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It is pointless to mention that we live in a world where violence, dictatorship, murder, manslaughter, wars and injustice are the order of the day. Let’s take the example of Ukraine: it is a fact that Russia feels threatened by the West – with good reason.

Russia is a thorn in the eye of the capitalist system and the capitalist system cannot exist without war. The West has not only been opposed to the East since the Ukraine war and calls for hatred of nations. It has been fighting against it for a long time with all permissible and impermissible means. The danger of nuclear war as an “ultima ratio” (last, extreme means) or as America’s plan to win the Third World War (1) is great.

People with traditional upbringings keep falling for the lure of the authorities

Actually, we have been living in the age of reason for several centuries. For a long time, mankind lived by faith and what the priest said applied. New thoughts were not allowed, they were punished. But what does the time of reason look like?

Most people, because of their upbringing, are not able or willing to imagine emotionally what is in store for humanity. Although the money is not there and people have to starve, enormous sums are spent on war armaments and murderous wars are waged.

Until today, people are educated by all social institutions – starting with education at home, by the church and by the state – so that they cannot say no and do everything that the others, the rulers, want them to do. That is the programme! That is conscious! And they are kept in this mood so that they fall for the lure of the authorities again and again.

This went so far in the last century that the German people of 100 million – the people of poets and thinkers – cheered Hitler and allowed themselves to be led to their deaths. All but about 100,000 opposition members whom he killed went along with him; starting with the Pope, the Catholic Church, the other churches, all the scholars, the philosophers and psychologists, all the workers, all the socialists.

Since the educational methods of the past have not changed fundamentally, people with traditional education also follow a new “Führer” as they once did a Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin or Johnson.

And since there is no politics without psychology and no explanation of political opinion and human concerns without knowledge of psychology, humanity will not make any progress without psychology.

Russia could work for peace today – Russia does not need war

Politically oriented people know that Hitler’s whole enterprise was directed against the East, against Russia. “Mein Kampf”, that was the planned war against Russia, and Russia knew that. But Russia was in dire straits and could not defend itself against Germany and Hitler.

Therefore, Russia was negotiating how to deal with Hitler. Russia was ready to march against Hitler. But the other states said they did not want to. They were afraid of Russia. Russia was then in great embarrassment because they were not equipped. That’s why they made a pact with Hitler to buy themselves time.

If you take a look at the official daily newspapers today or watch the official TV programme for a few minutes, you get the impression that at least the younger generation, which has not yet experienced war, has no respect for this greatest evil of humanity, this mass murder that we call war. There is no other explanation for the permanent call for hatred of nations, the incessant warmongering or the indifference displayed by many contemporaries. Both leaders and led are fools.

Today, Russia could work for peace. Because of their own resources, they do not need war and could achieve a lot. But they still lack the skills: they do not yet know psychology. If people had been let free during the Russian Revolution, if they had been talked to and if the whole system had been more humane, the Second World War might not have broken out (2).

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a teacher (retired headmaster), doctor of education (Dr. paed.) and graduate psychologist (Dipl.-Psych. with a focus on clinical, educational, media and individual psychology). He taught for many decades. As a retiree he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and educational-psychological articles he calls for a conscious ethical-moral education and an education for public spirit and peace. His motto according to Albert Camus: Give when you can. And not to hate, if that is possible.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

Quote from Camus mentioned at the beginning:

Marin, Lou (ed.). Albert Camus – Libertarian Writings (1948-1960). Hamburg 2013, p. 268

(1) https://www.globalresearch.ca/russia-responds-america-plan-win-world-war-III/5794403

(2) https://www.globalresearch.ca/open-letter-politicians-federal-republic-germany-russia-thorn-eye-capitalist-system/5776623

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Cholera and US Sanctions Killing Syrian Civilians

September 28th, 2022 by Steven Sahiounie

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On September 23, the Al Qaeda-occupied area in Idlib Province reported the first confirmed case of cholera in the last terrorist-controlled area in Syria. The deadly outbreak has claimed 39 lives in Syria, with thousands of suspected cases across the country. In areas under the Ministry of Health in Damascus, 23 deaths were reported recently, 20 of them in Aleppo, and at least 253 cases.

In the northeast region of Syria controlled by the US-backed SDF, a Kurdish militia with ties to the outlawed terrorist group the PKK, are a reported 16 deaths and 2,867 cases since September 5.  The US occupation forces there are controlling the main oil fields in Syria to prevent the Damascus government from using the oil to provide electricity for people’s homes, water pumping stations, and gasoline for their cars.

The cases were reported in several provinces, including Aleppo with 676 cases, Raqqa in the north with 17 cases, Latakia on the Mediterranean coast with 4 cases, Hama with 2 cases, Al Hasakeh with 38 cases, and Deir Ez Zor along the border with Iraq with 201 cases. There were two cases in Damascus, but the patients had just come from Aleppo.

This marks the first cholera outbreak since the conflict began in March of 2011, with the last outbreak recorded in 2009.

The source of the outbreak is the river

The Euphrates River runs for almost 2,800 kilometers (1,700 miles) across Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

During the rainy winter season, and fed by spring snow melt-offs in Turkey, the river runs full entering Syria from the Turkish border and then running in a diagonal towards Iraq.

Climate change has brought steadily rising temperatures combined with drought, and during this long and very hot, dry summer the river has sunk to its lowest point. So low that ancient antiquities once buried on the river bed have been suddenly revealed, but government reports warn the river could go completely dry by 2040.

Health authorities tested the Euphrates and found the bacteria causing cholera.  The river is polluted by raw sewage and oil spills from the US-occupied oil wells at Deir Ez Zor.  If the river can be replenished this winter the contamination might be mitigated.

Over five million Syrians rely on the Euphrates for their drinking water, which is pumped to them without filtering or sterilization. Farmers use irrigation pipelines to pump water out of the river onto their crops.  Syria is self-sufficient in ground crops, but using contaminated water to grow food is what has spread the outbreak.

Residents of the northeast who rely on the Euphrates know that it is polluted but are faced with no other choice or immediate solution.

The treatment plan and prevention

On September 19, Ahmed Al-Mandhari, the World Health Organization’s regional director, said that medications and other supplies had landed in Damascus.  The second shipment arrived on September 23 to fight the cholera outbreak.

The Syrian Ministry of Health advised people to make sure they drink water coming from “a secure source” and if that is not available people should boil water, then preserve it in a clean and closed-gallon container.

Cholera is an acute diarrheal illness caused by infection of the intestine with Vibrio cholerae bacteria. People can get sick when they swallow food or water contaminated with cholera bacteria. The infection is often mild or without symptoms, but can sometimes be severe and life-threatening.

Cholera can be simply and successfully treated by immediate replacement of the fluid and salts lost through diarrhea. Patients can be treated with oral rehydration solution (ORS), a prepackaged mixture of sugar and salts that is mixed with 1 liter of water and drunk in large amounts.

Boiling is the most effective way to make water safe. If boiling, bring your water to a complete boil for at least 1 minute.

Water used as a weapon of war

On August 22, 2016, Maher Ghafari of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), reported on the water situation in Aleppo during the occupation of East Aleppo by terrorist groups including Al Qaeda which ended in December 2016.  He confirmed that Aleppo gets its water from the Euphrates River which is pumped through four pipelines in a water plant, then under the control of an armed terrorist group. Water destined for the city of Aleppo is then re-pumped through three pumping stations: one then controlled by the government, and two by different armed terrorist groups.

All through the conflict in Syria, water was used as a weapon of war. Sometimes the terrorists would simply shut the water valves tight, and hold the lives of thirsty civilians hostage.  At other times, the terrorists would bomb the pumps or the water station. During the war years, the water maintenance crews were prevented from staying or repairing facilities.

Today, the war is over, the terrorists have left, and the only Al Qaeda-occupied area is Idlib, but the damages to water infrastructure have never been reconstructed because of the US-EU sanctions which prohibit the importation of materials that can be used to repair or reconstruct government infrastructure.

US-EU sanctions kill Syrian civilians and prevent reconstruction

The US-NATO attack on Syria for ‘regime change’ failed, but the collective punishment of an entire nation caused most to support the Damascus government, as it was seen as the only source of basic services and stability.

According to the UN, nearly two-thirds of water treatment plants, half of the pumping stations, and one-third of water towers have been damaged by more than a decade of war.

Last winter, Syrians died in their homes without heating, while snow drifts lay on the streets of Aleppo, Hama, and Damascus. Diesel fuel is used in Syria for home heating, but it is expensive and often in short supply because of the US occupation of the oil wells in the northeast, and the US sanctions preventing importing fuels. Most Syrians get about one hour of electricity because the fuel used to generate electricity is taken by the US troops.

The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, a law signed by President Donald Trump, has brought starvation, darkness, plague, misery, robbery, kidnappings, and the destruction of a nation. International aid no longer reaches Syria to the extent it did previously because many charities fear being hit with penalties from the severe US sanctions.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Syrians suffered shortages of oxygen and basic medical supplies due to the crippling sanctions.

According to Hasan Ismaik, a Jordanian writer, “No Syrian children under the age of 10 have ever seen their country at peace. And if they remain starved and deprived of basic medical care in a country with no economic opportunities, they could eventually become the foot soldiers of a new terrorism outbreak in the Middle East.”

Richard N. Haass, a US foreign policy expert, wrote in 1998 “Economic Sanctions: Too Much of a Bad Thing.”  He wrote that US sanctions often have no effect on the target, and Congress and the Whitehouse need to have rigorous oversight of the sanctions, which are doomed to fail if the desired results are large and require limited time.

Haass further warned that secondary sanctions, such as going after foreign nations who might send goods to Syria for rebuilding make matters worse. He prophetically added that sanctions hurt innocent civilians, which will bolster authoritarian governments and trigger large-scale emigration.

The US-EU sanctions due have humanitarian exemptions for food and medicine.  However, Elizabeth Hoff, former WHO director in Damascus, said that many medical machines in Syrian hospitals lay in disrepair, needing parts from Europe or the US, but the foreign companies will not sell the parts to Syria because the paperwork surrounding the exemption is so costly and time-consuming it is not worth it.

Migration caused by sanctions

The migration boats continue to sail across the deadly Mediterranean because of the suffering caused by the sanctions. The Syrians set sail with nothing to lose, except their lives, and carry their anger as baggage.

Josep Borrell, the EU minister for foreign affairs, insists on the collective punishment of the Syrian people by saying that the EU “will not lift the sanctions imposed on Syria before the start of a political transition in the country.” Great Britain, France, and Germany have all renewed their sanctions on Syria.

The US-EU sanctions have not achieved their goals, but have added to the suffering of the Syrian people. Unless the sanctions are lifted, Syria cannot rebuild and its people will be hopelessly tied to the US-NATO plan of maintaining chaos as the status quo.

