed amendments to Article 18 also seek to create mechanisms to develop and apply a “Traveler’s Health Declaration” that would require personal information about one’s travel itinerary, possible symptoms and any prevention measures that had been complied with in order to facilitate contact tracing. (Page 16)

29. Foreign “Health Care Workers” 

The proposed amendments to Article 18 also appear to make it mandatory for nations to allow foreign “health care workers” to enter their country. (Pages 16-17)

30. Digital Global Health Certificates

The proposed amendments to Articles 18, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 35, 36 and 44 as well as proposed amendments to Annexes 6, 7 and 8 would institute a global digital health certificate with a paper backup which would require people to show a QR code in order to continue to live their life as a human being on planet Earth, to travel, to shop, to do whatever it is that this may be used to prevent. It would set up an interoperable, world-wide digital health database system that would potentially enable bureaucrats from around the world to set requirements for prophylaxis, medications, treatment, injections and God only knows what else. This could potentially require people to undergo health treatments that are against their free will, in violation of their deeply held religious beliefs and their right of informed dissent just to enable them to participate in society. (Multiple pages)

31. Passenger Locator Form

The proposed amendments to Article 23 would set up a Passenger Locator Form that would require people to provide their travel itinerary and planned locations in order to facilitate contact tracing. (Page 18)

32. Competent Authorities Given Command Over Ships and Aircraft

The proposed amendments to Articles 27 and 28 would enable so-called “competent authorities” to actually command the captains of ships and aircraft to follow their orders. (Pages 18-19)

33. Multiple Health Documents

The proposed amendments to Articles 35 and 36 would dramatically expand the required health documents to require testing certificates, vaccine certificates, prophylaxis certificates and recovery certificates. (Page 20)

34. Legally Binding “Recommendations”

The proposed amendments to Article 42, as mentioned earlier, would require nations to implement the “recommendations” of the Dictator General of the World Hypocrisy Organization as though they were legally-binding orders, not just recommendations. (Page 20)

35. Attain The Highest Achievable Level of Health Protection

The proposed amendments to Article 43 seem to allow and encourage nations to go to the absolute extreme in responding to any so-called “emergency by striving to “attain the “highest achievable level of health protection.” This appears to encourage and give support to actions that were implemented by some nations which employed extremely severe lockdowns, travel restrictions and ZERO COVID policies. (Page 21)

36. The Finality of Decisions Made by the Emergency Committee Would Be a Direct Attack on National Sovereignty

The proposed amendments to Article 43 would make the decisions of the Emergency Committee legally-binding and final. They would seek to negate decisions made by sovereign member nations and limit the freedom of sovereign nations to enact legislation or regulations as they determine to be appropriate, as stated in Article 3, Section 4. (Pages 21-22)

37. Loss of Privacy Regarding Health Records

The proposed amendments to Article 44 would facilitate digital access to everyone’s private health records. The loss of one’s unalienable right to privacy regarding their health records is something that every human being on the planet must oppose. (Pages 22-24)

38. Censorship

The proposed amendments to Article 44 would also facilitate the censorship of any differing opinions under the guise of mis-information or dis-information. (Page 23)

39. WHO Interference in the Crafting of Legislation

The proposed amendments to Article 44 would also involve the World Health Organization in actually writing the laws that would be enacted in various nations in order to implement these regulations. (Page 23)

40. Unlimited Money for the PHEIC

The proposed amendments to Article 44A would organize massive financing on behalf of the Pharmaceutical Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex with absolutely no estimate or limit on the proposed costs. (Page 25)

41. Financing Rules to Remain Undetermined for 24 Months

The proposed amendments to Article 44A also state that the details of the financing mechanism would NOT be decided upon until 24 months after the adoption of the amendments to the International Health Regulations. (Page 25)

42. Loss of Privacy of Personal Health Data

The proposed amendments to Article 45 would make it acceptable for private, personal health data to be shared. Again, this violation of our unalienable right to privacy in our personal health records must not be allowed to occur. (Page 25)

43. Lack of Transparency with the General Public

The proposed amendments to Article 49 fail to stipulate that the reports of the Emergency Committee must be revealed to the general public. The reports of the Emergency Committee must be made publicly available, especially the dissenting voices that may disagree with the recommendations. The proposed amendment to Article 49 only requires the information to be shared with the member nations, who could then keep it secret from the general public. Personal experience has proven that the members of the delegations to the WHO are inaccessible and refuse to reveal such communications, even after numerous Freedom of Information Act Requests. (Pages 26-27)

44. Implementation Committee and More Bureaucracy

The proposed amendments to Articles 53A and 54 bis would redundantly establish an Implementation Committee or place implementation of the proposed amendments into the hands of the World Health Assembly. This Implementation Committee would just add to the bureaucracy along with the Compliance Committee, the Emergency Committee, the Review Committee, the Special Committee and the Standing Committee on Health and Emergency Prevention, Preparedness, and Response. Spending money on bureaucracy does not improve the health of the general public. (Pages 26-27)

45. Compliance Committee

The proposed amendments to Article 53 bis-quater would create yet another bureaucracy in the form of a Compliance Committee. This committee would consist of at least 36 people (6 bureaucrats from each of the 6 WHO regions). The Compliance Committee would be empowered to make recommendations to nations regarding how they may improve compliance with the core capacities required by the amendments to the International Health Regulations. This is yet another attack on the sovereignty of nations and the freedoms of people. (Pages 28-29)

46. Core Capacities

The proposed amendments to Annex 1 are absolutely massive. They include seven (7) full pages of requirements that each and every member nation would be required to implement as changes to the “core capacities” of their nation’s public health system. These changes also seek to impose requirements on a local or community level, at an intermediate public health response level, at the national health governance level as well as at the global level. (Pages 31-37)

47. Treatment Guidelines

The proposed amendments to Annex 1 would seek to enforce clinical guidance and treatment guidelines. The doctor-patient relationship would be absolutely destroyed. (Page 32)

48. Propaganda

The proposed amendments to Annex 1 would also require the core capacity for “information dissemination” via “appropriate messages” and “communication management.” By any other name, this is propaganda that would be funded by billions of dollars allocated to the WHO. (Page 32)

49. Surveillance Networks

The proposed amendments to Annex 1 would set up surveillance networks within the territories of the member nations to “quickly detect public health events.” The definition of a “public health event” can be almost anything that they want it to be. (Page 32)

50. Obligations of Duty to Cooperate

The proposed amendments seek to create an entirely new Annex 10 which would create “Obligations of Duty to Cooperate” that would require nations to assist when asked to build infrastructure around the world. And most concerning, on the very last page of the proposed amendments is the requirement of “Developed States Parties” of which there is not yet a list of nations clarifying which nations are considered to be developed, to assist in the building and maintaining of facilities at points of entry and for the operations associated with the implementation of the International Health Regulations. (Page 46)

What in the world could such facilities be planned to be used for?

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PART IV: There are glaring contradictions and flaws in the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations.

In addition to a number of blatant contradictions, many issues are missing, forgotten, overlooked or purposefully left out from the proposed amendments as well as missing from the entire process.

Neither the Working Group to consider amendments to the International Health Regulations (WGIHR) nor the International Health Regulations Review Committee (IHRRC) seem to have the foggiest clue about the many things that We the People of the World are actually very concerned about.

51. Lack of Input From The General Public

The vast majority of the people of the world have no idea whatsoever that any of these negotiations are happening. They have been given no opportunity whatsoever to have any say or any input into these secret negotiations. All of these negotiations are being done without any form of democratic process or public comment. Those of us who have reached out in an attempt to have our voices heard realize that the WHO does NOT reply, they do NOT respond to members of the general public at all. They are only interested in the inputs from what are considered to be “relevant stakeholders” which are big-money organizations and foundations, many of which donate to the WHO and actually fund and thus control their activities. That is what gives them a seat at the negotiating table and a voice in these negotiations. The average person is completely shut out and is considered to have and offer no value to the people who are negotiating, supposedly on behalf of the people of their nations.

52. Unknown and Unaccountable Delegates

Most people do not have any idea of who their delegates to the WHO are. They have no idea regarding who may be pretending to represent them before the WHO. Most people in the world do not know that the World Health Assembly even exists and that the 76th meeting will be occurring at the end of May, 2023.

53. The Negotiating Process has been Hijacked by the IHRRC

At the 75th meeting in May of 2022, the World Health Assembly agreed to create a Working Group to consider amendments to the International Health Regulations (WGIHR). They scheduled an initial meeting of the WGIHR for mid-November 2022, but the negotiating process was hijacked by the WHO at the beginning of October. The WHO created an International Health Regulations Review Committee (IHRRC) that took over the job that should be directly under the control of the Secretariat of the WGIHR. The IHRRC is sworn to secrecy and confidentiality and answers only to the Director General. The IHRRC was put together in early October and has met several times for weeklong secret meetings to negotiate and craft the document that they plan to submit to the WHO for consideration at the 76th World Health Assembly in May of 2023.

These are oligarchs and technocrats who are making rules to give more power, authority and money to oligarchs and technocrats.

The WGIHR’s authority over this process appears to have been usurped by the IHRRC. As of the end of 2022 the WGIHR has failed to provide any insight into their upcoming schedule and they have not planned any means by which the public would be able to comment on these negotiations to amend the International Health Regulations. It appears that the entire negotiating process has been hijacked by a group of 18 “experts” who have been hand-picked to do the bidding of the Dictator General of the World Hypocrisy Organization.

The entire process violates one of the fundamental principles in the Preamble of the WHO Constitution which states:

“Informed opinion and active co-operation on the part of the public are of the utmost importance in the improvement of the health of the people.”

54. Undefined Terminology

In regards to the proposed amendments themselves, the WGIHR and the IHRRC have created a jargon of their own that they refuse to legally define. Dozens of undefined words and phrases are used throughout the proposed amendments and, since they are not defined, they can purposefully be misrepresented and skillfully re-interpreted at will.

Undefined terms:

1. Assessment and Risk Criteria
2. Assistive Products
3. Benefit Sharing Mechanism
4. Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities
5. Conflict and Violence Elements
6. Developed States Parties
7. Developing States Parties
8. Equity
9. Event Information [Web]Site
10. Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits
11. Genetic Sequence Data
12. Genome Sequence Data
13. Guidance
14. Inclusiveness
15. Joint External Evaluation
16. National IHR Competent Authority
17. National IHR Focal Point
18. Non-State Actors (an official list is needed)
19. Pandemic
20. Potential to Become a PHEIC
21. Preparedness
22. Prevention
23. Public Health Interventions
24. Recovery
25. Response
26. Risks With a Potential to Impact Public Health
27. Solidarity
28. Universal Health Periodic Review
29. Vaccine

Without proper legal definitions, these words can be interpreted and re-interpreted at will to mean whatever they want them to mean.

55. Hypocrisy

After rejecting numerous natural and inexpensive therapeutic agents due to false claims of a lack of peer-reviewed studies, the WGIHR and the IHRRC continue to fail to appreciate the irony that they are negotiating proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations, purportedly to improve pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, and they have failed to provide a single peer-reviewed, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to back up any of their many recommendations. They are clearly NOT meeting their own supposed “gold standard.”

56. Fatal Flaw #1 – There are NO Valid Criteria by Which to Measure Preparedness

I will comment on just one of the several dozen undefined terms, which is the phrase “assessment and risk criteria.” During the first Informal Focused Conference, the WHO moderator asked several experts to explain which metrics could be used to determine a nation’s preparedness and thus, give them the ability to prevent and/or respond to a PHEIC. The experts clearly stated that no metrics, or assessment or risk criteria had been shown to accurately determine whether or not a nation could be confident that they were adequately prepared for the next pandemic.

Ignoring the fact that the word pandemic itself is not legally defined, the point is this: The entire process of crafting amendments to the International Health Regulations in order to “be better prepared to prevent and respond to the next pandemic” is a useless exercise because NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO MEASURE PREPAREDNESS! The WHO’s own experts expressed it in the following words, and I quote:

“We owe it to ourselves to not continue to rely on them in a dogmatic way until allowing scientific analyses to generate a new set of measurements. It’s a topic that I think has been marginalized, but is very important.”

The WHO is purporting to negotiate legally-binding amendments to the International Health Regulations to improve the ability to prevent and prepare for the next pandemic, and they have NO IDEA how to measure the goals that they say they are trying to achieve.

57. Fatal Flaw #2: National Sovereignty of Every Nation Directly Conflicts With the WHO’s Attempted Power Grab

Many of the proposed amendments should be seen as null-and-void because they directly conflict with principle number 4 in Article 3, which clearly states the following:

“States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to legislate and to implement legislation in pursuance of their health policies.”

Sovereign states cannot be commanded by recommendations that have attempted to be converted into commands or orders by the Compliance Committee, by the Rulings of the Emergency Committee or by the proclamations found in Article 44, Annex 1, or Annex 10 or by a change in terminology in Article 1 that seeks to change non-binding recommendations into legally-binding “Obligations of Duty to Cooperate.”

This makes the International Health Regulations self-contradictory and would make them null and void. The WHO seeks to have the member nations surrender their right to sovereign control over their own public health systems to the WHO. This is reason enough to #StopTheAmendments and #ExitTheWHO.

58. No Way to Cancel or End a Declared Emergency

In much the same way that the Director General is free to declare an emergency even against the advice of his own expert Emergency Committee with essentially no valid data whatsoever, the opposite problem of being unable to bring an already declared emergency to an end is also under the sole control of the Dictator General. There is currently no way for We the People to insist that an emergency be brought to an end.

59. The Proposed Funding Mechanism is Redundant With the World Bank’s Pandemic Fund

Although the World Bank’s Pandemic Fund is as deeply flawed as the ill-defined funding mechanisms proposed by both the proposed Pandemic Treaty and the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations, the World Bank’s Pandemic Fund is currently in place and will begin serving as a mechanism that can be studied to see if the hoped for benefits may arise from the many billions of dollars that they plan to spend. To even consider wasting untold tens of billions of dollars before the pilot project being conducted by the World Bank has had a chance to succeed or fail, is ridiculous. The World Bank Pandemic Fund has had great difficulty raising the money that they had hoped for. To believe that the funds associated with the proposed treaty and amendments will be greeted any more favorably is sheer folly.

60. Spending tens of billions of dollars diverts that money away from things that people are actually suffering from

Spending billions of dollars on the items and personnel that are currently undefined by the proposed amendments could and should absolutely be spent on health related issues that could truly have an impact upon people who are suffering from a wide range of dis-eases. Spending money to attempt to prevent or prepare for an event that may never come, and even if it does, is likely to be far different than what may have been planned for is simply bureaucratic malfeasance.

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PART V: The proposed amendments are absolutely ignoring many of the things that really should be and need to be addressed.

61. The Importance of Individual Health Over Public Health Systems

Supporting Public Health Systems associated with the Pharmaceutical Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex is not even remotely the same as supporting the health of individual people. The WHO seems to have forgotten that the good of any people is the sum total of the benefits enjoyed by each and every individual. The unalienable human rights of each individual, their personal sovereignty and their bodily autonomy, supersede the privileges of any and all international organizations, nations, states, provinces, cities or other groups that derive their existence from We, The Individual People Of The World.

62. Failure to explain the magical disappearance of Influenza

The WHO seems to be at a complete loss to explain how an why influenza magically disappeared from the health statistics over the past few years.

63. Failure to Isolate the virus

The WHO continues to be in absolute denial of the fact that no one has ever provided actual evidence of the existence of the supposed virus that has been given the name SARS-CoV-2 and its many supposed variants. Even though hundreds of Freedom of Information Requests for such evidence from around the world have been submitted, no one appears to have ever been able to properly isolate it and provide evidence of having done so.

64. Failure to prove causality via Koch’s Postulates

The WHO also continues to ignore the fundamental fact that SARS-CoV-2 has never been submitted to the scrutiny required according to Koch’s Postulates to determine whether or not it is actually the causal factor in the collection of EXTREMELY common symptoms that have come to be known as COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 has not been properly shown to be the sole cause of the symptoms associated with COVID-19 which has resulted in widespread mis-diagnosis, with massive numbers of false positive RT-PCR results.

65. Two Weeks to Flatten The Curve Was An Absolute Failure

The WHO is in complete denial that the concept of “two weeks to flatten the curve was a lie and that the lockdowns that resulted from that lie failed to stop the spread of whatever is causing the dis-ease that is known as COVID-19.

66. Lockdowns, Curfews, Travel Restrictions

The WHO is still failing to admit that lockdowns, quarantines, curfews, travel restrictions, social distancing and the wearing of masks only served to trigger severe economic devastation and caused an enormous mental health catastrophe. They still refuse to acknowledge that countless studies have shown that those actions failed miserably and have never been shown to reduce the spread of a respiratory pathogen.

67. Using RT-PCR to Diagnose Disease is Fraudulent

The WHO is still promoting the lie and pretending to determine cases of a disease via RT-PCR that is NOT of any benefit whatsoever to improving people’s health. Using RT-PCR is clearly NOT a valid way of diagnosing disease. All it does is generate a huge percentage of false positives that simply wastes resources on asymptomatic people who are actually more properly described as being healthy. Generating massive numbers of improperly diagnosed fake “cases” only serves to assist the fear-mongering that leads to feeding the Pharmaceutical Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex. Using RT-PCR must be admitted to be the fraud that it has always been since the very beginning.

68. Early Treatment

The WHO still seems to believe that the early, inaccurate detection of disease via RT-PCR followed by lockdowns, quarantines and mask wearing is somehow a better strategy to prevent outbreaks from spreading into pandemics than early effective treatment with decades old essential medications that have exhibited a long history of safety and effectiveness in combination with vitamins, minerals, herbs and good nutrition.

The WHO continues to fail to acknowledge that the blame for the death of millions of people must be placed directly upon the numerous health officials around the world who insisted that frontline clinicians follow pathetic treatment protocols which prevented the use of early, effective treatments. Millions of people died because their doctors were directed to tell them that “nothing could be done” and sadly, this situation still exists.

The WHO appears to be completely ignore-ant of the fact that the intelligent early treatment with essential medications and natural substances that were provided by wise and experienced health professionals all around the world were far more successful in preventing hospitalizations and preventing deaths than the pathetic official protocol of do nothing, take a Tylenol and go to the emergency room if it gets really bad so we can put you in a drug induced coma in order to mechanically control your breathing with a ventilator and give you Medazolam so that you can have a “good death.”

69. Nutrition

The WHO continues to fail to recognize the benefits of treatment with vitamins and minerals such as vitamins C and D and the mineral zinc. There is no profit to be had by the Pharmaceutical Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex in utilizing these proven, natural ingredients, and THAT is what clearly explains why they have not been used.

70. Essential Medications

The WHO continues to fail to recognize the benefits of repurposed essential medications such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Every person who contributed to restricting the use of these life-saving essential medications is a criminal and should be charged with mass murder.

71. Dangerous Authorized and Approved Medications

The WHO continues to fail to address the deadly side effects of approved and authorized drugs such as remdesivir and medazolam that have contributed to kidney failure and death in thousands of individuals. The ongoing use of these drugs must be investigated to determine their true risk/benefit ratio.

72. Ventilators are Deadly

The WHO continues to deny that ventilators and the drugs that are administered as part of the ventilator protocol have actually caused the deaths of thousands of innocent victims of medical murder.

73. In Silico Genetic Sequence Used for mRNA Injections

The WHO still chooses to ignore the undeniable fact that the genetic sequence that was supposedly used to create the mRNA injections was clearly created in silico (in a computer) and is not a naturally occurring sequence. If a spike protein is produced in the human body due to the mRNA found in the injections, then it is clearly a non-natural, man-made biological weapon.

74. Quality Assurance Failure

The WHO has failed miserably to ensure that quality assurance testing was done to ensure the purity of the ingredients in the jabs that have been injected into billions of people. In the past, if any other product was found to have the levels of contamination reported by many researchers or exhibited the complete lack of the purported active ingredient, such mislabeled products could, should and would have been recalled from the market immediately.

75. Vaccine Equity

The WHO still seems to believe that equity in producing and distributing poisonous drugs and deadly injections is more important than focusing on treatment protocols that actually save lives. Clearly, they believe that equity is about wealth, not about health.

76. The So-called “Vaccines” are simply NOT effective.

The WHO still fails to acknowledge that the COVID-19 gene-therapy biological weapons have failed miserably in their stated goals. Several billion people have had multiple injections and yet COVID-19 is rampant across the world, especially in those people who have received the most jabs. The WHO refuses to admit that the so-called COVID-19 “vaccines” were rushed into use and were never shown to be effective. They were never studied nor shown to reduce transmission of any virus. Statistics from all across the world have shown that those who have been jabbed are absolutely NOT protected from being diagnosed with COVID-19. How massive of a failure does this need to become before the WHO will recognize and admit that it has committed a gargantuan mistake?

77. The So-Called “Vaccines” Are Absolutely NOT safe

What will it take for the WHO to realize and admit that the jabs are damaging people’s immune systems and actually making the situation far worse than it was. The WHO refuses to admit that the so-called COVID-19 “vaccines” were rushed into use and were never shown to be safe. Lack of safety testing in pregnant women is an extremely egregious violation of the most basic ethical standards of health care.

Anyone who states that these injections are “safe” is committing a crime against humanity and should be charged as an accessory to mass murder.

78. Death, Disability and Dis-ease

The WHO is in complete denial of the many thousands of people who have been killed by these injections, or who have suffered severe disability, heart attacks, strokes, myocarditis, pericarditis, turbocharged cancers, Bell’s Palsy and countless other adverse reactions to the injections. The WHO is ignore-ant of the tens of thousands of people who have suffered damaged immune systems, cardiovascular problems, liver, kidney and nervous system and other systemic damage due to the toxic effects of the poorly tested injections. Their injuries suffered by these people around the world are real, not rare.

79. Fraudulent Causes of Death Listed on Death Certificates

The WHO seems to be in complete denial that the ongoing practice of claiming that people who died with a positive RT-PCR test, but whose deaths were actually due to a wide variety of other causes should still be counted as COVID-19 deaths is actually a form of fraud of which many people are aware. The WHO refuses to even examine the fact that, while many people have died, the reasons behind the causes of their deaths are exceedingly unclear and multi-faceted and cannot reliably be attributed to COVID-19

80. The Cover-up the Facts and the Propensity to Attack the Messengers

The WHO seems to be very much in favor of censoring those who seek to expose the truth in order to avoid holding themselves and other officials accountable for the financial devastation, mental anguish, physical harm and untold death that they have caused by their overreach, their ineptitude and their craven desire for power and control. Censorship is NOT a solution to the catastrophic failure that we have all witnessed over the past 3 years.

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PART VI: The proposed amendments would trample our rights and restrict our freedoms.

All people have an absolute, unalienable right to privacy in their personal information, including health related data. Every individual human being has the unalienable right to be free from any requirement to have or present any “vaccine passport,” “digital-ID,” or “health certificate” of any kind, whether in printed, digital or any other form.

82. The Unalienable Right To Express One’s Opinions

Every individual human being must always be free to fully express their own personal opinion free from any threat of retribution. Only the free debate of different and competing opinions can provide an environment of informed decision-making by each country, state, county, community, family and individual.  Each individual has the right to publicly express their own opinion regarding the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of any health related policy or treatment in spoken and/or written form. Every person’s experience is a valuable scientific observation and must NOT be censored.

As more free debate and free expression of ideas, facts and data are allowed to occur, each level of society will be better able to decide for itself what the best interventions to recommend are for the control and management of any disease. Any form of suppression of free public debate is strictly forbidden. Promotion of the public debate of competing points of view and access by the population to that debate, plus the personal dialogue between patients and doctors, will ensure each individual and family can be sufficiently informed to make their own choices and decisions regarding their health, under the principle of informed dissent. No uniform behavior of all of society can be required and the autonomy and free will of each individual must be protected.

83. The Unalienable Right To Provide Information on Prevention and Healing

Every individual human being has the unalienable right to provide information that is directed by their experience and wisdom, free from executive mandate, bureaucratic dictate, pressure or coercion. All people have an unalienable right to choose to ignore or to take action upon the information that they receive, free from any form of censorship or coercion.

84. The Unalienable Right To Choose Treatment

Every individual human being must always be free to use any preventive and/or therapeutic treatment interventions that they consider to be the best choice for them. This may include strategies such as lifestyle changes, food as medicine, vitamins, minerals, natural supplements and repurposed essential medications that were previously approved for other diseases and have a long safety record. Withholding any of those optional strategies is a violation of an individual’s unalienable right to choose. Health care decisions must ultimately be made based on the individual’s choice, not by bureaucratic dictate by government, academics, hospitals, clinics, medical practitioners or “public health experts.”

85. The Unalienable Right To Refuse Treatment

Every individual human being must always retain the unalienable right to refuse any intervention recommended by any institution, the World Health Organization, governments at all levels, medical associations, hospitals or health care providers. Each individual must be in control of the ultimate decision to utilize any and all health-related treatments, medications, and nutrition, as they themselves deem necessary to improve and/or maintain their health. The right of informed dissent by patients will always be placed above any political interests or centralized decision-making by any government or health agency.

86. The Unalienable Right To Travel Freely Upon The Planet

Every individual human being has the unalienable right to move about the planet and this right may NOT be made dependent upon health, testing, or treatment based requirements. Each individual has the right to travel, free from any lockdowns, quarantines, vaccine requirements, vaccine passports, digital-IDs, mask mandates, social distancing or any other attempt to impede their freedom of assembly or movement.

87. The Unalienable Rights Of Parents To Protect The Unalienable Rights Of Their Children

Every parent has the unalienable right and the solemn obligation to ensure that all the unalienable rights of their children are defended. No government or any other organization has the right to prevent any parent from defending the unalienable rights of their children.

88. The Unalienable Right To Be With Family and Friends

Every individual human being has the right to visit with family and friends, who may be suffering through an illness, in order to provide them with love and emotional support that they need, in any setting including, but not limited to, home, clinics or hospitals. The Freedom of Assembly shall NOT be denied.

89. The Unalienable Right To Freedom From Discrimination

Each individual human being has the right to be free from discrimination based upon any demand upon anyone to undergo any form of medical procedure, including testing. Discrimination based on personal health choices is absolutely unacceptable in employment or education matters, when accessing public and private institutions, organizations, private businesses or in other locations or in regards to any other issue. Discrimination based on medical status is wrong and must NOT be permitted in any form whatsoever.

90. There May be NO Derogation of Rights During a Declared Emergency

Every government, every corporation, every organization and every individual human being must respect and honor everyone’s unalienable rights despite any declaration of a “state of emergency” by anyone. Governments do NOT have the authority to suspend human rights because of so-called “emergencies.” The declaration of an “emergency” does not give anyone the right to infringe upon anyone else’s unalienable human rights. Every individual human being has the right to withhold their consent and refuse treatment or intervention of any kind, at any time, regardless of whether there is a declared “emergency” or not. Regardless of the scope and/or severity of any disease outbreak or real pandemic, human rights remain unalienable and may not be abridged.

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#ExitTheWHO

PART VII: The Ten Main Reasons why every nation on earth should #ExitTheWHO

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91. The WHO is Clearly Attempting a Power Grab 

The WHO is blatantly seeking to increase its power by pursuing a legally-binding “Pandemic Treaty” and proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations. The WHO seeks to turn its recommendations into legally-binding orders and control. The WHO seeks to have the 194 member nations surrender their sovereignty to the WHO. This must NOT be allowed to happen.

92. Conflicts of Interest and Corruption Have Plagued the WHO for Decades

The WHO is infiltrated by Big Pharma, Big Money, and Big Foundations and has been corrupted by financial donations from corporations and non-governmental organizations which have undue influence over WHO policies in ways that benefit the corporations and the organizations through a money-laundering and influence-peddling scheme of massive proportions. The WHO follows the dictates of it’s so-called “relevant stakeholders” while ignoring the needs and desires of “We the People.” The global health architecture proposed by the WHO is much closer to an organized crime syndicate than it is to anything resembling public health

93. The WHO is Plagued With Vaccine Madness

The WHO is influenced by vaccine manufacturers and vaccine pushers such as GAVI and Bill Gates. The WHO has clearly lost sight of its core purpose of promoting health and has overemphasized the use of “vaccines” which have recently been switched and converted into gene-therapy treatments which have not improved health, but have actually degraded the overall health of billions of people around the world. Best practices designed to improve health are now being ignored in favor of actions that are ultimately designed to profit the Pharmaceutical Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex.

94. Stop the Expansion of Bureaucracy and Waste

The WHO is dominated by bureaucrats and technocrats that are beholden to Big Pharma and are not knowledgeable health professionals that are dedicated to caring for patients and actually helping them to maintain and improve their health. The WHO wastes enormous amounts of money on salaries for their bloated staff and have allowed travel expenses to increase to such a degree that actual health related programs are chronically underfunded.

95. The WHO Has Continuously Engaged in Fear-Mongering

The WHO has sounded the alarm and wasted time, effort and money by declaring fake Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEICs) and are now seeking to be able to increase that activity by being able to declare Public Health Emergencies of Regional Concern (PHERC) and Intermediate Health Alerts. The fear-mongering has got to stop, and the only way to ensure that happens is for each and every nation to #ExitTheWHO and to ignore their recommendations.

96. The WHO’s Recommendations Have Been Horrible

The WHO has made horrible and corrupt recommendations in support of the expanded use of pharmaceutical drugs such as opiates and they have actually been responsible for the untold millions of unnecessary deaths. Turning their recommendations into legally-binding obligations would be a mistake of epic proportion.

97. The WHO Follows a False Model of Health

The WHO is overly dependent upon the petro-chemical based practice of allopathic medicine that is designed to alter and mask symptoms with chemicals, rather than to actually improve health. The WHO does not offer a forum for clinical and scientific discussion or debate and clearly marginalizes natural healing modalities.

98. Unwillingness to Learn From Mistakes Of the Past

The WHO has repeatedly demonstrated that it is absolutely unwilling and incapable of learning from its mistakes and is destined to continue wasting money while providing horrible advice based on the corruptive influence of Big Pharma.

99. WHO Delegates are Unaccountable, Out-Of-Touch, They Operate in Secret and They Lack Transparency

The delegates to the World Health Assembly are unelected, unaccountable, unknown to the people they purport to represent and they are completely out of touch with the needs and desires of the people of their respective nations. Far too much of what is done by the WHO remains hidden. What we know is horrible. What we don’t know may be monstrous.

100. The WHO has NO Authority Whatsoever Over We The People

For the most part, the World Health Organization has been an advisory organization. Their attempt to expand the scope of their authority should be seen for what it is: a worldwide POWER GRAB designed to set up a one-world governing body that is unelected and unaccountable to the people.

We the People must never allow authority to be handed over to any organization without demanding accountability.

We must never allow organizations to spend billions of dollars without complete transparency.

We must insist that each and every nation on earth #ExitTheWHO in order to chart their own course.

We the People of the world must stand together and defend our rights, our freedoms and our dignity. We must…

#StopTheTreaty

#StopTheAmendments

and

#ExitTheWHO

*

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From the birth of our nation, bankers sought by every available means to establish a central bank and thereby gain control over America’s finances. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, bankers pursued this ambition with uncommon zeal, and in 1913 they finally succeeded.

Although few were aware of it at the time, passage of the Federal Reserve Act was a quiet coup against the American people. Because when president Woodrow Wilson signed the bill into law just after Christmas he unwittingly ceded power of the purse to a private banking cabal that had no allegiance to the country, nor to the US Constitution. Thomas Jefferson, founding father and our third president, had warned that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies. His words were prescient, because in less than a year from the stroke of Wilson’s pen the world was at war.

Some historians who observed this concluded correctly that World War I was a bankers’ war. But what few understood is that the brand new Federal Reserve central bank did not merely facilitate US management of the war effort. The consequences were much greater than that, because creation of the Fed virtually guaranteed US entry into the war. Or, put another way: but for passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 the US would never have entered the war in the first place.

Indeed, without the Federal Reserve there might have been no world war at all. In 1914, Britain was bankrupt and could not have prosecuted a major war against the combined powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman empire without first securing an almost unlimited line of credit from somebody. And the only available creditor nation was America. Britain was bankrupt because during the previous half-century the Crown’s finances had been handled by the Bank of England (i.e., the City of London, included the Rothschilds). London bankers ran up a mountain of debt financing British military adventures around the globe, a pattern the US has repeated. Nor is this merely a coincidence.

By the early 1900s, war in Europe was on the horizon. Did the London bankers decide in those years to do to America what they already had done to Britain? Certainly they knew it was in their interest to install a US version of the “City of London,” acting through their American associates.

We know a detailed plan for the Federal Reserve was drafted in 1910 during a hush-hush ten-day meeting of prominent US bankers. The site of the secret talks was a resort hideaway on remote Jekyll Island, Georgia. We also know who attended and what generally transpired there, if not all of the details. At least two of the bankers present had close ties to the City of London.

The Rothschilds had a deserved reputation for war profiteering, and their involvements were non ideological. The English house of Rothschild profited from World War I, but so did the German and French sides of the Rothschild family. What are a nation’s policies, after all, not to mention moral principles, when there is money to be made?

Historians attribute US entry into World War I to Germany’s unrestricted u-boat attacks on American shipping that started in February 1917. Germany’s leaders understood full well that sinking US merchant ships in order to starve Britain would likely cause America to enter the war. They discounted this, however, because they were confident they could bring England to her knees within six months and win the war, long before the US would be able to mobilize and transport an army to the front in northern France. They were wrong.

The initial loss of life and tonnage from the German sub attacks was frightful, and explains the US declaration of war in April 1917. Very soon, however, the Brits introduced counter-measures, including convoys, escort ships and sub-chasers. The Royal navy also laid down mine barrages in the English channel and in the North Sea, and these sharply limited the movement of the German subs. The counter measures became increasingly effective and within a few months the losses of allied shipping sharply decreased. By September 1917, the tide had turned against Germany’s submarine campaign.

Although the Brits were successful at sea dealing with the u-boats, the ground war in France was not going as well. The conflict had become a war of attrition, a grinding succession of costly yet inconclusive attacks and counter-attacks, often fought over the same piece of ground. The losses on both sides were horrific. As the fighting dragged on, neither army could gain a decisive advantage. The stalled war produced deep gloom in Whitehall as British imperialists desperately cast about for some means to tip the balance in their favor.

This was the context for the fateful new policy announced in November 1917, the so called Balfour Declaration. It was only a brief letter, one page long, yet it was to have immeasurable consequences for our world. The letter was addressed to Lord Rothschild, leader of the Zionist movement. In it the British government announced its support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Notwithstanding the obvious fact that Palestine was not Britain’s to give, Zionists quickly embraced the offer. Ever since, the western media has treated the document with reverence, almost as though it were a sacred text.

Of course, the “gift” of Palestine to the Zionists was not a freebie. There were strings attached. The letter does not enumerate these, but there is no need to guess. Subsequent events inform us that British Zionists agreed to use their considerable influence against Germany. And this also meant bringing America into the war at the earliest possible date. The full story of the behind-the-scenes negotiations that produced the Balfour Declaration has never been told. But given the subsequent calamitous course of world history, I would argue with hindsight that US entry into World War I was a huge mistake.

