Endgame Ukraine; Putin’s Battleplan

November 27th, 2022 by Mike Whitney

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

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

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

***

This incisive and carefully researched article by Mike Whitney analyzes the shift in Russia’s military agenda.

Until recently, Russia had largely targeted  Ukraine’s military and strategic infrastructure (Air Force, Navy, Ground Forces).  The shift in Moscow’s strategy now consists in targeting Ukraine’s civilian energy, transport, and communications infrastructure which has resulted in devastating social consequences for the people of Ukraine. 

“The widespread power outages are accompanied by freezing temperatures that will inevitably lead to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Millions of Ukrainians will be forced to flee across the border seeking refuge in Europe”

While placing the blame on US-NATO’s geopolitical ambitions and Washington’s refusal to engage in dialogue and peace negotiations, the Kremlin nonetheless bears a deep-seated responsibility in this turn of events. According to Mike Whitney: 

“The objective of the Russian operation is to undermine Ukraine’s ability to wage war. The attacks on Ukraine’s power-grid, railway hubs, fuel deports, bridges and command-and-control centers are merely Phase 1 of a 2-phase operation that is designed to defeat the enemy and bring the war to swift end.”

How will US-NATO and “The Deep State” react? 

At this stage it’s unclear as to whether this strategic option adopted by the Kremlin will result in “ending the war”. I have my doubts. 

How will US-NATO respond?

More specifically how will the defence contractors, Wall Street and the financial establishment respond.

War is good for business. War is profit driven. Who are the main actors? Who are the decision-makers? 

Mistakes are a major determinant of history particularly when the president of the U.S. is a proxy politician incapable of formulating US foreign policy, ignorant of the underlying dangers including the use of nuclear weapons, responding to powerful financial interests and the weapons industry.  

In the wake of the Cold War, the Pentagon has been routinely involved in conducting World War III war games as well as simulations of World War III. 

The response to Moscow’s Military Agenda: A process of military escalation as well as economic warfare which could lead us into a World War III scenario.  This option is currently on the drawing board of the Pentagon. The preemptive use of nuclear weapons supported by a 1.3 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program “is on the table”. 

In June 2016 under the Obama administration, top military brass together with the CEOs of the weapons industry debated the deployment of nuclear weapons against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. It was called the Doomsday Forum. The focus was on building a consensus (within the Armed Forces, the science labs, the nuclear industry, etc) in favor of pre-emptive nuclear war against those four countries. 

That deployment against those four countries has been contemplated by the Pentagon for at least 20 years: 

In 2006, The Pentagon launched a set of war simulations entitled Vigilant Shield 07  (conducted from September through December 2006).

The core assumption behind Vigilant Shield 07 is “Global Warfare”. … [The simulations] anticipate the “New Cold War”. They reflect US foreign policy and military doctrine during both the Bush and Obama administrations. The declared enemies of America under Vigilant Shield 07 WWIII detailed simulation and timeline were (and remain) Irmingham [Iran], Nemazee [North Korea], Ruebek [Russia], Churya [China]”

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, November 27, 2022.

***

“Ukraine’s unquestioned strategic center of gravity is its western corridors to the Polish border where the vast majority of its war support enters the country. Their operational center of gravity is their resupply lines emanating eastwards from Kyiv to Ukraine’s various frontline positions. Without those two corridors, it would be nearly impossible for Kyiv to sustain wartime operations for more than a few weeks. Putin, therefore, may calculate the best use of those 218,000 additional troops will be to launch a three-pronged axis to cut both of those supply routes.” Lt. Colonel Daniel L. Davis, Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and Contributing Editor at 1945

“I want to emphasize again that all tasks of the special military operation… will be unconditionally fulfilled.” Russian President Vladimir Putin

***

Another day of large-scale missile attacks on Ukraine’s hobbled energy infrastructure has plunged much of the country into darkness. The relentless attacks—which continued through the night and into the early morning hours—have intensified dramatically as Russian combat troops continue to join their units along the perimeter in preparation for a major winter offensive. Russian President Vladimir Putin has waited patiently for the Zelensky regime to grasp the gravity of their situation and press for bilateral negotiations. But the Ukrainian president has stubbornly rejected diplomacy at every turn opting instead to fight until the bitter end. He is fully supported in that decision by his backers in Washington who see the conflict as an opportunity to weaken Russia so it cannot obstruct US plans to “pivot” to Asia. The transformation of Ukraine into a frigid, uninhabitable wastelands is largely the result of Washington’s voracious geopolitical ambitions. This is from a post at the website Moon of Alabama:

Previous attacks had limited the distribution capacity to some 50% of demand. Controlled blackouts over several hours per day allowed to give some electricity for a few hours to most parts of the country. The attack today created a much larger problem. Not only were distribution networks attacked but also so the elements that connect Ukraine’s electricity production facilities to the distribution network. All four nuclear power stations of Ukraine with their 15 reactors are now in shutdown mode. Kiev along with most other cities of Ukraine no longer has electricity.” Ukraine – Lights Out, No Water And Soon No Heat”, Moon of Alabama

Ukraine Plunged Into Darkness—As of the morning of November 24, more than 70% of Kiev remains without electricity. There is no water in half of the capital. Power outages continue in all regions throughout the country….”Kiev goes Dark as NATO Sacrifices Ukraine”,Southfront

Ukraine Plunged Into Darkness—As of the morning of November 24, more than 70% of Kiev remains without electricity. There is no water in half of the capital. Power outages continue in all regions throughout the country….”Kiev goes Dark as NATO Sacrifices Ukraine”, Southfront

The widespread power outages are accompanied by freezing temperatures that will inevitably lead to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Millions of Ukrainians will be forced to flee across the border seeking refuge in Europe. Others will be left to hunker-down in makeshift emergency shelters that are sporadically heated by diesel-powered generators. There is no prospect that Ukraine’s dilapidated power-system will be fixed quickly if ever. And even if it could be cobbled-back together in some improvised capacity, it would only be a short-term fix. The fact is, the Russians have identified the main substations, terminals and auto-transformers across Ukraine and are picking them off one-by-one. Unable to defend itself against the daily barrage of precision-guided missiles, Ukraine is gradually being bombed into the Stone Age.

The objective of the Russian operation is to undermine Ukraine’s ability to wage war. The attacks on Ukraine’s power-grid, railway hubs, fuel deports, bridges and command-and-control centers are merely Phase 1 of a 2-phase operation that is designed to defeat the enemy and bring the war to swift end. Russia has gathered roughly 500,000 troops in a combat Strike-Force that will traverse the country along three main axes annihilating Ukrainian Forces wherever they are encountered and seizing key cities along the way. Critical supply-lines from Poland will be blocked, leaving troops at the front cut-off and vulnerable to attack. Eventually, the regime and their Right-bloc security forces will be killed or captured. Moscow will not allow a government that is openly hostile towards Russia to rule the country. This is from an interview with Colonel Douglas MacGregor:

There are now 540,000 Russian troops stationed around the outskirts of Ukraine preparing to launch a major offensive that I think will probably end the war in Ukraine. 540,000 Russian troops, 1,000 rocket artillery systems, 5000 armored fighting vehicles including at least 1,5000 tanks, hundreds and hundreds of tactical ballistic missiles. Ukraine is now going to experience war on a scale we haven’t seen since 1945.” Colonel Douglas MacGregor, Rumble

MacGregor again—Everything has now changed… the large probability of offensives beginning in the next few weeks, whenever the ground freezes completely and the Russians judge their forces to be ready. and they will move in and they will finish off this Ukrainian state, let’s not kid ourselves, The regime in Kiev is likely to be annihilated along with the remainder of its armed forces….

The biggest mistake we in the west could make is to involve ourselves. We’ve done enough damage….and I think what we are going to see…. is the total destruction of this rump Ukrainian state. Now, what happens afterwards, I don’t know. I’m quite confident that Russians do not want to remain in western Ukraine …Russia is now treating Ukraine as a real enemy. Previously they were not. and this is not understood in the west.” “Ukraine is about to be annihilated”, Colonel Douglas MacGregor, youtube

(Question—Is there any chance that US combat troops will be sent to fight in Ukraine?)

MacGregor—We’re in no position to go to war with Russia, and anything we would do on the ground would fail miserably and we’d be embarrassed. But obviously no one in Washington is listening…There’s no real understanding of how desperate the situation is in western Ukraine. So what we can look forward to along with this massive (Russian) offensive is the migration of millions of more Ukrainians into Europe because they have no place else to go….. The Ukrainians know what’s coming. There’s not much they do about it at this point, but instead of throwing them a lifeline, we’ve essentially told them to sink with the ship that they’re on.” Col. Douglas Macgregor, “Ukraine is about to be annihilated”, youtube; 6:35 min

Note—So, when the missile strikes end and the ground freezes, the Russian offensive will begin. But what is the plan? How will the Russians deploy their troops and what tactical objectives will they seek to achieve?

While no one can say with certainty how the offensive will evolve, two recent posts at the military website 1945 provide a compelling and detailed explanation of what might take place if Putin decides to deliver the knockout punch to the Ukrainian armed forces and the political leadership in Kiev. The articles were written by 1945 “Contributing Editor, Daniel L. Davis who is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times.” Here are a few excerpts from the two pieces:

If Putin orders an all-out attack, it will most likely start with a massive air, missile and drone attack to complete the destruction of the Ukrainian electric grids, substations, fuel storage facilities, rail yards, diesel locomotives, and communication facilities. Intent will be to make it intensely difficult to support the UAF, complicate communications, make intra-country movement of troops much harder, diminish their capacity to logistically support troops in disparate fronts with food, water, medicine, ammunition, and spare parts.

By increasing the burden on Kyiv to take care of the civil population throughout the country, there will be yet fewer resources to allocate to supporting the war. If Kyiv prioritizes supplying the combat units, civilians could freeze to death or starve as a result, putting the government in a terrible no-win situation….

The key to understanding what Putin’s objectives may be is to assess what an additional 200,000 troops could reasonably accomplish in Ukraine: a three-pronged axis of advance designed to sever Ukraine’s life blood – the supply corridor from the Polish border through which all NATO supply and equipment enters Ukraine.“ (“Putin could launch an all-out attack on Ukraine but it could be his downfall” Daniel Davis, 1945)

Much of what Davis anticipates has already taken place, so we will move on to his more stunning scenarios. The post below was published just one day after the article above. Here’s what he says:

In this final edition, I will lay out what I contend is the most dangerous course of action Ukraine could face: a ground campaign to deprive Ukraine of its lifeblood from the West…. What I represent in this analysis…. represents the gravest danger to Ukraine ...

In this scenario, Putin recognizes that the number of troops he has for the task remains insufficient to capture large cities – and that he doesn’t need to capture major cities to succeed. Instead, what he may seek to do is identify and then take out the Ukrainian center of gravity. (which) military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. (defined as.. “the hub of all power and movement (of the enemy), on which everything depends.”

Meaning, in war, the overall objective should be to deprive the enemy of the one thing he must maintain to win the war..

In my assessment, Ukraine’s unquestioned strategic center of gravity is its western corridors to the Polish border where the vast majority of its war support enters the country. Their operational center of gravity is their resupply lines emanating eastwards from Kyiv to Ukraine’s various frontline positions. Without those two corridors, it would be nearly impossible for Kyiv to sustain wartime operations for more than a few weeks.

Putin, therefore, may calculate the best use of those 218,000 additional troops will be to launch a three-pronged axis to cut both of those supply routes: the priority effort in the west out of Belarus with the objective of Lviv, a supporting effort to the northeast in the Sumy direction, and supporting axis from the east to reinforce the current offensive in the Donbas.

A Russian attack out of southeast Belorussia with the objective of Lviv would represent the greatest strategic threat to the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF). Virtually all of the UAF’s weapons, ammunition, and repair parts enter the country from Poland through several land routes towards Kyiv. If Russia were to cut these routes off by attacking along the Polish/Ukraine border down to Lviv, Russia could cut off the majority of the shipments of war material from the West, without which Kyiv would not long be able to sustain its forces at the frontlines in the eastern part of Ukraine. …

If Russia employs a three-axes advance with its newly mobilized combat forces, added to the roughly 200,000 troops already engaged – and critically, avoids trying to invest cities – they will have a chance to focus their combat power where Ukraine is weakest, and in ways that are mutually reinforcing to other axes. This course of action would represent great risk for Zelensky’s troops, but it isn’t without significant risk for the Russians either. … (“Putin Could Launch a Big Winter Offensive in Ukraine to Cut Off Weapons“, Daniel Davis, 1945)

There is, of course, no way of knowing whether the war will actually play out in-line with Davis’s scenario. It does seem likely, however, that Russian strategists have already figured out that the war cannot be won without cutting off vital supply-lines to Poland. That is the main artery that sustains the conflict and allows Zelensky to avoid negotiations. For Putin, attempting such a move would be a risky gambit that could precipitate his political downfall, but if he fails to seize the opportunity to force Kiev to the bargaining table, the war could drag on forever. There are no easy choices but—in this case—it appears the benefits clearly outweigh the risks.

*

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

This article was 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).

Featured image is from TUR

Fauci Grilled Under Oath in Social Media Censorship Case

November 27th, 2022 by Michael Nevradakis

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

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

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

***

Dr. Anthony Fauci today faced questions from Attorneys General Eric Schmitt (Missouri) and Jeff Landry (Louisiana) in their lawsuit against the federal government for allegedly colluding with Big Tech platforms to censor content critical of COVID-19 vaccines and countermeasures.

Fauci sat for a deposition one day after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily halted the depositions of three other Biden administration officials.

In a statement released Tuesday in advance of Fauci’s deposition, Schmitt said:

“Tomorrow, along with my colleague from Louisiana, my Office and I will depose Dr. Anthony Fauci in our lawsuit against the Biden Administration for allegedly colluding with social media companies to censor freedom of speech.

“Since we filed our landmark lawsuit, we have uncovered documents and discovery that show clear coordination between the Biden Administration and social media companies on censoring speech, but we’re not done yet. We plan to get answers on behalf of the American people. Stay tuned.”

The statement also quoted Jeff Landry:

“We all deserve to know how involved Dr. Fauci was in the censorship of the American people during the COVID pandemic; tomorrow, I hope to find out.

“And I will continue fighting for the truth as it relates to Big Government colluding with Big Tech to stifle free speech.”

Schmitt and Landry sued President Biden, Fauci and others on May 5. New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonprofit group representing outspoken critics of COVID-19 vaccines and countermeasures, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, Aaron Kheriaty and also Jill Hines, joined the lawsuit in August, as did Jim Hoft, founder and editor-in-chief of The Gateway Pundit.

According to the complaint, government officials colluded with and coerced Big Tech and social media platforms to “suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints and content” relating to COVID-19.

Several officials named in the suit, including former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, argued they shouldn’t be required to be deposed, but a federal judge on Monday denied a request to quash Psaki’s subpoena.

The same judge, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, on Oct. 21 ordered Fauci and other government officials to provide depositions under oath.

In addition to Fauci and Psaki, other government officials slated to be deposed include:

  • FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan
  • Carol Crawford, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Digital Media Branch
  • Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly
  • White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty
  • Daniel Kimmage, an official at the State Department’s Global Engagement Center
  • U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy

Two lower-level officials were listed as alternates: Lauren Protentis of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in place of Easterly, and former White House COVID-19 adviser Andrew Slavitt in place of Flaherty.

A previous ruling had forced the above-named individuals to provide written testimony.

Judge rejects ‘self-serving blanket denials’

In his Oct. 21 ruling, Judge Doughty agreed with the plaintiffs that Fauci’s prior “self-serving blanket denials” regarding his role in censoring certain types of content and viewpoints on social media could not be taken at face value, necessitating a deposition.

Fauci challenged the order to sit for a deposition, arguing the communications in question are protected by executive privilege. But Judge Doughty ordered Fauci to turn over the documents within 21 days and to answer the plaintiffs’ questions in full.

Landry and Schmitt filed a request for depositions Oct. 10. In a statement released at the time by Schmitt, he said:

“After finding documentation of a collusive relationship between the Biden administration and social media companies to censor free speech, we immediately filed a motion to get these officials under oath.

“It is high time we shine a light on this censorship enterprise and force these officials to come clean to the American people, and this ruling will allow us to do just that. We’ll keep pressing for the truth.”

Depositions of three Biden administration officials on hold

In an order issued Monday, the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit temporarily halted the scheduled depositions of Easterly, Flaherty and Murthy.

According to Politico, the three-judge panel unanimously found Judge Doughty had erred in approving the depositions without first examining whether there were “other means” of obtaining the information the plaintiffs are seeking.

The court sent the case back to Doughty for further review. According to the order:

“Thus, before any of the depositions may go forward, the district court must analyze whether the information sought can be obtained through less intrusive, alternative means, such as further written discovery or depositions of lower-ranking officials.

“Written findings as to the availability and sufficiency of alternatives need to be entered.”

In a statement provided to The Defender by Landry’s office, Landry said, “These developments do not change my pursuit of the truth. We respect the court’s decision and will continue in the discovery phase of this case.”

Thursday’s court order came after lawyers for the government argued the plaintiffs should not have the ability to depose the three officials in question, on the basis that they are high-ranking government officials, and that the depositions would “unavoidably distract” them from “their important and time-sensitive duties,” which would “cause irreparable harm.”

However, the federal government’s motion for a partial stay of Judge Doughty’s deposition order was denied. The Nov. 21 order stated, “We make no ruling on the petition … at this time.”

Easterly, Flaherty and Murthy were scheduled to be deposed in early December.

On Wednesday Judge Doughty, in a separate ruling, ordered Psaki to sit for a deposition and rejected an attempt to shield FBI Agent Chan from answering questions under oath.

Plaintiffs in the case argued that none of the officials were “high-ranking,” and Judge Doughty agreed, finding that the “burdens” the officials would face as a result of sitting for depositions were outweighed by the necessity of gathering more information regarding the allegations in question prior to ruling on a motion for a preliminary injunction.

According to the 5th Circuit’s order:

“It is not enough, as the district court found, that these officials may have ‘personal knowledge’ about certain communications.

“That knowledge may be shared widely or have only marginal importance in comparison to the ‘potential burden’ imposed on the deponent.”

According to the court, the government already produced “extensive written discovery.” The government claims that these documents do not reveal any violations of the First Amendment, while the plaintiffs claim otherwise.

Politico also reported that the 5th Circuit asked Judge Doughty to consider ruling on the overall viability of the lawsuit before allowing the depositions to proceed.

The 5th Circuit said Judge Doughty should have not issued a ruling regarding the depositions until the courts decided on the government’s motion to dismiss — even though that motion was withdrawn after plaintiffs filed an amended complaint and the government has not filed a new motion to dismiss.

According to Politico, the 5th Circuit’s order is not final: Judge Doughty may still decide, based on a newly clarified analysis, that depositions of Easterly, Flaherty and Murthy are needed.

Politico also reported that the 5th Circuit’s order may strengthen efforts by Psaki and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to halt her deposition.

At a recent hearing, Psaki’s lawyers claimed there is no evidence she had met or had been in contact with any social media executives regarding purported “misinformation,” although she did express critical remarks about social media platforms during White House press briefings.

In his Nov. 21 order, Judge Doughty rejected that claim, writing:

“Despite the fact that Psaki is a former high-ranking official, the potential burden upon Psaki was outweighed by the need to determine whether free speech had been suppressed.”

Previously, a federal judge in Virginia rejected the arguments made by Psaki and the DOJ, including that sitting for a deposition would place an “undue burden” on her, taking her away from her family and her new job at MSNBC for several days.

Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia passed the issue to Judge Doughty. Davis dismissed Psaki’s claims, arguing that Psaki and the DOJ were attempting an “end-run” around the deposition order.

Judge Doughty previously found “that Plaintiffs have proven that Jennifer Psaki has personal knowledge about the issue concerning censorship across social media as it related to COVID-19 and ancillary issues of COVID-19.”

“Psaki has made a number of statements that are relevant to the Government’s involvement in a number of social-media platforms’ efforts to censor its users across the board for sharing information related to COVID-19,” Judge Doughty added. “Any burden on Psaki is outweighed by the need to determine whether free speech has been suppressed.”

*

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.

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

Featured image is from CHD

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Fauci Grilled Under Oath in Social Media Censorship Case

Football Capitulates at Qatar

November 27th, 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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

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

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

***

 

 

 

It did not take much.  The initial promises of protest from a number of footballers and their teams at the Qatar FIFA World Cup were always suspect and hollow.  There was Denmark’s less than impressive form of camouflaged protest via merchandise, supposedly defiant with its logo free monochrome colours.  There was the barely threatening promise that armbands about love would be worn.

Then came Australia’s own uniquely celluloid performance: videos from the players claiming sympathy with the various efforts made by Qatar in improving the record on human rights in various areas yet frowning about the fact that more could be done.

From the moment the first ball was kicked, even these feeble efforts were bound to be found wanting.  FIFA President Gianni Infantino made his position clear from the outset, playing the role of defender of the Qatari state and mocking detractors for obsessing with such niggling things as human rights.

In a letter sent to all 32 participating teams at the start of this month, Infantino and secretary general Fatma Samoura wrote that football, despite acknowledging that it did “not live in a vacuum” should not be “dragged into every ideological or political battle that exists.”  The organisation tried “to respect all opinions and beliefs, without handing out moral lessons to the rest of the world.  No one people or culture or nation is ‘better’ than any other.”

Having pretended to relativise all such positions, thereby making protest essentially meaningless, Infantino and his apparatchiks were keen to press home the point that footballers needed to focus on the ball. Gestures of protest on the pitch would not be tolerated – except through officially sanctioned FIFA channels.

Of particular interest were hardly earth-shattering threats that the captains of a number of sides would be wearing “One Love” armbands.  Various national football federations baulked, noting that FIFA had “been very clear that it will impose sporting sanctions if our captains wear the armbands on the field of play.”

The national federations could not put their “players in a position where they could face sporting sanctions including bookings, so we have asked the captains not to attempt to wear the armbands in the FIFA World Cup games.”  The bureaucrats behind the joint statement, in a weak effort to save face, insisted that they would have paid the fines normally applicable “to breaches of kit regulations and had a strong commitment to wearing the armband.  However, we cannot put our players in a position where they might be booked or even forced to leave the field of play.”

The teams of England, Wales, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands, duly complied, falling nine pins.  It really was just about the football.  Prior to their opening match against Iran, it had been reported that England’s captain Harry Kane would be braving the unsanctioned arm band.  He barely managed that.  Former Manchester United player Roy Keane offered his two bits worth by suggesting that Kane and his team should have done it for the first game and accepted the punishment.  “Take your medicine and in the next game move on.  You don’t wear it because you don’t want to get suspended but, I think it was a big mistake because both players – Wales and England – should have stuck to their guns and done it.”

What FIFA got was exactly what it wanted: cowed teams and captains who would wear only approved protesting apparel.  In a statement dated November 21, the organisation confirmed that “its No Discrimination campaign has been brought forward from the planned quarter-finals stage in order that all 32 captains will have the opportunity to wear this armband during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.”

While this was a victory chalked up to the grey suits in Zürich, other forms of protest had more serious implications.  In the case of the Iranian team, the stakes were far more serious.  Not singing the Iranian anthem in the first match in solidarity for protestors back in Iran was not a gesture appreciated by the clerical authorities.  But then again, some Iranian spectators have been less than impressed by a perception that the team is not supportive enough for the cause back home.  As a result, the side known as Team Melli has been given another name: Team Mullah.

Iran’s footballers have come fair game and are being subjected to something a bit more serious than yellow cards and on field scolding.  A number of arrests have been made against figures supposedly sympathetic to the protests.  The footballer Voria Ghafouri was recently arrested for allegedly “insulting and sabotaging” the country’s team and spreading “propaganda against the regime”.

Besieged and beleaguered, the plight of the players has left the coach, Carlos Queiroz, incensed.  “To those who come to disturb the team with the issues that are not only about the football opinions,” he told a news conference, “they’re not welcome because our boys, they’re just simple football boys.”

While sounding a tad condescending, Queiroz revealed an understanding paternalism that sees the tie between ball and player as the only relationship that really matters.  “Let the kids play the game. Because this is what they’re looking for.  They wanted to represent the country, to represent the people, as any other national team that [is] here.  And all the national teams, there are issues at home.”

The perennial issue: let footballers be footballers and leave the politics and moralising to those off the pitch.  To FIFA and the Qatari authorities, this must sound like the sweetest of music.

*

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

Dr. 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: This is the logo owned by FIFA for 2022 FIFA World Cup. (Licensed under Fair Use)

Video: Warning: ‘Vaccine Is Worse than We Feared, Could be Looking at Hundreds of Thousands More Dead’

November 26th, 2022 by RAIR Foundation USA

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg.

First published on February 10, 2022

***

As reported by the Daily Expose, “286% more deaths from COVID among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.”

Watch the video below.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @globalresearch_crg. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Mercola

367 Athlete Cardiac Arrests, Serious Issues, 209 Dead, After COVID Shot

November 26th, 2022 by Global Research News

Our thoughts are with the families of the young athletes who passed away after taking the Covid-19 Killer vaccine.

We are dealing with a crimes against humanity on an unprecedented scale.  The Killer vaccine must be withdrawn immediately.

Outstanding and carefully documented report by Good Sciencing 

That was more than a year ago, The numbers has increased dramatically since December of last year.

M. Ch. Global Research, December 22, 2021

***

It is definitely not normal for young athletes to suffer from cardiac arrests or to die while playing their sport, but this year it is happening. All of these heart issues and deaths come shortly after they got a COVID vaccine. While it is possible this can happen to people who did not get a COVID vaccine, the sheer numbers clearly point to the only obvious cause.

The so-called health professionals running the COVID vaccine programs around the world keep repeating that “the COVID vaccine is a normal vaccine and it is safe and effective.”

So in response to their pronouncement, here is a non-exhaustive and continuously growing list of mainly young athletes who had major medical issues in 2021 after receiving one or more COVID vaccines. Initially, many of these were not reported. We know that many people were told not to tell anyone about their adverse reactions and the media was not reporting them. They started happening after the first COVID vaccinations. The mainstream media still are not reporting most, but sports news cannot ignore the fact that soccer players and other stars collapse in the middle of a game due to a heart attack. Many of those die – more than 50%.

We really appreciate the athletes named in this list who have confirmed what happened to them so the truth can be known.

Where Are The Fact-Checkers?

Readers are writing to us asking for comparisons from previous years. Some say without that, these results mean nothing. That’s not true because if we had seen this in previous years, it would be well known and others would have documented it. We are starting to work on this – it is a lot of work.

Where are the fact-checkers? Where is the mainstream media? Some have piles of money from Bill Gates. Why are they not proving us wrong by all piling on and showing the documented Athlete deaths from 2019, 2018, 2017 and the previous decade?

They are nowhere to be found because this number of athlete deaths is abnormal and they know it. They have money from people who don’t want journalists poking around. So that’s why they don’t try to Fact-Check these reports or show previous year numbers.

Follow this link to see Gates Foundation handouts to some media that could do it. For example, NPR in the USA received $24 million.

The Gates Foundation also funded many investigative journalism centers, with around $38 million. Could that be why journalistic curiosity suddenly stopped being a thing?

 

Athlete collapses and deaths chart to 20th December 2021.

Athlete collapses and deaths chart to 20th December 2021.

Growing Report

This story will grow over time, as new information is added. If you have proof of information that we don’t already have, or if you have a correction, please send it through our contact form, with as much information as possible. Useful information would be the person’s name, age, what happened to them, if they had the COVID vaccine(s), date of death, link to any news story.

Growing Report

Special thanks to readers who have provided corrections, found errors that we missed, or provided new information we didn’t know about. It is now a real team effort and we appreciate it.

For the skeptics who believe this is normal, feel free to repeat the following 18 words, after reading each record or name in this list.

Repeat This After Reading Each Line

“The COVID vaccine is a normal vaccine. The COVID vaccine is safe. These injuries and deaths are normal.”

January 2021

  1. 01/01/21, Windmore, Pennsylvania, USA Dead
    Blake Barklage (17), a tennis player at La Salle High School in Windmore, Pennsylvania. Collapsed and died with a sudden cardiac arrest, after his team’s victory in the PCL. La Salle Covid Policy: Vaccines encouraged, Magnus confirmation, No quarantine or contact tracing for vaccinated students, Unvaccinated strongly encouraged to wear a mask, No unvaccinated students may travel beyond local events (Maximum 2.0 hr radius), includes student athletes. Note: Blake’s name was misspelled Barkley in a news story.  News Story
  2. 03/01/21, Portugal  Dead
    Alex Apolinario (24), Brazilian Alverca FC soccer player collapsing on pitch with cardiac arrest during match. Died four days later  News Story
  3. 09/01/21. USA
    Jordan Glenn, Wisconsin basketball player. Collapsed in a break at the start of the half. CPR with a defibrillator, transferred to hospital by Ambulance. Update: In April, had open heart surgery and now has a defibrillator inserted near his abdomen.  News Story
  4. 22/01/21, USA  Dead
    Hank Aaron (86), former Pro Baseballer received his COVID vaccine on January 5th, 2021 to demonstrate the safety of the vaccine and encourage other black Americans to do the same.  Died two weeks later in his sleep – listed as natural causes. News Story
  5. 30/01/21 Indianapolis USA Dead
    Wayne Radford (64), NBA star and former Indianapolis team star, died at his home in Indianapolis. News Story
  6. 30/01/21, France
    Garissone Innocent (20), Cannes Team football goalkeeper. collapsed and blacked out in a game against Chamblee. Tachycardia attack, unable to speak or breathe. News Story

    February 2021

  7. 06/02/21 Philippines Dead
    Clement Lucchu (25), Cameroonian basketball player. Played in Manila, Philippines. Suffered a heart attack and died.  News Story
  8. 21/02/21 Croatia Dead
    Zlatko Saracevich, (59) (former Yugoslavia handball player and world handball champion), won Gold with Croatia at Atlanta Olympics, and recent handball coach. His team just won in a derby against RK Lokomotiva 32:29, and he collapsed with a cardiac arrest just after he gave a media statement. Resuscitation failed.  News Story
  9. 22/02/21 Portugal Dead
    Alfredo Quintana (32), a Cuban handball goalie in Portugal. Collapsed after going into cardiac arrest during practice. Died four days later.  News Story
  10. 22/02/2021 Queensland, Australia Dead
    Dale Best (34), Maroochydore Swans Rugby League player collapsed during a match. Sports trainers performed CPR then paramedics attempted to stabilise the player. He was taken to hospital, where he later died.  News Story

    March 2021

  11. 03/03/2021, Wallkill Central School, New York, USA (17), Dead
    Miguel Antonio Lugo (17) high school football player collapsed and died during football practice
  12. 08/03/21 Egypt Dead
    Abdel-Rahman Atef (23). Al-Rowad Club football player collapsed and died during his team’s Al game in the city of Sharqiya. Swallowed his tongue and resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful (no trained staff).   News Story
  13. 11/03/21 Illinois, USA
    David Wakefield, (27) New Zealand cricketer. Collapsed during training with myocarditis. Brought back to life with defibrillator, hospitalized three weeks in intensive care, required extensive rehabilitation before he could walk and talk.  News Story
  14. 13/03/2021 New Hampshire, USA Dead
    Marvin Hagler (66), Boxer was rushed to hospital with chest pains and trouble breathing before dying four hours later according to his son, James. Thomas “Hitman” Hearns, his former opponent and long-time friend posted on Instagram that Hagler was “in ICU fighting the after effects of the vaccine.”  News StoryNews Story2
  15. 19/03/21, Milton Keynes, UK
    Raymond van Barneveld, darts player collapsed and received paramedic attention during PDC Championship  News Story
  16. 19/03/21 Charleston NC, USA Dead
    Joe Bradshaw, 19, a football player at Charleston Southern University. Collapsed with cardiac arrest – shallow breathing
  17. 20/03/21 Dead
    Andy Haman (54) Pro bodybuilder and actor Andy Haman has died of Pulmonary embolism News Story
  18. 22/03/21, Sacramento California, USA Dead
    Emmanual Antwi (18) a Kennedy High footballer (Canadian) collapsed on the field in Sacramento. On-field CPR attempts failed and he died
  19. 23/03/21
    Moussa Dembélé (25), Atlético Madrid striker collapsed in training and received medical attention.  News Story
  20. 27/03/21 Stewarton, Scotland Dead
    Laura Henderson (42), cardiac arrest while running, Died days later in hospital.  News Story
  21. 29/03/21 India Dead
    Devaraj Anchan (33) a State-level volleyball player collapsed, clutching his chest, while playing in a tournament and died on the way to hospital in Udupi.  News Story
  22. 30/03/21, Ghana
    Charles Bulu Ghanaian referee collapses during AFCON Match  News StoryVideo
  23. 30/03/21, USA
    Alex Stalock (34), NHL Oilers goalie out for the season or more due to heart condition. Positive COVID Test in November 2020, diagnosed myocarditis in March 2021  News Story – The AthleticNews Story2
  24. 31/03/21 USA
    Brett Smith, an NCAA college basketball referee, collapsed during a game. Hospitalized with a blood clot.
  25. 31/03/21 Norway
    Filip Ingebrigtsen (28) Norwegian runner had a tough 2021 after a reaction to the corona vaccine. Ingebrigtsen got the second vaccine dose just after the Olympics in Tokyo. His goal was “getting back to normal” but on October 17, he finished 10th in a race his brother won. News Story

    April 2021

  26. 06/04/21, Callalen, Corpus Cristi (15), Dead
    Moira Claire Arney (15) McAllen High School female Soccer player collapsed and died during practice  News Story
  27. 9/04/21
    Bert Smith (56) NCAA men’s basketball Referee collapsed due to a blood clot in his lung during a tournament  News Story
  28. 09/04/21 Maine, USA Dead
    Red Gendron (63), University of Maine Ice Hockey Coach died after a cardiac arrest while playing golf. His university colleague said he seemed fine earlier, when the team met to receive academic awards. Red was fully vaccinated against COVID-19.  News Story
  29. 10/04/21 Stamford, Lincolnshire, England
    Dave Mears (58), British former martial arts champion ( Taekwondo and Muay Thai) and current martial arts teacher had his left leg amputated after an infection caused by AstraZeneca vaccination 4 March  News Story
  30. 12/04/21 Dead
    Dejan Oršuš (24), Croation NK Otok player, collapsed from a heart attack and later died in the Čakovec County Hospital.  News Story
  31. 18/04/21 Jamaica Dead
    Tremaine Stewart (Tan Tan) (32), Jamaican footballer with FC Dunbeholden. Collapsed and died during the kickaround before a match.  News Story
  32. 22/04/21,
    Craig Jones (29) Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world champion black belt is unable to train or fight after a COVID injection
  33. 24/04/21, Dead
    Luis Ojeda (20), Argentine football player died unexpectedly  News Story
  34. 24/04/21 Texas USA Dead
    Ernesto Ramirez Jr: 16-Year-Old Boy collapsed while playing basketball, and died with a double-size enlarged heart 5 days after his first Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine on 19 April.  News Story
  35. 27/04/21 Minnesota, US
    Marco Rossi (19), Minnesota Wild Ice Hockey player has myocarditis. Team is reported to have been “fully vaccinated”  News StoryNews Story2
  36. 28/04/21, Atlanta, USA  (26)
    Brandon Goodwin (26), NBA player suffers blood clots shortly after COVID-19 vaccine, Possible end of career, still sidelined 7 months later.  News Story

    May 2021

  37. 01/05/21 Florida, USA, Dead
    Nickolas Lawrinas (17), Footballer died suddenly and unexpectedly, cause given by media, unclear
  38. 01/05/21,  USA
    Sage Canaday (35), ultra marathon runner had pneumonia and blood clots. Sage ran the Canyons 100k Ultra Marathon in California (April 24), flew back to Colorado (26th?) Then had the 2nd Pfizer vaccine and soon started having breathing problems and was in bed at least from May 1 to after May 6 when he said he had pneumonia. Went into hospital May 30 or 31, diagnosed with bilateral pulmonary embolism, blood clots. Sage was previously listed as died, due to mixed up reports that a) he was the Czech runner who collapsed and died on the Mont Blanc marathon and b) that he started having breathing problems after a flight. We apologize for the errors and are pleased he is still alive.
  39. ??/05/21 Georgia USA
    Shawn Kuhn (21), sports science major and personal trainer diagnosed with COVID-19 in December 2020, suffered minor symptoms and recovered within days. Received his second Pfizer vaccination in May 2021 and was diagnosed with pneumonia in late August 2021. After losing blood for weeks (with no medical explanation) he died on October 11th at 2:59 am.  News Story
  40. 7/05/21 USA
    Everest Romney (17), a healthy 6’9″ high school sophomore hospitalized after experiencing severe migraines and swelling in his neck post-vaccination. Within 24 hours of getting the vaccine, Everest began experiencing an “exorbitant amount” of pain and swelling in his neck that originated on the same side he received the vaccine. Everest’s dad experienced a similar reaction following a Moderna injection. An x-ray revealed he had over 100 blood clots in his lungs. News StoryMother’s interview Video
  41. 08/05/21 Travis County TX
    Coach Pete (45), athletics coach collapsed 6 days after second Pfizer vaccine with a stroke. Was vaccinated 11/04/21 and 02/05/21  Video
  42. 09/05/21 Shropshire, England
    Simon Walker (42) British soccer coach developed massive blood clots and permanent heart damage after his first AstraZeneca vaccination on 2nd May. Hospitalized with a resting heart rate of 188 on May 9th.  News StoryNews Story2
  43. 10/05/21, Nottinghamshire, England,  Dead
    Josh Downie, (24), cricketer  died after cardiac arrest at practice . His mother Helen said he had no known health problems. “It’s just completely out of the blue,” she said. “It doesn’t seem real at the moment. News Story
  44. 11/05/21 Germany,
    Miroslav Klose, 42, former Germany striker and assistant coach at Bayern Munich. Suffering from blood clots in his leg. Had to stop coaching. Apparently ll clear by September after medication and special socks.  News Story
  45. 14/05/21, Malaysia  Dead
    Haziq Kamaruddin (27), Olympian archer died of coronary artery disease. Died 10 days after Pfizer injections on 13th April and 4th May 2021  News Story
  46. 18/05/2021 Switzerland
    Michaël Perrier (32), Stade Lausanne Ouchy football player. During a team outing, the Swiss footballer suddenly suffered a serious cardiac arrest. It was after his first dose (23/04/2021) of the Moderna vaccine. He received 5 shocks of a defibrillator, then stayed 3 days in an artificial coma. A defibrillator was implanted to prevent a future cardiac arrest, and stayed 2.5 weeks in hospital. After 5 months rest, some arrythmia and light inflammation was still present, so he was unable to return to high level football.  News Story
  47. 28/05/2021 Seattle, USA
    Stefan Frei (36), Seattle Sounders goalkeeper. Seattle Sounders announced in April the team is “fully vaccinated.” In May, it was reported that blood clots in his knee could keep him out for 3-6 months.  News StoryNews Story2
  48. 30/05/21 (exact date unknown, but prior to 01/06/21, when Christian Eriksen collapsed)
    Marvin Schumann, a Gifhorn amateur player revived after cardiac arrest.  News Story
  49. 31/05/21 Bristol, England Dead
    Adam Bounds (41), football player died 31/05/21 of a severe brain-bleed in Derriford Hospital 11 days after AstraZeneca vaccine  News Story

    June 2021

  50. 1/06/21, Denmark
    Christian Eriksen(29), star Inter Milan footballer collapsed with cardiac arrest on the pitch 12 days after receiving a Pfizer vaccine on May 31st. Revived with defibrilator. Team doctor confirmed the team was vaccinated on May 18th – this may have meant all had received at least one shot, because another report mentions May 31st. News Story
  51. 04/06/21 Italy Dead
    Giuseppe Perrino, 29, from Fujimarino, Italy. Collapsed and died during a tribute game for his dead brother, Rocco. Paramedics at the scene tried to resuscitate him, but were unsuccessful. Thank you Joanna.  News Story
  52. 05/06/21 Russia Dead
    Maxim Ishkeldin (30), world field hockey champion, Russian national team midfielder, died suddenly in Novosibirsk, as a result of a clotting event.  News Story
  53. 07/06/21, Germany,  Dead
    Michael Schneider (38), Table tennis professional from Germany,  died suddenly and unexpectedly. News Story
  54. 07/06/21 Virginia USA Dead
    Joshua Johnson (16), standout football player for William Monroe High School in Stanardsville, Virginia died suddenly while fishing with his father. News Story
  55. 9/06/21, Ontario Canada,  Dead
    Kamila Label-Farrel (19), University Basketball star died unexpectedly – while on a morning jog she collapsed while stretching  News Story
  56. 12/06/21 Italy Dead
    Chloe Giani Gavazzi (12), Italian youth tennis player, member of Golarsa Academy in Milan. Died suddenly. Found dead In her bed by her mother.  News Story
  57. 12/06/21 Maryland USA Dead
    Sang Ho Baek (20), George Mason University baseball pitcher died after bloodclots following a vaccination and “Tommy John” elbow surgery 8 June. His father said “our family is devastated and we want answers to why our healthy son would die so suddenly after routine surgery.”  News StoryNews Story2
  58. 14/06/21, Indonesia,  Dead
    Marquis Kido (36), Indonesian Olympic gold medalist in double Badminton, died of cardiac arrest during game News Story
  59. 17/06/21 France
    Frederic Lott, Salouël RC team in France, suffered cardiac arrest after a football training session in Salouel. Saved by heart massage and defibrillator.
  60. 18/06/21 Honduras Dead
    Robert Lima (49), former Olympia footballer from Uruguay, Honduras. Collapsed and died of cardiac arrest while playing soccer with friends.  News Story
  61. 19/06/21 Colombia, Dead
    Jose Edgar Preciado, Colombian caddie suffered a fatal cardiac arrest at his hotel after the second round of the Holcim Colombia Classic in Bucaramanga, Colombia.  News Story
  62. 21/06/21 Hungary Dead
    Victor Marcel Hegedus (18), Hungarian soccer player. Collapsed and died during a training warm-up  News Story
  63. 23/06/21 France
    Christophe Lemaitre, French sprinter. Retired from French Championships and Tokyo Olympics. A coach said he failed a physical, after negative reactions to coronavirus vaccine.
  64. 23/06/2021 Blairgowrie, Scotland
    Hamish Bell (20), Blairgowrie RFC Rugby Union player and Aberdeen University student, suffered a cardiac arrest during a training session. After 25 minutes of CPR using a defibrillator, he was taken to hospital for treatment  News StoryNews Story2
  65. 25/06/21, USA
    Ethan Jovani Trejo (16), soccer player, collapsed on the field during training  News StoryNews Story2
  66. 26/06/21 Russia Dead
    Maxim Dubrovolski, 17, collapsed and lost consciousness during a Football League game. Moscow. Died before the ambulance arrived on the scene.  News Story
  67. 27/06/21, Singapore
    Unnamed teenager (16) suffered cardiac arrest after weightlifting session 6 days after first Covid-19 injection. He was in critical condition in hospital.  News Story
  68. 28/06/2021, Las Vegas, Nevada, Dead
    Chino Yelum Cajetan Nsofor (13) Football player collapsed and died during practice  News Story
  69. 28/06/21, (estimate) USA
    Kyle Warner: Professional mountain biker suffers from pericarditis after Pfizer vaccine, possible end of career (29) News Story

    July 2021

  70. 02/07/21 France Dead
    Lise Vidal (43), former windsurfer who participated in the Sydney Olympics died after a brain hemorrhage. She is also a French Olympics coach.  News Story
  71. 03/07/21 Antigua, West Indies
    Chinelle Henry (26) collapsed on field with teammate Chedean Nation. Only a few days prior, the club boasted on Twitter that it was “Vaccinated and ready to face Pakistan Women!” News Story
  72. 03/07/21 Antigua, West Indies
    Chedean Nation (35) collapsed on field with teammate Chinelle Henry. Only a few days prior, the club boasted on Twitter that it was “Vaccinated and ready to face Pakistan Women!” News Story
  73. 04/07/21 Nagoya, Japan
    Ryōsuke Hirata (33), Japanese baseball player. Diagnosed with “atypical angina”
  74. 06/07/21, Japan  (27), Dead
    Yusuke Kinoshita (27) Baseball player collapsed during practice. Died 03/08/2021, five weeks after COVID-19 vaccination
  75. 08/07/21, Toronto, Canada,  Dead
    Jenn Gouveia (31), Toronto mother, collapsed and died suddenly  on Sunday while out for a run in High Park News Story
  76. 10/07/21 Dead
    Mike Salase (39), Northland rugby league player died while playing a game. CPR attempts failed News Story
  77. 12/07/21 Jaroslaw, Poland Dead
    Vladimir Dorozhkin, 38 years old, coach and athlete. Died the same day as he got the COVID vaccine. “Vaccinated just after noon, died at midnight. Cardiomyopathy.  News Story
  78. 12/07/21 Egypt Dead
    Imad Bayoumi, footballer from Egypt. Collapsed and died during a friendly match in Egypt, a tribute to his friend Ayman Handal who died earlier.  News Story
  79. 13/07/21, Philadelphia PA, USA, Dead
    Ivan Hicks (16) Footballer died during scrimmage. Coroner found an enlarged heart and scarring, but no myocarditis or inflammation. Verdict cardiovascular disease. Tested positive for COVID.
  80. 13/07/21 Dubai Dead
    Sebastian Eubank (29), boxer, son of famous boxer, Chris Eubank, died of cardiac arrest, his wife said.  News StoryNews Story2
  81. 13/07/2021, Pennsylvania, USA (17), Dead
    Andrew Roseman, Junior High School Baseball Pitcher died unexpectedly,  News Story
  82. 13/07/21 California USA Dead
    Nathan Esparza (16), Castaic High School football player collapsed and died after a cardiac arrest at home 13 July. Reports on Twitter say he recently had a COVID vaccine.  News StoryNews Story2
  83. 14/07/21 Italy Dead
    Davide Bristot (18), volleyball player died 27 days after first Pfizer vaccine on 17 June. On 10 July, debilitating headaches started, and on 13 July he vomited twice while out with friends. The local hospital started an IV drip but released him an hour later. The next morning, his mother found him dead at the foot of his bed. Some media misspelled his name Bistrot.  News StoryNews Story2
  84. 15/07/21 Dead
    Arthur Zucolini (29), former basketballer. Died of cardiac arrest while sleeping. News Story
  85. 18/07/21 Portugal Dead
    Marilio Costa Leite (48), Portuguese professional long-distance runner. Died two days after receiving a Pfizer COVID vaccine. His body was found in a ravine.  News Story
  86. 19/07/21 UK Dead
    Maqsood Anwar (44), British cricket athlete from Wales. Had a cardiac arrest and died. Paramedics tried to revive him for 45 minutes, unsuccessfully.  News Story
  87. 21/07/21, USA (31)
    Kjeld Nuis (31) Two time Olympic Gold Medalist and World Record holder speed skater develops pericarditis after Pfizer vaccine News Story
  88. 22/07/21 New York Dead
    Unnamed boy (15), suddenly collapsed with cardiac arrest on soccer field while playing soccer at a local camp on July 22, 4 days after 2nd Pfizer injection. Died the next day. VAERS ID 1498080.  News Story
  89. 22/07/21 Fethiye, Turkey Dead
    Michael Mitchell (65), former Mr. Universe bodybuilder and Bravehart actor died six days after a Pfizer booster on July 16th, having received 2 doses of Sinovac. The first experimental Sinovac Coronavac “inactivated virus” injection was February 22, and the second March 20. News Story with screenshots
  90. 23/07/21, Germany  (27), Dead
    Tim B. (27) SV Hamberge football player from (Schleswig-Holstein) collapsed after returning from a football tournament and died   News Story
  91. 24/07/21, Germany  (unknown age)
    Unnamed football player of TuS Hoberge-Uerentrup Bielefeld (NRW) collapsed on the pitch with cardiac arrest   News Story
  92. 24/07/2021, Little Rock, Arkansas, Dead
    Devon DuHart (16) football player mysteriously died of a seizure in his sleep. He was not well after a recent practice.  News Story
  93. 25/07/21 Charles City, Iowa, USA
    Carly Stevenson Wartburg College shot put and discus athlete collapsed and was rushed to hospital with blood clots in her lungs and heart. She had trouble speaking and breathing and then her heart stopped. She was resuscitated three times. She lost her balance, head control, hand and arm movements, and communication skills. News Story
  94. 26/07/21 Netherlands Dead
    Whitnee Abriska (19), female handball professional passes away after cardiac arrest while on vacation. News Story
  95. 27/07/21 Iowa USA
    Leah Taylor (22) Iowa doctoral student and fitness promoter / bodybuilder hospitalized with myocarditis after her coerced Pfizer vaccination. The second Pfizer injection was likely between July 27 and August 22, based on context clues from her now-deleted Instagram account. After doctors told her to keep her heart rate down for six months, she wrote “I was diagnosed with myocarditis as a result of getting the COVID vaccine.” On 31st August she wrote, “I understand the fear and danger on both sides. Clearly. I mean look what the vaccine has done to my previously healthy, 22-year-old heart. I was extremely hesitant and scared to get the vaccine. My doctoral program pushed for all students to get it, and vaccination mandates for healthcare workers came out in my area. That is why I had to get the vaccine.”
  96. 28/07/21, Germany  (16), Dead
    Jascha Zey (16) U19 player of Eisbachtaler Sportfreunde (Rhineland-Palatinate) died suddenly and unexpectedly in hospital  News Story
  97. 28/07/21, Georgia, USA  (15), Dead
    Joshua Ivory (15) Football player collapsed and died during game. Coroner’s report said cardiac dysrhythmia triggered sudden cardiac arrest.  News Story
  98. 31/07/21 USA
    Daniel Brito (23), the Phillies minor-league infielder had been hospitalized since collapsing on the field with a stroke. News Story
  99. 31/07/21 Dead
    Sofia Graham (27) bodybuilder prepared to compete at 2021 NPC North Americans and NPC USA’s. Died of cardiac arrest in her sleep  News Story