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

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***

Guest is Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, founder of the Klinghardt Academy in the USA, as well as founder and director of various other academies, institutes and clinics in the USA and Switzerland, among others. He is an author of a textbook on psycho-kinesiology. His research interests are psychological factors in pain disorders, heavy metal stress, autism, and treatments of chronic diseases (e.g. Lyme disease).

This session is about a study on climate change and geoengineering.

From 2017, in an article in the Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International, geoscientist J. Marvin Herndon made some startling assertions that would prompt climate scientists to radically change their assumptions. Among them were:

  • evidence for the Earth’s variable heat production,
  • global, non-anthropogenic climate change, and
  • geoengineering-induced global warming and polar melting.

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***

Since 2014, the US-led political West has invested billions into propping up the Neo-Nazi junta in Kiev. This paid off exponentially, as major corporations now had a 100% free hand to tap into and plunder Ukraine’s resources. The country’s territory was always considered a breadbasket of Europe and beyondand its grain has been a target of every foreign power invading the area. This is precisely what happened this time as well, with Western corporations controlling approximately 30% of Ukraine’s arable land. The country’s massive Soviet-era industrial sector was also carved up and bought for pennies, both by foreign corporations and local oligarchs.

The brutal exploitation of Ukraine was further exacerbated after 2014 and continues unabated. However, since February 24, the political West found itself in a situation where it had to keep the unsustainable Neo-Nazi junta in Kiev afloat, at all costs. Nearly a decade of mismanagement and lack of meritocracy left the regime in a state of near complete incompetence to tackle the issues of tens of millions of Ukrainians. The political West was well aware of the uselessness of the puppets it installed, just like in any other country it hijacked or invaded, so it decided to do what it always does in such situations – throw money at the problem until it’s fixed or until it all crumbles into oblivion, as it did in Afghanistan in 2021.

According to the Kiev regime’s current frontman  Zelensky himself, this is precisely what is happening in Ukraine. In a CBS “Face the Nation” interview which aired on Sunday, Zelensky stated that the US is providing the Neo-Nazi junta with a mindboggling $1.5 billion per month. He claimed the regime would be completely unable to function without these funds. “The United States gives us $1.5 billion every month to support our budget to fight against Russia,” the Kiev regime’s official leader explained. And yet, he pointed out that “there still remains a deficit of $5 billion in our budget.” He kept parroting the same trope that this is far from enough for the Neo-Nazi junta.

After revealing the whopping $1.5 billion provided to the Neo-Nazi junta monthly, Zelensky said:

“But believe me, it’s not even nearly enough to cover the civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, universities, homes of Ukrainians. Why do we need this? We need the security in order to attract our Ukrainians to come back home.”

“If it’s safe, they will come, settle, work here and will pay taxes and then we won’t have a deficit of $5 billion in our budget. So it will be a positive for everybody,” he continued. “Because as of today the United States gives us $1.5 billion every month to support our budget to fight – fight this war. However, if our people will come back – and they do want to come back very much, they have a lot of motivation – they will work here.”

“And then the United States will not have to continue, give us this support,” Zelensky concluded. And yet, it seems the Kiev regime will never be in a position where the US-led political West “will not have to continue” providing such a massive and constant cash flow. And indeed, it seems it’s never enough for the Neo-Nazi junta and the corrupt oligarchs, who keep demanding more. Only a day after Zelensky complained that “it’s not even nearly enough” US Congress kept pushing with another $12 billion arrangement, according to AP.

“Negotiators to a stop-gap spending bill in the U.S. Congress have agreed to include about $12 billion in new aid to Ukraine in response to a request from the Biden administration, a source familiar with the talks said on Monday,” AP claims.

It should be noted that this arrangement isn’t that one-sided. The political West has also appropriated most of Ukraine’s gold and foreign exchange reserves. The political elites in Washington DC and Brussels have certainly not gone empty-handed as a result of this premeditated conflict. And neither have the oligarchs running the Kiev regime. It should be noted that it was only in July that the Associated Press and NPR called attention to a hugely inconvenient fact that there was no way the enormous funds being provided to the Neo-Nazi junta could be held up to scrutiny. The report states:

“As it presses ahead with providing tens of billions of dollars in military, economic and direct financial support aid to Ukraine and encourages its allies to do the same, the Biden administration is now once again grappling with longstanding worries about Ukraine’s suitability as a recipient of massive infusions of American aid.

But Zelensky’s weekend firings of his top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials have resurfaced those concerns and may have inadvertently given fresh attention to allegations of high-level corruption in Kyiv made by one outspoken U.S. lawmaker.”

What’s clear from this is that both the political elites of the collective West and the corrupt oligarchs of the Kiev regime are profiting from the “financial aid” back and forth, while regular people are suffering the consequences. All the while, the state and corporate-run propaganda machine of the political West continues trying to sell the “moral high ground” narrative that this is precisely what’s necessary to “protect the people of Ukraine,” the same people who have been pushed into a conflict with a nuclear-armed military superpower, one which they cannot hope to win in any conceivable way.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

As both Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 both suddenly lost pressure last Monday, Swedish seismologists registered multiple explosions.  The pipeline director reports unprecedented damage.  Clearly this is deliberate sabotage and could only have been done by a government with submarine capability to place underwater mines.

Who could that be?

US Secretary of State Blinken said the pipeline damage presents a “significant opportunity” for Western Europe to abandon Russian natural gas in favor of liquified natural gas from the US.

A Polish member of the European Parliament thanked the US for putting the pipeline out of commission as now Russia will have to negotiate with Poland in order to deliver gas to Europe. See this.

When faced with Russian intervention to prevent Ukraine’s invasion of Donbass, US President Biden said:

“There will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it. I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

Washington’s well trained European puppets will, of course, blame Russia for blowing up her own pipeline. See this and this. 

As I have warned would be the case, the Kremlin’s dilly-dallying over Ukraine has given Washington plenty of time for more mischief and widening of the conflict.  The Kremlin’s emphasis on legalisms might end in nuclear war.  The only safe way for Russia to deal with the threat from Ukraine would have been a blitzkrieg attack that conquered Ukraine before the West could react.  The go-slow, limited, drawn out conflict has played directly into Washington’s hands.  We might all die as the result.

There is no doubt that the war has widened, and now the Kremlin is betting Ukraine and the West will not continue the war if it involves direct attacks on Russian territory, thus the referendums.   

As I explained yesterday, a fateful moment of history is upon us. See this and this.

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

Featured image is from Indian Punchline

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***

The Taliban have signed a provisional agreement with Russia to supply gasoline, diesel, gas, and wheat to Afghanistan, acting Afghan Commerce and Industry Minister Haji Nooruddin Azizi told Reuters.

The announcement marks the first major international economic deal by the Taliban with a foreign government beyond its borders since the group came to power following the US’s chaotic withdrawal from the country in August 2021.

No country, including Russia, has formally recognised the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, although Russia is one of several countries that has maintained its embassy in the capital Kabul.

Azizi said that Russia had agreed to discount supplies to the Taliban, compared to average global commodity prices. The deal will see Moscow supply around one million tonnes of gasoline, one million tonnes of diesel, 500,000 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and two million tonnes of wheat annually, to the country.

The agreement will begin with a trial period for an unspecified amount of time and a final deal will be struck if both sides are satisfied with the arrangement.

No details have been provided on pricing or payment methods, but according to the Reuters report, Russia has agreed to a discount on goods delivered by road and rail.

Russia has increasingly turned East for partners as it faces isolation in the West over its invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin has purchased armed drones from Iran and is looking to deepen economic ties with Turkey.

‘National interest’

Afghanistan’s economy has been in dire straits after the US withdrew from the country and froze the Afghan Central Bank’s funds following the Taliban takeover. Foreign aid, which accounted for 95 percent of the government’s budget under the previous administration, has been cut. It is estimated that 95 percent of the population does not have enough to eat.

“Afghans are in great need,” Azizi told Reuters. “Whatever we do, we do it based on national interest and the people’s benefit.”

He added that Afghanistan was already receiving some gas and oil from Iran and Turkmenistan and had strong trade ties with Pakistan, but is looking to diversify.

“A country … shouldn’t be dependent on just one country, we should have alternative ways,” he said.

The US is also engaged in talks with the Taliban. This month Washington announced that it would release roughly half of the frozen $7bn in funds for monetary and humanitarian aid. Details of the plan are scarce and the Taliban has demanded the full amount. It’s unclear how the agreement with Russia will impact negotiations.

The agreement with Russia comes as the Taliban find themselves under increased pressure in the West, following the revelation that al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had been living in Kabul. Zawahiri was killed by a US drone strike in July.

In September, the UN’s envoy to Afghanistan, Markus Potzel, said the world was losing patience with the Taliban over the group’s refusal to allow girls’ education and the question marks over its links to al-Qaeda.

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Explainer: Britain’s Proxy War on Russia

September 28th, 2022 by Mark Curtis

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***

UK participation in the Ukraine conflict is far-reaching, involving military and intelligence support, arms supplies and information warfare. But as Ukraine makes gains on the battlefield, Whitehall sees the war not only as a way to defend Kyiv but to ensure the strategic defeat of its rival, Russia – a dangerous strategy.

The Ukraine conflict is also a British one, given the extensive UK role in the war, with Whitehall supporting Kyiv to repel Russia’s brutal invasion in numerous ways outlined in this Explainer.

However, UK governments do not go to war for moral or humanitarian purposes; only for strategic gain. In Ukraine, Whitehall’s main goal is to counter Russia, a power UK governments have long wanted to put back in its box and end Moscow’s independent foreign policy, which challenges NATO’s supremacy in the whole of Europe and, to an extent, the Middle East.

Russia’s brutal invasion needs to be condemned and reversed, Ukrainian sovereignty upheld and the rights of Ukrainians defended.

But the reasons for this to Whitehall planners are not their professed high-minded claims about defending democracy or stopping Russian war crimes – the UK is perfectly happy to acquiesce in such crimes in its own current conflicts, notably Yemen.

London’s interest in democracy is nowhere to be seen when it comes to supporting various dictatorships such as in the Gulf or Egypt. And its opposition to illegal foreign occupations is put aside when it comes to its increasing military support for Israel.

The problem with Russia

Whitehall sees the Ukraine war as an opportunity. Liz Truss has gone so far to say that “we will cripple Russia’s economic development in both the short and long term” with the sanctions imposed on the country following its invasion of Ukraine in February.

Image is by Tim Hammond / No10 Downing Street, licensed under CC

She has also in effect called for regime change in Moscow, saying the UK “can never allow Russia to be in a position to undertake this aggression again… which is why we wholeheartedly support Navalny”, referring to imprisoned opposition leader Alexander Navalny.

In a sign of how Russia is firmly in the sight of British leaders, the new head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, has even told troops they need to be ready to face Russia on the battlefield.

Whitehall’s major problem with Moscow is that it “is seeking its own independent sphere of influence separate to any American-backed global order or rule book”, the then head of the British army, General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, said last year.