The arrival in France of hundreds of thousands of fresh and high-spirited American Doughboys eager to fight tipped the scales against Germany. But the allied victory gave no hint of what was to follow. During the Versailles peace councils, the Brits and French imposed crushing reparations on Germany, even as they stripped Germany of the means to pay. In 1922, a German official, Walther Rathenau, sought a way out of this difficult situation by securing a bilateral agreement with Bolshevik Russia. The Soviets agreed to forgive their portion of the reparations owed by Germany in return for badly needed German manufactured goods. If the plan had gone forward the renewed commerce might have enabled Germany to meet its obligations and save itself. However, soon after the agreement was announced, Rathenau was assassinated, which mooted his initiative. Rathenau’s convenient death smacks of likely British involvement.

Need I mention the obvious parallel with the recent bombing of the Nordstream II pipeline by US/Britain? We are told the Russians blew up their own pipeline but this is nonsense. For many years, Germany’s remarkable prosperity was dependent on access to cheap and abundant Russian energy. The denial of this vital energy source has already caused the shut down of aluminum, chemical and other key industries, dooming the German economy. History has a strange way of repeating, never exactly but through a perverse logic that is unique to history itself.

After Rathenau’s murder, Germany suffered a currency collapse. To make matters worse, French troops occupied the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland, which brought the German economy to a standstill. After that, the country descended into a nightmare of social upheaval and political chaos that was exploited by the Nazis…

We all know the rest of the story.

But none of this was inevitable. For a moment, let us try and think outside the box. Imagine what might have happened if America had changed its mind and stayed out of that war. At the time, public opinion was arguably against intervention. The majority of Americans believed that what happens “over there” is none of our damned business. Stay out of it! The people were right.

The deep gloom of British officials at this stage of the war mirrored the gloom at the German high command. The British embargo on sea transport of goods to Germany had begun to bite. The people of Germany were already on short rations and were fast approaching a state of deprivation and near famine. All of Europe was war weary, including the troops. Both armies were exhausted. A number of French units had already mutinied in the trenches.

The crucible of war had produced a military stalemate. Absolute victory appeared beyond the reach of either side. The deep suffering and exhaustion brought about by years of war had demonstrated the need for a fundamental shift in international relations. All sides had arrived at this critical juncture together. What I am suggesting is: conditions were ripe for something entirely new, a breakthrough.

Germany had already proposed a truce. Why not simply call it a draw, agree to disagree, and get on with the business of living? Why not attempt to co-exist? There was a chance for something like this to happen. The obstacle, of course (then as now), is the way men think, our deeply felt but limiting beliefs, especially our assumption that international affairs is a zero sum game where only one side can prevail; and the other must lose. What about win-win?

Many will scoff and call this fantasy. (What have you been smoking, Mark?) But the reality is, our predicament today vis a vis Russia and China is no different in essence from the predicament of our forebears in 1917. Historians have pointed out that World War II was merely a continuation of World War I. Yes, but I would go further and argue that since the first shot was fired in August 1914 our world has been at war continuously, but for brief interludes of peace. It has been the same war.

Psychopath bankers and their militarist allies have done this to us.

Human nature has not changed. What has changed are the stakes because sabers, rifles and cavalry have morphed into weapons of inconceivable power. The vast majority of people today do not grasp what this means.

For more than a century, our so called leaders have been kicking the can down the road. The fact that the US refused, last December, even to discuss the new security framework for Europe proposed by Russia means we have finally run out of highway. Our leaders have failed us. We will have to save ourselves.

Pray for peace!

*

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Mark H. Gaffney is the author of Dimona: The Third Temple (1989), Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes (2004), The 9/11 Mystery Plane (2008), Black 9/11 (2016), and his latest, Deep History and the Ages of Man (2022). Mark can be reached for comment at [email protected]

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***

The new myth making the globalist rounds is that GMOs – and glyphosate in particular – are saving the planet. The industrial behemoths who produce the chemicals upon which GMOs depend now pontificate that the world will be rescued by their salvific chemical concoctions. This laughable sales pitch is touted by the Klaus Shwab and Bill Gates crew, to justify wiping out cows, meat, and Dutch farmers. Let us not be fooled.

The proclamation that GMHT (Genetically Modified Herbicide-Tolerant) crops are environmentally beneficial because they will sequester carbon and reduce tillage accompanies the longstanding misinformation that “only industrial agriculture can feed the world.” The opposite is the case.

Increasingly, Big Ag proponents are claiming that GMO crops create more environmental benefits than organic or conventional cropping. Their chief argument is that GMO genetics reduce applications of insecticides and other chemicals, and that because they are more productive (itself a controversial claim) will use less land area and reduce carbon emissions. A typical claim is that “Genetically modified crops support climate change mitigation”:

“As global demand for food production continues to grow, crop yield increases can reduce the need to add new land into production, thus preventing additional CO2 emissions from land-use change.”

The chief complaint against GMOs is that they are most often designed to require applications of chemicals such as glyphosate (Round-up) in order to generate the promised yields. Glyphosate in turn is controversial not merely due to claims that it may be hazardous to humans and other animal life (especially when combined with other chemicals), but that it may pose threats to important soil organisms.

The EPA, CDC and FDA support glyphosate use, but the claim that glyphosate-dependent crops are “environmentally beneficial” resonates like a corporate Pinocchio. GMO proponents assert that fewer chemical applications are required for GMO crops, higher yields are achieved, and increased productivity reduces the use of fossil fuels:

“The technology has also facilitated important cuts in fuel use and tillage changes, resulting in a significant reduction in the release of greenhouse gas emissions from the GM cropping area. In 2018, this was equivalent to removing 15.27 million cars from the roads.

Such analyses distract from underlying concerns about human health – the same article touts new GMOs tolerant to 2,4-D, another herbicide flagged as a potential human carcinogen by international bodies including the WHO (but not by the EPA). It is revealing that the corporate proponents of chemicals as harmless ignore international alarms about health while invoking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to support climate change assumptions – they “have their CO2 cake and their chemicals too.”

The bold claim is that these chemicals reduce CO2 and will save the planet more than conventional or organic cropping:

“This evidence confirms the correlation between genetically modified, herbicide-tolerant crops and glyphosate use is a driver of the increased soil carbon sequestration. The removal of tillage and adoption of minimal soil disturbances has reduced the amount of carbon released from tillage and increased the sequestration of carbon through continuous crop production. Countries that ban genetically modified crops and are enacting legislation restricting glyphosate use are implementing policies that Canadian farm evidence indicates will not contribute to increasing agricultural sustainability.”

The environmental dilemma between pollution by chemicals versus CO2 is here laid bare. The universal acceptance of the environmental harms caused by manmade chemicals engendered the EPA under President Richard Nixon: Al Gore then pivoted the world into a divisive debate over the impact of CO2. Now we are full circle, with corporate chemical companies like DuPont and Monsanto (now hiding under the once-benign trade name of Bayer) asserting that their highly-profitable and increasingly ubiquitous chemicals must be applied to soil and food to protect us from non-toxic CO2.

But does glyphosate enrich soil health? The evidence suggests that, especially over time, GM-dependent glyphosate reduces soil microbiome health, lowering yields, increasing soil erosion, and adding to water pollution – CO2 doesn’t much toxify water supplies. There are numerous concerns yet unanswered:

“Whilst the effects of glyphosate on human health are coming under scrutiny, scientists are now concerned about our insufficient knowledge of the ecological safety of glyphosate, the way it behaves in the natural environment, how it interacts with living organisms, and the pathways through which it is degraded. ….The Soil Association has reviewed the science on the impact of glyphosate on soils and soil life. For the world’s most widely sold weed-killer, we found surprisingly little research has been done. What research there is shows contrasting results, significant uncertainty and some evidence that glyphosate causes harm. More research is urgently needed.”

The exact degree of carbon dioxide destructiveness to the climate is similarly unknown, yet many rush in to promote these chemicals in food for which a long list of potential risk factors remain. Glyphosate residues persist in soil and water longer than previously thought; adversely affect aquatic invertebrates, amphibians, and earthworms; incorporate toxic adjuvants; threaten rhizosphere, Acidobacteria, Pseudomonas, and other vital soil microorganisms; compromise Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF); encourage crop disease reemergence and Superweeds; accumulate in humans; increase soil erosion; inequitably expose black farmers; and release toxic DDT and chlordecone from soil into water supplies.

Like mRNA vaccines and synthetic opioids, agricultural pesticides and herbicides guarantee short-term profits while long-term impacts present many unknown risks.

While globalist-minded industrial agriculture proponents tout their chemical technologies for profit, the science increasingly suggests there are potentially life-killing consequences to this mad rush to spray more chemicals on the landscape in the name of “environmental benefits”:

“In human urine samples, 90 percent of farmworkers, 60 to 95 percent of the general U.S. population, and 30 percent of newborns have high concentrations of glyphosate. ….50 years of extensive glyphosate use also increased human/animal pathogenic bacteria to break down the chemical compound. ….Considering pathogenic microbes are less sensitive or insensitive to glyphosate, these disease-causing microbes can accumulate to worsen adverse health effects. Furthermore, the authors note a connection between gut health and neurological diseases as individuals exposed to glyphosate also experience a higher incidence of ADD/ADHD, autism, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s.”

In the world of COVID, the arguments supporting glyphosate as world-saving ignore that the potential risk factors of glyphosate extend beyond carcinogenic properties. They include compromised human immune function.

“….glyphosate kills bacterial species beneficial to humans and incorporated in probiotics yet allows harmful bacteria to persist, leading to resistance. ….Antibiotic resistance can trigger longer-lasting infections, higher medical expenses, the need for more expensive or hazardous medications, and the inability to treat life-threatening illnesses.”

Federal regulatory agencies have not undertaken the research to assess the plethora of health and environmental risks of glyphosate. The Fauci-like EPA seems unconcerned:

“Residues of glyphosate on any food or feed item are safe for consumers up to the established tolerances. Before allowing the use of a pesticide on food crops, EPA sets a tolerance or limit on how much pesticide residue can legally remain on food and feed products, or commodities.”

How can the EPA determine what are safe levels for a substance it claims is non-carcinogenic and for which it has not undertaken rigorous study? The very assurance that there are “safe” levels of residue indicates that there are unsafe levels.

The clarion for GMOs has been tooted loudest by the chemical and food companies who stand to gain the most in profits by their increasing domination of public and private food production resources. Much like vaccine manufacturers touting COVID shots, and pharmaceutical companies pushing OxyContin, these manufacturers collaborate with government agencies charged with protection of human health to promote their products as beneficial despite their obvious harms. Like addictive pharmaceuticals and ineffective vaccines, the domination of food production by chemical-dependent crops will simply create more ill health and yet greater corporate dependency.

The Orwellian assertion that glyphosate will save the planet by decreasing CO2 levels is more than just insincere – it is patently propagandistic, on behalf of overly powerful corporate and private interests who do not properly care for either the ecosystem or humanity. The laundry list of potential environmental harms to human and animal life is inadequately researched. Chemical-peddling companies are investing instead in research of glyphosate-enabled CO2 sequestration, and how many cars won’t be driven on roadways when more Round-up is sprayed on the dying landscape.

Who cares whether glyphosate use sequesters carbon dioxide, when it poses so very many non-CO2 pollution threats? Humanity must resist this glyphosate-laced publicity Kool-Aid.

*

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John Klar is an attorney, author, grass-fed beef and lamb farmer, and grandfather. John advocates for greater conservative leadership in conservationism and environmental policy through policy supports for regenerative, local agriculture. He is a regular contributor to American Thinker, and pens a column for Vermont’s conservative True North Reports.

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***

 

 

 

 

“For decades, the idea of dismantling the Soviet Union and Russia has been constantly cultivated in Western countries. Unfortunately, at some point, the idea of using Ukraine to achieve this goal was conceived. In fact, to prevent such a development, we launched the special military operation (SMO). This is precisely what some western countries –led by the United States– strive for; to create an anti-Russian enclave and then threaten us from this direction. Preventing this from happening is our primary goal.” — Vladimir Putin

Here’s your geopolitical quiz for the day: What did Angela Merkel mean when she said “that the Cold War never really ended, because ultimately Russia was never pacified”?

1. Merkel was referring to the fact that Russia has never accepted its subordinate role in the “Rules-based Order.”
2. Merkel was referring to the fact that Russia’s economic collapse did not produce the ‘compliant state’ western elites had hoped for.
3. Merkel is suggesting that the Cold War was never really a struggle between democracy and communism, but a 45 year-long effort to “pacify” Russia.
4. What Merkel meant was that the western states –particularly the United States– do not want a strong, prosperous and independent Russia but a servile lackey that does as it is told.
5. All of the above.

If you chose (5), then pat yourself on the back. That is the right answer.

Last week, Angela Merkel confirmed what many analysts have been saying for years, that Washington’s hostile relations with Russia –which date back more than a century– have nothing to do with ideology, ‘bad behavior’ or alleged “unprovoked aggression”. Russia’s primary offense is that it occupies a strategic area of the world that contains vast natural resources and which is critical to Washington’s “pivot to Asia” plan. Russia’s real crime is that its mere existence poses a threat to the globalist project to spread US military bases across Central Asia, encircle China, and become the regional hegemon in the world’s most prosperous and populous region.

So much attention has been focused on what Merkel said regarding the Minsk Treaty, that her more alarming remarks have been entirely ignored. Here is a short excerpt from a recent interview Merkel gave to an Italian magazine:

The 2014 Minsk Accords were an attempt to give Ukraine time. Ukraine used this period to become stronger, as seen today. The country of 2014/15 is not the country of today….

We all knew that it was a frozen conflict, that the problem was not solved, but this was precisely what gave Ukraine precious time.” (“Angela Merkel: Kohl took advantage of his voice and build”, Corrier Della Sera)

Merkel candidly admits that she participated in a 7 year-long fraud that was aimed at deceiving the Russian leadership into thinking that she genuinely wanted peace, but that proved not to be the case. In truth, the western powers deliberately sabotaged the treaty in order to buy-time to arm and train a Ukrainian army that would be used in a war against Russia.

But this is old news. What we find more interesting is what Merkel said following her comments on Minsk. Here’s the money-quote:

I want to talk to you about an aspect that makes me think. It’s the fact that the Cold War never really ended, because ultimately Russia was never pacified. When Putin invaded Crimea in 2014, he was excluded from the G8. In addition, NATO has deployed troops in the Baltic region, to demonstrate its readiness to intervene. And we too have decided to allocate 2% of GDP to military expenditure for defence. CDU and CSU were the only ones to have kept it in the government programme. But we too should have reacted more quickly to Russia’s aggressiveness. (“Angela Merkel: Kohl took advantage of his voice and build”, Corrier Della Sera)

Source: Global Affairs.org

This is an astonishing admission. What Merkel is saying is that ” the Cold War never ended” because the primary goal of weakening (“pacifying”) Russia –to the point that it could not defend its own vital interests or project power beyond its borders– was not achieved. Merkel is implying that the main objective of the Cold War was not to defeat communism (as we were told) but to create a compliant Russian colony that would allow the globalist project to go forward unimpeded. As we can see in Ukraine, that objective has not been achieved; and the reason it hasn’t been achieved is because Russia is powerful enough to block NATO’s eastward expansion. In short, Russia has become the greatest-single obstacle to the globalist strategy for world domination.

It’s worth noting, that Merkel never mentions Russia’s alleged “unprovoked aggression” in Ukraine as the main problem. In fact, she makes no attempt to defend that spurious claim. The real problem according to Merkel is that Russia has not been ‘pacified’. Think about that. This suggests that the justification for the war is different than the one that is promoted by the media. What it implies is that the conflict is driven by geopolitical objectives that have been concealed behind the “invasion” smokescreen. Merkel’s comments clear the air in that regard, by identifying the real goal; pacification.

In a minute we will show that the war was triggered by “geopolitical objectives” and not Russia’s alleged “aggression”, but first we need to review the ideas that are fueling the drive to war. The main body of principles upon which America’s foreign policy rests, is the Wolfowitz Doctrine, the first draft of which was presented in the Defense Planning Guidance in 1992. Here’s a short excerpt:

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.

There it is in black and white: The top priority of US foreign policy “is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.” This shows the importance that Washington and its allies place on the territory occupied by the Russian Federation. It also shows the determination of western leaders to prevent any sovereign state from controlling the area the US needs to implement its grand strategy.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Russia’s transformation into a strong and independent state has not only put it squarely in Washington’s crosshairs, but also greatly increased the chances of a direct confrontation. Simply put, Russia’s return to the ranks of the great powers has placed it on Washington’s ‘enemies list’ and a logical target for US aggression.

So, what does this have to do with Merkel?

Implicit in Merkel’s comments is the fact that the dissolution of the communist state and the collapse of the Russian economy was not sufficient to leave Russia “pacified”. She is, in fact, voicing her support for more extreme measures. And she knows what those measures will be; regime change followed by a violent splintering of the country.

Putin is well-aware of this malignant plan and has discussed it openly on many occasions. Take a look at this 2-minute video of a meeting Putin headed just weeks ago:

“The goal of our enemies is to weaken and break up our country. This has been the case for centuries.. They believe our country is too big and poses a threat (to them), which is why it must be weakened and divided. For our part, we always pursued a different approach; we always wanted to be a part of the so-called ‘civilized (western) world.’ And after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we thought we would finally become a part of that ‘world’. But, as it turned out, we weren’t welcome despite all our efforts. Our attempts to become a part of that world were rejected. Instead, they did everything they could– including assisting terrorists in the Caucasus– to finish off Russia and break-up the Russian Federation.” Vladimir Putin

The point we’re making is that Merkel’s views align seamlessly with those of the neocons. They also align with the those of the entire western political establishment that has unanimously thrown its support behind a confrontation with Russia. Additionally, the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy and the Congressional Research Service’s latest report, have all shifted their focus from the war against international terrorism to a “great power competition” with Russia and China. Not surprisingly, the documents have little to do with ‘competition’, rather, they provide an ideological justification for hostilities with Russia. In other words, the United States has laid the groundwork for a direct confrontation with the world’s biggest nuclear superpower.

Check out this brief clip from the Congressional Research Service Report titled Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress:

The U.S. goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia... is a policy choice reflecting two judgments: (1) that given the amount of people, resources, and economic activity in Eurasia, a regional hegemon in Eurasia would represent a concentration of power large enough to be able to threaten vital U.S. interests; and (2) that Eurasia is not dependably self-regulating in terms of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons, meaning that the countries of Eurasia cannot be counted on to be able to prevent, though their own actions, the emergence of regional hegemons, and may need assistance from one or more countries outside Eurasia to be able to do this dependably.”….

From a U.S. perspective on grand strategy and geopolitics, it can be noted that most of the world’s people, resources, and
economic activity are located not in the Western Hemisphere, but in the other hemisphere, particularly Eurasia. In response to this basic feature of world geography, U.S. policymakers for the last several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U.S. national strategy, a goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia. Although U.S. policymakers do not often state explicitly in public the goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia, U.S. military operations in recent decades—both wartime operations and day-to-day operations—appear to have been carried out in no small part in support of this goal.” (“Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress”, US Congress)

It sounds alot like the Wolfowitz Doctrine, doesn’t it? (Which suggests that Congress has moved into the neocon camp.)

There are a few things worth considering in this short excerpt:

1. That “the U.S. goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia” has nothing to do with national defense. It is a straightforward declaration of war on any nation that successfully uses the free market to grow its economy. It is particularly unsettling that China on Washington’s target-list when US corporate outsourcing and offshoring have factored so large in China’s success. US industries moved their businesses to China to avoid paying anything above a slave wage. Is China to be blamed for that?
2. The fact that Eurasia has more “people, resources, and economic activity” than America, does not constitute a “threat” to US national security. It only represents a threat to the ambitions of western elites who want to use the US Military to pursue their own geopolitical agenda.
3. Finally: Notice how the author acknowledges that the government deliberately misleads the public about its real objectives in Central Asia. He says: “U.S. policymakers do not often state explicitly in public the goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia, U.S. military operations in recent decades—both wartime operations and day-to-day operations—appear to have been carried out in no small part in support of this goal.” In other words, all the claptrap about “freedom and democracy” is just pablum for the masses. The real goals are “resources, economic activity” and power.

The National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy are equally explicit in identifying Russia as a de facto enemy of the United States. This is from the NSS:

Russia poses an immediate and ongoing threat to the regional security order in Europe and it is a source of disruption and instability globally…

Russia now poses an immediate and persistent threat to international peace and stability….

Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order … This decade will be decisive, in setting the terms of …managing the acute threat posed by Russia.. (“The 2022 National Security Strategy”, White House)

And lastly, The 2022 National Defense Strategy reiterates the same themes as the others; Russia and China pose an unprecedented threat to the “rules-based order”. Here’s short summary from an article at the World Socialist Web Site:

The 2022 National Defense Strategy… makes clear that the United States …. sees the subjugation of Russia as a critical stepping stone toward the conflict with China.… The eruption of American imperialism… is more and more directly targeting Russia and China, which the United States sees as the principal obstacles to the untrammeled domination of the world. US strategists have long regarded the domination of the Eurasian landmass, with its vast natural resources, as the key to global domination.” (“Pentagon national strategy document targets China”, Andres Damon, World Socialist Web Site)

What these three strategic documents show is that the Washington BrainTrust had been preparing the ideological foundation for a war with Russia long before the first shot was ever fired in Ukraine. That war is now underway although the outcome is far from certain.

The strategy going forward appears to be a version of the Cheney Plan which recommended a break up of Russia itself, “so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.” Here’s more from an article by Ben Norton:

“Former US Vice President Dick Cheney, a lead architect of the Iraq War, not only wanted to dismantle the Soviet Union; he also wanted to break up Russia itself, to prevent it from rising again as a significant political power…The fact that a figure at the helm of the US government not-so-secretly sought the permanent dissolution of Russia as a country, and straightforwardly communicated this to colleagues like Robert Gates, partially explains the aggressive posturing Washington has taken toward the Russian Federation since the overthrow of the USSR.

The reality is that the US empire will simply never allow Russia to challenge its unilateral domination of Eurasia, despite the fact that the government in Moscow restored capitalism. This is why it is not surprising that Washington has utterly ignored Russia’s security concerns, breaking its promise not to expand NATO “once inch eastward” after German reunification, surrounding Moscow with militarized adversaries hell bent on destabilizing it.” (“Ex VP Dick Cheney confirmed US goal is to break up Russia, not just USSR”, Ben Norton, Multipolarista)

The carving up of Russia into several smaller statelets, has long been the dream of the neoconservatives. The difference now, is that that same dream is shared by political leaders across the West. Recent comments by Angela Merkel underscore the fact that western leaders are now committed to achieving the unrealized goals of the Cold War. They intend to use military confrontation to affect the political outcome they seek which is a significantly weakened Russia incapable of blocking Washington’s projection of power across Central Asia. A more dangerous strategy would be hard to imagine.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

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

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A BOMBSHELL new report claims [yet to be confirmed, GR] that the Department of Defense – meaning the Pentagon – controlled the COVID-19 Program from the very beginning.

If true, it means that everything we were told was political theater, right down to the FDA vaccine approval process.

Our guest today is a former executive of a pharmaceutical contract research organization Sasha Latypova and she shows what she has researched.

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Hrvoje Morić 0:00 Joining me once again for his second outing is Mark Taliano, a former high school teacher like myself. He currently is a Research Associate with Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research. That’s globalresearch.ca.

He’s the author of Voices from Syria as well as the second revised edition of Voices from Syria. The second edition is co- authored by Basma Qaddour. His website is marktaliano.net. We talked last time about Syria, so you can go back to the archive and and dig into that where we’ll be talking about COVID This time, welcome back to TNT Radio Mark.

Mark Taliano 0:33 Hi, nice to meet you again. I was listening to the earlier part of the conversation as well.

Hrvoje Morić 0:42 Yeah, did we put you to sleep? Or was it all right?

Mark Taliano 0:45 No, I was very happy to hear that we’re on the same page. Yes, very comforting to know. And someone mentioned segregation. And it’s not only by skin color. And I agree with him, too, because we’ve been segregated in Canada. You’re in the States, right?

Hrvoje Morić 1:04 I’m in Mexico. So yeah, oh, Mexico, sorry.

Mark Taliano 1:07 Well, in Canada and throughout the world, actually. I mean, we were living in basically an apartheid state, where people such as myself, who believe in and have the time to do research, didn’t go along with the agenda. And we were discriminated upon terribly, and it affects relationships with family with everybody. And part of that is a function of the military grade psychological warfare being waged against us. So really, it’s in many respects, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s horrible on many levels.

Hrvoje Morić 1:47 Yeah. You Yeah, I wanted to get your take on it. You know, I just saw that the Biden administration renewed until at least, I mean, I was predicting predicting this in December until at least April now, unvaccinated foreigners cannot enter the US. And as you said, I’ve mentioned that I went to the US recently, everyone that my family except my wife is a US citizen. And so yeah, first time, took my kid to visit family in the US. And you know, she she got sad, because after she was without her mom for a while, and I think that caused her to get a flu or whatever, just common illness and then yeah, all of this because of these insane policies. These you know, tyrannical military. Great, as you said, and I’ve had over the past year guests, Canadian guests, Daniel Bulford, was on with me the former Army Oh, yeah. Who’s his job was to protect Trudeau. Yeah, I’ve had Henry Hill the breath. Yeah, he quit because of the mandate. And then I’ve talked to Henry Hildebrand, sarjapur, Loski, and many others. So basically, you know, I had a guest on at the start of this week, talking about COVID. And he posited that the big picture here is that Western elites after World War Two, could no longer keep up the charade of democracy, and so had to resort to the sort of strategy of tension or false flag tactics to keep us plebs in line. Everything from NATO Gladio to 911 to 911, part deux COVID 911. So what’s sort of, what’s your assessment of what went down starting 2020 And it’s, it hasn’t stopped?

Mark Taliano 3:24 Well, it to me, it’s a horrible nightmare. And you know, I was wondering before this, I can … Okay, so I saw the signs. I’m not saying I’m more intelligent than anyone else, but I saw all the signs. And just like your previous speaker there, who’s in marketing, he saw all the signs that this whole thing was contrived. Okay, I remember I was walking my dog from the lake and then all the lights were off (and I thought) Oh, my god, we’re in trouble now. And we were in trouble. And I also recall wondering, Are they going to get away with this? Can they actually kill and injure millions of people globally and get away with it? And I think they can. And if I think too hard about that I’ll get really depressed but I mean, even according to the CDC figures like over 2 million  jab injuries and I suppose that’s only 1% and and and they’re they’re taking the they’re removing the record, apparently to try to cover themselves, but according to the CDC VAERS itself like over 30,000 dead and that’s a huge underestimate and people can look that up openVAERS CDC and there’s EudraVigilance  and there’s Yellow Card (UK). If you bring all these together, the death toll is just horrible and even more accurate probably is excess mortality. Edward Dowd has done a lot of work with that, and the excess mortality is, is, is very, very high. And he’s an insurance guy, a numbers guy. And that may be the best way because all of the increased excess mortality is  synchronous with the rollout of the COVID jabs, which are bioweapons. So I mean, we can get depressed over this. And I think that’s probably is a normal thing to do. Because it’s such a tragedy, catastrophic tragedy. Now I am, I am involved with …. many people who are on the same page as me. Okay, so that’s my social network. And that’s the survival. And that’s my sports network. So that’s kind of how I survive. But on the other hand, people have closed the door on me because they think I’m infectious. They think I’ve got the plague. And this is happening to all of us to one degree or another. And so I it’s very, very important topic. And I made some notes because I think the more we amplify it, the better. So I have some information for you, which I’m sure you’re familiar with as well.

Hrvoje Morić 6:13 We’ll have to jump to our break again, Mark our guest fortunately, like you, I’ve heard other people have these experiences. I haven’t really had that shunning from people who were Vax, maybe because people are, I’m sure like in Canada or us maybe because people in Mexico are generally a little bit more respectful and chill. So I haven’t had that experience. No, you have some notes, but I thought maybe just get your get your thoughts. You know, when all of this was happening for me, one of the biggest key things to focus on, you know, right out of the Gates in 2020 was the pandemic pandemic simulations. And because you mentioned this is what we’re going what’s what’s going on is it’s a military operation, a global military operation, and yet everything from you know, Dark Winter in 2001 and there’s just so many I can even keep track keep track of these pandemics, simulations, clade X, sparse Crimson Contagion, urban outbreak. Yeah, most people never mentioned that in September of 2019. The Chinese ran Coronavirus simulation at the Wuhan airport. And of course, everyone knows in October 2019, event two one and so right before 2020 There were three Coronavirus pandemic simulations. And then we recently had in Brussels a couple of months back, I think Catastrophic Contagion. And so, you know, I recall when I was researching 911, you know, Webster Tarpley, he had put together, I’ve got the file somewhere, a PDF, like how many simulations had been running right up to 911. And he had counted like, close to 40, or 50. Simulations, many of which were emulating what actually happened. On on 911. So just your thoughts on on these simulations or other worlds you think are important?

Mark Taliano 8:04 Yeah, it’s very important. First of all, who’s doing (it)? Rockefeller foundation, the same players, the same villains really? Rockefeller, the intelligence agencies, you mentioned, the military part, DARPA is involved. Why can we not get the ingredients for these bio weapons because it’s a military secret. So if we don’t know what’s in them, which we don’t, except for some people on the side are investigating on their own, but there’s, there’s a lot of variance in the batches. There is an Italian judge who tried to get ahold of it. And she was told it’s a military secret. So how can you possibly have informed consent? No, you cannot because nobody knows what’s in it. We know … some of the catastrophic results of taking these things, but we don’t know what’s in it. So therefore, it’s a violation of Nuremberg Code on many, many levels. And yes, it was, it was pre-planned and also, who, who is a major donator to the World Health Organization? Gates, he’s just behind Germany as far as that. Okay, so a lot of these oligarchs including Gates, they knew roughly when it would happen and what happened shortly after the initial Public Health Emergency of International Concern, which wasn’t a public health emergency, but it was announced as such, because there were maybe 1000 or whatever cases outside of China, very negligible. And those are cases in quotation marks, with fore-knowledge of the stock market crash, when the stock market crashes and you have foreknowledge, you can make a lot of money. And Chossudovsky and myself, we I agree that I mean, there must have been an intense amount of insider trading, which is criminal, based upon foreknowledge of when this thing would  happen. So people can hedge their bets. So Chossudovsky says on that same day outside China, there are like 1073 so- called cases that was 620. were 21 were passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess. Okay. Well, shortly thereafter, there’s a financial collapse. Some people, not you or me, but a lot of people made a lot of money off of that. So it was pre- planned. Yes,  the evidence is there, and we even know the players involved. But really the tragedy … Okay, so I’ll let you ask another question if you like, or I could go on, but so I agree with you. Yeah, it was pre planned. It’s right there. I mean, they’re not even hiding it. They weren’t hide. Yeah,

Hrvoje Morić 10:38 As you mentioned. Yeah. And right. Before, I mean, so many parallels to 911. This way, I like to call it some very mad with 911. Because you had the insider trading right before 911. And as you know, same thing, same thing with COVID. You had people recall in late 20, late 2019, early 2020. So many CEOs were just stepping down from their positions. And yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a military operation. But you know, before getting to the vaccines, you know, I kind of separate things. You’ve got like, the biosecurity protocols, right. Apart from Yeah, seems you’ve got the mat, the masking and the gel and the temperature checks and distancing. Yeah. Sounds and it really seems like a military regimen. And it was it in every single country, country. It’s absolutely insane. And I think that was more just the regiment, people like, you know, soldiers would in the military. So they were trying to regiment us in these military style biosecurity protocols. I mean, and then there’s a lot of stuff, you know, masks are bad for you, obviously. hand gel, I remember reading over the past two years, people actually died from taking too much of his handle on their hands, because it was some brands were toxic. So just your thoughts on some of these protocols? Well, they’re

Mark Taliano 11:57 They are toxic. I remember seeing someone who was using so much hand gel, and his hands were bloody. And I said, Well, it’s kind of counterproductive, isn’t it? But he didn’t really clue in. And that’s another thing. It’s hard really to get through to people. And there’s some theories on that too, it’s part of the psychological warfare, but maybe there’s something else. But I mean, I’ve always thought the best way to defeat this. And I still think this is just to say No. And I went to and I went to visit a relative who’s in Long Term Care, and I just didn’t abide by the rules. And next time I tried to get in, I could not get in. So this is how they’re doing it. And they’re trying to get people to jab and test and all this and I just don’t play that game. Well, I haven’t been here. So this is segregation and apartheid, but also part of their protocols. It means that they’re destroying the medical profession, they’re turning doctors into clinicians. Now, a lot of good doctors believe all good doctors should, I would assume believe in early therapeutics, but they’ve been denied early therapeutics like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, and that has created so many deaths, I would have to look up how many, but the fact that people have not been treated correctly, is part of the criminality of all this. Because early treatment has proven to be successful against this virus, which if we look at this virus, the WHO has admitted it’s in line  with the flu, okay, …. and says it’s .1 to  .3% Infection Fatality Rate. So everything, they threw out the tried and true pandemic protocols, and brought in these ridiculous militarized protocols to turn us into robots or sheep, or turn us into the dark ages, where we’re not thinking and sorry, but Shame on those doctors who, who are following along because a lot of deaths…. Yeah, go ahead.

Hrvoje Morić 14:00 I was just gonna ask him your thoughts as to the nature of because I think the real danger here is the injection, right? I’ve said from the beginning, I’ve never believed it. We’ve never been in a pandemic. And that if it was, you know, a gain of function virus, that again, it was like the flu, it was nothing to freak out about. But the real, you know, the real problem was the purported solution, because I mean, there are people saying that they don’t believe in infectious infectious disease or virus now. And I just think that that’s, you know, it’s a moot point. It’s the injections and all of these locked down dystopian protocols that have no place anywhere ever. You know, there’s no exception for them. Just nature.

Mark Taliano 14:47 Sorry, what were you saying? What what do I think about?

Hrvoje Morić 14:49 You think it was a bio weapon that was intentionally released or was that

Mark Taliano 14:56 I agree with you that hardly matters it’s basically a red herring, I think people are … up. It’s part it’s part of the mechanism of getting people fearful as part of the mechanism of getting people injected with these bio weapons, which is the end goal, Problem, Reaction Solution. So, I mean, okay, there’s probably something out there, but there always is something out there. That’s the thing. But But the real problem is the injections like Dr. Yeadon. I know you know him, former VP, Pfizer and Chief of Science at Pfizer, he’s, he’s saying that just read a bit here, he elaborates after the boosters three to four shots, the immune system has lost up to 80% of its defenses, thus, people are more vulnerable to catching any kind of disease. So this is horrifying. Now I just know anecdotally, some people that I know who believe in the jabs, the injections, experimental mRNA injections, they are a lot of them get colds, they seem to be more prone. Now, that’s just anecdotal. But doctors who do speak out are saying they’re seeing turbo cancers as well. They’re seeing they’re seeing and people that had protests that I’ve been to, like, nurses or former nurses who stood up and refused the jab. They’re saying, Well, all the people in hospital have taken these jabs. Okay, so I mean, and then we can get into these testing then, which is also part of the military operation, but I’ll let you ask the question. So anyway, I agree with you there is there may be a virus, okay, maybe there is, but it doesn’t satisfy Koch’s Postulates. And the tests are totally fraudulent. But okay, so if there is Dr. Ionniditis,  said it was Low Infection Fatality Rate. So their reaction to it has been insanely criminal.