    August 2021

  100. 02/08/21, Detroit USA, 15 years old, Dead
    Stephen Sylvester (15), Detroit Central Catholic High School football and track athlete collapsed and died during conditioning practice
  101. 04/08/21, Kansas, USA, 19 years old, Dead
    Tirrell Williams (19) Fort Scott freshman lineman died after collapsing with a stroke on field during practice  News StoryNews Story2
  102. 06/08/2021, Germany
    Unnamed SpVgg. Oelde II District league player collapsed on field revived by his opponent, Julian Pietsch from VfB Schloß Holte 2.  News Story
  103. 07/08/21, Belgium
    Rune Coghe (18), Belgian  KFC Eendracht Hooglede footballer suffers cardiac arrest on pitch News Story
  104. 08/08/21 Dead
    John Meadows (49) Bodybuilder AKA ‘Mountain Dog’ died of ‘blood clot’ News Story
  105. 08/08/21, Georgia, USA  (19), Dead
    Quandarius Wilburn (19), Football player collapsed during a Panthers conditioning practice and later died. He appeared to be in very good physical condition when he reported to his first college preseason camp.  News StoryNews Story2
  106. 10/08/21 Australia
    Chris Cairns (51), New Zealand cricketer suffered a massive heart attack and a ruptured aorta. He underwent heart surgery and was taken to a Sydney hospital for further vascular surgery.  News Story
  107. 12/08/21, New Zealand , Dead
    Lee Moses (29) Palmerston North Marist football player died during training session  News Story
  108. 12/08/21, Germany
    Unnamed female Freudenberg footballer collapses in women’s Westfalenliga Wacker Mecklenbeck against Fortuna Freudenberg (Baden-Würrtemberg) shortly before the end without opposing influence  News Story
  109. 13/08/21, France  (37), Dead
    Franck Berrier (37) former French professional footballer collapsed of a cardiac arrest while playing tennis. He retired in 2019 due to heart problems.  News Story
  110. 13/08/21, UK, Dead
    Roy Butler (23), Irish footballer Waterford FC dies with massive brain bleed after J&J vaccine. He suffered severe headaches and general malaise within one hour. By Saturday August 14, he was vomiting and having convulsions. His mother confirmed on facebook Roy only took the vaccine to go to Greece with friends. The tweet that reported this has been removed (we should have taken a snapshot!)  News Story
  111. 13/08/21 Tennessee USA Dead
    Azorean Tatum (16), high school football player suddenly collapsed at school, August 13, phoned his mother, had difficulty breathing, unable to stand up or walk on his own. Paramedics took him to Baptist Children’s Hospital. After 2 days, receiving no tests other than COVID test, he was released. He did not improve and on August 20 was taken to Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, where he passed away on Saturday, August 21. News Story
  112. 14/08/21, USA  (17), Dead
    Dimitri McKee (17) Lee High School Football player passed out and died after practice, News stories attributed his death to heatstroke  News Story
  113. 14/08/21, Kenya  (23), Dead
    23 year old China Olympics Champion Gilbert Kwemoi collapsed in his home (after a short illness) and claimed he had a headache. He died on the way to hospital,  News Story
  114. 15/08/21, Spain Dead
    Alena Hatvani-Kosinová (46), Czech female bodybuilder died after being rushed to hospital in Alicante, Spain. News Story
  115. 15/08/21,
    Jeremy Chardy (34), Veteran French tennis player, Former World No. 25, suspended his season after “Violent, near paralyzing pain” after Covid-19 vaccine in mid-August. News StoryNews Story2
  116. 15/08/21 Italy Dead
    Marco Tampwo (19), Atletico Fioghi footballer from Rome, died of a cardiac arrest. News Story
  117. 16/08/21, France  (24)
    Samuel Kalu (24) Bordeaux pro footballer suffers cardiac arrest during a game  News Story
  118. 16/08/21, Germany (62)
    Manfred Lehner (62) SV Niederpöring (Bayern) goalkeeping coach suffers cardiac arrest after training  News Story
  119. 18/08/21, Belgium
    Joppe Erpels (vaccinated) from Arendonk ended up in intensive care after a race.  Three young Belgian (Kempen) cyclists suffer heart issues following a race.  Riders from Acrog-Tormans BC. Joppe Erpels from Arendonk ended up in intensive care, Xander Verhagen from Geel had problems at training and Yarno Van Herck suddenly felt stabbing in his chest during the Herman Vanspringel Diamond.  News Story
  120. 18/08/21, Belgium
    Xander Verhagen (vaccinated) from Geel had problems at training.  Three young Belgian (Kempen) cyclists suffer heart issues following a race.  Riders from Acrog-Tormans BC. Joppe Erpels from Arendonk ended up in intensive care, Xander Verhagen from Geel had problems at training and Yarno Van Herck suddenly felt stabbing in his chest during the Herman Vanspringel Diamond.  News Story
  121. 18/08/21, Belgium
    Yarno Van Herck (vaccinated) suddenly felt stabbing in his chest during the Herman Vanspringel Diamond.  Three young Belgian (Kempen) cyclists suffer heart issues following a race.  Riders from Acrog-Tormans BC. Joppe Erpels from Arendonk ended up in intensive care, Xander Verhagen from Geel had problems at training and Yarno Van Herck suddenly felt stabbing in his chest during the Herman Vanspringel Diamond.  News Story
  122. 18/08/21, Belgium
    Jente van Genechten (25), footballer collapses on field due to cardiac arrest  News Story
  123. 19/08/21 UK Dead
    Alex Bruce (20), English rugby league player. Found dead in hotel room the morning after his pro rugby league debut. News Story
  124. 20/08/21 Dead
    Orlando Gallucci (49), Personal trainer, bodybuilder and athlete died of cardiac arrest after the 2021 NPC Worldwide European Championships News Story
  125. 21/08/2021 Neath Port Talbot, Wales Dead
    Alex Evans (31), Cwmllynfell RFC Rugby Union player felt unwell during the game and left the field, later collapsing. resuscitation attempts with defibrillator failed, and he died at the scene.  News Story
  126. 22/08/21,
    Fabrice N’Sakala (31), Besiktas defender collapses on pitch during game News Story
  127. 22/08/21, UK (29)
    Pedro Obiang (29), ex-West Ham star suffers myocarditis 10 days post-vaccine News Story
  128. 22/08/21, Italy  (38)
    Francesca Marcon (38), Italian volleyball player suffered pericarditis after 2nd Pfizer vaccine. shortness of breath and chest pains News Story
  129. 22/08/21, Venezuela  (30), Dead
    Alexaida Guedez (30), Venezuelan National Marathon Champion collapsed and died in a 5k race  News Story
  130. 22/08/21 Slovenia Dead
    Aidan Sharanovich (45) former Primorja striker also played in Slovenian league for Primoria. Suffered a severe cardiac arrest, resuscitated, died several days later.  News Story
  131. 24/08/2021, Luxembourg
    José dos Reis (29) collapsed on the field and was resuscitated  News Story
  132. 24/08/21, USA Dead
    Jack Alkhatib (18), Columbia High school footballer collapsed on the field and died  News Story
  133. 25/08/21 New York, USA
    Vinny Curry (33), New York Jets defensive end will miss entire 2021 season. Diagnosed with a rare blood disorder in July and removal of his spleen, Twitter post. Planned to return mid-September but developed blood clots and started blood thinners – no physical contact for 3-6 months. News Story
  134. 29/08/21, USA Dead
    Donadrian Robinson (Donnie) (17), Columbia High school footballer died  News Story
  135. 29/08/21, Germany  (unknown age)
    Unnamed Germany C-League Dillenburg a player from Hirzenhain collapses, game cancelled News Story

    September 2021

  136. 1/10/21 Canada,  Dead
    Jacob Downey (18), Peterborough Petes hockey player in 2019-2020 season, passed away suddenly after medical emergency News Story
  137. 01/09/21 Australia Dead
    Cameron Dale(29), Australian sailor, died after suffering a ‘ catastrophic’ stroke. He was youngest solo sailor to circumnavigate the globe. News Story
  138. 01/09/21,
    Greg Van Avermaet (36) former Olympic road champ quits Cycling World Cup after COVID vaccine News StoryNews Story2
  139. 02/09/21, Belgium
    Greg Luyssen (22), Professional Cyclist ends cycling career after heart failure News Story  “I was in the chasing group during the Kortemark Race when I suddenly became unwell,” he says. “I felt a huge pressure in my chest and it was so bad that I had to leave the race. I was taken to hospital and diagnosed with heart failure. I already had fever a number of times for no apparent reason after my second Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine, but I had never thought about the relationship. Further tests have shown that my heart muscle is affected and that my body now reacts poorly to intensive activity.”
  140. 02/09/21, Tokyo Paralympics
    Belgian wheelchair tennis player Joachim Gerard (32) collapsed with heart problems at Tokyo Olympics.  News Story
  141. 03/09/21 Columbia SC, USA Dead
    David Patten (47), three-time Super Bowl champion with Patriots, died while riding his motorcycle – he suddenly “went left of center” and struck on an oncoming Chevrolet sedan.  News Story
  142. 04/09/2021, France (16)
    Diego Ferchaud (16) from ASPTT Caen suffers a cardiac arrest in Saint-Lô  News Story
  143. 04/09/21, (27) Dead
    Jens De Smet (27), footballer collapsed on field, died of cardiac arrest News Story
  144. 04/09/21, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, UK  (29), Dead
    Dave Hyde (29) Henley Football Club Rugby player collapsed and died after match, suffering two cardiac arrests  News Story
  145. 05/09/21, Germany
    Unnamed Referee collapses during game. SC Neuburgweier – FV Ettlingenweier II (Baden-Württemberg)  News Story
  146. 05/09/21
    Florian Ploner (22), handball player for SC Ferlach collapses during game.  Symptoms pointed to a cardiac arrest or stroke.  News Story
  147. 05/09/21 PA, USA Dead
    Jalen Leavey, 19, former Philadelphia High School football player. Collapsed and died unexpectedly after a college game. News report says death due to natural causes, from a previous medical condition.  News Story
  148. 6/09/21
    Paul Zipser (27), Bayern Munich forward (basketball) underwent a successful surgery for  brain hemorrhage related to J&J News Story
  149. 06/09/21, Italy, 13 years
    Unnamed soccer player (13) from Janus Nova club, Saccolongo (Italy) collapses on the field with cardiac arrest
  150. 07/09/21, Great Britain, 17 years Dead
    Dylan Rich (17) soccer player collapsed on the field and died of a double heart attack during a game in England.
  151. 09/09/21, Germany
    Unnamed player from Birati Club Münster suffered cardiac arrest in a regional league game against FC Nordkirchen II Eriksen. Game canceled  News Story
  152. 09/09/21, Italy (20) Dead
    Christian Blandini (20), a University of Catania volleyball “rising star” died of a sudden cardiac arrest. A university statement described the industrial engineering student’s “sudden death.” Catania requires students to have a Covid-19 “Green Pass” showing vaccination.  News Story
  153. 10/09/21, Germany, 24 years old
    Lucas Surek (24) from BFC Chemie Leipzig collapses from myocarditis.  News Story
  154. 11/09/21, France, 49 years old Dead
    Frédéric Lartillot (49) Ain / France: suffers cardiac arrest in the locker room after a friendly match  News Story
  155. 11/09/21, Italy, 45 years old Dead
    Andrea Astolfi (45), sporting director of Calcio Orsago (Italy) suffers a cardiac arrest after returning from training and died with no previous illness
  156. 11/09/21, Denmark, 22 years old
    Abou Ali (22) collapses with cardiac arrest during a game in Denmark News Story
  157. 11/09/21, Netherlands, 19 years old Dead
    Sebastiaan Bos (19), Laren ice hockey player passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. News Story
  158. 12/09/21, France 33 years old
    Dimitri Lienard (33), FC Strasbourg midfielder collapses during game News Story
  159. 12/09/21,
    Santo Giuliano (33) Professional Dancer suffers cardiac arrest 5 days after Pfizer vaccine News Story
  160. 13/09/21, Germany  (61)
    Anil Usta, Turkish national playing for Vfb Schwelm (Ennepetal) collapsed on field with heart problems  News Story
  161. 13/09/2021 Waseca, Minnesota, USA
    Brad Wendland (48), Waseca Bluejays high school football team head coach had a cardiac arrest on the sideline of Friday’s game against St. Peter  News Story
  162. 14/09/21, USA 37 years old Dead
    Parys Haralson (37) former star player at Justice at Madison Central, then Tennessee and in the NFL died suddenly and unexpectedly at home in Jan Jose, California. News Story
  163. 16/09/21, India (29) Dead
    Avi Barot (29), Saurashtra cricketer suffers cardiac arrest, died – News Story
  164. 16/09/21
    Imogen Allen (24), female equestrian, champion show jumper may never ride again. Hospitalized with a  severe reaction to Moderna Covid vaccine with two massive blood clots on her lungs two weeks after her first vaccination. News Story
  165. 17/09/21
    John Stokes (21), NCAA Tennessee State University golfer had myocarditis four days after his second Pfizer dose. Spoke out against vaccine mandates News Story
  166. 17/09/2021 Visakhapatnam, India Dead
    Murtaza Lodhgar (aka Murtu bhai) (45), Mizoram Colts Cricketer. On an after-dinner walk he suddenly felt enormous chest pain and fell on the road  News Story
  167. 18/09/21, Germany 25 years old
    Kingsley Coman (25) from FC Bayern Munich had a heart operation after an arrhythmia.  News Story
  168. 18/09/21, Canada 25 years old Dead
    Francis Perron (25), University of Ottawa Gee-Gees defensive linebacker died suddenly after a game in Toronto. The University of Ottawa earlier launched its mandatory vaccination policy, “anyone who intends on coming to campus for any reason must be vaccinated.”  News Story
  169. 19/09/21, France 19 years old
    Unnamed FC Nantes soccer player (19) suffers cardiac arrest during training
  170. 19/09/21, Germany Dead
    Dirk Splisteser volleyball trainer from SG Traktor Divitz collapses dead on the sidelines within one hour News Story
  171. 21/09/21, Augsburg
    Unnamed assistant referee of a Kreisliga Augsburg game in Emersacker, collapses with heart problems  News Story
  172. 21/09/21, Germany
    Helen Edwards, At the women’s World Cup qualifier between Germany and Serbia in Chemnitz, the English linesman suffered heart problems and was carried off the pitch  News Story
  173. 21/09/21,
    Antoine Méchin (31), French triathlete suffers pulmonary embolism following Moderna vaccine  News Story
  174. 22/09/21, Wisconsin USA
    Tom Felton (34), collapses during golf game  News Story
  175. 22/09/21, Germany  (36)
    Nicky Dalibor (36), (Saxony-Anhalt) collapsed and was resuscitated on the pitch  News Story
  176. 22/09/2021 Israel Dead
    Arik Alfasi (49), Basketball coach, former Israeli national team assistant coach was twice vaccinated, then caught COVID – his condition worsened, was placed on life support and died. He had no co-morbidities and did not smoke.
  177. 26/09/21, Germany Dead
    Benny Taft (33) football player and coach of SVU Unterferrieden (Bavaria) suffers cardiac arrest in a game, died on the 27th,  News Story
  178. 27/09/21, Venezuela, Dead
    Guillermo Arias (31), Camaguán FC, Guárico state in a game with La Villa FC. He collapsed and died on the field. News Story
  179. 27/09/21, Germany  (61), Dead
    Mr. Steidel, referee, suffers cardiac arrest in a game of Lauber SV (Bayern). Game abandoned.  News Story
  180. 27/09/21, Italy, 20 years old
    Unnamed rider (20) suffers a cardiac arrest at the end of a tournament.
  181. 28/09/21, Germany, 17 years
    Hoher Hagen (17), JSG soccer player collapsed during game and was revived in Hannoversch Munden  News Story
  182. 28/09/21, Italy, 53 years Dead
    Antonello Campus (53), football coach for a Sardinia youth team collapsed and died in Sicily during practice with team
  183. 28/09/21, USA, 16 years Dead
    Unnamed twice vaccinated teenager (16) collapses while playing soccer and died a little later.
  184. 29/09/21, Germany Dead
    Dietmar Gladow, Team leader from Thalheim (Bitterfeld) suffers a fatal cardiac arrest before the game
  185. 28/09/21 Mexico Dead
    Leticia Rico Gonzalez (51), triathlete. Died of a cardiac arrest during Cozumel triathlon competition in Quintana Roo. Resuscitation attempts unsuccessful, pronounced dead at hospital.  News Story
  186. 29/09/21, USA Dead
    Unnamed high school football player collapsed during practice and died in the hospital.
  187. 30/09/21 Kostroma, Russia Dead
    Anna Kruglova (27), Russian national Taekwondo champion and a medallist in both European and World Taekwondo championships. No official cause of death, but it is reported that she suffered a heart attack then died, two day

Athletes Collapsing all Over the World

  1. October 2021

  2. 01/10/21, Germany, 15 years Dead
    Bruno Stein (15) goalkeeper from FC An der Fahner Höhe in Gräfentonna, Thuringia, died.  News Story
  3. 01/10/2021 Nashville, Tennessee, USA
    Todd Richards (54), Nashville Predators Ice Hockey assistant coach, had a heart attack or cardiac arrest  News Story
  4. 02/10/21 USA Dead
    Major Wingate (37), American basketball player and former Tennessee basketball captain (Springfield Armor, Shanxi Zhongyu, Tofas Bursa) died unexpectedly.  News Story
  5. 02/10/21 (28), Dead
    Jake Kazmarek (28) bodybuilder, Moderna vaccines 31st August & 28th September 2021 Died four days after vaccine  News Story
  6. 02/10/21 Holland
    Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado (23),  Dutch, reigning European champion Cyclo-cross rider out of action due to ‘disturbed blood count’ News Story
  7. 02/10/21 France
    Martin Lefèvre (16), Agneaux FC Football player collapsed during a Gambardella Cup match against FC Saint-Lô Manche, shortly before the half-hour mark. He attends Curie-Corot high school in Saint-Lô. His father said that his son has no heart problems, it was an inflammation of an artery in the brain, like a stroke … The club president said “He was paralyzed all over the right side, had lost his speech but remained conscious.” He remained in hospital for four days and transferred to the Centre for Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation for Children and Adolescents (CMPR), in Flers (Orne)  News Story
  8. 03/10/21 Canada
    Josh Archibald (28), Edmonton Oilers hockey forward  out indefinitely due to myocarditis News Story
  9. 03/10/21, Austria, 64 years old Dead
    Ernst Scherr (64) ex-goalkeeper coach and talent scout unexpectedly died.
  10. 03/10/21, Germany, Dead
    Timucin Sen (Hesse) Football player collapsed on pitch 10 Minutes before the end of the game. Resuscitated  News Story
  11. 3/10/21, Dead
    Niels de Wolff (27), Belgian White Star Sombeke football club player, collapsed with cardiac arrest after a game with Warbrook team. Revived with CPR and defibrillator. Died in hospital three days later.  News Story
  12. 4/10/21 Dead
    Hayden Holman (22), Sugar City, Idaho marathon runner. Collapsed during St. George Marathon in Utah. Initially revived. Died in the hospital.  News Story
  13. 04/10/21, Germany, 42 years old Dead
    Alexander Siegfried (42) from VfB Moschendorf unexpectedly collapsed and died.  News Story
  14. 04/10/21, Dead
    Benjamin Taft (33), German footballer/coach collapses with cardiac arrest after game News Story
  15. 06/10/21 Dead
    George Peterson (37) AKA “Da Bull” Bodybuilder won the Classic Physique competition at 2019 Arnold Classic, died days before competing in a top bodybuilding competition. Suspected brain haemorage after receiving two doses of covid vaccine which was an Orlando Olympics requirement.  News Story
  16. 06/10/21,
    Florian Dagoury: World’s Top Static Breath-Hold Freediver diagnosed with Myocarditis and Pericarditis 40 days after second Pfizer vaccine – Instagram  News Story
  17. 06/10/21, Germany  (61), Dead
    Bern Bauer (61), Trainer DJK Concordia Ludwigshafen (Rheinland-Pfalz)  News Story
  18. 07/10/21, Italy, 17 years old
    Unnamed athlete from Colverde (17) collapses with cardiac arrest while training.
  19. 08/10/21, France, 49 years old Dead
    Benoit Sabard(49), SC Massay player suffers a fatal cardiac arrest during the game. This is the third death of the year at SC Massay, after that of Jean-Philippe Roux (73?), former president of the club and deputy mayor of the town, and that of Franck Martin, former player and former vice-president.  News Story
  20. 8/10/21, Dead
    Dean Chiazari (31), canoe rower. Died of a cardiac arrest.  News Story
  21. 09/10/21, Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico Dead
    Alberto Olguin, PGA golf caddy for Manuel Torres collapses on the course during PGA Tour Latinoamerica event due to a cardiac arrest. It was the second PGA caddy death (19 June).  News Story
  22. 09/10/21, England, 29 years old
    Ryan Bowman (29) Shrewsbury professional striker was treated with a defibrillator after half an hour of play with extreme heart problems.  News Story
  23. 10/10/21, Italy, 18 year old
    Pompeo Tretola (18), soccer player suddenly faints on the field, is revived by his teammate.  News Story
  24. 10/10/21, France, 40 years old
    Unnamed Saint-James player suffers a cardiac arrest after warming up before the game, collapsed in the change room, saved with defibrilator by a firefighter on the opposing team.  News Story
  25. 10/10/21, Italy, 59 years old Dead
    Unnamed long-distance runner from Biella (59) dies of heart failure during a race.
  26. 10/10/2021, Germany
    Unnamed female player In the match between Wacker Mecklenbeck and Fortuna Freudenberg in the Women’s Westphalia League, collapsed near the end without any opposing influence.
  27. 10/10/21, Dead
    Simone Bedodi (40), Italian baseball player and coach of the Park Ranger baseball team. Died In his sleep.  News Story
  28. 11/10/21, Germany
    Marcel Herder, Guest coach,  collapsed on the edge of field Mühlwiese (Saxony) Resuscitated  News Story
  29. 11/10/21 Norway
    Daniel Aakervik (17), one of Norway’s greatest cross-country skiing talents suspended his season after a severe reaction to COVID vaccination. News Story
  30. 12/10/21
    Ewan Fraser (30), Glasgow field hockey player collapsed with cardiac arrest, during a match News Story
  31. 12/10/21 Germany, 25 years Dead
    Lukas Bommer (25), goalkeeper of HC TuRa Bergkamen, died suddenly and unexpectedly.
  32. 12/10/21, Macedonia, Dead
    Julija Portjanko (38), Ukrainian-born Macedonian handball player (Kometal Gjorče Petrov, Arvor 29, Macedonia national team). surprise death, in car with her husband, returning from Greece. News Story
  33. 12/10/2021 Spain
    Ferran Duran (27), Maià footballer collapsed on the pitch then suffered multiple heart attacks before arriving at the hospital. An automatic defibrillator was implanted in his heart.  News Story  News Story2
  34. 13/10/21, Mexico, 16 years old Dead
    Hector Manuel Mendoza (16) died of a cardiac arrest while training.  News Story
  35. 13/10/21, Brazil, 18 years old
    Fellipe de Jesus Moreira (18) professional footballer suffered a double heart attack. Released from hospital 3rd November.  News Story
  36. 14/10/21 UK, Dead
    David Jenkins (31), Olympic silver medalist diver and British diving coach unexpectedly died. News Story
  37. 14/10/21, Italy, 27 years old
    Gianni Moscon (27), multiple cycling champion, to undergo an operation because of severe cardiac arrhythmia.  News Story
  38. 14/10/21, Italy, 53 years old
    Unnamed AH footballer (53) suffers a cardiac arrest while training.
  39. 14/10/21, Germany, Dead
    Unnamed Referee collapsed and died during a game Kreisliga B match between SC Daisbach and FSV Taunusstein in Aarbergen (Hesse)   News Story
  40. 15/10/21, Gold Coast, Australia, 14 years old
    Ava Azzopardi (14), female soccer player collapsed on the pitch kept in an artificial coma in hospital. Later recovered.  News Story
  41. 16/10/21, France, aged 54 Dead
    Christophe Ramassamy (54) AH player and former referee collapsed and died of a cardiac arrest during a match.  News Story
  42. 16/10/21 Padua, Italy, Dead
    Dr. Filippo Morando (37), soccer player in Padua, Italy. Collapsed with severe chest pain during a run. Resuscitated by others present, went to the hospital but was discharged. Died 5 days later.  News Story
  43. 17/10/21 Italy, Dead
    Jaber Fathallah (32), Tunisian basketball player for Italian team Portitodo Messina match against Reggio Calabria.. Collapsed during game with cardiac arrest. Died in hospital.  News Story
  44. 17/10/21, France, 41 years old Dead
    Unnamed soccer player (41) collapsed on the field and died, apparently due to cardiac arrest during a soccer match in Avignon. Member of Rasteau’s senior football team. News Story
  45. 17/10/21 Brazil Dead
    Adans João Santos Alencar (38), former Brazilian footballer for Bruski FC, suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in Blumenau in the Santa Catarina Championship.  News Story
  46. 17/10/21 Italy Dead
    Haitem Fathallah (32), Italian Fortitudo Messina basketball player collapsed with cardiac arrest in a game against Reggio Calabria. Resuscitation failed and he never regained consciousness.  News Story
  47. 17/10/2021 USA Dead
    Brian Gassaway (49), former UFC MMA fighter. No cause of death.  News Story
  48. 18/10/21 USA Dead
    Lexi Riggles (16), a Hanover College senior and 2018 Danville High School graduate who played basketball for the Panthers and Warriors, died unexpectedly.  News Story
  49. 18/10/21 New Zealand Dead
    Sean Wainui (25), Star NZ rugby player, died in a solo car crash into a tree, a week after getting vaccinated  News Story
  50. 19/10/21
    Megan Roth (34), Marathoner, running trainer and sub-elite runner. Suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed During the Boston Marathon. Onlookers performed CPR on her and saved her life. News Story
  51. 19/10/2021 Murcia, Spain
    Antonio López (32), Real Murcia football defender had cardiomyopathy, a heart condition that can lead to heart failure, forced him to retire from playing football. He will have an implanted defibrillator. News Story
  52. 20/10/21, Italy (26)   Dead
    Ronald Biglione (26), Argentine Deportivo Club Independencia football player hospitalized with blood clots (thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura) after 2nd vaccine. Died 5 Nov News Story
  53. 20/10/21, Germany  (65), Dead
    Hans-Günter Kinnen (65), Weiler-Volkhoven tournament coordinator, youth manager, former player  News Story
  54. 21/10/21, NSW Central Coast, Australia
    Cienna Knowles (19) Australian equestrian star hospitalized due to blood clots. vomiting, fever, wet in sweat, heart palpitations, headache, sore muscles & joints like hell, blurry vision after Pfizer vaccine. News Storyand instagram
  55. 21/10/21, UK  (30)
    Nathan Baker, Bristol city footballer, collapsed during the game. 2 fans were also treated for medical emergencies.  News Story
  56. 24/10/21, Germany  (17)
    Elly Böttcher (17) from Rostocker FC collapses in away game in Hohen Neuendorf of the women’s Regionalliga Nordost without opposing influence   News Story
  57. 24/10/21 USA Dead
    Carl Madsen (71), NFL official died in his car, stalled in a lane on I-65, after working the Kansas City-Tennessee game  News Story
  58. 25/10/21 France, Dead
    Michael Engelbert (37), Ortho (La-Roche-en-Ardenne) footballer died suddenly of a cardiac arrest after a game and having a shower. Resuscitation unsuccessful. pronounced dead at hospital.  News Story
  59. 25/10/21, (25)
    Halil Elitok (25), SG Gahmen midfielder collapsed on pitch due to cardiac arrest  News Story
  60. 25/10/2021 Liège, Belgium Dead
    Michaël Englebert (37), Ortho footballer suffered a cardiac arrest in the locker room after playing a match. He was resuscitated, but died the next day in hospital. News Story
  61. 26/10/21 Derbyshire, England Dead
    Jack Gallagher (20’s), Gresley Rovers footballer (United Counties Premier League North). Clubs across the area paid tribute to the young footballer. No cause of death.  News Story
  62. 28/10/21, Germany
    Unnamed football player suffered cardiac arrest (NRW) Dersum. Rescusitated by Josef Stefens and Jürgen Koop  News Story
  63. 28/10/21, Germany Dead
    Selim Levent, Hertha BSC co-trainer,  died suddenly and unexpectedly while on vacation.  News Story  Twitter
  64. 28/10/21, Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, USA, 12 years Dead
    Jayson Kidd (12) collapsed during basketball practice at school and later died.  News Story
  65. 28/10/21, New Jersey USA, (New Zealand rugby player), (28)
    Tevita Bryce (28) Montclair Norsemen rugby player collapsed during game from 2 heart attacks and a stroke caused by a blood clot, heart stopped for 28 minutes  News Story  News Story
  66. 28/10/21, Balochistan, (30), Dead
    Mohammad Islam (30), Raziq football player collapses mid game, pronounced dead at hospital  News Story
  67. 30/10/21, Germany, (25)
    Benedikt Kirsch, captain of SpVgg Bayreuth (Bavaria) collapsed on the pitch. Julian Pietsch from VfB Schloß Holte 2 resuscitated him.  News Story
  68. 30/10/21 Tunisia Dead
    Doudou Faye (35), Senegalese basketball player suffered cardiac arrest. The Tunisian basketball championship paid tribute to one of its eminent members. News Story
  69. 31/10/21, Spain
    Sergio Aguero (33), Argentinian Barcelona star striker suffered chest pains and collapsed in match, now being treated for heart problems. Also known as Kun Agüero)  December 15 update – Sergio Aguero announced he was forced to retire by a “heart condition.”  News Story
  70. ??/10/21, Tennesee, USA
    Shelby Grace Allen (17), Dyer County Bowling Team member in Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, Memphis, after developing Guillain-Barré Syndrome.  News Story

    November 2021

  71. ??/11/2021 Switzerland
    Lara Gut-Behrami (30), Swiss World Cup alpine ski racer had extreme difficulty breathing and suffered repeated seizures for several weeks since the vaccine in October. She only trained five times in November 2021. On 30 November she still had difficulty breathing. On 11 December, she won a race, but on 17th, a positive COVID PCR test will keep her out for four races.  News Story  News Story2
  72. 01/11/21, Italy (23), Dead
    Vittoria Campo Italian soccer player collapsed with cardiac arrest, died in hospital. Her brother Alessandro (25) died 1/9/2021.  News Story
  73. 01/11/21, Sogndal, Norway
    Emil Palsson (28), Icelandic midfielder playing for Sogndal (Norwegian club), collapsed due to cardiac arrest during their game against Stjordals-Blink in the 12th minute, resuscitated, then flown to Haukeland Hospital for further examination and treatment.  News Story
  74. 01/11/2021 Montana, USA Dead
    Jedd Hoffman (AGE), Park City High School wide receiver and linebacker, collapsed with seizure-like actions. An assistant coach administered CPR and used a defibrillator. Hoffman was rushed to hospital at St. Vincent Healthcare in Billings, where he died a week later.  News Story
  75. 01/11/21, Wales  Dead
    Logan Luker (17), rugby player Youth Captain at Penygraig RFC died suddenly News Story
  76. 03/11/21, Austria  (24), Dead
    Boris Sádecký (24), vaccinated Slovakian @bratislavaCAPS ice hockey star died after collapsing on the ice during a match in Dornbirn, Austria  News Story  News Story2
  77. 03/11/21, USA , Dead
    Jordan Tucker (late 20s) former Longridge Town FC Captain died suddenly.
  78. 04/11/2021 Provo, Utah, US
    Richard Harward (42), Brigham Young Cougars basketball player will miss the rest of the season due to a “cardiovascular issue.”  News Story
  79. 05/11/21, USA  (36), Dead
    Dusan Pasek (36), @bratislavaCAPS CEO, 2 days after Boris Sádecký  News Story
  80. 05/11/21 Spain
    Caroline Graham (26), FC Barcelona women’s footballer. Complained of a rapid heartbeat and chest pains during a game and replaced. cardiac arrhythmia  News Story
  81. 05/11/21 Italy
    Daouda Peeters (22), Belgian footballer, Juventus midfielder. Diagnosed with neuropathy, sensory disorders and motor difficulties.  News Story
  82. 05/11/21 Belarusia Dead
    Konstantin Wajgin (or Vaygin or Vaigin), 57, Belarusian biathlete and coach. News report only refers to death, not cause.  News Story
  83. 05/11/2021 Argentina Dead
    Carlos Mario Brummich (60+), Yeti Gutiérrez basketballer collapsed during a tournament match and the hospital was unable to save him. News Story
  84. 06/11/2021 Dead
    Shawn Rhoden (46), Mr. Olympia 2018 bodybuilder, dead from cardiac arrest News Story
  85. 06/11/21, Scotland, (19)
    Jamie Hamilton (19) Hamilton Accies defender left the field with chest pains.  News Story
  86. 06/11/21 Brazil  Dead
    Luíz Antônio dos Santos, 57, Brazilian Olympic long-distance runner (1996), cardiac arrest.  News Story
  87. 06/11/21 Primorsky Territory, Russia Dead
    Victor Plakhuta (35), Powerlifter. Victor’s sister said he was generally fit and healthy. Cause of death given as bilateral pneumonia, but according to friends, Victor died two weeks after coronavirus vaccination.  News Story
  88. 06/11/2021 Galicia, Spain
    Ezequiel Martínez Canosa (20), Fisterra footballer collapsed during a match. He said heart problems run in the family, and that more tests were needed to know what really happened. Vaccination status unknown. News Story
  89. 07/11/21, Germany
    Unnamed Vaccinated football player suffers a stroke during a district cup match, with one-side paralysis, transported to hospital by ambulance.  News Story
  90. 07/11/21, Germany
    Unnamed Referee collapsed in 20th minute of a women’s game in Thüringen.  News Story
  91. 07/11/21, Germany
    Unnamed football player collapsed in Landesliga Staffel 2 NRW FC Arpe/Wormbach against BSV Menden (NRW) without opposing influence  News Story
  92. 07/11/21 Norcross High School, Georgia, USA Dead
    Isaiah Banks, 16, Norcross High School football player died at home of a medical condition unrelated to football   News Story
  93. 07/11/21 Russia  Dead
    Aliya Khambikova, 21, Female Russian volleyball player. Died of unstated illness (not COVID) News Story
  94. 07/11/21 Utah, USA
    Eric Turner (41), fitness model and bodybuilder suffered a spontaneous coronary artery dissection. His second COVID vaccine was in mid-may, according to his own posts. Like Doctor Lutchmedial, he said nasty things about people who preferred Ivermectin over experimental vaccines. News Story  Thank you Heidi
  95. 08/11/21 Houston, TX, USA  Dead
    Jamarcus Hall (16) Houston High School football player died on the same day the Hilltoppers football team was scheduled to play at Senatobia in the first round of the Class 4A playoffs News Story
  96. 08/11/21 USA  Dead
    Kim ‘Alarm’ Kyeong-Bo (20), a rising star in the Overwatch League playing flex support for the Philadelphia Fusion, died.  News Story
  97. 08/11/21 UK Dead
    Tom Greenway (38), Champion jockey dies News Story
  98. 08/11/21, Paraguay, Dead
    Nelson Solano, (21) footballer, collapsed and died from heart-attack.  News Story
  99. 08/11/21, USA, Dead
    Pedro Feliciano (45) New York Mets Pitcher died of a cardiac arrest in his sleep. No Vax status discovered yet.  News Story
  100. 08/11/21 Houston, TX USA, Dead
    Willis Forko, 37, Liberian-American footballer (Real Salt Lake, Bodø/Glimt, national team).  Obituary
  101. 08/11/21 USA
    Chuck “Kali Muscle” Kirkendall (46), bodybuilder collapsed two days after Shawn Rhoden died.
  102. 09/11/2021 New York, USA
    Keaton Parks (24), New York City FC, MLS player had surgery to remove a blood clot from his leg  News Story
  103. 10/11/21
    Murphy Jensen (53), Grand Slam Champion recovering after sudden cardiac arrest while playing tennis at a pro-celebrity charity event in Colorado. Hit his head in the collapse and has fractures at the base of his skull.  News Story
  104. 11/11/21, Germany (40), Dead
    Jörg Heinle (40) former striker and coach of Spvgg Detter-Weißenbach (Bavaria), an anesthesia nurse at the Franz von Prümmer-Klinik Bad Brückenau and family man died suddenly  News Story
  105. 11/11/21 Spain Dead
    Jony López (16), Sol del Este football player, suffered a heart attack during football training.  News Story
  106. 12/11/21 USA  Dead
    Dejmi Dumervil-Jean (22), former (2018) Louisville football player died  News Story
  107. 13/11/21, Denmark (24)
    Luther Singh (24) FC Copenhagen footballer hospitalized with a ‘mysterious illness’  News Story
  108. 13/11/21 Bulgaria Dead
    Ivo Georgiev, 49, Bulgarian footballer (Debrecen, Korabostroitel, national team), heart failure.  News Story
  109. 13/11/21 Poland Dead
    Jarosław Pacoń (49), Polish footballer (Stal Stalowa Wola). Died unexpectedly  News Story
  110. 13/11/21 Uruguay
    Sabrina Soravilla (25), Uruguayan Nacional player diagnosed with a career-ending heart condition 7 months after receiving her first Sinovax COVID vaccine News Story
  111. 13/11/2021 Basel Switzerland
    Ömer Türkes (Age), FC Basel football U-14 coach collapsed with cardiac arrest on the sidelines of a match agaibst Zurich and was resuscitated. The club confirmed was stable on Saturday evening. News Story
  112. 14/11/21 Australia
    Michelle Goszko (44), Aussie cricket great, in ICU after stroke  at 44. She is fully vaccinated. News Story
  113. 14/11/21 Athens, Greece Dead
    Stevan Jelovac (32), Serbian basketballer, playing for AEK Athens, collapsed during during individual practice. In hospital was diagnosed with a stroke and died on December 5th.  News Story
  114. 15/11/21,
    Julio Lugo (45) Dominican former Boston Red Sox shortstop died of a cardiac arrest in his sleep. No Vax status discovered yet. (Houston Astros, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Boston Red Sox), World Series champion (2007)  News Story  News Story2
  115. 17/11/21
    Sarah Gigante (21), Olympic cyclist and reigning Australian time trial champion had a severe reaction to COVID-19 vaccine, severe chest pains and repeated hospitalizations after the Tokyo Olympics, myopericarditis News Story
  116. 17/11/21 Panama Dead
    Adonis Villanueva (27), Panamanian Club Deportivo del Este midfielder may have hit his head in a game. (2 different stories) Later, after arriving at home, collapsed with a stroke. He died in hospital several days later on November 23. He woke up shortly before he died and a doctor asked him to move his hand, which he did. News Story  News Story2
  117. 17/11/21 Italy Dead
    Michele De Vecchi (25), mountain runner was jogging with a friend in the Prosecco hills collapsed with a cardiac arrest and died on the trail. News Story
  118. 18/11/21 Finland Dead
    Kim Suominen (52), player and coach at Turku Ball Club, passed away unexpectedly.  News Story
  119. 18/11/21 NY USA  Dead
    Carmyne Payton (15), NYstudent, with no prior health issues collapsed with a heart problem, died at basketball tryout News Story
  120. 18/11/21  Dead
    Unnamed Aragonese athlete (27) who participated in the Behobia-San Sebastian, died  in a hospital in the capital of Gipuzkoa. The runner had apparently fainted and suffered cardiac arrest while contesting the event and was immediately evacuated to the hospital.  News Story
  121. 19/11/21 USA
    Cooper Teare (22), world class runner, collapsed during the 2021 NCAA Cross-Country Championships while competing for the University of Oregon. Covid booster two weeks earlier. He complained about problems with his heart and doctors worked to bring down his heart rate.  News Story
  122. 20/11/21 NJ USA Dead
    Unnamed boy (14), in Dumont NJ died Saturday afternoon after collapsing at an elementary school basketball court. The New Jersey teen was scrimmaging with other teens at Grant Elementary School when he collapsed. The young athlete was rushed to Hackensack University Medical Center but did not survive. News Story
  123. 20/11/21 NSW, Australia
    Stephanie Gard (), Equestrian Athlete pericarditis, unable to feel her legs from the knees down, and unable to walk a few days after Pfizer COVID Vaccine News Story
  124. 21/11/21 France Dead
    Bruno Macedo (22), FC Nueil-les-Aubiers reserve team player collapsed and died suddenly Sunday morning at his home.  News Story
  125. 22/11/21 USA
    Duggar Baucom (61), Citadel Basketball Coach collapsed on sideline vs. Duke. Transported to hospital.  News Story
  126. 23/11/21 UK
    John Fleck, (30), Sheffield United star footballer collapsed during the game with Reading, transported to hospital, released   News Story
  127. 23/11/21 Japan Dead
    Riuler de Oliveira Faustino (23), Brazilian footballer (J.FC Miyazaki, Shonan Bellmare), cardiac arrest.  News Story
  128. 24/11/21 Italy Dead
    Unnamed cyclist (15) collapsed and died in his father’s arms  News Story
  129. 24/11/21
    Adama Traore (26), Sherrif Tiraspol winger collapsed on the pitch clutching his chest in game with Real Madrid  News Story
  130. 24/11/21 UK Dead
    Leon Taylor (36), Darlaston Town footballer suffered from “an illness” and died the next day. News Story
  131. 24/11/21 US
    Charlie Wyke (28), Wigan striker collapsed in training the day after his 1st Pfizer. This story says he did not have a COVID vaccine, but that contradicts what he said. Sadly, he may have wiped his twitter account clean, which is where we think he admitted getting it (it may have been Fleck – still under investigation).   News Story
  132. 24/11/21 Philippines
    Roider Cabrera (30), Filipino professional basketball star (Terrafirma team) collapsed with cardiac arrest in the locker room after a tournament at Ynares Sports Arena, Pasig City (twin victories over Meralco and Barangay Ginebra San Miguel). Update: angioplasty 02/12/21 a day after cardiologist found a heart blockage. Remains unconscious, but has finger movements and trying to open his eyes.  News Story  News Story2
  133. 26/11/21 Mali Dead
    Guimbala Tounkara (34), AS Police and former midfielder for Djoliba and USC Kita, died after a cardiac arrest, shortly after an AS Police training session. He went home, and then to a friend’s shop, but collapsed with a cardiac arrest and died before reaching hospital.  News Story
  134. 27/11/21 Prague, Czech Republic Dead
    Daire Ni Heldhin (29), Dundalk Young Ireland GAA female Gaelic footballer became unwell during a city break with pals in Czech Republic. Taken to hospital and died that morning  News Story
  135. 28/11/21 Russia Dead
    Valentin Rodionov (16), Russian Dynamo Moscow ice hockey player collapsed on the sideline after colliding with a protective board at the side of the ice, but died a week later. The head coach said “he passed [a medical examination]. He was an absolutely healthy, strong guy, cheerful, full of strength and energy.”  News Story
  136. 30/11/21 North Carolina, USA Dead
    Fatimah Shabazz (22), a key N.C. A&T volleyball player, died of complications from an aneurism. Was Cincinnati Northwest HS 2016 co-conference player of the year. Earned a degree in pre-physical therapy.  News Story
  137. 24??/11/21 Victoria, Australia
    Paul Dimattina (47), Former Western Bulldogs (Australian Rules Football) midfielder in intensive care after adverse reaction to Pfizer Covid booster. And now he has COVID symptoms.  News Story

    December 2021

  138. 01/12/21 Scotland Dead
    Siobhan Cattigan (26), female Scotland rugby international who won 19 caps for Scotland, died. Cause of death not given.  News Story
  139. 01/12/21 USA Dead
    CJ Hunter (52), died of unspecified causes.  News Story
  140. 01/12/21 Russia Dead
    Arina Biktimirova (19), taekwondo champion died suddenly at home. Won a gold medal, as champion at the European Taekwon-Do ITF Championships in Crete, in November.  News Story
  141. 01/12/21 Belgium Dead
    Keanu Breurs (19) KVK Svelta Melsele U23 football player and youth coach died suddenly Wednesday morning. Cause of death not given  News Story
  142. 01/12/21 Melbourne Australia
    Ben Madgen (36), South East Melbourne Phoenix basketballer in hospital with pericarditis after 2nd Pfizer. Tweet
  143. 02/12/21 Italy Dead
    Romina De Angelis (43), female volleyball player who collapsed while playing padel (a racquet sport like tennis) with friends. Suspected aneurism. News Story
  144. 02/12/21 Egypt Dead
    Adham El-Selhadar (53), Egyptian football manager collapsed and died on the sideline of a match after his team scored a winning goal.  News Story
  145. 03/12/21 Adelaide, Australia
    An unnamed Adelaide Crows football player went to hospital diagnosed with pericarditis (heart inflammation) two weeks after his first Pfizer. Percarditis destroys heart cells. The Adelaide Crows inexplicably did not release his name, citing “privacy” but it will soon be obvious because he will be out for at least 3 months.  News Story
  146. 03/12/21 Germany
    Kwabenaboye Schulz (23), FC Carl Zeiss Jena player collapsed after the final whistle in their game against Berliner AK, the same game as Ugur Tezel. They had 4 games in 11 days after quarantine. Team appears to be blaming it on Coronavirua, not the vax.  News Story
  147. 03/12/21 Germany
    Ugur Tezel (24), FC Carl Zeiss Jena player collapsed during their game against Berliner AK and was replaced. Same game as Kwabenaboye Schulz collapsed.  News Story
  148. 03/12/21 England
    Mark Simpson (age unknown), Knaresborough Town West Riding County FA striker collapsed and had heart palpitations in the dressing room at half time. He felt better after sitting out the rest of the game, but when he went to drive home, it started happening again.  News Story
  149. 04/12/21 USA
    CJ McCollum(30), Portland Trailblazers basketball Guard diagnosed with pneumothorax (collapsed lung), that can be caused by injury or disease. He may never play again. McCollum finished near the top of HoopsHype’s shooting guard rankings on August 31.  News Story
  150. 04/12/21 Beverwijk, North Holland Dead
    Wouter Betjes (14), student hockey player collapsed walking to the dugout after a catch-up game Bloemendaal JC3 against Overbos JC1. Club doctor tried to resuscitate him at the ground, continuing in the ambulance and at hospital in Amsterdam but they were not successful and he died.  News Story
  151. 04/12/2021 Carlisle, England
    Bobby Dixon (n/a), Carlisle City footballer collapsed in the early stages of a Cumberland County League game against Gosforth and was taken to the Cumberland Infirmary for tests  News Story
  152. 05/12/21 Italy Dead
    Fabio Pedretti (24), from Gardone Valtrompia, collapsed and died while running the Uno di Monticelli, a night trail running event on the hills of Franciacorta in Monticelli Brusati. In the final km of the 20 km race he collapsed and could not be resuscitated.  News Story
  153. 05/12/21 Tehran, Iran Dead
    Navid Khosh Hava (30), former Iran U23 football team defender died of cardiac arrest  News Story
  154. 05/12/21 Birmingham, Alabama, USA Dead
    John Wolfe (20), 3-time state tennis champion in high school (Briarwood High School, Alabama) died. News Story
  155. 06/12/21 Tamworth, England Dead
    Rob Woodward (36), Stonydelph Juliors FC U10 coach/manager. Double vaccinated. “It is with great sadness that the club announces that Rob Woodward our U10 Cougars manager passed away suddenly yesterday.”  Club Facebook
  156. 06/12/21 France Dead
    Xavier Ziani (49), French professional volleyball player and coach at Charenton-le-Pont died with a cardiac arrest.  News Story
  157. 07/12/21 Melbourne, Australia
    Jake Lever (25), Melbourne Demons star player (AFL) appeared weak as he dropped to the ground during his first training session in pre-season. He had 20 minutes of medical attention.  News Story
  158. 07/12/21 Croatia Dead
    Pavel Karpf (52), former Swiss football goalkeeper for FC Luzern was on his sailing boat in Croatia on Tuesday when he suddenly collapsed and died three days later in hospital.  News Story
  159. 09/12/21 USA Dead
    Matt Scherer (38), former Oregon Ducks pro runner died, no cause of death so far  News Story
  160. 10/12/21 Serbia
    Ricardo Gomes (29) Cape Verde native footballer playing for Serbian club FK Partizan collapsed during training , 45 days after his COVID vaccination. Coach Stanojevic said “The situation is serious.” Gomes, the coach, Bojan Ostojic, and Quincy Menig were vaccinated on the same day.  News Story
  161. 11/12/21 Norwich, England
    Victor Lindelof (27), Manchester United defender went down clutching his chest and pointing to his heart, complained of chest pain and racing pulse. His wife confirmed (many times) they were both vaccinated.  News Story
  162. 11/12/2021 California, PA, USA Dead
    Branson King (23), California University of Pennsylvania Ice Hockey player died suddenly. No cause of death  News Story
  163. 12/12/2021 Águias do Moradal-Pedrógão, Portugal
    Edgar Marques (20), Pedrógão de São Pedro football player collapsed during a match.  News Story
  164. 12/12/21 Italy
    Piotr Zielinski (27), Napoli midfielder went to the sideline, 19 minutes into the game against Empoli, struggled to breathe, pointing to his neck and chest.  News Story
  165. 12/12/21 France
    Martin Terrier (24), Rennes striker was substituted after chest pains in game against Nice.  News Story
  166. 12/12/2021 Australia Dead
    Kane van Dierman (n/a), Sydney Convicts RUFC Rugby Union. Circumstances of death not announced  News Story
  167. 12/12/2021 Reims, France
    An unnamed footballer (34), playing for Olympique FC de Reims suffered a cardiac arrest mid-match. He was resuscitated on the pitch and then taken to hospital by ambulance.  News Story
  168. 13/12/2021 England
    Maxwell Harrison (21), International ballroom dancer developed pericarditis (inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart muscle) five days after his second Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, and was hospitalized. Top cardiologists said his heart condition was a result of the Pfizer vaccination.  News Story
  169. 14/12/2021 Miami, Florida, USA Dead
    Andres Melendez (20), Cleveland Guardians minor league Baseball player died unexpectedly – no further details available  News Story
  170. 14/12/2021 Zinswiller, Alsace, France Dead
    Aurélie Hans (21), female football goalkeeper (since she was 12) suffered a sudden cardiac arrest and died Tuesday, December 14. Daughter of Laurent Hans, player and then manager of various clubs in Northern Alsace.  News Story
  171. 15/12/2021 Russia Dead
    Alexander Frolov (63), Sarmations Ice Hockey player was on the sidelines during a match in the Russian amateur Night Hockey League (NHL) when he suddenly fell ill and collapsed. Died on the way to intensive care unit, with an apparent heart problem.  News Story
  172. 16/12/2021 Rhode Island, USA Dead
    Meaghan McGonagle (41), Cranston High School East boys and girls Volleyball coach and business teacher. Cranston Mayor Ken Hopkins said “This is a young woman, 41 years old, in good health, that had the early vaccinations” but she “had been hospitalized for about a week prior to her death.”  News Story  News Story2
  173. 16/12/2021 New Zealand Dead
    Taniela Moa (36), Section Paloise, former Tonga international rugby union player, who played mostly in New Zealand and France, died suddenly. No cause of death  News Story
  174. 16/12/2021 Murcia, Spain
    José Javier Ros (aka Monas) (22), UCAM Murcia footballer withdrew from the rest of the season after being diagnosed with pericarditis.  News Story News Story2
  175. 16/12/2021 Spain Dead
    Dani Chabrera (29), Lokomotiv Tashkent football goalkeeping coach in Uzbekistan. He returned to Spain but became ill and died. News Story
  176. 17/12/21 Los Angeles USA
    Donald Parham (24) Los Angeles Chargers (NFL) tight end player collapsed in mid-air while taking a flying touchdown catch. He had received two Covid-19 vaccines and a booster. His arms were shaking as he was wheeled off. It appears clear that his left arm locked up before his helmet hit the ground – that seems to be why he didn’t handle the recovery well. The Chargers report he suffered a concussion, but the video tells a different story, a fraction of a second before his helmet touched down and his head suddenly threw back. The key to seeing this is to watch the action from the sideline, one frame at a time.  News Story
  177. 17/12/2021 Zirl, Austria Dead
    Leo Forstenlechner (12), Gunners Ice Hockey player had a “respiratory arrest” at home and then spent a few days in hospital and died. Facebook (snapshot taken)
  178. 19/12/2021 Spain
    Oscar Cabrera (26), Cantbasket Basketball player during a match, Oscar took the ball but collapsed face-first before he could make a pass. He can be seen twitching in the video. He was transferred to hospital.  News Story  Video
  179. 20/12/2021 Nebraska, US Dead
    Kimera Bartee (49), Detroit Tigers former player and current first base coach suddenly collapsed and died while visiting his father in Omaha, Nebraska. The club manager said they had 100% player participation in the COVID vaccine. In spring 2021, the club was involved in incentivising staff and fans to get the vaccine. The club manager said “the faster we get vaccinated, the safer we are and the more likely we are to be able to play continuously throughout our schedule.” On 6th September, reliever Joe Jimenez and bench coach George Lombard tested positive for the virus and had symptoms, even though both were vaccinated and the manager was surprised! What was he told about the vaccinations and what did he tell his team about the risks?  News Story  News Story2  News Story3  News Story4  News Story5
  180. 21/12/2021 Croatia
    Marin Čačić (23), NK Nehaj Footballer suddenly collapsed with cardiac arrest during training. He was rushed to a hospital where heart failure was diagnosed. He is in a coma.  News Story  News Story2

NOTE: No reports below this point are included in the counts in the Headline

NOTE: No reports below this point are included in the Vaccine counts in the headline because of insufficient documentation or other causes are more likely.