Unacceptably to British planners, Russia elected to become a rival. Then defence secretary Michael Fallon said in 2017 that “Russia has chosen to become a strategic competitor of the West”.

His successor, Gavin Williamson expressed a similar lament, saying that “after 1990 we … believed there would be only one superpower”, referring to the US. Now, “Russia wants to assert its rights”, he complained.

This Russian independence and rivalry has contributed to the “erosion of strategic advantage” for the West which must be regained, General Sanders says. The UK wants to see Russia confined to a status of global pariah.

Whitehall is making extraordinary efforts to help Ukraine, and defeat Russia, in its war. Six main contributions can be identified.

1.    Foreign fighters

There have been several reports of “retired” SAS soldiers being active in Ukraine. Whether this is correct or a Whitehall ruse is hard to establish.

Days after the invasion, a “crack team” of “retired” UK special forces soldiers were reported to have volunteered “for missions deep inside Ukraine”. They were said to be highly-trained snipers and experts in the use of anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles. The following month three of the soldiers were killed in a Russian airstrike.

The UK forces are believed to be directly killing Russians. One report in June claimed that a team of ex-SAS soldiers, all veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had killed up to 20 Russian generals and 15 mercenaries of the pro-Moscow Wagner Group.

As many as 3,000 Britons may be fighting in Ukraine, according to one source – a Georgian commander who said there are around 20,000 foreign soldiers in the country in total. By our count around nine Britons have been killed or captured in Ukraine, with five just released.

Some are reported to have left the British army to join the conflict. “A small number of serving British personnel have disobeyed orders and may have travelled to Ukraine to fight”, defence minister James Heappey told parliament in June.

Initially, then foreign secretary Liz Truss encouraged Britons to go to Ukraine, and many subsequently did so, including the son of a senior Conservative politician.

Ministers then backtracked and said they didn’t want Britons joining the war at all. The government now says that fighting in Ukraine may amount to an offence under UK legislation and open people up to prosecution on their return to the UK. But no-one is so far known to have been prosecuted.

2.    Official boots on the ground

The UK sent special forces to Ukraine in February, weeks before the invasion, with SAS, SBS, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and the Special Forces Support Group working in the country to train Ukrainian special forces in counter-insurgency tactics, sniping and sabotage.

Those special forces were soon instructing local troops in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on how to use British-supplied anti-tank missiles that were delivered in late February as the invasion was beginning.

In July the Ministry of Defence said it had 97 troops in Ukraine but it has been unwilling to divulge their location.

3.    UK arms killing Russians

It’s not only British soldiers but also UK arms that are killing Russians. Earlier this month defence secretary Ben Wallace told parliament that long-range weaponry supplied by the UK and other states had enabled Ukraine to strike more than 350 Russian command posts, ammunition dumps, supply depots, and “other high-value targets far back from the frontline”.

The UK’s supply of £2.3 billion in military assistance to Ukraine has included over 10,000 anti-tank missiles, hundreds of other missiles and guns, 200 armoured fighting vehicles, and three million rounds of small arms ammunition.

Precisely how the UK is spending its military aid is secret – the government has refused to give a full breakdown of its expenditure.

Neither is it known how many Russian soldiers these British arms have killed, but the figure may be substantial – Wallace claims Russia has lost no less than 25,000 soldiers in Ukraine.

It is likely that UK-supplied next generation light anti-tank weapons (NLAWs) have been especially devastating, and they have been credited with helping to stall Moscow’s armoured units.

The UK has essentially been coordinating the international supply of weapons into Ukraine since the invasion. British arms are being purposely provided “to go beyond” defending Ukraine to enable it to “mount offensive operations”, the UK government has said.

Indeed, defence minister James Heappey has backed Ukraine striking targets inside Russia with UK-supplied weapons. Heappey observed: “We don’t seek to tell the Ukrainians what they can and can’t be used for other than they should be used in a lawful way”.

It appears Ukraine is acting as a testing ground for new British weapons. Ukrainian troops have, for example, used Martlets, a laser-guided missile initially designed to help the Royal Navy combat swarms of small, unmanned attack boats. The Martlet is a weapon being tested by UK troops that is yet to be fully deployed by the British military.

More generally, the UK is using Ukraine “as an opportunity to showcase British-made arms”, the Independent’s Andrew Buncombe reports. Liz Truss, as foreign secretary, was unequivocal about this: she said in March that British arms for Ukraine are “a very important export for us”, and contribute to jobs and growth.

4.    Military training

Britain’s military training is directly aiding Ukrainian combat operations. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are being given intensive infantry instruction, including on urban warfare and marksmanship, at an army base in England.

Image by Chris McAndrew, licensed under CC BY 3.0

Annabel Goldie - Wikipedia

Training in the use of anti-tank weapons is one direct way the UK is aiding the Ukrainian military, but there are others. For example, SBS special forces instructed Ukrainian troops how to use small submarines called ‘sea scooters’ in order to help take back Snake Island, which lies 22 miles off Ukraine’s south coast in the Black Sea, from the Russians.

The UK training may also help the British military itself to fight Russians directly. In a candid comment, Baroness Goldie, a UK defence minister, recently told parliament the instruction of Ukrainians provides “a great learning opportunity, because our troops are learning what our enemy does in the latest battlefield situation and how we should deal with it”.

5.    Intelligence support

Information on support to Ukraine from the UK intelligence agencies is, as ever, murky. But US reporter Tom Rogan, citing three Western intelligence sources, writes that the UK military effort is being led by MI6 and that “Ukraine’s deep battlespace effort owes especial thanks to Britain — specifically to British strike and reconnaissance special forces personnel inside Ukraine”.

The US and UK are providing satellite, electronic warfare, signals, and cyber intelligence, Rogan writes.

He adds that Ukraine’s escalating campaign is a direct extension of long-standing British special forces doctrine. This involves the deployment of very small (4, 8 or 16 person) patrols deep into enemy territory which gather targeting intelligence for commanders at the rear.

Those teams also conduct sabotage operations against targets such as logistics trains, command centres, and high-value targets such as aircraft, ammunition dumps, and fuel depots.

MI6 is known to have had contacts with Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky since well before the invasion. In October 2020 Zelensky is said to have held a secret meeting with MI6 chief Richard Moore in the UK. Zelensky told the media one of the subjects discussed related to countering disinformation and fake news.

British and US spy planes are also monitoring Russian battlefield communications by conducting regular missions on the fringes of Ukraine’s airspace, it is reported. Intelligence gathered by three RAF electronic surveillance aircraft, known as Airseekers, is fed back to Defence Intelligence in London – and, presumably, on to Ukraine.

Jeremy Fleming, head of the UK’s largest intelligence agency, GCHQ, has said the UK is “shoring up” Ukraine’s defences by supporting its cyber security, but gave no further details.

But GCHQ is certain to be playing a role in the war. It has said it supports UK troops “whenever and wherever” they are deployed.

6.    Information war

Britain’s key role in the information war against Russia builds on long standing support to Ukraine. Simon Baugh, chief executive of the UK Government Communication Service – which oversees government media operations – says Britain has provided “strategic communications support” to the government in Kyiv since 2016.

This ranges “from helping to build a professional communications capability at the centre of Government, to building resilience to cyber security threats, to jointly delivering a campaign to support the shared values of our democracies”.

Before the invasion, at the start of February, Whitehall created a Government Information Cell, drawing on 35 staff from across different ministries, which seeks to counter Russian disinformation.

Baugh says this Cell works with NATO, the EU and the Five Eyes intelligence network (involving the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK) and “creates content to bolster the morale and confidence of the Ukrainian people by showing them they are not alone”.

He adds: “We are building the capability to deliver fast communication with impact, in real-time and on the basis of 24/7 monitoring, content production, response and rebuttal.”

The focus on “content production” is noteworthy. Baugh claims that the Cell does not propagate disinformation itself and that “our model is based on the UK Government using facts to expose the truth”.

This is not easy to verify, however, as the Cell’s activities are opaque. Various apparently false stories are appearing in the media about Russia, with unclear provenance. Assertions are being made by UK intelligence agencies which are also difficult or impossible to verify, such as GCHQ’S claim that Putin’s advisers were lying to him about Russia’s performance in Ukraine.

My colleague Matt Kennard recently found the UK government was spending over £80m on media projects in Eastern Europe, in countries surrounding Russia, which are often presented as fighting “Russian disinformation”.

There is a long history of the UK promoting covert information operations, including the planting of false material in media outlets.

What is clearer is that Whitehall is investing in promoting one-sided information, which can amount to a form of propaganda. In March, for example, the government announced an additional £4.1 million in “emergency funding” to the BBC World Service to support its Ukrainian and Russian language services broadcasting into both countries.

The UK’s proxy war on Russia is very high risk given Moscow’s losses on the battlefield due partly to UK military activity and arms supplies combined with Russia having the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. Russia, like Nato, likely sees nuclear arms as useable weapons.

Putin may be most likely to employ nuclear missiles precisely at the point of British/Ukrainian military ‘success’, i.e., if Moscow were close to defeat, and especially if Ukraine looked like recapturing Crimea, a region Russia regards as its own territory, which it illegally annexed in 2014.

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Mark Curtis is the editor of Declassified UK, and the author of five books and many articles on UK foreign policy.

Featured image: Defence Secretary Ben Wallace meets with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu at the Ministry of Defence, 11 February 2022. (Photo: Tim Hammond/No 10 Downing Street)

Tracking the Flow of Stolen Syrian Oil Into Iraq

September 28th, 2022 by The Cradle

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Although the porous Iraqi-Syrian border stretches for over 600 kilometers, about half of it – in practice – is not subject to the authority of either state. Over the years, this lack of comprehensive border control has given rise to a number of security threats to both nations, not least the persistent presence of ISIS elements in border regions.

From the Iraqi side, there has been a pro-active approach in countering this low-level terrorism with the establishment of two defensive lines by the Joint Operations Command, in addition to concrete barriers and watchtowers.

Smuggling from Syria into Iraqi border towns is another salient feature of current border activities, and one which presents both a threat and an opportunity for the US-led international coalition whose forces operate on both sides of the border.

The US loots and smuggles Syria’s oil

Under the guise of this international coalition, the US army controls the borders between Iraq and Syria, specifically at the Fishkhabour-Semalka crossing, the illegal Al-Waleed crossing between Iraqi Kurdistan and US-occupied Syrian territory, and the Al-Mahmoudiyah crossing. All of these border crossings have become notorious for the illicit smuggling of Syrian crude oil into northern Iraq, with direct involvement from US military forces.

Reconnaissance drones routinely hover over the skies of the region, and security is contracted out to private security firms by the US military. The employees of these companies, who travel in four-wheel drive vehicles under US air cover, are responsible for securing the transportation of Syrian oil to Iraqi territory – even though their mandate is solely to transport logistical equipment belonging to the international coalition.

When The Cradle reached the border area to investigate further, we were prevented from reaching beyond the joint control point of the Peshmerga and Asayish forces, the Kurdish military and intelligence agency forces, respectively.