Hrvoje Morić 16:58 rewarding. Regarding the tests, my view has always been, again, there’s they don’t make any sense. But for me, you know, maybe we can talk about this later. I mean, the, the big picture for me is that they were using this military biosecurity operation to basically the key here is the digitalization, they want to create this credit system, and, you know, cashless society, digital passports. And the testing, I think was, you know, for the social credit system, they need to have all your data, your surfing data, but also your, you know, biometrics your eyes, scan your fingerprints, but also your DNA or blood. And I recall photos lately. Yeah. And during the pandemic, I found a mainstream article out of China talking about how the Chinese and again, I’m not saying like, it’s, as you mentioned, I think it’s, most governments are involved. It’s DARPA, it’s every country to different degree is running involved in this, but China has scared its citizens. They invented some health scare to get people to give their blood tests and then later they recognize it was, oh, would they really have done it just to get the DNA for the DNA database? And then the CDC actually tweeted, like a year or two ago, Oh, guess what, 10% At least 10% randomly taken of the PCR test results of people are sent to DNA labs. So I think the goal there is Yeah, so I mean, just so your thoughts on the tests or anything else?

Mark Taliano 18:45 Okay, so getting a lot of people okay, so China, I guess is more advanced and more advanced in this in this matter. Anyway, they’re following these protocols. Reiner Fuellmich figures the Lion’s Den is in the US. But also possible that we the best chance of getting criminal convictions might also be in the US Okay. A digital ID okay. I was part of the I spent four nights and four days at the freedom rallies in Ottawa. It’s just that one of the best experiences of my life is totally peaceful, free food free. There’s everyone was celebrating and the truth was right out there. It was right out and old, which is in modern society isn’t. But how what did they do? The government, the the Trudeau Government, and Fuellmich figures, the government’s aren’t ours anymore. And I agree with that, because he he’s (Trudeau) one of these young global leaders (and Freeland too). So as , so they a lot of people were contributing to the Freedom Convoy, that’s digital, and what did the government do? They (froze the funds) it. So this is just one tip of the iceberg of what can happen if we have digital completely digital money they will have total control over us over how what we how we spend our money, where we spend our money if we spend our money and so it just we’re just relinquishing our freedom, all of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and (rights), and this was what we were protesting at the Freedom Convoy, which was a magnificent protest. But this is also they want to turn us into a world dictatorship basically. And a digital currency is one way of doing because they can stop it. They can turn it off just like that. And they can know everything. If it’s digital, they can know where we spend our money, how we spend our money.

Hrvoje Morić 20:44 Yeah, we’re seeing this happen now everywhere now in Canada I’ve seen in Brazil now people protested Bolsonaro last Brazilians had their bank accounts frozen in the US people haven’t been as frozen. There’s that Russian journalist Alina Lipp had her and her whole family’s bank accounts frozen. So Europe is happening. Yeah. And so we’re gonna have to jump to our break Mark. Again, the website is marktaliano.net. You can check out his book Voices from Syria and we’ll be right back on TNT radio.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this interview was originally published.

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**Voices from Syria**

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On December 21, 2022, during a week of police raids and harassments of peaceful anti-Zionist activists in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem, a large group of police entered the neighborhood to remove a Palestinian flag from a lamp post.

The police have been met with strong protest.

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Never before have there been massive excess deaths following vaccination.  

Never before have there been children, young adults, athletes in their prime, entertainers, dropping dead “cause unknown” following vaccination.

Of course, the cause is known.  The leading doctors and medical scientists of our time–which excludes health agency bureaucrats, such as Fauci, who serve as marketing agents for Big Pharma and corrupt, politicized state medical boards and HMOs–have explained why and how the mRNA “vaccines,” which are not vaccines, kill, destroy the immune system, and cause health injuries.  What is not known is why some die immediately after receiving the deadly substance, others a month later, and others remain, so far, alive.  Some researchers think the content of the “vaccines” differed by lot, and some think some of the jabs were placebos for the purpose of producing an uninjured cadre to tout the safety of the jabs.  

Professor Michel Chossudovsky has collected here a number of videos documenting the widespread sufferings and deaths of the vaccinated.  It is not the unvaccinated who are “mysteriously” dropping dead all over the world.  It is the vaccinated.  

Yet the coverup continues.  The western media–a collection of whores–are at work covering up for themselves as well as for Fauci, Biden, Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the FDA, NIH, CDC, and the utterly corrupt and irresponsible medical profession.  Big Pharma and the FDA continue to push jabbing babies with the killer vaccine, and there are still parents so utterly stupid and insouciant that they participate in the murder of their own children.

With people all over the world so stupid and so blindly trusting of authority, we can see why the Satanic Bill Gates and Satanic Klaus Schwab are confident that they can succeed in reducing the world population and effecting their Great Reset.

What do I mean when I say Gates and Schwab are Satanic? Think about it this way.  From time to time when discussing the subject, someone will say that people can be so awful they can understand why some would want to genocide them.  I ask them if they would be willing to push the genocide button, and they say “no.”  They understand that they have no right to cause people’s deaths in behalf of  their opinion or a climate or ideological agenda.  The difference between them and Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab is that Gates and Schwab are willing and eager to push the genocide button.   What is so horrifying is that this willingness has acquired a high moral position. Exterminating people has become the way to save the planet.

The perpetrators of this mass murder are confident that their crime is too huge to be recognized as such.  Naive populations simply won’t believe that “their” governments would do this to them.  No one wants to admit that they executed their own family members and their own children by blindly trusting “authorities” who had announced their genocide agenda in advance. 

In the United States only a tiny percentage of the  people have any idea what is happening. The time and energy of the population is used up in making ends meet and in entertaining themselves.  They fall for one transparent crime after another.  Whatever government announces they accept–President John Kennedy’s assassination, Senator Robert Kennedy’s assassination, the Gulf of Tonkin, 9/11, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Covid pandemic, “safe and effective” Covid vaccine.  They never learn.  

Now they face genocide, and they still haven’t learned. 

The perpetrators of mass genocide are still in control.

If it is not genocide, tell me what it is when distinguished medical scientists warn in advance about the mRNA “vaccine” and are censored and punished;

-when the inventor of the PCR “Covid test” [Kari Mullis, passed away in August 2019] stated that the test does not indicate the presence of the virus and is ignored,

-when the evidence of the harmful effects of the “vaccine” are kept secret by Pfizer and the FDA,

-when medical doctors are prevented from treating Covid with known cures such as Ivermectin and HCQ,

-when pharmacies refuse to fill doctors’ prescriptions for the cures,

-when illegal and unconstitutional mandates are used to force citizens under threat of loss of job to submit to being injected,

-when no official attention is paid to the massive increase in excess deaths among the vaccinated,

-when the media carries on a deceptive campaign of lies and propaganda?

Americans–indeed the world–are faced with a monstrous criminal enterprise.  Do they have the strength and intelligence to recognize it?

Are they going to do anything about it?

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article  was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

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In another case of yesterday’s conspiracy theory becoming today’s fact, mainstream media is finally reporting what we have known all along.

Biden, Fauci and Gates have been sharing these information with us, there was no winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated; in reality, this is a pandemic of the vaccinated.

Official investigations are being launched and lawsuits are being readied.

Watch the video below.

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Featured image is from Hal Turner Radio Show

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“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” – Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Really? Or was he joking?

Whenever January rolls around and a new year begins with its implied ending, I think of my father and Albert Camus, both born in 1913.  Camus died on January 4, 1960 in a strange car crash, which might have been an assassination according to Italian author Giovanni Catelli, while my father, who almost died in a car crash, was born on January 9.  They did not know each other personally, although they were kindred souls in the way that seeming opposites attract.

One a Nobel Prize winning author who wrote The Fall, the confession of a lawyer, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, whose monologue from a seedy bar reveals his guilt for living a phony, cowardly, and inauthentic life – “When one has no character one has to apply a method,” he says; the other a lawyer with character, an eloquent and witty writer who always, unlike Clamence, downplayed and did not parade his good deeds because he did them out of a pure heart.

Camus said he did not believe in God, yet I think a part of him did as filtered through his secular saint Tarrou in The Plague and his dialogue with Dominican Friars, among other writing, although he kept it publicly well hidden.  My father, baptized a Catholic like Camus, was a life-long believer, never letting any doubts directly show.  Both were reserved men in the best sense of the word.

For faith and doubt always play their shadow show in all souls.

In a review of Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone, Camus wrote, “For the grandeur of a faith can be measured by the doubts it inspires.”  In this case he was referring to secular faith, but he was lavishing praise on a novel that explores the interplay between secular and sacred faith, the former having its deepest roots in the later.

It is the story of Pietro Spina, the anti-fascist Italian revolutionary during Mussolini’s time, who is in hiding disguised as a priest, and his former teacher, the priest Don Benedetto.  Hunted and surveilled by Italy’s fascist government, they secretly meet and talk of the need to resist the forces of state and church collaborating in violence and suppression.  Don Benedetto tells Pietro, “But it is enough for one little man to say ‘No!’ murmur ‘No!’ in his neighbor’s ear, or write ‘No!’ on the wall at night, and public order is endangered.”

And Pietro says,  “Liberty is something you have to take for yourself.  It’s no use begging it from others.”

The two characters represent one truth, that the spirit of rebellion is sacred and profane. This Camus knew from the start, despite his reputation for being an unbeliever.  When Pietro and Don Benedetto meet and talk about the need to resist the fascist government – two priests, so to speak, one disguised and one real – we come to fully realize that they are one genuine person separated at birth for story-telling purposes.  The younger tells the older that “it was a religious impulse that led me into the revolutionary movement,” but that he lost his faith in God many years before.

To which the elderly priest replies, “It does not matter. In these times of conspiratorial and secret struggle the Lord is obliged to hide Himself and assume pseudonyms.  Besides, and you know it, He does not attach much importance to His name …. “

Silone writes: “The idea of God Almighty being forced to go about under a false passport amused the younger man greatly.  He looked at his old schoolmaster in astonishment, and suddenly saw him in a very different light from the image of him that he had preserved during the long years since they had last met.”

If one carefully reads Camus’ oeuvre, it becomes apparent that his sense of the sacred was profound even while saying that he didn’t believe in God; so too was his commitment to resist evil and to see the sense of the absurd as a starting point and not a destination.  “But does nothing have a meaning?  I have never believed that we could remain at this point,” he said.  “Even as I was writing The Myth of Sisyphus I was thinking about the essay on revolt (The Rebel) that I would write later on….”

Not to wallow in the absurd but to rebel against human suffering and oppression and to also serve beauty were always his twin goals.  He saw his vocation as an artist as a call to give voice to the sorrows and joys of everyone, not as a solitary elitist, but as a writer engaged in the world.

In an illuminating essay, “Thomas Merton’s Affinity with Albert Camus,” Jim Forest wrote the following, which I would second:

In fact what Camus rejected was not the person of Christ but a pseudo-Christianity that had become a mechanism for blessing the established order, a religion of accommodation that provides chaplains to witness executions without raising a word of protest, a religion committed to the status quo rather than the kingdom of God. What Camus was missing in the world were Christians who reminded him of Christ.

Which sounds like Silone’s Pietro Spina and Don Benedetto in dialogue.

But then there is Sisyphus and this happiness issue, which is my central concern.  Camus always fought against injustice and was well aware that he was living in a world where soulless and ruthless force was the context for all he wrote.  The specifics have changed today, but the general principal prevails with social convulsions, violence, and endless wars in many guises.  The old Cold War is now the new.

For Camus, the Greek myth of Sisyphus, the never-ending need to roll our rocks to the hilltop only to watch them come tumbling back down, these rolling stones of effort upon effort to resist the world’s predators with their death-loving violence and the feeling of the uselessness of these uphill battles with our stones falling back at our feet as we try and try again to say “no” – this, and the indifferent silence of the natural world that devours people as appetizers – he called the absurd, the unbridgeable chasm between our desires for happiness and the world’s indifference, including the hateful indifference of the world’s elites and their evil efforts to control and murder regular people.

And lest I forget one tiny insignificant detail, and one that was at the heart of Camus’ writing, the fact that we all die and that the day-to-day grind of struggling “to make a living” and be normal social beings can collapse in an instant on any street corner when one asks “why,” and the absurd enters as “the stage sets collapse.”

For Camus, Sisyphus and the feeling of the absurd were entwined, but why must we then imagine Sisyphus happy?  The endless struggle against violence, lies, and injustice is exhausting and one must fight against falling into the pit of despair. So I ask again: Was Camus joking?  He was not known for his humor.

Happy is a funny word; its etymology tells us so: it derives from the Old Norse happ, meaning chance, good luck, fortune.  And I think for anyone who contemplates it, happiness, however one defines it, is not a constant state.  It comes and goes if one is lucky. There are so many suffering people throughout the world for whom the word is a foreign language, since they are so victimized by violence and poverty that just to survive is their kind of luck.

Happiness can not be sought, although there are countless books and happiness gurus who will take your money to tell you it can and they have the method.  It’s interesting to note that over the past twenty-five years or so the happiness industry has grown in equal measure to the overwhelming deterioration of the world situation.  The more depressed, deprived, and distracted more people have become as the world’s elites have waged war in all its forms everywhere, the more the clamor to “just be happy” has been heard.  If it weren’t so “absurd,” I’d  think they had invented happiness pills.

After reading Edmund Gosse’s 1907 memoir about his Victorian childhood and his relationship with his very religious father, Father and Son, my father wrote to me saying that it reminded him of the two of us, a father who remained conventionally religious while the son rejected conventional Christianity for a dissident’s path.  But then he added, commenting on the seeming difference, “Quién sabe? (Who knows?).

Contradictions abound, which he knew, and such contradictions cut through the human heart.  So I wonder, what can cut through the contradictions?

For we are all contradictions in our different ways, but the question remains how we might be happy in the midst of life’s struggles.  How to live with our contradictions, how to reconcile them.  How not to be so single-minded that we can’t say, “Happy New Year” and mean it simply in all its complexity.

Although I think Camus was slightly wrong to say “we must” imagine Sisyphus happy, I think we may.  Albert himself famously said that “In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”  This “invincible summer” is the love of life despite all the struggles we go through.  Camus was no stranger to them – the delights and the struggles – nor my father nor I nor anyone.  Life is an agon – a conflict, struggle. contest – as the Greeks would put it.  But it is also, if we are lucky, filled with love, beauty, and passionate delights, that, although they may not manifest themselves constantly, slumber within like cats on a hearth in our hearts, as Albert wrote of the writer’s task, to be true to and awaken “those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his[our] heart[s] first opened.”

So I must conclude by saying Camus wasn’t joking, but humor was not his forte.  It was my father’s, his seeming opposite.  With humor we might summon the dozing genie.  I think it true what Lewis Hyde writes in Trickster Makes This World: “A touch of humor or levity, then, is one mark by which we know that a creative spirit working in the force field of contradictions has kept his promise, has not fallen from his tree, and so might actually move beyond the enclosing oppositions.”

And since tomorrow is my father’s birthday, I will recount a little story he wrote to me in his eloquent and inimitable style.  It differs slightly from Attorney Jean-Batiste Clamence’s confession from the “Mexico City” bar in Amsterdam, with the exception of the booze.  It goes like this:

On ecclesiastical matters I have a funny true story for you.  Dennis Casey, one of the attorneys I used to work with, told it.  He had an uncle who was a Bishop of some county in Ireland and, like a few citizens of the Ould Sod, could put away a drop or two of the creature.  When Cardinal Cooke was alive in the late ‘70s, the Bishop attended some ceremony at St. Patrick’s Cathedral where he was to give the homily.  Dennis Casey was with him and said the good Bishop fortified himself with quite a few shots or smiles, as Uncle Tim used to call the creature, before ascending the pulpit.  He then went on and on infinitum, saying in his thick Irish brogue, ‘if he had the cathedral filled with gold, I’d give it to the poor; if I had it filled with food, I’d give it the hungry,’ etc., etc., etc.  Finally they gave him the hook after a few nods from the Cardinal.  After the Mass the hierarchy retired to the Chancery for a reception.  The place was filled with Bishops, Monsignors, and prelates of all shapes and sizes and everyone partook of liquid refreshments, including our friend, the Bishop.  All went well until someone started a singalong when they coaxed Cardinal Cook for a solo.  He tried to beg off, saying, “I’m not much of a singer,” but the majority prevailed and he started a few notes of Danny Boy or some such song.  After a couple of lines and false notes, the Bishop’s stentorian brogue burst through the hall, shouting, “You are right.  You can’t sing a Fucking note.”  I think he was whisked back to Erin forthwith and now he sings with the heavenly choir or the devil’s band – having departed for his just reward.

Happy New Year, Albert and Edward, Sr.  Let’s raise our laughing glasses high to the beauty of the days gone by and those to come, even as we rebel.

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

Featured image: Albert Camus and Edward Curtin, Sr. (Source: Behind the Curtain)

The COVID “Killer Vaccine”. People Are Dying All Over the World. It’s a Criminal Undertaking

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 07, 2023

We are being accused of  “spreading disinformation” regarding the Covid-19 vaccine. The Reuters and AP media “trackers” and “fact checkers” will be out to smear the testimonies of parents who have lost their children.

A ‘Cover-Up of Evidence of Mass Murder’: The CDC Appears to be Removing VAERS Records

By DailyClout, January 09, 2023

Something strange is going on with the VAERS system. Reports that were present three months ago are now inexplicably missing. And fewer than 4% of adverse events recorded in V-Safe have made their way to VAERS.

mRNA/DNA Gene Injection “Vaccine”: Murder Charges Against Pfizer, Moderna, FDA, CDC,NIH, NIAID

By Dr. Paul Elias Alexander, January 08, 2023

Every single NFL player (or athlete in America) must be screened for myocarditis (post COVID gene injection); they must demand it! Do not take the field for you could be DAMAR! Do not let them lie to you and confuse you with commotio cordis!

The High Cost of Blowing Up the World: Ukraine and the 2023 NDAA

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, January 07, 2023

Bipartisan insanity was on display again this week as the U.S. congress responded to Biden’s requested $37 billion in additional aid to Ukraine by giving him $45 billion bringing the total U.S. support to its Davos-managed disposable ward up to $111 billion.

US Patriot Missiles in Ukraine: A Desperate and Dangerous Escalation

By Brian Berletic, January 07, 2023

US appears to be in the process of transferring its Patriot air defense missile system to Ukraine. CNN in its article, “Exclusive: US finalizing plans to send Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine,” claims the US will approve and then quickly ship the system or systems into Ukraine in just days after the decision is made.

“In Politics, Nothing Happens by Accident. If It Happens, You Can Bet It Was Planned that Way.”

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, January 07, 2023

Every person can correct the medieval-looking image of man instilled in him by his upbringing in order to learn to think on the basis of a scientific view of man, to understand his life better and to live it better.

Nowhere to Hide: How a Nuclear War Would Kill You — And Almost Everyone Else.

By François Diaz-Maurin, January 09, 2023

Any nuclear explosion creates radiation, heat, and blast effects that will result in many quick fatalities. Direct radiation is the most immediate effect of the detonation of a nuclear weapon. It is produced by the nuclear reactions inside the bomb and comes mainly in the form of gamma rays and neutrons.

Yet Another COVID “Variant”: Omicron XBB & the Self-driving Narrative

By Kit Knightly, January 09, 2023

There’s yet another Covid variant in the headlines – it’s Omicron XBB 1.5 if you want to know. It honestly doesn’t really matter at this point – but it does provide an interesting lesson in the nature of propaganda narrative construction and how, past a certain point, they take on a life of their own.

Pfizer Has a Shockingly Long History of Engaging in Illegal Activities and Human Experimentation

By Arsenio Toledo, January 09, 2023

Big Pharma company Pfizer has repeatedly engaged in inhumane and illegal activities in its history, including acts of fraud, corruption and even human experimentation disguised as vaccine trials.

How to Be Your Own Bank: Holding Actual Custody of Your Digital Assets

By Ben Bartee, January 07, 2023

Take warning! If you’re holding your crypto assets on big exchanges like Binance, CoinBase, or Kraken, you’re well-advised to get them off and into a privately-held wallet for a few reasons that we’ll survey here.

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This article was first crossposted by GR in October 2022.

This summer, the New York City Emergency Management department released a new public service announcement on nuclear preparedness, instructing New Yorkers about what to do during a nuclear attack. The 90-second video starts with a woman nonchalantly announcing the catastrophic news: “So there’s been a nuclear attack. Don’t ask me how or why, just know that the big one has hit.” Then the PSA video advises New Yorkers on what to do in case of a nuclear attack: Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned to media and governmental updates.

But nuclear preparedness works better if you are not in the blast radius of a nuclear attack. Otherwise, there’s no going into your house and closing your doors because the house will be gone. Now imagine there have been hundreds of those “big ones.” That’s what even a “small” nuclear war would include. If you are lucky not to be within the blast radius of one of those, it may not ruin your day, but soon enough, it will ruin your whole life.

Effects of a single nuclear explosion

Any nuclear explosion creates radiation, heat, and blast effects that will result in many quick fatalities.

Direct radiation is the most immediate effect of the detonation of a nuclear weapon. It is produced by the nuclear reactions inside the bomb and comes mainly in the form of gamma rays and neutrons.

Direct radiation lasts less than a second, but its lethal level can extend over a mile in all directions from the detonation point of a modern-day nuclear weapon with an explosive yield equal to the effect of several hundred kilotons of TNT.

Microseconds into the explosion of a nuclear weapon, energy released in the form of X-rays heats the surrounding environment, forming a fireball of superheated air. Inside the fireball, the temperature and pressure are so extreme that all matter is rendered into a hot plasma of bare nuclei and subatomic particles, as is the case in the Sun’s multi-million-degree core.

The fireball following the airburst explosion of a 300-kiloton nuclear weapon—like the W87 thermonuclear warhead deployed on the Minuteman III missiles currently in service in the US nuclear arsenal—can grow to more than 600 meters (2,000 feet) in diameter and stays blindingly luminous for several seconds, before its surface cools.

The light radiated by the fireball’s heat—accounting for more than one-third of the thermonuclear weapon’s explosive energy—will be so intense that it ignites fires and causes severe burns at great distances. The thermal flash from a 300-kiloton nuclear weapon could cause first-degree burns as far as 13 kilometers (8 miles) from ground zero.

Then comes the blast wave.

The blast wave—which accounts for about half the bomb’s explosive energy—travels initially faster than the speed of sound but slows rapidly as it loses energy by passing through the atmosphere.

Because the radiation superheats the atmosphere around the fireball, air in the surroundings expands and is pushed rapidly outward, creating a shockwave that pushes against anything along its path and has great destructive power.

The destructive power of the blast wave depends on the weapon’s explosive yield and the burst altitude.

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The year 2022 ended with a Zoom call to end all Zoom calls: Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping discussing all aspects of the Russia-China strategic partnership in an exclusive video call.

Putin told Xi how “Russia and China managed to ensure record high growth rates of mutual trade,” meaning “we will be able to reach our target of $200 billion by 2024 ahead of schedule.”

On their coordination to “form a just world order based on international law,” Putin emphasized how “we share the same views on the causes, course, and logic of the ongoing transformation of the global geopolitical landscape.”

Facing “unprecedented pressure and provocations from the west,” Putin noted how Russia-China are not only defending their own interests “but also all those who stand for a truly democratic world order and the right of countries to freely determine their own destiny.”

Earlier, Xi had announced that Beijing will hold the 3^rd Belt and Road Forum in 2023. This has been confirmed, off the record, by diplomatic sources. The forum was initially designed to be bi-annual, first held in 2017 and then 2019. 2021 didn’t happen because of Covid-19.

The return of the forum signals not only a renewed drive but an extremely significant landmark as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in Astana and then Jakarta in 2013, will be celebrating its 10th anniversary.

BRI version 2.0

That set the tone for 2023 across the whole geopolitical and geoeconomic spectrum. In parallel to its geoconomic breadth and reach, BRI has been conceived as China’s overarching foreign policy concept up to the mid-century. Now it’s time to tweak things. BRI 2.0 projects, along its several connectivity corridors, are bound to be re-dimensioned to adapt to the post-Covid environment, the reverberations of the war in Ukraine, and a deeply debt-distressed world.

Map of BRI (Photo Credit: The Cradle)

And then there’s the interlocking of the connectivity drive via BRI with the connectivity drive via the International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC), whose main players are Russia, Iran and India.

Expanding on the geoeconomic drive of the Russia-China partnership as discussed by Putin and Xi, the fact that Russia, China, Iran and India are developing interlocking trade partnerships should establish that BRICS members Russia, India and China, plus Iran as one of the upcoming members of the expanded BRICS+, are the ‘Quad’ that really matter across Eurasia.

The new Politburo Standing Committee in Beijing, which are totally aligned with Xi’s priorities, will be keenly focused on solidifying concentric spheres of geoeconomic influence across the Global South.

How China plays ‘strategic ambiguity’

This has nothing to do with balance of power, which is a western concept that additionally does not connect with China’s five millennia of history. Neither is this another inflection of “unity of the center” – the geopolitical representation according to which no nation is able to threaten the center, China, as long as it is able to maintain order.

These cultural factors that in the past may have prevented China from accepting an alliance under the concept of parity have now vanished when it comes to the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Back in February 2022, days before the events that led to Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, Putin and Xi, in person, had announced that their partnership had “no limits” – even if they hold different approaches on how Moscow should deal with a Kiev lethally instrumentalized by the west to threaten Russia.

In a nutshell: Beijing will not “abandon” Moscow because of Ukraine – as much as it will not openly show support. The Chinese are playing their very own subtle interpretation of what Russians define as  “strategic ambiguity.”

Connectivity in West Asia

In West Asia, BRI projects will advance especially fast in Iran, as part of the 25-year deal signed between Beijing and Tehran and the definitive demise of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – or Iran nuclear deal – which will translate into no European investment in the Iranian economy.

Iran is not only a BRI partner but also a full-fledged Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member. It has clinched a free trade agreement with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), which consists of post-Soviet states Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

And Iran is, today, arguably the key interconnector of the INSTC, opening up the Indian Ocean and beyond, interconnecting not only with Russia and India but also China, Southeast Asia, and even, potentially, Europe – assuming the EU leadership will one day see which way the wind is blowing.

Map of INSTC (Photo Credit: The Cradle)

So here we have heavily US-sanctioned Iran profiting simultaneously from BRI, INSTC and the EAEU free trade deal. The three critical BRICS members – India, China, Russia – will be particularly interested in the development of the trans-Iranian transit corridor – which happens to be the shortest route between most of the EU and South and Southeast Asia, and will provide faster, cheaper transportation.

Add to this the groundbreaking planned Russia-Transcaucasia-Iran electric power corridor, which could become the definitive connectivity link capable of smashing the antagonism between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

In the Arab world, Xi has already rearranged the chessboard. Xi’s December trip to Saudi Arabia should be the diplomatic blueprint on how to rapidly establish a post-modern quid pro quo between two ancient, proud civilizations to facilitate a New Silk Road revival.

Rise of the Petro-yuan

Beijing may have lost huge export markets within the collective west – so a replacement was needed. The Arab leaders who lined up in Riyadh to meet Xi saw ten thousand sharpened (western) knives suddenly approaching and calculated it was time to strike a new balance.

That means, among other things, that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) has adopted a more multipolar agenda: no more weaponizing of Salafi-Jihadism across Eurasia, and a door wide open to the Russia-China strategic partnership. Hubris strikes hard at the heart of the Hegemon.

Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar, in two striking successive newsletters, titled War and Commodity Encumbrance (December 27) and War and Currency Statecraft (December 29), pointed out the writing on the wall.

Pozsar fully understood what Xi meant when he said China is “ready to work with the GCC” to set up a “new paradigm of all-dimensional energy cooperation” within a timeline of “three to five years.”

China will continue to import a lot of crude, long-term, from GCC nations, and way more Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). Beijing will “strengthen our cooperation in the upstream sector, engineering services, as well as [downstream] storage, transportation, and refinery. The Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange platform will be fully utilized for RMB settlement in oil and gas trade…and we could start currency swap cooperation.”

Pozsar summed it all up, thus: “GCC oil flowing East + renminbi invoicing = the dawn of the petroyuan.”

And not only that. In parallel, the BRI gets a renewed drive, because the previous model – oil for weapons – will be replaced with oil for sustainable development (construction of factories, new job opportunities).

And that’s how BRI meets MbS’s Vision 2030.

Apart from Michael Hudson, Poszar may be the only western economic analyst who understands the global shift in power: “The multipolar world order,” he says,” is being built not by G7 heads of state but by the ‘G7 of the East’ (the BRICS heads of state), which is a G5 really.” Because of the move toward an expanded BRICS+, he took the liberty to round up the number.

And the rising global powers know how to balance their relations too. In West Asia, China is playing slightly different strands of the same BRI trade/connectivity strategy, one for Iran and another for the Persian Gulf monarchies.

China’s Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Iran is a 25-year deal under which China invests $400 billion into Iran’s economy in exchange for a steady supply of Iranian oil at a steep discount. While at his summit with the GCC, Xi emphasized “investments in downstream petrochemical projects, manufacturing, and infrastructure” in exchange for paying for energy in yuan.

How to play the New Great Game

BRI 2.0 was also already on a roll during a series of Southeast Asian summits in November. When Xi met with Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha at the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Summit in Bangkok, they pledged to finally connect the up-and-running China-Laos high-speed railway to the Thai railway system. This is a 600km-long project, linking Bangkok to Nong Khai on the border with Laos, to be completed by 2028.

And in an extra BRI push, Beijing and Bangkok agreed to coordinate the development of China’s Shenzhen-Zhuhai-Hong Kong Greater Bay Area and the Yangtze River Delta with Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC).

In the long run, China essentially aims to replicate in West Asia its strategy across Southeast Asia. Beijing trades more with the ASEAN than with either Europe or the US. The ongoing, painful slow motion crash of the collective west may ruffle a few feathers in a civilization that has seen, from afar, the rise and fall of Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Arabs, Ottomans, Spanish, Dutch, British. The Hegemon after all is just the latest in a long list.

In practical terms, BRI 2.0 projects will now be subjected to more scrutiny: This will be the end of impractical proposals and sunk costs, with lifelines extended to an array of debt-distressed nations. BRI will be placed at the heart of BRICS+ expansion – building on a consultation panel in May 2022 attended by foreign ministers and representatives from South America, Africa and Asia that showed, in practice, the global range of possible candidate countries.

Implications for the Global South

Xi’s fresh mandate from the 20th Communist Party Congress has signaled the irreversible institutionalization of BRI, which happens to be his signature policy. The Global South is fast drawing serious conclusions, especially in contrast with the glaring politicization of the G20 that was visible at its November summit in Bali.

So Poszar is a rare gem: a western analyst who understands that the BRICS are the new G5 that matter, and that they’re leading the road towards BRICS+. He also gets that the Quad that really matters is the three main BRICS-plus-Iran.

Acute supply chain decoupling, the crescendo of western hysteria over Beijing’s position on the war in Ukraine, and serious setbacks on Chinese investments in the west all play on the development of BRI 2.0. Beijing will be focusing simultaneously on several nodes of the Global South, especially neighbors in ASEAN and across Eurasia.

Think, for instance, the Beijing-funded Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, Southeast Asia’s first: a BRI project opening this year as Indonesia hosts the rotating ASEAN chairmanship. China is also building the East Coast Rail Link in Malaysia and has renewed negotiations with the Philippines for three railway projects.

Then there are the superposed interconnections. The EAEU will clinch a free trade zone deal with Thailand. On the sidelines of the epic return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to power in Brazil, this past Sunday, officials of Iran and Saudi Arabia met amid smiles to discuss – what else – BRICS+. Excellent choice of venue: Brazil is regarded by virtually every geopolitical player as prime neutral territory.

From Beijing’s point of view, the stakes could not be higher, as the drive behind BRI 2.0 across the Global South is not to allow China to be dependent on western markets. Evidence of this is in its combined approach towards Iran and the Arab world.

China losing both US and EU market demand, simultaneously, may end up being just a bump in the (multipolar) road, even as the crash of the collective west may seem suspiciously timed to take China down.

The year 2023 will proceed with China playing the New Great Game deep inside, crafting a globalization 2.0 that is institutionally supported by a network encompassing BRI, BRICS+, the SCO, and with the help of its Russian strategic partner, the EAEU and OPEC+ too. No wonder the usual suspects are dazed and confused.

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This article was originally published on The Cradle.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Cradle

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

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***

I’ve often thought that if Dr. Jordan Peterson can be faulted for anything, it’s taking his ridiculous critics too seriously. Since he rose to prominence in 2016 for his perfectly reasonable opposition to the Trudeau government’s Bill C-16 compelled speech law, he has been contending with legions of bloviating, hysterical ninnies who are determined to make fools of themselves by debating him.

The clinical psychologist, author, and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto is probably the most learned and cultivated man in Canada. However, instead of being grateful for the privilege and pleasure of listening to him, many of Canada’s government and institutional leaders have expressed a persistent desire to punish him for his unorthodox views about the human condition.

And what are his unorthodox views? For starters, Dr. Peterson is an advocate of free speech, which he believes is a prerequisite for thinking about and discussing things—especially things of a complex nature. He also advocates that human beings take responsibility for their actions and speech, lead orderly and disciplined lives, seek purpose and meaning instead of impulsive pleasure, assume a courageous and principled position in human affairs instead of an expedient one, and study history and literature. He advocates equality of opportunity instead of state and institution imposed equality of outcome.

For advocating these ideas, Dr. Peterson has been subjected to some of the ugliest conceivable expressions of rage. Being on the receiving end of such vitriol has (understandably) been a troubling experience for him. This experience is, I suspect, an expression of Schopenhauer’s famous observation:

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Dr. Peterson’s intellectual forebears include Socrates, Jesus, Milton, Montaigne, Blackstone, Madison, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, and Jung. Most of the political views he espouses are firmly within the tradition of classical liberal thinkers such as John Stuart Mill. Some of his practical advice reminds me of the American motivational speaker, Jim Rohn, who spoke eloquently of how productivity and success can be attained through self-improvement, careful planning, discipline, and focus.

That Dr. Peterson is considered a controversial figure is an expression of the bad joke that now passes for higher education. His message to young men—stop playing video games and watching porn and start strengthening your characters, bodies, and minds—can only be threatening to people who derive a sense of power by claiming to represent all those mired in victimhood, weakness, and misery. Dr. Peterson’s critics remind me of the final scene of the film Amadeus, when Salieri tells the young priest taking his confession:

I will speak for you father. I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint.

On January 3, Dr. Peterson tweeted:

The Ontario College of Psychologists @CPOntario has demanded that I submit myself to mandatory social-media communication retraining with their experts for, among other crimes, retweeting [Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre] and criticizing [Prime Minister Justin Trudeau] and his political allies.

Until about a decade ago, this sort of action would have seemed perfectly outlandish in a parliamentary democracy of British ancestry. Reasonable people would have viewed it as an abomination reminiscent of the Holy Office of the Inquisition hauling Giordano Bruno or Galileo before its fanatical judges. The notion of Dr. Peterson submitting himself to “retraining” conjures the “re-education camps” of communist Cambodia, Vietnam, China, and North Korea.