No documentation found yet

Investigations in progress. No news media documentation found in this section so far. Some names may be spelled incorrectly. Dates may be wrong. We found correct details for more than 10 like this so far. Now we are adding them to this area of the list, but not counting them in the headline total, until documentation is found. Any assistance would be appreciated.

  1. 18/01/21 Turkey
    Ibrahim Khalil (49), a Turkey national athletics team coach. Died of a heart seizure.
  2. 22/08/21 Dead
    Milos Georgeevic, 31, died in his sleep, apparently from a heart condition.
  3. 06/09/21 Austria
    Unnamed Austrian ASV Baden player collapsed on the field and was resuscitated
  4. 06/09/21 Bergamo, Italy
    Unnamed football player (16), in Bergamo, Italy suffers cardiac arrest.
  5. 13/10/21 Italy, Dead
    Ricky Pirrallo (29), soccer player from Cigliano, Italy. Died suddenly. This may refer to Rocco Perrino, possibly a translation error, as the original reference may have been in Hebrew.
  6. 10/11/21 Brescia, Italy
    Armano Ferrari (51), soccer coach in Brescia, Italy, died suddenly. No information found, even using different names. Possibly incorrectly reported.
  7. 12/11/21 Macedonia
    Jiob Adnan (30), footballer from Macedonia. Died three days after second dose of coronavirus vaccine during a football match with friends. In a break he collapsed on a bench. resuscitation unsuccessful.
  8. ??/11/21
    Andrea Corcio (42), Italian football coach. Died suddenly
  9. 15/11/21, USA
    Jason Plummer (52), Australian Olympic swimmer (1988).
    No cause given (seems suspicious)

May Or May Not Be Vax Related

There is insufficient information to decide if any of these collapses or deaths are related to COVID vaccinations. More investigation is needed. Any help would be appreciated because keeping with the ongoing investigations isn’t easy. These are listed here because they appear in some lists as vax-caused, but we believe there is either currently insufficient information to decide or other explanations seem to overrule vax-caused, such as cancer.

  1. 25/01/21 USA
    Jack Draper (19), Tennis player collapsed during a game against Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Kukushkin at Miami Open first set on a hot humid day. Possibly heat-related, but it was only the first set.
  2. 30/01/21 Indianapolis, USA  Dead
    Wayne Radford, 64, an NBA star and former Indianapolis team star, died at his home in Indianapolis. Possibly of cancer  News Story
  3. 04/02/21
    Andres Felipe Roman (25), Diagnosed with congenital hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Discovered this in club testing, before playing. Was this long-term or recent after vaccination?
  4. 04/04/21 Russia Dead
    Nikita Sidorov (18), youth team footballer for the Professional Football League (PFL). Died 5 minutes after coming onto the pitch as substitute, during a game at Torpedo Stadium. Resuscitation was unsuccessful. A doctor said he had a cereb ral aneurism and internal bleeding. News reports talked about an autopsy and investigation, but no further information has been discovered. News Story
  5. 18/04/21 USA Dead
    Antron Pippen (33), basketball player for Texas A&M and later World Basketball Association’s Heat Upstate team. Died unexpectedly, with no known health problem, accident or other causes of death. His father Scottie said Antron had chronic asthma, but would not reveal cause of death.  News Story
  6. 12/08/21, USA  (16), Dead
    Drake Geiger (16), 6′ 3″ 400-pound Nebraska Football player collapsed and died during a practice break, after only playing for 10 minutes. His father, Scott Hoffman said they were recently in Las Vegas, where it was hotter and he had no problems there. The autopsy apparently said his death was due to “hyperthermia, enlarged heart and heart problems,” but he had passed a physical exam a week before training. Sadly, there is no information on vax status, but it would be pertinent. Too many autopsies are hidden or contain scant information, as though they want to protect Big Pharma. All we want is the truth.  News Story
  7. 12/08/21, NZ  (24), Dead
    Olivia Podmore (24) NZ Olympic Cyclist died suddenly and mysteriously in her room, Coroner investigating cause (possible suicide). A friend said, “I was the last person to see her alive. If you had seen her in the last 72 hours, you wouldn’t have thought this could happen.”
  8. 12/08/21, USA  (27), Dead
    Cameron Burell, Sprinter died mysteriously, ruled suicide by self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Was he vaxxed and if so, did he know his career was over?  News Story
  9. 19/08/21 Dead
    Phil Hernon (55), Bodybuilder died after ‘sudden recent decline,’ possibly dialysis related  News Story
  10. 23/08/21, USA  Dead
    Jimmy Hayes (31), former Bruins player unexpectedly died. He had Cocaine and Fentanyl in his system. How much was not disclosed. The state of his heart was not disclosed.  News Story
  11. 04/09/21 Lagos, Nigeria
    Kelechi Okafor (21), footballer died after landing on a stone after heading a ball while playing the day before he was to leave for Azerbaijan to advance his career.  News Story
  12. 08/09/21 Kokomo, Indiana, USA Dead
    Curtis Robert Pettigrew (49), known as Bobby or Big Bob, former Wildkats star, shot put champion and Kokomo High School assistant coach for 15 years and Howard County Sports Hall of Famer died in a car accident. No information discovered about the accident or if it was caused by cardiac arrest.  News Story
  13. 17/09/21 Kazakhstan Dead
    Albert Linder, 25, weightlifter from Kazakhstan. Death by suicide according to his brother, not helped by heartless trainer.  Brother Story
  14. 07/10/21 France Dead
    Unnamed cyclist (60+) went into cardiac arrest in Saint-Jean-de-Belleville, Savoie, between Le Villard and Les Deux Nants. Alerted by hikers, rescuers from CRS Alpes de Modane and firefighters intervened around 12:30 p.m. but could not resuscitate him.  News Story
  15. 12/10/21 Baltimore, USA, Dead
    Elisha Gorham (17), baltimore football player. Collapsed during a game. Suspected brain injury.  News Story
  16. 21/10/21, USA  Dead
    Jake Ehlinger (20), University of Texas linebacker found dead – ruled as accidental xanax/fentanyl overdose  News Story
  17. 21/10/21 USA Dead
    Ivan Douglas (41) won a national championship with the Buckeyes. Career cut short by blood clots that started around 2003. Apparently he contracted COVID in September 2021 and sent to hospital October 21 and died on the 24th. Vax status unknown.  News Story  News Story2
  18. 30/10/21 USA Dead
    Jason Aguilar (16), a sophomore accounting major and track athlete, died. He was found unresponsive in his room. This entry needs to be investigated, because the suicide may refer to a different man with the same name. Coles County Coroner Ed Schniers said cause of death unknown at the time but after autopsy gave a suicide verdict, according to some websites, but a coroner’s report is not available. News Story
  19. 04/11/21 Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina Dead
    Amela Fetahović (35), Female Bosnian footballer (Sarajevo, Spartak Subotica, national team). Died in a car accident (did she have a cardiac arrest while driving?)  News Story
  20. 09/11/21 Blagoveshchensk, Russia Dead
    Pyotr Shatokhin (54), aikido (coach). Pyotr had been involved with skiing and judo before taking up aikido and then coaching aikido. He was said to have covid-19 and relatives tried to find a donor with antibodies, unfortunately to no avail.  News Story
  21. 21/11/21 Parcé-sur-Sarthe, France
    Unnamed female (50+), table tennis player collapsed with a cardiac arrest during a match. Saved by her opponents (volunteer firefighters) and a defibrillator.  News Story
  22. 25/11/21 Spain
    Pedro Acosta (17), Moto 3 World Champion collapsed while speaking at a podium after a race. Recovered a short time later, collapse may have been due to exhaustion and nerves. Twitter video
  23. 06/12/21 Lancaster, UK
    Cliff Trickett (age unknown), long-time referee died suddenly, cause of death unknown.
  24. 06/12/21 UK Dead
    Marvin Morgan (38), former Aldershot Town, Shrewsbury Town, Plymouth Argyle and Hartlepool United player and fashion brand designer. In 2018, he was diagnosed with a cavernoma, a cluster of abnormal blood vessels usually in the brain or spinal cord, that cause seizures, strokes and possibly premature death. Vax status unknown. Died while on business travel in Europe.  News Story
  25. 06/12/21 Anderson, Ohio, USA Dead
    Brock Vogel (15), high school senior on wrestling and football teams at Anderson High School, died Monday. No cause of death. Moved from the main list because of a reader report saying “no way” was he vaccinated” – but two other students at his school died in the same week, and two students at a British school died in the same week, so we place this report here, uncounted in the main list while we investigate.   News Story  News Story2
  26. 07/12/21 USA Dead
    Glenn Foster (31), former New Orleans Saints defensive lineman died on in Alabama after a high speed police chase and crash into a tree. He was bipolar. An autopsy is expected.  News Story
  27. 08/12/21 Roswell, Georgia, USA Dead
    Demaryius Thomas (33), Ex-NFL Denver Broncos Wide Receiver died alone in his home, either from a seizure or cardiac arrest in the shower. He had apparently been having seizures for a year. By the time police arrived rigor mortis had set in.  News Story
  28. 08/12/21 Mexico Dead
    Alfredo ‘Chango’ Moreno (41), former América forward died after a short battle with cancer. There are conflicting reports of cancer in the pancreas and gall bladder. One story said he was in hospital November 30 for a gall bladder operation when intestinal cancer was discovered and a call went out to relatives for blood and platelets.
  29. 09/12/21 Brazil
    Pele (81), former soccer star was vaccinated March 2021, then diagnosed with colon cancer September 2021 and was admitted to hospital again December 2021. He had prostate surgery in 2015.  News Story

Most Likely Not Vax Related

These collapses or deaths are most likely unrelated to COVID vaccinations.

09/12/20 France
Dimitri Linard, 33, Strasbourg FC footballer, collapsed during a game with Lyon. He has played at least 10 matches in 2021, after his collapse. It seems highly unlikely his 2020 collapse was related to vaccine.  News Story

11/11/20 Pennsylvania, USA
Journey Brown (21), Penn State star running back diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It can cause shortness of breath, chest pain or heart electrical system problems, life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias) or sudden death.  News Story

12/12/20 Florida, USA
Keyontae Johnson (21), University of Florida basketball star. Hospitalized after collapsing face first four minutes into the game against Florida State. Released from hospital. Unlikely to be vaccine-related because it was December 2020, a time when he was unlikely to have been able to get the vaccine.  News Story

16/03/21 Moscow, Russia
Timur Faizutdinov (19), was playing for Dynamo St. Petersburg junior team in a playoff game against Loko Yaroslavl when he was hit in the head by a puck. He collapsed and then died in hospital.  News Story

15/04/21 Preston, Australia
Goce “Colakot” Gruevski (47), former Macedonia national team and Preston Lions goalkeeper and current goalkeeper coach. No cause of death given.  Facebook

06/05/21 Oregon USA
Maggie Williams (15), Oregon high school track star collapsed due to lack of oxygen during the 800-meter event because a ridiculous state mandate forced her to wear a mask while running and she could not breathe properly.

27/10/21, Austria, 26 years old
Raphael Dwamena (26) Ghanaian forward. Fell with severe heart problems before the ÖFB Cup match between Linz Weiß-Blau FC and Hartberg TSV. Had a known heart condition since 2017. Aug 2017: failed Brighton medical after detection of heart condition. Oct 2019: Doctors recommend retirement Jan 2020: Continued playing with implanted cardioverter-defibrillator. Oct 2020: Heart issues detected before match. Oct 2021: Fell in cup game. “I received an electric shock from the defibrillator. It hurts and knocks you off your feet. But I didn’t collapse,” 4 December 2021: Club terminated contract.  News Story

03/12/21 Lancaster, UK
Kortney Hause (26), Aston Villa footballer crashed his Lamborghini into a school fence after losing control of the vehicle on a wet road. He was dazed but uninjured and nobody was hurt. He had a record of speeding and being late.

Players Talk

Sidelined Athletes with “Illness” Not Included in This Report

Many sports teams now have multiple sidelined players. There are dozens of them. The teams and Big Media are hiding this, thinking nobody will notice. These damaged players will not be shown in this report if they are reported only as “illness” but they would be worth tracking, because it is not normal to have so many. Their immune systems are likely to have been compromised by “something,” so they will be open to many things they would normally have been able to shrug off. We leave it to others to track these – we have our hands full handling the investigations for this list, going back in time trying to find new information that wasn’t available before, and making minor corrections as they are discovered. It will all come out eventually.

List of Injuries

Here is a non-exhaustive list of injuries reported. Most were cardiac arrest.

  • Cardiac Arrest
  • Blood Clots or Thrombosis
  • Stroke
  • Irregular Heartbeat
  • Arrhythmia
  • Neuropathy
  • Death

Thanks to Many Contributors

Many people are contributing to this, some indirectly by reporting to Telegram groups and other websites. There are many duplicates and in some cases, people report things we’ve had for months, but every report helps because sometimes there is a small piece of information we didn’t have before, such as a date, an autopsy report, a name spelling, or a report from months ago that never made it into a news story. That was the case with Chuck “Kali Muscle” Kirkendall. Helpful websites include DVDbeaver, The COVID Blog.

Update Notes

  1. Update 15 Dec – 19 Dec: Added Marco Rossi, Murtaza Lodhgar, Todd Richards, Brad Wendland, Richard Harward, Sergio Aguero (an update), Keaton Parks, Arik Alfasi, Michaël Perrier, Bobby Dixon, Taniela Moa, Jedd Hoffman, Andres Melendez, Daire Ni Heldhin, Branson King, Brian Gassaway, Kane van Dierman, Alex Evans, Hamish Bell, Dale Best, Ferran Duran, Lara Gut-Behrami, Jack Gallagher, Jony López, Anna Kruglova, Victor Plakhuta. Raphael Dwamena moved to “unlikely vaccine-related.” Pyotr Shatokhin added to “May not be vaccine related.”Update 10 Dec – 15 Dec: Added CJ McCollum, Adam Bounds, Stephanie Gard, Drake Geiger, chart updated, Demaryius Thomas, Brock Vogel, Keanu Breurs, Chuck “Kali Muscle” Kirkendall, Pavel Karpf, Lise Vidal, Eric Turner, Michele De Vecchi. Thanks to readers checking, thankfully, Sage Canaday did not die – he was in bed due to pneumonia and blood clots, and then overnight stay in hospital which he says is not vax related, but which started to happen a short time after his second Pfizer vaccine. His entry remains below, but with the red death marker removed. Ivan Douglas, former Buckeyes football player changed from affected by vax to May or may not, and Dead, because no proof yet he was vaxed, but apparently caught COVID. Updated Roider Cabrera status. Corrected Lemaitre name spelling.Update 5 Dec – 9 Dec: Added Adham El-Selhadar, Pompeo Tretola, Ben Madgen, Marvin Morgan, Ugur Tezel, Stevan Jelovac, Jake Lever, CJ McCollum, Adam Bounds. Note: 10/10/21 Unnamed Italian soccer player was Pompeo Tretola.
  2. Update 30 Nov – 4 Dec: Added Sabrina Soravilla, Valentin Rodionov, Sean Wainui, Shelby Grace Allen, Carly Stevenson, Fatimah Shabazz, Laura Henderson, Adans João Santos Alencar, Tremaine Stewart, Jow Bradshaw, Haitem Fathallah. Headline edited to reflect issues other than cardiac arrest.
  3. Update 27 Nov: 60 new listings discovered, almost all died.
  4. Update Nov 26: Unnamed player from 8/10/21 identified as Benoit Sabard
  5. Update: Nov 23, 14 additions, and 10 deaths
  6. Update: Nov 22 Bodybuilder additions, and date additions
  7. Update: Nov 16, 2021, 30 added, 23 more deaths, dates checks in progress.
  8. Update: Nov 9, 2021, Five added, two more deaths.
  9. Update: Oct 28, Rugby player Tevita Bryce, listed as dead, was actually revived after his heart stopped for 28 minutes

Severe Reactions And Deaths Continue

That is the current list … all these athletes have suffered heart problems after COVID vaccines. At the time of initial writing, 28 died. That was not normal, but then, 10 days later, 56 deaths were listed, and the numbers are climbing. Any other real vaccine would have been pulled off the market long before now. The media would be asking questions. They would be pressuring governments. But they are not. And governments are continuing on and running TV and radio and newspaper ads encouraging people to get their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th shot.  Perhaps that is why the mainstream media are saying little, because they are collecting government money for ads?

The deaths and severe reactions will continue until so many people die that it becomes obvious the vaccine is 10x to 100x worse than the virus it is supposed to treat.

These athletes are the canaries in the mine that warn us of imminent danger. They are being hidden so the people who are not paying attention do not see the warning.

We only see the athletes because they are in the spotlight. The nobodies – i.e. most citizens – do not make the news.

More Information.

Why are athletes collapsing?

Updates

Update 19 Dec – 22 Dec: Added Stefan Frei, Meaghan McGonagle, Alexander Frolov, Donald Parham, Michael Mitchell, Azorean Tatum, Simon Walker, Davide Bristot, Nathan Esparza, Ernesto Ramirez Jr, Sang Ho Baek, Joshua Johnson, Dave Mears, Leah Taylor, Shawn Kuhn, Red Gendron, Aurélie Hans, Antonio López, Michaël Englebert, Carlos Mario Brummich, Ezequiel Martínez Canosa, Ömer Türkes, Leo Forstenlechner, Kimera Bartee, Marin Čačić.

Poisons at the FIFA World Cup

November 26th, 2022 by Manlio Dinucci

The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar hides a tragic reality that the political-media mainstream covered with silence. First of all, this Gulf emirate was chosen by FIFA to organize the 2022 World Cup. The International Football Federation, FIFA, is deeply corrupted to the extent that its top officials have been arrested for fraud, racketeering, and laundering money.

It is, therefore, no wonder that FIFA chose Qatar to expel Russia from the World Cup. The 2022 World Cup is the most expensive in history: Qatar spent 220 billion dollars on it (compared to the 4 billion spent by Germany to organize the 2006 World Cup).

Qatar – an emirate of 3 million inhabitants, whose workforce is 95% made up of 2 million immigrants – has used migrant workers recruited in Nepal, Bangladesh, and other Asian countries to build stadiums and infrastructure for the World Cup.

These people were lured with false promises, and once in Qatar they were subjected to slavery-like exploitation. Their passport was confiscated to prevent them from leaving the country. They were forced to grueling work shifts in dangerous conditions with 40-50 degrees temperatures for wages much lower than promised. They were forced to live in hovels in disastrous hygienic conditions. There is evidence that about 15,000 died, whose deaths were officially attributed to “natural causes”. The families were consequently denied any compensation.

All of this has been ignored by the “international community” because Qatar, a country that violates the most basic human rights, has been named by President Biden a “Major Non-NATO Ally of the United States“.

Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar is the largest US military base in the Middle East. It is lined up with, among others, strategic nuclear attack bombers. Italy, which has sent over 600 soldiers to man the stadiums where the World Cup is held, has important military agreements with Qatar, to which it supplies war helicopters and other armaments.

I veleni nella Coppa del Mondo

November 26th, 2022 by Manlio Dinucci

La Coppa del Mondo FIFA 2022 in Qatar nasconde una tragica realtà su cui il mainstream politico-mediatico ha calato una cappa di silenzio. Anzitutto il fatto che sia stato questo emirato del Golfo ad essere scelto dalla FIFA per organizzare la World Cup 2022. La FIFA, la federazione internazionale di calcio, è profondamente corrotta, tanto che suoi alti funzionari sono stati arrestati per frode, racket e riciclaggio di denaro. Non c’è quindi da stupirsi che la FIFA, mentre ha scelto il Qatar, ha espulso la Russia dal Mondiale. La Coppa del Mondo 2022 è la più costosa della storia: il Qatar vi ha speso 220 miliardi di dollari (in confronto ai 4 miliardi spesi dalla Germania per organizzare i Mondiali del 2006).

Il Qatar – emirato di 3 milioni di abitanti, la cui forza lavoro è costituita per il 95% da 2 milioni di immigrati – per costruire gli stadi e le infrastrutture della Coppa del Mondo si è servito di lavoratori immigrati reclutati in Nepal, Bangladesh e altri paesi asiatici. Attirati con false promesse, una volta in Qatar sono stati sottoposti a uno sfruttamento di tipo schiavistico. Gli è stato sequestrato il passaporto per impedire che potessero lasciare il paese. Sono stati costretti a turni di lavoro massacranti, in condizioni pericolose, con temperature di 40-50 gradi, per paghe molto inferiori a quelle promesse. Sono stati costretti a vivere in tuguri in condizioni igieniche disastrose. Ci sono le prove che ne sono morti circa 15 mila, il cui decesso è stato ufficialmente attribuito a ”cause naturali”. Alle famiglie è stato di conseguente negato ogni risarcimento. 

Tutto ciò è stato ignorato dalla “comunità internazionale” perché il Qatar, paese che viola i più elementari diritti umani,  è stato nominato dal preaidente Biden “Maggiore Alleato Non-NATO degli Stati Uniti”. La base aerea di Al Udeid in Qatar è la più grande base militare statunitense in Medio Oriente. Vi sono schierati, tra gli altri, bombardieri strategici da attacco nucleare. L’Italia, che ha inviato oltre 600 militari a presidiare gli stadi dove si svolge la Coppa del Mondo, ha importanti accordi militari col Qatar, a cui fornisce elicotteri da guerra e altri armamenti. 

Manlio Dinucci 

“The US-NATO War of Aggression Against Yugoslavia“ by Michel Chossudovsky

November 25th, 2022 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

***

 

 

 

My sincere thanks for this welcome to the Republic of Serbia. I must say my heart is in the Republic of Serbia today. And my thanks to Zivadin.

I should mention that just about 15 minutes ago he gave me a bottle of Sljivovica. It was delivered to my room at quarter to 11, 15 minutes ago. It‘s a weapon  of mass destruction [Laughter] but it’s also an act of solidarity and sharing. And when I arrived here I had the bottle of Sljivovica in my hands and somebody confiscated it and put it on the table over there. But we will share it, we will share it together at the end of this presentation [Laughter]. Well that bottle is a symbol of division but also solidarity in the Serbian context.

This presentation I think is important inasmuch as the world is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history.

In many regards the US-NATO war against Yugoslavia which extended incidentally over a period of 20 years or more, because it started in the early 80s was a dressed rehearsal for all US sponsored subsequent wars.

It is important to point out that prominent scholars entitled that war against Yugoslavia as a “Just War”. Now, there’s nothing “Just” about that war, it’s a criminal undertaking. But you have people like Professor Richard A. Falk from Princeton University (currently involved in the anti-war movement in relation to Ukraine), who in 2001 put forth the notion of “The Just War“.

He was referring to Yugoslavia and Afghanistan:

Interview with R. Falk 

Yugoslavia was a preamble to Afghanistan based on the same premises of criminality against Sovereign countries.

I should mention also that when the war on Yugoslavia broke out, on the 24th of March 1999, progressives in other words leftist movements in both Western Europe as well as North America we’re firmly behind NATO.  And these were anti-war and anti-globalization activists who were either totally ignorant, but I suspect through complicity, they were supportive of the alleged “humanitarian war” to the rescue of the Albanian population of Kosovo.

I should mention that most of my research was done outside Serbia. I have visited Serbia on several occasions but when the war broke out on the 24th of March, I started writing. Many of the texts which are in this book were written more than 20 years ago, some of them were written actually in the mid 1990s.

I had started my research in the early 1990s focusing on the economic and social dimensions which are crucial to an understanding of the military and  strategic dimensions. I’m referring to the fact that in the early 1980s  there was, what we might describe as, an “Economic War Plan” largely with instrumented by the IMF and the World Bank, which essentially consisted in dismantling an entire National economy.

I recall that the war against Yugoslavia as of March 24 1999 was targeting essentially civilian infrastructure: schools, hospitals, the infrastructure of residential areas.

These are amply documented but there was one element which is beyond criminality.

When I was in Belgrade a year later, I visited the Children’s Hospital and the children hospital had been identified as a target, a strategic target by US – NATO.  And when we say US – NATO, it’s really US. NATO is simply an appendage of the Pentagon.

US-NATO stated categorically that their objective was to save lives and because of that they did not bomb the section of the hospital where the babies were residing, but instead they bombed the power generators which provided electricity to the hospital and to the children in incubators. What this meant is that the entire hospital was destroyed because these smart bombs had undermined the basic functioning of the hospital, which then required the subsequent evacuation of the hospital, and many children, of course, died as a result of this.

That’s one example, but it’s one example that I investigated when I returned to Belgrade a year later to attend the commemoration organized under the auspices of the Belgrade Forum.

I would like to look at the issue of chronology and history of this war.

Starting in the 1960s and 1970s, Yugoslavia was a successful economy with a social project. It was entitled “Market Socialism”, it had a cooperative structure of enterprise management and it had the highest growth rate when compared to European countries, in excess of 6 percent and a full-fledged welfare state.

I should mention that this process was in a country which had experienced heavy casualties during World War II, which were commemorated yesterday.

I should mention my first visit to Yugoslavia was in 1967 as a student. In fact, it was a group of students from the Institute of Social studies in The Hague Netherlands and we decided we wanted to go to Yugoslavia, to take cognizance of “Market Socialism”. The Institute arranged for this to take place.

Without personalizing: during this visit I had a minor health problem. I went to a clinic and received treatment from a medical doctor. Then I said “How much do I owe you?” and he said to me “Nothing”. He responded “In the Republic of Serbia we also welcome our foreign visitors and provide them with full health coverage”.

No other country in the world would have that kind of procedure. It was full-fledged health coverage for the citizens of Yugoslavia but also visitors to the country. That experience was something which had an obvious impact on the way I analyzed the history of what happened to this societal project and how it was deliberately destroyed.

In other words, a societal project [Market Socialism and the Welfare State] had been carried out, with inevitable divisions at a political level. But ultimately based on a social consensus, that was what the people of Yugoslavia wanted. And that that is what was destroyed quite deliberately through a series of economic, social and political mechanisms starting in the early 1980s.

In 1984 the Reagan Administration published what was called a National Security Decision Directive. It was an important policy document, entitled “secret and sensitive”. It was intended to undermine market socialism and integrate Yugoslavia into a so-called free market economy.

That was a 3-page document. I think that many people in this room have read this document. There’s nothing secret about it and there’s nothing sensitive about it. It was made public, but there was also another agenda which was not revealed. There was a military intelligence agenda.

I did not have access to those documents. But there was one document to which I had access and it was a World Bank report published in the early 1990s, which revealed the entire logic of how you destabilize and destroy a country.

I have sent that document, it is on file with the Belgrade Forum. I must say that at the time I received that document it was an internal document of the World Bank. I received it from a representative of the government of Yugoslavia at the time. Normally this was something that was not supposed to be released.

What this document describes is essentially a bankruptcy program, which was initiated under the auspices of the World Bank which then led to the outright closing down of the industrial sector, applied to all major sectors of the Yugoslav economy, dictated of course by the creditors  of the Belgrade government.

What this report described were the policies implemented  on behalf of Belgrade’s creditors, which consisted in the phasing out of socially owned Enterprises. In other words, that was the condition and then there were conditions with regard to bankruptcy and privatization.

They sent in an army of advisors and Western lawyers and consultants to implement this crucial operation. There was the Financial Operations Act of 1989, which was passed and played a crucial role in engineering the collapse of of Yugoslavia’s industrial sector.

The terminology is diabolical in many regards. The bankruptcy process involved what they called an exit mechanism.

Exit mechanism is like killing the economy, killing the industry.

In other words these enterprises were thrown out of the economic landscape. This was under, what was called, The 1989 Financial Operations Act. It was entirely controlled by Western creditors, the IMF and the World Bank.

And already in 1989 there were tens of thousands of workers who were simply removed from their employment and the socially managed enterprises went bankrupt. In the meantime this set the stage for subsequent macroeconomic policies, because it led to the impoverishment of the entire population.

In other words, it didn’t totally kill the welfare state because, I think, there was a commitment to retaining the welfare state, but it certainly killed the whole economic structure of a sovereign country and its social achievements in the wake of World War II.

Without getting into the detail, this project, was in some regards even more deadly than the US-NATO military operations which were waged at a subsequent stage. Already in 1989 they had more than 200 enterprises which were targeted and almost a 100,000 workers lost their work. That was the first stage both prior and in the wake of the 1990 January IMF Shock Treatment.

January 1990 was the Shock Treatment by the IMF, which ultimately broke down the fiscal structure of the Yugoslav Federation.

The fiscal structure of the Yugoslav federation played a central role in the transfer of resources from the central government to the republics. That’s the basis of a federal structure. These transfers of revenues and expenditures from the central government to the member states of the Federation.

When shock treatment was applied, the federal fiscal structure was destroyed and dismantled, paving the way and creating the conditions for secession.

Already in early 1990, 614 000 workers were dismissed out of a Workforce of the order of 2.7 million. In other words, almost the quarter of the labor force with the largest concentrations of bankrupt firms in Serbia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Macedonia and Kosovo.

The January 1990 IMF Shock Treatment: That was their economic terminology – shock treatment – the idea is that you get shock treatment and then you recover.

Meanwhile the fiscal structure is destroyed, the links between the central government and the republics are undermined and at the same time all the major components of the Yugoslavia economy with regard to large-scale electrical companies, petroleum, refinery, machinery, engineering all of this was precipitated into bankruptcy.

I should mention that this process of economic disintegration was the precondition for the so-called Civil War including military intervention. Social divisions were created. People were impoverished. And this then led to the subsequent stage of military intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It was also related to Operation Storm in Kraijina and Operation Medak Pocket and the various military actions in Croatia directed against Serbian civilians, from the early 1990s to the mid 1990s.

During the period  1990-1995, the US intelligence strategy was to bring in their terrorists namely Al-Qaeda.

Al Qaeda was integrated into the Bosnian Muslim Army as of an early stage. This is not necessarily known to everybody but Al-Qaeda was a creation of the CIA going back to first War on Afghanistan what was called the the Soviet Afghan War (1979-1989).

It wasn’t the Soviet Afghan War, it was a US sponsored war with so-called “freedom fighters”, namely what was subsequently described as Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda means “The base” and Al-Qaeda was the base in the CIA data bank of the Freedom Fighters who were recruited to wage war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

The relationship between  the Bosnia Muslim Army and Al-Qaeda is documented in a congressional document. In other words it’s a document of the US Senate, which was drafted by the Republican party at the time, and they accused the Clinton administration of bringing in Al Qaeda.

It’s all confirmed. They brought in Al-Qaeda in Bosnia and Herzegovina and, of course, they brought in Al-Qaeda into Kosovo at a subsequent stage.

I should also mention that the Kosovo Liberation Army, they were also trained in Afghanistan, courtesy of the US intelligence.

In other words, the KLA as an entity was linked up with Al-Qaeda terrorists at a much earlier stage, training in Afghanistan and then ultimately these Kosovo terrorists were given United Nations status, as you know that’s came subsequently. But the history goes back to Bosnia  and the use of terrorists to create conditions which then led to ultimately, as far as Bosnia is concerned the so-called Dayton Agreement.

In 1995 there was an alleged peace agreement which was signed in a US military base in Ohio [Dayton, Ohio]. It wasn’t in Geneva, it was in a US military base in Ohio and it was monitored by the US government and military with an army of lawyers and consultants. It was at Dayton that they drafted the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Now this goes beyond colonialism. They drafted the Constitution of a so-called sovereign state. It wasn’t a sovereign state at all. And in that Constitution there is a clause that struck me, I went into the appendices, it wasn’t easy to find it at that time. The Constitution said that the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is a key instrument of monetary and macroeconomic policy, the president of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina will not be a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, or of a neighboring country. He/she she will be appointed by the IMF. That’s what you call democracy.

There is a transition from Bosnia to Kosovo. The United States had private mercenary companies, because they wanted to avoid being directly involved. This was Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI). And MPRI was involved in training terrorists in Croatia and Bosnia and ultimately these acts of training were also conducive to the crimes committed against the Serbian population in Croatia, namely Kraina, the Medak Pocket, if I recall correctly. We then had, of course, a chief of staff whose name was Agim Çeku, which of course everybody knows who he is.

But Agim Çeku was recruited by by Military Professional Resources Incorporated MPRI), mostly composed of former high level officers of the Pentagon.

Agim Çeku, of course, then became Commander in Chief of the Kosovo forces at a subsequent stage.

But in the earlier period he was instrumental in Operation Storm, which was a criminal operation directed against the Serb population in Croatia.

There is another individual which of course everybody knows, it’s General Michael Jackson. It’s not the pop singer. I think I should mention a little bit about the background of Michael Jackson. He was first involved in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, appointed by the United Nations. He held the highest rank in the British Military. And ultimately became Head of the Joint Chief of Staff.

But there’s something else about Michael Jackson which I don’t think people in Serbia know. I know that because I’m of Irish descent and he was the second officer in command of the Bloody Sunday Massacre in Northern Ireland, that was in the 1970s.

He was a young officer and all his training was based in Northern Ireland, largely directed against civilians. I will make that article available. But it’s important to understand how they appoint criminals to high-ranking positions under  UN auspices.

So that in effect, the methods of killing civilians was something that he had inherited from his role in Derry, Northern Ireland. It was in 1972, when civilians were involved in a protest movement and they were shot, killed on the orders of Michael Jackson.

There is a lot of detail in history, but let me proceed to the subsequent stage of the US-Nato Aggression against Yugoslavia, which is the 1999  Illegal invasion and bombing of Yugoslavia, and the role of the alleged Kosovo Freedom Fighters namely the KLA.

This was portrayed as a humanitarian undertaking and the media conformed throughout the Western world and, as I mentioned earlier, the Kosovo Liberation Army was viewed as a legitimate entity protecting the human rights of the Albanian minority.

This of course is total rubbish, because the Kosovo Liberation Army was linked to organized crime. Hashim Thaçi had a file with Interpol, this was well known and they were, of course subsequently, the Kosovo Liberation Army freedom Fighters were then given UN passport, so to speak. The Freedom Fighters linked to organized crime then became the Kosovo Protection Corps and all of that was, of course, not only illegal but criminal.

In late March 1999, I started writing an article which was called and “Kosovo Freedom Fighters financed by organized crime“.

I was a regular contributor to the Le Monde diplomatique which was a prestigious French monthly, and still is, and I worked with them for a period of 10 years starting in 1989, and that article was never published by the Le Monde diplomatique, and I was under attack by various people on the Left regarding my assessment of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

As I mentioned earlier the Kosovo Liberation Army was protected by the CIA and German intelligence – the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). It was also trained by these intelligence operatives and, as I mentioned, some of the training took place in Afghanistan and the KLA had links to Al-Qaeda right from the beginning prior to 1999.

The issue was as far as media coverage was concerned: it was absolutely prohibited to mention that Hashim Thaçi was on file with Interpol.

I knew it, I checked it, that information was known but it was never released in the course of the war.

In other words not only is the leader of a terrorist organization links to organized crime, but at the same time the leader of that organization becomes the ideal candidate for position of head of state of the self-proclaimed Kosovo Republic. T

he irony is that Hashim Thaçi became president with a criminal record and it was only more than almost 20 years later that there was a report coming from the Hague Tribunal saying that he had committed crimes against humanity etc.

Very convenient: that came 20 years later, when it was known in the late 90s that he was a criminal.

But I should say one thing, criminals were considered as the ideal candidates for high office (President, Prime Minister). Why because they obey orders! Criminal  appointees, corrupt politicians are not going to question the people who are behind them. So what happened: the Mafia State installed by NATO was by a political entity and a leader who was on the Interpol list, but that doesn’t matter because he’s not going to make any decisions, the decisions are taken by US – NATO and this is a very convenient appointment.

I think I should conclude referring to the utmost relevance of US-NATO wars on Yugoslavia in an understanding of what is now happening in Ukraine and beyond.

Because since Yugoslavia there have been a series of US-NATO-sponsored Wars either directly or indirectly but certainly with regard to Libya NATO was involved. Libya, Syria, of course, Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was officially a NATO project, because Article 5 of the Atlantic Treaty was endorsed and within three weeks after the 9/11 attacks allegedly by terrorist, (September 11 2001(, on October 7th 2001 they waged war on Afghanistan, based on fraudulent statement that somehow Afghanistan had attacked America. There were no Afghan jets in the skies of New York that day and meanwhile Osama bin Laden had been admitted for treatment to  Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi within walking distance of the US military Mission,

They knew where he was: was he coordinating the 9/11 attacks from his hospital bed with his laptop?

That’s another dimension, but I think what we have undertake, starting in the Republic of Serbia, we have to build a Worldwide movement against US-NATO and also against what is now treason, political treason, within the European Union.

The term Mafia state is not limited to Kosovo. In many regards the European Union has become the Mafia state. I will not dwell upon this but there’s one key appointment in the European Union which is the president of the European Central Bank. Now it just so happens that Christine Lagarde, formerly managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has the criminal record in France. She was condemned to a prison sentence of one year attributable to her role in money laundering  and deviation of public funds. It’s all on record. But she was then released of that decision by  French judges when the IMF governing board, which she chairs, incidentally sent a note to the French government saying that she was a very honest person and they asked for the repeal of the Judgment. But the criminal record is still there and why is that important. Because she is obeying orders from the upper echelons of the financial establishment. There are many elements of Mafia state appointments within the European Union which are now unfolding.

I am going to complete this presentation focusing on the nature of the crisis now affecting the European Union and, of course, Ukraine. It’s interconnected.

There is an act of economic Warfare which in many regards is modeled on the act of economic Warfare against Yugoslavia.

It’s the triggering of bankruptcies, it’s the destabilization of agriculture.

It’s very complex, but it is focusing essentially on two variables:

1. energy and 2. food.

Energy is the input into production, food is survival.

Those two variables and the actions of the United States to block the supply of energy to the European Union are crimes against humanity.

But, on the part of the European, as we say in French La classe politique, it is an act of treason, because they are sleeping with the enemy.

This is a war on Europe, it’s not a war on Russia,

It’s a war in Europe and it has a whole history behind it.

I won’t enter into the details. Specifically North Stream was an act of sabotage by the US government. We have all the information to that effect and Biden said „Yes, I promise we will do it“. We have evidence. In international law, an act of sabotage directed against infrastructure in the territorial waters of sovereign states of the European Union, namely Sweden and Denmark, is an act of War, it’s defined as an act of War.

My thanks to everybody. This is not meant to be a “serious statement” but I think it’s a good idea for the Republic of Serbia not to join the European Union at this particular moment.

*

Question 1: Thank you very much for coming to Belgrade and for writing this book which I can’t wait to read. I have two questions. One, has there been a promotion of this book in Canada?

The book is available on our website online. Actually, I posted it back today. It has been read quite extensively online and we will continue promoting it.

I think the problem is that print versions are not easy to distribute in this particular context because there is censorship.

My research center is not continuing with print publications. First of all, we don’t have the resources, but we are now moving into what we call ebooks. I’ve just completed a book on the Corona crisis which I think is also relevant to the debate here. But that’s another topic. But yes it is available now.

There are Serbian communities in North America and many cities particularly in Canada and Toronto. I’ve lost contact a little bit because, we were very active in 1999 at various venues in which the late Ramsey Clark was involved. There was a coherent peace movement. I think the problem now is that we don’t have a coherent peace movement.

Question 2: Second, you touched upon a few issues relating to the war in Ukraine and European Union and I’m just wondering if you’re planning to write a book on those topics? It would be very interesting.

I have written extensively on Ukraine in the form of articles and, of course, we’ve also got very numerous contributors and authors which have written on that.

At this stage, all that information is available on Ukraine, in terms of daily coverage.

The books that I’ve written recently or less recently are on nuclear war, the first of which came out in 2011.

Then another book which is entitled “The globalization of War“ came out in 2015 and then my latest book is on the Corona crisis which essentially is almost two years of research,  it’s very detailed.

Let me just mention one dimension, and that’s very important. The economic crisis did not start in February of this year, it started in January of 2020. And what economists do not understand, but that’s also a characteristic of our discipline, is that when you implement a lockdown requiring the confinement of the labor force and you close down the workplace in 193 countries simultaneously, what are the impacts.

it’s the largest economic and social crash in world history which was instrumented on March 11, 2020.

That I’ve tackled very extensively so that all the corona crisis is part of of our understanding of what’s happening in Ukraine and so on and so forth.

Again it’s another topic but that book is available online and I will make sure that it is also available to the Belgrade Forum so that all of you can get a copy of it.

I think in a sense you are very fortunate in Serbia not to have experienced this crisis as in most countries.

Because there was an awareness and I mean, I’m coming from Canada, people are still wearing the mask.

The restrictions, the levels of devastation are beyond description and the logic of this Corona crisis is bankruptcy as well. And it’s the building up of debt and it’s the fiscal crisis of the state. This is outlined in the book there are several chapters on the economic dimensions.

*

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.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on “The US-NATO War of Aggression Against Yugoslavia“ by Michel Chossudovsky
  • Tags:

US-Africa Relations: Dissecting Geopolitics, Economic Cooperation, Soft Power Strategies in an Emerging Multipolar World

November 25th, 2022 by Kester Kenn Klomegah

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

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

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

***

As the White House gears up for the mid-December African Leaders Summit, several reports indicated that a few African countries might not attend. U.S. President Joe Biden plans to hold an African leaders’ gathering in Washington as a further major step to strengthen geopolitical dialogue and multifaceted relations between the United States and Africa.