This checkpoint reflects the security coordination between the Pentagon and the Ministry of Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan, and is conducted without Baghdad’s knowledge or coordination. The central Iraqi government’s lack of awareness of the situation on its borders may be summed up in what one senior Iraqi security source told The Cradle: that the US troops were there “supporting Kurdish forces as part of the Iraqi defense system to combat terrorism.”

Destination: Iraqi Kurdistan

However, tribal sources confirm that under the cover of this “security zone,” illegal crossings between Iraq and Syria are active, with dozens of tankers passing weekly in convoys transporting smuggled Syrian oil, accompanied by US warplanes or helicopters.

Shepherds in the region also corroborate these claims, and indicate that the Syrian oil is transported to the Harir military site in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq (KRI), for the benefit of the Kurdish oil company KAR Group, owned by Sheikh Baz Karim Barzanji, who is close to the family of the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Massoud Barzani.

The latter has strong relations with the new so-called “Club of Influential Countries” in Iraq, in reference to the UAE and Turkey. Barzani also maintains a strong relationship with the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria, whose members have been protecting convoys of Syrian oil tanks.

Sheikh Baz came under some scrutiny in March when one of his villas, reportedly used as a safe house by Israel’s Mossad spy agency, was struck by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) missiles, killing and injuring agents inside.

At the time, Kurdish politician Hiwa Seid Salim told The Cradle he suspects the reason for the Iranian attack on Sheikh Baz’s villa was due to his business activities, which Iranian security sources say includes selling Iraqi (or Syrian) oil and gas to Israel.

Sheikh Baz was one of the channels of communication between the KDP and government of Saddam Hussein on the transportation of Iraqi oil to Turkey during the economic embargo on Iraq. After the 2003 US invasion, he worked with USAID and transformed his construction contracting company – set up in the 1990s – into an oil conglomerate.

The logistics of the looting

Speaking to The Cradle, a former Iraqi diplomat points out that the theft of Syrian natural resources witnessed a significant increase when former US President Donald Trump came to power. At that time, he told Iraqi officials that “Syrian oil is a cheap price for Washington’s contribution to the fight against ISIS.”

While it is not possible to accurately determine the quantities of looted oil, Iraqi tribal sources confirm that the tanker journey takes approximately 48 hours through the main crossings, approved by the US army (Fishkhabour, Al-Waleed or Al-Yaarubiyah), in a process that only pauses for brief periods to fill their tanks.

According to these sources, there are usually no less than 70 to 100 tankers transporting Syrian oil during each journey.

Inside Syria, tanker convoys travel through areas outside the authority of the central state. The trip starts from the Syrian Al-Jazira region and passes through Al-Hasakah, where it stops for hours before continuing to one of the border outlets to procure supplies, and then proceeds to the Harir site in Erbil in the KRI.

There, the oil is emptied into other tanks that carry it to the US base at Ain al-Assad in Iraq’s Anbar province, or to Halabja province, where another US military base is located.

Map depicting the transportation of stolen Syrian oil to Iraq

The transfer of tankers from Kurdistan to the Ain al-Assad base or any other US military site must obtain prior approval from the National Operations Center. Therefore, these transfers take place under the guise of “logistical support for the international coalition forces,” according to one Iraqi security source in close contact with the US. Although Baghdad is unlikely to be completely kept in the dark about this repeated violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, it appears to have very little say in the matter.

The source tells The Cradle that the tankers’ journey through the Al-Qaim-al-Bukamal crossing would have been shorter had this crossing not been under the control of armed Iraqi factions that accuse Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi of “opening the doors” for the Americans.

The same security source points out that these factions “have not stopped calling for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, which continue their security and intelligence work inside the state under the cover of providing security and military advice to the Iraqi forces in the fight against terrorism.”

How much does the Iraqi government know?

The US military’s “advisory work” is ostensibly limited to providing Iraqi forces with some satellite images of the ISIS presence in the mountains in northern Iraq. However, this information is arguably already attainable by Iraqi authorities without US help, according to sources in the military joint operations room, the highest military and security authority in Iraq.

The Cradle attempted to reach out to officials in the Iraqi government for a comment on what is happening at Iraq’s border crossings, but there was no response.

A political source attributed this non-response to “political fragility,” whereby it has become common for decision-makers to avoid commenting on what is considered “sensitive” information. This is particularly the case at a time when Iraq is undergoing political uncertainty while very tentatively emerging from its economic crisis.

There are positive steps recently undertaken by the Iraqi authorities, including a recent meeting by the country’s border guards with Syrian army officers in Baghdad – the first of its kind since 2021 – aimed at strengthening cooperation and fortifying the border against terrorism and smuggling networks.

Yet Baghdad’s failure to confront and clamp down on the illegal transportation of stolen Syrian oil into Iraq further cements – and confirms – the perception of a number of Iraqi factions that the government of Mustafa al-Kadhimi is a mere puppet in American hands.

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A former Polish Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski, has attributed to the United States the sabotage of two pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, which carry natural gas from Russia to Germany. “Thank you, USA,” Sikorski wrote on Twitter. Sikorski was Minister of National Defense from 2005 – 2007 and served as Deputy Minister of National Defense and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, previously. He is currently an elected member of the European parliament.

Nord Stream 1 and 2 lie on the bed of the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 2 was finished last year but Germany never opened it because Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Poland’s Secretary of State, Stanisław Żaryn, denounced Sikorki’s claim on Twitter as “Russian #propaganda,” calling it “a smear campaign against Poland, the US, and Ukraine, accusing the West of aggression against #NS1 and #NS2. Authenticating the Russian lies at this particular moment jeopardizes the security of Poland. What an act of gross irresponsibility!”

But it’s not out of the realm of the possible that the U.S. is indeed behind the attack. President Joe Biden promised on February 7 to prevent Nord Stream 2 from becoming operational if Russia invaded Ukraine. “If Russia invades,” said Biden, “then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany’s control?”

Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

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Featured image is from Michael Shellenberger

Original Antigenic Sin — The Hidden Danger of COVID Shots

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, September 28, 2022

They say more research needs to be done on what is known as “original antigenic sin,” aka “immune imprinting,” which refers to how your immune system responds to repeated introductions of the COVID variants.

Ukraine War: Implications of “Joining Russia”: Referendums in Donbass, Zaporozhe and Kherson

By Drago Bosnic, September 27, 2022

The areas expressed a clear intention of joining Russia and are now being subjected to reprisals by the Neo-Nazi junta. These war crimes are hardly unexpected, as the Russian-speaking people living in eastern, southeastern, southern and southwestern areas of Ukraine have often been referred to as “Untermensch” (or “subhuman”) by the NATO-backed Neo-Nazi clique which hijacked Ukraine in 2014.

The Israel Files: WikiLeaks Docs Show Top Hollywood Producers Working with Israel to Defend Its War Crimes

By Alan MacLeod, September 27, 2022

As Israel was launching a deadly assault on Gaza, killing thousands of civilians and displacing more than 100,000 people, many of America’s top TV, music and film producers were organizing to protect the apartheid state’s reputation from widespread international condemnation.

Revealing Covid Vaxx Lies: US Federal Court Orders CDC to Release 137 Million Entries of COVID Vaccine Adverse Events Collected Via V-safe App

By Michael Nevradakis, September 27, 2022

The order by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas-Austin Division follows a series of lawsuits filed by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), an Austin-based nonprofit “focused on the scientific integrity of vaccines and [the] pharmaceutical industry.”

Putin’s Address to the Russian People: “Abandoning Hope For Peaceful Coexistence”?

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts and Pres. Vladimir Putin, September 27, 2022

In his speech Putin begins the preparation of the Russian people for the hard reality.  Putin doesn’t like the hard reality and did his best to avoid it by ignoring provocations and insults until it became impossible because, as Putin says,  “the West has crossed every line.”

CIA Adapts Database Software Called PROMIS with Back Door for Cyber-espionage

By Dr. Jack Colhoun, September 27, 2022

Did the CIA lie, cheat and betray its friends and business partners in ways that even Donald Trump might envy? A rapidly unfolding intelligence scandal indicates that the answer is yes. The dark world of cyber-age espionage is on full display in the unfolding scandal involving the CIA and Crypto AG, the encryption company based in Zug, Switzerland.

World War III Has Already Begun, but the Truth Is Being Withheld from the Public Until the Very Last Moment

By Mike Adams, September 27, 2022

World War III has already begun. You simply aren’t being told this because your government and dishonest media outlets are dedicated to keeping you in the dark. After all, they want to use the remaining time to stockpile food, ammunition, medical supplies and precious metals for themselves, and this can only be accomplished by withholding the truth about the situation for as long as possible.

‘Untethered’ Air Force General. The Alleged “China Threat”: ‘When you kill your enemy, every part of your life is better’

By David Roza, September 27, 2022

An aerospace industry conference took on more of a tent revival feel on Wednesday when an Air Force general took the stage and sought to fire the audience up about the existential threat he said China posed to the American way of life and the urgent work needed to defeat it.

Negotiated Settlement to Prevent a “Protracted Proxy War with a Nuclear Ending”

By Walt Zlotow, September 27, 2022

The Chicago Tribune uses this singular victory in the 7 month Russian offensive as foreshadowing a possible Ukrainian victory in the war. But the Trib omitted that the 1,000 square miles recaptured represents just 2% of the near one fifth of Ukraine under Russian control. At a 2% success rate, that would require 49 more offensives to oust Russia.

Fascism Returns to Europe’s Centerstage

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, September 27, 2022

The stunning victory of a far-right coalition in Italy’s parliamentary election on Sunday is largely seen from the distinct prospect of Giorgia Melonibecoming the country’s next prime minister, whose hardline views on immigration and the preservation of the “Christian family” are rooted in the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a party founded after World War II by the nostalgic former members of Benito Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship. 

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Original Antigenic Sin — The Hidden Danger of COVID Shots

September 28th, 2022 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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Scientists warn repeated COVID boosters may result in lowered immunity through a process known as “original antigenic sin” or “immune imprinting”

Original antigenic sin describes how your first exposure to a virus shapes the outcome of subsequent exposures to antigenically related strains. The end result is that you become increasingly prone to symptomatic infections

Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirm that people who got two or three COVID jabs are MORE likely to get ill with COVID six to eight months after the last dose than had they gotten none

Health authorities are potentially worsening matters further by pushing people to simultaneously get the updated bivalent COVID booster and a quadrivalent flu vaccine this fall

The COVID jab and the flu vaccine are the No. 1 and No. 2 most dangerous injections respectively, based on adverse event reports and payouts from the U.S. Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Both are also capable of shedding, and both can make you more prone to infection as their protection wears off

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COVID-19 has been going on for nearly three years, and with a whole new set of untested COVID boosters being rolled out, some scientists are taking a step back, cautioning that there still are unanswered questions about how the shots work.

They say more research needs to be done on what is known as “original antigenic sin,” aka “immune imprinting,” which refers to how your immune system responds to repeated introductions of the COVID variants.