His tweet also reminded me of actions taken by the American Board of Internal Medicine against Dr. Peter McCullough, which I wrote about in my Substack essay of October 30, 2022.

Like the German government did in the 1933-45 period—when many of that country’s best writers and artists emigrated to the UK, Canada, and the United States—the Canadian government and institutions such as the Ontario College of Psychologists are now trying to force one of their country’s brightest minds into ideological conformity. It seems to me that this presents a golden opportunity for an American institutional leader to give Dr. Peterson a new academic home.

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Something strange is going on with the VAERS system. Reports that were present three months ago are now inexplicably missing. And fewer than 4% of adverse events recorded in V-Safe have made their way to VAERS. This is the CDC’s database; Dr. Rochelle Walensky is in charge of it. And the agency’s failure to properly manage VAERS is suppressing the already-alarming safety signal of the Covid-19 shots.

Now, what is VAERS? VAERS stands for Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. As mentioned earlier, VAERS is a database put in place in 1990 under the supervision of the CDC. Reports of suspected vaccine adverse events take about half an hour to fill out, and 86% of the time, this is done by a doctor, nurse, paramedic, coroner, or healthcare professional when he or she believes the adverse event is related to a vaccine reaction. And because of its lengthy report process as well as the lack of awareness of the existence of VAERS, there is a general consensus of a severe underreporting factor for this database.

To get a better idea of what’s going on with the CDC’s handling of the VAERS system, Dr. Naomi Wolf spoke with Dr. Henry Ealy, an expert on the database.

Dr. Henry Ealy is the Founder & Executive Community Director for the Energetic Health Institute. He holds a Doctorate in naturopathic medicine and has been at the tip of the spear on the Grand Jury front — taking action to bring forth a Grand Jury investigation of the CDC for allegations of criminal data fraud and willful misconduct.

“You mentioned that V-Safe should be added to VAERS, but only 4% of V-Safe [adverse events have been] added. Can you explain what that means to people and why it matters?” asked Dr. Wolf.

Dr. Ealy explained,

“VAERS is designed specifically for medical professionals and people alike to report, ‘Hey, I got hurt.’ And when enough people have gotten hurt for officials to look at it and say, ‘Hey, this product isn’t safe; it’s got to come off the market.’ V-Safe was created (by the CDC) to also do something similar to that — and to make that process a little bit easier. You don’t need as much information to record a report in V-Safe.”

By streamlining the process, the CDC got inundated with adverse event reports from the Covid-19 shot. Out of the 10,108,273 individual users, 800,000 had an adverse event — or about 1 in 13. And of those 800,000 V-Safe reports, only 30,492 have been logged into VAERS.

Dr. Ealy continues,

“In V-safe, there have been over 800,000 reports of injury. And the deal was that in V-Safe, every single report of injury was supposed to also then subsequently have a VAERS report associated with it. So that means all 800,000 should be in VAERS. But unfortunately, or by design — however you want to look at it — only just over 30,000 of those 800,000 have been recorded in VAERS. So what that means is that fewer than 4% of the records in V-Safe have actually been reported in VAERS as they were supposed to be done.”

“What a sneaky way to basically sweep almost 800,000 adverse events under the rug,” remarked Dr. Wolf.

“Adverse events, hospitalizations, permanent injuries, deaths — compromises [the] dataset,” replied Dr. Ealy.

“That’s so disgusting!” exclaimed Dr. Wolf.

To add insult to injury, not only are the bulk of V-Safe reports not making their way to VAERS, but Dr. Ealy suspects that VAERS reports are being removed.

Specifically, he notes that between September 2022 and December 2022, the CDC has removed at least 32,844 records of injury related to the following conditions: myocarditis, pericarditis, and heart inflammation. What were 45,388 reports three months ago has now inexplicably dropped down to 12,544.

Dr. Ealy stresses he’s “triple-checked this,” and he stands by the allegation that the agency is removing or obfuscating records.

Dr. Jessica Rose has also reported similar issues with VAERS. She wrote on November 19,

“The foreign data set was gutted this week in VAERS, and the cancer signal was halved. The myocarditis dose three response signal was lost, and 994 spontaneous abortions/stillbirths were dropped.”

So, from two credible sources, it is suspected that the CDC is removing records.

“It’s not an accident they would do this,” attested Dr. Ealy. “With Dr. Ladapo and Governor DeSantis coming out with that study about myocarditis and pericarditis, they’re trying to do everything they can to delete records to thwart what Governor DeSantis and (Florida) Surgeon General Dr. Ladipo are doing.”

“I’m stunned,” expressed Dr. Wolf. “This is as big as the Pentagon Papers, easily, if indeed the CDC deleted those records. I’ve seen the screenshots; it looks pretty bad. And so, you’re saying that Dr. Ladapo and Governor DeSantis calling for a Grand Jury investigation could be the reason that they’re deleting these, basically, evidence of their crimes? Because Ladapo and DeSantis will be investigating that data? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Right,” confirmed Dr. Ealy. “When you read through the Grand Jury petition that Governor DeSantis signed and submitted to the Florida Supreme Court, they are putting a lot of what their argument based upon their findings with myocarditis. So myocarditis and pericarditis — and that’s not without good reason.”
Dr. Ealy continues,

“So the issue is — if you’re the CDC now — and you know you’ve been complicit in data fraud from day one, what do you start doing? Well, you’ve been deleting records for the last couple of years. Why not delete the records specific for myocarditis and pericarditis to try to thwart their attempts and try to discredit their analysis of what they’re doing? That’s what it looks like to me right now.”

“That’s many felonies!” exclaimed Dr. Wolf. “That’s not just a felony in terms of data handling — that’s a felony in terms of the criminal process, right? Isn’t that covering up evidence of a crime?

“Well, yeah. It would definitely [be],” replied Dr. Ealy.

“The problem with VAERS as a federal system is yes, maybe if there is an erroneous record here or there, you should have the ability to delete it. But when you started seeing the CDC deleting hundreds of thousands of records and removing, in this case, over 32,000 records, or at least removing the search term. That’s my suspicion here — that they didn’t delete the record. What they deleted was that word — ‘myocarditis’ or ‘pericarditis or ‘heart inflammation’ in the actual report. And so, that’s modification of official records. And when you do that, that’s now criminal fraud — again. And, of course, it throws off our ability to really understand what’s going on with this because we rely on systems like this to give us information for making decisions.”

Dr. Wolf argues the CDC’s actions appear to be a “cover-up of evidence of mass murder.”
And she pleads Governor DeSantis and Surgeon General Ladapo to get in touch with Dr. Ealy’s team “because what you all have uncovered is absolutely stunning.” “And this latest, which you’ve presented, should be on the cover of every newspaper and every magazine and every news site in the world. This is huge if, indeed, they’re concealing myocarditis outcomes.”

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There’s yet another Covid variant in the headlines – it’s Omicron XBB 1.5 if you want to know. It honestly doesn’t really matter at this point – but it does provide an interesting lesson in the nature of propaganda narrative construction and how, past a certain point, they take on a life of their own.

These days, self-driving cars are in the news a lot. Give it a few years, and driving your own car will be seen as “selfish”, “dangerous” and “old-fashioned”.

But Covid has become a self-driving narrative.

It is a self-perpetuating machine, not out of the control of its creators, but currently set to auto-pilot. We’ve reached the propaganda singularity – that point at which too many people have too much riding on the supposed “reality” of Covid to ever let it die.

If the originators of the Pandemic lie were to speak out – to admit the planning of the scam, explain how it was done and claim Covid never existed – they would be ignored or shouted down. And all the fake “science” they paid to create would be used as “evidence” they were wrong.

This is not accidental. It is the ultimate aim of propaganda. The media is an industrial machine designed to turn a collection of lies into a story, a story into a belief, and finally – most importantly – a belief into an unquestioned part of the collective reality.

This is not a new process but it usually takes years and years, Climate Change being the obvious recent example. Covid has shown us the process massively accelerated, like a time-lapse of a seed becoming a flower.

The major part of this is engaging people’s profit motive. Money mostly, as always and forever, but aspects of ego and “virtue” and purpose play into it as well – all of that can be balled into a group we can roughly term “self-interest”.

Right now there are dozens – maybe hundreds – of universities and research labs around the world being paid millions of dollars in grants and subsidies to research “Covid” in one way or another.

New variants, new methods of testing, assessing the effectiveness of PPE, pandemic preparedness and prevention, updating testing assays, modifying vaccines…the list goes on and on.

You name some small area of the “pandemic” narrative, and I can guarantee that some guy in a lab coat is out there being paid to write papers about it.

An army of people – people who likely never had any role in creating the fake narrative, and may well believe it’s entirely real – are now in the position where their very livelihood depends on Covid existing. They will NEVER allow themselves to be convinced otherwise.

Everyone knows the Upton Sinclair quote “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.” That certainly applies here.

But just as true, and just as relevant is this: It is very easy to find something when your salary depends on finding it. So the variants will keep on coming.

Covid has become a cottage industry. Sucking in money on one end, spitting out variants on the other.

And while, for the present, that is a quiet process running in the background, at any moment one of these “variants” can be plucked from relative obscurity and used to restart lockdowns and mask mandates and the whole pandemic spiel.

A little fear porn farm, with a ripening crop to be harvested as needed.

That’s the little lesson here – the ultimate propaganda victory is not to make everyone believe a lie is the truth, it is to make some people need it to be.

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Big Pharma company Pfizer has repeatedly engaged in inhumane and illegal activities in its history, including acts of fraud, corruption and even human experimentation disguised as vaccine trials.

An investigative journalist writing about censored subjects under the pseudonym “Kanekoa the Great” noted on his Substack blog that one of the greatest cultural transformations to occur in the past nearly three years is the complete rehabilitation of the image of Big Pharma companies and their newfound glorification for supposedly being responsible for saving humanity from the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

“An industry plagued by decades of fraud, corruption and criminality managed to quickly rebrand itself as the savior of humanity during the COVID-19 crisis. But nothing inherently changed. Big Pharma still values shareholders’ profits more than people’s lives,” Kanekoa the Great wrote. (Related: Pfizer’s business model is to create the sickness and sell the “cure.”)

For evidence of Pfizer’s history of engaging in illegal activity that leads to the deaths of hundreds, Kanekoa the Great said to look no further than Nigeria.

In the northern Nigerian city of Kano, Pfizer in 1996 administered an experimental drug to 200 children whose parents never knew that their kids were subjected to a clinical trial. Pfizer did not obtain consent or inform any of the children or their parents that they were the subjects of an experiment. The pharma company did not even inform the recipients that the drug has not been approved for wider use.

Eleven of the children died. Dozens more of the children suffered severe adverse effects, including brain damage and organ failure.

As a result of criminal and civil suits, Pfizer agreed to pay $75 million to the families harmed. Now, Kano’s residents are reasonably hesitant of any vaccinations.

“I won’t advise, I won’t allow and I won’t tolerate seeing my son, myself or any of my relatives to receive the COVID-19 vaccine,” said Hajiya Maryam, a resident of Kano whose son was one of the victims of Pfizer’s illegal experiment. Maryam has already dedicated her life to discouraging anybody she knows in Kano from taking the vaccine and informing them of the 1996 incident.

“I will educate them on that,” she said. “My son is now living in agony despite the so-called compensation… He is neither in school nor into business. He is living a miserable life.”

Pfizer paying out hundreds of millions to settle lawsuits against illicit activities

The Kano incident is not the only time Pfizer has had to shell out millions of dollars to settle lawsuits.

In 1992, Pfizer paid an undisclosed sum of between $165 to $215 million after artificial heart valves that it developed kept fracturing, leading to nearly 300 deaths at the time. In 1994, Pfizer paid $20 million after it lied to the federal government to get approval for another mechanical heart valve that kept fracturing. Nearly half of the money went to monitor the health of patients who received the device or to pay for its removal.

In 2002, Pfizer paid $49 million for defrauding the federal government and 40 states by charging too much for its cholesterol drug. In 2004, Pfizer pleaded guilty to two felonies and paid $430 million in penalties for fraudulently promoting the drug Neurontin for unapproved uses.

In 2009, Pfizer was fined $2.3 billion, then the largest pharmaceutical fraud settlement, for misbranding the painkiller Bextra “with the intent to defraud or mislead.” In the same year, Pfizer paid another $750 million to settle a class action suit accusing its drug Rezulin of killing 63 people and causing dozens more to experience liver failure.

From 2010 to 2014 alone, Pfizer paid out another $1.72 billion to settle lawsuits related to its illicit activities and its ineffective drugs.

As Kanekoa the Great noted, the above-mentioned list of incidents are just a handful of the scandals involving Pfizer. The result of these malpractices means it continues to conduct unethical human testing of its products in the world’s poorest nations.

Watch this video featuring Tony Lin discussing the 1996 incident in Nigeria where Pfizer experimented on 200 children without their parents’ consent.

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What you need for murder charge to stick is below in my substacks; he ‘died’ on the field, they are lying about commotio cordis, they killed him with this deadly gene vaccine they made Chauvin 2.0

Every single NFL player (or athlete in America) must be screened for myocarditis (post COVID gene injection); they must demand it! Do not take the field for you could be DAMAR! Do not let them lie to you and confuse you with commotio cordis!

It is time to lay murder charges on Pfizer, Moderna, CDC, NIH, FDA, NIAID, Fauci, Francis Collins, Walensky, Ashish Jha etc.

It is time. These beasts killed a black man openly on live television and the black activists must step up now! Black live DO NOT matter to these beasts like Pfizer et al., never did for public health people like Fauci, so it is time we lay murder charges for this time, they were actually at the scene of the crime with their murder weapon. No trial even needed!

Blacks in America must stand up now.

The Biden administration is flooding the border with illegals from South America who with my own eyes, get preference over blacks in New York and Buffalo. I imagine across the US. I saw sitting shocked in hospitals how whites and blacks are sidelined and sent to the back over illegals from South America. This is wrong. The assault with this vaccine that acts like a biological weapon of sorts, delivers differential morbidity and mortality on minorities. Blacks must stand up! They killed a black man on national television. This is too much ‘in your face’.

Buffalo Bills Safety Damar Hamlin is removed from Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio in an ambulance. The Buffalo Bills, in white, kneel at the bottom left of the image. (Licensed under CC0)

They are telling us, me, McCullough etc. to STFU, that we who are asking the right questions as to what went wrong here, we must STFU. That we are loons. We are loons? Had it not been for people like me across this 3 years of lockdown lunacy, millions more would have died. People like Risch, McCullough, Oskoui, Jeff Tucker, Wolf, Ladapo, Urso, Berenson, Toby, Kirsch, Bridle, Tenenbaum etc. We were the wall while public health officials at CDC and NIH and FDA and the FDA sold us down the river. We ‘held’ and will continue to hold as more warriors step up.

I say under NO condition will we. Yes, they killed him, they killed DAMAR and know it and we will continue to go after them for we want all who did this, who brought this fraud so called vaccine, this entire pandemic fraud, all of it from lockdowns to the fraud vaccine, properly deposed in proper legal settings, proper tribunals with proper judges and we want accountability and justice. If judges rule that all of their money is to be taken, we take it. If judges rule those involved must be imprisoned, at the highest levels of government, we jail them for life. We lock them up! If judges rule capital punishment is the remedy, we seek the death penalty! Does not matter to me who.

They killed a black man, they stopped his heart in front of you, stopped his breathing with their death shot. DAMAR died for 10 minutes. From all we know so far. New reports indicate they had to bring him back to life in the hospital too.

They committed murder on live national television during an NFL game! They killed a black man! Their gun, weapon of choice was a mRNA/DNA gene injection ‘so called vaccine’. They know it. They know we are beginning to grapple with it and ask the right questions and they know the players on that field who cried, they cried out of love and horror for their teammate, yet they cried too because they know they are juiced up with the gene fraud injection and they know that that means, the bell may toll for thee too! Soon.

We want the congressional black caucus in the US congress to stand up now and defend this black American, DAMA HAMLIN, do the right thing, get accountability and not just for him and his family, but for all Americans, for all the other NFL players. We want the NAACP to stand up. You say you seek justice, you did not get it before, now here is your chance!

Pfizer placed their criminal corporate boot, with CDC and FDA and NIH and NIAID and Fauci and Francis Collins and Walensky and Albert Bourla and Bancel, all of them, their placed their money-hungry power-hungry malfeasant boot on the neck of DAMAR HAMLIN, this is Derek Chauvin once again, Pfizer is Derek Chauvin with it’s boot on the neck of George Floyd, this time George is DAMAR. Yes, DAMAR like George Floyd, could not breathe for 10 minutes, “I can’t breathe”. Pfizer took the life of an African American man on live national television.

Yes, I am saying it plainly, the Pfizer gene injection mRNA/DNA vaccine, unless we are shown otherwise, based on all the uncertainty still, and based on all the unanswered questions, but based on all we DO know, was the murder weapon that killed DAMAR HAMLIN. Yes, thank God for the medical response but he died for 10 minutes in front of us. And we know the killer. We know all involved, the DIRTY DOZEN.

Yes Pfizer and Moderna did the unthinkable, they murdered DAMAR HAMLIN, a Black African-American man as you watched, on national television, for they, their actions, their product, the COVID gene injection caused his heart to quit on him and he suddenly fell in cardiac arrest, in your face. They stopped his heart for 10 minutes we were told, and then began the cover up and lie on national television too and even sent out their television talking head dangerous deceitful corrupted medical doctors and media to lie about commotio cordis. They know the chance of this being commotio cordis is slim. They know it happens in children mainly, they know generally using a ball etc.

They know that this is more than likely ‘silent’ vaccine-induced myocardial scarring (from prior COVID injection) that lead to a high-adrenaline (catecholamine) arrhythmia episode causing cardiac arrest. They know that the catecholamine surge due to exertion in the backdrop of a myocardial damaged heart, can stress the heart and cause cardiac arrest.

They know! Fauci, Walensky, Bourla, Bancel, Ashish Jha, Francis Collins, Baric, Hotez, Wen, Njoo, Tam etc. They know! They know this will be repeated over and over! They know it already has been playing out! They know what will happen to many young persons and infants and children due to the COVID gene injection.

You want to shut me up for asking the right questions, NEVER! The record is now in place. Criminal charges must be laid at the feet of Pfzier and Moderna, along with CDC, NIH, FDA, Fauci, Birx, Walensky, Francis Collins, Ashish Jha, Bourla, Bancel etc. Murder charges!

I say murder charges!

I am riding with real warriors in this who with me, decided NO, enough is enough and we reacted with the right response and I mean myself, Oskoui, McCullough, Berenson, Stock, Wolf, Mark Crispin Miller, Rogers, Kirsch etc. We did not insert our heads into ours assess afraid, like some of the freedom fighters who recoiled and stood back. Somehow when they saw the cardiac arrest, they stapled their stones to their thighs and who had no staples, glued theirs to their thighs. They lost the ‘warrior’ in them and put on some pink ‘woke’ pussy hats. But Oskoui and McCullough and Jeff Tucker said NO. I said NO. Miller said NO. NO, we said NO, we know something is and was wrong and we told them 2 years now this will happen and more of it will. We asked the questions while many, shockingly in our movement, slinked away. Shrunk when we needed them most. The hope is that they grow back the backbone we know they have and stand up!

Warriors with balls of steel and I tip the hat to them! I tip my hat to Tucker Carlson!

NFL players be warned, what you saw with DAMAR will happen to many more of you. To our police, the best among us, our military, our pilots. Our border agents. We told you so. Sadly, you did not listen. Aaron Rodgers knew what he was saying. So was Novak. You should have understood.

Key documents in such a murder charge filing, based on my prior substacks including Berenson’s and the combined statements of Alexander, Stock, McCullough, and Oskoui:

Our official position (Alexander and Stock with McCullough and Oskoui) and you are free now to use this and quote it:

“The most likely diagnosis from the little certainty we have so far, is vaccine-induced myocardial scarring (from prior COVID injection) that lead to a high-adrenaline arrhythmia episode causing cardiac arrest. The chance of vaccine myocarditis scarring and subsequent arrhythmic predisposition is much greater than the chance of Commotio Cordis absent vaccine cardiac injury.  Commotio Cordis is very rare in his age range, non-projectile Commotio Cordis even rarer, vaccine myocardial scarring is very common to them, the hit on the play was not a major chest blow, and the Buffalo Bills have stated that they are 100% vaccinated.  Had he suffered onset of ventricular arrythmia at the time of chest impact it is unlikely he could have finished a tackle, let alone gotten to his feet after the play.  The most likely diagnosis from the little certainty we have is vaccine-induced myocardial scarring leading to high-adrenaline arrhythmia.  But he only reason for this uncertainty should be the player’s or his family’s desire for privacy.  The CDC, FDA or NIH can and should address this.  Cardiac MRI looking for late gadolinium enhancement, review of mis medical records including vaccine records and response to those, or autopsy in the horrific even he should pass, should be offered by the government for free, if not because the most likely diagnosis is vaccine induced myocardial injury, then for the sake of easing the population’s fears.  The failure to do so will be more telling than the results.”

Sanjay Verma, MD FACC, Interventional Cardiologist:

i) Myocarditis after vaccination against COVID; Why mandated COVID vaccination polices in schools and universities are unethical

ii) Myocarditis after COVID-19 Vaccination; The Stupefying and Humbling True Magnitude

iii)

In this peer reviewed French study, the authors evaluated national hospital discharge data for myocarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination compared to unvaccinated controls. Compared to CDC’s reliance on VAERS this French study performs a more comprehensive analysis. The analysis indicates the risk of myocarditis after mRNA vaccination was 8 times greater than unvaccinated controls for BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) and and 30 times greater than unvaccinated controls for mRNA-1273 (Moderna). By comparison history of SARS-CoV2 infection yielded a 9 times greater risk of myocarditis than controls.’

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Take warning! If you’re holding your crypto assets on big exchanges like Binance, CoinBase, or Kraken, you’re well-advised to get them off and into a privately-held wallet for a few reasons that we’ll survey here.

I realize a lot of hardened crypto veterans will probably roll their eyes as if to say “duh.” But I didn’t realize this stuff when I got into the uncharted technological territory that is a cryptocurrency, and it has important implications for your financial health.

Exposure to meddlesome governments

Any crypto exchange is susceptible to getting bullied by rapacious governments envious of the peasants enjoying untraceable, untaxable commodities.

So far, by and large, Western governments have been relatively hands-off in terms of interfering in the crypto market, but the Biden administration has quietly been moving against crypto exchanges for the past year and a half.

Crypto assets held on exchanges are not subject to FDIC insurance

Crypto assets held on exchanges are not subject to FDIC insurance. That means that, in the event the exchange goes belly-up, you (the customer) have no guarantee of getting your assets out. You’ll be left holding the bag, SOL. If a crypto exchange tells you it’s FDIC insured, it’s lying.

Cryptocurrency exchanges can manipulate

Cryptocurrency exchanges, owing to the exclusive access they have to real-time market information, can manipulate supply and demand, which affects every holder’s coin value.

For instance, two bots trading in just a few months from February to November 2013 artificially jacked the Bitcoin price from $150 to $1,200.

Exchanges can be hacked (and frequently are)

By virtue of the technology’s ingenious design, blockchain cryptocurrencies are virtually immune from manipulation because they rely on a public domain ledger. Crypto exchanges, on the other hand, which house crypto wallets, are a different story.

In March 2022, hackers broke into Ronin Network and made off with $600 million in stolen pillaged cryptocurrency. In June 2022, so-called “blockchain bridge” Horizon got hacked and its users took a $100 million loss. Similar examples are legion.

‘Not your keys, not your coin’

Above all, the #1 reason to move your crypto assets from exchanges to a private wallet is that “your” cryptocurrency on exchanges actually doesn’t belong to you at all.

Every crypto wallet has two addresses: one public and one private. The public address is the one you provide to people and businesses with whom you conduct business, so it’s not important to protect.

The second address, the private one, is the proverbial key to the kingdom. It’s the code that you use to authorize transactions. Therefore, safeguarding your private key is paramount.

If you use a custodial wallet – the kind that you have if you store your crypto assets on an exchange – then you don’t own or control your private keys. The third-party exchange does that part for you, which implicitly requires that you trust in their honesty and technical capacity to do so.

A non-custodial wallet – a private wallet — means that you and you alone control both your public and private keys. They remain entirely in your possession to be used at your discretion.

Learn more about custodial vs non-custodial wallets.

The best non-custodial wallets

There are two types of non-custodial wallets, “hot” and “cold”:

• Hot wallets store your keys in software connected to the internet. They’re more susceptible to hacks than cold wallets but more convenient for frequent transactions. I’d recommend Muun Wallet as a high-quality hot wallet.
• Cold wallets store your keys offline in a safe physical place, fully immune from hacks. Hardware wallets are the most common form. I’d recommend Ledger Nano Walllet as an affordable, reputable hardware wallet.

Protecting your private key and seedphrase

The one major advantage to using a custodial wallet on a crypto exchange that keeps your private key on file is that you don’t have to rely on yourself to keep your information safe and secure.

However, that convenience comes at a cost to your independence. At the end of the day, you don’t really own your cryptocurrency – you’re essentially just leasing temporary and conditional access to cryptocurrency in the same way you might lease a car.

You can drive it around, and more or less do whatever you want with it within reason, but it’s not yours, and it can be confiscated if you don’t play by the rules.

All you really need to know, as the maxim goes, “not your keys not your coin.” The converse is equally true: “your keys, your coin.”

Which brings us to the #1 rule of thumb for private wallets, the Golden Crypto Rule, the First Crypto Commandment: for the love of God, don’t lose your private key and/or seed phrase.

(Your seed phrase is your ultimate protection in the event that you lose your private key.)

Two key developments in recent history, driven by the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, should drive home the importance of storing your assets offline in cold wallets.

First, in the US, Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced legislation that would force “know Your Customer (KYC) information collection on bitcoin ATMs, digital asset mixers which anonymize your crypto making it harder to trace, and even businesses which create self-hosted wallets.”

Your identity, and your transactions, would become fully visible to the government, and therefore subject to regulation, taxation, and/or confiscation.

Second, in the EU,  new anti-money laundering proposals will enforce similar record-keeping and reporting to the authorities on customer transactions and identities.

Crypto’s whole premise – its central selling point – is decentralized finance, independent of the fiat cartel that rigs the economic game to benefit big government and big private-sector interests.

Take that ethos to heart and get your crypto off the exchanges.

In a similar vein, buy gold and silver. Gold and silver ownership justifies itself by the same logic as controlling your own crypto in your own wallet: an independent store of wealth that can’t be digitally confiscated.

Stash that silver and gold someplace safe – where only you or your most trusted family/friends can get to it.

When the dollar inevitably collapses – which it certainly will, whether in a month or ten years – you’ll be left with crypto and hard currency outside of the grasp of the central bankers’ tentacles.

Fuck Wall St. and the whole of the rotting Manhattan cesspit. Fuck the Federal Reserve. And fuck the federal fiat garbage to hell — you don’t need to be a crypto prodigy to feel that visceral call for human freedom and act on it.

*

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Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose, Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter. Please support his independent operations however you can. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Bipartisan insanity was on display again this week as the U.S. congress responded to Biden’s requested $37 billion in additional aid to Ukraine by giving him $45 billion bringing the total U.S. support to its Davos-managed disposable ward up to $111 billion.

The aid was part of an overall omnibus spending bill passed by both houses of Congress was a gargantuan $1.7 trillion and included $858 billion in defense spending which far exceeds any sum ever spent by a U.S. government in history.

Of that $858 billion, $817 billion is allocated directly to the U.S. Department of Defense while the remaining $29 billion will be allocated to national security programs within the department of energy.

Continuing to Weaponize Taiwan

2023 NDAA Funds will be used to “strengthen” Taiwan in the Pacific with $12 billion authorized to assist Taiwan in purchasing weapons from the U.S. military industrial complex (with the $12 billion in ‘loans’ needing to be paid back over the course of the next five years of course). Of this fund, $100 million will be given directly to contractors to fill up a “contingency stockpile” to be used by Taiwan “in case of any future conflict”.

Additionally Taiwan will be invited to participate in the next U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific Military Exercise in 2024 and thus greater “Pacific NATO” strategy encircling mainland China. This exercise and broader Pacific NATO (aka Quad) anti-China arsenal of puppet colonies will be boosted by an additional $11.5 billion will be allocated to the Pacific Deterrence Initiative ‘to counter malign Chinese influence in the Pacific’.

Just as Ukraine has suffered U.S.-directed color revolutions in 2004 and 2014, so too has Taiwan been strung through a similar NED-funded ‘Sunflower Revolution’ regime change in 2014 which saw the Kuomintang Party taken out of power just as final stages of an economic integration agreement with mainland China were being finalized.

Billions have been tagged to purchase Lockheed Martin Corp’s (LMT.N) F-35 fighter jets and ships made by General Dynamics but beyond airforce, one of the biggest and most dangerous boosts in spending this year has been absorbed by a fixation on ‘space warfare’. $5.3 billion will be directed towards ‘space force’ and the ongoing effort to militarize space as a new dimension in war making in the 21st century (which was $333 million more than originally requested by military officials at space force’).

The recent U.S.-Canada-Australia joint ‘space warfare’ drills in order to prepare for an oncoming war over Europe took place at the start of December 2022 at the Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado- which indicates that the residues of any positive memory of ‘space diplomacy’ once seen under JFK’s leadership, the 1976 Apollo-Soyuz cooperation program or even the better aspects of President Trump’s Artemis Accord.

The 2000 RAD Origins of NDAA 2023’s Dark Age Doctrine

It would be a lie to say that this program for human extermination originated in 2022, or even under the previous presidencies of Trump or Obama.

If one wishes to grasp the germ seed of today’s policy doctrine, it would be necessary to revisit the Project for a New American Century Think Tank’s September 2000 Rebuilding America’s Defenses report where the end of history cultists then taking the helm of government stated:

“RAD” envisions a future in which the United States is in complete control of land, sea, air, space and cyberspace of planet Earth. It finds objectionable the limitations imposed by the ABM treaty and urges a newer rendition of Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ defense shield program.

On top of calling for the USA’s exit from the ABM Treaty (which was promptly done in the wake of 911), the authors of RAD outline in clear detail the rationale behind the growth of the rise of a need for a new branch of the military known as space force. The authors stated that the USA must gain:

“CONTROL THE NEW ‘INTERNATIONAL COMMONS’ OF SPACE AND ‘CYBERSPACE,’ and pave the way for the creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces – with the mission of space control.”

Outlining the doctrine of ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ the PNAC report outlined on page 51:

Global Missile Defenses — “A network against limited strikes, capable of protecting the United States, its allies and forward-deployed forces, must be constructed. This must be a layered system of land, sea, air and space-based components”.

Looking towards the need to expand and modernize nuclear forces due to the possible danger of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Iraq, the RAD authors stated:

“Today’s strategic calculus encompasses more factors than just the balance of terror between the United States and Russia. U.S. nuclear force planning and related arms control policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals – from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran and Iraq – and a modernized and expanded Chinese nuclear force.”

Possibly one of the most dangerous and revealing aspects of RAD, was found on page 60, where the authors outline a program that soon grew into obscene proportions in the wake of the 2001 Anthrax attacks which justified the later passage of Cheney’s 2004 Bioshield Act as well as the growth of the 320+ international biolabs run by the pentagon. Describing the conversion of bioweapons from the realm of terror to “a political useful tool”, the authors state:

“Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and ‘combat’ likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and perhaps the world of microbes… Space itself will become a theater of war, as nations gain access to space capabilities and come to rely on them; further, the distinction between military and commercial space systems – combatants and non-combatants – will become blurred. Information systems will become an important focus of attack, particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to short-circuit sophisticated American forces. And advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”

Back to Ukraine

How will the $45 billion Ukraine money burning project be used? That’s not so easy to say exactly?

What we do know is that $22.9 billion will go towards that Kiev will be expected to use to buy more weapons from private U.S.-based defense contractors and much of the rest will be enjoyed by NGOs and Non Profits which will more often than not be run by figures closely tied to those same creatures in the Washington swamp who voted for these bills.

These uncomfortable facts were outlined repeatedly by the oft-slandered republican Senator Marjorie Taylor Greene whose multiple attempts to create some form of oversight and auditing of the handouts to Ukraine have been met with absurd levels of resistancesince the special operation was launched in February. Even when such operations as the FTX crypto exchange (a major partner to Kiev and the World Economic Forum) was discovered to be simply a money laundering outfit infusing vast sums into the coffers of the DNC that were tied to Ukrainian operations, hardly a single western Mockingbird press outlet made a peep.

As the Pentagon Papers and Hunter Biden Laptop reminded us, not only has Ukraine been run by a coterie of money laundering grifting politicians enjoying endless skimming of foreign aid (Pandora Papers revealed that both Zelensky and his billionaire handler Igor Kolomoskoi were both tied to offshore shell companies representing hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen loot), but also energy firms like Burisima which has been caught extracting revenue from the Ukrainian people the way silk worm farmers extract silk.

And what happens if you find yourself among that precious minority of republican or independent voices of resistance to this new plunge into world war? Just ask Representative Matt Gaetz who has been called out alongside other patriots such as Jim Jordan and Lauren Boebert for not applauding Zelensky’s pathetic speech in Congress this week. For the crime of keeping their hands from slapping in lock step with the rest of the congressional herd, NBC analysts like Michael Beschloss have attempted to stir up a McCarthyite witchhunt asking why these representatives refused to clap, asking:

“I’d like to know why that was for two reasons- Number one: You’re a public servant, we’re allowed to know those things. You’re supposed to tell us if you’re serving in Congress what the reason was. Do you love Putin, or are you just opposed to democracy, or is there something else?”

The fact that these figures even dared ask where graft was going probably touched a nerve too close to home with the Pentagon itself failing its fifth consecutive audit in November 2022 with over 65% of its assets and expenditures unaccounted for. That’s right, the government ‘lost track’ of $2 trillion in 2022.

Will enough Americans wake up to the reality that they have been walking on the wrong side of history for far too long or has the point of no-return already been crossed?

*

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Matthew Ehret the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas trilogy. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TCP

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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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US appears to be in the process of transferring its Patriot air defense missile system to Ukraine. CNN in its article, “Exclusive: US finalizing plans to send Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine,” claims the US will approve and then quickly ship the system or systems into Ukraine in just days after the decision is made.

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Jeder Mensch kann das ihm in der Erziehung eingeflößte, mittelalterlich anmutende Bild vom Menschen korrigieren, um auf der Basis eines naturwissenschaftlichen Menschenbildes denken zu lernen, sein Leben besser zu verstehen und besser zu leben.