The White House National Security Council in November told Today News Africa the criteria for inviting African governments to attend the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit scheduled for December 13-15. While the primary goal is to host a broadly inclusive gathering of high-powered delegations from across the African continent, a number of African countries were blacklisted.

In a statement, four countries were not invited because they are suspended by the African Union (AU) following military coups and counter coups. Currently, four countries – Burkina Faso, Guinea, Sudan, and Mali – are suspended by the AU and were not invited. All the four countries not invited are currently run by strong men who took political power by the guns. The United States on its part recognizes most African nations, except a few like Western Sahara.

According reports monitored by this author, the U.S.-African summit will discuss the emerging global order, changing geopolitical and economic issues and will also offer enormous funds for various development projects as well as for good governance and human rights. Under the plan, Washington says the summit will focus on existing challenges, especially those relating to peace and security, food security to climate change and poverty alleviation directions across Africa.

The high-level dialogue is expected to set the scene for reviewing the opportunities for the United States and corporate leaders from various African public and private sectors, review thoroughly how to strengthen economic partnership between the United States and Africa.

That U.S.-Africa summit “will demonstrate the United States enduring commitment to Africa, and will underscore the importance of U.S.-Africa relations and increased cooperation on shared global priorities. Africa will shape the future – not just the future of the African people, but of the world. Africa will make the difference in tackling the most urgent challenges and seizing the opportunities we all face,” according to statement from Biden Administration.

Washington considers the United States collaboration with leaders from African governments, civil society, the private sector and the African diaspora would help tackle some of the existing and future challenges, especially in efforts to offer billions of dollars for various development projects including building badly needed infrastructure and support energy security for the population.

In terms of broadening trade and economic cooperation, according our monitoring sources, African leaders would be required to bring huge delegations for special sessions during the mid-December summit. Together with their potential American investors would examine ways for exploring and leveraging unto the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

The AfCFTA aims at creating a single market with an estimated 1.3 billion population, and ultimately requires all kinds of business services and consumable products. Quite challenging though, but there are new legislations that stipulate localizing production and distribution inside Africa.

The United States government and private sector leaders, together with African political and corporate business leaders, have been consistently working over these years to share insights on critical issues and policies influencing the US-Africa economic partnership.

The U.S. Agency for International Development would be working close with African institutions and organizations, it would be working closely on the participation for Africans. During these past months, USAID has provided approximately $1.3 billion in aid to the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are listed as beneficiaries, to help stave off mass starvation and deaths in the drought-stricken region of Africa.

Further to that, Dana Banks, White House Senior Director for Africa, said the White House administration has been pushing for the Prosper Africa Build Together Campaign that would drive billions of dollars of investment in Africa. Summit details will soon be announced further detailed information, according to Washington and the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA).

In August on her African trip, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the long-planned trip is not part of global competition with either of America’s rivals, but it is part of a series of high-level U.S. engagements “that aim to affirm and strengthen our partnerships and relationships with African leaders and peoples.”

Her trip from Aug. 4-7 was followed immediately by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visits to South Africa, Congo and Rwanda from Aug. 7-11.

“We’re not catching up. They are catching up,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “We have been engaging with this continent for decades, and even my own career is very much evidence of that.”

Thomas-Greenfield first went to Africa as a student in the 1970s, and in her career as a U.S. diplomat she rose to be Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 2013 to 2017. Many American corporate business leaders have visited and investing significantly in various sectors in Africa.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made resonating announcement that the foundation will spend $7 billion, over the next four years, to improve health, gender equality and agriculture across Africa. Strengthening and supporting these sectors have become necessary due to increasing complains about lack of funds and worse, due to the negative impact of geopolitical changes.

It will further continue to invest in researchers, entrepreneurs, innovators and healthcare workers who are working to unlock the tremendous human potential that exists across the continent, according to the statement, noting that the Russia-Ukraine crisis was reducing the amount of aid flowing to the continent and created global instability. It appeals to global leaders to step up their commitments to finding solutions to multiple problems in African countries.

Noteworthy to reiterate here that President Biden has held several summits since his inauguration in January 2021. For instance, on December 9-10, 2021, President Biden held the first of two Summits for Democracy, which brought together leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector in a shared effort to set forth “an affirmative agenda for democratic renewal and to tackle the greatest threats faced by democracies today through collective action.”

Now the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit comes just a few months after Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken unveiled the new U.S. policy for Africa in South Africa in August. The new policy says that the United States will pursue four main objectives in Africa. The four objectives in the new strategy are fostering openness and open societies, delivering democratic and security dividends, advancing pandemic recovery and economic opportunities, and supporting conservation, climate adaptation and a just energy transition.

The new strategy begins by acknowledging that

“Sub-Saharan Africa plays a critical role in advancing global priorities to the benefit of Africans and Americans,” and that it “has one of the world’s fastest growing populations, largest free trade areas, most diverse ecosystems, and one of the largest regional voting groups in the United Nations (UN).”

To realize its ‘openness and open societies’ objective, the U.S. will promote government transparency and accountability, increase the U.S. focus on the rule of law, justice, and dignity, and assist African countries to more transparently leverage their natural resources for sustainable development.

For democracy and security dividends, the United States will focus on

“working with allies and regional partners to stem the recent tide of authoritarianism and military takeovers, backing civil society, empowering marginalized groups, centering the voices of women and youth, and defending free and fair elections, improving the capacity of African partners to advance regional stability and security and reducing the threat from terrorist groups to the United States Homeland, persons, and diplomatic and military facilities.”

The mid-December Summit has already gained wide popularity among African leaders and, for the second time, will be the biggest U.S.-Africa gathering in Washington since former President Barack Obama hosted African leaders in 2014.

In addition, Obama also started the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) which brings every year a group of young Africans to the White House. Until today, YALI continues to run various educational and training programmes including seminars for Africans. The Times Higher Education index indicated that approximately 43,000 Africans have currently enrolled into and are studying in American universities.

Angolan President, João Lourenço, in an interview with Hariana Veras, White House correspondent, praised President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for hosting the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit, saying that it will help create a win-win partnership between the United States and Africa, accelerate industrialization, increase direct foreign investment and further cement the already good collaboration between Angola and the United States.

According to that report, he pointed to assertiveness of Biden administration’s focus on trade and investment in Africa, highlight America’s commitment to Africa’s security, its democratic development, and its people, as well as emphasize the depth and breadth of the United States commitment to the African continent.

The Angolan leader advised that the Russian and Ukraine war should open the eyes of advanced countries to lead efforts in increasing investment in more alternative energy sources besides the traditionally used energy sources. As the Russia-Ukraine war rages in Europe and its ramifications are extended to other parts of the world, including in Africa, Lourenço called for increased food production and investment in African nations, saying that the global food crisis has badly affected Africa.

Despite some negative criticisms, African leaders continue sourcing different kinds of economic assistance and support provided by the United States. It shows the United States remains an indispensable power and will, by and large, play its appreciable eternal role in the emerging the new world order. It has the strategic mechanism, experience and confidence to influence the future.

The African leaders are mostly western-oriented, support the global status quo, admire the incomparable never-failing practical soft-power of the United States and in turn, maintain long-term geopolitical interest with the West. Within the context of the geopolitical realities, the United States and its leadership still have strong sustainable political, economic and cultural ties with African countries.

It is certainly true that western and European systems classically appeal more to Africans. But the stark reality is that with abundance of natural resources, Africans must reflect on their current foreign policy and approach vis-avis with ultimate goals of building of large-scale sustainable development for 1.3 billion population, and so must necessarily be guided by the African Union Agenda 2063.

*

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

Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a regular contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

Featured image is from the author

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on US-Africa Relations: Dissecting Geopolitics, Economic Cooperation, Soft Power Strategies in an Emerging Multipolar World

Deeply Flawed Censorship Project: Experts Condemn UK Online Safety Bill as Harmful to Privacy and Encryption

November 25th, 2022 by Joe Mullin

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

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

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

***

The British Parliament may start debating the Online Safety Bill again as soon as this week. The bill is a deeply flawed censorship proposal that would allow U.K. residents to be thrown in jail for what they say online. It would also force online service providers to use government-approved software to search for user content that is deemed to be related to terrorism or child abuse. In the process, it will undermine our right to have a private conversation, and the technologies that protect that right, like end-to-end encryption. 

In a letter published today, EFF has joined dozens of security researchers and human rights groups to send a clear message to incoming U.K. prime minister Rishi Sunak: the Online Safety Bill must not undermine encryption. As the letter notes, in its current form, the Online Safety Bill “contains clauses that would erode end-to-end encryption in private messaging.” It continues:

Undermining protections for end-to-end encryption would make UK businesses and individuals less safe online, including the very groups that the Online Safety Bill intends to protect. Furthermore, because the right to privacy and freedom of expression are intertwined, these proposals would undermine freedom of speech, a key characteristic of free societies that differentiate the UK from aggressors that use oppression and coercion to achieve their aims.

In the past few years, we’ve seen a number of proposals brought forward by governments that want to scan user-to-user communications for criminal content: the U.S. EARN IT Act, and the EU’s proposal to scan private chats. All of these proposals suffer from the incorrect belief that a backdoor or other workaround to read encrypted messages can be designed for use only in benevolent ways.

That isn’t the case, and never will be. Criminals, rogue employees, domestic abusers, and authoritarian governments are just some of the bad actors that will eagerly exploit backdoors like those proposed by the Online Safety Bill. Proposals like this threaten a basic human right: our right to have a private conversation.

We hope Prime Minister Sunak acknowledges the consensus among technologists against the current Online Safety Bill and proposals like it.

*

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.

Featured image is from blogtrepreneur/Flickr

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Deeply Flawed Censorship Project: Experts Condemn UK Online Safety Bill as Harmful to Privacy and Encryption
  • Tags: ,

Bolsonaro Denies Brazil Election Results on the Basis of a Software ‘Malfunction’

November 25th, 2022 by Lauren Leffer

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

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

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

***

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro filed a complaint on Tuesday contesting the results of the run-off election he lost more than three weeks ago. In it, Bolsonaro’s lawyer Marcelo de Bessa claims that a “software bug” on 59% of the voting machines used across Brazil invalidates many ballots, according to a report from the Associated Press.

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — More than three weeks after losing a reelection bid, President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday blamed a software bug and demanded the electoral authority annul votes cast on most of Brazil’s nation’s electronic voting machines, though independent experts say the bug doesn’t affect the reliability of results.

Such an action would leave Bolsonaro with 51% of the remaining valid votes — and a reelection victory, Marcelo de Bessa, the lawyer who filed the 33-page request on behalf of the president and his Liberal Party, told reporters.

The electoral authority has already declared victory for Bolsonaro’s nemesis, leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and even many of the president’s allies have accepted the results. Protesters in cities across the country have steadfastly refused to do the same, particularly with Bolsonaro declining to concede.

Liberal Party leader Valdemar Costa and an auditor hired by the party told reporters in Brasilia that their evaluation found all machines dating from before 2020 — nearly 280,000 of them, or about 59% of the total used in the Oct. 30 runoff — lacked individual identification numbers in internal logs.

The 33-page complaint describes the alleged voting machine issue as an “irreparable non-compliance due to malfunction,” affecting all machines more than two years old, said the AP. And the filing demands that ballots cast on the ~280,000 machines in question be voided. Specifically, an auditor hired by Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party said the voting machines lacked individual identification numbers, without explaining how that could’ve possibly impacted election results, according to a report from Politico.

“It does not undermine the reliability or credibility in any way,” Wilson Ruggiero, a computer engineer at the Polytechnic School of the University of Sao Paulo, told the AP.

Another expert, Diego Aranha, a systems security researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark who has previously been part of security tests of Brazil’s election system, also told the AP something similar. Arhana explained that, though the machine ID numbers didn’t show up in internal digital logs, they did appear on printed receipts tallying the votes cast for each candidate.

Bolsonaro’s loss (and Lula’s victory) has already been declared by Brazil’s electoral authority, and the results have been widely accepted by politicians across the country—even many of Bolsonaro’s allies.

In response to Bolsonaro’s new claims, the leader of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court said it would not reassess the election results unless the Liberal Party files a new complaint inclusive of the congressional elections it won earlier in October, Politico reported.

The concept of faulty and vulnerable voting machines have been a constant refrain in Bolsnaro’s attempts to undermine Brazil’s democracy for years. However, there has never been any evidence of fraud or ill-doing via the machines that have been used since 1996—despite regular audits, according to another AP report.

Though the complaint is unlikely to have a direct impact on government actions or sway election officials, according to multiple outlets, it is likely to fuel ongoing protests by Bolsonaro supporters. Emboldened by Bolsonaro’s earlier refusal to officially concede, tens of thousands of Brazilians have taken to the streets, refusing to accept the President’s loss. Sure sounds like he’s taking a page out of former President Donald Trump’s election-denying playbook.

*

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.

World Economic Forum (WEF) Announces Creation of Orwellian ‘Global Coalition for Digital Safety’

November 25th, 2022 by Leo Hohmann

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version). 

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

First published on July 5, 2021

what was promised by the WEF in June 2021, is happening NOW. 

***

The World Economic Forum announced June 29 2021 it will initiate a new “public-private partnership” with Big Tech and governments around the world to identify and uproot all opinions from the Internet that it considers “harmful.”

The WEF is one of those elitist organizations that wields enormous influence over the elected leaders of Western nations but which almost nobody in the general population has heard of.

Its members are internationalist corporate honchos and technocrats who meet once a year in Davos with the stated goal of working to “shape global, regional and industry agendas.”

It made a big splash last year with its highly touted “Great Reset,” which promises to use the pandemic as an “opportunity” to crash the world’s dollar-based, capitalist economic system and “build back better” under a more socialist and globally integrated system that mirrors the United Nations Agenda 2030 goals for Sustainable Development.  

Any politician you hear using the term “build back better” [Biden-Harris-Trudeau-Johnson repeat this mantra daily] you know has drunk the poisonous Kool-Aid of the World Economic Forum and its founder, Klaus Schwab [pictured below].

Schwab’s latest venture is the so-called “Global Coalition for Digital Safety” that consists of execs from Big Tech and government officials with the goal of creating a “global framework” for regulating speech on the Internet, wiping it of so-called “harmful content.”

[I could not help but think of the Committee of Public Safety that conducted the reign of terror during the French Revolution.]

And who gets to define what’s “harmful”?

Why, the global coalition set up by the elitist WEF of course!

The “harmful” content targeted by this Global Coalition for Digital Safety you can bet will be tailor made to entrap those who stand for limited government, traditional values and individual freedom. Those of us who still believe in such things will not be included in the WEF’s definition “inclusive,” “equality” or “diversity.”

“The Global Coalition for Digital Safety is a public private platform for global, multi stakeholder cooperation to develop innovations and advance collaborations that tackle harmful content and conduct online,” states the WEF on its website.

Microsoft immediately announced it was on board with the WEF’s plan to squelch free speech on the Internet.

Chief digital safety officer for Microsoft Courtney Gregoire stated:

“Technology offers tools to learn, play, connect, and contribute to solving some of the world’s greatest challenges. But digital safety harms remain a threat to these possibilities. As the World Economic Forum is uniquely positioned to accelerate the public-private collaboration needed to advance digital safety globally, Microsoft is eager to participate and help build whole-of-society solutions to this whole-of-society problem.”

Facebook also seems excited to get started on finding new ways to groom users to start thinking about turning in their friends for wrongthink. The social media giant has begun sending cryptic messages to some users that read as follows:

“Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?”

See screenshot below that one user received from Facebook today, July 1, and sent to this reporter.

This program fits perfectly with the rhetoric coming out of Washington since Biden claimed the presidency.

Biden and his attorney general, Merrick Garland, take every opportunity to talk about “extremists” on the right being the “biggest threat to our democracy.” This is a classic propaganda technique used to turn public sentiment against a targeted demographic. The Nazis perfected this, using the media to blame all of Germany’s problems on Jews before they actually started rounding them up and making them disappear.

The next phase in this evil plan is to encourage Americans to turn each other in to the online thought police. What happens next, after one has been reported to Facebook, Google or Microsoft? Will the tech giants turn those accused of thought crimes by their online “friends” and “followers” over to Biden’s politicized FBI? This is exactly how it works in China.

Readers of this blog know that China is the model being touted by those who believe in the Great Reset. Now their plans are right out in the open on the World Economic Forum website with this announcement of their Global Coalition for Digital Safety.

The WEF states:

“With the growing challenge to counter health misinformation, violent extremist and terrorist content, and the exploitation of children online, there is an urgent need for more deliberate global coordination to improve digital safety.

“The Global Coalition for Digital Safety aims to accelerate public-private cooperation to tackle harmful content online and will serve to exchange best practices for new online safety regulation, take coordinated action to reduce the risk of online harms, and drive forward collaboration on programs to enhance digital media literacy.”

In the above quote, notice how sneakily the WEF lumps spreaders of “health misinformation” – that would be anyone who expresses reticence about experimental mass vaccination programs, COVID lockdowns, mandatory mask wearing, etc. – in with violent extremists, terrorists and child traffickers. How clever.

The WEF has the audacity to claim its coalition will be “impartial” in policing the Internet. This is the same organization run by Schwab, who openly states that the pandemic should be exploited as a “unique window of opportunity” to fundamentally change the way the people live, work, do business and fit into society.

“The Forum is uniquely positioned to leverage its impartial platform and convening power to drive public-private cooperation amongst key stakeholders focused on improving safety online,” the WEF states in its release about the new coalition.

The WEF sets itself up as the global arbiter that defines terms like “harmful content” and “misinformation.” It also laments the fact that encrypted social media channels like Telegram and Signal are able to allow users to communicate free of censorship and spying.

Here are its recommendations for “key focus areas that now require coordinated action” by governments and their Big Tech allies:

1. Share Best Practices on Safety Standards: Exchange knowledge on policies and practices for improving online safety, considering content policies, remedies, transparency reports, use of data, and new technologies

2. Address Balance of Privacy and Safety: Share best practices on addressing the growing tension between privacy and safety as harmful content on encrypted channels risks evading detection

3. Market Competition: Drive better alignment between regulations focused on safety and competition to foster market innovation and enable consumer choice

4. Cross-Jurisdictional Content Cooperation: Enable action on content that spans jurisdictions and requires greater coordination amongst countries (e.g. content created in one county but causing harm in another)

5. Definitional Alignment: Support work on consistent definitions for content categories, such as self-harm and cyber-bullying to enable standardized enforcement, reporting, and measurement across regions.

If COVID taught us anything, it’s that Big Tech social-media platforms, in league with global power elites, defined for us what is allowed and not allowed to be said on the Internet.

Posts that challenge the official narrative about the virus and the best way to respond to it were immediately censored, either tagged with warnings meant to discredit the posts or removed all together.

The most typical reason for such censorship was that these posts “violated community standards,” which consist of mysterious, vaguely worded legalese that nobody reads.

Big Tech corporations are also increasingly working in concert with governments around the world, including in the U.S. and the ruling Chinese Communist Party in China, to regulate what people are allowed to see on the Internet.

But all of this control over the free flow of information is not enough for some of the global power elites.

Now they are ready to take their Gestapo tactics to the next level.

They want to turn us against each other.

Don’t let them do it.

Now is the time for all freedom-loving patriots in nations across the world to wake up, rise up, recognize these tactics as divisive and anti-human, and unite against this pernicious group of global predators.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @crg_globalresearch. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

All images in this article are from LeoHohmann.com

Ukrainian Authorities Advance “De-russification” Project

November 25th, 2022 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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

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

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

***

 

 

 

 

Even in the midst of a high-intensity military conflict, one of the main priorities of the Ukrainian authorities is to attack Russian culture and history. The local administration of Odessa recently approved the demolition of Russian monuments, including those of Empress Catherine the Great and Generalissimo Alexander Suvorov. The move shows how Kiev plans to advance its “de-Russification” project, which can only be stopped with a Russian military victory.

The decision was announced by Ukrainian legislator Alexey Goncharenko, who is a spokesman for the executive committee of the Odessa City Council. He said: “During a session of the executive committee of the Odessa City Council, ExCo members supported the decision to dismantle and relocate the Monument to Odessa’s Founders”.

In the past, Goncharenko had already submitted to the mayor of Odessa, Gennady Trukhanov, a bill proposing the removal of the statue of Catherine the Great, but it had then remained unanswered, with the decision taking place now. Trukhanov participated in the statue’s installation nearly a decade ago, but now he seems to have adhered to the Russophobic frenzy that affects Ukrainian officials and their militant supporters. In November alone, the statue of Empress Catherine was attacked twice by neo-Nazi vandals, which shows the serious situation of anti-Russian sentiment among local political groups.

Source: InfoBrics

Previously, several other acts of vandalism had already been made against the statue, as well as petitions produced by neo-Nazi militants to demolish it. On July 5, for example, ultranationalist groups created an online petition proposing the replacement of the monument by a statue in honor of the American actor Billy Herrington, known for having worked in several pornographic films. Obviously, the proposal was a mockery and could not be taken seriously, but such is the depth of anti-Russian animosity in post-Maidan Ukrainian society that more than 25,000 people signed the petition – which was presented to President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, despite its grotesqueness. Surprisingly, in August, the Ukrainian president reacted to the petition asking local authorities to “consider” the demolition topic.

It is important to note how the decision to destroy such a monument constitutes a direct attack against the memory of Odessa itself, since it was Catherine the Great who founded the city by an imperial decree in the 18th century. Goncharenko even emphasized in his speech that this was an act against the “Odessa’s Founders”, making clear the intention of the Ukrainian authorities to erase their own history. The objective is to detach Odessa – and the entire Ukraine – from any cultural ties with Russia, destroying national memory and rewriting local history as being purely “Ukrainian”, without Russian participation.

Repeatedly, Zelensky commented on the alleged “necessity” to make Ukraine free of “Russian-related objects”. Several attacks on monuments of Russian and Soviet heroes have already been carried out in many regions of Ukraine. The conflict in Donbass itself was marked in its first days – 2014 – by the attempt on the part of the Ukrainian forces to remove a statue of Lenin, prevented by strong popular resistance.

It is also necessary to emphasize that Ukraine is not the only country going through such a process. The Ukrainian case is more serious because the country is under a neo-Nazi regime since the Maidan coup, but there are similar initiatives in all states that joined the Western-backed anti-Russian wave. In the Baltics, the removal of Soviet monuments has become common a practice, for example. And so, the countries that participated in Russian civilization in the past gradually try to erase or rewrite their history, considering this a kind of “cleaning”.

The demolition of statues is just one of the lines of action in this broad project to “cancel” Russian history. The rejection of Russian culture, language and art is also part of this problem. As well known, Ukraine has been promoting the elimination of Russian-language books – including translations of non-Russian authors – in recent months, and there have been even public book burning events. Indeed, if Kiev’s neo-Nazi regime lasts long, surely future generations will be educated with adulterated versions of their own history, believing that their ancestors were never part of the Russian civilization and that Russia has always been an “enemy”, “aggressor” country.

In fact, rewriting history based on racism and resentment is an intolerable practice. The only way to prevent cultural genocide against Russians and to preserve Russian memory in Ukraine is through military victory against the Maidan regime. Only by ending NATO’s proxy dictatorship it will be possible to promote conciliation between Russians and Ukrainians and keep the national memory, interrupting the racist and irrational hate instilled by foreign groups.

*

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.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

Featured image: This is a photo of a cultural heritage object in Russia, Suvorov Monument, Suvorov Square (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Ukrainian Authorities Advance “De-russification” Project

COVID-19 Vaccines Are the Main Cause of Excess Mortality Around the World

November 25th, 2022 by Kevin Hughes

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

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

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

***

Financial analyst Edward Dowd recently told the Health Ranger Mike Adams that the supposedly “safe and effective” vaccines against the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) are the main cause of excess mortality in America and around the world. He made this claim during an episode of Adams’ “Health Ranger Report.”

According to the “They Lied, People Died” website, a project of Dowd’s, his career “was spent analyzing companies and earning billions for hedge funds. In early 2020, [he] famously made some predictions on Twitter.” A year later, Dowd backed up his predictions with data from government agencies – leading to his ban on the social media platform.

Dowd recounted to the Natural News and Brighteon.com founder that he began hearing anecdotes about people dying and being injured from the so-called vaccines in March and April 2021. This led him to look into data from insurance companies and funeral homes. When his fame grew and a team assembled around him, Dowd decided to partner with two physicists in Portugal to start the Humanity Project – which outlined all the deaths caused by the COVID-19 vaccines per country.

“They reached out to me to help with the project. They basically have taken the U.S. data, the U.K. data and the European data. It’s a pretty devastating analysis that goes country by country,” he said.

Dowd, a former BlackRock managing director, added that he and his partners came up with a methodology paper on how to accurately find out excess mortality from the COVID-19 vaccines. According to the analyst, this could be published in a peer-reviewed journal and its findings used in future court cases.

Daily vaccine deaths almost at the same scale as 9/11 deaths

In response to the Health Ranger’s question about what level of excess mortality is expected following the introduction of the vaccines, Dowd said the general U.S. population had a 32 percent excess mortality rate in 2021. This mortality will continue in 2022, he added, but will slightly dip as people are not enthusiastic about taking up boosters.

According to Adams, this 32 percent excess mortality equates to more than 2,400 people dying daily. This, he added, is almost the same scale as the Sept. 11 attacks. (Related: EXCESS MORTALITY: Over 2400 Americans are DYING each day following vaccine mandates… Ed Dowd unveils alarming, evidence-based data.)

The former BlackRock executive warned that this will have serious consequences for the economy for years to come, adding that being employed in 2021 and 2022 was detrimental for a person’s health

He cited that the number of employed workers in the U.S., amounting between 98 million and 100 million, reported a 26 percent increase in their disability rate. Since 2021, between 3.5 million and four million have been disabled by the vaccines. The general population, meanwhile, saw disability rates increase by 11 percent.

Moreover, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics five years before the pandemic showed only around 29 million to 30 million Americans being disabled. This did not increase in 2021, and even dropped, because the COVID-19 lockdowns prevented accidental disabilities or injuries. But come May 2021, the disability rate took off “like a growth stock chart that broke out of its trend.”

Follow VaccineDeaths.com for more stories about deaths caused by the COVID-19 injections.

Watch the full conversation between Edward Dowd and Mike Adams below.

*

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.

Featured image is from Pandemic.news

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on COVID-19 Vaccines Are the Main Cause of Excess Mortality Around the World
  • Tags:

Here Is the Official Response from the CDC About the Death Safety Signal Being Triggered in VAERS

November 25th, 2022 by Steve Kirsch

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

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

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

***

The CDC blocks all my emails, so a doctor friend of mine sent in the question.

The question 

This question was submitted to the CDC on October 11, 2022 1:54 PM (Pacific Time):

Is this true that the death safety signal in VAERS triggered and nobody at the CDC noticed as pointed out in this article.

If not, can you supply the correct calculation?

The CDC’s response (6 weeks later)

As you might expect, they side-stepped the question.

They said that since the calculation was done by a third party, they couldn’t comment on it.

But you can rest assured that the CDC is monitoring VAERS for safety signals!

Here is the official response that was received 

From: Vaccine Safety (CDC) <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, Nov 23, 2022 at 6:51 AM
Subject: Your Inquiry Regarding VAERS
To: <my doctor friend>
Cc: CDCExecSec (CDC) <[email protected]>

Dear Dr. <redacted>:

Thank you for your inquiry to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, regarding your concerns about the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Your message was referred to my office for a response.

CDC was not involved with the work you mentioned in your correspondence, which used limited information from a publicly accessible VAERS database. Please see the disclaimer on the CDC WONDER site for more information: About the VAERS System. CDC is unable to comment on this analysis conducted outside of the agency. CDC has been publicly presenting and openly discussing data from our vaccine safety monitoring systems regarding coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccinations at meetings of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and we have also regularly published analyses of these data. Statements that imply that reports of deaths to VAERS following vaccination equate to deaths caused by vaccination are scientifically inaccurate, misleading, and irresponsible. We continue to monitor these and other adverse events using our safety surveillance systems.

Authorized and approved COVID-19 vaccines are being administered under the most comprehensive and intensive vaccine safety monitoring effort in U.S. history. CDC expanded and strengthened its ability to monitor vaccine safety and created new ways to gather information about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. Robust systems and processes are in place to identify and evaluate potential vaccine safety concerns. Monitoring vaccine safety involves multiple complementary ongoing systems. Within CDC, these systems include VAERS, the Vaccine Safety Datalink, the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Project, v-safe, and the v-safe Pregnancy Registry. For more information on vaccine safety monitoring systems at CDC, please see: Vaccine Information and Safety Studies | Vaccine Safety.

Anyone can submit reports to VAERS, including patients, family members, healthcare providers, and vaccine manufacturers, regardless of the plausibility of the vaccine causing the event or the clinical seriousness of the event. Data from VAERS are especially useful for the timely detection of unusual or unexpected patterns of adverse event reporting that might indicate a possible safety concern (or “safety signal”) about a vaccine. VAERS is not designed to assess causality; VAERS is designed to collect data, detect potential safety signals, and generate hypotheses.

Around 90% of reports to VAERS after COVID-19 vaccination have been non-serious. Healthcare providers who administer COVID-19 vaccines are required under the provider agreements for the CDC COVID-19 Vaccination Program and Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to report certain serious adverse events, like deaths, to VAERS regardless of whether the reporter thinks the vaccine caused the adverse event. This required reporting is one reason why many reports to VAERS do not represent adverse events caused by the vaccine.

Physicians at CDC and FDA continuously screen and analyze VAERS data for possible safety concerns related to COVID-19 vaccines, including review of individual reports and aggregate data analysis. Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare. FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it is unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. More than 624 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through October 6, 2022. During this time, VAERS received 16,803 preliminary reports of death among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. As part of the vaccine safety review and analysis process, CDC and FDA clinicians obtain additional information for these reported patients, including death certificates, autopsy reports, and medical records.

Through these methods, FDA and CDC have successfully identified various rare safety signals related to COVID-19 vaccines, including anaphylaxis, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia (TTS) following use of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine, and myocarditis and pericarditis following use of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. This information is included in the fact sheets for both healthcare providers administering vaccines and for vaccine recipients and caregivers. Continued monitoring has identified nine deaths causally associated with Johnson & Johnson/Janssen COVID-19 vaccination, who all died after developing TTS. On May 5, 2022, FDA revised the EUA for the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine to limit the authorized use of the vaccine to people ages 18 years and older for whom other authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccines are not accessible or clinically appropriate, and to people ages 18 years and older who elect to receive the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine because they would otherwise not receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

CDC continues to monitor the COVID-19 pandemic and is partnering with international, state, and local governments and public health partners to respond to this public health threat. For further information on the response and the current situation in the United States and abroad, please visit www.cdc.gov/COVID-19/.

We appreciate your interest in this important public health issue and hope you find this information helpful.

Sincerely,

Michael McNeil, MD MPH

Acting Director,
Immunization Safety Office, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Disease
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Summary 

The CDC says “trust us, if there was a safety problem, we’d let you know about it.”

It takes only minutes to do the calculation that the safety signal was triggered. Now we have a public record that they were notified it was triggered and chose not to look.

Similarly, so-called “truth tellers” including UPenn Professor Jeffrey Morris and famous anti-vax debunker David Gorski both refuse to validate the calculation as well. I even offered monetary incentives to both of them and they turned it down. They didn’t want to look either.

My doctor friend who sent that note is now being investigated by the Medical Board of California (they are seeking to take away his license to practice medicine).

Similarly, no fact checker in the world is going to fact check this since it would destroy all remaining confidence in the CDC and the US government that they are protecting us. If you are a fact checker and you think I made a mistake, call me and let’s have a RECORDED chat about it instead of saying that you asked someone else and they thought it was false so you rated it false.

I’ve had multiple independent statisticians validate the calculation. The signal was triggered and we have an organization which is ignoring the safety signals, even when it is clearly pointed out to them.

P.S. I took a several day “vacation” from posting (getting my new BMPCC to work with a custom in-camera LUT that I built in Davinci Resolve) but now I’m back.

*

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.

Featured image: This is our billboard outside of CDC headquarters. I’m hoping that someone at the CDC will notice it, but so far, nobody has reached out to me and they continue to ignore the safety signal in plain sight for DEATH. Wow. (Source: Steve Kirsch)

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Here Is the Official Response from the CDC About the Death Safety Signal Being Triggered in VAERS
  • Tags: , ,

War on Cash: India Rolling Out Retail Pilot Program for Digital Rupee

November 25th, 2022 by Peter Schiff

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on War on Cash: India Rolling Out Retail Pilot Program for Digital Rupee

U.S. Military Poised to Return to Subic Bay, Counter China’s Presence

November 25th, 2022 by Kyodo News

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on U.S. Military Poised to Return to Subic Bay, Counter China’s Presence

NATO Doesn’t Supersede the U.S. Constitution. “As our government continues to stumble towards World War III”

November 25th, 2022 by Dan McKnight

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

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

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

***

 

As our government continues to bumble and stumble at full speed towards World War III, the concept of tripwires and the legal authority of Article 5 become required understanding for the vigilant citizen.

Last week the American people received the then-breaking news that a missile had landed in Poland and killed two people.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said that this was a purposeful act of war by Russia, and that the West must respond with full kinetic retaliation.

He was joined by his amen corner here in the United States, that group of politicians, regime journalists, and paid lobbyists who have sold out their country for the requisite thirty pieces of silver.

The War Party immediately jumped into action: this was what they’ve been waiting, praying for. A catalyst to launch the missiles, and sacrifice the world.

Poland, like the United States and nearly all of Europe, is a member of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. (Maybe we should wonder why countries like Poland, Estonia, and Romania are in an “Atlantic” alliance.)

A provision of NATO is Article 5, which popular conception treats as a mandatory obligation to go to war when a member of the alliance is attacked.

It’s a one way pass into World War III.

There were just two things wrong with this narrative.

First, as was revealed within forty-eight hours and confirmed by both the Polish government and Biden White House, the missile was Ukrainian, not Russian.

Vladimir Putin had not attacked NATO—purposefully or accidentally. Instead, a Ukrainian air defense missile attempting to intercept a Russian strike went off trajectory killed two Poles across the border.

All of a sudden “collective security” was no longer threatened, and no one on cable news was talking about how this required NATO retaliation on Kiev. (Surprised?)

Secondly, even if it had been a Russian missile, and even if Vladimir Putin himself had aimed directly at that Polish farm, Article 5 obligates the United States to nothing.

The NATO Treaty also has an Article 11, which specifies that the provisions of the alliance will be carried out in accordance with the domestic constitutions and processes of the respective members.

That means a majority vote of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on a formal declaration of war.

Any member of Congress or news talking head saying Article 5 requires an immediate military response without a debate or vote is either lying or woefully uninformed.

And even if the NATO Treaty didn’t have that provision, we’d still rest our argument of Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, the supreme authority of our laws.

We are a sovereign nation, and the American people always have a choice on whether or not to go to war. Any international piece of paper trying to say otherwise be damned.

Unfortunately, the War Party doesn’t always make that choice easy. They bribe politicians with weapon contract profits, flood the corporate press with propaganda, and instruct the American people that they must either commit to endless war or lose their liberty. They manufacture themselves consent.

This crisis continues to demonstrate why we need Defend the Guard. This legislation would prohibit the deployment of a state’s National Guard units into active combat without a declaration of war by Congress.

It’s the best way to tell Washington DC that they can’t go to war without a debate and a vote by the people’s representatives. And if they try, they won’t have the manpower to fight such a conflict because patriotic state legislators won’t allow their National Guard, the backbone of the U.S. Armed Forces, to participate in an illegal war.

I have worked to introduce this bill in over twenty states in the past, and my team is already preparing for the 2023 legislative session.

But to be successful I need your support. Visit DefendTheGuard.US to see if a bill has been sponsored in your state, or if you need to contact your representative and state senator.

An American people, active and informed, will not be led into World War III by their irresponsible, stupid leaders.

*

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.

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 Al Mayadeen English

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on NATO Doesn’t Supersede the U.S. Constitution. “As our government continues to stumble towards World War III”
  • Tags: ,

Putin Invokes Castro’s Legacy

November 25th, 2022 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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

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

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

***

A three-meter-tall bronze statue of Fidel Castro was unveiled on Tuesday in the Fidel Castro Square in Moscow’s Sokol District by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel in memory of the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution.

Fidel himself was staunchly against creating a cult of personality and in Cuba there are no streets, buildings, institutions or localities named for him. In a speech in 2003, Fidel stated: “There is no cult of personality around any living revolutionary, in the form of statues, official photographs, or the names of streets or institutions. The leaders of this country are human beings, not gods.” 

Thus, the only things named in honour of the great revolutionary are located outside Cuba — a park in Vietnam, several streets in South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Tanzania, Mozambique and so on.

The event in Moscow saluting Fidel’s legacy is highly symbolic. From being a “status quoist” state, Russia is rapidly assuming a “revolutionary” role in world politics, challenging the so-called “rules-based order” imposed by the West, and is in the middle of one of the gravest crisis of the post-Cold War era. 

The year 2022 happens to be the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis marking the high noon of the Cold War when again Moscow found itself at the centre of a showdown with Washington. The discord then was eerily similar to the one now — over the US attempts to push strategic deployments in Russia’s immediate neighbourhood threatening its national defence and security. 

The crisis in 1962 erupted when the US detected the construction of Soviet launch sites in Cuba as retaliation for the US deployment of Jupiter missiles in Turkey. It was addressed through back channel negotiations to reach a deal whereby the Soviet missiles were eventually dismantled and removed from Cuba, while on its part, the US ended its quarantine of Cuba in October 1962 and removed its Jupiter missiles from Turkey by April 1963. 

Alas, President Biden, unlike President Kennedy, has refused to negotiate with Russia, and a proxy war ensued in Ukraine. The war could have been avoided and Ukraine’s destruction averted if only negotiations were held to resuscitate the Minsk Agreements that made allowance for some form of regional autonomy for Donbass region within a federated country governed from Kiev. President Biden chose not to take that road (and, of course, the pro-Western Ukrainian leadership in Kiev felt encouraged to undermine the Minsk Agreements as such.)  

Putin recalled poignantly on Tuesday that in his last conversation with Fidel in July 2015, “He talked about the things that were surprisingly consonant with the time –- the time of the development of a multipolar world – saying that independence and dignity cannot be put up for sale and that every nation is entitled to develop as it sees fit and to choose its own path, and that a truly fair world has no place for dictatorship, plunder or neo-colonialism.” 

Putin later drew the attention of Diaz-Canel to the demeanour of the statue. “I do not know if you liked it or not, but it seems to me that one can’t help but like it,” Putin said with a smile, adding that it was an appropriate tribute to Fidel’s memory and a real work of art. “It’s dynamic, on the move, looking forward. A perfect image of a true fighter.” Diaz-Canel concurred: “This is a monument in motion. I think it reflects Fidel’s personality in the midst of struggle, just like we are in the midst of struggle today.” The meaningful exchange carried a far-reaching message of its own. 

Truly, the Ukraine war has been a moment of truth for Russia. From a foreign policy focused narrowly on national interests, Russia is reclaiming its regional and global role lately. Fidel would have nodded approvingly, as Cuba under him had an internationalist outlook and made immense sacrifices in challenging US hegemony. 

Fidel’s legacy is of exceptional importance to Russia today. Putin described the friendship between Russia and Cuba as their “shared heritage.” He underscored, “Jointly, we will continue to strengthen our union and defend the great values of freedom, equality and justice.” 

Putin added, “Based on this solid foundation of friendship, we must, of course, bearing in mind the current realities, move on, and strengthen our cooperation. I am very glad that we have such an opportunity.” 

Diaz-Canel was more direct and forthright. He told Putin: “We appreciate all the work that the Russian Federation is doing to ensure that the world moves toward multipolarity and makes progress in that direction. In this sense, you have serious leadership.  

“Russia and Cuba have been subjected to unfair unilateral sanctions and have a common enemy, a common source which is the Yankee empire, which manipulates a large part of humankind… And our first commitment is to continue to uphold the Russian Federation’s position in this conflict which, we believe has its origins, unfortunately, in the fact that the United States is manipulating the international community… We appreciate all efforts of the Russian Federation and your role in orienting the world towards multi-polarity, in encouraging it to move in this direction. In this sense, you have a very strong leadership role.” 

How this verve in the Russian-Cuban relations pans out in the complex geopolitical setting will bear watch. The Russian-Cuban intergovernmental commission held a session in Moscow during Diaz-Canel’s visit, where, reportedly, “a number of important decisions on key issues” were taken to advance the bilateral relations. Diaz-Canel told Putin, “We have identical approaches and views on global issues. I would like to say again that Russia can always rely on Cuba.” 

No matter the denouement to the Ukraine war, Russia still would face the stark reality of the US-NATO military presence right at its doorstep. There is no question of a NATO rollback to the 1998 position in Europe. The Western mercenaries in their thousands are fighting in Ukraine and prominent faces like General David Petraeus are demanding an open western military intervention in Ukraine to defeat Russia. 

Indeed, the US initiative to induct Finland into NATO as a member — although that country faces no threat from Russia —  aims to “box in” Russia. And the West is aggressively stepping up its presence all around Russia. It is inconceivable that Russia can afford to remain passive. 

Suffice to say, Putin is playing the “Cuban card” at an inflection point. Interestingly, Diaz-Canel’s itinerary of visit also includes China. Díaz-Canel will be the first head of state from a Latin American country that Xi Jinping receives after the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry took note that “despite international vicissitudes, China and Cuba have forged ahead together on the path of building socialism with national characteristics, supported each other on issues concerning core interests and had close coordination on international and regional issues, setting an exemplary model for solidarity and cooperation between socialist countries and sincere mutual assistance between developing countries.” 

In a commentary on Díaz-Canel’s forthcoming visit, Global Times took note that “Despite US’ long-term crackdown on left-wing governments in the region, Latin America is now experiencing “pink tide” resurgence with major countries in the region “turning left.” Latin America is tired of US’ hegemony and coercion, and leaders with agenda focusing on domestic development are gaining public support.” 

*

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.

A Shocking and Revealing Documentary: “State of Control”

November 25th, 2022 by Debunk Productions

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

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

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

***

“State of control”, the control society is increasingly becoming a reality.

What is the price of convenience?

The CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) and the digital passport can make our lives easier and more efficient. But new international legislation shows that the purpose of these possibilities, has far-reaching implications for our privacy.

In this documentary international experts such as Edward Snowden, Arno Wellens, Catherine Austin Fitts express their serious concerns and criticisms.

It compiles the range of facts and opinions, creating a shocking picture about the future of mankind. A crystal-clear narrative that can”t be ignored.

Click here to watch the movie.

*

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.

The Ukraine War Is a Sales-promotion Campaign for Lockheed and Other U.S. ‘Defense’ Contractors

November 25th, 2022 by Eric Zuesse

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

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

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

***

On 3 December 2021, a year ago, Lockheed Martin shares cost $333.81. On 23 November 2022, they cost cost $481.07. That’s a 44% gain during this year-long period.

$4,027.26 is the S&P on 23 November 2022, and it was $4,701.46 on 24 November 2021. That’s a 14% decline during this year-long period.

A dollar invested in the S&P became $0.86, but in Lockheed became $1.44, and that is 68% more than the S&P market-average performance.

That’s the benefit of owning a controlling interest in a mega-corporation whose market is the Government in which you have purchased a controlling interest (by political donations and lobbyists), as compared to not.

And you will see there that though the stock-price of Lockheed soared after Russia’s 24 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the rise in its stock-price actually started on 3 December 2021. Perhaps that was when U.S.-Government insiders got their first clear indications that the U.S. Government was going to force Russia to invade Ukraine in order to prevent Ukraine from ever being able to join NATO so as for the U.S. to place its missiles only 317 miles away from The Kremlin.

Here are all of the headlined news-stories at the New York Times site on 3 December 2021, all 45 of them, and here are all 3 of the ones there featuring national defense or international relations:

  • “Shell pulls out of a U.K. oil field targeted by climate activists”
  • “With No Resources, Authority or Country, Afghan Ambassador Presses On”
  • “Why Peng Shuai Has China’s Leaders Spooked”

NONE has to do with national defense or international relations at all, but 100% of the news-stories are instead domestic-affairs articles, even the ones on global warming and on the former Afghan Ambassador, and on the Chinese tennis star. This fact (0 out of 45 being ‘defense’ or international-relations) goes to exemplify that if anyone is interested in warfare or other international-relations topics, it’s NOT the general public. Who might it be, then? Perhaps it’s the types of people who control firms such as Lockheed and other ‘Defense’-contractors — firms that sell onlyto the U.S. Government and to its allied (or vassal) Governments such as in NATO, and so these firms need to control their own Government in order to control their sales-volumes and their profits — which they manifestly do (the U.S. Government is bipartisanly neoconservative — pro-increasing the U.S. empire)

Here are all of the headlined news-stories at the New York Times site on 23 November 2022, and these are the 8 international-relations stories there:

  • “Will Mexico Be the Next Venezuela?”
  • “Ukraine Fights for Peninsula That Could Prove Critical to War’s Next Phase”
  • “Missiles for Poland Raise Questions on NATO Stance in Ukraine War”
  • “Ukraine raided a holy site amid suspicion of an Orthodox Church tied to Moscow”
  • “Buffeted by Economic Woes, U.K. Starts to look at Brexit With ‘Bregret’”
  • “Even the Saudi Team Is Stunned After Its Victory Over Argentina”
  • “England Had a Game, but First Its Fans Had a Quest. For Beer.”
  • “France decisively beat Australia, capping a wild day at the World Cup”

Five of those 8 concern international relations and national defense. All of a sudden, after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022 because America rejected on 7 January 2022 Russia’s demand on 17 December 2021 “Article 6: All member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States”, America’s public care at least a little about international relations and national defense.

But: Is Ukraine actually about defending America, at all? Of course, it isn’t, but it very much is about Russia’s national defense, because it has the closest border to Moscow of any nation, being only around 300 miles away from The Kremlin.

Though keeping Ukraine out of NATO is a national-defense imperative for Russia, it’s no national-defense issue, at all, for America. It is purely a neoconservative issue for America. It is a U.S.-and-allied billionaires’ issue, NOT authentically about “defending” the United States.

It is, instead, actually, the most effective marketing campaign for the billionaires who control Lockheed Martin and its Government, the U.S. Government. And THAT is the reason why NO billionaire — not a single one of them in either the U.S. or the UK — advocates for and donates to, writers and organizations that are anti-neoconservative: anti-imperialist. Not a single one of them is and does. They are invested in warfare, against their ‘competitors’ (the countries that they DON’T yet control, and which they therefore are obsessed to “regime-change”).

*

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

This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II fighter jet takes off from HMS Queen Elizabeth (Source: Stop the War Coalition)

Monument in Memory of Fidel Castro’s Political Struggle

November 25th, 2022 by Kester Kenn Klomegah

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

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

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

***

Under the auspices of an official state visit to attend the unveiling of  a statue in memory of former leader Fidel Castro in northwestern Moscow, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez unreservedly expressed support for anti-American position taken by Russia, recalled the history of Cuba and the Soviet Union during the Cold War when both shared the same stand.

Diaz-Canel Bermudez highlighted the significance of the visit to Moscow. Cuba and Soviet Union had similar experience, both were blockaded.

“It takes place at a time when both Russia and Cuba have been subjected to unfair unilateral sanctions and have a common enemy, a common source which is the Yankee empire, which manipulates a large part of humankind,” he said. “We constantly condemn the sanctions imposed on the Russian Federation and the sources of the ongoing conflict so that people are not misled and do not blame Russia for this, and we also condemn what Europe is doing, being completely subordinate to US interests.”

Referring to the unveiling of the monument, he described it as a true reflection of Fidel Castro’s personality in the midst of struggle, just like in the midst of struggle today. He denounced the imperialist powers and further praised all efforts of the Russian Federation and, under such complicated circumstances, Russia’s role in orienting the world towards multi-polarity.

Russia can always rely on Cuba. Moscow and Havana will continue to strengthen cordial bilateral relations and defend the great values of freedom, equality and justice. The principle of continuity, not just a slogan or a motto, but to continue promoting relations with the Russian Federation. Cuban leader thanked Russia for its support for his country and spoke in favor of expanding economic cooperation between the two countries.