Understanding Original Antigenic Sin

The following description of original antigenic sin was published in a January 2019 Journal of Immunology paper titled “Original Antigenic Sin: How First Exposure Shapes Lifelong Anti–Influenza Virus Immune Responses”:1

“The term ‘original antigenic sin’ (OAS) was first used in the 1960s to describe how one’s first exposure to influenza virus shapes the outcome of subsequent exposures to antigenically related strains. In the decades that have passed, OAS-like responses have been shown to play an integral role in both protection from and susceptibility to infections.

OAS may also have an important deterministic role in the differential efficacy of influenza vaccine responses observed for various age cohorts across seasons …

OAS describes the phenomenon whereby the development of immunity against pathogens/Ags is shaped by the first exposure to a related pathogen/Ag … subsequent infections with similar influenza virus strains preferentially boost the Ab response against the original strain …

The critical role of primary exposure in shaping the composition of the Ab repertoire was not only observed in humans after influenza virus infections; this phenomenon was also observed in animal models and in the context of other infectious agents.

For example, additional serum absorption experiments in ferrets infected in succession with three different influenza virus strains demonstrated that nearly all of the host Abs after the infection series were reactive against the first strain, only a fraction of serum Abs could be absorbed by the secondary virus, and fewer yet by the tertiary virus.”

Simplified Example

Here’s a layman’s summary to illustrate this phenomenon as simply as possible, within the context of COVID:

  • Exposed to the original Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 strain, your humoral immune system is programmed to produce antibodies against that specific virus. Similarly, if you got the jab, your body will produce antibodies against the viral spike protein formulated into that shot.
  • Exposed to the Delta strain, your immune system responds first by boosting production of the original antibodies, while antibodies specific against Delta are produced in a far lower amount as it takes time for your body to respond to the new strain.
  • Exposed to an Omicron variant, your immune system again responds by boosting the original antibodies, while antibodies against Omicron are produced in even lower amounts than those against Delta.

As a result of this process, with each exposure to a new variant, the original antibodies get “back-boosted.” So, over time, those antibodies come to predominate.

The process is (at least theoretically) the same for all vaccinations. Each booster dose back-boosts or strengthens the original antibodies, making them more and more predominant. The problem is that they may not be effective at neutralizing newer strains (depending on the amount of mutation), thus rendering you more and more prone to symptomatic infection.

Frequent Boosting May Backfire

As reported by ABC News:2

“Some experts say they are concerned that frequent boosting with the original version of the vaccine may have inadvertently exacerbated immune imprinting. At this point in the pandemic, some adults have received four or more doses of the same vaccine …

[Some] scientists worry about a potential backfire, with frequent boosting handcuffing the body’s natural immune system and leaving it exposed to radically different variants that might emerge in the future.

‘Where this matters is if you keep giving booster doses with [original] strain, and continue to lock people into that original response. It makes it harder for them to respond then to essentially a completely different virus,’ says Dr. Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Philadelphia …

The timing of vaccines may also need to be taken into account, as the nation moves from original doses to updated boosters.

‘It is true that the best boosts typically are the ones that are given infrequently, that immunologically, if you boost too much and too frequently, then you often have a lower immune response at the end,’ said [director of the center for virology and vaccine research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dr. Dan] Barouch.”

Data Confirm Negative Efficacy After Second Dose

In the video above, Dr. Meryl Nass reviews official data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which confirm that people who got two or three COVID jabs are MORE likely to get ill with COVID six to eight months after the last dose than had they gotten none.

Should You Double Up on COVID Booster and Flu Shot?

Our reckless health authorities are potentially worsening matters further by pushing people to simultaneously get the updated bivalent COVID booster and a seasonal flu vaccine this fall.

Early in September 2022, White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci urged Americans to “Get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you are eligible,” and White House COVID coordinator Ashish Jha, September 6, stated, “I really believe this is why God gave us two arms, one for the flu shot and the other one for the COVID shot” — a statement that will live on in infamy as one of the most ridiculous comments from a public health official ever uttered.3

One problem, although hardly the most important one, is that it’s still far too early for a flu shot. As noted by STAT News:4

“The protection generated by influenza vaccines erodes pretty quickly over the course of a flu season. A vaccine dose given in early September may offer limited protection if the flu season doesn’t peak until February or even March, as it did during the unusually late 2021-2022 season.

‘If you start now, I am not a big fan of it,’ Florian Krammer, an influenza expert at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, told STAT. ‘I understand why this is promoted, but from an immunological point of view it doesn’t make much sense.’”

STAT cites research showing the effectiveness of the flu shot wanes by about 18% for every 28 days’ post-vaccination. What it doesn’t mention is the fact that the flu shot historically has had an effectiveness well below 50% to start with. The 2018/2019 flu vaccines, for example, which outperformed the 2017/2018 vaccines, had an adjusted effectiveness rating of:5

  • 29% for all ages
  • 49% for children aged 6 months through 8 years
  • 6% for children ages 9 through 17
  • 25% for adults between the ages of 18 and 49
  • 12% for those over 50

This May Become the ‘Dark Winter’ Biden Warned About

Ever since the rollout of the COVID shots, there have been suspicions that some kind of shedding is happening between the jabbed and the unjabbed.6 With mass flu vaccination, the possibility of transmission is further exacerbated, and there’s no telling what kind of viral mutations the combination of a bivalent COVID jab and a quadrivalent flu shot might produce.

A study7 published January 18, 2018, in the journal PNAS showed that people who receive the seasonal flu shot and then contract influenza excrete infectious influenza viruses through their breath.

What’s more, those vaccinated two seasons in a row had a greater viral load of shedding influenza A viruses. According to the authors, “We observed 6.3 times more aerosol shedding among cases with vaccination in the current and previous season compared with having no vaccination in those two seasons.”

This study also highlighted the possibility that annual flu vaccination might lead to reduced protection against influenza over time, and that each vaccination can make you progressively more prone to getting sick. That, again, is the original antigenic sin phenomenon discussed above.

Now, combine the possibility of antigenic sin for COVID with the antigenic sin for influenza, and what might we end up with? Who knows? Research8 has also shown that priming your immune system with influenza vaccine can make you more susceptible to bacterial infections as well, and what are face masks loaded with? Bacteria.

Taken together, we could well be facing the “dark winter” president Biden warned would befall the unvaccinated last year. But it’ll be those with COVID booster and quadrivalent flu shots who will suffer the most. The rest of us will hopefully avoid problems provided we keep our immune systems strong.

Both Shots Are Associated With Serious Side Effects

On top of the antigenic sin possibility for both the COVID jab and the flu vaccine, there’s the possibility of suffering serious side effects from either or both of these shots. Before the advent of the COVID jab, injury following influenza vaccination was the most compensated claim in the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP).

Between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 2019, a total of 5,407 injury claims for flu vaccine were filed, 4,614 of which were compensated.9 Based on VICP injury filings and awards, the flu vaccine was the riskiest vaccine out there. The COVID jab, however, blew the flu shot out of the water within the first few weeks of use.

“This fall, they’re telling people to line up for the two riskiest and deadliest injections out there. Media are stating that getting the flu shot and the COVID jab at the same time is ‘safe.’ Yet there are absolutely NO data to support such a claim.”

As of September 2, 2022, just 21 months into the COVID jabs existence, 1,400,350 post-jab injuries have been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).10 That’s more than half of all VAERS reports collected for all vaccines since its inception 32 years ago.

So, this fall, they’re telling people to line up for the two riskiest and deadliest injections out there. In my view, this is reckless beyond belief, and I would caution against this strategy. Disturbingly, media are stating that getting the flu shot and the COVID jab at the same time is “safe.”11 Yet there are absolutely NO data to support such a claim. It’s pure assumption.

Vaccine Journal Warns of Serious Side Effects

The fact that the COVID jabs can cause serious side effects is evident by VAERS data alone, but studies reanalyzing original trial data submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are also starting to emerge that confirm the riskiness of these shots.

Most recently, a study12 13 in the journal Vaccine concluded the Pfizer and Moderna COVID jabs are associated with a 16% “excess risk of serious adverse events of special interest” over placebo baseline, on average. As detailed in that paper:14

“In 2020, prior to COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the Brighton Collaboration created a priority list, endorsed by the World Health Organization, of potential adverse events relevant to COVID-19 vaccines. We adapted the Brighton Collaboration list to evaluate serious adverse events of special interest observed in mRNA COVID-19 vaccine trials.

Methods: Secondary analysis of serious adverse events reported in the placebo-controlled, phase III randomized clinical trials of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in adults … focusing analysis on Brighton Collaboration adverse events of special interest.

Results: Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an excess risk of serious adverse events of special interest of 10.1 and 15.1 per 10,000 vaccinated … respectively. Combined, the mRNA vaccines were associated with an excess risk of serious adverse events of special interest of 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated …

The Pfizer trial exhibited a 36 % higher risk of serious adverse events in the vaccine group; risk difference 18.0 per 10,000 vaccinated … The Moderna trial exhibited a 6 % higher risk of serious adverse events in the vaccine group: risk difference 7.1 per 10,000 …

The excess risk of serious adverse events found in our study points to the need for formal harm-benefit analyses, particularly those that are stratified according to risk of serious COVID-19 outcomes. These analyses will require public release of participant level datasets.”

Researchers Call for Release of Patient Data

In an open letter addressed to the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna published in The BMJ,15 the authors of this Vaccine paper call for the release of all clinical data, including individual participant data, so that a more thorough reanalysis can be made:

“The effort to prepare these datasets is minimal, and no potentially identifying data is needed … Today (Aug 31), our study of serious adverse events in the Pfizer and Moderna phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trials was published in the peer-reviewed journal Vaccine.

The results showed the Pfizer and Moderna both exhibited an absolute risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest (combined, 1 per 800 vaccinated), raising concerns that mRNA vaccines are associated with more harm than initially estimated at the time of emergency authorization.

We acknowledge that our estimates are only approximations because the original data remain sequestered. For example, we could not stratify by age, which would help clarify the populations in which benefits outweigh harms.

A more definitive determination of the actual harms and benefits requires individual participant data (IPD) that remain unavailable to research investigators … COVID-19 vaccines are now among the most widely disseminated medicines in the history of the world.

Yet, results from the pivotal clinical trials cannot be verified by independent analysts. The public has a legitimate right to an impartial analysis of these data …

Transparency, reproducibility, and replication are cornerstones of high-quality science. The time is overdue for Pfizer and Moderna to allow independent scientists and physicians to see the original data and to replicate the analyses.”

COVID Jabs Linked to Excess Deaths

The COVID shots also appear to be responsible for the rapid increase in excess deaths around the world. As reported September 8, 2022, by The Defender,16 the COVID jabs are causing injuries on a scale we’ve never seen before in medical history.

Yet governments around the world are turning a blind eye. Most medical researchers also avoid these data like the plague, for fear of getting defunded. Two university professors in Germany, however, have bucked that trend.