Das oben erwähnte Zitat, das dem US-amerikanischen Präsidenten Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 bis 1945) zugeschrieben wird, sei in der Diplomatie gang und gebe. Untersucht man relevante politische Entscheidungen unter diesem Aspekt, gehen einem die Augen auf. Als Mitmensch fühlt man sich jedoch mitverantwortlich für das Schicksal der Menschen, weil man in der Regel tatenlos geschehen ließ, dass eine Minderheit auf Kosten der Mehrheit lebt. Dabei ist die Welt so reich, dass alle Menschen ohne Ausnahme im Wohlstand leben könnten. Aber das wird nicht zugelassen. Auch Ungerechtigkeiten müssten nicht sein; niemand würde in seinem Leben zu kurz kommen. Hunger und Not würden ebenfalls nicht aufkommen. Doch die Herrschenden und ihre Politiker haben geplant, das naturwissenschaftliche Menschenbild nicht aufkommen zu lassen, damit die Menschen nicht denken lernen und ihr Leben besser verstehen sowie besser leben.

Anthropologische Prämissen der Natur des Menschen

Menschenbild und Weltsicht sind für das Individuum von großer Bedeutung, ob sie ihm bewusst sind oder nicht. Das Menschenbild umfasst Ansichten über die Natur des Menschen, über seine Lebensbedingungen und Entwicklung, über seine Stellung in der Natur, im Kosmos und in der Gesellschaft. Jede Theorie über den Menschen hängt von anthropologischen Prämissen seiner Kultur ab, von der Vorstellung über die menschliche Natur und damit auch von der Weltanschauung.

Das Konzept der Natur des Menschen impliziert aus naturwissenschaftlicher Sicht die völlige Abwesenheit genetisch determinierter aggressiver Triebe. Dadurch ergibt sich die Fähigkeit des Menschen und die Notwendigkeit, ohne Gewalt und Krieg in einer friedlichen Gesellschaft zu leben und sich darin zu organisieren.

Eine zweite Annahme resultiert aus der biologischen Existenz des Menschen: Der Mensch besitzt keine voraus-definierten Instinkte; bei seiner Geburt verfügt er lediglich über ein paar Reflexe.

Daraus folgt, dass die intellektuellen Fähigkeiten, die gefühlsmäßigen Reaktionen, die subjektive Bestandaufnahme der Umwelt, die geistigen Vorstellungen der Außenwelt und die Persönlichkeit des Menschen durch Sozialisation erworben werden. „Sozialisation“ als lebenslanger Lernprozess der Eingliederung beziehungsweise Anpassung des heranwachsenden Menschen in die umgebende Gesellschaft und Kultur. Menschen können und müssen alles lernen. Dieses Lernen setzt die Beziehung zu mindestens einem Mitmenschen voraus (1).

Arbeit, Liebe und Gemeinschaft als die drei großen Lebensaufgaben

Das menschliche Leben als Ganzes hat den Charakter einer Aufgabe. In jedem Augenblick unseres Daseins sehen wir uns vor Aufgaben gestellt, die wir zu bewältigen haben. Die drei großen Lebensaufgaben, die uns unausweichlich zur Auseinandersetzung drängen sind Arbeit, Liebe und Gemeinschaft. Dieser Auffassung des Individualpsychologen Alfred Adler kann man sich nur anschließen.

Die Notwendigkeit der Arbeit geht aus der Tatsache hervor, dass sich die Menschen nur erhalten können, wenn sie einer produktiven Tätigkeit nachgehen. Somit leisten sie einen Beitrag zur allgemeinen Wohlfahrt, die den Bestand des Menschengeschlechts sichert.

Die Forderung der Liebe ist dadurch gegeben, dass die Natur die Zweigeschlechtlichkeit vorgesehen hat und damit die Aufgabe schuf, sich mit einem Liebespartner zu verbinden.

Arbeit und Liebe sind zugleich auch Gemeinschaftsfragen. Sie entspringen dem Umstand, dass der Mensch ein soziales Lebewesen ist und dass alle seine Lebensprobleme einen sozialen Charakter haben. Daraus lässt sich ableiten, dass zu einer gesunden Lebensgestaltung vor allem das Gemeinschaftsgefühl, die Verbundenheit mit den Mitmenschen erforderlich ist. Dieses äußert sich nicht nur in der Bereitschaft zur Arbeit und Liebe, sondern auch in der Anteilnahme zu Fragen des größeren Zusammenhangs, Fragen von Stadt und Land, Volk und Menschheit (2).

Die wichtigsten Grundsätze des Menschenbildes einschließlich soziobiologischer, erzieherischer und kultureller Dimensionen

Die erste Dimension ist die sozialbiologische. Sie lautet: Der Mensch ist ein soziales Lebewesen. Dabei hängen Überleben und Entwicklung der menschlichen Spezies von der gegenseitigen Hilfe (Kropotkin) und der interpersonalen Beziehung ab. Schließlich ist der Mensch ein Kind seiner Kultur, der seinerseits Kultur schafft.

Die zweite, erzieherische Dimension besagt: Der Mensch ist abhängig von seiner Erziehung. Das heißt, Charakter, Verhalten und intellektuelle Fähigkeiten sind nicht angeboren, sondern entwickeln sich im Rahmen interpersoneller Beziehungen und des soziokulturellen Milieus.

Die dritte, kulturelle Dimension besagt: Der Mensch ist ein Wesen der Kultur und abhängig von ihr. Das bedeutet, der Mensch erschafft sich sein Menschenbild; seine Weltanschauung beeinflusst seine Sicht vom Menschen, seine Sicht der Erziehung und seine interpersonalen Beziehungen (3).

Als wissenschaftlicher Pädagoge und Psychologe mache ich mir vor allem Gedanken über das gegenwärtig noch existierende – weil gewollte – vorpsychologische und mittelalterlich anmutende Menschenbild, das einem zeitgemäßen naturwissenschaftlichen partout nicht weicht. Der Mensch wird dadurch nicht aufgeklärt.

Menschen sollen an einen Aggressionstrieb glauben, damit sie sich von ihrer Liebe und den Kindern trennen und in den Krieg ziehen, um zu töten und sich töten zu lassen.

Im Buch von Arno Plack aus dem Jahr 1973 „Der Mythos vom Aggressionstrieb“ schreibt der Wissenschaftler Dr. sc. at. August Kaiser im Kapitel „Aggressivität als anthropologisches System“:

„Die Auffassung, dem Menschen wohne eine naturgegebene, angeborene Neigung inne, seinen Mitmenschen zu schaden, zieht sich durch die Jahrtausende menschlicher Kulturgeschichte wie ein roter Faden. Die Moralvorschriften aller Religionen enthalten Gebote im Sinne von „Du sollst nicht töten!“, womit die natürliche Neigung zum Bösen ausdrücklich als menschlicher Wesenszug angenommen wird. Heute zählt die Berufung auf theologische Auffassungen allerdings nicht mehr viel. Dem Bedürfnis nach wissenschaftlichen Erklärungen nachgebend, spricht man jetzt lieber von einem angeborenen ‚Aggressionstrieb‘ als von der Erbsünde.

Dieser ‚Aggressionstrieb‘ wird heute allgemein, außer von Fachleuten, als bewiesene Selbstverständlichkeit angesehen. Jeder Zeitungsleser oder Fernsehzuschauer kennt die Namen von SIEGMUND FREUD und KONRAD LORENZ, die durch ihre Arbeiten die Aggressionstrieb-Hypothese bewiesen zu haben meinten. Eine große Zahl von Schülern hat ihre Aussagen übernommen, ohne diese kritisch zu überprüfen und ohne neue Argumente beizutragen. Sind die Beweise für diese Hypothese wirklich erbracht? Oder hat die Aggressivität des Menschen andere Ursachen? Die Beantwortung dieser Fragen hat für die Menschheit schicksalhaften Charakter.“ (4)

Es ist die gewalttätige Erziehung, die beim Kind Aggressionen auslöst. Diese sind anerzogen. Der Mensch wäre nicht imstande, seinen Mitmenschen umzubringen; das entspricht nicht seiner menschlichen Natur.

Das vorpsychologische Menschenbild geht davon aus, dass Menschen in den Krieg ziehen wollen. Doch das ist ein Betrug, ein Schwindel, ein großer Unsinn. Kein Mensch verlässt seine Liebe, kein Mann Frau und Kinder, um in den Krieg zu ziehen, andere umzubringen und sich selbst umbringen zu lassen. Das sagen nahezu alle jungen Menschen im vertraulichen Gespräch.

Die Theoretiker des Aggressionstriebes verstehen den Menschen nicht. In Wirklichkeit wollen die Menschen in ihrem Haus, Hof und Garten ruhig und in Frieden leben. Auf einmal sollen sie einen Aggressionstrieb haben und gegen das andere Volk in den Krieg ziehen wollen. Haben wir den Mut und die Geduld, unsere Meinung zu revidieren. Die psychologische Fakultät der Universitäten vermittelt in weltanschaulicher und politischer Beziehung leider viel Unsinn.

Die Beiträge im erwähnten Buch „Der Mythos vom Aggressionstrieb“ stammen von Vertretern verschiedener Wissenschaften, die alle mit dem Aggressionsproblem konfrontiert sind. Auf der Buch-Rückseite steht geschrieben: „So wird von mehreren Seiten gezeigt, dass die Selbstverständlichkeit, mit der heute im Anschluss an Konrad Lorenz von einem angeborenen Aggressionstrieb gesprochen wird, keinesfalls berechtigt ist.“ (5)

Menschen sollen durch autoritäre Erziehung das Folgen lernen und vor Mitmenschen Angst bekommen, damit sie sich nicht mit ihnen zusammentun, zusammenwirken und zusammenleben.

Nicht nur ausgewiesene wissenschaftliche Experten, sondern auch aufgeklärte Erzieher wissen seit langem, dass die autoritäre, gewalttätige Erziehung aus der Zeit vor den großen Weltkriegen viel Schaden anrichtete, obgleich Eltern und Erzieher das nicht wollten. Die jungen Menschen sollten das Folgen lernen, damit sie als Erwachsene an Autoritäten glauben, ihre Befehle befolgen und in den Krieg ziehen (siehe Auschwitz-Kommandant Rudolf Höss).

Die Erziehung in unserer Kultur ist nach wie vor darauf aufgebaut, dass wir Angst haben vor den Menschen. Die Art, wie die Erzieher mit dem Kind umgehen, erzeugt in ihm Gefühlsreaktionen, die sich gegen den Menschen wenden. Der junge Mensch hat Angst vor den Mitmenschen. Wenn er dann heranwächst, ist er nicht imstande zusammenzuwirken und zusammenzuleben. Er kann sich das Leben nicht gut einrichten.

Auch eine verwöhnende und verzärtelnde Erziehung ändert daran nichts. Dazu schreibt der bereits erwähnte Naturwissenschaftler und Psychologe August Kaiser:

„Eine autoritäre Erziehung erschöpft sich nicht in psychischer Gewaltanwendung, sondern umfasst eine Reihe von subtileren Methoden, mit denen das Kind bezwungen wird. Eine versteckte Form des Zwanges liegt in der Verwöhnung vor. Durch das Überschütten mit ‚Liebe‘, das Wegnehmen aller Mühe und Schwierigkeiten wird das Kind seiner Möglichkeiten zur freien Entscheidung und Auseinandersetzung beraubt, es wir in Abhängigkeit und Unabhängigkeit gehalten. Der Charakter des Kindes wird dadurch korrumpiert. Die Strenge erzwingt die Unterwerfung mit Gewalt, die Verwöhnung hingegen erkauft sie. Beides findet sich in der traditionellen Erziehung nebeneinander.“ (6)

Hinzu kommt der Zwang der Erzieher. Das Kind versagt, wenn es bezwungen wird. Das liegt in seiner Natur. Es hat dann ein Unbehagen und kann nicht mehr lernen. Ohne Angst und Zwang lernt es gerne. Doch diese unglückliche Art der Erziehung wird auch in der Schule nicht aufgegeben.

Eigentlich ist die Schule das geeignete Werkzeug, um die Gesamtpersönlichkeit des Kindes zu bilden, meint Alfred Adler:

„Dass die Schule als die Basis der ganzen Erziehung des Volkes angesehen werden muss, daran ist kein Zweifel. Die Aufgabe der Schule ist: Wie entwickeln wir Menschen, die im Leben selbständig weiterarbeiten, die alle Erfordernisse notwendiger Art nicht als fremde Angelegenheit, sondern auch als ihre Angelegenheit betrachten, um daran mitzuwirken.“ (7)

Wenn Studenten der Psychologie in der Universität nichts Vernünftiges kernen, werden keine Psychologen ausgebildet, die dem Menschen helfen wollen und können.

Tatsache ist, dass aufgrund mangelhafter Ausbildung an den Universitäten keine Psychologen herangebildet werden, die sich der Sache der Menschen annehmen.

Der Autor hat das selbst erlebt. Er hatte jedoch das Glück, dass er sich im Anschluss an sein Psychologiestudium der Tiefenpsychologie sowie der Psychotherapie zuwenden konnte.

Da der Mensch keine Ungleichheit, keine hierarchischen Strukturen verträgt, sollte auch die.

Haltung eines echten Psychologen oder Psychotherapeuten von absoluter Gleichwertigkeit und Gewaltlosigkeit getragen sein. Weil zwischen einem Therapeuten und einem Patienten nur graduelle Unterschiede bestehen, sollten „Hilfesuchende“ einen geeigneten „Gesprächspartner“ finden, der die fundamentale Gleichheit im Verhältnis Therapeut-Patient wertschätzt und befolgt. Um sein Gegenüber – auch im Gefühl – erreichen beziehungsweise „berühren“ zu können, muss der Psychotherapeut zudem in der Lage sein, von einem akademisch-elitären Sprachgebrauch abzusehen und die jeweilige Sprache seines Gegenübers zu sprechen.

Menschen sollen nicht zur Vernunft kommen und denken lernen, weil sie sonst von der mystischen Auffassung Abschied nehmen und die Ungerechtigkeiten in der Welt nicht mehr sprachlos hinnehmen werden.

Die mystische Auffassung als Gegensatz zur wissenschaftlichen Sicht hatte schon die Gedanken der Philosophen, der neu-Hegelianischen und der libertären Sozialisten beschäftigt. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 bis 1872) hatte gezeigt, dass jede Religion anthropomorph ist, dass der Mensch also schon vorhandene Anschauungen auf die religiöse Ebene projiziert, so dass etwa aus dem autoritären Vater der allmächtige Gott im Himmel wird. Karl Marx (1818 bis 1883) hatte darüber hinaus die Funktion der Religion für die Gesellschaft analysiert („das Opium des Volkes“) und mit der Einführung der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung den Menschen vom Himmel herunter und auf die Erde gestellt.

Noch heute gibt es ernstzunehmende, aufgeklärte Wissenschaftler und andere Zeitgenossen, die sich die Frage stellen, welche Wirkung eine religiöse Erziehung auf die.

seelische Gesundheit, auf die Fähigkeit adäquat zu denken und mit anderen in Beziehung zu treten, auf die Entwicklung des Gemeinschaftsgefühls und die spätere Entstehung von Neurosen haben kann. Da das vorpsychologische Menschenbild bewusst aufrechterhalten wird, deshalb verharrt der Mensch im Glauben.

Es gibt Zeitgenossen, die der Auffassung sind,

• dass Kinder, denen in jungen Jahren mystische Vorstellungen aufgedrängt werden, kein Gemeinschaftsgefühl entwickeln,
• dass dem in der mystischen Auffassung Erzogenen die irrationale Spekulation als Methode zur Erklärung von Sachen und Ereignissen dient,
• dass sich die Spekulation zu einem mehr oder weniger bewussten „Deutungsorgan“ des Menschen entwickelt, das ständig im Unbewussten wirkt,
• dass die Entwicklung des Einzelnen und der Menschheit wirksamer durch Prophylaxe gefördert werden kann als beim Erwachsenen in einer Psychotherapie und
• dass eine rationale Erziehung ohne jegliche übernatürliche Instanz der Weg zu einer gesunden Entwicklung und einer würdigen Existenz des Menschen und der Gesellschaft ist (8).

Wir Menschen haben uns noch nicht gelöst vom Mittelalter. Das Ablehnen der Mystik fällt vielen sehr schwer; die Menschen sollen nicht zur Vernunft kommen. Sie sind eingebettet in den Glauben – und damit kann nicht nur die heutige Wirtschaft aufrechterhalten werden.

Heute glauben die Menschen, weil das künstlich aufrechterhalten wird. Die Menschen können lesen und würden sich abwenden und nicht mehr glauben. Aber das wird ihnen eingeflößt. Was sie in der Schule lernen, das bestimmt die Kirche. Die Lehrpläne für diese Institution werden vorwiegend von der Kirche erstellt. Staat und Kirche sind vereint und arbeiten Hand in Hand.

Vor vielen Tausenden von Jahren haben sich die Menschen Götter erdacht – und glauben heute noch daran. Die Psychologie versucht, die Natur des Menschen und sein Wesen zu erkennen und erfährt dabei, dass die Mystik sie noch beherrscht.

Erst wenn Menschen ihr in der Erziehung erworbenes, vom Staat eingeflößtes Menschenbild korrigieren, haben sie ein Instrument in der Hand, um denken zu lernen und um das eigene Leben besser zu verstehen und zu gestalten.

Die Psychologie ist das Werkzeug, das die Menschen in die Lage versetzt, sich selbst, die politische Situation und die notwendigen gesellschafts- und kulturverändernden Maßnahmen angemessen beurteilen zu können. Ohne psychologische Kenntnis der Natur des Menschen versandet alles genauso, wie ohne geschichtliches Wissen und vertiefte Kulturkritik.

Ein Mensch kann sich in seiner Denkungsart, in seiner Weltmeinung, in seiner Gedankenwelt vollkommen ändern. Er hat Angst, es sei eine Sünde, nicht zu glauben. Wenn er jedoch anfängt die Kirchengeschichte zu lesen, die Geschichte der anderen Seite, der Zweifler, die sich aufgelehnt haben und er Einblick in die Naturwissenschaft bekommt, dann hat er andere Gedanken, eine andere Lebensauffassung.

Die Psychologie und Psychotherapie ist keine leichte Sache. Sie erfordert vom Einzelnen viel Mut, Vertrauen in den Gesprächspartner und Geduld; Gefühle und Einstellungen ändern sich nicht von einem Tag auf den anderen und das psychotherapeutische Gespräch ist kein Plaudern. Vorurteile müssen durch Wissen ersetzt werden. Insgesamt haben wir es sehr schwer, die Tatsachen, die Realität natürlich zu sehen und zu empfinden. Wie ist das im 21. Jahrhundert noch möglich? Da sich alles wehrt gegen die Psychologie und ihre Erkenntnisse, ist es schwer, sie zu vermitteln. Vielleicht muss man noch ein paar Generationen abwarten.

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Dipl.-Psych. Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Volksschul-Lehrer (Rektor), Erziehungswissenschaftler (Dr. paed.) und Psychologe (Dipl.-Psych.). Nach Hochschul-Ausbildung, Referendarzeit und Universitätsstudium wurde er wissenschaftlicher Lehrer in der Erwachsenenbildung. In dieser Funktion war er Ausbildungsleiter bei der BAYER-AG/Leverkusen, Mitbegründer und Leiter eines freien Schul-Modell-Versuchs in Köln, Fortbildner bayerischer Beratungslehrkräfte und Schulpsychologen an der Akademie für Lehrerfortbildung und Personalführung in Dillingen/Donau und Leiter der Zentralen Staatlichen Schulberatungsstelle München. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis und war Berichterstatter bei einer Öffentlichen Anhörung zur Jugendkriminalität im Europäischen Parlament in Brüssel. Seine Bücher befassen sich mit den Themen: Möglichkeiten der Anwendung der Individualpsychologie in der Schule (Verstehen und helfen; Wie geht es Ingo? Oder: Wie wird man Mitmensch? – Vorwort: Peter Handke), psychische Folgeschäden von „Unterhaltungsgewalt“ (Game over! ; Das spiel ich nicht mit!), psychologisches Manifest des gesunden Menschenverstands (Keinem die Macht übergeben!). In allen seinen Veröffentlichungen 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.

Noten 

(1) Ansbacher, H. L. und Ansbacher, R. R. (Hrsg.). (1982). Alfred Adlers Individualpsychologie. Eine systematische Darstellung seiner Lehre in Auszügen aus seinen Schriften, München

(2) A. a. O.

(3) A. a. O.

(4) Plack, Arno (Hrsg.). (1973). Der Mythos vom Aggressionstrieb. München, S. 43

(5) A. a. O.

(6) A. a. O., S. 63

(7) Adler, A. (1914). Individualpsychologie in der Schule. Frankfurt / Main, S. 25f.

(8) Zum Beispiel: Gassmann, M., Gleich, W., Greuter, D., Hug, H., Palmer, U. (1979). Soziale Psychologie. Zürich 

Vorgestelltes Bild: Franklin D. Roosevelt (Lizenziert unter CC BY 2.0)

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Every person can correct the medieval-looking image of man instilled in him by his upbringing in order to learn to think on the basis of a scientific view of man, to understand his life better and to live it better.

The above-mentioned quotation, which is attributed to the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) is commonplace in diplomacy. If one examines relevant political decisions under this aspect, one’s eyes open. As a fellow human being, however, one feels co-responsible for the fate of people, because as a rule one has allowed a minority to live at the expense of the majority without doing anything.

Yet the world is so rich that all people without exception could live in prosperity.

But this is not allowed to happen. Injustice would not have to be; no one would be short-changed in life. Hunger and hardship would not arise either.

But the rulers and their proxy politicians have planned not to allow the natural-scientific image of man to arise, so that people do not learn to think and understand their lives better as well as live better.

Anthropological premises of human nature

Human image and worldview are of great importance to individuals, whether they are aware of them or not. The conception of man includes views about the nature of man, about his living conditions and development, about his position in nature, in the cosmos and in society. Every theory about man depends on anthropological premises of his culture, on the concept of human nature and thus also on the worldview.

From a scientific point of view, the concept of human nature implies the complete absence of genetically determined aggressive drives. This results in the ability of human beings and the necessity to live and organise themselves in a peaceful society without violence and war.

A second assumption results from man’s biological existence: Man has no pre-defined instincts; at birth he has only a few reflexes.

It follows that the intellectual faculties, the emotional reactions, the subjective apprehension of the environment, the mental conceptions of the external world and the personality of man are acquired through socialisation. “Socialisation” as a lifelong learning process of integration or adaptation of the growing human being into the surrounding society and culture. People can and must learn everything. This learning requires a relationship with at least one fellow human being (1).

Work, Love and Community as the Three Great Tasks of Life

Human life as a whole has the character of a task. At every moment of our existence we are confronted with tasks that we have to overcome. The three great tasks of life that inevitably urge us to confront are work, love and community. One can only agree with this view of the individual psychologist Alfred Adler.

The necessity of work stems from the fact that people can only sustain themselves if they engage in productive activity. In this way they contribute to the general welfare, which secures the existence of the human race.

The requirement of love is given by the fact that nature has provided for bisexuality and thus created the task of connecting with a love partner.

Work and love are also community issues. They arise from the fact that man is a social creature and that all his life problems have a social character. From this it can be deduced that a healthy way of life requires above all a sense of community, a bond with one’s fellow human beings. This is expressed not only in the willingness to work and love, but also in the sympathy for questions of the larger context, questions of city and country, people and humanity (2).

The main principles of the concept of man, including socio-biological, educational and cultural dimensions.

The first dimension is the socio-biological one. It is: Man is a social living being. In this respect, the survival and development of the human species depend on mutual aid (Kropotkin) and interpersonal relationships. Finally, man is a child of his culture, which in turn creates culture.

The second, educational dimension says: Man is dependent on his upbringing. This means that character, behaviour and intellectual abilities are not innate, but develop within the framework of interpersonal relationships and the socio-cultural milieu.

The third, cultural dimension says: Man is a being of culture and dependent on it. This means that man creates his image of man; his world view influences his view of man, his view of education and his interpersonal relationships (3).

As a scientific educator and psychologist, I am particularly concerned about the pre-psychological and medieval-looking image of man that still exists today – because it is intentional – and which refuses to give way to a contemporary scientific image of man. The human being is not enlightened by this.

People are supposed to believe in an aggression instinct so that they separate themselves from their love and children and go to war to kill and be killed.

In Arno Plack’s 1973 book “The Myth of the Aggression Instinct”, the scientist Dr. sc. at. August Kaiser in the chapter “Aggressiveness as an anthropological system”:

“The view that man has a natural, innate tendency to harm his fellow man runs like a red thread through the millennia of human cultural history. The moral rules of all religions contain commandments in the sense of “Thou shalt not kill!”, whereby the natural inclination to evil is explicitly accepted as a human trait. Today, however, the appeal to theological views no longer counts for much. Giving in to the need for scientific explanations, one now prefers to speak of an innate ‘instinct of aggression’ rather than of original sin.

This ‘aggression instinct’ is now generally taken for granted, except by experts. Every newspaper reader or television viewer knows the names of SIEGMUND FREUD and KONRAD LORENZ, who thought they had proved the aggression instinct hypothesis through their work. A large number of students have adopted their statements without critically examining them and without contributing new arguments. Has the evidence for this hypothesis really been produced? Or does human aggressiveness have other causes? The answer to these questions has a fateful character for humanity.” (4)

It is violent upbringing that triggers aggression in the child. These are instilled. Man would not be able to kill his fellow man; that does not correspond to his human nature.

The pre-psychological conception of man assumes that people want to go to war. But this is a fraud, a swindle, a great nonsense. No man leaves his love, no man leaves his wife and children to go to war, to kill others and to get himself killed. That is what almost all young people say in confidential conversation.

The theorists of the aggression instinct do not understand man. In reality, people want to live quietly and in peace in their house, yard and garden. All of a sudden they are supposed to have an aggression instinct and want to go to war against the other people. Let us have the courage and patience to revise our opinion. The psychology faculty of the universities unfortunately teaches a lot of nonsense in ideological and political terms.

The contributions in the aforementioned book “The Myth of the Aggression Instinct” come from representatives of various sciences, all of which are confronted with the problem of aggression. On the back of the book it says:

“Thus it is shown from several sides that the self-evidence with which today, following Konrad Lorenz, an innate aggression instinct is spoken of, is by no means justified.” (5)

People are supposed to learn to follow and become afraid of fellow human beings through authoritarian education, so that they do not associate, cooperate and live together with them.

Not only proven scientific experts, but also enlightened educators have known for a long time that the authoritarian, violent education from the time before the great world wars caused a lot of damage, although parents and educators did not want this. Young people were supposed to learn to follow so that as adults they would believe in authority, obey its orders and go to war (see Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss).

Education in our culture is still built on being afraid of people. The way educators treat the child creates emotional reactions in him that turn against the human being. The young person is afraid of fellow human beings. When he then grows up, he is not able to cooperate and live together. He cannot arrange life well for himself.

Even a spoiling and pampering upbringing does not change this. The aforementioned natural scientist and psychologist August Kaiser writes on this:

“An authoritarian upbringing is not exhausted in the use of psychological force, but includes a number of more subtle methods by which the child is subdued. A hidden form of coercion is pampering. By showering the child with ‘love’ and taking away all effort and difficulties, the child is deprived of its possibilities for free decision-making and discussion, and is kept dependent and independent. The child’s character is thereby corrupted. Strictness enforces submission by force, whereas pampering buys it. Both are found side by side in traditional education.” (6)

Added to this is the coercion of the educators. The child fails when it is forced. That is in its nature. It then feels uneasy and can no longer learn. Without fear and coercion, it likes to learn. But this unfortunate way of education is not abandoned even in school.

Actually, school is the appropriate tool to form the child’s total personality, Alfred Adler believes:

“That the school must be regarded as the basis of the whole education of the people, there is no doubt about it. The task of the school is: how do we develop people who will continue to work independently in life, who will regard all requirements of a necessary nature not as a foreign matter, but also as their business, in order to participate in them.” (7)

If students of psychology do not learn anything sensible at university, no psychologists will be trained who want to and can help people.

The fact is that because of inadequate training in universities, psychologists are not being trained to take up people’s cause. The author has experienced this himself. However, he was lucky enough to be able to turn to depth psychology as well as psychotherapy after his psychology studies.

Since human beings do not tolerate inequality, hierarchical structures, the

The attitude of a genuine psychologist or psychotherapist should be based on absolute equality and non-violence. Because there are only gradual differences between a therapist and a patient, “help-seekers” should find a suitable “interlocutor” who values and follows the fundamental equality in the therapist-patient relationship. In order to be able to reach or “touch” his counterpart – also in feeling – the psychotherapist must also be able to refrain from an academic-elitist use of language and speak the respective language of his counterpart.

People should not come to their senses and learn to think, because otherwise they will say goodbye to the mystical view and no longer accept the injustices in the world speechlessly.

The mystical conception as an antithesis to the scientific view had already occupied the thoughts of the philosophers, the New Hegelians and the libertarian socialists. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 to 1872) had shown that every religion is anthropomorphic, that is, that man projects already existing views onto the religious plane, so that, for example, the authoritarian father becomes the almighty God in heaven. Karl Marx (1818 to 1883) had also analysed the function of religion for society (“the opium of the people”) and, with the introduction of the materialist conception of history, placed man down from heaven and onto earth.

Even today, there are serious, enlightened scientists and other contemporaries who ask themselves what effect a religious education has on mental health, on the ability to think adequately and to relate to others, on the development of a sense of community and on the later development of neuroses. Since the pre-psychological image of man is consciously maintained, that is why man persists in believing.

There are contemporaries who are of the opinion

• that children who have mystical ideas forced upon them at a young age do not develop a sense of community,
• that irrational speculation serves as a method of explaining things and events to those brought up in the mystical conception,
• that speculation develops into a more or less conscious “organ of interpretation” of man, constantly at work in the unconscious,
• that the development of the individual and of humanity can be promoted more effectively by prophylaxis than in adults in psychotherapy, and
• that a rational education without any supernatural agency is the way to a healthy development and a dignified existence of man and society (8).

We humans have not yet detached ourselves from the Middle Ages. Rejecting mysticism is very difficult for many; people are not supposed to come to their senses. They are embedded in faith – and this is not the only way to sustain today’s economy.

Today people believe because that is artificially maintained. People can read and would turn away and no longer believe. But that is instilled in them. What they learn in school is determined by the church. The curricula for this institution are mainly created by the church. State and Church are united and work hand in hand.

Many thousands of years ago, people invented gods – and still believe in them today. Psychology tries to recognise the nature of man and his essence and learns that mysticism still dominates it.

Only when people correct their image of man, acquired in education and instilled by the state, do they have an instrument in their hands to learn to think and to better understand and shape their own lives.

Psychology is the tool that enables people to adequately assess themselves, the political situation and the necessary measures to change society and culture. Without psychological knowledge of the nature of man, everything peters out just as it does without historical knowledge and in-depth cultural criticism.

A person can change completely in his way of thinking, in his world view, in his world of thought. He is afraid that it is a sin not to believe. But when he starts to read the history of the church, the history of the other side, of the doubters who rebelled and he gets insight into natural science, then he has different thoughts, a different view of life.

Psychology and psychotherapy is not an easy thing. It requires a lot of courage from the individual, trust in the interlocutor and patience; feelings and attitudes do not change from one day to the next and the psychotherapeutic conversation is not a chat. Prejudices have to be replaced by knowledge. Overall, we have a very hard time seeing and feeling the facts, the reality naturally. How is that still possible in the 21st century? Since everything resists psychology and its findings, it is difficult to communicate them. Perhaps one has to wait for a few more generations.

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Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is an elementary school teacher (Rector), educationalist (Dr. paed.) and psychologist (Dipl.-Psych.). After university training, traineeship and university studies, he became a scientific teacher in adult education. In this capacity he was head of training at BAYER AG/Leverkusen, co-founder and head of an independent school model trial in Cologne, in-service trainer of Bavarian guidance counsellors and school psychologists at the Academy for Teacher Training and Personnel Management in Dillingen/Donau and head of the Central State School Guidance Office in Munich.

As a retiree, he worked as a psychotherapist in private practice and was rapporteur at a public hearing on juvenile delinquency in the European Parliament in Brussels. His books deal with the topics: Possibilities of applying individual psychology in schools (Understanding and helping; How is Ingo? Or: How to become a fellow human being? – Foreword: Peter Handke), psychological consequences of “entertainment violence” (Game over!; I’m not playing that game!), psychological manifesto of common sense (Don’t hand over power to anyone!). In all his publications, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral values education 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) Ansbacher, H. L. and Ansbacher, R. R. (eds.). (1982). Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology. A systematic presentation of his teachings in excerpts from his writings, Munich.

(2) Op. cit.

(3) Op. cit.

(4) Plack, Arno (ed.). (1973). The myth of the aggression instinct. Munich, p. 43

(5) A. op. cit.

(6) op. cit., p. 63

(7) Adler, A. (1914). Individual psychology in schools. Frankfurt / Main, p. 25f.

(8) For example: Gassmann, M., Gleich, W., Greuter, D., Hug, H., Palmer, U. (1979). Social psychology. Zurich

Featured image: Franklin D. Roosevelt (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

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a

***

“The narrative of the West is so far away from reality that practically every major story which appears in the Western Press has a hidden or shadow real story which we need to bring out!”

– Professor Radhika Desai, from this week’s interview

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If there is a single term that could describe the news stories shaping the past year, it would be POLARIZING.

We saw it in the Freedom Convoy in Canada in January and February. Some sympathized with the demand by truckers to end the COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Others saw it as a collection of threatening individuals that made the Prime Minister’s use of the human rights suspending Emergencies Act a necessary evil. [1]

We saw it in the U.S. mid term elections as voters divided according to their stands on abortion rights, gun control, and immigration. [2]

And we also saw it in the widening of the gap between countries dedicated to a US-NATO supremacy, which supposedly defends human rights and democracy, and the alternative model made up of China, Russia and many of the countries in the BRICS alliance, described by the West as the “authoritarians.” When Russia launched a “special military operation” in Ukraine and got hit hard with sanctions as a result, the world witnessed its unravelling into two factions. It is predicted that nothing short of a nuclear climax will once again reunite humanity – via universal destruction! [3]

But beyond this reality, the media itself is seeing massive changes. Different perspectives from the more NATO-friendly stories is quickly dismissed as “fake news” serving the Kremlin. Levels discouraging the dissent from these sorts of perspectives are approaching, and possibly even surpassing those in evidence during the Joseph McCarthy years of anti-communist madness. [4]

Here at the Global Research News Hour, we are striving to point out major flaws in the major news coverage. This is attributable to who or what actually owns the major press outlets, and who or what advances their financial success through advertising, not to mention devices like Operation Mockingbird and a host of other mechanisms between the Fourth Estate and the State itself.

We thus have made an annual ritual at this time of year to look into which stories relevant to the general public are actually getting under-reported or even censored by the wealthy press outlets.

Our regular guide on this journalistic journey is the renowned media institution Project Censored. PC educates the public on the important links between a free press and a democratic self-government and provides them with regular lists of news stories under-reported or censored by mainstream media.

In our first half hour, Andy Lee Roth, the contributing editor for the group returns once again as a travelling companion pointing out some of the incredible stories you otherwise might have missed out on in 2022. He also gives us a look at Censored 2023, the yearbook highlighting some of the major themes in journalistic suppression over the course of the past year.

In our second half hour, we are joined by three past guests and independent media producers to get their own takes on major stories and perspectives in the world in 2022 that were left out of mainstream news coverage. Our guests are Professor Radhika Desai, Matthew Ehret, and Max Blumenthal.