President Vladimir Putin noted in his speech that the bilateral relations between Cuba and Russia have been making steady headway in the past three years since the previous meeting in the Kremlin. He pointed to the appreciable developing cooperation between foreign ministries, parliaments and governments. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin visited Cuba quite recently.

The Russia-Cuba Intergovernmental Commission is working. It held its 19th session. There are plans for cooperation between the governments with many joint projects up to 2030. Cuba maintains a cautious stance based on the need to maneuver between Russia who is capable of providing it with considerable support, and the United States who is gradually going back to Barack Obama’s policy aimed at restoring relations, which was suspended by Donald Trump.

Cuba does not have much importance for Russia as a trade partner. At the same time, there is a lot of Soviet and Russian made civilian equipment in the Caribbean island country, as well as infrastructure facilities built with Moscow’s assistance. The maintenance of those equipment and infrastructure that are currently of interest to Russia.

That however, Putin stressed that the Soviet Union and Russia have always supported the Cuban people in their struggle for independence and sovereignty.

“We have always opposed any restrictions, embargoes, blockades and so on. We have always backed Cuba on international platforms. We are seeing that Cuba occupies the same position with respect to our country, to Russia,” he added.

All this is a result of the traditional friendship that was started by Comrade Fidel Castro. Today, Cuba and Russia agreed to have unveiled a monument to him. Indeed, this is a good memory of him, a true work of art. He is so dynamic, always in motion, moving forward. It definitely captures the look of a fighter that he had.

Putin really remembered his personal meetings very well, even the details with him.

“He was an impressive man. I remember how during our first meeting in his office when we were freely discussing the current situation during lunch, I was stunned by his attention to detail and his knowledge of the nuances of ongoing events, even if they took place far away from Cuba,” he narrated the story.

“He was aware of and could analyse everything happening in the world. It was very interesting and useful for me to have these meetings with him. Relying on this firm foundation of friendship, we must certainly move forward and enhance our cooperation in the current conditions,” Putin said in conclusion.

Work on the bronze-made three-meter-monument lasted for six months and took place in the Russian capital. Castro is depicted seated on a rock with a stylized map of Cuba inscribed on it. The image reflects the heroic path of a person who stood up for the rights and freedoms of the Cuban people, according to the Kremlin’s press service fact sheet.

The Moscow city legislature approved the idea of such a monument on February 16. The initiative to erect a monument to Fidel Castro came from the leadership of the Russian Defense Ministry. The idea was supported by the Russian Military-Historical Society which held a closed artistic contest with 11 works participating.

The monument was erected on Moscow’s square named in honor of Castro. Cuba has been under a U.S. embargo since 1962 after the Communist revolution. Fidel Castro was one of the leaders of Cuba’s revolutionary movement who chaired Cuba’s Council of Ministers from 1959 to 2008. The Cuban politician died in 2016.

*

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

Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a regular contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

Featured image is from the author

Why German State Racism Is Now Directed at the Palestinians

November 25th, 2022 by Jonathan Cook

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

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

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

***

 

 

 

There are troubling insights to be gained into modern European racism from the German arts community’s decision to revoke a lifetime achievement award to the respected British playwright Caryl Churchill over her trenchant support for the Palestinians.

On 31 October, Churchill was stripped of the European Drama Prize she had been given in April in recognition of her life’s work. The decision was backed by Petra Olschowski, the arts minister of the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, who said:

“We as a country take a clear and non-negotiable stance against any form of antisemitism. This is all the more reason why a prize funded by the state cannot be awarded under the given circumstances.”

The jury – comprising eminent figures in German cultural life – said they had had their attention drawn, since making the award, to two problems. First, Churchill had backed BDS, a Palestinian grassroots movement calling for a boycott of Israeli institutions directly involved in Israel’s decades-long oppression of the Palestinians.

Back in 2019, an overwhelming majority of the German parliament designated support for BDS as “antisemitic”.

And second, the panel had been reminded of a short play called Seven Jewish Children, written 13 years ago in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s savage and extended bombardment of Gaza’s besieged Palestinian population in the winter of 2008-09. In a statement, the German jury said the play could “be regarded as being antisemitic”.

In Churchill’s now largely forgotten play, Jewish parents articulate their trauma generation by generation.

Palestinians are not present. They are shadows. They are the referred pain of a wound from Europe. Instead, the play contextualises the suffering in Gaza through a series of monologues as each generation of Jewish parents struggles to decide what they should tell their children and what realities they should hide – be it about the horrors of Europe, the crimes involved in the creation of Israel, or the bombardment of Gaza.

The play hints at uncomfortable truths: that the oppressed can turn into oppressor; that traumas do not necessarily heal or enlighten; and that their effects can be complex and paradoxical.

Friends to tormentors

One conclusion to draw from the revocation of Churchill’s award – the latest episode in Europe’s endless “antisemitism rows” – is that German elites, who control the public discourse, have signally failed to internalise the Holocaust’s key lesson.

It is a universal one: that we should never tolerate the demonisation of oppressed and marginalised groups, or those who stand in solidarity with them, especially when the state itself or its representatives are behind such demonisation. That way lies pogroms and gas chambers.

How has support for the Palestinian cause of BDS – for boycotts of those directly involved in Israel’s decades-long oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians – come to be reinterpreted as racism against Jews?

This, of course, is not a uniquely German failing. Most western states – including the US, France and Britain – have willingly conflated criticism of Israel over its oppression of Palestinians with antisemitism, and sought to silence or criminalise calls to punish Israel through boycotts.

But this failure ought to be all the more surprising given the enormous efforts Germany has expended over many decades in Holocaust education, supposedly to eradicate the susceptibility of Germans to state-sponsored racism. How have they switched – so easily, it seems – from one kind of state-sanctioned racism, antisemitism, to another kind, anti-Palestinian racism?

But even more paradoxically, Germany has smeared not just Palestinians and their supporters through its crackdown on BDS, but Jews too. It treats them all as inherently responsible for the actions of Israel, a state that no more represents all Jews than Saudi Arabia represents all Muslims.

Germany’s ostentatious philo-semitism – expressed in its reflexive support for Israel – is simply antisemitism-in-waiting. If Jews are viewed as intrinsically tied to Israel’s actions, then their fate depends on how Israel is viewed at any particular moment. Should western elites support Israel, as they do now, then Jews are safe. Should western elites turn against Israel, then Jews are not safe.

Crucially, what Caryl Churchill and the vast majority of Palestinians and their supporters are highlighting is that Israel and “the Jews” are not the same. Criticism of Israel is not criticism of Jews. And those who claim it is are playing with fire. They are providing the conditions for those they now regard as friends to later become their tormentors.

‘Reeks of fascism’

So how has Germany reached the point where it can cancel an award to a renowned playwright – and smear her as antisemitic – because she supports the right of Palestinians to freedom and dignity and because she wishes to speak out against their silencing in Europe? How has Germany so casually, so unthinkingly, become racist towards Palestinians and their supporters, and once again to Jews?

As Mike Leigh, a famous British film director who is Jewish, has observed in Churchill’s defence, the decision to revoke the prize “reeks of the very fascism it affects to oppose”. There is a wider context to Germany’s repurposing of its racism.

The same elites who were attracted to a worldview that blamed the Jews, and others, for the subversion of a supposed “Aryan civilisation” are now attracted to a worldview that blames Muslims – including Palestinians (not all of whom are Muslim, it is too often forgotten) – for the subversion of European civilisation.

This monochrome worldview is appealing because it sweeps aside complexity and offers simple solutions that turn the world upside down and place the oppressor, western elites, on the side of Good and those they oppress on the side of Evil. Back in the 1930s and 1940s those solutions propelled Germany towards the horrors of the death camps.

The same racism that fuelled the Holocaust does not, of course, have to lead precisely to another industrial-scale genocide. That supreme crime has nephews and nieces, some of whom ostensibly look less ugly than their older relative. It can lead to exclusion, demonisation and McCarthyism, all of which serve as a prelude to worse crimes.

In our supposedly more enlightened age, the same Manichean impulse divides the world into camps of good and evil. Into “white” European natives versus Muslim and Arab invaders. Into moderates versus extremists. And somehow, conflated with these other categories, it pits supporters of Israel against “antisemites”.

To the dark side

This is no accident. Israel has helped to cultivate this divide, while its supporters have richly exploited it. Israel has provided the cover story for western elites to engineer a supposedly civilisational confrontation between West and East, between the Judaeo-Christian world and the Muslim world, between humanism and barbarism, between good and evil.

This morality tale, paradoxically with the Holocaust serving as its prequel, has been written to reassure western publics of their leaders’ benevolence. It suggests that through its repentance, Germany – the epicentre of the genocide of the Jews – cleansed itself and the rest of Europe of its sins.

Perversely, the industrialised crime of the Holocaust serves as the alibi for an enlightened Europe. The barometer of German and European atonement and redemption is their reflexive support for Israel. To back Israel uncritically is supposedly proof that today’s Europe is morally superior to a global south in which many condemn Israel.

Through Israel’s creation, according to this morality tale, Europe did not perpetuate its racism – by relocating its victims to another region and turning them into the tormentors of the native population. No, Europe turned over a new leaf. It made amends. Its better nature triumphed.

To bolster this improbable story, to breathe life into it, a yardstick of difference was needed. Just as “the Jews” once served that purpose by contrasting a pure Aryan race from a supposedly degenerate Jewish one, now the Muslim world is presented as the antithesis of an advanced white European civilisation.

And anyone who sides with those oppressed by Israel – and by a colonial West that inserted a self-declared Jewish state into the Middle East by destroying the Palestinians’ homeland – must be cast out, as Churchill has been by Germany. Such people are no longer part of an enlightened Europe. They have gone over to the dark side. They are traitors, they are antisemites.

‘Confected outrage’

This story, absurd as it sounds, carries great weight outside Germany too. One need only remember that a very short time ago a British political leader, Jeremy Corbyn, came within sight of power before he was crushed by the same antisemitism smears faced by Churchill.

But there is a notable difference.

In the case of Churchill, it has been harder to contain the backlash – at least outside Germany. Prominent artists, including Jewish actors, directors and writers, have rushed to her defence.

Perhaps more surprising still, so have liberal media outlets in Britain, such as the Guardian, which, according to research, was as deeply invested as the rest of the establishment media in undermining Corbyn and the anti-racist, anti-imperialist left he briefly led.

Take, for example, this comment from Dominic Cooke, an associate director at the National Theatre, defending Churchill’s play Seven Jewish Children, which he directed at the Royal Court.

He is quoted sympathetically by the Guardian:

“The confected outrage about Caryl’s play was designed to divert attention away from this fact [the large Palestinian death toll caused by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in 2009] and scare possible critics of it into silence.”

He is right. But the “confected outrage” directed at Churchill is exactly the same confected outrage that was directed at Corbyn – a confected outrage designed in Corbyn’s case both to divert attention from the former Labour leader’s anti-imperial opposition to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and to scare leftwing critics of Israel into silence.

In Labour’s case, simply noting that the outrage had been “confected” – or weaponised – was sufficient grounds to suspend or expel party members for antisemitism. In fact, it was precisely Corbyn’s comment about the problem of antisemitism being “dramatically overstated” for political reasons that ultimately served as the pretext to oust him from the Labour parliamentary party.

Timid cultural world

There are reasons why prominent artists and establishment media outlets such as the Guardian are coming to the defence of Churchill in a way, and using a forthrightness, they avoided with Corbyn.

In a very real sense, the fight to stand up for Palestinians culturally and artistically is now largely a lost cause. Who can imagine Seven Jewish Children being produced in the West End now, as it was 13 years ago? Or Peter Kosminsky, another Jewish signatory of the letter defending Churchill, being allowed to make The Promise, as he was 11 years ago by Channel 4, a drama series that revealed the full panorama of violence associated with Israel’s creation and its occupation?

Our cultural world is once again far more timid, more intimidated, in exploring and representing the realities of Palestinian suffering, paradoxically even as those realities are better understood than ever before because of social media.

The other reason Churchill is receiving the kind of support denied to Corbyn is that the cancellation of her award is really a skirmish on the margins of the fight to give voice to Palestinian oppression – the reason the Guardian can afford to indulge it. Defending a respected, elderly playwright from the accusation of antisemitism for a play that was quickly erased from memory incurs no real cost.

Far more was at stake in the battle to defend Corbyn. He had the potential power – had he become prime minister – to make real amends for European colonialism, to really atone, by denying British support and arms for Israel to perpetuate that colonialism in the Middle East and continue its oppression of the Palestinians.

More likely, however, had Corbyn been able to form a government, and been in a position to challenge Europe’s collusion in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, he would have faced even more savage resistance than he endured as Labour leader – and not just from the British establishment but from a wider western one.

That would have risked exposing as a myth the morality tale Europeans have been encouraged to tell about themselves. It would have risked highlighting the absurdity of the Holocaust alibi for European moral superiority.

Caryl Churchill has been stripped of her award because state-sponsored racism still lies at the heart of the European project. Europe’s racism was never cleansed. The seeds of fascism did not go away. They simply need a new time and purpose to flourish once more.

*

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.

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

Featured image: Portrait sketch of the playwright Caryl Churchill (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

This Week’s Most Popular Articles

November 25th, 2022 by Global Research News

College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario “Suggests”: Unvaccinated Patients Are Mentally Ill and Should be Put on Psychiatric Medication

Jim Hoft, November 21, 2022

The Dark Origins of the Davos Great Reset

F. William Engdahl, November 23, 2022

How Blackrock Investment Fund Triggered the Global Energy Crisis

F. William Engdahl, November 24, 2022

Video: 90 Sudden or Unexpected Canadian Doctor Deaths: Dr. William Markis Interview

William Markis, November 20, 2022

Were the 9/11 Aircraft Electronically Hijacked and Remotely Controlled?

Dan Hanley, November 20, 2022

“What a Scam it Actually is.” Assessing COP27 and Modern Climate Activism

Michael Welch, November 19, 2022

New US B61-12 Nuclear Bombs Deployed in Europe: What Will Russia Do? “Much Worse than the Cold War”

Vladimir Kozin, November 21, 2022

Putin’s Sledgehammer

Mike Whitney, November 23, 2022

They Will Lock You Down Again

Jeffrey A. Tucker, November 21, 2022

NATO-Exit under Art. 13: Dismantle NATO, Close Down 800 US Military Bases, Prosecute the War Criminals

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 20, 2022

Why Do Americans Hate Putin?

Mike Whitney, November 23, 2022

A World Ever More Dystopian. Klaus Schwab’s – WEF – Full Speech at G20 / B20 in Bali, Indonesia

Peter Koenig, November 22, 2022

48,817 Dead and 5,107,883 Injured Following COVID-19 Vaccines in European Database of Adverse Reactions

Brian Shilhavy, November 18, 2022

Armageddon in the Holy Land? Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Program, Mordechai Vanunu, and the Coming War on Iran

Timothy Alexander Guzman, November 21, 2022

US Aid to Ukraine Invested in Corrupt Crypto FTX Scheme. “Instead of using funds to fight Russia, the money was invested in the FTX Ponzi scheme”

Free West Media, November 18, 2022

Maligned in Western Media, Donbass Forces Are Defending Their Future from Ukrainian Shelling and Fascism

Eva Bartlett, November 20, 2022

The Covid-19 “Co-Conspiracy”: The Hidden Face of US-China Relations

Emanuel Pastreich, November 22, 2022

“The Covid mRNA Vaccine Causes Cardiac Arrests, Heart Attacks, Strokes… : Leading British Cardiologist, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, and Dr. Peter McCullough Independently Come to Same Conclusion

John Leake, November 24, 2022

Is Your Body the Legal Property of Big Pharma?

Dr. Joseph Mercola, November 18, 2022

When Green Turns Brown – And Nobody Notices

Peter Koenig, November 19, 2022

Selected Articles: Accused of “Corona Insanity”: Swiss Doctor Locked Away in Mental Asylum for Speaking Against COVID Laws, April 2020

November 25th, 2022 by Global Research News

Accused of “Corona Insanity”: Swiss Doctor Locked Away in Mental Asylum for Speaking Against COVID Laws, April 2020

By Martin Armstrong, Dr. Thomas Binder, and Taylor Hudak, November 24, 2022

Dr. Thomas Binder is a Swiss cardiologist with over 34 years of experience in treating respiratory infections. He received a doctorate in immunology and virology, specializing in internal medicine and cardiology, from the University of Zurich. Binder is an intelligent man who was deemed insane by the Swiss government for speaking out against COVID regulations.

US Defenseless to Protect Kurds Against Turkish Invasion in Syria

By Steven Sahiounie, November 25, 2022

Ilham Ahmed, a co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, confirmed on November 20 that Turkish airstrikes had struck near Derik, a town within the US military’s area of occupation.

Medical Ethics and the Covid Pandemic. Give People “Morality Pills”

By Igor Chudov, November 24, 2022

Be aware that “bioethics” has moved on to proposals that might seem crazy to you but are considered seriously and published in Bill Gates-funded publications and scientific journals. Important studies on this subject are conducted under the auspices of the World Economic Forum.

Silicon Valley Fake: Elizabeth Holmes and the Fraudster’s Motivation

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, November 24, 2022

It has been one noisy time for the paladins of big tech.  Jobs have been shed by the thousands at Meta, Amazon and Twitter; FTX, the second largest cryptocurrency company, has collapsed.  Then came the conviction of Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the healthcare company Theranos, for fraud.

Swimming in Superbugs: MRSA and E coli Found in British Rivers

By Andrew Wasley, November 24, 2022

Testing commissioned with World Animal Protection and the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics has found evidence of drug resistance in waterways near poultry and pig farms and in cattle farm waste, highlighting the risks of slurry leaks contaminating rivers.

Video: Biden COVID Minion Tells Americans “God Gave Us Two Arms” for Multiple Vaccines

By Steve Watson, November 24, 2022

Joe Biden’s COVID ‘czar’ declared Tuesday during a White House press briefing that “God gave you two arms” so we can all be injected with different vaccines. Dr. Ashish Jha made the statement while simultaneously pushing COVID booster shots and flu shots as if they are the same thing.

NY Times Takes Rare Look at Apparent Ukrainian War Crimes

By Zero Hedge, November 24, 2022

The New York Times has in an extremely rare moment (or perhaps more like unprecedented) conducted an in-depth visual investigation of a likely war crime against surrendered Russian troops conducted by Ukrainian forces. Multiple videos from different angles, including drone footage, emerged last week showing the incredibly disturbing scenes as Ukrainian forces were recapturing the village of Makiivka in the Luhansk region.

French Ambassador: US ‘Rules-based Order’ Means Western Domination, Violating International Law

By Ben Norton, November 24, 2022

France’s ex US Ambassador Gérard Araud criticized Washington for frequently violating international law and said its so-called “rules-based order” is an unfair “Western order” based on “hegemony.” He condemned the new cold war on China, instead calling for mutual compromises.

White House Announces ‘New Enforcement Guidance’ on COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

By Jack Phillips, November 24, 2022

It announced “new enforcement guidance to ensure nursing homes are offering updated COVID-19 vaccines and timely treatment to their residents and staff,” according to a White House fact sheet released on Nov. 22. It stated that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) still requires “nursing homes to educate their residents” on COVID-19 vaccines and offer vaccines to residents.

Pfizer CEO Claims 400% Price Hike on COVID Vaccines Will be “Free”

By Beth Mole, November 24, 2022

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla claimed at a news event last week that the company’s COVID-19 vaccines will continue to be “free to all Americans,” despite the company’s plan to raise the price of the vaccine roughly 400 percent—a price difference that will be picked up by health insurers.

  • Posted in NO READ MORE LINK
  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: Accused of “Corona Insanity”: Swiss Doctor Locked Away in Mental Asylum for Speaking Against COVID Laws, April 2020

US Defenseless to Protect Kurds Against Turkish Invasion in Syria

November 25th, 2022 by Steven Sahiounie

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

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

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

***

“It’s the end of the road for those who believe they can stall Turkey by pun games, by changing names of terrorist organizations, by sharing pictures showing their soldiers next to terrorists,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

Erdogan was directly referring to the US and their support of the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) and their fiercest fighters, the People’s Defense Units (YPG), who are tied to the PKK, an internationally outlawed terrorist group which have killed about 40,000 people in Turkey over three decades.

“We oppose this move and call for immediate de-escalation,” US Defense Department spokesperson Phil Ventura said in response to the Turkish president’s stated plans to attack and invade the Kurdish region of northeastern Syria.

Ilham Ahmed, a co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, confirmed on November 20 that Turkish airstrikes had struck near Derik, a town within the US military’s area of occupation.

The Turks are aware that the US military operates a joint training camp there with their SDF and YPG allies. Two SDF soldiers died and three others were wounded in the attack on November 22 which marks the first Turkish attack so close to a US military occupation base in Shamuka, Syria.

The Turkish military also attacked territory between Raqqa and Hasakah which is controlled jointly by US and Russian forces.

The northeastern quadrant of Syria is not solely inhabited by Kurds, but they have always been a very sizeable majority. Kobani is where the US and the Kurdish SDF and YPG formed their military alliance to fight ISIS.

On November 23, Erdogan said,

“Air strikes against terrorists in Syria and Iraq are only beginning. We have never been more serious about securing our borders. We will launch the operation at the best possible time for us. The administrations in Syria and Iraq must not feel threatened. We intend to ensure the territorial integrity of these countries,” he said in his speech to the parliament.

Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on November 23 that Turkish armed forces have neutralized more than 254 terrorists and hit 471 targets during military operations in Syria and Iraq.

“Claw Sword”, the Turkish military codename, began on November 20. Using 20 drones and over 50 aircraft strikes were carried out against the SDF and YPG bases in Syria, and areas in northern Iraq as well.

Turkish F-16 fighters resumed strikes on targets in Syria on November 21 and 22 and Erdogan has threatened an intended ground invasion into northeast Syria following the November 21 attack on the Turkish town of Karkamis near Gaziantep which killed three civilians.

A Turkish ground operation would require air support, and the US and Russia would have to first allow Turkish planes to use the airspace under their control.

Turkey has launched three prior ground offensives against SDF and YPG forces in northern Syria over the past several years. Turkish officials continue to publicly condemn Washington’s partnership with Kurdish forces.

Ankara’s most recent incursion against the YPG in October 2019 initially displaced some 300,000 civilians and led to extensive allegations of war crimes against local populations by Turkey’s mercenaries who are followers of Radical Islam, the same political platform as Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Turkey has been protecting and defending Idlib which is the last terrorist-occupied area in Syria.  The terror group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has recently made advances in Afrin and it is widely believed that Turkey will use HTS as part of its attack on Manbij.

Revenge for the Istanbul attack

A bomb attack took six lives in Istanbul on November 13.  The following air strikes have been seen as revenge for the Istanbul attack, which was immediately blamed by Turkish authorities on a Syrian Kurd.

General Kobane revealed his investigation into the person the Turkish police arrested in Istanbul following the bombing and have blamed for the attack. According to Kobane, “The woman who was arrested for planting the bomb comes from a family linked to the Islamic State. Three of her brothers died fighting for the Islamic State. One died in Raqqa, another in Manbij, and a third died in Iraq. Another brother is a commander in the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition in Afrin. She was married to three different Islamic State fighters and the family is from Aleppo. We had absolutely nothing to do with the bombing and we have no such policy.”

Erdogan and elections

Erdogan faces re-election in June 2023.  His support is at its lowest point due to failed economic policies and his participation in the failed US-NATO attack on Syria for ‘regime change’ beginning in 2011.

Many see the brewing war on the Kurds in Syria as a distraction manipulated by Erdogan in his effort to boost nationalist sentiments ahead of the election.

According to Kobane,

“Turkey wants to destroy our autonomous administration. That’s its overarching goal. But most immediately there is the question of elections in Turkey. Through these attacks, Erdogan and his government are laying the ground, setting the public mood for the forthcoming elections. “

The US position

Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar called on the US to cut ties with the SDF and YPG in a speech to lawmakers in Ankara.

About 900 US troops remain in Syria, most of them in support of the SDF and YPG.

“We have urged Turkey against such operations, just as we have urged our Syrian partners against attacks or escalation,” the US State Department spokesperson said.

Erdogan has blamed the bombing in Istanbul on the US-backed SDF and YPG. Ankara considers the YPG to be inextricable from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated a terrorist group by Turkey and the US.

US forces were ordered to evacuate their posts so as not to risk hostile fire when Turkey invaded Syria in 2019. The Biden administration has not expressed any interest in a solution to the years-long stalemate in northeast and northwest Syria.

The Russian position

Alexander Lavrentiev, Russian Presidential Envoy to Syria, on November 22 urged Turkey to show restraint. He hopes that “it will be possible to persuade our Turkish partners to refrain from using excessive force on Syrian territory.”

A Turkish incursion into Manbij or Kobani would penetrate areas under the influence of Russian troops, which support negotiation and reconciliation efforts in Syria, and oppose any Turkish invasion.

The Damascus position

Damascus and Ankara share the same view concerning the Kurdish region in northeast Syria.  Both want to contain the Kurds. However, during the US-NATO attack on Syria, Turkey and Syria were in direct opposition.

Over the last year, there have been a series of overtures by Erdogan to repair the broken relationship between Ankara and Damascus.

Prison camps

Some 10,000 captured ISIS fighters and more than 50,000 suspected family members remain in prison camps across Syria’s northeast.

Dana Stroul, the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy official said in July,

“ISIS views the detention facilities where its fighters are housed as the population to reconstitute its army.”

The prisons are administered by the SDF, but with few resources, the prisoners, women, and children live in squalor. The Biden administration helped Syrian Kurdish authorities to fund new detention facilities to better secure the ISIS prisoners.  Their indefinite detention, which recalls Guantanamo, will depend on a political settlement in Syria, but that seems elusive.

*

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

This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from MD

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

**Voices from Syria**

Author: Mark Taliano

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-9-1

Year: 2017

Product Type: PDF File

List Price: $6.50

Special Offer: $5.00 

Click to order.

Medical Ethics and the Covid Pandemic. Give People “Morality Pills”

November 24th, 2022 by Igor Chudov

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

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

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

***

Medical ethics is a large field of study. The Covid pandemic certainly brought many medical ethics issues to the forefront and produced rather amazing “ethicist” gems, such as this:

Be aware that “bioethics” has moved on to proposals that might seem crazy to you but are considered seriously and published in Bill Gates-funded publications and scientific journals. Important studies on this subject are conducted under the auspices of the World Economic Forum.

Forcibly giving people collectivism-promoting “Morality Pills” (archive link) is a popular suggestion among bioethicists.

It was published in Bill Gates-funded The Conversation and is discussed widely in scientific literature. (The Conversation received 7 million dollars from Bill Gates but pretends to be an independent journalism publication)

What are these morality pills? You might think that morality, to them, means being a good husband or wife, an honest businessperson, fulfilling promises, and so on. Why not enhance that? What’s the problem?

The problem is that this is NOT how they define morality! To them, morality is a collectivist mindset, lack of critical thinking, and compliance. The article explains that some people lack “moral qualities” and refuse to wear masks or take Covid vaccines, or even deny climate change:

My research in bioethics focuses on questions like how to induce those who are noncooperative to get on board with doing what’s best for the public good. To me, it seems the problem of coronavirus defectors could be solved by moral enhancement: like receiving a vaccine to beef up your immune system, people could take a substance to boost their cooperative, pro-social behavior. Could a psychoactive pill be the solution to the pandemic?

They propose giving people pills to enhance “morality” and explain the climate change angle relevance:

But a strategy like this one could be a way out of this pandemic, a future outbreak or the suffering associated with climate change. That’s why we should be thinking of it now.

The proposed solution to give people morality pills is more than idle thinking. Several candidate psychoactive substances are identified and considered seriously: psilocybin and oxytocin, for example.

You Would not Take Morality Pills? Administer them Secretly!

The obvious objection to all this morality pill talk is that skeptics would not take them! I would not take such a pill to enhance my collectivist mindset. At the risk of being presumptuous, I would say that you, my dear subscriber, would refuse them also. Right?

The ethicists have a solution: administer collectivist morality pills by force or surreptitiously.

As some have argued, a solution would be to make moral enhancement compulsory or administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply. These actions require weighing other values. Does the good of covertly dosing the public with a drug that would change people’s behavior outweigh individuals’ autonomy to choose whether to participate? Does the good associated with wearing a mask outweigh an individual’s autonomy to not wear one?

Serious articles discuss how to do it:

A covert psychoactive substance administration to the masses must not be discussed publicly before its implementation, right? So the ethicists desire to bypass any democratic process or prior public discussion and scrutiny. These ethicists refuse to see an ethical problem with that!

World Economic Forum Sponsored Research into “Collectivist Bioenhancement”

Some of you, my dear readers, might think this is so batshit crazy that it is simply useless musings of fringe philosophers, not worth discussing.

Quite to the contrary, the famous and influential organization called the World Economic Forum sponsors such bioenhancement research.

Linda Fried, mentioned above, is the aunt of Sam Bankman-Fried. Sam stole billions of dollars from crypto-investors (in my opinion) and used that money to become the second largest Democratic party donor. So, Linda Fried is not exactly a nobody languishing in obscurity. By the way, a friend of this blog El Gato wrote a great post discussing Sam — check it out.

Linda explains in her article that her goal is “collective welfarism,” and she is part of the group convened by the World Economic Forum:

A stronger ethical approach, though, would be to abide by the principle, termed ‘collective easy rescue’, whereby small individual losses are justified in the name of collective well-being. Mass vaccination is a well-documented example of collective easy rescue.

Human “enhancement” to force mass vaccination? Sounds familiar?

Self Absorbed Do-Gooders 

Those “medical ethicists,” “world changers,” and “disinformation fighters” are so self-absorbed and self-righteous that they think their way of thinking is the only right way. They consider any deviation from their mindset to be antisocial, divisive, and subversive.

To them, freedom is dangerous. Truth is misinformation. Pursuing personal happiness and liberty instead of welfarism is selfish and immoral and needs to be dealt with through covert bioenhancement pills. Their opponents need to be silenced as “disinformation agents” or influenced via secretly applied substances to enhance compliance and lower critical thinking.

This is NOT a Conspiracy Theory!

My post, discussing outlandish agenda developed under the auspices of the World Economic Forum, may sound like the perfect conspiracy theory. If someone approached me and told me that the WEF is sponsoring “bioenhancement research,” whose goal is to develop substances to impose “collective welfarism” and achieve compliance with mass vaccination, I would not take that person seriously!

Such is the problem with describing many WEF proposals. Some of their ideas are so crazy that they are difficult to accept as genuine when retold. Official papers, proposals, peer-reviewed studies, and agenda articles describe plans that are extremely strange to the uninitiated — and yet are pursued seriously. Other authors, such as Tessa Lena, also mentioned how difficult it is to describe these tendencies.

I explained my difficulties with describing crazy but real proposals by world-leading unelected organizations such as the WEF.

Their proposals, when understood properly, are highly disturbing and seem unreal — except that they are very serious.

The difficulty with their plans is that regular people cannot believe they are real. That happens for a good reason: nobody would expect such insanity to be seriously promulgated by important men and women. Even I have difficulty reconciling the plain text and the simple meaning of their anti-human theories with my idea of what our leaders should act like.

And yet, here we are — the welfarist pills are promulgated under the auspices of the WEF by no one but Linda Fried, the aunt of the second-largest Democrat donor and crypto thief (in my opinion) Sam Bankman-Fried.

In the future, you may need to be careful with your drinking water or the compulsory mystery “health enhancement pill” you must take for an unexplained reason!

Would you take such a welfarism bioenhancement pill?

*

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.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Medical Ethics and the Covid Pandemic. Give People “Morality Pills”
  • Tags: ,

“Ein Schritt zur weiteren Unterdrückung und Tyrannei”: Offener Brief an die Redaktion der NZZ

November 24th, 2022 by Peter Koenig

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

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

Folgen Sie uns auf Instagram und Twitter und abonnieren Sie unseren Telegram-Kanal. Sie können die Artikel von Global Research gerne weiterveröffentlichen und mit anderen teilen.

***

Guten Tag Redaktion,

Das ist wiederum eine Lüge.

Die Schweiz mag zwar keine eigenen Gasspeicher haben – aber sie hat sehr wohl ein Abkommen mit Deutschland zur Belieferung von Gas.

In Deutschland sind die Gasspeicher bis zu 94% voll, mehr denn je in den letzten 5 Jahren. 

Siehe auch den untigen Artikel der bezeugt wie Europa vollbeladen ist mit Gas – wie noch nie zuvor.

Das muss so gesagt werden nicht weiterhin das Volk belügen und Angstmachen – sodass Busen verhängt werden können wenn jemand über, sagen wir mal, 19 Grad C heizt in einem eiskalten Winter, der wie Sie wissen – wie es Professoren der ETH wissen – manipuliert, oder “Geoengineered” werden kann. So wie es die Sommer Hitze war.

Mit solchen Lügen und die entsprechenden Strafmassnahmen – wie kontrolliert und limitierte Wohn-Heizungen auf ein Minimum, sagen wir mal 19 Grad C – ist eine reine Einschüchterung der Bevölkerung.

Eine physische und mentale Krankmacherei.

Ein Schritt zur weiteren Unterdrückung und Tyrannei.

Es ist notwendig, dass diese Wahrheiten ans Volk gelangt, dass wir uns verteidigen können gegen eine stets wachsende Tyrannei.

Wo glauben Sie, werden Sie, Herren und Frauen Redaktoren und Redaktorinnen, landen unter einer völligen Tyrannei? Haben Sie sich darüber schon Gedanken gemacht? Irgendwann spielt vermutlich auch Ihr Gewissen eine Rolle.

Die betrifft zwar nicht nur die Schweiz – sondern die meisten der 193 UN-Mitgliedsländer – aber die Schweiz ist klein genug um sie zu bekämpfen, die Tyrannei.

Sie – die NZZ – als eine der wichtigsten Zeitungen der Schweiz, haben eine Schlüssel-Rolle zu spielen in der Verbreitung der Wahrheit – und NICHT in der Verbreitung von Lügen.

Mit freundlichen Grüssen, 

Peter Koenig

***

EU Stockpiles Russian Diesel Before the Ban on Russian Oil Begins

By Mac Slavo, November 23, 2022

Russian diesel shipments headed to the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) storage region surged to 215,000 barrels per day from November 1 to November 12. It is a 126% increase from October, according to Pamela Munger, Vortexa senior market analyst.  This means, that in order to prepare themselves for the ban they instituted, they are stockpiling the very thing they insisted on banning.

NZZ – Zitat – 23 November 2022:

Darum ist es wichtig: Wegen der westlichen Sanktionen hat Russland Mitte Juni die Erdgaslieferungen über die Nord-Stream-1-Pipeline nach Europa gestoppt. Da Strom auch durch Gas erzeugt wird, droht daher eine Strommangellage. Die Schweiz ist dabei in einer Zwickmühle: Weil das Land keine eigenen Gasspeicher hat, ist es auf Importe angewiesen. Als Brandbeschleuniger erweist sich in dieser Lage das Fehlen eines Stromabkommens mit der EU.

*

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

Peter Koenig ist geopolitischer Analyst und ehemaliger leitender Wirtschaftswissenschaftler bei der Weltbank und der Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO), wo er über 30 Jahre lang in der ganzen Welt tätig war. Er hält Vorlesungen an Universitäten in den USA, Europa und Südamerika. Er schreibt regelmäßig für Online-Zeitschriften und ist Autor von Implosion – Ein Wirtschaftsthriller über Krieg, Umweltzerstörung und Konzerngier sowie Mitautor von Cynthia McKinneys Buch “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter des Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Er ist auch ein nicht ansässiger Senior Fellow des Chongyang Instituts der Renmin Universität in Peking.

  • Posted in Deutsch
  • Comments Off on “Ein Schritt zur weiteren Unterdrückung und Tyrannei”: Offener Brief an die Redaktion der NZZ

Silicon Valley Fake: Elizabeth Holmes and the Fraudster’s Motivation

November 24th, 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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

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

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

***

 

 

 

 

 

It has been one noisy time for the paladins of big tech.  Jobs have been shed by the thousands at Meta, Amazon and Twitter; FTX, the second largest cryptocurrency company, has collapsed.  Then came the conviction of Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the healthcare company Theranos, for fraud.

Pursuing the steps of the college drop-out turned billionaire, Holmes claimed that her company had remarkable technology, capable of diagnosing a number of medical conditions from a mere drop of blood.  The ruse of the blood analyzer known as the Theranos Sample Processing Unit (TSPU), Edison or minilab, worked – at least for a time.  All the way, Holmes was very consciously promoting herself in the mould of Steve Jobs, initially mocked only to become mighty.  Investment flowed into the company coffers.  By 2014, Theranos was valued at $10 billion.

Some noses were detecting a strange smell in such success.  The Wall Street Journal picked up a scent in 2015.  Unreliable results arising from ineffectual blood-testing technology from Theranos, made available across dozens of Walgreens stores, actually posed a risk to patients.

The response from Holmes regarding suspicions was pure Apple, which is to say, copied.  “This is what happens when you work to change things.  First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, then you change the world.”

Cliché followed cliché, platitude bolstered platitude.  At the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit, a gathering bound to be unreliable if not questionable in ethics, she was there to add to the show, only this time sounding like Chumbawamba.  “You’ll get knocked down over and over again, and you get back up… I’ve been knocked down a lot, and it became really clear that this was what I wanted to do, and I would start this company over 10,000 times if I had to.”

In 2018, the US Securities and Exchange Commission rather punctured the balloon of hubris by charging Theranos, Holmes and former President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani “with raising more than $700 million from investors through an elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business and financial performance.”

As the Commission’s media release continued to explain, the allegations focused on false and misleading statements across investor presentations, product demonstrations and media articles claiming that the “portable blood analyzer – could conduct comprehensive blood tests from finger drops of blood, revolutionizing the blood testing industry.”

Theranos, Holmes and Balwani had also claimed that company products were used to effect by the US Department of Defense in Afghanistan and on medevac helicopters.  This fabulous fib was complete by assertions that $100 million in revenue would flow back to the company.  In the Commission’s words, “Theranos’ technology was never deployed by the US Department of Defense and generated a little more than $100,000 in revenue from operations in 2014.”

After a trial lasting a month, Holmes was found guilty on three counts of wire fraud and one of conspiracy. She was found not guilty on four other counts, and the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on the remaining three counts.  This month, she received a prison sentence of 11 years and three months.  (Lawyers for the government had asked for 15 years.)

“I am devastated by my failings,” Holmes stated.  “Looking back there are so many things I’d do differently if I had the chance.  I tried to realise my dream too quickly.”  And there, the rationale of the fraud was set out, the fine line between tolerated crookedness and the crookedness that gets you found out.

Big fraud is an indispensable element in society.  To succeed, a presumption must work: the fraudulent behaviour can only hit a mark with the collusion of the gullible, those willing to fall for the outrageous suggestion, the astonishing proposition.  The world of art forgeries is the best illustration of this fact: is the purchaser intent on collecting the original, or merely a signature?  Throw in a few experts to sign off on authenticity and provenance, and we can forget the reality.

Orson Welles, in characteristically brilliant fashion, drew out this point in his idiosyncratically subversive F for Fake (1973).  The two stars are the Hungarian aristocrat – or so he purported to be – Elmyr de Hory, and Clifford Irving.  Both figures perpetrated, in their own way, frauds of daring.

Irving made his name by convincing McGraw-Hill, Inc. that he had worked with billionaire Howard Hughes to produce his life story. To substantiate the account, Irving forged Hughes’ handwriting, which was, as it were, authenticated by the publishing house.  It took the sceptical approach of postal inspectors to change tack and ask for samples of Clifford’s own writing.

Elmyr’s own contribution to fakery came with art forgeries verging on genius.  With breezy effortlessness, he would whip up a Picasso, a Monet or a Modigliani.  Art collectors and galleries acquired them by the dozens.  Along the way, the armies of the duped and cheated, refusing to do their own critical research and even ask the basic questions, grew.

While the most gullible are often thought of as the weakest and most vulnerable in society, they can sometimes be the most powerful.  The most acute illustration of this is the fact that those in power, at the very least those with supposed expertise, hate being fooled so blatantly.

Fraud, for it to be committed to scale, comes with a certain style, a fashion.  Make it plausible, make it receivable.  Holmes did that to a tee, aping, mimicking the Jobs factor, even dressing in his fashion.

Engineer Andy Hertzfeld’s own account of Jobs is relevant in this regard.  The founder of Apple had a “reality distortion field, a confounding mélange of a charismatic style, an indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.”  Holmes was exploiting the notion of drop out chic, but she was also operating in a world of evangelical hustling and truth stretching.

The dupes, to some extent, deserve it, and Holmes, as egregious as her behaviour might have been, merely fed it.  To that end, the sentence she received was harsh, even vengeful. Former New York federal prosecutor Andrey Spektor is one who thinks as much.  Federal sentencing, while seeming arbitrary, “requires a humane and common sense result: Defendants must not be punished more than necessary.”  To lock up Holmes in a federal penitentiary till her 50s, was not necessary.  But such is the vicious retaliation that comes from the duped.

*

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

Dr. 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: Elizabeth Holmes Backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2014. (Photo by Max Morse for TechCrunch, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Message to Joe Biden: ‘You have promised to defend “every inch of NATO territory.” Are you going to bomb Russia now?’

November 24th, 2022 by Media Lens

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

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

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

***

On November 15, as 90 Russian cruise missiles struck at Ukraine’s energy network, a companion US-UK propaganda blitz blamed the Russian missiles for the deaths of two workers on a farm in Poland.

This was a big deal. Poland is a member of Nato and Article 5 of Nato’s treaty reads:

‘The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all…’

The fear being, obviously, that treating a Russian attack on a Nato member as an attack on the United States or Britain could lead to rapid escalation and possible nuclear confrontation. Accurate media reporting of events in Poland was therefore vital. On November 16, the headlines said it all.

The Times:

‘Russians blamed for fatal strike on Poland’

The Telegraph:

‘Russian missile strikes Poland’

The Guardian:

‘Russian barrage strikes Ukraine amid claims missiles hit Poland’

The Daily Mirror:

‘RUSSIAN MISSILES HIT POLAND’

Metro:

‘“RUSSIAN MISSILES” HIT POLAND’

The Daily Express:

‘Russian missiles kill 2 in Poland’

Daily Star:

‘Putin bombs NATO’

Online, Sky News reported:

‘Reports Russian missiles have killed two people in Poland…’

Channel 4 News:

‘“Russia missiles” kill two in Nato member Poland claims US official’

With little known about the explosions and much at stake, the Pentagon’s spokesman Patrick Ryder was more cautious:

‘I don’t want to speculate when it comes to our security commitments and Article 5. But we have made it crystal clear that we will protect every inch of NATO territory.’

In an extraordinary message aimed at President Joe Biden, Anders Aslund of the Atlantic Council said:

‘You have promised to defend “every inch of NATO territory.” Are you going to bomb Russia now?’

Aslund added that Biden’s first move should be to establish a no-fly zone in Ukraine before ‘clean[ing] out the Russian Black Sea fleet’.

Ukraine was also quick to stoke the tension. President Zelensky called it ‘a Russian missile attack on collective security’ and, as such, ‘a very significant escalation’. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said it was ‘a conspiracy theory’ to suggest missiles were part of Ukrainian air defences.

In fact, this version of events was rubbished on the same day the front pages appeared. Even the BBC admitted of Zelensky and Kuleba’s comments:

‘These claims about Russia subsequently appear unfounded.’

And:

‘Polish President Andrzej Duda has said there are no signs of an intentional attack after a missile strike killed two people on a farm near the western border with Ukraine.

‘Earlier, US President Joe Biden said it was “unlikely” the missile had been fired from Russia.’

After nine months of relentlessly propagandising against Russia and for Ukraine-Nato, the Guardian struggled to adapt to this new situation where it was actually good – because it led away from nuclear war – to blame the Ukrainians. A Guardian news report read:

‘Polish village struck by Ukraine war missile struggling with trauma’

What is a ‘Ukraine war missile’? Is it a Ukrainian missile? Or is it a missile fired by one of the sides fighting the war in Ukraine? Might it, then, have been fired by Russia? The mangled grammar – was the ‘Ukraine war missile’ ‘struggling with trauma’? – suggested editors desperately trying to massage the message.

Like numerous other media, NBC News reported that the missile was ‘Russian-made’:

‘The Polish government said a Russian-made missile killed two of its citizens Tuesday near the border with Ukraine, but U.S. President Joe Biden said that it was “unlikely” that it was launched from Russia.’

This will surely have bewildered many readers into thinking the missile might well have been fired by Russia. Although it was clear who fired the missile, NBC described the investigation as ‘ongoing’. As Seinfeld once said: ‘It’s a hazy mystery.’

In fact, Reuters reported on November 16 that Biden had confirmed that the blast in Poland had been ’caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile’.

Responding to this astonishingly reckless propaganda blitz, Mark Curtis, co-founder and editor of Declassified UK, said it all:

‘It’s almost as if the British press sees its primary role as backing the state’s foreign policy rather than accurately informing the public.’

And that is indeed the key role of the dozen or so major UK newspapers and also other news media ostensibly serving the British public a diet of impartial, balanced fact – their primary task is to promote, defend and whitewash US-UK foreign policy driven by corporate greed for resources, power and profit (especially fossil fuels).

But what is so fascinating and terrible about this propaganda system – the reason we have continued writing about these issues for more than two decades – is that this is only one of the ‘mainstream’s’ smaller brainwashing functions. The real work goes much deeper.

A Sad Heart At The Supermarket

In 1962 – long before the full eruption of the global, 24/7 corporate monoanticulture – poet, literary critic and acutely sensitive soul, Randall Jarrell, captured the truth of ‘mainstream’ media exactly. In his collection of essays, ‘A sad heart at the supermarket’, Jarrell wrote that ‘the media’ should actually be termed the ‘Medium’:

‘For all these media – television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, and the rest – are a single medium, in whose depths we are all being cultivated. This Medium is of middle condition or degree, mediocre; it lies in the middle of everything, between a man and his neighbor, his wife, his child, his self; it, more than anything else, is the substance through which the forces of our society act upon us, and make us into what our society needs.’ (Randall Jarrell, ‘A sad heart at the supermarket; essays & fables’, Atheneum, 1962, pp.65-66)

But what does the Medium want?

‘Oh, it needs for us to do or be many things: workers, technicians, executives, soldiers, housewives. But first of all, last of all, it needs for us to be buyers; consumers; beings who want much and will want more – who want consistently and insatiably… It is the Medium which casts this spell – which is this spell. As we look at the television set, listen to the radio, read the magazines, the frontier of necessity is always being pushed forward. The Medium shows us what our new needs are – how often, without it, we should not have known! – and it shows us how they can be satisfied: they can be satisfied by buying something. The act of buying something is at the root of our world.’ (p.66, our emphasis)

Of course, it is this same Medium on which many of us are relying now to tell the truth about the results of a system that trains us to ‘want consistently and insatiably’. We are relying on the Medium to tell us how the Medium and its consumerism is destroying us. We are hoping for the Medium to urge us to rise up and overthrow… the Medium.

The classic science fiction movie, ‘The Day The Earth Caught Fire’, foresaw our current predicament with astonishing accuracy, with one failing. It assumed that the Medium – and as a consequence, the public – would become more and more concerned, more and more determined to do something in the face of an authentically existential crisis. But the Medium is far too deeply entrenched in greed for that to happen. Ironically, the film’s leading character, Peter Stenning, is a journalist at the Daily Express – filming took place in the newspaper’s actual offices.

In reality, record-breaking carbon emissions, temperatures, floods, hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, animal and plant extinctions have become the new ‘normal’ for our press, ‘just the way things are’.

Across Europe, heavily botoxed and surgically enhanced hosts of glitzy TV chat shows are being forced to mention temperature rises so extreme that even weather forecasters look worried, with even members of the public interviewed on beaches no longer smiling. But these are rarely glimpsed moments, quickly drowned out by the celebrity gossip, royal tittle-tattle and sports – the Medium is fundamentally unmoved.

No surprise, then, that in October the corporate-advertising packed, profit-maximising, warmongering Guardian, reported:

‘Concerns about climate change shrank across the world last year, with fewer than half of those questioned in a new survey believing it posed a “very serious threat” to their countries over the next 20 years.

‘Only 20% of people in China, the world’s biggest polluter, said they believed that climate change was a very serious threat, down 3 percentage points from the last survey by Gallup World Risk Poll in 2019.