Psychologist Christof Kuhbandner and Matthias Reitzner, a statistician, analyzed excess mortality data from the German Federal Statistical Office (Bundesamt für Statistik) for 2020 through August 2022.17 18

By applying actuarial analysis to the all-cause mortality data — i.e., by estimating the number of all-cause deaths during these years had there been no pandemic, and then comparing that to the observed all-cause deaths — they found the death toll in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, was actually close to the expected number.

In 2021, however, the observed number of deaths were “two empirical standard deviations above the expected number.” What’s more, the increase in mortality only started to accumulate after April that year. A similar pattern was also observed for stillbirths, which rose by 11% in the second quarter of 2021.

The figure below illustrates the differences in excess mortality between 2020, the year of the virus, and 2021, the year of the COVID jabs.19 20 Looking at the age groups, we see something very odd. In 2021, excess mortality was highest among 15- to 79-year-olds, yet COVID infection primarily killed the elderly, 70 to 79 years of age, in 2020.

Mortality in age groups 15 to 29, and 50 to 59, during the pandemic, pre-jab, was actually below average, and excess mortality among children was well below average. Yet in 2021, excess mortality went up for all age groups, not just the elderly. This strongly suggests the COVID virus was not a primary contributor, but rather the experimental injections.

excess mortality

Kuhbandner and Reitzner further notes there were spikes in excess mortality in April and May and again in September, November and December 2021. The April/May spike coincides with the COVID shot rollout in Germany, and the increases in the fall correlate with booster campaigns.

The following graph21 22 illustrates how tightly connected the excess mortality numbers are with the rise and fall in COVID shots administered.

number of excess deaths

In my view, there’s simply no doubt the COVID jabs are causing more harm than good, and combining a reformulated and never tested bivalent COVID booster with a quadrivalent flu shot could potentially be disastrous.

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Notes

2 ABC News September 7, 2022

3 STAT News September 9, 2022

4 STAT News September 9, 2022

5 CDC.gov 2018-2019 Vaccine Effectiveness

6 Behind the FDA Curtain Substack September 5, 2022

7 PNAS January 18, 2018; 115(5): 1081-108

8 Journal of Leukocyte Biology 2014 Mar; 95(3): 405–416

9 HRSA.gov, VICP Adjudication Statistics, Updated July 1, 2022, Page 2 (PDF)

10 OpenVAERS as of September 2, 2022

11 STAT News September 9, 2022

12 Vaccine September 27, 2022; 40(40): 5798-5805

13 The Disinformation Chronicle September 6, 2022

14 Vaccine September 27, 2022; 40(40): 5798-5805

15 The BMJ 2022;378:o1731

16 The Defender September 8, 2022

17 ResearchGate August 2022 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27319.19365

18 Eugyppius.com August 27, 2022

19 ResearchGate August 2022 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27319.19365

20 Eugyppius.com August 27, 2022

21 ResearchGate August 2022 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27319.19365

22 Eugyppius.com August 27, 2022

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense


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 

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***

On Wednesday, September 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the people of Russia and made several important announcements.

He briefed the citizens on the progress of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and also announced an immediate partial mobilization amid surging Kiev regime forces attacks, primarily aimed at the populations of DNR, LNR, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.

The areas expressed a clear intention of joining Russia and are now being subjected to reprisals by the Neo-Nazi junta. These war crimes are hardly unexpected, as the Russian-speaking people living in eastern, southeastern, southern and southwestern areas of Ukraine have often been referred to as “Untermensch” (or “subhuman”) by the NATO-backed Neo-Nazi clique which hijacked Ukraine in 2014.

Shelling and other forms of attacks against civilians in Donbass have been a daily occurrence for nearly a decade now. Approximately 15,000 people have been killed in this way until February 24, when Russia launched its counteroffensive against NATO’s crawling encroachment. However, the Kiev regime forces never stopped shelling the DNR and LNR, albeit the latter has been fully liberated, negating the enemy the chance to conduct widespread artillery attacks. Still, Donetsk has been under near-constant artillery attacks, especially in recent months, after the political West (primarily the United States) sent new artillery systems, including the HIMARS. To save the population, Russia evacuated millions of people from these areas and beyond (including from Kharkov and Kherson regions).

All of this has either severely disrupted or completely halted any significant economic activity in these areas, in addition to the fact that other civil services are operating under wartime conditions or aren’t operating at all. In this way, the Kiev regime has shown that it doesn’t only consider the people of Donbass hostile, but even those living in other regions it lost control of, be it the Kherson, Zaporozhye or Kharkov regions.

 

 

The Russian air defense units deployed in all of the aforementioned areas have been shooting down dozens of missiles fired by the Kiev regime forces daily, which is preventing the number of casualties from being exponentially higher. Still, the attacks continue and are not only limited to shelling, but also include terrorist attacks and other forms of subversion aimed at disrupting the lives of the locals.

To prevent all this, the local administrations of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Zaporozhye (currently operating in the city of Melitopol) and Kherson regions decided to hold referendums on joining the Russian Federation. The votes will be cast from September 23 to 27. The Kiev regime has already started its intimidation campaign, targeting civilians and sending death squads to assassinate anyone it considers connected to organizing the referendums. At least a dozen people from the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions’ civil administrations have already been killed in this way. However, this is highly unlikely to change the outcome of the vote, especially now when Russia’s patience has all but run out.

Securing these areas, driving out the Kiev regime forces further away and preventing artillery and terrorist attacks is the priority which also requires far more troops than the ones already deployed in these regions. Thus, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced low-level mobilization which will include hundreds of thousands of fresh troops. According to various reports from the Russian Ministry of Defense, up to 300,000 additional troops will be mobilized and most likely sent to the four areas to maintain security and assist Russian units which are already there. According to Russian sources, new troops will include reservists with previous military experience. This low-level mobilization pool represents just over 1% of Russia’s full mobilization capacity.

It is still unclear how and where exactly the Russian military would deploy these additional forces, but it’s safe to assume that certain counteroffensive actions will be necessary to drive out the Kiev regime forces from the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, as well as from the occupied parts of the DNR. These actions are most likely the priority in order to stop the near-constant heavy shelling, as well as to prevent the Kiev regime forces from terrorizing the “noncompliant” locals in the areas they still control. In addition, it should also prevent or at least disrupt the actions of the aforementioned death squads operating in the areas which have already been liberated.

According to the local administration of the Zaporozhye region, late last night, an explosion occurred near the central market in Melitopol. The detonation occurred in a clothing store, injuring at least three people. Similar attacks on civilian infrastructure and local residents are being reported in both former Ukrainian regions in addition to the regular shelling of the DNR. Apart from preventing the further senseless slaughter of civilians, Russia will need to secure the aforementioned areas to allow the locals to finally start living normal lives. To accomplish this, other goals of the special military operation will need to be met and they include areas far beyond the Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, as there are tens of millions of other people still living under the jackboot of the Neo-Nazi junta in Kiev.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. 

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***

As Israel was launching a deadly assault on Gaza, killing thousands of civilians and displacing more than 100,000 people, many of America’s top TV, music and film producers were organizing to protect the apartheid state’s reputation from widespread international condemnation.

Together, the Sony Archive – a cache of emails published by Wikileaks – prove that influential entertainment magnates attempted to whitewash Israeli crimes and present the situation as defending itself from an impending “genocide”, liaised with Israeli military and government officials in order to coordinate their message, attempted to cancel those who spoke out against the injustice, and put financial and social pressure on institutions who hosted artists criticizing the apartheid government’s actions.

As Israel Attacks, Hollywood Plays Defense

“[Israel’s message] Must be repeated ad infinitum until the people get it,” wrote Hollywood lawyer and producer Glenn D. Feig, in an email chain to many of Tinsel Town’s most influential executives. This was in response to the unprovoked 2014 Israeli attack on Gaza, one of the bloodiest chapters in over half a century of occupation.

Named “Operation Protective Edge”, the Israeli military engaged in seven weeks of near-constant bombing of the densely populated coastal strip. According to the United Nations, over 2,000 people were killed – a quarter of them children. 18,000 houses were destroyed, leaving more than 100,000 people homeless.

The Israeli military deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure, knocking out Gaza’s only power plant and shutting down its water treatment plants, leading to economic, social and ecological devastation in an area Human Rights Watch has labeled the world’s largest “open air prison”.

Many in Hollywood expressed deep concern. “We must make sure that never happens again”, insisted producer Ron Rotholz. Rotholz, however, was not referring to the death and destruction Israel imposed on Gaza, but to the fact that many of the entertainment world’s biggest stars, including celebrity power couple, Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, had condemned Israel’s actions, labeling them tantamount to “genocide.”

“Change must start from the top down. It should be unheard of and unacceptable for any Academy Award-winning actor to call the legitimate armed defense of one’s territory…genocide” he continued, worrying that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement – a worldwide campaign to put economic pressure on Israel in an attempt to push it to meet its obligations under international law – was gaining steam in the world of the arts. Israel’s legitimacy rests upon political and military support from the U.S. Therefore, maintaining support among the American public is crucial to the long term viability of its settler colonial project.

Rotholz then attempted to organize a silent, worldwide pressure campaign on arts venues and organizations, including the Motion Picture Academy in Hollywood and the Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals, to stamp out BDS, writing,

What we can do is urge the leaders of major film, TV and theater organisations, festivals, markets and potentially the heads of media corporations to issue official statements condemning any form of cultural or economic boycotts against Israel.”

Others agreed that they had to develop a “game plan” for opposing BDS.

Of course, when influential producers, festivals and heads of media corporations release statements condemning a certain position or practice, this is, in effect, a threat: stop taking these positions or suffer the professional consequences.

Loach on the Brain

The Sony emails also reveal a near obsession with British filmmaker and social activist Ken Loach. The celebrated director’s film, “Jimmy’s Hall” had recently been nominated for the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and in the wake of Israel’s assault on Gaza, he had publicly called for a cultural and sporting boycott of the apartheid state.

This outraged many in Hollywood. Ryan Kavanaugh, CEO of Relativity Media, a film producing company responsible for financing more than 200 movies, demanded that not only Loach, but the whole Cannes Film Festival be cancelled. “The studios and networks alike must join together and boycott cannes,” he wrote. “If we don’t we are sending a message that another holocaust is fine with Hollywood as long as it is business as usual,” he added, framing the Israeli attack on a near-defenseless civilian population as a Palestinian genocide of Israelis.

Others agreed. Ben Silverman, former co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios and producer of shows such as “The Office”, “The Biggest Loser” and Ugly Betty” said that the industry should “boycott the boycotters”. Rotholz, meanwhile, wrote to the head of the Cannes Film Festival, demanding that he take action against Loach for his comments. “There is no place for [Loach’s intolerant and hateful remarks] in the global world of film and filmmakers”, he insisted.