Andy Lee Roth is the Associate Director of Project Censored, a media research program which fosters student development of media literacy and critical thinking skills as applied to news media censorship in the United States.

Radhika Desai is  Professor in the Department of Political Studies and Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group (GERG) at the University of Manitoba in Canada; she edits newcoldwar.org, a project associated with GERG, and is the Convener of the International Manifesto Group.

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas (which you can purchase by clicking those links or the book covers below). In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Max Blumenthal is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Gray Zone. He is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 374)

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Other stations airing the show:

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Notes:

1. https://www.netnewsledger.com/2022/02/12/poll-finds-support-for-freedom-convoy-at-20-across-canada/
2. https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/guide-into-us-most-polarized-midterm-elections
3. https://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/86831
4. https://www.globalresearch.ca/conform-or-be-cast-out-the-new-model-of-journalism-during-a-time-of-war/5795751

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The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) on Monday announced it will participate in a new project that includes assessing the health risks of exposure to 5G technologies.

According to IARC, the project will “develop tools and instrumentation for reliable evaluation of exposure, conduct experimental studies (in vitro, animal, and human studies) on potential cancer risks, and develop effective health risk communication materials for stakeholders.”

The project — Scientific-Based Exposure and Risk Assessment of Radiofrequency and Millimetre-Wave Systems (SEAWave) — aims to identify differences in exposure patterns between 5G and earlier mobile technologies, such as 2G-4G.

Horizon Europe and SERI (Switzerland) are co-funding the project, which will culminate with a risk assessment of 5G, set to be released in 2025.

Experts on the health risks of exposure to 5G technologies told The Defender that risk assessments should have been conducted years ago.

“A risk assessment should have been performed before the 5G rollout — and not years after it started,” Mona Nilsson, managing director of the Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation, said.

Instead, Nilsson said, “entire populations” have for several years been “effectively turned into 5G lab rats in a dangerous experiment.”

Eileen O’Connor, co-founder and director of the EM Radiation Research Trust in the U.K. and board member of the International EMF Alliance, agreed.

“Why isn’t IARC calling for the precautionary principle as a matter of urgency rather than agreeing to an assessment on 5G?” O’Connor asked. “There is enough evidence and reason for concern regarding public health associated with 2G, 3G and 4G,” she said.

According to O’Connor, “The whole population will be exposed to untested and unregulated [electromagnetic] radiation, which they will absorb into their bodies and without any public agreement. Too many reports and reviews delay and deny the precautionary approach due to economic interests.”

“It’s time for action,” said O’Connor, adding that she is “deeply concerned” about the role “that special interests and industry lobbying are playing.”

“It’s time to demand accountability for the imposition of this technology in every corner of our lives, and time to demand accountability on the part of the individuals who are voting to put this technology in place without a single safety test having been conducted for 5G, as established by U.S. Senator Blumenthal during congressional hearings on 5G,” she said.

Why is ‘risk communication’ last on SEAWave agenda?

According to the IARC, the agency plans to “play a critical role in the later stages of the project by coordinating a comprehensive evaluation of the project’s experimental studies and a review of the latest literature on millimeter-wave frequencies and health effects” — effectively making it the main arbiter for which scientific studies are considered when determining whether there is scientific evidence of health risks posed by 5G.

According to its website, the SEAWave project consists of completing 11 interlinked smaller projects — called “work packages” — initiated at its kick-off meeting and co-design workshop.

SEAWave plans to complete eight work packages, including studies focusing on types of 5G exposure and health outcomes, and then assess the risk of 5G on human health as its ninth work package.

After that, the project will address how to communicate risk to the public.

Scientists who invoke the precautionary principle said risk communication regarding 5G and wireless technologies — such as the use of wireless headphones like Apple’s popular AirPods — should be proactive, not retroactive.

Health risks associated with 5G already known, critics say

Nilsson — who has authored two books on the health risks associated with wireless radiation and co-authored an academic publication titled “International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) 2020 Guidelines on Radiofrequency Radiation” — said the IARC press release “gives the impression that we do not already know that there is massive scientific evidence of harmful effects from previous generations of telecommunication technology (2G, 3G WiFi).”

She continued:

“It fails to mention that the radiation from 5G and previous generations was classified as ‘possibly carcinogenic to humans’ group 2B by IARC in 2011.

“It also fails to mention the unacceptable fact, put forward by the scientists in the 5G Appeal and the recently formed International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields, that the risks must be investigated before any rollout and that there are already proven harmful effects from previous generations, such as DNA-damage, oxidative stress, cancer, harmful effects on the brain, on fertility, etc.”

O’Connor told The Defender she found it shocking that IARC would agree to coordinate production of a risk assessment on 5G exposures as part of the EU-funded SEAWave project “while admitting over the past four decades, more and more wireless applications have emerged and are continually evolving, which makes it difficult to keep abreast of changing exposure patterns to radio frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) in populations.”

“They are admitting they are unable to keep up-to-date and yet agreeing to review 5G?” she asked.

It has been more than a decade, O’Connor explained, since members of the IARC classified the entire RF-EMF spectrum as a “2B Possible Human Carcinogen.” The vote was “nearly unanimous: 29 to 1,” she added.

Since then, O’Connor said, more human studies and toxicology studies in animals, which demonstrated clear evidence of tumors, have added to the evidence of increased cancer risks.

In 2018, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) — part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — determined in a $30 million study that there was “clear evidence” that electromagnetic radiation is associated with cancer and DNA damage.

“The $30 million U.S. National Toxicology Program RF [radio frequency] studies and the Italian Ramazzini Institute’s 10-year research project both found clear evidence of malignant tumors,” she said.

“Two different institutes,” O’Connor emphasized, “with laboratories in different countries, totally independent of each other and both producing parallel consistent findings, reinforces the validity of these groundbreaking animal studies.”

O’Connor added:

“An external peer-review panel of 11 scientists complimented the methodology of the NTP study and concluded that the results showed clear evidence of carcinogenic activity.

“Many doctors and scientists are now calling for an urgent upgrade to the classification of RF-EMF from 2B to Group 1 (Known Carcinogen), the same category as tobacco.

“Dr. [Lennart] Hardell, a specialist oncologist and a cancer epidemiologist, who provided expert commentary on the NTP study, stated unequivocally: ‘The agent is carcinogenic to humans.’”

Moreover, Nilsson said, in 2017, “Scientists warned in the 5G Appeal that 5G will lead to a massive increase of exposure to microwave radiation similar to previous generations, which have already been proven to be harmful, and that the 5G rollout should be halted until the health risks had been investigated.”

Nilsson added:

“During the last years of 5G rollout since late 2019, our measurements of radiation have confirmed that 5G indeed lead to a massive increase in exposure in Swedish cities.

“The first case study on health effects from 5G, by epidemiologist Lennart Hardell and me, showed that a 5G base station within two days caused the microwave syndrome in two persons living close to the base station.”

O’Connor noted that a worldwide list of all peer-reviewed scientific studies, through May 2020, on human health around mobile phone base stations and cell towers, compiled by Karl Muller and the EM-Radiation Research Trust, showed consistent findings of health problems. “Out of 33 studies, 32 (or 97%) reported health problems,” she said.

The only study that did not find health problems was a “very poor study of cancer in Bavaria that by its own admission did not have sufficient controls,” she said.

Just last year, 250 scientists signed a petition to the United Nations that took aim at both non-ionizing electromagnetic fields (EMFs), which are used by AirPods and other Bluetooth devices, and cellphones and Wi-Fi, which emit RF radiation.

Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California, Berkeley, is one of the petition’s signers.

“From a precautionary standpoint,” Moskowitz said, “I would argue you shouldn’t experiment with your brain like this by keeping these kinds of wireless headphones on your head or in your ears.”

“You’re conducting a health experiment on yourself, and current regulations are completely oblivious to these kinds of exposures,” Moskowitz added.

A ‘greenwashing project’ tainted by corporate stakeholders?

According to SEAWave’s website, the project “aims to contribute to the scientific basis for health risk assessment of 5G and offer the means for effective health risk communication and results dissemination to all stakeholders, ranging from citizens and national regulators, to standardization bodies and the industry.”

But Nilsson told The Defender the project “looks like a greenwashing project for the rollout of 5G to the benefit of the major corporate stakeholders.”

For instance, Nilsson pointed out, some of SEAWave’s consortia partners — such as Telecom Paris and ITIS — are “of concern” for potentially receiving sponsor funding from 5G stakeholders.

Nilsson also noted that IARC’s press release included the “misleading claim” that many exposure parameters of 5G are similar to those of 2G-4G. “But we know that 5G has already led to a massive exposure increase compared to previous generations according to the measurements performed so far during the 5G rollout,” she said.

“The fact that 5G massively increases radiation exposure is also why the telecom sector has lobbied various governments — such as Brussels, Switzerland and Italy — to relax their radiation limits, because they will not be able to roll out 5G as planned otherwise.”

Now years into the 5G rollout, she said, exposure levels “exceed 1 million microwatts per square meter in peak values — which is far above what is known to cause harmful effects in terms of sleep disturbances, headache, dizziness, tinnitus, heart arrhythmia, and fatigue.”

“The symptoms were already described some 50-40 years ago as the microwave syndrome or radio frequency illness and are confirmed by studies on people living near mobile phone masts [cell towers] and base stations during the last two decades,” Nilsson added.

Nilsson emphasized that in view of the influential corporate economic interests involved, it is necessary that any risk assessment be performed by scientists that have no ties to the telecom sector or telecom-affiliated corporations.

“However, the IARC is unfortunately no longer a guarantee for such objectivity,” she said, adding:

“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is by far the largest single voluntary funder of the IARCand such funding probably comes with strings attached.

“Further, IARC’s head of the radiation department, Joachim Schüz, is a well-known risk-denier, in spite of growing evidence to the contrary, who has produced a seriously biased report for the EU-Commission and flawed studies on brain tumor risks from cellphones, funded by telecom companies, such as the Danish Cohort and the Cefalo study.”

At a 2014 European Commission conference on EMFs and potential health effects at which O’Connor and Schüz were presenters, O’Connor said she confronted IARC officials — including Schüz — for excluding Hardell’s papers from their review of EMF scientific studies.

Schüz claimed the papers arrived too late following SCENIHR’s [Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks] call for papers, O’Connor said, “but I reminded him that he accepted a paper/letter that did not suggest potential health risks later than Hardell’s papers.”

Indeed, IARC leadership is sending “mixed signals” on its stance regarding acknowledging the documented health risks associated with RF radiation, Microwave News reported last month.

IARC Director Elisabete Weiderpass recently revealed that a new assessment of the evidence linking RF radiation to cancer would likely take place in early 2024 and that a formal decision could come within a few months.

Weiderpass didn’t suggest that the new assessment would reaffirm the IARC’s previous classification of RF as a possible human carcinogen. Rather, according to Microwave News, she made clear that the RF cancer risk might instead be downgraded by the IARC and the current classification could be removed.

*

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.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

Featured image is from CHD

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***

What is democracy but platitudes and dog whistles? The national direction is quietly predetermined — it’s not up for debate. The president’s role is to sell it to the public; you might say he’s the public-relations director in chief:

“. . . my Administration will seize this decisive decade to advance America’s vital interests, position the United States to outmaneuver our geopolitical competitors, tackle shared challenges, and set our world firmly on a path toward a brighter and more hopeful tomorrow. . . . We will not leave our future vulnerable to the whims of those who do not share our vision for a world that is free, open, prosperous, and secure.”

These are the words of President Biden, in his introduction to the National Security Strategy, which lays out America’s geopolitical plans for the coming decade. Sounds almost plausible, until you ponder the stuff that isn’t up for public discussion, such as, for instance:

The national defense budget, recently set for 2023 at $858 billion and, as ever, larger than the rest of the world’s military budget combined. And, oh yeah, the modernization — the rebuilding — of the nation’s nuclear weapons over the next three decades at an estimated cost of nearly $2 trillion. As Nuclear Watch put it: “It is, in short, a program of nuclear weapons forever.”

And the latter, of course, will go forward despite the fact that in 2017 the countries of the world — well, most of them (the vote in the United Nations was 122-1) — approved the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which flat-out bans the use, development and possession of nuclear weapons. Fifty countries ratified the treaty by January 2021, making it a global reality; two years later, a total of 68 countries have ratified it, with 23 more in the process of doing so. Not only that, as H. Patricia Hynes points out, the mayors of more than 8,000 cities all across the planet are calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

I mention this to put Biden’s words in perspective. Does “a brighter and more hopeful tomorrow” ignore the demands of most of the world and include the presence of thousands of nuclear weapons, many still on hair-trigger alert? Does it mean the ever-present possibility of war and the ongoing manufacture and sale of every imaginable weapon of war? Is a near-trillion-dollar annual “defense” budget the primary way we intend to “outmaneuver our geopolitical competitors”?

And here’s another flicker of reality that’s missing from Biden’s words: the non-monetary cost of war, which is to say, the “collateral damage.” For some reason, the president fails to mention how many civilians’ deaths — how many children’s deaths — will be necessary to secure a brighter and more hopeful tomorrow. How many hospitals might it be necessary, for instance, for us to accidentally bomb in coming years, as we bombed the hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan in 2015, killing 42 people, 24 of whom were patients?

Public relations platitudes do not seem to have room to acknowledge videos of U.S.-inflicted carnage, such as Kathy Kelly’s description of a video of the Kunduz bombing, which showed the president of Doctors Without Borders (a.k.a., Médecins Sans Frontières) walking through the wreckage a short while later and speaking, with “nearly unutterable sadness,” to the family of a child who had just died.

“Doctors had helped the young girl recover,” Kelly writes, “but because war was raging outside the hospital, administrators recommended that the family come the next day. ‘She’s safer here,’ they said.

“The child was among those killed by the U.S. attacks, which recurred at fifteen-minute intervals, for an hour and a half, even though MSF had already issued desperate pleas begging the United States and NATO forces to stop bombing the hospital.”

Those who believe in the necessity of war — such as the president — may well feel shock and sadness when a child, for instance, is unintentionally killed by U.S. military action, but the concept of war comes complete with flowers of regret: It’s the fault of the enemy. And we will not be vulnerable to his whims.

Indeed, the dog whistle in Biden’s brief quote above is the calm acknowledgement of U.S. intention to stand up to the dark forces on the planet, the autocrats, who do not share our vision of freedom for all (except little girls in bombed hospitals). Those who, for whatever reason, believe in the necessity, and even the glory, of war, will feel the pulse of the U.S. military budget coursing through his positive, happy words.

When public relations circumvents reality, an honest discussion is impossible. And Planet Earth is in desperate need of an honest discussion about the elimination of nuclear weapons and, God help us, ultimately transcending war.

As Hynes writes: “If the U.S. could once again replace its masculinist power with creative foreign policy and reach out to Russia and China with the purpose of dismantling nuclear weapons and ending war, life on Earth would have a heightened chance.”

How can this become a country with a creative foreign policy? How can the American public move beyond being spectators and consumers and become actual, literal participants in U.S. foreign policy? Here’s one way: the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal, an online event scheduled for November 10-13, 2023.

As Kelly, one of the organizers, describes it: “The Tribunal intends to collect evidence about crimes against humanity committed by those who develop, store, sell, and use weapons to commit crimes against humanity. Testimony is being sought from people who’ve borne the brunt of modern wars, the survivors of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, and Somalia, to name but a few of the places where U.S. weapons have terrified people who’ve meant us no harm.”

Victims of war will be interviewed. Those who wage war, and those who profit from it, will be held accountable to the world. My God, this sounds like real democracy! Is this the level at which truth shatters the platitudes of war?

*

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***

Introduction

Afghanistan, Iraq, maybe Libya. If you asked the average American where the United States has been at war in the past two decades, you would likely get this short list. But this list is wrong — off by at least 17 countries in which the United States has engaged in armed conflict through ground forces, proxy forces, or air strikes.[1]

For members of the public, the full extent of U.S. warmaking is unknown. Investigative journalists and human rights advocates have cobbled together a rough picture of where the military has used force, but they rely on sources whose information is often incomplete, belated, or speculative. There is only so much one can learn about the United States’ military footprint from trawling Purple Heart ceremonies, speaking with retired military personnel, and monitoring social media for reports of civilian harm.[2]

Congress’s understanding of U.S. war-making is often no better than the public record. The Department of Defense provides congressionally mandated disclosures and updates to only a small number of legislative offices. Sometimes, it altogether fails to comply with reporting requirements, leaving members of Congress uninformed about when, where, and against whom the military uses force. After U.S. forces took casualties in Niger in 2017, for example, lawmakers were taken aback by the very presence of U.S. forces in the country.[3] Without access to such basic information, Congress is unable to perform necessary oversight.

It is not just the public and Congress who are out of the loop. The Department of Defense’s diplomatic counterparts in the Department of State also struggle to understand and gain insight into the reach of U.S. hostilities. Where congressional oversight falters, so too does oversight within the executive branch.

This proliferation of secret war is a relatively recent phenomenon, and it is undemocratic and dangerous. The conduct of undisclosed hostilities in unreported countries contravenes our constitutional design. It invites military escalation that is unforeseeable to the public, to Congress, and even to the diplomats charged with managing U.S. foreign relations. And it risks poorly conceived, counterproductive operations with runaway costs, in terms of both dollars and civilian lives. So how did we get here?

Two sources of the government’s ability to wage war in secret are already the subject of much discussion. The first is the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Notwithstanding the limitations in its text, the 2001 AUMF has been stretched by four successive administrations to cover a broad assortment of terrorist groups, the full list of which the executive branch long withheld from Congress and still withholds from the public. The second is the covert action statute, an authority for secret, unattributed, and primarily CIA-led operations that can involve the use of force.[4] Despite a series of Cold War–era executive orders that prohibit assassinations, the covert action statute has been used throughout the war on terror to conduct drone strikes outside areas of active hostilities.

But there is a third class of statutory authorities that enable undisclosed hostilities yet have received little public attention: security cooperation authorities. Congress enacted these provisions in the years following September 11 to allow U.S. forces to work through and with foreign partners. One of them, now codified at 10 U.S.C. § 333, permits the Department of Defense to train and equip foreign forces anywhere in the world. Another, now codified at 10 U.S.C. § 127e, authorizes the Department of Defense to provide “support” to foreign forces, paramilitaries, and private individuals who are in turn “supporting” U.S. counterterrorism operations.

While training and support may sound benign, these authorities have been used beyond their intended purpose. Section 333 programs have resulted in U.S. forces pursuing their partners’ adversaries under a strained interpretation of constitutional self-defense. Section 127e programs have allowed the United States to develop and control proxy forces that fight on behalf of and sometimes alongside U.S. forces. In short, these programs have enabled or been used as a springboard for hostilities.

The public and even most of Congress is unaware of the nature and scope of these programs. The Department of Defense has given little indication of how it interprets §§ 333 and 127e, how it decides which § 333 partner forces to defend, and where it conducts § 127e programs. When U.S. forces operating under these authorities direct or engage in combat, the Department of Defense often declines to inform Congress and the public, reasoning that the incident was too minor to trigger statutory reporting requirements.

Notwithstanding the challenges Congress has faced in overseeing activities under §§ 333 and 127e, Congress recently expanded the Department of Defense’s security cooperation authorities. Section 1202 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2018 largely mirrors § 127e, but instead of supporting U.S. counterterrorism efforts, the partner forces it covers are intended to support U.S. “irregular warfare operations” against “rogue states,” such as Iran or North Korea, or “near-peers,” such as Russia and China. Far beyond the bounds of the war on terror, § 1202 may be used to engage in low-level conflict with powerful, even nuclear, states.

Through these security cooperation provisions, the Department of Defense, not Congress, decides when and where the United States counters terrorist groups and even state adversaries. Moreover, by determining that “episodic” confrontations and “irregular” warfare do not amount to “hostilities,” the Department of Defense has avoided notification and reporting requirements, leaving Congress and the public in the dark.[5]

This report delves into the legal frameworks for conducting and overseeing security cooperation and identifies how those frameworks have inaugurated the modern era of secret war. It draws on public reporting and materials prepared by the Departments of Defense and State, as well as interviews with administration officials, congressional staffers, and journalists. Part I provides a brief history and overview of constitutional war powers and congressional oversight of the military; part II analyzes the suite of authorities under which security cooperation takes place; and part III identifies the constitutional defects of this secret war-making and proposes reforms to increase transparency and prevent abuse.

I. History and Overview of Constitutional War Powers

In the U.S. constitutional system, authority over military affairs is divided between Congress and the president. The Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to declare war and the power to create, fund, and regulate the military. The Constitution also vests the president with a general “executive power” and provides that the president shall be the commander in chief of the military.

Based on Congress’s responsibility for declaring war and making military appropriations, the Constitution was long understood to afford Congress substantial control over where and how the military operates.[6] Furthermore, a special limitation on the length of army appropriations — the Constitution’s Two-Year Clause — was understood to demand Congress’s regular and informed review of military affairs.[7] The president’s role, by contrast, was narrow. Per the Supreme Court, the “power and duty” of the president was to “command [] the forces” and “direct the conduct of campaigns” after Congress had already “provide[d] by law for carrying on war.”[8] Only in narrow circumstances, when defensive force was necessary to “repel sudden attacks” on U.S. soil and persons, was the Constitution understood to empower the president to act without congressional authorization.[9]

As discussed below, this balance of power was respected for most of the nation’s history. But it began to unravel during the Cold War, a trend that has accelerated since September 11.

Early History

The precedent for congressional control and oversight of military operations was established early. Just 10 years after the Constitution’s adoption, during the Quasi-War with France, Congress exercised its authority to limit the geographic scope of U.S. naval activity. Denying a request from President Adams, Congress restricted American vessels to defending the coastline rather than cruising the high seas and seeking confrontations with French vessels.[10] Congress additionally specified how American vessels would be armed, manned, and even provisioned — rations included one pound of bread each day and four ounces of cheese every other.[11]

Adams acknowledged Congress’s wartime enactments, and the Supreme Court enforced them when American vessels exceeded their scope.[12] The Supreme Court affirmed Congress’s power to wage a war “limited in place, in objects, and in time.”[13] Early presidents were careful not to overstep their authority, even when they acted unilaterally to defend the country from foreign threats. In 1801, while Congress was out of session, President Jefferson invoked his inherent constitutional authority to prevent the Barbary States from detaining and ransoming American merchants. The day after Congress returned, however, Jefferson dutifully apprised Congress of his deployment of American vessels to the Mediterranean, the circumstances that had given rise to the deployment, and the conduct of the vessels. He then sought and received Congress’s express permission to “go beyond the line of defense” in countering the Barbary States.[14]

Presidential respect for Congress’s power to authorize or foreclose American military action, and transparency about military operations, persisted well past the Founding Era. Half a century after Jefferson repelled the Barbary States, President Lincoln followed his model in countering the Confederacy. The Civil War began when Congress was out of session, with the Confederacy’s bombardment of Fort Sumter. Lincoln called for a special legislative session and, as he waited for Congress to return, readied the nation for war and imposed a naval blockade to close the Confederacy’s ports. When Congress reconvened, Lincoln publicly outlined what he had done and sought retroactive and continuing congressional approval for it.[15] To aid Congress in its deliberations, he and his administration promised to “stand ready to supply omissions, or to communicate new facts considered important for [Congress] to know.”[16]

Even when American lives and the unity of the country were at stake, Jefferson and Lincoln acknowledged the limits of presidential unilateralism and embraced accountability to Congress. They understood that transparency enabled Congress to fulfill its constitutional role of legislating on military affairs and determining whether, when, and how war could be waged.

The Cold War 

Even as the United States grew in size and military might, Jefferson’s and Lincoln’s understanding of the constitutional balance of powers prevailed throughout the 19th century and into the early decades of the 20th. The Cold War, however, ushered in a shift in presidential practice regarding Congress’s authority to declare war and conduct military oversight.[17]

In 1950, President Truman unilaterally committed American forces to the Korean War, enmeshing the United States in a three-year conflict without prior congressional approval. Departing from the established balance of powers, Truman asserted a presidential prerogative to use the military “in the broad interests of American foreign policy.”[18] President Eisenhower followed in Truman’s footsteps, using the newly created CIA to engage in unauthorized and undisclosed hostilities in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Eisenhower’s secret war in Laos — a war that his successors would broaden in size and scope — was particularly noteworthy. The CIA’s control of a “vast proxy army” of tens of thousands of Laotians, combined with its bombing campaign in support of those proxies, was a lurch, not a step, toward undoing the balance of powers envisioned in the Constitution and implemented by Jefferson and Lincoln.[19] Congress had not approved the “large scale operations,” and legislators eventually excoriated the agency for acting “considerably beyond” its authority.[20] But Congress’s condemnation came a full decade after the start of the secret war, as journalists finally broke the news on Laos by using “scraps of [] information picked up from irregular sources.”[21]

Laos exemplified the dangers of secrecy in military affairs: by frustrating Congress’s ability to conduct oversight, the president could usurp Congress’s power to decide when, where, and how war would take place. The president could render Laos the “most heavily bombed nation in history,” and Congress and the American public would scarcely know it.[22]

Perhaps because the constitutional balance of powers relied so heavily on military transparency, secrecy was on the rise. In 1960, Congress assessed that the Eisenhower administration had spurred “a growth of secrecy in the Federal Government unparalleled in American history,” using “the excuse of military security” to conceal where U.S. forces were and what they were doing.[23] The trend accelerated under subsequent administrations. In 1969, President Nixon expanded the Vietnam War into neutral ambodian territory without informing Congress, let alone requesting authorization. Congress learned of the incursion four years later, after an Air Force major blew the whistle on how he had “deliberately falsified the reports of at least two dozen secret B-52 [bomber] missions over Cambodia.”[24]

The secret war in Cambodia pushed Congress to enact the War Powers Resolution, over Nixon’s veto. In accordance with the Constitution’s text and history, the War Powers Resolution reaffirmed the president’s obligation to seek congressional authorization before engaging U.S. forces in hostilities beyond the line of defense.[25] It also required the president to notify and consult with Congress whenever combat-equipped U.S. forces were deployed and when they engaged in hostilities.[26] Consistent with Congress’s power to limit war “in place, in objects, and in time,”[27] the War Powers Resolution set forth special procedures for Congress to terminate hostilities and compel the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the field.[28] Even without Congress’s use of these special procedures, the War Powers Resolution directed that the president “shall terminate” any unauthorized hostilities after 60 days or, in cases of “unavoidable military necessity,” 90 days.[29]

Presidents were not eager to comply with these new measures to rein in unilateralism and restore transparency. Immediately, Nixon challenged the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution.[30] Subsequent administrations echoed his arguments while adopting strained interpretations of the law that neutered its reporting provisions and limitations on unauthorized hostilities. Thus, President Reagan maintained that his administration had acted in a manner consistent with the War Powers Resolution, even as it operated unauthorized paramilitary groups against Nicaragua’s government and launched an unauthorized invasion of Grenada.[31]

But Congress did not let up. Lawmakers repeatedly brought suit under the War Powers Resolution to challenge unauthorized hostilities, whether those undertaken by Reagan or later by President Clinton in the former Yugoslavia. Congress also enacted legislation such as the Boland Amendments, which exercised Congress’s military appropriations power to prohibit the use of funds for “supporting, directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua.”[32] During the Clinton administration, Congress enacted similar funding prohibitions to restrict the use of U.S. forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haiti, Rwanda, and Somalia.[33]

September 11 and Its Aftermath

September 11 ushered in a new era of deference to the president. Congress quieted its efforts to preserve its constitutional role, and the War Powers Resolution lay dormant — even as new military authorities and technologies expanded the president’s power to deploy the military without explicit congressional authorization or even knowledge.

Within a week of the attacks, Congress passed the 2001 AUMF to allow President George W. Bush to pursue those who had “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks.”[34] Shortly thereafter, the Bush administration concluded that the terrorist organization al-Qaeda had perpetrated the attacks and that the Taliban, the political leadership of Afghanistan, were providing al-Qaeda with safe harbor. So began the war in Afghanistan.

But the 2001 AUMF was not limited to Afghanistan.Indeed, it had no geographic or temporal limitation. As Bush said on September 20, 2001, two days after signing the 2001 AUMF into law, “There are thousands of terrorists in more than 60 countries. . . . Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there.” Contrary to the stated purpose of the 2001 AUMF — preventing those responsible for September 11 from perpetrating future acts of terrorism against the United States — Bush’s purpose was to ensure that “every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.”[35]

This vision of the war on terror has superseded the plain text of the 2001 AUMF. Successive administrations have interpreted the 2001 AUMF to cover al-Qaeda’s “associated forces,” despite those words not appearing in the statute. The executive branch has designated a broad array of terrorist groups, including those that did not yet exist on September 11, as associated forces. In doing so, presidents have unilaterally expanded the scope of the war on terror to organizations like al-Shabaab in Somalia, which was founded in 2006 and which threatens targets in East Africa, not the United States.

For much of the war on terror, Congress was unaware of the full list of associated forces or countries that the executive branch asserted were covered by the 2001 AUMF.[36] Only in 2013 did President Obama provide Congress with a list of such forces and describe the executive branch’s rationale for designating them.[37] Even then, the list did not include the countries in which the Department of Defense countered adversaries. The Trump administration, too, refused to provide information on the geographic scope of the war on terror — despite Congress’s enactment of a law specifically demanding it.[38] In March 2022, after years of delay, the Biden administration finally provided the congressional foreign affairs[39] and defense committees with a series of overdue reports on where and against whom U.S. forces have fought. These reports had lengthy classified annexes, were not provided to all congressional offices, and are not publicly available.

The AUMF, though, was not the end of the matter. On the day before he signed the 2001 AUMF into law, President Bush made a broad finding under 50 U.S.C. § 3093, the covert action statute, to grant the CIA “exceptional authorities” to kill or capture al-Qaeda targets around the world.[40] This finding granted the CIA powers “identical” to those wielded by the Department of Defense under the 2001 AUMF, including the “direct use of lethal force.”[41] By 2011, the CIA controlled a “3,000 man covert army in Afghanistan,”[42] had used new drone technologies to conduct covert airstrikes in Yemen and Pakistan, and had killed upward of 2,000 militants and civilians.[43] Twenty percent of CIA analysts were dedicated to identifying and locating targets for future drone strikes.[44] Ostensibly a civilian agency, the CIA had the authorities and tools to act as a military force.

Even though the roles of the CIA and the military have converged, the executive branch maintains that the CIA is not subject to the same statutory reporting regime as the Department of Defense. When the CIA conducts hostilities, whether by directing a proxy force or conducting an airstrike, its hostilities are not reported to all of Congress or to the public. Indeed, they are not even reported to the congressional defense or foreign affairs committees. Instead, CIA activities are reported through highly classified notifications to the congressional intelligence committees. In some cases, the president limits these notifications to just eight senior lawmakers.[45]

Building on the 2001 AUMF and the covert action statute, Congress has enacted security cooperation statutes to allow the military to “support” foreign forces whose objectives align with those of the United States. The ways in which these authorities have enabled military operations without specific congressional authorization and with limited oversight are the focus of this report and detailed in the next part.

Finally, the creation, use, and misuse of these statutory authorities came on the heels of a dramatic increase in the president’s claimed authority to conduct military operations without congressional authorization. In the years leading up to September 11, executive branch lawyers formulated a novel theory of self-defense, under which the president could initiate hostilities just shy of an all-out war to protect “important national interests.”[46] The George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations cited this theory in support of unilateral interventions in Somalia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. And the Obama and Trump administrations expanded the theory, using it as the basis for unilateral interventions in Libya and Syria.

These legal authorities — the 2001 AUMF, the presidential finding under the covert action statute, the security cooperation provisions, and the newly expanded conception of constitutional self-defense — coincided with the development of drone and cyber technologies, so-called light-footprint means of using force against adversaries without a clear U.S. presence.

Able to operate under these new authorities and with these new technologies, the Department of Defense, like the CIA, had the tools to conduct hostilities in ways that were nearly imperceptible to Congress and the public. So it did. The military extended the reach of the war on terror across the globe, combating adversaries Congress could not have foreseen in places ranging from the Philippines to Tunisia. At times, it became clear to Congress that the scope of these hostilities far exceeded what it had authorized or even understood.[47] But instead of invoking the War Powers Resolution or passing funding limitations,[48] Congress has allowed this unaccountable behavior to persist.[49]

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Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced to his Bolivian counterpart, Luis Arce Catacora, that his country will once again join the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), from which it withdrew in 2020 by decision of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

The decision will be ratified by Lula during the VII Summit of Heads of State to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 24 January, said the deputy foreign minister, Freddy Mamani.

“This participation of the president of Brazil, Brazil’s return to Celac is very important, this announcement is fundamental for Latin America and the Caribbean and will strengthen the process of regional integration,” Mamani said during a press conference.

On 16 January 2020, the Bolsonaro government announced that it had decided to withdraw Brazil from Celac because it considered that it “gave prominence to non-democratic regimes”.

On the same grounds, earlier, in April 2019, the far-right leader made Brazil’s withdrawal from the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) official. Instead, he integrated Brazil into the Forum for the Progress of South America (Prosur), founded in March 2019 in Chile by right-wing governments and which excludes Venezuela by decision of the conservative governments of the eight member countries.

Unlike Bolsonaro, Lula, who assumed the presidency on 1 January, has a different conception of both blocs and even has a broad predisposition to give them a major regional boost.

In fact, the Bolivian deputy foreign minister said that Arce and Lula talked about “recovering Unasur, on new bases, guaranteeing a clear programmatic and effective sense of the organisation”.

Mamani affirmed that the sub-regional organisation will be “reconstructed” for greater continental integration in line with the deepening of bilateral relations between Brazil and Bolivia, as agreed by Lula and Arce.

At the meeting held by the two heads of state on 2 January, it was decided to “rebuild and deepen the broad agenda of work between Bolivia and Brazil for the benefit of our peoples, including cooperation, investment, trade and environmental issues, among others,” Mamani stressed.

They also analysed actions to strengthen border security and the fight against drug trafficking.

They also discussed various trade agreements, including the purchase and sale of natural gas, the possible export of electricity and the sale of urea and potassium chloride.

Although the leaders addressed the topics in general terms, the vice-chancellor said that each of them would be analysed by work teams from both governments.

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Russia’s crude grades from the Arctic, which used to be sold in Europe before the EU embargo, are now heading East to the two biggest buyers of Russian oil since the invasion of Ukraine—China and India.

Russia’s grades from the Arctic – Arco, Arco/Novy Port, and Varandey – have been selling at deep discounts in China and India as the EU embargo and the G7 price cap have further pushed more Russian crude to customers in Asia that have not joined the Price Cap Coalition, according to trade data and sources cited by Reuters.

“All these Arctic crudes usually go to the EU but now they have to go elsewhere,” a Singapore-based trader told Reuters.

India imported at the end of 2022 its first cargo of Varandey crude from the Timan-Pechora oilfields operated by Lukoil, per sources and vessel-tracking data from Refinitiv.

Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, India was a small marginal buyer of Russian crude oil. After Western buyers started shunning crude from Russia, India became a top destination for Russian oil exports alongside China.

Russia overtook Iraq to become the single-largest oil supplier to India in November, as Indian refiners raced to stock up on Russian oil ahead of the December 5 price cap and associated bans on transportation services for Russia’s crude.