‘Globally, the figure fell by 1.5 percentage points to 48.7% in 2021. The survey was based on more than 125,000 interviews in 121 countries.’

Incredibly, as carbon emissions, temperatures and extreme weather events rise precipitously, concern is falling. But why?

In September, Media Matters described a typical case of Medium performance:

‘In late August a massive, unrelenting heat dome began impacting much of the western United States – breaking numerous temperature records. California is bearing the brunt of the heat, with the state’s power grid stretched to its limit. Climate scientist Daniel Swain called the heat wave in California “essentially the worst September heat wave on record… By some metrics, it might be one of the worst heat waves on record, period, in any month, given its duration and its extreme magnitude.”

‘While the size and scope of the heat wave is not being ignored by major national TV news networks – there have been 153 segments and weather reports on the heat and the fires it helped spawn since August 31 – only 18 of the segments (12%) mentioned climate change. Even worse, only 3 of these climate segments mentioned the need for climate action in order to stave off worsening heat waves like this one in the future.’ (Our emphasis)

Media Matters added:

‘This is a pitiful performance by TV news reporters, especially considering the fact that a year ago they mentioned climate change in a collective 38% of segments on a similar record-breaking heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. There are clear links between the emissions from burning fossil fuels and the growing frequency, duration, and intensity of extreme heat. This record-breaking heat event occurs alongside a devastating flooding event in Pakistan that has displaced millions and can be seen from space, and after a summer of extreme heat and drought events in both Europe and China. The western U.S. heat wave should thus not be treated as a one-off, freak-of-nature incident, but rather contextualized in the larger global climate emergency.’

Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist who has been repeatedly arrested on direct action protests, commented:

‘Just unbelievable the media’s lack of concern about ongoing, intensifying climate and Earth breakdown. It’s all around us now. A few years ago I thought for sure, by this point, these levels of flooding and heat, the media would be sounding the alarm loudly, clearly, skillfully.’

Kalmus added:

‘As a climate scientist trying to sound the alarm for the good of us all, I can’t even tell you how infinitely harder this makes it’

The Independent’s climate columnist, Donnachadh McCarthy, responded to Kalmus:

‘Rather in my experience, uk’s oligarch media have gone in opposite direction on a frenzy attacking all action on climate, since the 40C heatwave set Britain on fire & extreme weather engulfed all continents. Dealing with it in interviews is beyond depressing.’

As the latest pitiful climate conference, COP27, ground to a halt this week, the BBC reported:

‘The final overarching deal did not include commitments to “phase down” or reduce use of fossil fuels.’

If this was shocking news, economic historian Matthias Schmelzer placed it in astonishing context:

‘In 30 years of UN climate negotiations, eliminating the primary cause of global heating – fossil fuels – has never been mentioned in the decisions, not even in the COP27 in 2022.’

What on earth has become of us, of humanity? Who are we? How can we be responding like this to the literal destruction of the stable climate on which we depend? Jarrell explained:

‘The Medium shows its People what life is, what people are, and its People believe it: expect people to be that, try themselves to be that. Seeing is believing; and if what you see in Life [magazine] is different from what you see in life, which of the two are you to believe? For many people it is what you see in Life (and in the movies, over television, on the radio) that is real life; and everyday existence, mere local or personal variation, is not real in the same sense.’ (p.78, our emphasis)

In our lives, we see the parched grass, experience the 40 degrees of heat, the fires and floods, but this is ‘mere local or personal variation’. In Life, as it were, we see car adverts, holiday offers, Black Friday deals on tech. And this genuinely seems more real.

This is the final truth of why we are unable, most of us, to feel the disaster that is overwhelming us in plain sight:

‘The Medium mediates between us and raw reality, and the mediation more and more replaces reality for us.’ (p.78)

This is not a struggle between good and evil; it is a struggle between reality and unreality. It is a struggle between human agency and an automatic profit-maximising machine that was built by human beings but which automatically seeks to neutralise any internal or external human opposition. The state-corporate system is a runaway train, a Frankenstein’s monster.

Ultimately, we are engaged in a struggle between truth and lies. Infinite profit-maximising on a finite planet is a lie; human survival depends on the extent to which enough of us can perceive the truth and act.

For more than 21 years we have argued that the Medium is the lynchpin, the Achilles’ heel, for anyone hoping to stop this runaway train, to break this spell.

When Julian Assange tried to challenge this system, the Medium turned on him, crushed his reputation, and thereby crushed the public support that might otherwise have protected him.

When Jeremy Corbyn challenged the system, the Medium tried and failed with everything, until it threw the ultimately despicable sink, barbarically exploiting the suffering and deaths of six million Jews in the Holocaust to crush him.

Now that the courageous, smart and principled heroes of Just for Oil, Insulate Britain and Extinction Rebellion are trying to save their lives, your lives and our lives by exposing the truth of fossil fuel industry insanity, the Medium is branding them narcissists, traitors, public enemies. Trashy, billionaire-owned, capitalist tabloids are assailing the opponents of runaway capitalism in the name of ordinary working people.

It’s all very well trying to expose US-UK military crimes, to reform the Labour Party from within, to shine a bright light on climate crisis, but the real battle, the deepest need, is to destroy the credibility of the Medium that controls the public mind and politics through illusions, false allies, false promises and false hopes. We must persuade the public to reject this system and to seek out and support genuinely human, compassionate, rational alternatives not poisoned by limitless greed.

As Noam Chomsky has commented, corporate propagandists will continue subordinating people and planet to profit until they are up to their necks in climate change floodwater. Our plan is to continue challenging them, refuting them, until that happens.

*

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.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Message to Joe Biden: ‘You have promised to defend “every inch of NATO territory.” Are you going to bomb Russia now?’

Government Requires “Make Believe”

November 24th, 2022 by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

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

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

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

***

 

“Government requires make-believe. Make believe that the king is divine, make believe that he can do no wrong or make believe that the voice of the people is the voice of God. Make believe that the people have a voice or make believe that the representatives of the people are the people. Make believe that governors are the servants of the people. Make believe that all men are created equal or make believe that they are not.”— Edmund S. Morgan, 1916-2013

What if the government’s true goal is to perpetuate its own power?

What if the real levers of governmental power are pulled by agents and diplomats and by bureaucrats and central bankers behind the scenes?

What if they stay in power no matter who is elected president or which political party controls either house of Congress?

What if the frequent public displays of adversity between Republicans and Democrats are just a facade? What if both major political parties agree on the fundamental issues of our day?

What if the leadership of both political parties believes that our rights are not natural to our humanity but instead are gifts from the government? What if those leaders believe the government that gives gifts to the people can take those gifts away?

What if the leadership of both parties gives only lip service to Thomas Jefferson’s assertions in the Declaration of Independence that all persons “are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” and that when the government assaults our natural rights, we can “alter or abolish” it?

What if the leadership of both parties quietly dismisses those ideas as Jefferson’s outdated musings? What if Jefferson’s words have been enacted into federal law that all in government have sworn to uphold?

What if the leadership of both political parties believes that the constitutional requirement of due process somehow permits mothers to hire doctors to kill babies in their wombs, out of fear or convenience? What if the leadership of both political parties believes that the president may lawfully kill any foreigner out of fear, because due process is an inconvenience?

What if the last four presidents — two from each political party — have used high-tech drones to kill innocent people in foreign lands with which America was not at war and claimed that they did so legally, relying not on a declaration of war from Congress but on erroneous and secret arguments that claim American presidents can kill with impunity?

What if the Constitution requires a congressional declaration of war or due process whenever the government wants anyone’s life, liberty or property, whether convenient or not, and whether the person is American or not? What if due process means a fair jury trial, not a secretly ordered killing?

What if most members of Congress from both political parties believe in perpetual war and perpetual debt? What if the political class believes that war is the health of the state? What if the leadership of that class wants war so as to induce the loyalty of its base, open the pocketbooks of the taxpayers and gain the compliance of the voters? What if the political class uses war to enrich its benefactors? What if the government has been paying for war by increasing its debt?

What if the $31 trillion current federal government debt has been caused by borrowing to pay for wars and false prosperity? What if the federal government collects about $4 trillion annually but spends about $6.8 trillion? What if the feds borrow money to pay $500 billion in interest annually?

What if it is insane to borrow money to pay interest on borrowed money? What if American taxpayers are still paying interest on debts incurred by Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and every post-World War II president?

What if the banks have borrowed the money that they lend? What if they can’t pay it back? What if the stock market was once soaring on money borrowed at artificially low interest rates?

What if the government demands transparency from us but declines to be transparent to us? What if government leaders assert the make-believe that they work for us but recognize silently that we work for the government?

What if the federal government has access to all our electronic communications, bank accounts, medical and legal records, and utility and credit card bills? What if the government knows more about us than we know about it?

What if the federal government stays in power by bribing the states with cash, the rich with bailouts, the middle class with tax cuts and the poor with welfare?

What if the government thinks the Constitution is make-believe and doesn’t apply in bad times? What if it thinks it can cure disease by forcing experimental drugs on the healthy? What if it mocks the Bill of Rights?

What if the government the Founding Fathers gave us needed our permission to do nearly everything? What if today we need the government’s permission to do nearly anything?

What if, on Thanksgiving Day, our gratitude is not to the government that assaults our freedoms and steals our wealth but to God, who gave us our freedoms and our ability to earn wealth?

What if, on Thanksgiving Day, our gratitude is for life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the exercise of free will and human reason? What if these are integral to our humanity despite the government’s assaults on them?

What if the Thanksgiving holiday has become a four-day oasis from a fractious government that is blind to the consequences of its borrowing, killing and assaults on freedom?

What if, on Thanksgiving Day, we are most grateful that we are free creatures made in God’s image and likeness?

What if, on Thanksgiving Day, we begin altering or abolishing the government, make-believe or not?

Happy Thanksgiving.

*

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.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court Judge, has published nine books on the U.S. Constitution.

Featured image: The Declaration of Independence (Photo from New Jersey Herald)

Swimming in Superbugs: MRSA and E coli Found in British Rivers

November 24th, 2022 by Andrew Wasley

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

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

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

***

UK rivers near livestock farms are awash with superbugs and antibiotic residues, including in the idyllic River Wye, research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found.

Testing commissioned with World Animal Protection and the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics has found evidence of drug resistance in waterways near poultry and pig farms and in cattle farm waste, highlighting the risks of slurry leaks contaminating rivers. Combined with previously unseen data released under freedom of information laws, it presents a snapshot of the extent of superbug pollution stemming from farm waste.

The tests found antibiotic-resistant strains of E coli and Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause serious infections in humans, among other superbugs. Some of the samples showed resistance to antibiotics that are classified as “highest-priority critically important for human medicine”. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a serious health threat because it makes illnesses harder to treat.

Residues of controversial medicines known as ionophores, widely used in Britain’s intensive chicken industry, were also found.

There are growing concerns about the health of British rivers and the apparent lack of regulation around AMR in farm waste. In October, the Guardian found wide scale river pollution from dairy farms in Devon, and there has been public outcry over raw sewage dumped in UK rivers earlier this year.

Contamination of the River Wye, which flows from the Cambrian mountains in Wales to the Severn estuary, has caused particular outrage, with farming blamed for high levels of phosphates. The river passes through Herefordshire, an area where chicken farming has rapidly expanded and an estimated 20 million birds are reared in the river’s catchment.

Angela Jones has been swimming, working on and exploring the River Wye for decades. She said she had seen sections of the river turn “cloudy and foul” and felt her eyes stinging after swimming.

She told the Bureau: “I feel like crying but I knew two years ago we were close to the edge. And I know now it’s not changed … [Poultry farms are] still chucking all that manure. We need something drastic.”

A recent environmental audit committee inquiry concluded that the UK’s rivers were “in a mess”, citing farm pollution as a significant cause. The inquiry also said that waterways had become a breeding ground for antibiotic resistance.

The Bureau’s new evidence prompted immediate calls for increased surveillance and tougher regulations.

Philip Dunne, the chairman of the environmental audit committee, told the Bureau: “While much of the attention is on sewage overflows when it comes to water quality of our rivers and beaches, diffuse agricultural pollution is another issue lurking under the surface. This investigation raises the risk in our rivers from emerging antimicrobial resistance. This is another good reason why water quality monitoring needs to be ramped up to avoid people becoming gravely ill.”

Charles Watson, chairman of the NGO River Action, said: “This critically important investigation adds to our understanding of the true horrors being inflicted on our rivers by intensive livestock production. In particular, it highlights how the UK’s existing regulatory controls for managing farm waste are simply nowhere near fit for purpose.”

A 2016 UK government review on AMR estimated that superbugs kill at least 700,000 people worldwide every year – which could rise to 10 million extra deaths by 2050 if no action is taken.

Antibiotics are widely used in livestock production to treat and prevent disease, particularly on factory farms where animals are often reared in overcrowded conditions where bacteria thrive. These farms can act as incubators for potentially fatal drug-resistant diseases in humans.

Although UK livestock sectors have significantly reduced the use of antibiotics on farms in recent years, there are concerns that overuse of certain antibiotics have created superbugs still circulating in farm animals and, consequently, in meat and the environment.

While the public health risks from superbug-contaminated meat has received much media coverage, environmental contamination linked to antibiotic use on farms is underreported.

Livestock farms generate large quantities of animal waste, which is often spread on land for use as a fertiliser, or discharged into public waterways, where superbugs can accumulate.

Superbugs can then reach humans through drinking water, fish and molluscs from contaminated water, or crops grown with contaminated manure. Even washing or swimming in contaminated water can put people at risk.

Dr Andrew Singer, a scientist at the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, told the Bureau that the environment was an important transmitter of antibiotic resistance. He added that the “continuous pollution of our environment with drugs and bugs simply hastens” the development of superbugs.

Our investigation obtained samples of water and sediment from waterways near twelve poultry and pig farms, including in the Wye Valley and Norfolk. Waste at four cattle units in Sussex, including dairy and beef farms, and one sample from poultry litter (a mixture of droppings and soiled straw) in Sussex, were also tested.

All of the cattle farms, and eight of the poultry and pig farms, were intensive, with some or all animals permanently kept indoors. Four were free range.

The river samples were collected both upstream and downstream of the pig and poultry farms to assess differences in resistant bacteria, genes – regarded as the building blocks of antibiotic resistance – and residue levels. Cattle farm samples were obtained directly from slurry, which in one case was leaking from a waste lagoon, polluting a footpath and nearby fields.

Analysis by scientists at the Fera laboratory in York revealed resistance to antibiotics known as sulfonamides, which are classified as highly important in human medicine, was more consistently found downstream than upstream of factory pig and chicken farms. This suggests resistance is entering the environment from these farms.

In human medicine, sulfonamides are often used to treat urinary tract infections, one of the most common bacterial infections. Despite this, in the UK the drugs are more widely used in farm animals than in human medicine, prompting fears that overuse in livestock could reduce their effectiveness in treating humans.

All of the cattle waste samples tested positive for sulfonamide-resistant genes, while one harboured antibiotic resistant E coli. The poultry litter tested was also found to contain sulfonamide-resistant genes and drug resistant E coli.

In the Wye Valley, the river water contained a version of MRSA and residues of ionophore antibiotics, which are widely used in the chicken industry.

Campaigners said that among the most worrying findings were E coli resistant to cefotaxim and S aureus resistant to vancomycin. Both drugs are classified by the World Health Organization as being highest-priority critically important in human medicine. Earlier this year the Bureau revealed that UK pork meat was contaminated with a vancomycin-resistant superbug.

Cóilín Nunan, the scientific advisor to the Alliance to Save our Antibiotics, said: “Cefotaxime is a particularly important antibiotic for treating serious human infections caused by E coli and other pathogens. It is very worrying that resistance to this antibiotic was found in a chicken litter sample and a cattle slurry sample from intensive farms, and downstream of an intensive chicken farm.

“The use of antibiotics related to cefotaxime is finally being reduced in farming, but far greater reductions are needed and this will only be achieved through government action.”

Previously unpublished records obtained using freedom of information laws also revealed further evidence of UK rivers and farms being contaminated with both antibiotics and superbugs.

In southwest England, testing of waste from more than fifty dairy units found infection with drug resistant disease, including on footpaths polluted with slurry, which has the potential for onward contamination.

Catherine McLaughlin, chief animal health and welfare adviser to the National Farmers’ Union said there have been “hugely positive” voluntary achievements across the industry in reducing antibiotic use.

“Our farmers are continuing to work hard to protect animal health and welfare, using alternative strategies such as vaccines and engaging with vets in various initiatives which focus on data collection and preventive health care and animal husbandry,” she said.

In Northern Ireland, testing downstream of livestock farms and farms fertilised with manure found residues of antibiotics known to be used in veterinary medicine. The antibiotic tilmicosin – which can be harmful for humans – was also found at a wastewater treatment outflow serving Belfast.

The pollution of water with these antibiotic residues encourages the development and spread of superbugs because bacteria already present in the water can develop resistance.

Much like the Wye Valley, Northern Ireland has become a powerhouse for livestock production in recent years, with a steep rise in intensive poultry farms.

The UK has no specific laws relating to mitigating the spread of antibiotic resistance through farm waste disposal. Instead, regulators rely on farmers to adhere to best practice guidance and codes of practice. The lack of official controls risks the spread of antibiotic resistant diseases in the environment.

The Bureau has learnt that in some instances litter from poultry farms contaminated with antibiotic-resistant strains of salmonella was freely spread on land in Northern Ireland for use as fertiliser, despite birds from affected flocks being destroyed.

Experts and campaigners say this practice is unacceptable.

Dr Singer said: “Litter from diseased animals should be destroyed in such a way to eliminate the risk from the disease spreading in the manure. This is going to be expensive and challenging, but it must be done.”

James Orr, director of Friends of the Earth Northern Ireland, said: “It is scandalous for the industry to continue this practice of diseased poultry waste to be spread on farmland. We are increasing the risk of AMR being spread when we could just as easily stop this practice.”

The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland said that farmers were offered guidance on salmonella outbreaks that included “measures to prevent exposure of any litter pathogens to both wild and farmed animals” and advice on preventing run-off into watercourses. It added: “Poultry litter should be deep ploughed into arable ground and should not be spread on land that is to be grazed, or from silage or hay [that] is to be harvested in the same year.”

Investigations into tilmicosin pollution were suspended because of the pandemic, the department said.

A Defra spokesperson said: “We do not support routine preventative use of antibiotics in animals – they should not compensate for poor husbandry practices and we will continue to look into strengthening legislation in this area.”

*

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.

Featured image: Samples of water and sediment were taken at sites in England and Wales (Source: World Animal Protection)

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Swimming in Superbugs: MRSA and E coli Found in British Rivers

Pfizer CEO Claims 400% Price Hike on COVID Vaccines Will be “Free”

November 24th, 2022 by Beth Mole

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

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

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

***

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla claimed at a news event last week that the company’s COVID-19 vaccines will continue to be “free to all Americans,” despite the company’s plan to raise the price of the vaccine roughly 400 percent—a price difference that will be picked up by health insurers.

The company said in October that it plans to raise the price of a dose of its COVID-19 vaccine from about $30 to somewhere between $110 and $130 as it moves the shots to the commercial market next year.

Until now, all COVID-19 vaccines in the US have been bought by the US government, which paid $30.48 per dose in its latest vaccine supply agreement from June. The US government had previously paid $24 per dose in July 2021 and $19.50 per dose in July 2020. The government offered all the doses to Americans for free.

Now, the company expects health insurance companies to pick up the tab, however larger. “Based on our current understanding, when we enter a traditional commercial model, anyone with commercial or government insurance who is eligible to be vaccinated should be able to access the vaccine without any out-of-pocket payments,” Angela Lukin, Pfizer’s US president of global primary care, said in an October call with investors.

That assumption led Bourla to suggest last week that the large price hike would be “free.”

“Americans will see no difference,” he said, according to Stat News, which hosted the event. The vaccine will “be free for them to get, regardless of the insurance they have.”

“Double talk”

But outsiders were quick to point out flaws in that statement. For one, it would seem that the shots would no longer be free for those without insurance. Moreover, for those with insurance, the lack of out-of-pocket costs at the time of vaccination does not mean that the price hike is free. The hiked price will be absorbed by health insurance companies, which may pass on the extra cost in the form of higher premiums.

The cost “ultimately comes out of workers’ paychecks,” Stat’s health care business reporter, Bob Herman, pointed out.

David Mitchell, co-founder of the advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs, echoed the point. “[Bourla said] repeatedly that COVID vaccines priced at $120 a dose will be ‘free.’ It’s not true,” Mitchell tweeted. “It’s more Bourla/pharma double talk.”

It’s unclear what price Moderna will set for its COVID-19 vaccine when it moves to the commercial market next year. But, financial analysts who spoke with Reuters said Pfizer’s price could drive up the prices of rivals.

Pfizer’s price is not wildly out of the normal range for vaccinations. While the annual flu shot can range from $50 to $95 at CVS for those without insurance, an MMR vaccine goes for $135, a shingles vaccine goes for $179, and meningitis vaccines are a little over $200.

Still, Pfizer’s price between $110 and $130 is higher than financial analysts expected for the COVID-19 vaccines. “This is much higher than our assumption of $50 per shot,” Wells Fargo analyst Mohit Bansal wrote in a research note, according to Reuters. Bansal added that the pricing could add around $2.5 billion to $3 billion to Pfizer’s annual revenue.

It’s unclear how the commercial price hike—likely to occur in the first quarter of next year—will influence booster uptake. Currently, uptake is dismal. Only 11 percent of Americans eligible for an updated COVID-19 booster have received one ahead of Thanksgiving, according to data tracking by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

*

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.

Beth is Ars Technica’s health reporter. She’s interested in biomedical research, infectious disease, health policy and law, and has a Ph.D. in microbiology.

Featured image is from Health Thoroughfare

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

Accused of “Corona Insanity”: Swiss Doctor Locked Away in Mental Asylum for Speaking Against COVID Laws, April 2020

November 24th, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

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

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

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

***

Dr. Thomas Binder is a Swiss cardiologist with over 34 years of experience in treating respiratory infections. He received a doctorate in immunology and virology, specializing in internal medicine and cardiology, from the University of Zurich. Binder is an intelligent man who was deemed insane by the Swiss government for speaking out against COVID regulations.

Dr. Binder has been an outspoken critic of COVID restrictions since the beginning of the pandemic. On April 9, 2020, the cardiologist criticized the government’s response to COVID and provided his own analysis of the virus. He posted his thoughts on his private website, and the post received over 20,000 views.

Three days later, a day before Easter, 60 armed police officers and 20 members of the Kantonspolizei Aargau’s anti-terrorism unit forcibly removed Dr. Binder from his home.

Authorities searched through the doctor’s online activity and could not find anything to use against him. However, an emergency room doctor who was working with the authorities arrived and diagnosed Dr. Binder with “corona insanity.” He was locked away in a mental asylum for questioning the COVID narrative.

Yet, he refuses to be silenced. He is now a member of the Doctors for COVID Ethics and the German Physicians and Scientists for Health, Freedom, and Democracy. I applaud him for still speaking against coronavirus mandates despite the government’s pitiful attempt to silence him.

Martin Armstrong

***

Video. Thomas Binder Interviewed by Taylor Hudak

*

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.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Accused of “Corona Insanity”: Swiss Doctor Locked Away in Mental Asylum for Speaking Against COVID Laws, April 2020
  • Tags:

Video: Biden COVID Minion Tells Americans “God Gave Us Two Arms” for Multiple Vaccines

November 24th, 2022 by Steve Watson

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

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

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

***

Joe Biden’s COVID ‘czar’ declared Tuesday during a White House press briefing that “God gave you two arms” so we can all be injected with different vaccines.

Dr. Ashish Jha made the statement while simultaneously pushing COVID booster shots and flu shots as if they are the same thing.

“Get one in each arm if you want,” Jha proclaimed.

Watch:

The COVID shot contains experimental mRNA. Most people have many times greater protection from having had the virus and recovered, whereas the flu shot is a traditional vaccine backed by years of research and data.

To lump these two vaccines together in a 2 for 1 type campaign is at best disingenuous.

It isn’t the first time Jha has made the “God gave you two arms” comment, he also used it back in September, noting that he “really believes” that is why humans have two arms:

Elsewhere during Tuesday’s briefing, Jha told Americans they will need to get yet another Covid vaccine next year.

“We’re probably gonna need to update our vaccine again next year and have Americans get vaccinated again next year,” Jha asserted, calling the COVID vaccine a “once a year shot.”

The five jabs from the past year isn’t enough. Get more.

He also encouraged people to push vaccines on their families “around the Thanksgiving table,”:

“If folks get their updated vaccines, and they get treated, if they have a breakthrough infection, we can prevent essentially every COVID death in America,” Jah said.

Breakthrough infections are no longer a dangerous conspiracy theory, they’re now a good thing apparently.

During the same presser, The White House Press Secretary immediately shut down a reporter who attempted to ask Anthony Fauci a question about the origin of COVID:

Real questions are not allowed.

*

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.

Featured image is a screenshot from Summit News

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

The US and ROK Consider “Deterring North Korea’s Use of Nuclear Weapons”

November 24th, 2022 by Dr. Konstantin Asmolov

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

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

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

***

From reading the previous article, one could get the impression that, against the background of North Korea’s unprecedented missile activity and the likelihood of a seventh nuclear test by Pyongyang, there are growing calls in the US for an end to Pyongyang through sanctions, a pre-emptive strike or the deployment of nuclear weapons on the peninsula.  However, the author points to a different trend: voices calling for recognition of the DPRK’s nuclear power status and a review of the policy of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Here are some examples.

On October 26, 2022, ROK Minister of Defense Lee Jong-sup said the focus of efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue should shift from deterring their development to deterring the use of nuclear weapons. “We have put our focus on trying to prevent North Korea from conducting additional nuclear tests and advancing its nuclear capabilities, but it’s time to change our strategy.” Now “the priority should be on deterring the use of nuclear weapons,” giving the North Koreans an understanding that if the DPRK attempts to use nuclear weapons, it will result in the termination of the North Korean regime.

In a similar vein, ruling party chief Chung Jin-suk said, “We have entered a completely new phase in North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats. We need to reexamine our entire response system to the North’s nuclear threats… We should also have an overpowering defense system so local provocations do not evolve into a full scale war.” Conservative MP Han Ki-ho, who heads the DPRK Threat Response Committee, also noted that “denuclearization policies we have pushed for until now have failed.”

Although South Korean conservatives speak not of negotiation but of a forceful response to force, such deterrence is also a form of control. But far more important is the opinion of US officials. At the 2022 Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington, US Deputy Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Bonnie Jenkins said that if Pyongyang is willing to return to engagement, an arms control treaty could eventually be worked on. Jenkins added that the US and North Korea may have different interpretations of “arms control” and “nuclear disarmament,” which have complicated related discussions and proved to be serious obstacles during the Trump era engagement, but “building a foundation by defining a goal” would be the starting point of any potential negotiations, which she said would take time.

It should be noted that this is not the last US government official to speak out, but the basic official position is still the same. In response to a question about Jenkins’ remarks on October 31, US Department of State Spokesman Ned Price said that “there has been no change to US policy. Our DPRK policy remains the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The United States does not and will not recognize North Korea as a nuclear state: “That is not our policy. I do not foresee that ever becoming a policy”.

The US and South Korean experts and retirees are more outspoken. As former Minister of Unification under the Moon Jae-in administration Jong Se-hyun told The Korea Times,

“after the midterm elections, the US will have no options but to start arms control talks with North Korea based on the North’s commitment to the non-proliferation of its nuclear weapons”.

As former US special envoy for talks with North Korea Joseph DeTrani points out, North Korea has no intention of getting rid of its nuclear weapons in exchange for economic incentives or normalization of diplomatic relations, so offering Pyongyang such “carrots” in exchange for disarmament will not work.  According to DeTrani, North Korea wants to be accepted as a nuclear state like Pakistan, while stressing that its nuclear program is for deterrence and will not be used for offensive purposes. The US, on the other hand, has openly said that it does not accept the DPRK as a nuclear state, as this would lead to a nuclear arms race in the region and create opportunities for nuclear proliferation, fissile material falling into the hands of a rogue state or terrorist groups.

Robert Kelly, a professor of political science at Pusan National University, also believes that persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear program will not be easy, while Seoul has no options. The only thing that can be achieved is arms control: “we might get some constraints, maybe we’ll get some inspectors to get the North Koreans to cap it at like 200 strategic missiles and warheads or something like that, but they’re never going to go to zero.”

Soo Kim, a policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, thinks the US, like South Korea, is running out of options “because there just aren’t that many creative ideas to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table, and to actually convince Kim Jong-un to give up some aspect of his nuclear program.”

Kim Jong-dae, a former South Korean defense official and visiting professor at Yonsei University, also thinks that complete denuclearization of the North is something that cannot be achieved at all and developing discussions with North Korea in terms of arms control is a very realistic idea.

A recent Bloomberg article states that the policy of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, pursued in recent decades, has failed. The US and its allies must accept the DPRK’s status as a nuclear power and learn to operate in the new environment. Criticism has also been levelled at anti-North Korean sanctions, which have had no effect other than to create food shortages for millions of North Koreans.

Earlier, Jeffrey Lewis, an expert in nuclear non-proliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, spoke of the need to recognize North Korea’s nuclear status in the interest of easing tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Journalist Donald Kirk, who specializes in East Asia, also wrote that hopes of talks with Kim Jong-un on the nuclear issue were a fantasy. He called for a focus on strengthening defense capabilities, describing the North’s adoption of a nuclear doctrine at the legislative level as a real threat.

Statements of this kind are based not only on an assessment of the DPRK’s military capabilities, but also on public opinion: the proportion of those who consider the DPRK’s threat serious is declining in the US, while the number of supporters of a constructive solution is rising.

In August-September 2022, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs conducted an opinion poll on how important certain foreign policy issues seem to the average American. It was found that only 52% of Americans believe that North Korea’s nuclear program poses a “serious threat” to the United States (compared to 75% in 2017 and 59% in 2021). There is a split on “what should be done to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons,” with 46% of respondents believing that the US should establish formal diplomatic relations with the DPRK, while 31% are of the opinion that the US should use military force under favorable conditions.

Commenting on the poll results, experts from the Chicago Council noted that the DPRK issue is currently overshadowed in American consciousness by events in Ukraine, as well as economic problems. As a result, North Korean issues have been put on the backburner in Biden’s policy.

On September 22, the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University released the results of a poll showing that 92.5% of respondents are convinced that North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons, which is the highest score ever.  55.5% were in favor of Seoul possessing its own nuclear weapons, the highest score on record as well. Compared to last year, there was a 10% increase.

It should be noted that the “arms control treaty” is what Pyongyang has demanded in past years. However, negotiating arms control is not an easy process for the US, as it would mean recognizing the North as a nuclear state and thus fundamentally changing US policy towards the DPRK, because Washington has always maintained that North Korea’s nuclear program is illegal and subject to United Nations sanctions.

Nevertheless, Russian experts, such as Aleksandr Zhebin, have repeatedly stressed that the West should accept reality and move on from talks on denuclearization to talks on arms control, given that the DPRK positions itself as a responsible state that adheres to the doctrine of nuclear non-proliferation. All attempts to find evidence of nuclear smuggling and/or technology (which was actively sought for the sake of the new stranglehold) were unsuccessful.

*

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.

Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia, the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Featured image is from NEO

U.S. Authorizes Firms to Provide Services to Russian Oil Trade

November 24th, 2022 by Tsvetana Paraskova

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

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

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

***

U.S. persons are allowed to provide certain services relating to the maritime transportation of Russian oil as long as said crude oil is purchased at or below the price cap expected to be announced shortly, according to new guidance from the U.S. Treasury. 

The new price cap policy guidance, issued late on Tuesday, sheds more light on the so-called price cap mechanism, how it will apply, and who will be affected. The guidance, as well as several general licenses for certain exemptions, were issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control less than two weeks before the EU embargo on imports of Russian crude oil by sea and the price cap on Russian oil enters into force on December 5.

While considering the parameters of the price cap, the U.S. Treasury already issued at the end of October guidance that says Russian crude oil loaded onto a vessel at the port of loading for maritime transport prior to December 5 will not be subject to the price cap if the oil is unloaded at the port of destination before January 19, 2023.

In several general licenses issued this week, the U.S. Treasury authorized certain transactions related to the imports of Russian oil into Bulgaria, Croatia, or landlocked European Union member states. This aligns the U.S. licensing and sanctions regime with the EU embargo which, at its adoption in June, issued a special temporary derogation to Bulgaria, because of its geographical exposure, to continue importing crude oil and petroleum products via maritime transport until the end of 2024.

Another EU derogation that the U.S. also authorizes is “As of 5 December 2022 for a landlocked EU Member State, if the supply of crude oil by pipeline from Russia is interrupted for reasons outside the control of that EU Member State, for seaborne crude oil from Russia … to be imported into that EU Member State, until the supply is resumed or until the Council of the EU decides to terminate this exemption with regard to that EU Member State, whichever is the earliest.”

*

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.

Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

NY Times Takes Rare Look at Apparent Ukrainian War Crimes

November 24th, 2022 by Zero Hedge

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

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

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

***

The New York Times has in an extremely rare moment (or perhaps more like unprecedented) conducted an in-depth visual investigation of a likely war crime against surrendered Russian troops conducted by Ukrainian forces. Multiple videos from different angles, including drone footage, emerged last week showing the incredibly disturbing scenes as Ukrainian forces were recapturing the village of Makiivka in the Luhansk region. 

The videos show ten apparently unarmed Russian soldiers lying facedown on the ground, who early on are seen moving and in a position of surrender as at least four Ukrainian troops stand nearby outside of a house in a farmyard.

By the end of the footage, eleven Russians had been shot dead at close range, in what Russia says was a summary execution of people who at that point (based on their surrender) effectively become non-combatants based on accepted international laws of war.

The Russian Defense Ministry has said the videos confirm “deliberate and methodical murder” of its soldiers by the Ukrainian side, also with the Russian Foreign Ministry calling the act “merciless” and “shocking”.

Surprisingly, the videos were initially made public by Ukrainian news sources and soldiers themselves, and were shared widely on social media, as they purportedly showed the ‘heroism’ of Ukrainian soldiers as they clawed back territory in eastern Ukraine.

But The New York Times described, “The videos show the grisly before-and-after scenes of the encounter earlier this month, in which at least 11 Russians, most of whom are seen lying on the ground, appear to have been shot dead at close range after one of their fellow fighters suddenly opened fire on Ukrainian soldiers standing nearby.”

The United Nations has called for a formal investigation into the videos, with a statement from the UN Human Rights Office quoted in Reuters saying, “We are aware of the videos, and we are looking into them.”

“Allegations of summary executions of people hors de combat should be promptly, fully and effectively investigated, and any perpetrators held to account,” the statement continued, in reference to people legally designated “outside of combat”.

The Times report details the sequence of events beginning as follows:

One soldier, with his rifle drawn, tentatively approaches the structure where the Russian soldiers are sheltering. The soldier with the machine gun provides cover. Several gunshots are heard — though it’s not clear from where — and the soldier slowly backs away from an outhouse, drawing out the Russian soldiers at gunpoint.

The report comments that soon after the Russian soldiers emerge from the building, it is clear that an orderly surrender has taken place, with many of the prone Russian solders moving around on the ground after giving up their arms, clearly alive.

But soon after the entire scene turns to carnage:

Two of the Ukrainians standing by appear to be relaxed and are pointing their rifles toward the ground…

As an 11th Russian soldier emerges from the outhouse, he opens fire, aiming at one of the Ukrainian soldiers. The Ukrainians are taken by surprise. The cellphone camera jolts away as the Ukrainian soldier filming the scene flinches. A frame-by-frame analysis of what happens next shows the Ukrainian soldier standing beside him raise his rifle and aim toward the Russian gunman.

By the time the dust settles, all of the Russian soldiers – and not just the gunman who emerged from the outhouse – lie dead, apparently shot in the head at close range, pools of blood forming around them.

“The video ends and it’s unclear what happens next. But a second aerial video of the location shows the bloody aftermath,” the NYT writes. “The Russian soldiers are lying motionless, apparently dead, most of them positioned as they were when they surrendered. Blood is pooling around them, and some appear to be bleeding from the upper body or head. The soldiers are dressed in the same uniforms with the distinctive red straps and blue marking.”

Screenshot/Twitter: Just prior to being shown deceased, the captured Russian soldiers were ordered to lie face down on the ground.

The footage, as well as the NY Times’ confirmation of the event, is now going viral inside Russia, causing fury and an angry denunciations, while at the same time Ukrainian officials have suggested the initial surrender had been “staged” by the Russian side in order to set a trap for the Ukrainian soldiers. Kiev has rejected the charges of war crimes from Moscow.

Russia has consistently complained that the West routinely ignores clear evidence of Ukrainian war crimes, while only putting Russian forces under the microscope. This NY Times investigation is an almost unprecedented moment where the “paper of record” is actually hinting that the Kremlin has a valid point.

*

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.

Credit Suisse Craters to Record Low After Revealing Staggering $88 Billion Bank Run

November 24th, 2022 by Zero Hedge

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

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

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

***

One month ago, weeks before the crypto sector was shaken by the crushing FTX bankrun which led to a quick and painful bankruptcy, and revealed that one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges and its “JPMorgan-esque” owner were nothing but hollow shells of fraud, another bank was suffering from a far bigger bank run.

Readers will recall that in mid-October we reported that the Fed was quietly wiring increasingly greater dollar amounts to the Swiss National Bank – which eventually peaked at around $11 billion weekly – which in turn was then using these dollar swap lines to plug USD funding holes within one or more Swiss commercial banks.

One didn’t need to be a rocket surgeon to figure out that the bank in question was Credit Suisse, which had seen its stock tumble amid a relentless barrage of scandals, corporate mistakes and the occasional fraud (that we know of), and which we said was likely suffering from a painful behind-the-scenes bank run.

Fast forward one month, when this morning the 2nd largest Swiss bank confirmed our worst-case speculation, admitting that it had just gone through a staggering bank run in which clients pulled as much as 84 billion Swiss francs, or $88.3 billion, of their money from the bank during the first few weeks of the quarter, underlining ongoing concerns over the bank’s restructuring efforts after years of scandals.

Of course, as FTX learned the hard way, bank runs don’t have a happy ending, and the Zurich-based bank warned on Wednesday that it will face a loss of up to 1.5 billion Swiss francs ($1.6 billion) for the three final months of the year, in large part as a result of the decline in wealth and asset management client funds from the start of October to Nov. 11. That, according to Bloomberg, is the worst exodus since the financial crisis.

The outflows were especially acute at the key wealth management unit, where they amounted to 10% of assets under management. While they have been “reduced substantially from the elevated levels of the first two weeks of October 2022,” they have yet to reverse, the bank said.

This means that just as we expected, the massive dollar swap lines were being used by the SNB to provide Credit Suisse with much needed, critical funding; had the funds not arrived, Credit Suisse would likely have liquidated!

The client withdrawals contrast with inflows at rival wealth managers in recent months. AT UBS Group AG, investors added more than $17 billion to the wealth management unit in the third quarter. Julius Baer Group Ltd. said on Monday that it saw a “clear improvement” in new money flows since the end of June, with wealthy clients adding a net 4.1 billion francs in the four months through October.

“The massive net outflows in Wealth Management, CS’s core business alongside the Swiss Bank, are deeply concerning — even more so as they have not yet reversed,” said Andreas Venditti, banking analyst at Bank Vontobel AG in Zurich. “Credit Suisse needs to restore trust as fast as possible – but that is easier said than done.”

Analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Jefferies said the wealth-management outflows were much worse than expected, and warned that bank wasn’t out of the woods. Ethos Foundation, a proxy advisor, said more steps may be needed to restore investor confidence than the bank has so far outlined.

“Cutting cost is one thing but growing the business is another one,” Vincent Kaufmann, Chief Executive Officer of Ethos, said on Bloomberg TV. “Maybe they can do both, but it remains to be seen.”

Besides the massive bank run which has drained the bank’s capital, the Zurich-based bank said it expects losses in both the wealth management division and its investment banking unit due to “subdued activity, market conditions, continued outflows of customer assets and the sale of non-core businesses.”

The bank’s grim outlook underscores the urgency for the bank’s latest (and soon to be former) Chairman Axel Lehmann to put Credit Suisse on a sustainable footing again through a sweeping overhaul that will see its investment bank carved up and greater focus placed on private banking. Shareholders on Wednesday approved a capital raise of about 4 billion francs that’s needed to finance the restructuring, which will also see about 9,000 jobs cut by 2025.

“Credit Suisse is on an important journey,” Lehmann said in a speech posted on the lender’s website. “We will work to rebuild and refocus this proud 166-year-old Swiss institution with global reach.”

The market was not as optimistic, and Credit Suisse tumbled more than 5%, crashing to a new record low.

In conclusion, the dismal Credit Suisse news provides a handy comparison between the fiat and crypto regimes:

  • FTX was hit with record bank run, and filed for bankruptcy in days, with no central bank to bail it out.
  • Credit Suisse hit with record bank run, and both the SNB and Fed rushed to bail it out.

One wonders which system is a better representation of what true capitalism should be like…

*

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.

Featured image: Credit Suisse, Paradeplatz in Zürich (Switzerland) (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Credit Suisse Craters to Record Low After Revealing Staggering $88 Billion Bank Run
  • Tags:

French Ambassador: US ‘Rules-based Order’ Means Western Domination, Violating International Law

November 24th, 2022 by Ben Norton

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

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

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

***

France’s ex US Ambassador Gérard Araud criticized Washington for frequently violating international law and said its so-called “rules-based order” is an unfair “Western order” based on “hegemony.” He condemned the new cold war on China, instead calling for mutual compromises.

France’s former ambassador to the United States, Gérard Araud, has publicly criticized Washington, saying it frequently violates international law and that its so-called “rules-based order” is actually an unfair “Western order.”

The top French diplomat warned that the United States is engaged in “economic warfare” against China, and that Europe is concerned about Washington’s “containment policy,” because many European countries do not want to be forced to “choose a camp” in a new cold war.

Araud condemned US diplomats for insisting that Washington must always be the “leader” of the world, and stressed that the West should work with other countries in the Global South, “on an equal basis,” in order “to find a compromise with our own interests.”

He cautioned against making “maximalist” demands, “of simply trying to keep the Western hegemony.”

Araud made these remarks in a November 14 panel discussion titled “Is America Ready for a Multipolar World?“, hosted by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank in Washington, DC that advocates for a more restrained, less bellicose foreign policy.

Gérard Araud’s credentials could hardly be any more elite. A retired senior French diplomat, he served as the country’s ambassador to the United States from 2014 to 2019. From 2009 to 2014, he was Paris’ representative to the United Nations.

Before that, Araud served as France’s ambassador to Israel, and he previously worked with NATO.

He was also appointed as a “senior distinguished fellow” at the Atlantic Council, NATO’s notoriously belligerent think tank in Washington.

This blue-blooded background makes Araud’s frank comments even more important, as they reflect the feelings of a segment of the French ruling class and European political class, which is uncomfortable with Washington’s unipolar domination and wants power to be more decentralized in the world.

The ‘rules-based order’ is actually just a ‘Western order’

In a shockingly blunt moment in the panel discussion, Gérard Araud explained that the so-called “rules-based order” is actually just a “Western order,” and that the United States and Europe unfairly dominate international organizations like the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund (IMF):

To be frank, I’ve always been extremely skeptical about this idea of a ‘rules-based order.’

Personally, for instance, look, I was the permanent representative to the United Nations. We love the United Nations, but the Americans not too much, you know.

And actually when you look at the hierarchy of the United Nations, everybody there is ours. The Secretary General [António Guterres] is Portuguese. He was South Korean [Ban Ki-moon]. But when you look at all the under secretaries general, all of them really are either American, French, British, and so on. When you look at the World Bank, when you look at the IMF, and so on.

So that’s the first element: this order is our order.

And the second element is also that, actually, this order is reflecting the balance of power in 1945. You know, you look at the permanent members of the Security Council.

Really people forget that, if China and Russia are obliged to oppose [with] their veto, it is because frankly the Security Council is most of the time, 95% of the time, has a Western-oriented majority.

So this order frankly – and you can also be sarcastic, because, when the Americans basically want to do whatever they want, including when it’s against international law, as they define it, they do it.

And that’s the vision that the rest of the world has of this order.

You know really, when I was in – the United Nations is a fascinating spot, because you have ambassadors of all the countries, and you can have conversations with them, and the vision they project of the world, their vision of the world, is certainly not a ‘rules-based order’; it’s a Western order.

And they accuse us of double standards, hypocrisy, and so on and so on.

So I’m not sure that this question about the ‘rules’ is really the critical question.

I think the first assessment that we should do will be maybe, as we say in French, to put ourselves in the shoes of the other side, to try to understand how they see the world.

Araud argued that if the international community is serious about creating a “rules-based order,” it must entail “integrating all the major stakeholders into the managing of the world, you know really bringing the Chinese, the Indians, and really other countries, and trying to build with them, on an equal basis, the world of tomorrow.”

“That’s the only way,” he added. “We should really ask the Indians, ask the Chinese, the Brazilians, and other countries, really to work with us on an equal basis. And that’s something – it’s not only the Americans, also the Westerners, you know, really trying to get out of our moral high ground, and to understand that they have their own interests, that on some issues we should work together, on other issues we shouldn’t work together.”

“Let’s not try to rebuild the Fortress West,” he implored. “It shouldn’t be the future of our foreign policy.”

French diplomat criticizes US new cold war on China

Gérard Araud revealed that, in Europe, there is “concern” that the United States has a “containment policy” against China.

“I think the international relationship will be largely dominated by the rivalry between China and the United States. And foreign policy I think in the coming years will be to find the modus vivendi … between the two powers,” he said.

He warned that Washington is engaged in “economic warfare” against Beijing, that the US is trying “basically to cut any relationship with China in the field of advanced chips, which is sending a message of, ‘We are going to try to prevent you from becoming an advanced economy.’ It’s really, it’s economic warfare.”

“Really on the American side is the development of economic warfare against China. It’s really cutting, making impossible cooperation in a very important, critical field, for the future of the Chinese economy,” he added.

Araud pointed out that China is not just “emerging”; it is in fact “re-emerging” to a prominent geopolitical position, like it had for hundreds of years, before the rise of European colonialism.

He stressed that many countries in Asia don’t want to be forced to pick a side in this new cold war, and are afraid of becoming a zone of proxy conflicts like Europe was in the first cold war:

Asia doesn’t want to be the Europe of the Cold War. They don’t want to have a bamboo curtain. They don’t want to choose their camp.

Australia has chosen its camp, but it’s a particular case. But Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, they don’t want to choose their camp, and we shouldn’t demand they choose their camp.

So we need to have a flexible policy of talking to the Chinese, because talking is also a way of reassuring them, trying to understand their interests, also to define our interests not in a maximalist way, of simply trying to keep the Western hegemony.

Araud challenged the idea that the United States must be the unipolar “leader” of the world, stating:

The Americans entered the world, in a sense, being already the big boy on the block. In 1945, it was 40% of the world’s GDP.

Which also may explain what is American diplomacy. The word of American diplomats, the word of American diplomacy is ‘leadership.’

Really, it’s always striking for foreigners, as soon as there is a debate about American foreign policy, immediately people say, ‘We have to restore our leadership.’ Leadership. And other countries may say, ‘Why leadership?’

West must ‘try to see the world from Beijing’

Gérard Araud similarly criticized Western media outlets for their cartoonishly negative coverage of China. The top French diplomat called on officials to “try to see the world from Beijing”:

When you look at the European or Western newspapers, you have the impression that China is a sort of a dark monster which is moving forward, never committing a mistake, never really facing any problem, and going to the domination of the world – you know, the Chinese work 20 hours a day, they don’t want a vacation, they don’t care, they want to dominate the world.

Maybe that if we will try to see the world from Beijing, really we will consider certainly that all the borders of China are more or less unstable, or threatened, or facing unfriendly countries, and that’s from the Chinese point of view.

Maybe they want to improve their situation. It doesn’t mean that we have to accept it, but maybe to see, to remember, that any defensive measure of one side is always seen as offensive by the other side.

So let’s understand that China has its own interests. You know, even dictatorships have legitimate interests. And so let’s look at these interests, and let’s try to find a compromise with our own interests.