Others came up with another way of countering Loach. “How about we all club together and make a documentary about the rise of new anti-Semitism in Europe,” suggested British film producer Cassian Elwes, adding,

I would be willing to contribute and put time into it if others here would do the same. Between all of us I’m sure we could figure out a way to distribute it and get it into places like Cannes so we could have a response to guys like Loach. Perhaps we try to use it to rally support from film communities in Europe to help us distribute it there”.

“I love it,” replied publishing oligarch Jason Binn, “And I will promote it in a major way to all 3.2 million magazine subscribers across all on and offline platforms. I can even leverage Gilt’s 9 million members,” he added, referring to the shopping and lifestyle website he managed.

“Me too,” said Amy Pascal, the Co-Chairperson of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Meanwhile, Mark Canton, producer of movies such as “Get Carter”, “Immortals” and “300” busied himself drumming up more Hollywood support for the idea. “Adding Carmi Zlotnik to this growing list”, he replied, referencing the TV executive.

This whole correspondence was from an email chain of dozens of high-powered entertainment figures entitled “Happy New Year. Too bad Germany is now a no travel zone for Jews,” which ludicrously claimed that the European country had become a Muslim-controlled Islamic theocracy.

“It is horrible. But in the end, it is no surprise, because apologists for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians will go to any length to prevent the people opposing them,” Mr. Loach said, when asked for comment by MintPress. “We shouldn’t underestimate the hatred of those who cannot tolerate the idea that Palestinians have human rights, that Palestine is a state; and they have their country,” he added.

Shutting Down Free Expression

The pro-Israel group in Hollywood also put serious pressure on American institutions to crack down on support for Palestinian human rights. Silverman revealed that he had written to Peter Gelb, the general manager of the New York Metropolitan Opera, in an effort to shut down a performance of “The Death of Klinghoffer”, an opera that tells the story of the 1985 hijacking of an airliner by the Palestine Liberation Front. “I suggest though that we each call him on Monday at his office at the Met and your point about the Met’s donors’ leverage is important,” he advised the other entertainment oligarchs, thereby shining a light on how the powerful move in secret to silence speech they do not approve of, and how they use their financial clout to coerce and strong-arm others into toeing their line. A lot of pressure was necessary, because, as Silverman explained, “as members of the artistic community it is very hard to be pro free speech only some of the time and not all of the time.”

Ultimately, the performance did go ahead, but not without a large and coordinated protest both inside and outside the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, as individuals attempted to shut down the performance, claiming it was “antisemitic.”

Liaising with the IDF

The email conversations of many of Hollywood’s most influential individuals show that they believe they are on the verge of a worldwide extermination of Jews, and that Israel – and themselves – are the only things standing in the way of this impending fate. As Kavanaugh wrote, “It’s our job to keep another Holocaust from happening. Many of you may think that can’t happen, that is extreme…[but] If you pull newspapers from pre Holocaust it seems eerily close to our world today.”

Rotholz was of a similar opinion, writing that,

It is imperative that leading figures in the LA/NY film, tv, media, digital and theater communities who support a strong and potent Jewish state develop a strategy for liasing with colleagues in London and Europe and also with the creative communities here and in Europe to promote and explain the Israeli cause.”

The Sony Archive emails also show that, not only were Tinsel Town’s top brass coordinating strategies to silence critics of Israel, but that they were also closely liaising with the Israeli government and its military.

Producer George Perez, for example, messaged his colleagues in the chain email to introduce them to an IDF colonel, stating (emphasis added),

Everyone please use this “reply all” list from here on.  I have included Kobi Marom a retired commander in the Israeli army. Kobi was kind enough to give my family and I a jeep tour of the Golan Heights during our June trip to Israel.  He also took us to visit an army base on the border of Israel and Syria, an area which has been in the news lately.  Hard to imagine that the “kids” that we met at the base are most likely engaged in combat with our enemies.”

Seeing as the large majority of those who died were Palestinian civilians, it is unclear whether he considers all Palestinians or just Hamas as enemies of Hollywood. Perez also noted that “Kobi works closely with the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces (FIDF) who are in need of donations,” and advised that Hollywood needed to “dig deep to help in the constant struggle for the survival of Israel.”

The group also attempted to recruit Israeli-American movie star Natalie Portman into their ranks. But the Academy Award-winning actress appeared more concerned that her personal details were being shared. “How did I get on this list? Also Ryan Seacrest?” she replied, before directly addressing Kavanaugh, writing,

[C]an you please remove me from this email list? you should not be copying me publicly so that 20 people i don’t know have my personal info. i will have to change my email address now.  thank you”.

While Portman’s open contempt for the group of rabidly pro-Israel producers is notable, more so was Kavanaugh’s response, which revealed how close the connection between the Israeli state and Hollywood is. Kavanaugh wrote back,

Sorry. You are right Jews being slaughtered for their beliefs and Cannes members calling for the boycott of anything Israel or Jewish is much much less important than your email address being shared with 20 of our peers who are trying to make a difference. my deepest apologies…I had lunch yesterday with Israel consulate general who brought J street up to me. He was so perplexed confused and concerned when he heard you supported them that he begged me to connect you two.”

Thus, the leaked emails prove beyond any doubt that both the Israeli government and the IDF liaise with some of the most powerful people in the entertainment world in order to push forward a pro-Israel message and stamp out any deviance from that line.

Hip Hoppers for Apartheid

While their efforts at recruiting Portman fell flat, one star who responded enthusiastically was hip hop mega producer Russell Simmons, founder of Def Jam Records and the brother of Joseph “Rev.Run” Simmons, one third of Run DMC. Simmons has recently been the subject of controversy, after 20 women have come forward, charging him with rape or other sexual misconduct.

The emails reveal that promoting engagement with Israel within the African-American community is one of Simmons’ primary interests. When asked if he had any ideas how to improve Israel’s image, he said, “Simple messaging from non Jews specifically from Muslims promoting peace and Israel’s right to exist…We have resources and the desire to win rather than lose the hearts of young Muslims and Jews.”

What these resources were, he explained,

We have hundreds of collaboration programs between Imams Rabbis and their congregations We have many respected imams who would join former chief rabbi metzker (spelling) rabbi Schneier and non Jews in promoting the Saudi peace plan”.

“Through this campaign we will be helping Israel,” he concluded.

Turning the Tide

Despite the best efforts of Simmons and others, however, American public opinion has, in recent years, begun to turn against Israel. Young Americans, in particular, are more likely to sympathize with the plight of the Palestinian people and support an independent Palestinian state.

Much of this has to do with the rise of social media and a new generation of activists breaking through the barriers to highlight injustices being carried out by their government. Today, Americans are more likely to see first-hand, unvarnished accounts of Israeli brutality on social media platforms. As veteran political scientist Noam Chomsky explained to MintPress last year, “The veil of intense propaganda [is] being lifted slowly, [and] crucial U.S. participation in Israeli crimes is also coming more clearly into view. With committed activism, that could have salutary effects.”

Nevertheless, U.S. government support for Israel continues to rise. Between 2019 and 2028, it is scheduled to send nearly $40 billion in aid, almost all of it military, meaning that American taxpayer funds are contributing to Palestinian oppression and displacement.

Loach was even more upbeat on the issue, telling us that those who stand in the way of justice will be judged poorly by history, stating,

The denial of human rights of the Palestinians is one of the great crimes [of the modern era] and Palestinian rights is one of the great causes of last century and this century. We should all support the Palestinians. If you have any care for human rights, there is no question: the Palestinians have to be supported. And these people who oppose them, in the end, will fade away. Because history will show this was a terrible crime. Palestinians suffered ethnic cleansing of their homeland. We have to support the Palestinians, full stop.”

Those people, however, have no intention of “fading away”, and continue to organize on behalf of the Israeli government. Thanks to the leaked documents, those who care about Palestinian self-determination have a clearer understanding of how they operate.

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Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.orgThe GuardianSalonThe GrayzoneJacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

Featured image: Illustration by MintPress News

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***

Germany has nationalised the gas importer Uniper, to save it from insolvency in the face of the Gazprom gas stoppage. Robert Habeck’s earlier scheme to save Uniper and other importers involved the imposition of a gas surcharge of 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour on all consumers, but the government appears ready to scrap this plan just days before it was set to go into effect. Instead, some politicians are now talking of capping gas prices, though as far as I can tell, nobody has any idea how.

As the pressure builds and the first closures begin, Germany is entering an economic recession, and there are everyday renewed cracks in the political edifice. Minister President of Saxony Michael Kretschmer (CDU) – no fringe political figure – recently remarked that Germany “cannot do without Russian gas” and acknowledged that EU sanctions are to blame for the shortage, but he stopped short of demanding that Nord Stream 2 be opened; instead, he hopes for a return to Russian gas after the Ukraine war has ended.

The Greens in government remain committed to taking Germany’s last nuclear power plants offline by the end of the year, hoping that enough French nuclear plants will return to service over the winter to cover any resulting shortages. It is hard to imagine a more farcical approach to nuclear energy. Meanwhile, the head mayor of Berlin has suggested that two- or three-hour periods of load-shedding may be necessary to keep the electrical grid functional over the winter.

Other experts, while downplaying the risk of uncontrolled outages, have raised the possibility load-shedding as well, confirming that these are very real contingency plans and that we’re being prepared for them. The stated concern is invariably that local or regional gas shortages will cause the widespread activation of electrical heaters and overwhelm the grid, though how exactly this could be anticipated far enough in advanced for scheduled outages is unclear to me.

Prices have increased vastly across the economy, and estimates are that up to 60 percent of German households are now committing their entire monthly income to cover the rising cost of living. The depth of the crisis isn’t fully known, as loan defaults and similar economic signals won’t begin in earnest until 2023.

And that’s it. There are no plans from the government, beyond doubtful price-tinkering, regulatory schemes and targeted financial assistance. If you look at those news outlets most guilty of Corona hysteria, like the state-funded Tagesschau or the Süddeutsche Zeitung, you find extremely muted reporting on the crisis. Instead, hyperventilation about Ukraine continues to dominate headlines; pieces on the energy apocalypse are either misleading items like this one, hailing a dip in gas prices, or trivial write-ups about whether cities should cancel their Christmas lighting this year.

UPDATE: The Danish Maritime Authority reports a drop in pressure in the undersea Nord Stream 2 pipeline, with gas bubbles appearing near the Baltic island of Bornholm, the site of the apparent rupture. The pipe had been filled with gas following its completion in November 2021, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz refused to certify its operation, and so it has remained out of service. Many conspiracy theories are possible here, in what will very likely turn out to be an act of sabotage.

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***

A federal court in Texas is giving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) until Friday to release the first batch of data on adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination collected by the agency via its V-safe app.

The order by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas-Austin Division follows a series of lawsuits filed by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), an Austin-based nonprofit “focused on the scientific integrity of vaccines and [the] pharmaceutical industry.”

According to ICAN, the court order requires the CDC to release the first batch of 19 months’ worth of data collected from millions of participants who reported adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccination via the V-safe app between Dec. 14, 2020, and July 31, 2022.