In China, independent refiners have seen their refining margins jump in recent weeks as they have been able to negotiate steeper discounts for their preferred Russian crude grade, ESPO, even if they buy it above the G7 price cap.

While China hasn’t joined the Price Cap Coalition, the fact that a price cap now exists gives the world’s top crude oil importer, as well as other buyers of Russian crude such as India, more bargaining power to negotiate steep discounts for the Russian crude even outside the price cap mechanism, analysts say.

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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

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“The German government has decided to shift the problems that their predecessors created onto our country. To this end, they plan to confiscate Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, Russia‘s lower house of parliament.

Moscow could retaliate with similar measures if Germany decides to use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine rebuild, a senior Russian official warned on Thursday.

“The German government has decided to shift the problems that their predecessors created onto our country. To this end, they plan to confiscate Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament.

“We have the right to take similar actions in relation to assets of Germany and other states,” he said in a Telegram post.

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Israel’s new national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, lost no time in demonstrating who is boss. On Tuesday, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was sworn in, the ultra-nationalist politician marched straight in to the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in the occupied Old City of Jerusalem – probably the most incendiary site in the Middle East.

Ben-Gvir did so despite reports that he had agreed with Netanyahu to delay such a visit for fear of the potentially explosive consequences.

But who will hold him to account for playing with fire? A prime minister who desperately needs Ben-Gvir’s support to stay in power so that Netanyahu can legislate an end to his corruption trial and keep himself out of jail? Or the Israeli police force that Ben-Gvir himself now has unprecedented control over?

The leader of the fascist Jewish Power party used the visit to indicate both to his followers and to Netanyahu that he answers to no one, and that he will not compromise on his own extreme ideology of Jewish supremacism.

The visit sent another message too: Ben-Gvir appears ready to provoke a religious war – one that would demonstrate once and for all the power of his kind of Jewish zealotry and thuggishness to subdue all Muslim opposition. Al-Aqsa could be the powder-keg to ignite such a conflagration.

Ben-Gvir’s visit has passed, at least so far, without a significant Palestinian backlash, although Hamas had reportedly warned beforehand that it would not “sit idly by”, threatening “explosive violence”.

Ben-Gvir was testing the waters. He will surely be back soon, with bigger provocations. Both during and after Israel’s recent general election campaign, he called for Jews to be able to pray at the Muslim holy site, and has said he will demand that Netanyahu institute what he terms “equal rights for Jews” there.

Diplomatic protest

The fear of what Ben-Gvir may do next, unless Netanyahu reins him in, was part of the reason his visit triggered such a storm of diplomatic protest. Jordan, which has formal custodianship of the holy site, called in Israel’s ambassador for a dressing down, while the US, Israel’s patron, roused itself to describe the visit as “unacceptable”. The UAE postponed Netanyahu’s forthcoming visit.

Ben-Gvir will be delighted at such ineffectual reprimands. The precedent he was drawing on was the visit to Al-Aqsa in September 2000 of then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon backed by 1,000 members of Israel’s security forces, over the opposition of the Jerusalem police.

That incursion triggered a Palestinian uprising, the Second Intifada, justifying years of crushing Israeli military repression. Israel used tanks to confine the then Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, to his Ramallah headquarters, while the Israeli army emasculated the Palestinian Authority (PA), effectively reversing the promise of self-rule implicit in the Oslo Accords. Palestinian society was gradually bled of the ability and will to sustain an uprising that cost thousands of lives.

Ben-Gvir might be angling to provoke a similar confrontation to provide a pretext for finishing off what’s left of the PA. There could be a domestic political bonus too: Sharon rode the wave of Jewish nationalism he unleashed right into the prime minister’s office. The Israeli public wanted an uncompromising general and Jewish patriot to pound the Palestinian people into submission.

Already buoyed by a renewed wave of Jewish chauvinism, along with the political legitimacy Netanyahu has conferred on him by ushering his party into government, Ben-Gvir might be hoping to see that scenario play out again.

Rival nationalisms

Israeli media, Arab states and western diplomats have all framed Ben-Gvir’s visit as threatening what is known as the “status quo”: a set of principles agreed in the 19th century, and renewed after Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, to enshrine Muslim sovereignty over the mosque complex and Muslim authorities’ power to regulate access and worship.

The truth, however, is that Israel has been whittling away the status quo at an ever-faster pace since Sharon’s visit. That was why the Israeli general’s incursion sparked an explosion from Palestinians two decades ago, while Ben-Gvir’s, so far at least, has not. Violations of the status quo by extremist Israeli politicians are no longer quite so out of the ordinary.

Perhaps more than any other Israeli leader of his time, Sharon appreciated the degree to which Al-Aqsa had become the symbolic, beating heart of a power play between rival Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms. Encouraging the distinction between national and religious sentiment to be blurred, as he did at Al-Aqsa, helped to unify an Israeli society deeply divided by questions of religion.

Ownership of the mosque complex – or Temple Mount, as Israeli Jews call it, referring to two ancient Jewish temples that supposedly lie beneath the plaza – was seen as the natural corollary, and confirmation, of Jewish title to the land. Or as Sharon put it at the time, the holy site was “the basis of the existence of the Jewish people, and I am not afraid of riots by the Palestinians”.

It was how the ultra-nationalist, secular Sharon redefined the conflict. He made an assertion of Jewish sovereignty over the plaza a prerequisite for any Israeli politician vying for power. After he became prime minister, and in the midst of the Second Intifada, Sharon in 2003 unilaterally enforced access for Jews and other non-Muslims to the site, over the opposition of the waqf, the Muslim religious authorities at Al-Aqsa.

Today, little of the status quo agreement survives. Israeli occupation forces exclusively determine who gets entry to Al-Aqsa. Muslim worship can be limited whenever Israel decides. Palestinians from Gaza, trapped in their enclave by fences and watchtowers, are permanently excluded from the holy site.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers in military fatigues, and religious Jews and settlers, have ready access – and they often use their visits to pray, in stark contravention of the status quo. Increasingly, Israeli security forces storm the mosque at will; such an incident in May 2021 contributed to weeks of violence across the occupied territories and inside Israel.

Master-serf relations

Like Sharon, Ben-Gvir views Al-Aqsa as a supreme nationalist cause. One of his legislators, Zvika Fogel, a former Israeli military commander in charge of Gaza, set out Ben-Gvir’s goal, suggesting it could be achieved without a Palestinian backlash: “We shouldn’t treat his visit as something that will lead to an escalation. Why not see it as part of realising our [Jewish] sovereignty?”

Yet, faced with a weakened Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir must be hoping to push Sharon’s policy still further – not only asserting a principle of Jewish ownership of the holy site, but also entrenching the physical reality of absolute Jewish control.

This would include prioritising Jewish worship, as now happens in Hebron at the Ibrahimi Mosque. It is a model that the settlers who follow Ben-Gvir want repeated at Al-Aqsa, and it also implies the physical partition of Al-Aqsa plaza, mirroring the reality in Hebron.

Such ambitions replicate at al-Aqsa the master-serf relationship that Israel has developed in the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Should Jewish rule over the plaza be contested, the Israeli government could then punish Muslims and ban access, with state police – now under Ben-Gvir’s control – empowered to break into the mosque or any other site on the plaza whenever they deem necessary.

But it does not end there. Like his supporters, Ben-Gvir wants to destroy the Muslim holy site and restore it as a Jewish temple. He said as much last May when he visited Al-Aqsa complex, posting a picture calling for the eradication of the mosque to “establish a synagogue on the mount”.

‘The last war’

For the time being, Ben-Gvir appears to be using his party’s legislators as his mouthpiece, so as not to jeopardise his coalition agreement with Netanyahu. After Tuesday’s visit, Fogel relished the prospect of Hamas retaliating with rocket fire out of Gaza. He said such a showdown “would be worth it because this will be the last war – and after that we can sit and raise doves and all the other beautiful birds that exist”.

Ben-Gvir does not need to set the fire directly at Al-Aqsa. With Israel’s police forces under his command, and with his political ally Bezalel Smotrich in charge of managing the occupation, he has a whole armoury of other ways, particularly in Jerusalem, to inflame the Palestinian population.

Trigger-happy police killings of civilians, settlement expansion, house demolitions, and the building of a cable car route through occupied East Jerusalem to bring Jewish tourists to the foot of Al-Aqsa all have the potential to fire up tensions. Ben-Gvir can also make the lives of Palestinian security prisoners even more miserable, as he promised to do during the elections, provoking hunger strikes.

Palestinian anger often finds its outlet at Al-Aqsa because of the holy site’s role as a religious and nationalist symbol, particularly for a people denied any other symbols of nationhood.

Ben-Gvir’s closest political allies in the Temple Mount movement are already setting their sights on Passover in April, which this year coincides with the middle of Ramadan. They have appealed to the police, as they do every year, to allow them to carry out provocative rituals, such as animal sacrifice, associated with the construction of a Jewish temple in place of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Each year, police try to stop them; but this year, Ben-Gvir will be dictating police policy.

Scholar Tomer Persico, a keen observer of Ben-Gvir’s Kahanist roots, notes that in a 2019 interview, the Jewish Power leader argued that the “big difference” between him and his mentor, extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, was that “they give us a microphone”, while Kahane was shunned by the Israeli political establishment.

That was three years ago. Ben-Gvir has rapidly become the new mainstream in Israel. Today, with his ministerial powers and a national platform to amplify his incitement, it is only a matter of time before he sets things alight.

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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net

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Mounting evidence shows the COVID shots are destroying people’s immune systems and are triggering turbo-charged cancers

A survey by Steve Kirsch found sudden death is the No. 1 cause of death among those under the age of 65 who got the COVID jab

Myocarditis as a cause of death is now registering across all age ranges but only for the vaccinated. Cardiac-related deaths are also significantly elevated among younger people (under 65) who got the jab compared to their unjabbed peers

Recent research shows repeated jabs trigger a switch in the types of antibodies your body produces and lower your ability to clear viruses. By switching from spike-specific neutralizing IgG antibodies to IgG4 antibodies, your body switches from tumor suppression mode into tumor progression mode

In addition to the potential for cancer cells to run amok, IgG4 dominance may also have severe autoimmune implications, as the COVID jab spike protein share similarities with human proteins

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Evidence showing the COVID shots are a public health disaster keeps mounting. In late December 2022, Steve Kirsch¹ and Jessica Rose,² Ph.D., both published Substack articles detailing some of the latest evidence showing the shots are destroying people’s immune systems and have triggered an avalanche of turbo-charged cancers.

Kirsch’s article³ features results from a recent survey he conducted. It included four questions: age, whether the deceased was jabbed or not, year of death and cause of death. While the number of responses is low, major insights can still be gleaned by looking at the trends.

First, we have the baseline data from 2020, which show cancer was the No. 1 killer of Americans younger than 65, followed by hospital treatment for COVID. Turbo-charged cancers accounted for one-ninth of the cancer reports, and there were no reports of death from myocarditis.

Among seniors over the age of 65, preexisting conditions were the top cause of death in 2020. Cancer was second, COVID infection third and cardiac events fourth. There were no turbo-charged cancer deaths, nor any myocarditis deaths. Kirsch then gets into the differences between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed in 2021 and 2022.

What the Unvaxxed Died of in 2021 and 2022

In 2021 and 2022, the primary cause of death for people 65 and younger was hospital treatment for COVID. Incidences of sudden death, pulmonary embolism and turbo-charged cancers were all low, and there were no unknown causes of death, nor any myocarditis deaths.

Click to enlarge.

The same went for people older than 65. Hospital treatment for COVID was the No. 1 killer. Heart attacks, turbo-charged cancer and sudden death were all low, and there were no deaths from myocarditis.

Click to enlarge.

What the COVID-Jabbed Died of in 2021 and 2022

Among the COVID-jabbed aged 65 and younger, sudden death was the No. 1 cause of death in 2021 and 2022. The second was cardiac-related death and cancer was third. Importantly, the incidence of turbo-charged cancer among the jabbed was significant in this group, and myocarditis killed more than COVID-19.

Click to enlarge.

Among those older than 65, cancer was the No. 1 cause of death, and the turbo-charged cancer rate is “huge compared to those without the vaccine.” Sudden death was also significantly elevated.

Click to enlarge.

Stark Difference in Cancer Deaths Between Jabbed and Unjabbed

Kirsch summarizes the three most stunning differences between the jabbed and unjabbed:⁴

How COVID Jabs Raise Risk of Infections and Cancer

Exploding cancer rates is precisely what you would expect from a drug that impairs and destroys your immune system, which is what the COVID jabs do. The scientific paper “Innate Immune Suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccinations”⁵ describes how the COVID shots suppress your innate immune system by inhibiting the type-1 interferon pathway, which is the first-stage response to all viral infections.

The reason type-1 interferon is suppressed is because it responds to viral RNA, and there’s no viral RNA in the COVID shot. The RNA is modified to look like human RNA, so the interferon pathway doesn’t get triggered. As a result, the COVID jab makes you more susceptible to infections.

One mechanism by which the jab causes cancer has to do with the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein obliterates 90% of the DNA repair mechanism in lymphocytes,⁶ a type of white blood cell that helps your body fight infections and chronic diseases such as cancer. That’s bad enough, yet that’s just one mechanism of many.

How the Jab Lowers Your Viral Clearance Capacity

Recent research^7,8 also shows that repeated jabs trigger a switch in the types of antibodies your body produces and lower your ability to clear viruses. Jessica Rose reviews these findings in her Substack article:⁹

“A paper was published in Science Immunology on December 22, 2022 entitled: ‘Class switch towards non-inflammatory, spike-specific IgG4 antibodies after repeated SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination’¹⁰ …

[It] explains in wonderful detail how a class of antibody that commands a non-inflammatory response (more like tolerizing) is prominent in people who have been repeatedly injected with the modified mRNA COVID-19 injectable products.

Translation: Instead of the intended pool of spike-specific neutralizing IgG antibodies being dominant in multiply-injected people, a pool of antibodies associated with spike-specific tolerance are dominant in multiply-injected people.

Besides the tolerizing capacity, they also showed that the phagocytic enabling capacities were much reduced overall. These activities lead to clearance of viral pathogens. Reduce them → reduction in viral clearance capacity …

To be clear, this wasn’t a ‘maybe the antibody profile was a little different’ … This was a ‘whoa there’s a 48,075% increase in spike-specific antibodies between the 2nd and 3rd injections …

IgG4 antibodies among all spike-specific IgG antibodies rose on average from 0.04% shortly after the second vaccination to 19.27% after the third … [I]mportantly, that is not a typical consequence of repeat antigen exposure from either natural infections and vaccination.”

Spike Overexposure Also Opens the Door for Cancer

As noted by Substack author Brian Mowrey:¹¹

“This is a totally bonkers thing for an anti-spike-protein B cell to decide to do, and reflects B cell over-exposure to spike, which reflects super-excess production of spike by the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA code …

It is not normal to make IgG4 when repeat encounter with a virus is spaced out over a lifetime, but injection-prompted antigen exposure promotes this response, and mRNA vaccines accelerate this effect …

There is no reason to predict that this would be ‘good’ in an antiviral response … ‘Wearing out’ the immune response in this way is believed to contribute to the development of tolerance against tumors.”

So, to summarize the effects in layman’s terms, the switch from spike-specific neutralizing IgG antibodies to IgG4 antibodies switches your body from tumor suppression mode into tumor progression mode, as cancerous cells now can evade your immune system. You become “tumor tolerant” as your immune system is no longer scavenging for and eliminating cancer cells. Mowrey also points out that:¹²

“Once a B cell has switched to IgG4, it cannot switch to any other IgG subclass, as the genes for all those other base designs have been discarded. All future clones of this B cell will code for IgG4 receptor/antibody for the antigen in question.”

What Other Health Effects May Result?

For clarification, IgG4 is a subclass of the immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody type that responds to repeated and/or long-term exposure to an antigen. The mRNA shot evaluated here was that of Pfizer, and it was compared against Janssen’s viral vector-based shot. Moderna’s shot was not included. Notably, these results were not found among people who got Janssen’s shot, only Pfizer’s Comirnaty jab.

As noted by Rose:¹³

“… the bottom line here is that the Comirnaty product … induces a shift away from a viral clearing to a tolerance-inducing antibody class, and this is not the status quo for traditional vaccines or natural infections. The main problem here is … we have no idea of the effects of this ‘effect.'”

That said, we can look at what happens in people with IgG4-related disease, and start formulating hypotheses from there. As explained by Rose, a hallmark of IgG4-related disease is fibrosis, i.e., tissue scarring, which can lead to organ dysfunction, organ failure and even death if left untreated.

Rose is now researching the possible links between this antibody switching and the stringy white deposits found in COVID-jabbed people who died. Might it be a new form of connective tissue disease?

In addition to the potential for cancer cells to run amok (as discussed in the section above), IgG4 dominance may also have severe autoimmune implications seeing how the COVID jab spike protein share similarities with human proteins.

“Molecular mimicry has been shown¹⁴ in multiple publications to be a potential problem with regard to the spike protein whereby it has been shown to share motifs with human proteins,” Rose writes.¹⁵ “What this means is that autoimmunity potential against these human proteins is clear and present.

In the context of this recent publication showing a dominant IgG4 pool, I have to wonder what the implications of this dominant pool are for molecular mimicry. Are these IgG4 antibodies capable of tolerizing in the context of our own protein?”

Resources for Those Injured by the COVID Jab

If you got one or more jabs and suffered an injury, first and foremost, never ever take another COVID booster, another mRNA gene therapy shot or regular vaccine. You need to end the assault on your system.

The same goes for anyone who has taken one or more COVID jabs and had the good fortune of not experiencing debilitating side effects. Your health may still be impacted long-term, so don’t take any more shots.

When it comes to treatment, there are still more questions than answers, and most doctors are clueless about what to do — in part because they never bothered to give early treatment for COVID and therefore don’t understand how different medicines and supplements impact the spike protein.

So far, it seems like many of the treatments that worked against severe COVID-19 infection also help ameliorate adverse effects from the jab. This makes sense, as the toxic, most damaging part of the virus is the spike protein, and that’s what your whole body is producing if you got the jab.

Two doctors who have started tackling the treatment of COVID jab injuries in earnest include Dr. Michelle Perro (DrMichellePerro.com), whom I’ve interviewed on this topic, and Dr. Pierre Kory (DrPierreKory.com).

Both agree that eliminating the spike protein your body is now continuously producing is a primary task. Perro’s preferred remedy for this is hydroxychloroquine, while Kory’s is ivermectin. Both of these drugs bind and thereby facilitate the removal of spike protein.

As a member of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), Kory helped develop the FLCCC’s post-vaccine treatment protocol called I-RECOVER. Since the protocol is continuously updated as more data become available, your best bet is to download the latest version straight from the FLCCC website at covid19criticalcare.com¹⁶ (hyperlink to the correct page provided above).

The World Health Council has also published lists of remedies that can help inhibit, neutralize and eliminate spike protein. Inhibitors that prevent spike protein from binding to your cells include Prunella vulgaris, pine needle tea, emodin, neem, dandelion extract and the drug ivermectin.

Spike protein neutralizers, which prevent the spike from damaging cells, include N-acetylcysteine (NAC), glutathione, fennel tea, star anise tea, pine needle tea, St. John’s wort, comfrey tea and vitamin C. A March 2022 review paper¹⁷ suggests combating the neurotoxic effects of the spike protein using the flavonoids luteolin and quercetin.

Time-restricted eating (TRE) and/or sauna therapy can also help eliminate toxic proteins by stimulating autophagy. Several additional detox remedies can be found in “World Council for Health Reveals Spike Protein Detox.”

Other Helpful Treatments and Remedies

Other treatments and remedies that may be helpful for COVID jab injuries include:

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We’re witnessing a fascinating thing: Congress is actually debating and voting on something.

Remarkable!

For the first time in a century—and only the second time since the Civil War—the vote for the next Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has entered multiple ballots.

To replace Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats have put forward Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a walk-the-line party man.

Jeffries has supported curtailing the war on Yemen and has cautiously questioned the the American military occupation of Syria. But he’s a reliable yes-man for every Pentagon budget, and he’s committed to U.S. military intervention in Ukraine (the springboard for World War III).

This vote was intended to be a shoe-in for Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican House Minority Leader.

McCarthy—who already tried and failed to become Speaker in 2015—is bought and paid for shill of the War Party and military-industrial complex.

When Kevin McCarthy hears about a new country we’re bombing illegally, he gets dollar signs in his eyes. He has no saving grace when it comes to an America First foreign policy.

For pete’s sake, four years ago his nominating speech for Minority Leader was given by the reptile Liz Cheney herself!

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a small cadre of Freedom Caucus members are opposing his coronation to the speakership.

On Tuesday, on the first vote, there were an assortment of names put forward. The one with the strongest showing in opposition was Andy Biggs of Arizona.

Rep. Biggs is a patriot, and principled defender of the U.S. Constitution. He’s a signer of my organization’s Congressional War Powers Pledge, where he swore to not support a war that was not first explicitly authorized by a vote of Congress.

He has kept that pledge.

Just a few weeks ago, Rep. Biggs told Judge Andrew Napolitano,

“These AUMFs, which I believe are unconstitutional to begin with, the AUMFs are being bastardized as we speak and they’re being used in every which way. And effectively, I gotta put it this way. We are fighting a proxy war with Russia today in the Ukraine. And there is absolutely no authority for that…”

That’s the sort of America First perspective that’s never entered Kevin McCarthy’s tiny mind.

On the second and third vote, the dissenters coalesced around conservative workhorse Jim Jordan of Ohio, who’s officially supporting McCarthy for the speakership.

Now, as I write, the House has finalized its sixth round of voting and has adjourned until noon today.

Twenty determined members have settled on Byron Donalds of Florida as their choice.

Rep. Donalds has only served one-term in the U.S. House, so it’s difficult to ascertain a full-scope view of his foreign policy.

He has voted to repeal the 2002 AUMF against Iraq, but last year supported giving even more military supplies to Ukraine than Joe Biden countenanced. Over the summer, like dozens of other Republicans, he flip-flopped and now opposes further aid.

Personally, I find the legislative process refreshing. This is how the people’s house is supposed to function!

(Maybe the whole country would be better off if they just vote on the Speakership a couple thousand times for the next two years).

In the meantime, while Beltway organizations sit on their hands waiting to see who they’ll be taking out to lunch in the new session, Bring Our Troops Home has continued our labor to pass Defend the Guard.

With this bill, we will prevent our National Guard’s deployment into illegal, undeclared wars and starve imperial Washington of manpower.

State Senator Eric Brakey of Maine, one of our most intelligent and committed supporters, has introduced Defend the Guard and is waiting to receive a formal bill number.

We’ve had Defend the Guard presented before a Maine House committee back in 2021, which you can watch.

I’ll let you in to a little secret: whoever becomes the next Speaker of the U.S. House, the swamp is not going to get drained. The War Party will not be kicked off its roost so easily.

But in state governments, closer to voters and the beating heart of our once proud republic, we can make real progress. We can fix our broken foreign policy.

Bring Our Troops Home is not working around the clock just for a dog and pony show. We’re meeting with legislators, gathering veterans, and educating the public to pass actionable legislation to end our endless wars.

When we go to committee again, and hopefully a floor vote—not just in Maine but in over thirty states in 2023—I need to know that we have your support.

To find out what you can do to defend the integrity of your state’s National Guard, visit DefendTheGuard.US

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Dan McKnight is a 13-year veteran of the military, including service in the United States Marine Corps, United States Army, and the Idaho Army National Guard. He is founder and chairman of Bring Our Troops Home. Follow him on Twitter @DanMcKnight30 and @TroopsHomeUS

Featured image is from TLI

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***

My sister in Canada once had an ardent although not excessive interest in British royalty. She’s followed successive generations of The Windsors from the 1940s into the 21st Century. Now, she says, that’s over. First she refused to indulge the latest ‘Crown’ film series; now she’s determinedly ignoring the newest BritRoyal wrangles and confessions displayed on Netflix’s ‘Harry and Meghan’ run. 

I’m joining the boycott. Not because I might not sympathize with a young couple’s reported difficulties with their family. But because they have taken on a narrative that they cannot possibly control, one that simply provides a captivated public with a new chapter in an endless loop; it’s unarguably mere entertainment. So, are they exploiting the family name? Or is the media machine exploiting them?

However savvy the exiled young family may appear, however trusted the advisors who arrange their appearances, however candid, perceptive and valid their interpretations of BritRoyal life, do they really believe their story can rise beyond a quotidian media event to feed the public’s insatiable mythomania?

I admit I found some of the stories presently circulating irresistible: ‘The Crown’ drama and the countless documentaries about the doomed and adored Diana: cheated wife, cool mother, pitiable sister, shunned daughter-in-law, public martyr. All are supplemented with film forays through the Windsor family tree, each limb with its jealousies, intrigues and mysteries: the royal sisters, Margaret and Elizabeth; a new Channel 4 British production ‘Prince Andrew: The Musical’; the exiled recluse, Princess Alice of Battenberg, mother of the Duke of Edinburgh. Royal historians proffer appropriate dignity and authority while doddering cousins, eyewitnesses to the royals as adorable infants, are pulled from retirement to add a kinder touch.

Controversies from the 2021 Oprah TV interview highlighting the problems of the likable scion Harry and his American wife Meghan were preempted by June’s week-long spectacle, the funerary ritual of Elizabeth II. But the current docuseries, with its added layer of Sussex-Windsor confessions, must have been underway before the matriarch’s royal body was cold. As if Harry’s and Meghan’s tattling would not create a backlash, this week we have Harry offering a footnote for the public to chew on.

I’m inclined to concur with my sister’s decision to dismiss further portrayals of BritRoyals. Whatever insights they may offer about dysfunctional family realities and the plague of press attention they suffer, there’s no definitive truth here, certainly no winner. Whichever side we may come down on after hearing revelations by the Duke and Duchess, all this is a sort of pulp biopic.

This enchanting couple has succumbed to a powerful drug—celebrity. They may win sympathy; they may fill their de-royaled coffer (reputedly $100 M for the series); they may feel vindicated. But they’re no more than itinerant celebrity entertainers.

Wasn’t Harry’s mother Diana, whose victimization he himself invokes, a casualty of press obsession with celebrity? Not only was the ‘People’s Princess’ doomed; she fell victim to the myth that she might set the record straight. Perhaps she believed that the adoration showered on her would affirm the inviolability of her truth. Harry, like Diana, is turning to that same media monster, perhaps believing it’s the court of true justice. And like Diana, he may be entangled in a web where it’s hard to distinguish clash from collusion. He may never resurface.

Remember Diana’s cunningly-arranged 1995 BBC interview? She was lured into that after she’d been maneuvered to provide the text for Diana: Her True Story­­ — the in-her-own-words book by Andrew Morton. Now Harry, insisting his mother’s woeful history will not be repeated, is about to release his ‘raw, unflinching’ (to use the book’s promotional blurb) memoir, Spare.

Great British authors, from Shakespeare to Hilary Mantel, have created complex, engaging, irresistible portraits of the British aristocracy and monarchy for public consumption. Their plots and characters derive from royal competitions and jealousies, family rivalries, church and state intrigue, misogyny and sedition, mental illness, betrayal, racism, abuse, thwarted ambitions and false claimants. The British House of Windsor provides today’s creative minds with abundant material for our binge-watching and tabloid journalism. Doubtless, novels and plays will follow.

The unfortunate aspect of the current brouhaha created by Harry and Meghan is that as exiled-royals they have joined the media business—Meghan’s pre-royal life was in TV drama; she now hosts a podcast. Yet it appears she and her husband fail to understand that the business is so much bigger than them.

We wait for a wise counselor to bring them up to speed on the vagaries of digital data, polarization of news reporting, the business of media criticism and the genre of fact-checking.

And what about their American children and those young royal cousins across the pond?

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Barbara Nimri Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon. 

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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“Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”

By Barbara Nimri Aziz

A century ago Yogmaya and Durga Devi, two women champions of justice, emerged from a remote corner of rural Nepal to offer solutions to their nation’s social and political ills. Then they were forgotten.

Years after their demise, in 1980 veteran anthropologist Barbara Nimri Aziz first uncovered their suppressed histories in her comprehensive and accessible biographies. Revelations from her decade of research led to the resurrection of these women and their entry into contemporary Nepali consciousness.

This book captures the daring political campaigns of these rebel women; at the same time it asks us to acknowledge their impact on contemporary feminist thinking. Like many revolutionaries who were vilified in their lifetimes, we learn about the true nature of these leaders’ intelligence, sacrifices, and vision during an era of social and economic oppression in this part of Asia.

After Nepal moved from absolute monarchy to a fledgling democracy and history re-evaluated these pioneers, Dr. Aziz explores their legacies in this book.

Psychologically provocative and astonishingly moving, “Yogmaya and Durga Devi” is a seminal contribution to women’s history.

Click here to order.

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***

Eleven months after the Russians acted to provide a military protection force for Russians living in western Ukraine, or alternatively, 11 and a half months after Kiev and Zelensky stepped up attacks on their “own people” in the Donbass, presumably for their own good, what have we learned?

People of the world have gained new perspectives on things like gross US and NATO hypocrisy, the ability of politicians and diplomats to lie to your face, and in writing, and the ability of any number of countries exist and persist despite their ostensibly and possibly corruptly elected leadership being infirm, decrepit, insane, criminal and/or widely known for playing pianos with their dicks.

Life goes on – money gets made – people vote with their feet – and politicians hold their index fingers in the air to determine what next.

The WEF elite meets in Davos this month.  Many of the topics revolve around how to rebuild Ukraine, and all the “right” investors will reserve their tickets on that 2023 gravy train.  If 2022 was a profitable US/NATO/EU/UK military and logistics laundry and boondoggle in Ukraine, 2023 is looking to be an even bigger operation.  Quadrillions will be spent – as time runs out on the dollar and dollar-pegged currencies.

After destruction of the electrical and industrial infrastructure, the collapse of the military capability and the departure of nearly a third of the population– 8 million to Europe, 3 million choosing Russian-protected independence in the Donbass – Ukraine is both a carcass for European and American vultures, as well as a nearly clean slate for a delightful WEF experiment.

Economic collapse in a small country with natural resource and agricultural wealth, accompanied by a domestic political-cultural crisis, and a weakened national military makes for good times, if you are a Davos believer, a US foreign policy designer, or just a good old-fashioned Rodney Dangerfield of a neighbor who has done so much for Ukraine already, and still can’t get any respect.

Medvedev’s predictions are entertaining, but he is not lying about Poland and western Ukraine.  Just last week, Germany rudely denied Poland’s demand for $1.3 trillion in WWII reparations.  Poland may be forced to take their reparations directly out of Germany’s current bestie.  It would actually be a good deal for a Germany impoverished by green socialism and bloodied by self-flagellation.  Trade western Ukraine for the past “debt” and Poland’s trouble, and now we have the makings of an excellent resolution of the small European war of 2022.

Poland is NATO – so the wheezing hawks get a little bit of NATO-ized “Ukraine.” The Donbass and Crimea are Russian, associating with the Russian Federation as they see fit.  But how can we ensure the graft, the grift, the laundering and the wet dreams of the WEF?  Perhaps a small enclave in the middle of Ukraine can be set aside as that “big Israel” of Europe that Zelensky has offered – a place for global thievery and intrigue, a playground for all types.  Perhaps this New Ukraine could exist on transfer taxes on oil and gas, become a convenient capitol laundry for dying Western currencies, a host for US and EU government cryptocurrency?  A green casino, or a Maz Kanata’s Castle?  Towards this end, Zelensky has already thoughtfully destroyed the press, the police and the church. What a happy accident!

Zelensky, and his western enablers and sponsors, have done all they can to pave the way for a larger Poland and a New Ukraine – all for the price of 3 or 4 million Russians who, in flying new flags, will only slightly enhance Russia’s geography and economy.

We are seeing a new shift in the elite conversation.  Two months ago it was punishing and wearing down Russia to defend precious Ukrainian democracy; today, is it “rebuilding” and refunding a post-war Ukraine, with a sudden need to pay back Poland for seven decades of bad faith.  Yet, the western media is still reporting that Ukraine is winning.  Maybe that’s part of the plan.

The wind over Ukraine stinks of dead animals and smoke, and the organized rape is just beginning.  On the bright side, global war may be postponed.  That the West’s latest victim is of the Christian European northern hemisphere – and not part of a Crusade narrative against an alien and godless “other” – should set off alarm bells everywhere.

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Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, farmer and aspiring anarcho-capitalist. She ran for Congress in Virginia’s 6th district in 2012.

Featured image is from Alexey Fedorenko/Shutterstock

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***

The Zaporizhzhia region in south eastern Ukraine houses the largest nuclear power station in Europe – the Zaporizhzhia NPP – one of the ten largest such plants in the world. It is currently in an intensely fought war zone. Dr Philip Webber, SGR, explains some of the risks of radiation releases that this poses, both nationally and internationally.

About the Zaporizhzhia site

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant [1] is part of a huge industrial complex some 8km square. It houses six large (1 gigawatt or GW) VVER-1000 Russian designed and built nuclear power reactors, [2] three thermal (coal- and gas-powered) power stations, and the purpose-built city of Enerhodar, which was built in 1970 to house 11,000 power plant workers and a total population of around 53,000. [3]  Before the war, the nuclear plant supplied about 20% of Ukraine’s electricity – widely used for heating in large apartment blocks. The reactors’ containment structures [4] house the nuclear core and used or ‘spent’ nuclear fuel in cooling pools. After five years, this spent fuel is transferred to dry storage casks nearby, which are air-cooled. In addition, huge external cooling ponds – which are continuously sprayed with water – store many older used nuclear fuel rods. The three thermal plants were shut down in May 2022 having run out of fuel due to the Russian invasion.

The Zaporizhzhia power site is much larger than the biggest UK nuclear sites such as Sellafield or Hinkley Point – either of these would fit within just the area of the cooling ponds at Zaporizhzhia. The entire complex is situated on a flat promontory on the south-east bank of the Dnipro River which is 5km wide at that point. [5]  The site is 50km south west of the city of Zaporizhzhia, also on the south bank of the Dnipro. Kherson is about 150km to the south west – but on the other bank of the river.

Under occupation

The reactor site has been occupied by Russian military forces since March 2022 – with Ukrainian forces in control of the opposite river bank. The original Ukrainian Energoatom plant operators are being forced to keep working there under conditions of extreme stress. These stresses include excessively long shifts, extreme concerns about family safety, and even the arrest of the plant chief. Various parts of the site have been hit by artillery shells and warheads from rocket-launched missiles over several months. Photographs show cratering and rocket tubes embedded in the ground. Both sides accuse the other of deliberately targeting and hitting the plant site. As a result of major safety concerns, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has placed monitoring teams at the site and nearby, but sourcing reliable information remains extremely difficult. [6]

The local electricity grid is very extensive and extremely vulnerable. Before the war, several high voltage (HV) power lines extended east from the nuclear and thermal plants to what is now Russian-occupied Ukraine via extensive electricity sub-stations, whilst one large HV line connected directly across the Dnipro to the opposite bank – under the control of Ukraine – via Marhanets just 15km away. Artillery shells can easily be fired over 40km whilst rocket launchers can reach even further, so the entire area is within range of both Russian and Ukrainian forces. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the IAEA continue to report that connections to the electricity grid keep being destroyed by artillery shelling which are then intermittently repaired. Repairs are very difficult owing to a severe shortage of supplies such as power transformers, insulators, cabling and HV circuit breakers. So far, neither the containment buildings for the reactors, nor the spent fuel assemblies in canisters, nor the large cooling ponds appear to have been seriously breached, but there is no guarantee this will continue to be the case.