Araud went on to point out that the US government is constantly militarily threatening China, sending warships across the planet to its coasts, but would never for a second tolerate Beijing doing the same to it:

When I was in Washington, just after the [hawkish anti-China] speech of Vice President Pence to the Hudson [Institute] in October 2018, I met a lot of specialists on China in Washington, DC, but when I was trying to tell them, you know, your [US] ships are patrolling at 200 miles from the Chinese coast, at 5000 miles from the American coast, what would be your reaction if Chinese ships were patrolling at 200 miles from your coast?

And obviously my interlocutors didn’t understand what I meant. And that’s the question, you know, really trying to figure out what are the reasonable interests of the other side.

Araud stressed that China “is not a military threat” to the West.

French diplomat: Western sanctions on Russia are causing us to ‘inflict pain on ourselves’

With this new cold war between the United States and China, Gérard Araud explained, “in this context, Russia is a bit like Austria-Hungary with Germany before the First World War, is a bit doomed to be the ‘brilliant second’ of China.”

While Araud harshly denounced Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he also criticized the Western sanctions on Moscow, which he cautioned, “on the European side, it is inflicting to ourselves some pain.”

He warned that Europe is in a “dead end” with Russia, “because as long as the war in Ukraine will go on, and my bet unfortunately is that it may go on for a long time, it will be impossible for the Europeans, and the Americans in a sense, but also for the Europeans to end the sanctions on Russia, which means that our relationship with Russia may be frozen for an indefinite future.”

“And I think it’s very difficult to have diplomatic activity [with Russia] in this situation,” he added.

You can watch the full panel discussion hosted by the Quincy Institute below:

*

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.

Featured image: France’s Ambassador to the US Gérard Araud with President Barack Obama in the White House in 2016 (Source: Multipolarista)

Lebanon Still Faces Multiple Crises

November 24th, 2022 by Michael Jansen

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

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

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

***

Jibran Bassil, who heads Lebanon’s Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), has been told by its ally Hizbollah the group will not support him for the presidency and will, instead, continue to back the candidacy of Suleiman Frangie. Kuwait daily Al Rai reported, Hizbollah “has sent Bassil unequivocal signals that it will not back his own nomination under any circumstances although it is keen on preserving the political alliance with him”.

The alliance with the Maronite Christian FPM is important to both Shia Hizbollah and Amal, as it gives them a Christian ally and a total of 47 seats in the 128-member Lebanese parliament. However, the faction which lost most seats in the May 15th legislative election was the FPM, which shed 12 of the 29 seats it obtained in the 2009 election. This made the FPM the second largest party after the right-wing Lebanese Forces.

Al-Rai cited an informed source who said that, in Hizbollah’s view, Bassil has an “unhidden desire to prepare the circumstances for his own presidential nomination [which involves] prolonging [the current] vacuum and eliminating those who have the best chances”.

Hezbollah, Al Rai said, is also “open to consensus on any other name which might enjoy broad domestic, international and Arab support, seeing as it wants to create an atmosphere that would allow for international-Gulf involvement in Lebanon’s revival process” once assurances are provided to the movement over retaining its weaponry. Frangie has given such a commitment, stating that Hizbollah’s weapons “do not need my cover or protection”. Presumably because there is no paramilitary force in Lebanon to challenge these weapons while the Lebanese army would not do so.

Former minister Wiam Wahhab has revealed that Hizbollah is also holding discussions with army chief Joseph Aoun whose name has been repeatedly mentioned as a successor to ex President Michel Aoun (who is not a relative of the general).

Parliament is set to hold a seventh session today with the aim of electing a president by majority vote. This will be the third since the former president left office at the end of October. Parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri has been criticised for repeatedly convening the national assembly while deeply divided factions cannot agree on a consensus candidate. It could take months before this is achieved while the country suffers economic collapse and 80 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line.

Since Lebanon’s parliament has in the past repeatedly failed to elect a president, this is not an unusual occurrence. Lebanon was without a president for 30 months before Aoun was chosen. However, the current situation leaves the country in a vacuum, facing multiple political, economic and social crises without a president, without a fully empowered government, and without a functioning legislature.

Caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati has declared support for Frangie, grandson of a former president, whose Marada movement has only two seats in parliament. According to Beirut daily Al Akbar France and Saudi Arabia have indicated they could accept Frangie while the US has rejected Bassil. He has been sanctioned for corruption and connections with Hizbollah, which Washington has accused of being a “terrorist” organisation because of its opposition to Israel.

Deadlock persists because Aoun appears to be supporting the strategy adopted by Bassil, his son-in-law, for securing the nomination by wearing down and wearing out parliament. Since May, when Mikati was compelled to become caretaker premier due to the parliamentary election, Aoun rebuffed every attempt he made, as premier designate, to form a government. A caretaker Cabinet cannot take major policy decisions and a caretaker prime minister cannot assume the presidency once the incumbent has stepped down and there is no replacement. Former Prime Minister Tammam Salam stepped into the role of acting president from May 2014 to October 2016 when Aoun was elected.

Meanwhile, there is some good news from Lebanon. Its vaccination campaign against cholera has inoculated 190,000 people, most between five and 14 years of age, reported caretaker Health Minister Firass Abiad. This is far above expectations in the drive to prevent cholera’s spread throughout the country. Some 600,000 doses of vaccine have been received by Lebanon where at least 18 people have died among 3,369 cases registered by the ministry since early October. The disease crossed the border from war and sanction devastated Syria where the UN’s children’s agency has reported 35,569 cases.

Following the US-brokered deal defining the maritime border between Lebanon and Israel, France’s Total and its partner Italy’s Eni announced they will soon begin exploration for natural gas in Lebanon’s Qana field. High yields could eventually help Lebanon overcome its financial crisis and encourage potential donors and investors to provide funding.

The American University of Beirut (AUB) founded by US missionaries in 1866, has been ranked top university in sustainable education in the region and 140th of 700 on the world scene, tying with prestigious Princeton in the US. The AUB has had a huge impact on the Arab world by educating generations of young people and providing independence leaders, presidents, prime ministers, doctors, scientists, literary figures, entrepreneurs and environmentalists.

*

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.

Featured image is from OneWorld

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Lebanon Still Faces Multiple Crises
  • Tags:

White House Announces ‘New Enforcement Guidance’ on COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

November 24th, 2022 by Jack Phillips

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

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

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

***

The White House on Nov. 22 announced “new enforcement guidance” on COVID-19 vaccine mandates for nursing home residents and staff.

It announced “new enforcement guidance to ensure nursing homes are offering updated COVID-19 vaccines and timely treatment to their residents and staff,” according to a White House fact sheet released on Nov. 22. It stated that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) still requires “nursing homes to educate their residents” on COVID-19 vaccines and offer vaccines to residents.

“CMS will issue guidance today reminding health care providers of this requirement,” the fact sheet reads. “In its guidance, CMS will make clear that nursing homes with low vaccination rates will be referred to state survey agencies for close scrutiny, and that facilities that do not comply with the requirement to offer and educate on the benefit of lifesaving COVID-19 vaccinations will face enforcement actions, including the need to submit corrective action plans to achieve compliance.”

The White House didn’t elaborate on what “enforcement actions” it would implement. However, in the fall of 2021, President Joe Biden’s administration announced vaccine mandates for facilities that receive Medicaid or Medicare funding—along with a now-scrapped rule that would force workers at companies with 100 or more employees to get the vaccine.

CMS officials didn’t respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment by press time regarding what penalties health care providers may encounter.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will ask “governors for their assistance and partnership in increasing COVID vaccination rates for long-term care residents and highlight for them how their states are performing against their peers,” according to the White House.

Corporate and government COVID-19 vaccine mandates have largely fallen out of favor in recent months amid falling COVID-19 numbers. Tyson Foods, the largest meat company by sales in the United States, confirmed last week that it dropped its mandate, while a New York judge tossed New York’s mandate for city employees in October.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated in 2021 that the requirement covers 10.4 million health care workers at 76,000 facilities.

Mandate

The vaccine requirement for Medicare and Medicaid providers was one of several mandates Biden’s administration imposed upon private-sector employers to try to drive up vaccination rates. The rule impacted doctors, nurses, aides, technicians, and even volunteers at hospitals, nursing homes, outpatient surgery centers, home-health providers, and other medical facilities that get Medicaid or Medicare funding.

The Supreme Court blocked a rule requiring employers with more than 100 workers to be vaccinated or tested weekly for COVID-19. A lower court also blocked a requirement for employees of federal contractors to be vaccinated.

Over the months, Biden’s various vaccine orders were challenged in court by Republican-led states, conservative groups, and some businesses. The lawsuits argued in part that the mandates exceeded federal executive powers and infringed on states’ rights to regulate public health matters.

About two dozen states recently asked (pdf) HHS and CMS to end its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers. Led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, 22 state attorneys general argued that the current policy is outdated and noted that vaccines don’t protect against COVID-19 infections.

“The mandate has limited many patients’ access to needed medical care and imposed substantial costs on patients and health care workers without any corresponding benefits. The Biden administration should have never imposed this mandate, and CMS should now throw it in the trash bin where it belongs,” Knudsen, a Republican, said in a statement.

Further, the states asserted that the CMS mandate led to widespread staffing shortages at health care facilities and limited patients’ access to medical care. CMS and HHS officials didn’t respond to a request for comment on the letter.

Earlier this year, CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said vaccine mandates hadn’t led to significant shortages, although she didn’t provide evidence.

“We have seen that healthcare systems that implement vaccine requirements are not experiencing dramatic staff losses,” Brooks-LaSure said in a letter (pdf) in February to health care facilities. “Vaccinated staff are instead more available to work since they are less likely to get sick.”

On Nov. 11, a spokesperson for HHS said the Biden administration will keep its COVID-19 emergency intact when the current emergency expires in January 2023 after a 60-day deadline passed. The spokesperson said the emergency “remains in effect and as HHS committed to earlier, we will provide a 60-day notice to states before any possible termination or expiration.”

A number of individual states, including ones run by Democrats, have dropped their respective states of emergency and some mandates in recent days. For example, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, announced that his state’s public health emergency ended on Oct. 31.

*

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.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter at The Epoch Times based in New York.

Featured image: A hospital corpsman administers a COVID-19 vaccine to a fellow corpsman at Naval Health Clinic Hawaii on Dec. 16, 2020. (Naval Health Clinic Hawaii)

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on White House Announces ‘New Enforcement Guidance’ on COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

Video: Planet Lockdown. The Most Devastating Crisis in Modern History: Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

November 24th, 2022 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.\

First published on 22 July 2021

Updated

***

Early in the Covid-19 pandemic Michel Chossudovsky recognized how this was being deliberately engineered to be The Most Devastating Crisis in Human History.

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.

August 2022: Michel Chossudovsky’s E Book (15 Chapters):

The Worldwide Corona Crisis: Global Coup d’État against Humanity

.

Watch the interview below, Vaccine Choice Canada

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Video: Planet Lockdown. The Most Devastating Crisis in Modern History: Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
  • Tags: , ,

Washington’s Plan to Break Up Russia

November 24th, 2022 by Mike Whitney

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

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

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

First published on November 6, 2022

***

“The Western goal is to weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our nation. They are openly stating that, since they managed to break up the Soviet Union in 1991, now it’s time to split Russia into many separate regions that will be at each other’s throats.” Russian President Vladimir Putin

“Cheney ‘wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.’...The West must complete the project that began in 1991 …. Until Moscow’s empire is toppled, though, the region—and the world—will not be safe…” (“Decolonize Russia”, The Atlantic)

Washington’s animus towards Russia has a long history dating back to 1918 when Woodrow Wilson deployed over 7,000 troops to Siberia as part of an Allied effort to roll back the gains of the Bolshevik Revolution. The activities of the American Expeditionary Force, which remained in the country for 18 months, have long vanished from history books in the US, but Russians still point to the incident as yet another example of America’s relentless intervention in the affairs of its neighbors. The fact is, Washington elites have always meddled in Russia’s business despite Moscow’s strong objections. In fact, a great number western elites not only think that Russia should be split-up into smaller geographical units, but that the Russian people should welcome such an outcome.

Western leaders in the Anglosphere are so consumed by hubris and their own blinkered sense of entitlement, they honestly believe that ordinary Russians would like to see their country splintered into bite-sized statelets that remain open to the voracious exploitation of the western oil giants, mining corporations and, of course, the Pentagon. Here’s how Washington’s geopolitical mastermind Zbigniew Brzezinski summed it up an article in Foreign Affairs:

“Given (Russia’s) size and diversity, a decentralized political system and free-market economics would be most likely to unleash the creative potential of the Russian people and Russia’s vast natural resources. A loosely confederated Russia — composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic — would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with its neighbors. Each of the confederated entitles would be able to tap its local creative potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow’s heavy bureaucratic hand. In turn, a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization.” (Zbigniew Brzezinski, “A Geostrategy for Eurasia”, Foreign Affairs, 1997)

The “loosely confederated Russia”, that Brzezinski imagines, would be a toothless, dependent nation that could not defend its own borders or sovereignty. It would not be able to prevent more powerful countries from invading, occupying and establishing military bases on its soil. Nor would it be able to unify its disparate people beneath a single banner or pursue a positive “unified” vision for the future of the country. A confederal Russia –fragmented into a myriad of smaller parts– would allow the US to maintain its dominant role in the region without threat of challenge or interference. And that appears to be Brzezinski’s real goal as he pointed out in this passage in his magnum opus The Grand Chessboard. Here’s what he said:

“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia…and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.” (“THE GRAND CHESSBOARD – American Primacy And It’s Geostrategic Imperatives”, Zbigniew Brzezinski, page 30, Basic Books, 1997)

Brzezinski sums up US imperial ambitions succinctly. Washington plans to establish its primacy in the world’s most prosperous and populous region, Eurasia. And–in order to do so– Russia must be decimated and partitioned, its leaders must be toppled and replaced, and its vast resources must be transferred to the iron grip of global transnationals who will use them to perpetuate the flow of wealth from east to west. In other words, Moscow must accept its humble role in the new order as America’s de-facto Gas and Mining Company.

Washington has never really veered from its aim of obliterating the Russian state, in fact, the recently released National Security Strategy (NSS) along with a congressional report titled “Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress”, confirm much of what we have said here, that the US plans to crush any emerging opposition to its expansion into Central Asia in order to become the dominant player in that region. Here’s an excerpt from the congressional report:

The U.S. goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia, though long-standing, is not written in stone—it 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.” (“Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress”, US Congress)

How different is this new iteration of official US foreign policy than the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine that was delivered prior to the War in Iraq. Here it is:

“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.”

As you can see, there has been no meaningful change in the policy since Wolfowitz articulated his doctrine nearly 2 decades ago. The US foreign policy establishment still resolutely asserts Washington’s right to dominate Central Asia and to regard any competitor in the region as national security threat. This is further underscored by the fact that both Russia and China have been identified in the latest National Security Strategy as “strategic competitors” which is a deep-state euphemism for mortal enemies. Check out this excerpt from an article titled “Partitioning Russia After World War III?”:

The end goal of the US and NATO is to divide and pacify the world’s biggest country, the Russian Federation, and to even establish a blanket of perpetual disorder (somalization) over its vast territory or, at a minimum, over a portion of Russia and the post-Soviet space…

The ultimate goal of the US is to prevent any alternatives from emerging in Europe and Eurasia to Euro-Atlantic integration. This is why the destruction of Russia is one of its strategic objectives….

Redrawing Eurasia: Washington’s Maps of a Divided Russia

With the division of the Russian Federation, (the) article claims that any bipolar rivalry between Moscow and Washington would end after World War III. In a stark contradiction, it claims that only when Russia is destroyed will there be a genuine multipolar world, but also implies that the US will be the most dominant global power even though Washington and the European Union will be weakened from the anticipated major war with the Russians.” (“Partitioning Russia after World War 3”, Global Research)

Washington’s relations with Russia have always been contentious but that has more to do with Washington’s geostrategic ambitions than any disruptive behavior on Moscow’s part. Russia’s only crime is that happens to occupy real estate in a part of the world the US wants to control by any means necessary. When Hillary Clinton first announced US plans to “pivot to Asia” most people thought it sounded like a reasonable scheme for shifting resources from the Middle East to Asia in order to increase US participation in the world’s fastest growing market. They didn’t realize at the time, that policymakers intended to goad Russia into a bloody ground-war in Ukraine to “weaken” Russia so that Washington could spread its military bases across the Eurasian landmass unopposed. Nor did anyone foresee the lengths to which Washington would go to provoke, isolate and demonize Russia for the express purpose of removing its political leaders and splitting the country into multiple statlets. Here’s Hillary making the case back in 2011:

“Harnessing Asia’s growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests… Open markets in Asia provide the United States with unprecedented opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology…..American firms (need) to tap into the vast and growing consumer base of Asia…

The region already generates more than half of global output and nearly half of global trade…. we are looking for opportunities to do even more business in Asia…and our investment opportunities in Asia’s dynamic markets.”(“America’s Pacific Century”, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton”, Foreign Policy Magazine, 2011)

A careful reading of Clinton’s speech along with a review of the Wolfowitz Doctrine will help even the most obtuse reader to draw some obvious conclusions about the current conflict in Ukraine which has almost nothing to do with so-called “Russian aggression”, but everything to do with Washington’s plan to project power across Asia , control Russia’s massive oil and gas reserves, encircle China with military bases, and establish American domination at the epicenter of this century’s most prosperous market. Here’s Putin again:

“In order to free itself from the latest web of challenges, they need to dismantle Russia as well as other states that choose a sovereign path of development, at all costs, to be able to further plunder other nations’ wealth and use it to patch their own holes. If this does not happen, I cannot rule out that they will try to trigger a collapse of the entire system, and blame everything on that, or, God forbid, decide to use the old formula of economic growth through war.”

US foreign policy experts are shameless in their promotion of theories that threaten to trigger a direct military confrontation with Russia that could result in a nuclear exchange. In a recent “webinar for congressmen and women hosted on June 23 under the title “Decolonizing Russia.” The webinar, staffed by CIA operatives and right-wing nationalists from Ukraine and the Caucasus, effectively argued that Russia was a colonial empire that had to be broken up with the support of Washington.” (WSWS) The author explores the reasons why some experts want to brand Russia as “imperialist”? An article at the WSWS explains why:

...”the claim that Russia is “imperialist” serves a vital political function: It provides a political cover for the imperialist aggression against Russia and the war aims of the imperialist powers…. It is this strategy which the pro-NATO pseudo-left covers up for with its clamor about “Russian imperialism.” The fostering of nationalist, regionalist and ethnic tensions has been a key component of imperialist war policy for decades…..

Through a combination of NATO expansion, coups on its borders and military interventions in countries allied with Russia and China, the imperialist powers have systematically and relentlessly encircled Russia…

Indeed, if one reviews the history of the wars waged by US imperialism over the past thirty years, the unfolding war for the carve-up of Russia and China appears like a brutal inevitability. Despite their reintegration into the world capitalist system, the imperialist powers have been barred by the ruling oligarchic regimes from directly plundering the vast resources of these countries. Vying for these resources between themselves, and driven by irresolvable domestic crises, they are now determined to change this.

… the draft resolution describes the basic aims of the US war against Russia as follows: “the removal of the present regime in Russia, its replacement by an American-controlled puppet, and the breakup of Russia itself—in what is referred to as “decolonizing Russia”—into a dozen or more impotent statelets whose valuable resources will be owned and exploited by US and European finance capital.” This passage is central for understanding both the unfolding conflict and the politics of the pro-NATO pseudo-left and their insistence that Russia is an “imperialist country.” (“The historical and political principles of the socialist opposition to imperialist war and the Putin regime“, Clara Weiss, World Socialist Web Site)

As you can see, elite members of the foreign policy establishment are doggedly searching for new and more convincing justifications for a confrontation with Russia the ultimate purpose of which is to fragment the country paving the way for Washington’s strategic rebalancing or “pivot”. 20 years ago, during the Bush administration, politicians were not nearly as circumspect in their views about Russia. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, made no attempt to conceal his utter contempt for Russia and was surprisingly candid about the policy he supported. Check out this excerpt 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…. Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote that, “When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, Dick wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat.”…

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.

Russian security services have published evidence that the United States supported Chechen separatists in their wars on the central Russian government. British academic John Laughland stressed in a 2004 article in The Guardian, titled “The Chechens’ American friends,” that several Chechen secessionist leaders were living in the West, and were even given grant money by the US government. Laughland noted that the most important US-based pro-Chechen secessionist group, the deceptively named American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), listed as its members “a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusiastically support the ‘war on terror’”:

They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be “a cakewalk”; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush’s plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.

The fact that far-right Salafi-jihadists made up a significant percentage of the Chechen insurgency didn’t bother these anti-Muslim neocons – just as Islamophobic “War on Terror” veterans had no problem supporting extremist head-chopping Takfiri Islamists in the subsequent US wars on Syria and Libya….

…. Victoria Nuland, the third-most powerful official in the Joe Biden administration’s State Department, served as Vice President Cheney’s principal deputy foreign policy adviser from 2003 to 2005. (She also helped to sponsor the violent coup in Ukraine in 2014 that toppled the democratically-elected government.) Like her mentor Cheney, Nuland is a hard-line neoconservative. The fact that he is a Republican and she works primarily in Democratic administrations is irrelevant; this hawkish foreign-policy consensus is completely bipartisan.

Nuland (a former member of the bipartisan board of directors of the NED) is also married to Robert Kagan, a patron saint of neoconservatism, and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century – the cozy home of the neocons in Washington, where he worked alongside Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and other top Bush administration officials. Kagan was a longtime Republican, but in 2016 he joined the Democrats and openly campaigned for Hillary Clinton for president.” (“Ex VP Dick Cheney confirmed US goal is to break up Russia, not just USSR”, Ben Norton, Multipolarista)

US foreign policy is now exclusively in the hands of a small group of neocon extremists who reject diplomacy outright and who genuinely believe that America’s strategic interests can only be achieved through a military conflict with Russia. That said, we can say with some degree of certainty, that things are going to get alot worse before they get better.

*

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

This article was 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).

Featured image is from The Unz Review

Selected Articles: Why Do Americans Hate Putin?

November 24th, 2022 by Global Research News

Why Do Americans Hate Putin?

By Mike Whitney, November 23, 2022

Is Carlson right, do Americans hate Putin because the media and the political class in Washington have told them to do so? Yes and no. Yes, the media and the politicians have played a big role in the demonization of Putin. But, no, they’re not the main drivers of this smear campaign.

“The COVID mRNA Vaccine Causes Cardiac Arrests, Heart Attacks, Strokes… : Leading British Cardiologist, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, and Dr. Peter McCullough Independently Come to Same Conclusion

By John Leake, November 24, 2022

Until the British cardiologist, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, expressed grave concern about the safety of Covid mRNA vaccines, he was one of the most celebrated doctors in Britain. In 2016 he was named in the Sunday Times Debrett’s list as one of the most influential people in science and medicine in the UK in a list that included Professor Stephen Hawking.

Where Has the DoDs Money Gone? The Pentagon Fails Its Fifth Audit. $3.5 Trillion in Assets, 39% of Which Are Accounted For…

By Connor Echols, November 23, 2022

The news came as no surprise to Pentagon watchers. After all, the U.S. military has the distinction of being the only U.S. government agency to have never passed a comprehensive audit.

Massachusetts Death Certificates Show Excess Mortality Could be Linked to COVID Vaccines

By Madhava Setty, November 23, 2022

After analyzing more than seven years of Massachusetts death certificates, independent investigator John Beaudoin, Sr., uncovered evidence that thousands of deaths in 2021 may have been linked to COVID-19 vaccines.

The WEF’s Digital Tyranny: “Are We Ready for a New World Order?” Cashless Society Talk Goes Mainstream in a Hurry and Should be Trusted Like the NSA

By David Haggith, November 23, 2022

We’re on the brink of a dramatic change where we’re about to — and I’ll say this boldly — we’re about to abandon the traditional system of money, and accounting, and introduce a new one…. The new accounting is what we call “blockchain.”

Israeli Military Chief Tells US to Step Up Planning for Joint Attacks on Iran

By Dave DeCamp, November 23, 2022

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi arrived in the US on Sunday and has been holding talks with high-level officials. So far this week, he has met with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and CIA Director William Burns.

All Western Attempts to Isolate Russia at G20 Failed

By Ahmed Adel, November 23, 2022

From November 15 to 16, the G20 Summit took place in Indonesia, and contrary to Western attempts, Russia was an active and welcomed participant. On the eve of the Summit, the US called for Russia to be isolated, however, what transpired in Bali instead did not live up to Washington’s expectations – the Russian delegation, led by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, was not abandoned despite all efforts and attempts.

COP27 Concludes While the Environmental Crisis Continues

By Abayomi Azikiwe, November 23, 2022

There were high expectations for the United Nations Climate Conference held in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh. COP27 took place on the African continent amid months of preparations by governments, non-governmental and mass organizations across the region and beyond.

From the History of WWII: A Genocide in Nazi Croatia

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, November 23, 2022

Due to the current conflict in (East) Ukraine (historically known as Russia Minor), the world is more and more becoming informed about the genocide of the Poles, Jews, and Russians on the territory of West Ukraine during WWII committed by Ukrainian Nazi-nationalists (the Banderists).

Cancel Culture’s War on History, Heritage and the Freedom to Think for Yourself

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, November 23, 2022

We are being shunted down the road to that dystopian future right now, propelled along by politically correct forces that, while they may have started out with the best of intentions, have fallen prey to the authoritarian siren song of the Nanny State, which has promised to save the populace from evils that only a select few are wise enough to recognize as such.

  • Posted in NO READ MORE LINK
  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: Why Do Americans Hate Putin?

“The Covid mRNA Vaccine Causes Cardiac Arrests, Heart Attacks, Strokes… : Leading British Cardiologist, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, and Dr. Peter McCullough Independently Come to Same Conclusion

November 24th, 2022 by John Leake

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

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

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

***

“The Covid mRNA vaccine has likely played a significant role or been a primary cause of unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure since 2021…”

Until the British cardiologist, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, expressed grave concern about the safety of Covid mRNA vaccines, he was one of the most celebrated doctors in Britain. In 2016 he was named in the Sunday Times Debrett’s list as one of the most influential people in science and medicine in the UK in a list that included Professor Stephen Hawking. His total Altmetric score (measure of impact and reach) of his medical journal publications since 2013 is over 10,000 making it one of the highest in the World for a clinical doctor during this period.

In the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Britain, he advocated the injections for the general public. However, in July of 2021, he experienced a terrible personal loss that caused him to reevaluate the shots—namely, the sudden and unexpected death of his 73-year-old father. His father’s death made no sense to him because he knew from his own examination that his father’s general and cardiac health were excellent. As he put it in a recent interview:

His postmortem findings really shocked me. There were two severe blockages in his coronary arteries, which didn’t really make any sense with everything I know, both as a cardiologist—someone who has expertise in this particular area—but also intimately knowing my dad’s lifestyle and his health. Not long after that, data started to emerge that suggested a possible link between the mRNA vaccine and increased risk of heart attacks from a mechanism of increasing inflammation around the coronary arteries. But on top of that, I was contacted by a whistleblower at a very prestigious university in the UK, a cardiologist himself, who explained to me that there was a similar research finding in his department, and that those researchers had decided to essentially cover that up because they were worried about losing funding from the pharmaceutical industry. But it doesn’t stop there. I then started looking at data in the UK to see if there had been any increase in cardiac arrest. My dad suffered a cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death at home. Had there been any change in the UK since the vaccine rollout? And again those findings were very clear. There’s been an extra 14,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests in 2021 vs 2020.

The more Dr. Malhotra looked into it, the more he felt the same concern about the safety of the mRNA vaccines that Dr. Peter McCullough had felt since the spring of 2021. The alarming incidence of sudden, unexpected deaths during the latter half of 2021 and the first eight months of 2022—especially among the young and fit—strengthened his grave concern and suspicion.

In September of 2022,—after a thorough investigation of the growing volume of data—he came to his conclusion:

The Covid mRNA vaccine has likely played a significant role or been a primary cause of unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure since 2021 until proven otherwise.

His conclusion, including his precise verbal formulation of it, was identical to the conclusion drawn by Dr. Peter McCullough. Though the two doctors ultimately established contact to compare notes, they reached their conclusions based on their own, independent inquiries, before they spoke with each other.

Recently the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation produced Until Proven Otherwise— a short video documentary about the corroborating findings of these two leading cardiologists. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the gripping, four-minute video is a MUST SEE for everyone. Please share it with your family and friends.

 

 


If you live in Dallas—or happen to find yourself in Dallas—on the evening of November 29, 2022, please be sure to attend the dinner for Drs. Malhotra and McCullough, hosted by the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation. It is sure to be a fascinating evening of discovery and conversation—not to mention a great party. We hope to see you there. Please click HERE to register for the event.

*

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.

John Leake is a True Crime Writer. Coauthor with Dr. Peter McCullough of “The Courage to Face COVID-19.: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Biopharmaceutical Complex.”

Featured image:  A hand holding an mRNA vaccine vial. (Spencer Davis / Unsplash)

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

Video Interview: “The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity”. Michel Chossudovsky

November 23rd, 2022 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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

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

 

***

The Launching of  Michel Chossudovsky’s Book entitled:

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

As a means to reaching out to millions of people worldwide whose lives have been affected by the corona crisis, we have decided in the course of the next few weeks to distribute the eBook for FREE.

FREE COPY Click here to download.

***

 

Video Interview of Michel  Chossudovsky with Caroline Mailloux

Click screen below

 

 

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized, –Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

 仕組まれたコロナ危機:「世界の初期化」を目論む者たち

Reviewed in Japan 🇯🇵 on November 18, 2022

“It’s a great book that I want people all over Japan to read. When I read this book, the various events explained in chronological order all fall into place and context, and they came close with a sense of reality. It’s terrifying. My heart became pounding and painful as I read on. We must carefully determine the reverse side of the goodwill of the people who organized the COVID-19 pandemic. What can we do as a grassroots person? It’s a tough question. 

 

Iraq’s ‘Theft of the Century’: How $2.5bn in Public Money ‘Evaporated’

November 23rd, 2022 by Suadad al-Salhy

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

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

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

***

A confidential report obtained by Middle East Eye reveals intricate details of a plot involving fraudulent cheques dubbed the “theft of the century” by Iraqi media in which trillions of dinars were stolen from Iraq’s tax authority.

The report sets out the findings of an investigation by Iraq’s ministry of finance that uncovered how hundreds of cheques purportedly issued by the tax authority were cashed at branches of a state-owned bank between September 2021 and August 2022.

The investigation, launched in September by the country’s then-acting finance minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar Ismail, concluded that almost 3.7 trillion dinars (about $2.5bn) had been stolen from the Iraqi General Commission of Taxes (IGCT).

The report was sent by the finance ministry to the Iraqi parliament’s finance committee last month but has not been made public.

It raises serious concerns of corruption or negligence involving senior figures at the tax authority, the state-owned Rafidain Bank, and within the wider Iraqi political system – with dozens of officials in different state apparatus facing charges over alleged theft or alleged facilitation of theft from the IGCT’s tax deposit accounts used to hold money paid in advance by companies against future tax liabilities.

It also suggests that the thefts were enabled by the removal of Iraq’s public spending watchdog, the Federal Board of Supreme Audit (FBSA), from oversight of tax deposit refund requests just weeks before the first cheques were cashed.

According to documents reviewed by MEE, this change was proposed by the then-head of the parliamentary finance committee.

It also appears to have been approved by a top official in the office of then-prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, as well as by the heads of the IGCT and the FBSA.

Details of the thefts came to light following the resignation in August of the finance minister, Ali Allawi, in protest at what he described as endemic corruption in public finances.

In Allawi’s place, Kadhimi appointed Ismail, then also the oil minister, as acting finance minister.

MEE understands Ismail was told about the missing funds when officials discovered there was not enough money in the IGCT’s accounts to cover genuine requests from companies for tax deposit refunds.

But Iraq’s parliament – at the recommendation of the finance committee – last month voted for Ismail to be removed from the finance ministry over alleged mismanagement just days after the ministry forwarded the report on the investigation.

Ismail subsequently offered his resignation to Kadhimi, which the prime minister accepted.

In his resignation letter, which MEE has seen, Ismail blamed moves to oust him from the finance ministry on parties who he said wanted to stop the investigation into the missing tax money, and said that removing him from the post was in the interests of those who had profited from the theft.

The saga has unfolded amid wider upheaval in Iraqi politics. On 27 October, the parliament finally approved a new government led by Mohammed Shia al-Sudani after more than a year of deadlock since elections in October 2021 during which Kadhimi had remained in office as caretaker prime minister.

Speaking earlier this month, Sudani vowed to tackle corruption and called for the funds stolen from the IGCT to be recovered.

Those so far arrested or the subject of warrants include current and former officials at the IGCT, the finance ministry, Rafidain Bank, and the Federal Commission of Integrity (FCI), a regulatory body.

MEE understands they also include members of Iraqi intelligence, senior staff in former Prime Minister Kadhimi’s office, and a number of businessmen.

‘Reverse-tracking’ the missing money

The classified report obtained by MEE reveals how a web of companies and related bank accounts was created to enable trillions of dinars to be stolen through fake cheques purportedly issued and then cashed for tax deposit refunds from the IGCT’s accounts at Rafidain Bank.

According to the report, the balance of the accounts at the time of the investigation should have been 3,531,501,702,289 dinars (about $2.4bn). But the actual balance was just 145,050,309,732 dinars ($99m).

Investigators said the money had been stolen using 247 cheques paid to five companies with accounts at branches of Rafidain Bank between September 2021 and August 2022.

All of the money was withdrawn from the banks as cash shortly after the cheques had been paid to the accounts. The scheme peaked in June 2022 when 45 cheques worth 775 billion dinars ($531m) were cashed.

Rafidain Bank branch in Baghdad (MEE)

Rafidain Bank’s branch in Baghdad’s Al-Waziriya neighbourhood, where some of the cheques were cashed (Mohammed Aqeel/MEE)

But investigators found no records of the cheques being issued by the IGCT. One person involved in the investigation, speaking to MEE on condition of anonymity, said the money appeared to have “evaporated”.

“The robbers cancelled the entire documentation process for requests for tax refunds,” he said.

“All the cheques were issued without any documents, so we did not know what had happened until we started reverse-tracking the movement of money.”

Investigators discovered that none of the companies to whom the money was paid had any tax deposits to reclaim. Some of the companies had been created just weeks beforehand, and all five company accounts held by Rafidain Bank were opened shortly before they were first used to cash the cheques.

The five companies which cashed cheques were Al-Qant General Contracting Company, Al-Mobdioon Oil Services Company, Al-Hout Al-Ahdab General Trading Company, the Badiat al-Masaa Company, and the Riyah Baghdad Company for General Trading.

Al-Qant cashed cheques totalling almost 1.2 trillion dinars (around $812m) between September 2021 and August 2022.

According to the report, the first cheque, worth more than 44 billion dinars ($30m), was paid into Al-Qant’s account at Rafidain Bank on 9 September 2021, just two days after the account had been opened.

Al-Hout Al-Ahdab cashed cheques worth 982 billion dinars ($673m), Badiat al-Masaa cashed 624 billion dinars ($428m), Riyah Baghdad Company cashed 477 billion dinars ($327m), and Al-Mobdioon cashed 433 billion dinars ($297m).

The report names a businessman, Noor Zuhair Jassim, as the CEO of both Al-Qant and Al-Mobidoon companies. Jassim was arrested last month at Baghdad International Airport. MEE was unable to reach Jassim for comment but understands he is still in custody.

The three other companies were all established in July 2021 and all share the same CEO, named in the report as Abdul Mahdi Tawfiq Mahdi, a 68-year-old businessman. Mahdi has been released on bail but his whereabouts are unknown and MEE was unable to reach him for comment.

All three companies opened bank accounts in November 2021, about six weeks before cheques were paid into the accounts.

Bank statements up to September 2022 for the five companies seen by MEE show that no deposits were paid into the accounts other than the cheques from the IGCT. Most of the money was withdrawn in cash on the same day it was deposited.

Officials involved in the investigation told MEE the withdrawal of such large amounts of cash – on some days totalling 90 billion dinars ($61.7m) – should have set alarm bells ringing.

“Withdrawing such huge sums in cash, not only draws attention, but is considered a disaster in the banking sector,” said an advisor at the finance ministry.

“Money for a bank manager is like a child that has to be cared for and protected. Allowing such amounts to be withdrawn over a year without the bank manager opening an investigation, or informing the minister of finance or the Central Bank, is an unforgivable and unjustifiable sin.”

MEE contacted the finance ministry, which also handles media queries relating to Rafidain Bank. But the ministry declined to comment because it said the case is still under investigation.

How the watchdog was sidelined

According to the report, one of the main reasons why the thefts were not detected earlier was that Iraq’s public spending watchdog, the FBSA, which had previously been responsible for auditing tax deposit refund requests, had been removed from this oversight role in August 2021, just weeks before the first cheque was cashed.

“The FBSA was the biggest obstacle faced by the thieves, so they worked to remove it,” a senior Iraqi official familiar with the investigation told MEE.

The FBSA oversees the financial accounts of ministries, government departments, and independent public bodies.

In 2017, then-Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi tasked the FBSA with auditing requests to refund tax and customs deposits. Abadi told MEE this was necessary to “reduce manipulations” of the system.

In July 2021, however, Haitham al-Jubouri, who was then the head of the parliamentary finance committee and later became an advisor to Kadhimi on financial policy, sent a letter to Ali Allawi, the finance minister, urging him to reverse this move.

Jubouri told Allawi his committee had received complaints from companies frustrated that payment of tax refunds was being delayed by the FBSA’s scrutiny of the process.

Jubouri wrote:

“With the aim of mitigating the procedures… we suggest that the IGCT conduct the audit procedures… and limit the role of the FBSA to its basic tasks stipulated in its law.”

Copies of the letter were sent to the heads of the FBSA and the IGCT.

In a statement, Jubouri told MEE his proposal had only made the point that Iraq’s financial management law “did not mention any role for the FBSA to disperse tax trust deposits”.

He said responsibility for the subsequent change to the auditing arrangements rested with the IGCT.

“Those who stopped the audit were [carrying out] the directives of the IGCT… not the proposal we submitted,” said Jubouri.

Rafidain bank headquarters

The headquarters of the Rafidain Bank in Baghdad (Mohammed Aqeel/MEE)

Jubouri was questioned by a Baghdad court as part of preliminary investigations but no arrest warrant against him was issued. A security official familiar with the progress of the investigation told MEE Jubouri had left Iraq for Jordan.

Jubouri’s letter appears to have set in motion a chain of events that led to the shift in responsibility for auditing tax refund requests from the FBSA to the IGCT.

In a letter sent to Kadhimi’s office on 27 July, the head of the FBSA expressed support for Jubouri’s proposal and asked whether the watchdog should continue to audit tax refund requests.

Jubouri’s proposal then appears to have gained the backing of Raed Jouhi, the head of Kadhimi’s office.

According to documents seen by MEE, Jouhi instructed Ibrahim al-Zubaidi, the prime minister’s legal adviser, to write to the FBSA, the IGCT, and the General Customs Authority in support of the proposed reduced role for the FBSA.

In his letter, however, Zubaidi advised them only to “do what is necessary in accordance with the law”, citing articles of the financial management law and another law relating to the work of the FBSA.

Neither of the laws cited by Zubaidi appears to provide any statutory basis for removing the oversight role of the FBSA in regard to tax refund requests, MEE found.

In fact, in law, the FBSA has a broad remit to audit all aspects of public finance.

MEE contacted both Jouhi and Ibrahim al-Zubaidi for comment but got no response.

According to further correspondence and documents reviewed by MEE, Zubaidi’s letter nevertheless appears to have been taken as approval by top officials at both the IGCT and the FBSA to halt the auditor’s oversight of refund requests.

On 2 August, the director general of the IGCT, Shaker Al-Zubaidi, ordered officials to begin work to adopt the new auditing procedure that he said had been approved by Kadhimi’s office and the FBSA.

Zubaidi left the IGCT days later, moving to another role within the finance ministry in the customs department. When contacted for this story, Shaker al-Zubaidi referred MEE to his media advisor who declined to comment.

By the end of August 2021, Allawi was facing mounting pressure to remove the FBSA from the process of auditing requests for tax deposit refunds and finally agreed.

Within weeks millions of dollars were being siphoned unnoticed – and yet withdrawn as cash at branches of Rafidain Bank – from the IGCT’s account.

‘Secret networks’

It would be almost another year before Allawi quit over what he described as his frustration at a separate scandal also involving Rafidain Bank in which it had agreed to pay an e-payments company $600m in compensation to terminate a contract between them.

Allawi denounced the contract as corrupt, describing the case as “the straw which broke the camel’s back” and citing endemic public sector corruption.

“There are extensive secret networks [consisting of] senior officials, businessmen, politicians, and corrupt state officials, operating in the shadows to control entire sectors of the economy and withdraw billions of dollars from the public treasury,” he wrote in a devastating resignation letter to Kadhimi which he read out at cabinet.

Asked why he had agreed to the removal of the FBSA from its oversight role, Allawi told MEE: “My approval was based on the request of the legislative authority represented by the finance committee of the former parliament, the approval of the FBSA and the prime minister’s office, as well as the request of the IGCT.”

Allawi said he had nonetheless put other auditing processes in place, and suggested that the FBSA’s scrutiny of tax deposit requests would not have been enough to stop the theft of the tax authority’s money – because the thieves had left no paper trail for auditors to follow.

“The existence of the FBSA would have made [the thieves] think twice before doing this, but it [the FBSA] would not have discovered the theft,” he said.

*

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.

Featured image: 247 cheques worth about $2.5bn were cashed at branches of Rafidain Bank between September 2021 and August 2022 (Ilustration by Mohamad Elaasar)

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Iraq’s ‘Theft of the Century’: How $2.5bn in Public Money ‘Evaporated’
  • Tags:

JFK Assassination. Remembering the November 22, 1963 Deep State Coup d’état

November 23rd, 2022 by Charles Burris

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

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

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

***

Today is the fifty-ninth anniversary of the brutal assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas, Texas and the subsequent regime change/cover-up of his murder. After almost six decades the final confrontation, repercussions, reconciliation, and resolution of this tragic event and its impact must be undertaken.

President Joseph R. Biden must issue the appropriate executive order in compliance with the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, and direct all government agencies/entities to make public and unredacted all complete files and records pertaining to the assassination of John Kennedy as directed by this Act. This information shall be transmitted to the National Archives for full public disclosure to be included in the Archives’ Collection and made available for public inspection and copying.

There is an ever-growing scholarly consensus among presidential historians, distinguished political analysts, and JFK assassination researchers that on November 22, 1963, an insidious coup d’état by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and the highest echelons of the National Security State was accomplished with the brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy.

The official full 889-page report by the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, about the assassination of President John Kennedy on November 22, 1963, established the cover-up of this coup. Their landmark final report was presented to President Lyndon Johnson on September 24, 1964, and made public on September 27.

What happened on that fateful Friday in Dallas fifty-nine years ago led to perhaps the single most important series of events affecting the subsequent history of our nation. It lies at the inner most depth, the dark clotted heart, of what observers now describe as the deep state.

Here are additional authoritative evidentiary resources to assist readers in examining this seminal event —  

Thirty years after his film JFK, filmmaker Oliver Stone takes viewers on a journey though recently declassified evidence in the assassination of President Kennedy — the most consequential American murder mystery of the twentieth century. Joined by Whoopi Goldberg and Donald Sutherland, as well as a distinguished team of forensics, medical and ballistics experts, historians, and witnesses, Stone presents compelling evidence that in the Kennedy case ‘conspiracy theory’ is now ‘conspiracy fact.’

This is the full length uncut version of Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane. Lane, one of the early critics of the preconceived conclusions of the Warren Commission, went to Dallas to do his own investigation and interview witnesses that were ignored by the Commission and others who expanded on their knowledge of the JFK assassination. Particularly crucial were the authoritative statements of eyewitnesses S. M. Holland, Lee E. Bowers, and Mrs. Acquila Clemons, What is portrayed in this short critique offers a different picture from the one presented by the US government to the world. This film is a brief for the defense of Lee Harvey Oswald. Mark Lane’s pioneering best-selling book, Rush to Judgment, challenged the Warren Commission Report relating to Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole assassin of President John Kennedy.

Andrew Gavin Marshall in 2010 wrote an exceptional online summary article entitled , “The National Security State and the Assassination of JFK” which builds upon the path-breaking research of author James W. Douglass in his widely-acclaimed book, JFK and the Unspeakable:Why He Died and Why It Matters

These are the first analytical studies serious scholars should examine in depth, followed by the entire five volume series of Douglas P. Horne’s Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK.

Horne is the former Chief Analyst for Military Records for the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), established by the JFK Records Act of 1992, which was tasked with defining, locating, and ensuring the declassification (to the maximum extent possible under the JFK Act) of all Federal Records considered “reasonably related” to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Horne details the numerous anomalies and interrupted chain of custody and destruction of key evidence regarding the president’s body, in the autopsy report(s), the autopsy photo collection (particularly the JFK brain photographs), the deliberate alteration and forgery of the extant Zapruder film, and the supposed “magic bullet” found at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Watch Douglas P. Horne’s definitive five part video documentary series which summarizes his exceptional research, Altered History: Exposing Deceit and Deception in the JFK, Assassination Medical Evidence. Horne has also written the concise authoritative summary volume, JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated.

While serving as chief analyst of military records at the Assassination Records Review Board in 1997, Douglas P. Horne discovered that the Zapruder Film was examined by the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center two days after the assassination of President Kennedy. In this film, Horne interviews legendary NPIC photo interpreter Dino Brugioni, who speaks for the first time about another NPIC examination of the film the day after the assassination. Brugioni didn’t know about the second examination and believes the Zapruder Film in the archives today is not the film he saw the day after the assassination. Drawing on Volume 4 of his book “Inside the ARRB”, Horne introduces the subject and presents his conclusions.

Jeffrey Sachs – “JFK’s Quest for Peace;”

Stephen Kinzer – “Regime Change: Roots of the Imperial Temptation;”

Michael Glennon – “Double Government and the ‘Best Truth’ about the Assassination;”

Douglas Horne —  “The National Security Establishment’s Obsession with Invading Cuba;”

Michael Swanson – “What Is The Purpose of the National Security State?”

Peter Janney – “JFK & Mary Meyer: Relationship as Redemption;”

Ron Paul – “Enemies: Foreign and Domestic;”

Jefferson Morley – “Angleton, Cuba, and Assassination;”

James DiEugenio – “Vietnam Declassified: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon;”

Oliver Stone with James DiEugenio – “If JFK Were Alive Today;” and

Jacob G. Hornberger – “The National Security State: The Biggest Mistake in U.S. History”

The national-security establishment’s assassination of President John F. Kennedy was one of the pivotal events in our lifetime, and it continues to have an adverse impact on American life today. This conference was held in March and April of 2021 and was oriented toward people who are not well-versed in the assassination and who wish to gain a deeper understanding of it.

The conference presents an easy-to-understand introduction to what happened and why. Consider it a primer on the Kennedy assassination. Attendees learned about President Kennedy’s foreign policy and how it was so different from that of both his predecessors and successors — and why the Pentagon and the CIA considered it to be such a grave threat to national security. Attendees also learned about the fraudulent nature of the autopsy that the national-security establishment performed on the president’s body on the evening of the assassination and how it leads to an understanding of the assassination itself.

The conference consists of an astounding 31 hours of online presentations by various speakers,  Viewers will have a good grasp of what happened on that fateful day in November 1963 and why it is so critically important today. 

  • The “smoking gun” in the cover-up of the assassination is found in CIA Dispatch #1035-960 (available online). This was the crucial covert directive to the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird elite media assets to vigorously denounce critics of the Warren Commission Report as “conspiracy theorists.” This is when that particular derogatory term of denunciation and disinformation widely entered the national conversation in an attempt to marginalize, cut off and stifle informed debate on the president’s murder because the path of evidence would lead directly to those elements behind the sinister cover-up. These facts are discussed in detail in Lance deHaven-Smith’s authoritative Conspiracy Theory in America (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press). Dr. Smith is a widely published scholar in peer-reviewed academic journals and is Professor in the Reubin O’ D. Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

This is an excellent and invaluable resource. Comprehensive, accessible and unprecedented, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination presents vital information on each of more than 1,400 individuals related in any noteworthy way to the murders of President John F. Kennedy, Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit and alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22 and 24, 1963. Based on years of research, a wealth of sources and a long study of the Warren Commission’s twenty-six volumes, this encyclopedic book includes: A-to-Z entries on virtually all the suspects, victims, witnesses, law enforcement officials and investigators.