The plants remain in a highly contested conflict area. The IAEA and UN have called for the plants to be placed in a demilitarised safety zone. No such zone has yet been set up. It is perhaps worth saying that any such demilitarised zone would have to include the city of Enerhodar because of its intimate connection and proximity to the nuclear power plants and power lines that traverse the entire area. Creating such an exclusion zone at the centre of a high intensity war zone is extremely difficult and has been rarely achieved in other conflicts.

Emergency shutdown

It is extremely difficult to secure a reliable picture of what is actually going on at the Zaporizhzhia power generation site. The most reliable and consistent reporting in December 2022 appears to be that all of the Zaporizhzhia reactors were ‘scrammed’ – put into emergency shutdown – as the entire Ukrainian power grid was hit by multiple Russian strikes on 23rd November 2022. All of Ukraine’s other three reactor sites – Rivne, South Ukraine and Kmelnytskyi – were also scrammed. These three latter plants are still under Ukrainian control being outside of the Russian occupied areas east of the Dnipro River. In a scram, the control rods are fully inserted into the reactor, emergency back-up diesel generators are activated for core cooling, and thus the reactor cores gradually reduce to low levels of nuclear fission. According the Petro Kotin, President of Energoatom, [7] after the emergency shutdowns, two of the six Zaporizhzhia reactors were restarted to generate sufficient power to enable the emergency diesel generators to be taken off-line and to provide some power to the city of Enerhodar. However, restarting a cold shutdown reactor is very far from routine in the middle of a war zone without reliable external power supplies. Emergency shutdowns and restarts place large strains on the steam generation circuit pipework and valves making equipment failures more likely.

What if the cooling fails?

Any nuclear reactor, for safe operation, needs to be connected to an electricity supply to provide a reliable source of emergency core cooling power. Without such active cooling from pumped water, the reactor core will eventually overheat to dangerous levels. Outside the reactor cores, radioactive decay in spent fuel continues, releasing heat inside the reactor containment structure, the dry storage casks, and the external ponds. Any failures of, or threats to, electricity supplies create serious emergency situations. Because of this danger, each reactor has emergency diesel-fired electricity generators with around 10 days of fuel. [8]  Ultimately, without active cooling powered by the grid, and once back-up diesel generators run out of fuel, core temperatures would rise uncontrollably. This would lead first to hydrogen gas release, then explosions, and ultimately, runaway core meltdowns breaching the core containment.

This is what happened at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in 2011 [9] – when the cores in three reactors could not be cooled, large volumes of hydrogen gas were released into the containment structures, which then exploded, releasing highly radioactive materials into the environment – mainly as gases and vapours. After a few days, the reactor cores reached the melting points of the nuclear fuels and these highly radioactive molten materials burned down through the lower regions of the reactor vessels. This situation also has similarities with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster – the site of which is now part of Ukraine (and was occupied briefly by Russian troops early during the invasion).

In a reactor core of 1GW size, as those at Zaporizhzhia, if the cooling system breaks down, hydrogen explosions would occur after 8 to 12 hours. After about two days, the reactor core would become hot enough to burn through the base of the reactor vessel. [10]

Cooling for the reactor cores and spent fuel storage relies on several factors: a reliable supply of water; a reliable supply of power for the cooling pumps; working pumps; and staff to conduct any repairs and maintain the cooling systems. Without a reliable connection to the electricity grid, the only source of power for the pumps are, as mentioned, the back-up generators. With all of these factors now under threat, the risk of a reactor containment breach due to cooling failure is high. [11]

Other risks result from the ongoing conflict. Whilst an artillery shell or conventional cruise missile strike is unlikely to breach the reactor core containment directly, the threat is much greater to the integrity of over 3,000 spent fuel assemblies stored locally in concrete containers. Artillery, or a cruise missile could easily breach any of these containers releasing highly radioactive materials. This in turn could make part of the site – for example, cooling circuitry or fuel supplies – too dangerous to manage, which would lead to an even more serious core failure.

The possible effects of a nuclear disaster

There are a wide range of possible disaster scenarios.

Firstly, considering a meltdown of one or more reactor cores, the most comparable reactor accident so far has been the Fukushima plant radiation releases following the Great East Japan Earthquake and its subsequent tsunami in 2011. This led to an initial obligatory exclusion zone of 20km radius around the plant with 30km radius stay-at-home and no-fly zones and finally a larger zone extending 40km to the north west. Within a year, some people were permitted to return home within the 20km zone, whilst others with higher radiation levels were restricted for five years after the disaster, and a 30-year clean up period was envisaged. The Fukushima experience however does not give one high confidence that future nuclear disasters may be better managed. Following the meltdowns, the Japanese authorities did not coordinate information about radiation properly. For example, residents were evacuated from one area to another which in fact had higher levels of radiation contamination. [12]  There were multiple failures including a lack of evacuation planning and deliberate restriction of information.

Establishing the levels of radiation requires monitoring over-flights – in the Fukushima case, these were undertaken by the US military. Such flights would be highly dangerous and perhaps impossible in a war zone, so it would be extremely difficult for anyone to gather accurate information about the radiation levels on the ground. This would make any emergency planning very difficult from the outset.

A further difficulty arising from the conflict is that emergency responses such as evacuation of population, distribution of iodine tablets or provision of emergency medical treatment would be very difficult to coordinate, especially as no one authority would be able to take charge of the situation. Reactor crises require rapid, coordinated and well-organised recovery measures including evacuation, emergency measures to reduce radiation, suppress fires etc. These would be unlikely to be possible further increasing the impacts of any radiation release.

The most likely risk scenario is a breach of spent fuel held in canisters or cooling ponds outside of the reactor core containment structure. This spent fuel is still highly radioactive and vulnerable to missiles, shells and rocket strikes which could spread radiation directly or start fires spreading radiation. An impact by an aircraft is also a significant risk due to the highly inflammable aircraft fuel onboard.

What if a nuclear weapon were used?

At Zaporizhzhia, the large amounts of spent fuel storage make this risk even worse. Fallout would create a lethal radiation risk across the entire plant site and city of Enerhodar. Risks downwind would be highly dependent on the wind direction, speed and any rainfall, but could threaten lethal dose rates in Marhanets and Nikopol (population 100,000) only 15km away. Lethal radiation doses could be experienced at least 60km downwind. [14]  This could potentially include the city of Zaporizhzhia itself, which had a pre-war population of 750,000. This would present a completely unmanageable evacuation requirement in peacetime let alone in the middle of an intense war. Depending on the dose rates, some areas may need to be avoided for years to decades. This was a major problem after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 with a 30km radius exclusion zone still in place over 30 years later.

In the case of a larger nuclear weapon (e.g. 1,000kT), even larger potentially lethal radiation zones would be created up to 550km in extent and 100km wide. [15]  Again, the primary source of radiation risk would be the reactor products, although in this case, combined with major blast and fire damage across a 5km radius.

Impacts in a war zone

Both the risk of a nuclear disaster and the consequences of it are multiplied in a war zone. In Ukraine, the population are already suffering intense pressure, strain and casualties due to direct impacts such as widespread Russian bombardment with artillery and missiles. Continued attacks on the energy infrastructure are leading to widespread power outages, water shortages, cold homes and huge damage to vital infrastructure such as hospitals and access to medical care. These acts already amount to widespread breaches of international humanitarian law, and are contributing to an as yet uncertain death toll amongst the civilian population.

Any nuclear accident leading to a significant release of radiation would further escalate consequences by adding yet another layer of uncertainty and danger combined with extreme difficulty in responding to an emergency. Coordination of effort cannot be achieved in the middle of an intense conflict; within Ukraine, comprehensive radiation monitoring would be extremely difficult or impossible and either side would doubt any information that was produced. Any of the more severe accident scenarios could result in radiation impacts outside of the borders of Ukraine including the EU, Russia and Belarus. In the case of Chernobyl these led to restrictions on some food stuffs over very wide areas.

The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the existence of nuclear plants in any war zone creates a whole new range of risks and dangers as the maintenance of safe operation relies on expert management, reliable supplies of vital materials such as diesel, and a connection to a working grid. Nuclear power and conflict (or environmental disaster such as recent flooding in Pakistan or drought in France) are mutually incompatible. For this reason, some commentators have likened nuclear reactors to giant landmines that can be ‘detonated’ in war in a disaster impossible to contain or effectively manage. The other three Ukraine reactor sites are also at high risk due to damage to the electricity grid and have already been subject to emergency shutdown due to such damage. The attacks on the electricity supplies also create problems and risks for neighbouring Moldova which also faces a cold winter as it obtains its electrical power from the Ukrainian grid via Russian-controlled Transnistria. [16]

Any conflict highlights how our modern society now relies on a wide range of infrastructure: energy; clean water; medical and social care; and other public services such as housing and transport. Wars disrupt all of these as they become deliberate military targets in the attempt to disrupt the resources that support frontline troops and to break the resolve of the civilian population. This has been the case for centuries and continues regrettably with much more destructive weaponry today. [17]  Other recent examples of the targeting of civilians and vital infrastructure include conflicts in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and several ongoing conflicts across the horn of Africa. That today, in Europe, yet another conflict is seeing deliberate attacks on civilian targets including highly vulnerable nuclear power plants, water supplies and the electricity grid is yet another example of how vital it is to find peaceful solutions to conflict and how ultimately military action creates long-lasting destruction that will take decades of post-conflict rebuilding and many generations to heal.

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Dr Philip Webber is Chair of Scientists for Global Responsibility. He has written widely on the risks of nuclear weapons and nuclear power – including co-authoring the book London After the Bomb. He spent part of his career working as an emergency planner in local government.

Notes

[1] Wikipedia (2022a). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Plant

[2] The VVR reactors are not only Russian designed and built but also supplied with enriched uranium from Russia. Despite much publicised sanctions, 20% of the nuclear fuel used by the EU is still supplied by Russia. No2NuclearPower (2022). 2 December. https://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/news/nuclear-fuel-3-12-22/

[3] Wikipedia (2022b). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enerhodar

[4] A reactor containment structure is a massive concrete and steel structure designed to contain intense radiation and superheated steam circuit pipework and valves protecting the highly radioactive reactor core.

[5] The river is dammed in several places, so strictly speaking the body of water to the north of Zaporizhzhia is part of the extensive Kakhovka reservoir 240km long and up to 23km wide.

[6] IAEA (2022). Director General Statement on Situation in Ukraine, 20 November. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-128-iaea-director-general-statement-on-situation-in-ukraine

[7] The Observer (2022). 27 November. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/26/fears-for-all-ukraines-nuclear-plants-after-emergency-shutdowns

[8] Electricity Info (2022). 9 October. https://electricityinfo.org/news/ukraine-zaporizhzhia/

[9] Wikipedia (2022c). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster

[10] Wikipedia (2022d). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_meltdown (also see note 13)

[11] Popovych Z, Bondar D, Ramana M (2022). 7 October. https://thebulletin.org/2022/10/zaporizhzhia-on-the-brink-how-deteriorating-conditions-at-the-nuclear-power-plant-could-lead-to-disaster/; Ouest France (2022). 1 September. https://www.ouest-france.fr/monde/guerre-en-ukraine/guerre-en-ukraine-quels-sont-les-risques-d-accident-nucleaire-autour-de-la-centrale-de-zaporijjia-b1108af8-29e8-11ed-bd3f-f86da3bd80f7

[12] Reference 133: The Economist, 10 March 2012 from: Wikipedia (2022c) – as note 9.

[13] Fetter S, Tsipis K (1981). Catastrophic Releases of Radioactivity. Scientific American, vol.244, no.4, pp.41–47; Rotblat J (1981). Nuclear radiation in warfare. SIPRI/ Taylor & Francis; Fetter S (1982). The Vulnerability of Nuclear Reactors to Attack by Nuclear Weapons. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science and Technology for International Security, Report No.7.

[14] This estimate is based on fallout spread for a 1kT weapon from nuclear tests entraining reactor products. Data from: Fetter (1982); Rotblat (1981) – as note 13.

[15] The danger zone (1 gray cumulative dose causing radiation sickness and some longer-term deaths) for a 1GW reactor and 1MT weapon is 550km x 100km. Rotblat (1981) – as note 13.

[16] In a legacy from the Soviet Union, the Ukraine, Russian and Moldovan electrical power grids remain part of a common infrastructure. Quite apart from efforts by the EU to secure energy independence from Russia and self-sufficiency this is another example of how interdependence of energy supplies can be used as a weapon of war.

[17] Some weapons have been specifically designed to damage electricity generation for example by air-dropped conducting fibres.

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***

“The Real Story of January 6,” a documentary by The Epoch Times, reveals the truth that has been hidden from the American people. While a narrative has been set that what took place that day was an insurrection, key events and witnesses have been ignored until now. The documentary takes an unvarnished look at police use of force and the deaths that resulted in some measure from it. The film asks tough questions about who was responsible for the chaos that day. With compelling interviews and exclusive video footage, the documentary tells the real story of January 6. The film is narrated by Joshua Philipp, host of “Crossroads” on EpochTV and a senior investigative reporter at The Epoch Times.

Jasper Fakkert, editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times, said: “There has been a narrative perpetuated about January 6 that omits many of the facts about what happened that day.

“With in-depth interviews and exclusive video footage, we take an objective look at the issues, the people, and the impacts of the events.”

The film takes a close look at the shooting of 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt and the deaths of three other supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. It analyzes the police response to the massive crowds and use of force around the U.S. Capitol.

It examines the human impacts of Jan. 6, including the suicide of one defendant and the long pretrial imprisonment of dozens of others. It also investigates claims that some attacks on the Capitol and police were carried out by unindicted suspicious actors.

What Really Happened on January 6? | The Real Story of January 6

While the dust from Jan. 6, 2021, has long cleared, it has been replaced by a smoke screen. A carefully crafted narrative has been set that claims the events of that day amounted to a “violent insurrection.” This claim, however, does not match the facts. “The Real Story of January 6” takes an objective look at what happened through the eyes of those who were there. The Epoch Times provides the first comprehensive look into what really happened that day. The Truth can’t be hidden.

We are Being Censored. Help Spread This Documentary.

While this documentary is groundbreaking in providing a complete overview of what happened on January 6, The Epoch Times has been censored and suppressed by Big Tech. In order to spread the documentary, The Epoch Times relies on its own Epoch TV as well as other non-cancelable platforms to spread the truth. Stand up for free speech and oppose censorship by sharing the documentary with as many people as you can.

Click here to watch the documentary.

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***

“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.”—Montesquieu, Enlightenment philosopher

For those wondering what to expect from the government in 2023, it looks like we’re going to be in for more of the same in terms of the government’s brand of madness, mayhem, corruption and brutality.

Digital prisons. Unceasingly, the government and its corporate partners are pushing for a national digital ID system. Local police agencies have already been given access to facial recognition software and databases containing 20 billion images, the precursor to a digital ID. Eventually, a digital ID will be required to gain access to all aspects of life: government, work, travel, healthcare, financial services, shopping, etc. Before long, biometrics (iris scans, face print, voice, DNA, etc.), will become the de facto digital ID.

Precrime. Under the pretext of helping overwhelmed government agencies work more efficiently, AI predictive and surveillance technologies are being used to classify, segregate and flag the populace with little concern for privacy rights or due process. All of this sorting, sifting and calculating is being done swiftly, secretly and incessantly with the help of AI technology and a surveillance state that monitors your every move. AI predictive tools are being deployed in almost every area of life.

Mandatory quarantines. Building on precedents established during the COVID-19 pandemic, government agents may be empowered to indefinitely detain anyone they suspect of posing a medical risk to others without providing an explanation, subject them to medical tests without their consent, and carry out such detentions and quarantines without any kind of due process or judicial review.

Mental health assessments by non-medical personnel. As a result of a nationwide push to train a broad spectrum of so-called gatekeepers in mental health first-aid training, more Americans are going to run the risk of being reported by non-medical personnel and detained for having mental health issues.

Tracking chips for citizens. Momentum is building for corporations and the government alike to be able to track the populace, whether through the use of RFID chips embedded in a national ID card, microscopic chips embedded in one’s skin, or tags in retail products.

Military involvement domestically. The future, according to a Pentagon training video, will be militaristic, dystopian and far from friendly to freedom. Indeed, all signs point to the battlefield of the future being the American home front. Anticipating this, the government plans to have the military work in conjunction with local police to quell civil unrest domestically.

Government censorship of anything it classifies as disinformation. In the government’s ongoing assault on those who criticize the government—whether that criticism manifests itself in word, deed or thought—government and corporate censors claiming to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns are, in fact, laying the groundwork now to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

Threat assessments. The government has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state. Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score. It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.

War on cash. The government and its corporate partners are engaged in a concerted campaign to shift consumers towards a digital mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient. This push for a digital currency dovetails with the government’s war on cash, which it has been subtly waging for some time now. In recent years, just the mere possession of significant amounts of cash could implicate you in suspicious activity and label you a criminal.

Expansive surveillance. AI surveillance harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and widespread surveillance technology to do what the police state lacks the manpower and resources to do efficiently or effectively: be everywhere, watch everyone and everything, monitor, identify, catalogue, cross-check, cross-reference, and collude. Everything that was once private is now up for grabs to the right buyer. With every new AI surveillance technology that is adopted and deployed without any regard for privacy, Fourth Amendment rights and due process, the rights of the citizenry are being marginalized, undermined and eviscerated.

Militarized police. Having transformed local law enforcement into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are moving into the next phase of the transformation, turning the nation’s police officers into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone extraction software, Stingray devices and so much more.

Police shootings of unarmed citizens. Owing in large part to the militarization of local law enforcement agencies, not a week goes by without more reports of hair-raising incidents by police imbued with a take-no-prisoners attitude and a battlefield approach to the communities in which they serve. Police brutality and the use of excessive force continues unabated.

False flags and terrorist attacks. Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure—has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government. This has become the shadow government’s modus operandi regardless of which party is in power: the government creates a menace—knowing full well the ramifications such a danger might pose to the public—then without ever owning up to the part it played in unleashing that particular menace on an unsuspecting populace, it demands additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threat.

Endless wars to keep America’s military’s empire employed. The military and security industrial complexes that have advocated that the U.S. remain at war, year after year, are the very entities that will continue to profit the most from America’s expanding military empire abroad and here at home.

Erosions of private property. Private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.

Overcriminalization. The government has increasingly adopted the authoritarian notion that it knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives. Overregulation and overcriminalization have been pushed to such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair.

Strip searches and the denigration of bodily integrity. Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, forcibly take our DNA, strip search us, and probe us intimately. Individuals—men and women alike—continue to be subjected to what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by police in the course of “routine” traffic stops.

Censorship. First Amendment activities are being pummeled, punched, kicked, choked, chained and generally gagged all across the country. Free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors have conspired to corrode our core freedoms. The reasons for such censorship vary widely from political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remains the same: the complete eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the “principal pillar of a free government.”

Taxation Without Any Real Representation. As a Princeton University survey indicates, our elected officials, especially those in the nation’s capital, represent the interests of the rich and powerful rather than the average citizen. We are no longer a representative republic. With Big Business and Big Government having fused into a corporate state, the president and his state counterparts—the governors—have become little more than CEOs of the Corporate State, which day by day is assuming more government control over our lives. Never before have average Americans had so little say in the workings of their government and even less access to their so-called representatives.

Year after year, the government remains the greatest threat to our freedoms, and yet year after year, “we the people” allow ourselves to be suckered into believing that politics will fix what’s wrong with the country.

Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is the very definition of insanity.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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***

While helicopters flew overhead, members of Peru’s national army shot down civilians with live bullets in the outskirts of the city of Ayacucho on December 15. This action was in response to a national strike and mobilization to protest the coup d’état that deposed President Pedro Castillo on December 7.

Hundreds of university students, shopkeepers, street vendors, agricultural workers and activists gathered on December 15, at the center of Ayacucho to express their discontent over the removal of Castillo and continued their mobilisation toward the airport. Similar action was witnessed in several other cities across the southern Andean region of the country.

As protesters approached the airport, members of the armed forces opened fire and shot tear gas canisters directly at them. The firing by the army from the helicopters proved to be the most lethal. As the hundreds of unarmed people ran for their lives, the shooting continued.

Ten people were killed as a result of this violence inflicted by the army, and dozens more were injured, according to official numbers provided by the ombudsman’s office. At least six people are still fighting for their lives in hospitals in Peru’s capital Lima and in Ayacucho. Autopsies of 10 of those who died in Ayacucho show that six of the victims died from gunshot wounds to the chest. The youngest was just 15 years old.

Reuters reported, on December 27, how one of these fatal victims in Ayacucho — 51-year-old Edgar Prado — was shot and killed while attempting to help someone else who had been shot down during the protests.

The exceedingly violent response of the security forces to the anti-coup protests across Peru was widely condemned. A delegation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) visited the country from December 20–22 to receive testimonies from local human rights organisations and victims about the violent repression suffered by protesters and also spoke to families of the 28 fatal victims. The delegation traveled to Ayacucho on December 22.

More than a dozen other family members, Ayacucho inhabitants, organisers, and a couple of independent journalists, including myself, waited on the sidewalk of one of the city’s narrow and colourful streets as the meeting was underway. As people came and went, much of the events and tragedies of December 15 were recounted.

The massacre

“They won’t show you this on the news here,” Carmen (name changed) told me as she showed me a video on her phone of a young boy with blood all over his shirt being dragged to safety by fellow protesters. “That’s her nephew,” she said, pointing to a woman sitting on the ground.

Pedro Huamani, a 70-year-old man who is a member of the Front in Defense of the People of Ayacucho (FREDEPA), was accompanying the victims waiting outside the IACHR meeting. “We have suffered a terrible loss,” he told me, “I was present that day in a peaceful march toward the airport.

“When they began to shoot tear gas grenades and bullets at us, I started to choke, I almost died there,” Huamani said. “I escaped and went down to the cemetery, but it was the same, we were trying to enter and they started to shoot at us from behind. Helicopters were flying overhead and from there they shot tear gas grenades at us, trying to kill us.”

Carmen brought over some of her friends and one of them, who was wearing a grey sweatsuit, told me, “We all live near the airport, and saw everything happen. You should’ve seen how they shot them down like animals. We tried to help some of the injured, but it was hard.”

The massacre in Ayacucho, as well as the violent repression across the country, has only intensified people’s demand that Dina Boluarte step down. Boluarte was sworn in on December 7 immediately following the coup against Castillo. In interviews and public addresses, she has justified the use of force by police against protesters calling their actions as acts of “terrorism” and “vandalism.”

Huamani, while shaking and holding back tears, said: “She is a murderous president and in Huamanga, we do not want her, nor do we recognise her as president because this woman ordered the police and the army to shoot at us Peruvians. And these bullets, these weapons, are really bought by us, not by the army, nor the soldiers, but by the people. And for them to kill us is really horrible.”

The anger felt by Ayacucho residents is also linked to the historical undermining of Peruvian democracy and the economic exclusion suffered by the regions outside of Lima. Huamani explained: “They took out our president [Castillo] so this is not a democracy. We are not a democracy, we are in [state of] war, but not just in Ayacucho and Huamanga, but also in Arequipa, Apurímac, Cusco. In these regions, we are suffering from poverty, we can no longer survive, we are dying of hunger … and these right wingers want to make us their slaves, but we won’t permit this because we are responding and resisting.”

Old wounds ripped open

December 15 was not the first time civilians in Ayacucho were massacred by the Peruvian armed forces. Many who were present on December 15 said that the warlike treatment received by the peaceful protesters was reminiscent of the days of the two-decades-long internal armed conflict that Peruvians suffered through more than 20 years ago.

“They still treat us as if we were all terrorists,” a family member of one of the victims of the protests pointed out.

As part of the state’s campaign against the guerrilla insurgency, it tortured, detained, disappeared, and murdered tens of thousands of innocent peasants and Indigenous people, accusing them of supporting or being part of the insurgency.

The population of Ayacucho was one of the hardest hit. According to reports by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up to look into the human rights violations, of the estimated 69,280 fatal victims of the internal armed conflict in Peru from 1980-2000, 26,000 were killed or disappeared by state actors or insurgent groups in Ayacucho. Thousands of people that fled their towns for the city of Ayacucho during the conflict continue to search for their loved ones and demand justice.

One of them is Paula Aguilar Yucra, who I met outside the IACHR meeting. Like more than 60% of people in Ayacucho, Indigenous Quechua is her first language. The 63-year-old is a member of the Ayacucho-based National Association of Relatives of Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared of Peru (ANFASEP). She fled her rural community in Usmay for Ayacucho in 1984 after her mother was killed and her brother was taken by soldiers and never seen again.

Nearly 40 years later, she mourns again. Her grandson, 20-year-old José Luis Aguilar Yucra, father of a two-year-old boy, was killed on December 15 by a bullet to the head as he attempted to make his way home from work.

In a vigil held on the afternoon of December 22, Paula stood tall with the other members of ANFASEP and held a sign reading: “Fighting today does not mean dying tomorrow.”

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Zoe Alexandra is a journalist and co-editor of Peoples Dispatch.

Featured image: Outside the meeting with the human rights delegation, relatives of victims and witnesses to the massacre hold a sign that reads “Justice for our brothers killed in the massacre on December 15”. Photo: Zoe Alexandra/People’s Dispatch

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***

While there’s no doubt that both sides could benefit from a temporary lull in fighting that enables them each to resupply their forces even more during that narrow window, it’s not a game-changer either way since a day and a half doesn’t make any military difference. With this in mind, the question therefore becomes why Kiev didn’t decide to take this mutually beneficial opportunity.

President Putin declared a unilateral 36-hour truce for Orthodox Christmas from 12pm Moscow time on Friday until midnight on Saturday, yet this was rejected by Kiev on false pretexts. Zelensky claimed that his counterpart just wanted time to resupply, while his Foreign Minister also expressed similar sentiment speculating that the Russian leader was insincere. For his part, Biden added that President Putin was “trying to find some oxygen”, but all these excuses don’t make any sense.

It’s extremely unlikely that Russia really thought that Ukraine would agree to its unilateral 36-hour truce, meaning that Moscow probably didn’t expect that it would be able to resupply its forces during that narrow window without interruption if that truly was its motivation all along. Not only that, but even in the event that Kiev went along with this to deflect from its crusade against elements of its Orthodox Christian population, 36 hours isn’t long enough to make a military difference for either side.

The notion that Russia’s special operation is supposedly failing so badly that the Kremlin desperately needs a day-and-a-half-long lull in fighting to resupply its forces in order to stave off their allegedly imminent defeat contradicts the US-led Western Mainstream Media’s (MSM) “official narrative”. According to them, President Putin is obsessed with the Battle for Artyomovsk/Bakhmut for reasons related purely to his personal prestige and that of his country.

The reality is that control of this city is tactically crucial for both sides, hence why they’ve redoubled their respective efforts along that front. In any case, whether one acknowledges the aforementioned objective military reality or ascribes to the MSM’s “official narrative”, the outcome of President Putin regarding this battle as “too big to lose” (at least for the time being) is the same. That in turn extends credence to the assessment that he already ordered his forces to be regularly resupplied long ago.

Thus, it’s unimportant whether Kiev agreed to the unilateral 36-hour truce or not since the Russian Armed Forces continue being supplied no matter what, including during the most intense firefights along this front over the past weeks. While there’s no doubt that both sides could benefit from a temporary lull in fighting that enables them each to resupply their forces even more during that narrow window, it’s not a game-changer either way since a day and a half doesn’t make any military difference.

With this in mind, the question therefore becomes why Kiev didn’t decide to take this mutually beneficial opportunity. The answer is most likely political for two reasons: first, agreeing to a Russian-initiated truce could be interpreted as signaling weakness and thus prompting speculation that Ukraine might agree to tacitly recognize the loss of its four peripheral reasons; and second, keeping the military pressure on Russia during Orthodox Christmas is part and parcel of its crusade against that religion.

Altogether, it can be concluded that that this was a missed opportunity for both sides, but one that Kiev decided to do without since its political motivations overrode its military ones. That being the case, this insight can be extrapolated upon to predict that fighting will continue for the foreseeable future without any credible chance of a lasting ceasefire anytime soon. The only variable that could offset this scenario is if one side achieves a major breakthrough along the Line of Control, but that seems unlikely for now.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday,

“We have launched a process as Russia-Turkey-Syria,” and added, “We will bring our foreign ministers together and then, depending on developments, we will come together as leaders.”

Last week, the Foreign Ministers of Turkey, Syria and Russia met together in Moscow for the highest-level talks since 2011.  Prior to the conflict in Syria, Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were close enough to refer to each other as brother.  All that changed after Turkey participated in the US attack on Syria for regime change, which has left thousands dead, and millions of refugees, and utilized thousands of Radical Islamic terrorists as foot-soldiers inside Syria.

The US has imposed a stalemate in Syria, but Erdogan has decided to create a solution to Turkey’s National Security issue by working in conjunction with Assad.

Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Hamide Rencüzoğulları, Educator and Researcher, specialized in the Middle East. Published books: AKP’s Syrian War, Bloody Spring in Libya, All at Once: the ISIS and Women in the Claw of Jihad. Her articles were published in various newspapers and magazines, and she prepared and presented the TV Program “Agenda: Middle East”. Nine lawsuits have been filed against her for her books and articles and she is still on trial by the Turkish judiciary.

Steven Sahiounie (SS):Recently, it is apparent that Turkey is trying with all means to repair their relationship with Syria; however, Turkey had participated in the US/NATO war on Syria. Now, they can see that attack has failed. In your opinion, what does Turkey want to get out of Syria?

Hamide Rencüzoğulları  (HR):  Turkey can no longer bear the burden of militants trained and equipped by NATO and Arab countries in the region.

Everyone withdrew their hands and this burden is only on Turkey’s shoulders. On the other hand, Western countries no longer pay for refugees. The economic crisis has already deepened. The postponement of Russia’s natural gas debt relieved the Turkish Government. He wanted Damascus and Ankara to get closer in return for this election gift that Putin gave Erdogan until the election. In fact, because Putin put pressure on Erdogan, he sought a formula to reconcile with Assad, but the reason is not just Putin’s will. Turkey is in a stalemate on Syrian territory. It has both economic and political reasons. Investing in infrastructure and wages of militants in the regions controlled by Turkey is now challenging. On the other hand, Erdogan presents the position of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the PYD in Syria as a justification for national security, but neither Russia nor America gave permission for the final operation. Erdogan’s intention is for the Kurds to withdraw to a depth of 32 kilometers and, to place the jihadist militants and their families there instead. Rather than failing in the wars against the SDF, he wants to solve the SDF problem with Damascus. Of course, if Damascus is going to give Erdogan an election gift, he will accept this condition, but this is not an easy issue.

SS: President Erdogan has made sending back the Syrian refugees a national policy. Isn’t this the same policy of all Turkish opposition parties?

HR:  The problem of refugees started to put the ruling party in a difficult position. Because a large part of the society wants the Syrians to return. The authority lost the vote when it said that we will not send power. Especially after the leaders of the nationalist opposition started to turn the Syrian refugees into election material against Erdoğan.  Erdoğan also announced that he would send the Syrians back. The main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, already has the subject of deportation of Syrians to their country on their agenda, but it does not say “we will expel them”. “Honorable and voluntary return”, they are saying instead, which means reconciliation with Damascus and creating a common political solution. Erdogan was first talking about occupying an area 32 kilometers deep and relocating Syrians there. Now he has aligned with what the main Opposition Party, CHP, said. For that reason, he says he wants peace with Damascus. He wants to make peace with Damascus despite the reactions of the opponents he protects and feeds. Therefore, he needs propaganda before the election: the propaganda of “We solve the refugee crisis and the Kurdish problem together with Syria”.

SS: We hear through media reports, that Turkey and Syria are meeting and that Turkey is willing to give up the Radical Islamic terrorists. In your opinion, where will terrorists go including the Uyghurs?

HR:  He can’t go anywhere with those terrorists. More precisely, the Justice and Development Party-AKP has no power to solve it. First of all, the “Syrian National Army” established by the AKP includes over 100 thousand militants, but it is not homogeneous. There are many different groups and not all of them give unconditional allegiance to Erdogan. If he says he will lay down arms, not all of them will. Second, there is Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkistan Islamic Party, which the AKP does not undertake as a guarantor. He can never speak to them. But Turkey seems to have a secret agreement with HTS for several months. Groups close to Turkey started to act with HTS, and HTS took Afrin together with these pro-Turkey groups. Turkey neither spoke out, nor took any steps to prevent it. On the contrary, when HTS launched the Afrin operation, senior officials from Turkey went to Azaz to meet with opposition leaders and returned. In this meeting, I think that Turkey gave the green light to HTS and warned the opposition not to engage in conflict. Why is Turkey paving the way for HTS? There was already a secret alliance from the beginning, now the Hamza, Suleyman Shah and Sultan Murad Brigades, who are closest to Turkey, joined HTS and took over the areas under Turkish control. AKP probably has an account like this: It wants to withdraw from Syria and leave this area to HTS. Groups in the Syrian National Army that refuse to lay down their arms also join HTS in this way, so the AKP can say that it has withdrawn its hand from Syria, but on the other hand, it will continue to deepen the conflict in Syria with this growing jihadist army. I guess they have such plans. But this is too dangerous. Because the muzzle of the abandoned jihadists may return to Turkey.

SS: Media leaks have said America is offering Syria a deal if Syria will not repair the relationship with Turkey. In your opinion, why is America against a new relationship between Ankara and Damascus?

HR:  Although the USA withdrew its hand from the Syrian opposition, it actually continued to manage the conflicts through Turkey. Even though it has a position in Syria only through the Kurds, the USA has support for the Turkish invasions. The USA wants Turkey to maintain its position in the Syrian territory it has entered. However, it does not want to offend Turkey, which highlights the SDF as a security issue. In particular, the USA never wants Ankara to get closer to Damascus. We have read in some media that the USA has offered a different proposal to Turkey in order to disrupt this, which is that, the USA will pull the SDF back one kilometer, but it will revive the Suvvarül Raqqa (Raqqa Revolutionaries) group and place it on the Turkish border. This group of Raqqa Revolutionaries is a jihadist structure and the USA thinks that Turkey will not be bothered by them. As long as Russia and the Syrian army do not replace the Kurds… I guess this is the formula of the USA.

SS:We have heard media reports that the Syrian opposition in Turkey has been asked to leave Turkey immediately. In your opinion, is the break with the Syrian opposition signaling that the rapprochement with Damascus is more important?

HR:  I don’t think there will be a complete break. The persuasion process continues. There are those who accept unconditionally. Turkey may close a few of the opposition channels broadcasting in the country as a formality. Or, objecting leaders can be expelled from the country, but I think this is all a formality. Because it cannot completely confront the opponents, it is very risky…

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Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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