Quick identification of each person followed by biographical facts, testimony, evidence and more. Detailed listings of sources. Explorations of the puzzling theories and countless sides of the case. Extensive cross-referencing of entries, allowing readers to follow their own investigations and construct their own conclusions. This all-new who’s who will prove an essential companion to the many best-selling books, documentaries and feature films about the JFK assassination.

Bound to be referred to again and again, it is the complete resource for anyone who wants to know more about– or wants to keep better track of– the key players involved in one of the most infamous chapters in American history.

This is the first of several high-level political analyses motivated by a need to better understand the politics that led to both the JFK assassination and the Nixon Watergate Affair. It deploys as the primary theoretical model, C. Wright Mills “Theory of the Power Elite” and the framework in Carroll Quigleys book Tragedy and Hope. With these tools, Carl Oglesby posits an interesting thesis: that JFK’s assassination, instead of being a random act by a lone nut was in fact a carefully planned and professional executed ongoing coup d’ etat a la Americaine, a not so silent coup by the same forces responsible for the murders of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X and possibly the demise and eventual destruction of the billionaire Howard Hughes.

What all of these events had in common was that they were links in a chain designed to replace one set of power elite (members of the old moneyed “peace promoting” Northeastern Yankee Establishment) with another (the Nuevo Riche and newly arrived, “progress through war” Western Cowboys). Thus it is argued here that the events connecting Dallas, Memphis, Watergate and the demise of the Hughes empire, are but threads in a common fabric, growing and evolving directly out of the systematic corruption of American politics and out of contemporary political realities.

The late Murray N. Rothbard was particularly enamored with this pioneering book, remarking:

Carl Oglesby’s new book is not only exciting and thoroughly researched, it presents the only analytic framework — originated by himself — which makes sense of the violent events of the last decade and a half our recent political history, and puts them all into a coherent framework: the Yankee vs. Cowboy analysis.

The important question looms: why is it that Oglesby has been alone in coming up with this framework? I think the answer is that the methodologies of other writers and researchers have led them astray: the free-market economists who are critical of government actions never bother to ask who benefited from those actions and who were likely to be responsible for them; the Marxists are anxious to indict an abstract, mythical and unified ‘capitalist class’ for all evils of government, and believe that detailed research into concrete divisions and conflicts among power elites detract from such an indictment; those sociologists who have engaged in concrete power elite analysis have only examined structures (who owns corporation X, who belongs to what social club?) rather than the dynamics of concrete historical events; the one writer who has treated Yankees and Cowboys has been so blinded by particular hostility to the Cowboys that he virtually includes everyone living in the Sunbelt as part of a vast Cowboy conspiracy; and the various doughty investigators and reporters of Dallas or Watergate have struck to surface events because they lacked the overall coherent framework.

Carl Oglesby has surmounted all of these defects, and has therefore been able to make a giant breakthrough in explaining our recent history.

The death of Mary Meyer left many Americans with questions. Who really killed her? Why did CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton rush to find and confiscate her diary? Had she discovered the plan to assassinate her lover, President Kennedy, with the trail of information ending at the steps of the CIA? Was it only coincidence that she was killed less than three weeks after the release of the Warren Commission Report?

Fans of The Murder of Mary Russell, JFK: A Vision for America, and other JFK books will love Mary’s Mosaic. Building and relying on years of interviews and painstaking research, author Peter Janney follows the key events and influences in Mary Pinchot Meyer’s life—her first meeting with Jack Kennedy; her support of her secret lover, President Kennedy, as he worked towards the pursuit of world peace and away from the Cold War; and her exploration of psychedelic drugs. Fifty years after the assassinations of President Kennedy and Mary Meyer, this book helps readers understand why both took place.

Author Peter Janney fought for two years to obtain documents from the National Personnel Records Center and the US Army to complete this third edition. It includes a final chapter about the mystery man who could be the missing piece to learn the truth behind Meyer’s murder.

Focuses upon the intimate relationship between JFK and Mary Pinchot Meyer and their brutal murders.

Dr. Cyril Wecht, for two decades the elected coroner of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (including Pittsburgh), is a nationally acclaimed forensic pathologist, and holds both a medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1956), and a law degree from the University of Maryland (1962). Forensic pathologists specialize in medically determining how and why someone died.

In criminal murder cases this function is absolutely vital in helping to determine the guilt or innocence of a suspect — in no case more so than in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Dr. Wecht, a very early critic of the Warren Commission, testified at the HSCA. At the annual JFK Lancer assassination research conference in Dallas, held in November, Dr. Wecht summarized the medical evidence against the lone-gunman hypothesis. At the center of Dr. Wecht’s examination is what has become known as the “single-bullet theory” — or the “magic bullet,” as it is known to its detractors: the theory that one bullet can account for the multiple wounds (besides the headshot) of both JFK and Governor Connally.

According to Dr. Wecht, the conclusions of the Warren Commission rest entirely on the single-bullet theory. If that theory fails, then there had to be more than one gunman. This, in turn, leads to questions about the history of the United States since 1963 that many people would rather not pursue. With both passion and meticulous attention to detail, Wecht dissects the Warren Commission’s conclusions.

Moving beyond the medical evidence, he then utters words unexpected from any former American elected official, and particularly powerful coming from a person with his credentials: “What we witnessed…my friends, in plain, plain English — was [a] coup d’état in America. The overthrow of the government. That’s what this case was all about.”

Watch this classic eight minute YouTube clip of JFK Assassination researcher John Judge from the “JFK: Cinema as History” conference (January 1992) which appeared on C-SPAN. It reveals more about “the why” of the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the coup d’état following his murder than almost anything you have probably heard.

After quoting Thomas Jefferson on the importance of a free press to a republic, John Judge makes a disparaging reference to The Washington Post and The New York Times. He then pauses for a few seconds and is shown glaring at another panel member. This person (not shown in the clip) was Walter Pincus of The Washington Post, who had viciously attacked Oliver Stone’s movie JFK. The older man who is briefly shown in one momentary scene is the late Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty who served as chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff where he was in charge of the global system designed to provide military support for covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. In Oliver Stone’s highly acclaimed film, JFK, the mysterious character ‘X’ portrayed by Donald Sutherland was in fact Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who assisted director Stone in the production and scripting of this historical epic.

Prouty had relayed the shocking information detailed in the movie to the actual New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Cosner) in a series of communiques. Fletcher Prouty was the author of two excellent books, The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World. and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy.

JFK: A President Betrayed

Narrated by Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman, “JFK: A President Betrayed” uncovers shocking evidence that reveals how President John F. Kennedy, early in his term as president in 1961, felt entrapment, that he had been misled by his military and intelligence advisors regarding the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Because of this betrayal he was determined to constantly be on guard regarding subsequent strategic advice issued to him.

After his confrontational June 1961 Vienna Summit meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, later that year in September Kennedy under took a bold initiative and introduced at the Sixteenth General Assembly of the United Nations a Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World.

Conversely the national security establishment (particularly the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA) believed, not in disarmament but in a nuclear first strike policy against the Soviet Union, and that JFK was naive and lacked determination and resolve in his opposition to this apocalyptic doomsday scenario. On March 13, 1962 the JCS submitted Operation Northwoods as a pretext for a Cuban Invasion.

This war between JFK and the military intensified following the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Pentagon leaders such as Air Force chief of Staff General Curtis LeMaybelieved the peaceful resolution of the Crisis was not Kennedy’s finest hour but had been appeasement of the Soviets and the worst disaster in American history.

JFK proceeded to embark on secret back channel peace efforts with Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro and was determined to get out of Vietnam despite intense opposition inside his own government.

“The Peace Speech” — JFK Commencement Address at American University, June 10, 1963.

To the deep state, this was treason.

It all came to an end on November 22, 1963, when an insidious coup d’état by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and the highest echelons of the National Security State was accomplished with the brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

*

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.

Featured image is from OffGuardian

US Sen. Elizabeth Warren Warns Crypto Madness Will ‘Take Down the Economy’ If It Isn’t Regulated

November 23rd, 2022 by Kenny Stancil

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

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

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

***

“FTX’s implosion should be a wake-up call,” said the Massachusetts Democrat. “Regulators must enforce the law before more people get cheated, and Congress must plug the remaining holes in our regulatory structure.”

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned Tuesday in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that if the federal government fails to adequately regulate the planet-killing cryptocurrency industry, it will “take down the economy.”

Writing in the wake of the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s digital asset exchange platform FTX, the Massachusetts Democrat argued that “crypto is following a well-worn path of financial innovations, such as subprime mortgages and credit-default swaps, that began with dazzling rewards and ended with crippling losses.”

“Proponents say crypto holds great promise for making the financial system more efficient and inclusive,” wrote Warren. “We’ve heard that story before. History is littered with financial schemes promoted by criminals and charlatans who claimed that the latest and greatest tools had evolved beyond the need for regulation or a cop on the beat. During the 2008 collapse and every financial crisis before that, these claims have proved dangerously delusional. Crypto is no exception.”

“FTX’s implosion should be a wake-up call,” Warren continued. “Regulators must enforce the law before more people get cheated, and Congress must plug the remaining holes in our regulatory structure—before the next crypto catastrophe takes down our economy.”

As the Journal reported on November 11:

“FTX is the latest in a string of crypto companies seeking bankruptcy protection this year. Months ago, Mr. Bankman-Fried served as a lender of last resort to his industry, following the failure of other crypto companies. Its fortunes reversed in the past 10 days, after a CoinDesk report showed the depth of the relationship between FTX and Alameda, triggering a loss of faith in the platform by amateur and professional investors.”

According to the newspaper, which in another article cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter, “FTX extended loans to Alameda using money that customers had deposited on the exchange for trading purposes, a decision that Mr. Bankman-Fried described as a poor judgment call.”

As the Journal noted:

FTX was previously seen as a rising star in the digital asset world. It attracted nearly $2 billion of investments from high-profile venture capital funds, hedge funds, and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. Many investors face a wipeout of their equity stakes in FTX as the exchange heads to the bankruptcy court. Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital said on Wednesday it is writing down its $150 million investment in FTX to zero.

Bankruptcy means that it could be a long time before individual investors and others owed their funds are able to potentially recover any of them, if ever. Creditors to Mt. Gox, the Japanese crypto exchange that failed following a 2014 hack, are still waiting for their funds almost a decade later.

“Crypto investors may find an uphill battle to get their crypto deposits back in bankruptcy proceedings,” the newspaper explained, “because their investments are likely to be treated as unsecured claims without collateral rights.”

The sudden disintegration of FTX prompted the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch an ongoing investigation.

“Crypto executives who break the law are just like any other crooks, and the Justice Department should use its full range of tools, including criminal penalties, against them,” Warren wrote Tuesday. “If Mr. Bankman-Fried and FTX executives committed fraud, then federal prosecutors should send them to prison.”

“But FTX’s fall, like the collapse of Lehman Brothers before it, isn’t limited to one out-of-control company,” the progressive lawmaker stressed. “That means the Securities and Exchange Commission needs to suit up as well. Market manipulation, theft, insider trading—the SEC has decades of experience in rulemaking and monitoring retail investment and knows how to root out fraud and hold cheaters accountable.”

She continued:

The Treasury Department has also moved, using existing law to impose sanctions on two crypto mixing services, Blender and Tornado Cash,which were used to launder billions of dollars worth of virtual currencies, including hundreds of millions stolen by hackers. Crypto lobbyists howled, but Treasury was right to use its authority to force these entities to comply with the law. A few cases are good, but Justice, SEC, and Treasury are the frontline enforcers, and they need to act like it every single day. Federal agencies should use their expansive authority to crack down hard on crypto fraud.

Congress should back up these law enforcement agencies and financial regulators with more funding. Many crypto executives have armies of lawyers, PR advisers, and paid celebrity supporters, and they seem to think they can escape the laws that apply to everyone else. If the financial cops are going to take on crypto criminals, they need adequate resources to fight and win.

“It is past time for crypto to be subjected to the same basic rules as other financial activities,” Warren concluded. “If the crypto industry can succeed without stealing from investors or providing money-laundering services to terrorists and drug dealers, that’s great—but we won’t know that until the loopholes are closed and the laws are rigorously enforced.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

*

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.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on US Sen. Elizabeth Warren Warns Crypto Madness Will ‘Take Down the Economy’ If It Isn’t Regulated
  • Tags: ,

Where Has the DoDs Money Gone? The Pentagon Fails Its Fifth Audit. $3.5 Trillion in Assets, 39% of which are accounted for…

November 23rd, 2022 by Connor Echols

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

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

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

***

Last week, the Department of Defense revealed that it had failed its fifth consecutive audit. 

“I would not say that we flunked,” said DoD Comptroller Mike McCord, although his office did note that the Pentagon only managed to account for 39 percent of its $3.5 trillion in assets. “The process is important for us to do, and it is making us get better. It is not making us get better as fast as we want.”

The news came as no surprise to Pentagon watchers. After all, the U.S. military has the distinction of being the only U.S. government agency to have never passed a comprehensive audit.

But what did raise some eyebrows was the fact that DoD made almost no progress in this year’s bookkeeping: Of the 27 areas investigated, only seven earned a clean bill of financial health, which McCord described as “basically the same picture as last year.”

Given this accounting disaster, it should come as no surprise that the Pentagon has a habit of bad financial math. This is especially true when it comes to estimating the cost of weapons programs.

The Pentagon’s most famous recent boondoggle is the F-35 program, which has gone over its original budget by $165 billion to date. But examples of overruns abound: As Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Jack Reed (D-RI) wrote in 2020, the lead vessel for every one of the Navy’s last eight combatant ships came in at least 10 percent over budget, leading to more than $8 billion in additional costs.

And another major overrun is poised to happen soon, according to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office.

The Navy plans to expand its ship production in an effort to maintain an edge over China, with a particular focus on a new attack submarine and destroyer ship. The Pentagon has proposed three versions of this plan at an average cost of $27 billion per year between 2023 and 2052, a 10 percent jump from current annual shipbuilding costs.

But the CBO says this is a big underestimate. The independent agency’s math says the average annual cost of this shipbuilding initiative will be over $31 billion, meaning that the Navy is underestimating costs by $120 billion over the program’s life.

As Mark Thompson of the Project on Government Oversight recently noted, these overruns “shouldn’t come as a shock” to anyone who has paid attention to DoD acquisitions in recent years. “But it does suggest a continuing, and stunning, inability by the Navy to get its ducks, and dollars, in a row,” Thompson wrote.

So will the Pentagon manage to get its financial house in order any time soon? It’s possible, if a bit unlikely.

Despite the long odds, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) proposed a bill last year that could help make that happen. The legislation would cut one percent off the top of the budget of any part of the Pentagon that fails an audit. That means that, if the proposal had already passed, 20 of the agency’s 27 auditing units would face a budget cut this year.

Unfortunately, momentum around that bill appears to have fizzled out, leaving the Pentagon’s accountants as the last line of defense. Per Comptroller McCord, the DoD hopes to finally pass an audit by 2027, a mere 14 years after every other agency in the U.S. government blew past that milestone. That may coincide with another historical moment, according to Andrew Lautz of the National Taxpayers Union.

“[W]e could reach a $1 trillion defense budget five years sooner [than the CBO estimates], in 2027,” Lautz wrote.

*

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.

Featured image is by gualtiero boffi/shutterstock

UK to Join Dutch-led Military Mobility Project

November 23rd, 2022 by Alie Peter Neil Galeon

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

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

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

***

The following text are excerpts from the Defence Post which confirm the nature of Britain’s military deployment within the European Union, extending into Ukraine.

To read the complete article click here

The British Ministry of Defence has confirmed its participation in the Netherlands-led Military Mobility project, further enhancing cross-border military transport procedures across Europe.

The Military Mobility project was established to enable the unhindered movement of troops and equipment within the European Union (EU) by cutting lengthy bureaucratic procedures on the road, rail, air, or sea.

“We are joining the Dutch-led Military Mobility project, which will better enable us to deploy troops and equipment across Europe and crucially support EU-NATO cooperation,” said MP Ben Wallace

The former EU member is the latest addition to the Dutch-led project, joining 24 other member states. Norway, Canada, and the US joined last year.

Permanent Structured Cooperation

The Dutch-led project is part of the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) framework.

“It is a framework and a structured process to gradually deepen defence cooperation to deliver the required capabilities to also undertake the most demanding missions and thereby provide an improved security to EU citizens,” the EU said.

To read the complete article click here

*

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.

Featured image: Military convoy. Photo by: Netherlands Ministry of Defence

Massachusetts Death Certificates Show Excess Mortality Could be Linked to COVID Vaccines

November 23rd, 2022 by Madhava Setty

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

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

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

***

After analyzing more than seven years of Massachusetts death certificates, independent investigator John Beaudoin, Sr., uncovered evidence that thousands of deaths in 2021 may have been linked to COVID-19 vaccines.

In this article, I highlight the work of independent investigator John Beaudoin, Sr., who analyzed nearly seven years of Massachusetts death certificates he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Beaudoin’s findings demonstrate that the COVID-19 death toll in Massachusetts was largely confined to a short window of time in 2020, and that COVID-19 deaths in 2020 resulted from pulmonary causes — in contrast to COVID-19 deaths in 2021, which were more closely linked to illnesses of the heart and blood.

There is no reasonable way to explain how SARS-CoV-2 dramatically changed the way it attacks and kills human beings and why it did so at precisely the time the experimental mRNA inoculations were deployed.

Beaudoin’s analysis also suggests that medical fraud and negligence may have been in play on a scale yet to be definitively determined.

Massachusetts: a center of COVID controversy

Beaudoin is a fellow resident of Massachusetts. Just down the road from us sit some of the most renowned hospitals and centers for medical research. None seem interested in validating or refuting the devastating implications of Beaudoin’s findings.

Boston was home to the infamous Biogen conference held in March 2020. The event was considered to be one of the first “super spreader events” in the country.

In the summer of 2021, an outbreak of COVID-19 in Massachusetts’ Barnstable County forced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to acknowledge that the injectable mRNA therapies were worthless.

When all was said and done, the vaccinated comprised a disproportionately larger percentage of those who contracted COVID-19 than the percentage of the county’s residents who were fully vaccinated.

In other words, there was no evidence that the vaccine offered any protection against infection.

Of those who were hospitalized in this outbreak, 80% were fully vaccinated. The “vaccines” offered no protection against severe disease.

Furthermore, vaccination status had no bearing on the viral load of those who got sick. Because viral load is correlated with infectiousness, the vaccine did not offer any reduction in transmissibility.

In one of its first real-world tests, the rapidly developed, tested and deployed therapy failed completely on all counts.

Massachusetts researchers can’t seem to move on from mask mandates

Earlier this month, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) found there was an increase in COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts school districts that lifted their mask mandates.

The authors of the study were researchers from the Boston Public Health Commission and venerated, local academic institutions in Boston (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Boston University, the Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School).

According to the authors, school districts with mask mandates had 39.9 fewer cases per 1,000 students over a 15-week period.

I wish to pose a simple question to the dutiful scientists down the road: so what?

Although districts that continued to enforce mask mandates after the statewide mandate was dropped had a lower COVID-19 incidence rate, mask mandates did not eliminate the transmission of the disease. Those districts still had 60 cases per 1,000 students.

The NEJM authors also proved that COVID-19 is transmissible whether or not masking precautions are implemented.

Children are going to get COVID-19 whether they are forced to wear a mask or not. There is no longer a need to “flatten the curve” until a miracle “vaccine” can be developed at “warp speed.”

COVID-19 is a disease that will be with us for the foreseeable future. What is the point of such a study? To convince Massachusetts residents that a modest decrease in school days missed is worth the imposition of perpetual mask mandates upon their children?

The ‘Big Story’ in Massachusetts

While the NEJM researchers were busy tabulating COVID-19 infection rates in different school districts during the first part of 2022, a far more important story was unfolding in Massachusetts.

Through a FOIA request made to the state’s department of public records, Beaudoin, an electrical engineer, obtained access to every death certificate in the state of Massachusetts between 2015 and September 2022.

His investigation into these records paints a disquieting picture of how the COVID-19 “vaccine” likely devastated the health of Massachusetts residents.

Beaudoin’s analysis is detailed and rigorous and stands as an example of why a medical degree or an academic appointment is not required to uncover explosive evidence.

In fact, those kinds of credentials can often be impediments rather than assets. There is no excuse why the Massachusetts Department of Public Health has not done the analysis Beaudoin chose to do himself.

For the purposes of this article, I will focus on the summary points. A deeper dive can be found on Mathew Crawford’s “Rounding The Earth” podcast or in Beaudoin’s own Substack, which he writes under the name “Coquin de Chien.”

Below is a plot of the raw numbers of daily deaths (confirmed by death certificates) over time for the years 2015-2021 overlayed:

massachusetts all cause daily deaths

Image credit: John Beaudoin, Sr.

The takeaway is impossible to miss. The rise and fall of daily deaths over a 10-week period in the early-to-late spring of 2020 is representative of a non-immune population encountering an infectious and virulent pathogen for the first time. This bump in the black line was from the casualties of the first wave of SARS-CoV-2 infections in Massachusetts.

Whether or not the state was still in the throes of a pandemic emergency beyond the first few weeks of June 2020 is debatable because it is quite clear that daily deaths quickly returned to baseline and stayed there until the autumn — when a far less lethal second wave hit the state. Recall that Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) stipulates that a public emergency is required before any mitigating therapy can obtain EUA.

The rapid rise and fall of deaths in Massachusetts in early 2020 is unmistakable, but who died? Beaudoin answers this question here:

2020 standard deviations

Image credit: John Beaudoin, Sr.

This graphic visualization technique is called a heat map. Each cell in the array represents the deviation from the expected number of deaths in specific age groups at a specific time in 2020, based on values from 2015-2019. The deeper the red, the greater the difference is over expected levels. The deeper the blue, the lower the difference.

The majority of the casualties were confined to the elderly (65 and older) over a 10-week period. This is represented by the deep red cells in ages over 65 starting April 1.

Contrary to the endless deluge of news reports that suggested otherwise, official death certificates indicate the pandemic in Massachusetts was short-lived and affected only the most vulnerable.

Beaudoin gives us the equivalent heat map for the year 2021. Once again comparisons are made with the years 2015-2019:

2021 standard deviations

Image credit: John Beaudoin, Sr.

The distribution of deaths in 2021 is remarkably different than in 2020:

  • The short-lived and profound increase in deaths in the elderly in the spring of 2020 is not present in 2021. As mentioned above, the pandemic emergency was arguably over by the summer of 2020.
  • There is a substantial and sustained (present throughout the year) increase in deaths in people ages 60 to 80 that is not present in 2020. What is causing or contributing to the excess deaths in this younger age group in 2021 that was not present in 2020?
  • There is a substantial decrease in deaths in the eldest age group (85+).

The paradoxical drop in deaths in the most elderly (85+) is best explained by the substantial jump in deaths from the previous year in that age group. SARS-CoV-2 took the lives of the most elderly leaving a hardier group of octogenarians.

The increase in deaths throughout 2021 implicates the COVID-19 “vaccines” as a contributing factor (among others) for two reasons.

First, the pattern of deaths is not representative of an infectious agent that takes the lives of the vulnerable while leaving behind a population that is more robust and that is attaining natural immunity through exposure, i.e., what was seen in 2020.

Second — and most obvious — is that the “vaccines” were present in 2021 and not in 2020.

What is actually killing people in 2021?

The increase in all-cause mortality in 2021 in Massachusetts is reflected in other parts of the world. This concerning trend is often explained as solely the result of pandemic restrictions that prevented people from obtaining basic healthcare, cancer screenings, chemotherapy, etc.

This is where Beaudoin’s Massachusetts findings go further. Here are some key points from his detailed analysis:

  • Average age of all-cause deaths in 2021 was 75, which is significantly lower than the average for the years 2015-2019 (75.6) and even more so than in 2020 (76.2).
  • 2021 saw an 8% jump in deaths from all causes compared to the average for the years 2015-2019, yet there was a substantial decrease in deaths attributed to COVID-19 compared to 2020. This could be explained by a vaccine that is partially effective in preventing COVID-19 deaths. However …
  • 2021 saw the biggest jump in deaths from cardiac arrest compared to the previous year. Deaths from cardiac arrest in 2020 made up 16.62% of all deaths that year. In 2021, it was 18.63% of all deaths — or a 12.1% increase from 2020, which already had the greatest percentage of the previous five years.
  • A similar jump in deaths from pulmonary emboli occurred in 2021 as well. Moreover, COVID-19 deaths that involved pulmonary emboli doubled in 2021 compared to 2020 and more than tripled in 2022.
  • The proportion of COVID-19 deaths that involved cardiac arrest increased by 47.5% in 2021 compared to 2020 and 63.3% in 2022. Recall that Pfizer’s six-month results demonstrated a four times greater risk of cardiac arrest in vaccinated participants than in those who received the placebo (Table S4).

According to information extracted from actual death certificates, COVID-19 apparently changed its way of killing people in 2021. Beaudoin accurately summarizes:

“Viruses do not simply change how they kill from one year to the next. Something happened in C19-involved deaths after 2020 that changed how C19 purportedly kills people. Pneumonia and respiratory issues dominated 2020, the year of C19, but something insidious has doubled and tripled relative numbers of circulatory system deaths after 2020. The Massachusetts DPH cannot hide from this. Either there is massive fraud in coding of deaths or some intervention in 2021 and 2022 caused deaths or both are true at the same time.”

Evidence of medical fraud?

In his dive into the 400,000 or so death certificates he obtained, Beaudoin showed there is also a high likelihood that some deaths are being inappropriately attributed to COVID-19 while others are linked to the vaccine but no mention of this appears on the certificate.

One such example involves the death of a 7-year-old girl in a town near my own. As Beaudoin has respectfully declined to mention the name of the child in his Substack, I will follow his example. Multiple news outlets covered this tragedy. All reported that she died from COVID-19.

Beaudoin was able to find her death certificate, which indeed states that she died from “Complications from COVID-19 viral infection.”

But was her death certificate accurate?

He also found a report in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, of a complication from a second dose of the Pfizer formulation that was administered to a 7-year-old girl in Massachusetts.

Personal identification information does not appear on VAERS reports. However, the report indicates that this vaccine complication occurred just three days prior to the day of the death of the child who died of COVID-19:

vaers report covid vaccine injury child

Source: Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System

Note that this VAERS report indicates the child previously experienced severe nausea and vomiting for 8-10 hours immediately following her first dose. After her second dose, for which this report was filed, her fever spiked to 103, she developed a severe stomachache and had not had a bowel movement for three days.

Is this the same child who purportedly died from COVID-19? If so, attributing the death to COVID-19 with no mention of the vaccine on her death certificate would constitute medical fraud — or at the very least, negligence on the part of the medical examiner.

Conspicuously missing from news reports covering this child’s death was her vaccination status. Was this an oversight? If this young person who died from COVID-19 had not received the COVID-19 “vaccine” would this have been mentioned?

Notably, a different 7-year-old girl who died from COVID-19 made the news around the same time this year. This child was from Tennessee. People magazine covered her story, taking care to mention that she had not been inoculated.

People printed a quote from her doctor, a pediatric infectious disease expert, who told Good Morning America:

“This is not something to mess around with. The takeaway for parents is this is a virus that we have got to take very seriously and one we have a safe and effective vaccine for.”

Media coverage rarely misses an opportunity to laud the vaccines’ benefits and warn of the danger of remaining unvaccinated. Simultaneously, any information that may implicate the COVID-19 “vaccines” when harm has occurred is categorically omitted.

Of course, without proof of this child’s vaccination status, we can only speculate. This information exists on the Massachusetts Immunization Information System, which Beaudoin hopes he will eventually be able to access.

Questions for the medical establishment

How many deaths have occurred where the COVID-19 “vaccine” likely played a role but was not mentioned in official records?

How many deaths have been falsely attributed to COVID-19?

In March, health officials in Massachusetts eliminated nearly 4,000 (approximately 15%) COVID-19 deaths from their tally. Dr. Catherine Brown, a Massachusetts Department of Public Health epidemiologist said:

“After a deep dive into our data and reviewing thousands of death certificates we recognize that this updated definition gives us a truer picture of mortality associated with COVID-19.”

What prompted this “deep dive?” Was it news of Beaudoin’s FOIA request and his investigation that was being picked up around the same time?

While researchers at prestigious institutions are trying to retrospectively determine whether face coverings may have prevented absenteeism in a handful of school districts, Massachusetts health officials continue to ignore enormous vaccine safety signals and evidence of medical fraud in their own state.

Official death certificates indicate that thousands of deaths in 2021 may have been linked to the COVID-19 vaccines. If they weren’t linked to these products, why and how has the SARS-CoV-2 virus found a different way to kill people in 2021 and 2022?

Do these same signals appear in other states as well? How long will state departments of public health sit on their data before telling the public what that data show?

*

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.

Madhava Setty, M.D. is senior science editor for The Defender.

Featured image is from CHD

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Massachusetts Death Certificates Show Excess Mortality Could be Linked to COVID Vaccines
  • Tags: ,

The WEF’s Digital Tyranny: “Are We Ready for a New World Order?” Cashless Society Talk Goes Mainstream in a Hurry and Should be Trusted Like the NSA

November 23rd, 2022 by David Haggith

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

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

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

***

We’re on the brink of a dramatic change where we’re about to — and I’ll say this boldly — we’re about to abandon the traditional system of money, and accounting, and introduce a new one…. The new accounting is what we call “blockchain.”

It means digital. It means having an almost perfect record of every single transaction that happens in the economy, which will give us far greater clarity over what’s going on…. It also raises huge dangers in terms of the balance of power between states and citizens.

At least the World Economic Forum and its counterpart now have the decency to title their videos candidly: “Are We Ready for a New World Order?” However, I’m pretty sure our supreme leaders won’t listen if I answer, “No, thank you.”

As recently as a year ago, I’d be labelled a “conspiracy theorist” and get locked up as a Twitter jailbird for claiming some cabal of banksters, economists and government leaders is planning a new world order for everyone along with a government-controlled digital currency to empower it. Now, it is table talk, and those who are planning it all are only too happy to share their thoughts, so confident are they in how it will go down.

At the recent 2022 “World Government Summit” in Dubai, the moderator directly raised the question, “Are you ready for a new world order?” During the conversation about that in the video above, Dr. Pippa Malmgren, who recently let me run her article about the dangers of digital currency here on The Great Recession Blog, made the above proclamation. She clarifies that she is not talking about cryptocurrencies that we now have that use blockchain technology but sovereign currencies that she openly states will be anything but private.

Central-bank digital currencies have become something global planners talk about openly in their world forums as a fact of the immediate future, not some faraway horizon. They are already being rolled out, as I described in my last article, “The Money of the Apocalypse is Rising in US Banks from the Ashes of the Cryptocrisis THIS WEEK!“

In her own article published earlier on my site, Dr. Malmgren warned extensively of the huge dangers that digital currencies will pose, but in this video she indicates she believes we can resolve all those problems with a “digital constitution of human rights.”

In my opinion, such safeguards are even less likely to protect everyone’s privacy than the FISA warrant system was when the Patriot Act became law, making the harvesting of all cell and internet data on a continual basis possible in the Bush II years. When I first read about the big black box being built by the NSA in Fort Meade, Maryland, to collect and store all that data, I never believed FISA would be respected carefully enough to prevent snooping into everything you’ve ever said and written in digital form.

We learned about just how weakly guarded the system is after it was used to snoop on presidential candidate Donald Trump back in 2016. Edward Snowden, who worked in the system, warned us about how it was harvesting all the cellular and digital data of leaders and ordinary citizens around the world well before that; yet, I remember reading about how it would do that when Bush first started building it, and I never trusted it to be safeguarded properly.

If protections are as weak as the were for Trump, who was likely to become president of the United States back when the exiting government wanted to gin up the Trump-Russiagate scandal, imagine how careless the system is with protecting your information! Without the vast powers of the presidency to go after the people who abused their powers against him — and even then to little avail — imagine how powerless even billionaire Trump would have been against this system. The digital data of all your calls and internet use is simply so abundant and so readily available, that the temptations to snoop whenever there is suspicion or even where there is merely hope for something suspect, as was the case with Trump, are great.

Far less do I trust a system of bankers to keep everything I do that can be traced through financial activity sacred just because they create a digital constitution for my privacy. Even less do I trust such a system not to be used by my government to shut me out of the world financially or narrowly regulate my financial activity if I do something the government disapproves of … just as Canada tried to do last year with digital money when people supported truckers striking against the Covid vaccine or as many governments did with Russian oligarchs through the regular banking system. Imagine how much easier that will be when they can simply use electronic switches to regulate your available options.

These central-bank digital currencies will be easier to do that with than cryptocurrencies were when Canada tried because they will be under full government control via the government’s banker and/or the US Treasury; and, as I said in my last article, they are coming online just as crypto has entered a global crisis of its own, making it suspect and government-regulated digital currency more safe in the eyes of many.

If you think government autocracy is a risk for you right now, wait until you see all it can do to you to shut you out of life itself once money becomes fully digital. Dr. Malgren — although she seems like an advocate of such systems in the interview above — does about as thorough a job of pointing out the pitfalls of central bank digital currencies as I could, so I encourage you to read her article here if you haven’t already.

Don’t worry about whether the new cashless system will be accepted in the next year or two, though, because The WEF & Co. will come up with a beautiful video concert from around the world to assure us all of how beautiful the new-world odor of their money will be for all of us just as they did for us during Covid: (If you don’t have time for such a long and inspirational video, or the stomach for King Charles, I recommend you, at least enjoy the singing finish at 2:24:54. It’s as happy, happy as the cadmium yellow in a Bob Ross painting.)

Click here to watch the video.

Just so much to love about that New World Order. See all the smiling people, and you know it’s going to be good for you, too. “Take our vaccine. Use our money … and all this fun and freedom can be yours … for as long as we decide it will be.” And, as they say in the video, it is so important that we all share our opinions about this now-dawning Aquarian age … so they can continue to ignore us or silence us on social media while assuring us how important our “conversation” is to them.

Soon, your money will even be able to accomplish all of the following in order to help us all live better lives … together:

*

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.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The WEF’s Digital Tyranny: “Are We Ready for a New World Order?” Cashless Society Talk Goes Mainstream in a Hurry and Should be Trusted Like the NSA
  • Tags:

Under Pressure from the US, EU Agrees to Cap the Price of Russian Oil

November 23rd, 2022 by Mish

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

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

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

***

Bickering Over the Cap

The EU agreed to scrap its plan to not insure tankers carrying Russian oil in favor of a Biden-sponsored plan to cap the price of oil.

The insurance scheme was absurd. Russia would have exported oil in tankers not insured. The only loser would be Western insurance companies.

Today, the US and EU are bickering over where the cap is set. Poland wants the cap at $20 and the Biden administration is looking at caps as high as $70.

Watered Down Plan

The European Union watered down its latest sanctions proposal for a price cap on Russia’s oil exports by delaying its full implementation and softening key shipping provisions.

The bloc proposed adding a 45-day transition to the introduction of the cap, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. The proposed grace period would apply to oil loaded before Dec. 5 — the date oil sanctions are due to kick in — and unloaded by Jan. 19, aligning the EU to a clause previously announced by the US and the UK.

The EU is also proposing a 90-day transition in the event of any future changes to the level of the price cap.

Western Allies Aim to Agree on Russian Oil Price Cap Wednesday

The Wall Street Journal reports Western Allies Aim to Agree on Russian Oil Price Cap Wednesday emphasis mine.

Ambassadors from the 27 European Union member states are scheduled to meet Wednesday, when they will try to come to an agreement on a price. The bloc must agree on the price cap unanimously and diplomats warned that may prove difficult. The G-7 is aiming to approve the cap in sync with the EU.

The aim of the plan, which was pushed hard by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, is to crimp Russian energy exports revenue while avoiding a surge in oil prices when a European embargo on Russian oil imports kicks in early next month. Despite European reluctance at the time, the G-7 first agreed on setting the oil price cap in June following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

The price cap will replace Europe’s plan to completely ban the financing and insurance of Russian oil shipments, which is set to take effect on Dec. 5. U.S. officials are worried those sanctions would cut Russian oil off from global markets and send energy prices higher, so they want to put into place the price cap by that date.

Aim of the Plan

The aim of the plan is to not eat Russian cake while eating Russian cake. 

It’s quite amazing that anyone thinks the plan can possibly work, but president Biden, the EU, Janet Yellen and even prominent economists think the cap is a good idea.

Q&A Why Not?

Q: Why not cap the price of everything and end inflation?
A: Figure it out.

Q: Is it possible a cap might seem to work?
A: Yes. If the cap is set high enough it will be meaningless.

And if by some lucky fate a cap is set where the direction of oil is headed anyway, then the economic illiterates will be hooting and cheering their alleged success.

Why Won’t Caps Work?

  • China, India and other countries will not go along. That’s enough right there to show the ridiculousness of the idea.
  • Countries in the EU have an incentive to cheat.

The Incentive to Cheat

Here’s an amusing snip from the WSJ:

 “Under a compromise hammered out by U.S. and EU member state officials, the ban for vessels will now be time limited, according to people familiar with the plan. It will also rest on evidence that the vessel had deliberately breached the price cap.”

Oh, we breached the cap but it wasn’t deliberate. What a hoot.

One of Two Things

  1. The cap will fail and do nothing.
  2. The cap fail spectacularly and drive up the price by re-routing oil headed to the EU to China and India instead. Then the EU will have to get oil from the US or OPEC over longer routes increasing the cost.

The above two points are in isolation. But things should not be viewed in isolation. Given a pending global recession, oil prices are likely to drop anyway.

If they do, then as noted above, the economic illiterates will be hooting and cheering the alleged success of caps.

This is all so stupid that only economists and politicians are dumb enough to believe it can work.

*

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.

Featured image: The Primorsk Oil Terminal near St. Petersburg (file image)

JFK’s Legacy Will Live Forever. “Tell The Truth”. Support Global Research Through 2023

November 23rd, 2022 by The Global Research Team

To our readers,

Yesterday, we commemorated the assassination of  John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. 

59 years have passed yet the real perpetrators remain free and unchained.

Global Research has challenged the establishment’s narrative and published a plethora of articles exposing the links to the JFK murder, see this list. 

 

 

Our intention at Global Research is to continue to relentlessly promote independent and authoritative voices that speak out on issues which are deliberately neglected or distorted by the corporate media.

We live in an age of fear brought about by disinformation, where free speech is outlawed.

Online censorship has greatly affected our readership. In this context, with a view to sustaining our endeavours, we ask our readers to help us reach as many people as possible.

We are doing our best to circumvent all forms of censorship but only an army of readers and supporters can get us through it.

  • Crossposting Global Research articles on your blog sites,
  • Forwarding Global Research articles to emails lists,
  • Sharing Global Research articles on social media,
  • Bringing the Globalresearch.ca Newsletter to the attention of friends and colleagues,
  • Use the translate template on the top of our website to reproduce Global Research in many foreign languages

If you have the means, you can also help us continue with our mission through donation and membership.

Click to view our membership plans

Click to make a one-time or a recurring donation

  • Posted in NO READ MORE LINK
  • Comments Off on JFK’s Legacy Will Live Forever. “Tell The Truth”. Support Global Research Through 2023

Biden Administration Sticks to ‘Vague’ Wording on Saudi Ties After Immunity Decision

November 23rd, 2022 by Middle East Eye

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

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

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

***

The US is continuing to review its relationship with Saudi Arabia despite a Biden administration decision that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should be provided immunity from a lawsuit over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.

“The opinion that we provided does not speak in any way to the merits of the case nor the current status of the bilateral relationship.”

“Our review of that relationship is ongoing,” insisted Blinken, who arrived in Doha on Monday, a day after the crown prince was at the football World Cup opening ceremony.

“The Biden administration has always claimed they are re-evaluating their relationship with Saudi, but time and again, it seems to be promises and gestures more than a real fundamental shift of policy,” Aziz Alghashian, a Riyadh-based researcher of Saudi foreign policy, told Middle East Eye.

The US said last month that it would reassess its relationship with Saudi Arabia after Riyadh backed an oil production cut at Opec+ that was seen as a snub to the US amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and heightened energy prices.

The move was particularly embarrassing for Biden, who defended his visit to the kingdom in July as necessary to shore up US energy security.

“We’ve seen mostly gestures from the White House that signal how the relationship with Saudi Arabia has become less friendly. But beyond such gestures and symbolic moves, I don’t think we can necessarily expect much in terms of ‘consequences’ for Riyadh,” Giorgio Cafiero, the CEO and founder of Gulf State Analytics, told MEE.

Downgrade unlikely  

As a candidate, Biden pledged to make Saudi Arabia “a pariah” over the murder of Middle East Eye and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which the CIA said was sanctioned by Mohammed bin Salman.

Some Democratic lawmakers said the US should pursue measures against Saudi Arabia following the Opec+ move. Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, who chairs the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for the US to freeze some arms sales to the kingdom – though that rhetoric has died down recently.

But the Biden administration is unlikely to make any of those moves as it looks to preserve the relationship in the context of a growing rivalry with China and Russia’s continued outreach to Riyadh, said Cafiero, from Gulf State Analytics.

“Any major moves on the administration’s part to downgrade relations or punish Riyadh would likely only push the Saudis even closer to Moscow and Beijing,” he added.

In addition, both Riyadh and Washington continue to share common concerns about security in the region, as tensions with Iran escalate.

“Shared interests continue keeping the US and Saudi Arabia close despite the shouting and angry sentiments between officials in Washington and Riyadh,” Cafiero said.

Keeping it vague

Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), the US-based advocacy group founded by Khashoggi, and his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, are plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking justice for Khashoggi’s killing.

This month, the Biden administration said that Mohammed bin Salman should have immunity in the lawsuit, as head of state. The crown prince’s elevation to prime minister in September was seen by critics as an attempt to protect him from litigation.

Blinken added that there were “no plans” for the crown prince to visit Washington while it reviews relations with the Gulf state.

“With regard to MBS, there are no plans for him to travel to Washington,” Blinken said.

Like other Gulf leaders, the crown prince has been courted by western powers as the war in Ukraine revives concerns about energy security.

Mohammed bin Salman travelled to Europe this summer, and despite the rupture over Opec+, western executives have flocked to the oil-rich kingdom to get a slice of its booming economy. The World Bank predicts Saudi Arabia will have the fastest-growing economy in the G-20 this year.

Blinken reaffirmed the administration’s case for granting immunity.

Blinken told a press conference the US administration had followed “longstanding legal practice” that a head of state or government, or foreign minister, was “entitled to immunity”.

“This is a determination that we’ve made in dozens, hundreds of cases over the years. And in every case, we simply follow the law,” he said.

Alghashian said the Biden administration likely hopes to keep its pledge to reset the relationship vague, “to avoid being perceived as breaking promises towards/against Saudi”.

*

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.

European Parliament Severs Ties with Iran Over Sanctions Against EU

November 23rd, 2022 by The Cradle

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

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

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

***

The EU parliament announced on 21 November its decision to sever ties with Iran. The announcement comes in response to the Islamic Republic’s recent decision to place sanctions on the European governing body, which has been slapping its own sanctions against Tehran throughout the ongoing unrest in the country.

“We will not look away from those who look to us from the streets of Iran. Iran must stop its oppression of legitimate protests. In response to Iran’s [sanctions] on members of the European Parliament, [it] will no longer engage with Iranian authorities,” President of the EU parliament, Roberta Metsola, said in a statement via Twitter with the popular Iranian protest slogan “Women, life, freedom” written in Persian at the end of the tweet.

At the opening of its November plenary session on the same day, Metsola said that there would be “no direct contract” between the parliament and Iranian officials “until further notice.”

As Iran continues to face large waves of violent riots – which have resulted in the deaths of several members of the security forces and the destruction of public property – western media has framed the response by authorities as nothing more than a brutal crackdown on peaceful protestors.

In addition to the propagation of misinformation by mainstream, western European media, the EU has repeatedly placed several rounds of sanctions against Iran.

Accusing European states of interventionist policies and “supporting terrorism and violence” on Iranian soil, Tehran on 26 October announced the implementation of its own sanctions against several individuals and institutions associated with the EU.

Earlier that month, the Islamic Republic had sent several letters to European diplomats warning them that the aggressive EU sanction policy against Tehran could result in a “rupture” of relations between them.

As European, Saudi, British, and US media outlets lead the misinformation campaign against Tehran, violent attacks against the country’s security personnel are on the rise, and internationally-backed armed separatists continue to push for the illegal overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

*

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.

Featured image is from KUNA

Israeli Military Chief Tells US to Step Up Planning for Joint Attacks on Iran

November 23rd, 2022 by Dave DeCamp

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

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

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

***

The head of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is pressing the US to step up planning for joint attacks against Iran, The Times of Israel reported on Tuesday.

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi arrived in the US on Sunday and has been holding talks with high-level officials. So far this week, he has met with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and CIA Director William Burns.

“During the discussions, it was agreed that we are at a critical point in time that requires the acceleration of operational plans and cooperation against Iran and its terrorist proxies in the region,” Kohavi said.

Tensions are high between the US and Iran as the Biden administration has been increasing sanctions on the Islamic Republic and is voicing support for protesters inside the country. Talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal have been stalled for months, and administration officials have made clear they have no plans to resume them, at least anytime soon.

The US acknowledged in its recently released Nuclear Posture Review that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, but Israel continues to hype up the threat of Iran’s nuclear program.

“On the one hand, Iran is under many economic, military, and internal pressures, and on the other hand, it continues to promote its nuclear program. The IDF strongly promotes all operational plans against the Iranian threat,” he said.

*

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.

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

The Danger of Taking Official Claims at Face Value

November 23rd, 2022 by Daniel Larison

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

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

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

***

The Associated Press has fired the reporter behind an erroneous report that claimed that the missile that struck Poland last week had been fired by Russian forces. The original report relied on the word of a single anonymous U.S. intelligence official. An investigation into the erroneous report shows that a willingness to take official sources at their word seems to have been part of the larger problem:

Internal AP communications viewed by The Post show some confusion and misunderstanding during the preparations of the erroneous report.

LaPorta shared the U.S. official’s tip in an electronic message around 1:30 p.m. Eastern time. An editor immediately asked if AP should issue an alert on his tip, “or would we need confirmation from another source and/or Poland?”

After further discussion, a second editor said she “would vote” for publishing an alert, adding, “I can’t imagine a U.S. intelligence official would be wrong on this.” [bold mine-DL]

Skepticism about official claims should always be the watchword for journalists and analysts. These are claims that need more scrutiny than usual rather than less. If you can’t imagine that an intelligence official could get something important wrong, whether by accident or on purpose, you are taking far too many things for granted that need to be questioned and checked out first.

Intelligence officials of many governments feed information to journalists and have done so practically ever since there was a popular press to feed information to, and that information certainly should not be trusted just because an official source hands it over. It is also always possible for intelligence officials to just get things wrong, whether it is because they are relying on faulty information or because they were too hasty in reaching conclusions about what they think they know.

Whether the AP’s source was feeding them a line or was simply mistaken, a claim as provocative and serious as this one should have been checked out much more thoroughly before it got anywhere near publication. The AP report in this case seems to have been a combination of a story that was “too good to check” and a culture of deference to official sources in which the editors didn’t feel compelled to make the effort to check. The desire for a quick, eye-grabbing headline probably also contributed to the mistake. The incentives for news outlets to be first rather than right are strong and can have distorting effects on what gets published.

Fortunately, both the Polish and the U.S. governments reacted responsibly and carefully to the missile incident and the bad reporting about it, but we can see how easy it would be for them to have acted otherwise when there are too many journalists and analysts ready to believe whatever comes through official channels. There will be other situations where official sources will want to push a certain story out to manipulate public opinion, and there are not enough safeguards against media outlets reproducing and amplifying propaganda. I don’t know how that gets fixed or even if it can be fixed, but the first step is to treat official claims with much more skepticism until they can be confirmed by other sources.

*

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.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Danger of Taking Official Claims at Face Value