In all, the CDC will be required to release more than 137 million health V-safe entries.

The CDC describes V-safe as a smartphone app that “provides personalized and confidential check-ins via text messages and web surveys,” enabling users to “quickly and easily share with CDC how you, or your dependent, feel after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.”

According to the CDC, “This information helps CDC monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in near real time,” adding that the purpose of the V-safe app “is to rapidly characterize the safety profile of COVID-19 vaccines when given outside a clinical trial setting.”

Public will ‘see for themselves the actual self-reported data’

The data collected via the V-safe app is “collected, managed, and housed on a secure server by Oracle,” with only the CDC having “access to the individualized survey data.”

Oracle’s access is limited to “aggregate deidentified data for reporting.”

This distinction led to the main thrust of ICAN’s lawsuits against the CDC. ICAN argued that “based on the CDC’s own documentation, the data submitted to V-safe is already available in deidentified form (with no personal health information) and could be immediately released to the public.”

ICAN submitted three Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the deidentified data collected via V-safe, “in the same form in which Oracle can currently access it.”

However, ICAN said, the CDC “had apparently not read its own documentation regarding V-safe” and refused ICAN’s requests, claiming “information in the app is not deidentified.”

Even when ICAN clarified its FOIA request to specifically ask for “all data deidentified after [emphasis original] it was submitted to the V-safe app,” the CDC “administratively closed this request stating it was duplicative of the original request.”

ICAN responded by suing the CDC in federal court in December 2021, via its attorney, Aaron Siri, for the release of this data.

Siri also represented Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, the organization that sued the U.S. Food and Drug Association (FDA) for the release of data from the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trials — a lawsuit that was successful.

Following a new FOIA request by ICAN in April 2022, for the release of “all data submitted to V-safe since January 1, 2020,” and the CDC’s subsequent refusal, ICAN filed a second lawsuit in May 2022.

ICAN said these successive refusals on the part of the CDC came “despite the CDC’s ability to immediately release this deidentified data pursuant to its own protocol,” based on the claim that “the information in the app is not deidentified.”

ICAN commented on the significance of the ruling, stating in a press release:

“This is a huge win for ICAN and for the American public, who will finally start to be able to see for themselves the actual self-reported nationwide data about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines.”

Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, called the ruling an “absolutely huge development.”

Hooker told The Defender:

“This is an absolutely huge development and I’ll be waiting with anticipation as the V-safe data are released.

“With CDC’s reluctance to release this information, one can only imagine that it will not reflect well on the whole COVID-19 vaccination program, especially given irregularities seen with VAERS [the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] reporting and the shifting narrative of the CDC regarding COVID-19 guidance.”

Hooker has faced similar obstacles to those encountered by ICAN when requesting data from the CDC. He said he “submitted a FOIA for the V-safe pregnancy data early in the process and was denied.”

“I’m glad that Aaron [Siri] and ICAN stuck with it,” Hooker said. “I can only think of the lives that could have been spared if the CDC would have been forthcoming with this information in the first place.”

The data collected via the V-safe app is distinct from the data submitted to VAERS. ICAN described the distinction:

“The FDA and CDC have admitted their existing safety monitoring program, VAERS, was incapable of determining causation and therefore unreliable.

“The CDC has therefore deployed a new safety monitoring system for COVID-19 vaccines called V-safe, and now claims that these ‘vaccines are being administered under the most intensive vaccine safety monitoring effort in U.S. history.’”

Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.

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.”

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Introduction by Paul Craig Roberts

The Western media is a collection of liars in a propaganda ministry, and its so-called “Russian experts” are for the most part Russophobes operating on grants from the US military/security complex.  

Consequently, Westerners have no valid understanding of the conflict in Ukraine, how it arose, and how the West’s involvement together with extraordinary provocations, has  created in the Russian leadership the conviction that the goal of the West is to destroy Russia. 

As this conviction hardens, the Russian leadership is abandoning hope of peaceful coexistence with the Western world and is preparing for war.

In his speech Putin begins the preparation of the Russian people for the hard reality.  Putin doesn’t like the hard reality and did his best to avoid it by ignoring provocations and insults until it became impossible because, as Putin says,  “the West has crossed every line.”

The West, of course, is Washington.  The rest of the Western world reports to Washington as I learned from a US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. “How,” I asked him, “do we get the other countries to do what we want?”  “Money,” he replied. “You mean foreign aid?”  “No, we give the leaders bagfuls of money.  They report to us.  We own them.”

This means that there are no independent Western voices in Britain, Germany, France or elsewhere to moderate Washington’s drive for world hegemony.  There is no one to say, “do you know what you are doing?”

There is no one to warn Washington that the US is pushing Russia too hard.  There is no one to warn us against believing our own propaganda. Consequently, Washington has pushed the Russian leadership out of the accommodation mode into the prepare for conflict mode.

This clearly demonstrates how dangerous is the neoconservatives’ unilateralism.  There is no one to talk back to Washington but Washington’s chosen enemies, whose words, if reported at all, are always reported out of context following the propaganda line that it is Russia and China, never Washington, who is the threat and cause of conflict.

I recommend you read the translation of Putin’s address to the Russian Nation.  Possibly Tass or the office of the Russian President will provide a better translation, but his one is sufficient to see how the Russian leadership views a situation that has been misreported by Western presstitutes in a fashion that supports the West’s propaganda picture of Russia’s evil intent.

The fact of the matter is that the problem is Washington’s evil intent.

Military historians understand that once mobilization starts, war follows.  Putin is trying to avoid this irreversible course by ordering a limited, not full mobilization, which he hopes, together with the self-determination under the UN Charter of the four liberated areas to be reunited with the Russian Federation, will convince the West that the war cannot continue unless the West supports military attacks directly on Russian territory. 

I have been writing for 8 years that Washington, despite its arrogance, will not go so far as to initiate war with a superior Russian military force.  This was true in 2014.  I hope it is still true today.

You will not hear Putin’s closing words to the Russian nation from the West’s presstitutes.  Putin puts the idiot West on notice that the West’s survival is unlikely unless Washington gives up its demand for hegemony:

“It is in our historical tradition, in the fate of our people, to stop those who are striving for world domination, who threaten to dismember and enslave our Motherland, our Fatherland. We will do it now, and so it will be.”

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

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Putin’s address to the Russian people 

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Friends,

The topic of my speech is the situation in the Donbas and the course of a special military operation to liberate it from the neo-Nazi regime, which seized power in Ukraine in 2014 as a result of an armed coup d’état.

I appeal today to you, to all citizens of our country, to people of different generations, age and nationality, to the people of our great Motherland, to all those who are united by the great historical Russia, to the soldiers and officers, volunteers who are now fighting on the front line, are on combat duty, to our brothers and sisters – residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, other areas liberated from the neo-Nazi regime.

Video

 

We will talk about the necessary, urgent steps to protect the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Russia, about supporting the desire and will of our compatriots to determine their own future and about the aggressive policy of a part of the Western elites, who are trying with all their might to maintain their dominance, and for this they are trying to block and suppress any sovereign independent centers of development in order to continue to rudely impose their will on other countries and peoples. impose their pseudo-values. 

The goal of this West is to weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country. They are already directly saying that in 1991 they were able to split the Soviet Union, and now the time has come for Russia itself, that it must disintegrate into many deadly warring regions and regions.

And they have been hatching such plans for a long time. They encouraged gangs of international terrorists in the Caucasus, promoted NATO’s offensive infrastructure close to our borders. They have made total Russophobia their weapons, including for decades purposefully cultivating hatred of Russia, primarily in Ukraine, to which they were preparing the fate of an anti-Russian bridgehead, and turned the Ukrainian people themselves into cannon fodder and pushed them to war with our country, unleashing it, this war, back in 2014, using armed forces against the civilian population, organizing genocide. blockade, terror against people who refused to recognize the power that arose in Ukraine as a result of a coup d’état.

And after the current Kiev regime actually publicly abandoned a peaceful solution to the problem of Donbass and, moreover, declared its claims to nuclear weapons, it became absolutely clear that a new, next, as it was before twice, large-scale offensive in the Donbas is inevitable. And then, just as inevitably, there would be an attack on Russia’s Crimea – on Russia.

In this regard, the decision on a pre-emptive military operation was absolutely necessary and the only possible one. Its main goals – the liberation of the entire territory of Donbass – have been and remain unchanged.

The Lugansk People’s Republic has already been almost completely cleansed of neo-Nazis. Fighting in the Donetsk People’s Republic continues. Here, in eight years, the Kiev occupation regime has created a deeply layered line of long-term fortifications. Their assault in the forehead would have resulted in heavy losses, so our units, as well as the military units of the Donbass republics, act systematically, competently, use equipment, protect personnel and step by step liberate the Donetsk land, clear cities and towns from neo-Nazis, provide assistance to people whom the Kiev regime has turned into hostages, into a human shield.

As you know, professional servicemen serving under a contract take part in a special military operation. Together with them, volunteer formations also fight shoulder to shoulder: people of different nationalities, professions, ages are real patriots. At the call of their hearts, they stood up to defend Russia and Donbass.

In this regard, I have already instructed the Government and the Defence Ministry to determine in full and as soon as possible the legal status of volunteers, as well as fighters of units of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. It should be the same as that of career servicemen of the Russian army, including material, medical support, social guarantees. Particular attention should be paid to the organization of supplying volunteer formations and detachments of the people’s militia of Donbass with equipment and equipment.

In the course of solving the main tasks of protecting Donbass, our troops, based on the plans and decisions of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff on the general strategy of action, liberated significant territories of Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, as well as a number of other areas, from neo-Nazis. As a result, a long line of combat contact was formed, which is over a thousand kilometers.

What do I want to say publicly for the first time today? Already after the start of the special military operation, including the talks in Istanbul, representatives of Kiev reacted to our proposals very positively, and these proposals primarily concerned ensuring Russia’s security and our interests. But it is obvious that the peace solution did not suit the West, therefore, after reaching certain compromises, Kiev was actually given a direct instruction to disrupt all agreements.

Ukraine began to be pumped even more with weapons. The Kiev regime has unleashed new gangs of foreign mercenaries and nationalists, military units trained according to NATO standards and under the de facto command of Western advisers.

At the same time, the regime of repression throughout Ukraine against its own citizens, established immediately after the armed coup of 2014, was strengthened in the most severe way. The policy of intimidation, terror and violence is taking on increasingly massive, terrible and barbaric forms.

I want to emphasize that we know that the majority of people living in the territories liberated from neo-Nazis, and these are primarily the historical lands of Novorossiya, do not want to be under the yoke of the neo-Nazi regime. In Zaporozhye, Kherson region, Lugansk and Donetsk have seen and see the atrocities committed by neo-Nazis in the occupied areas of the Kharkiv region. The heirs of the Banderites and Nazi punishers kill people, torture them, throw them in prisons, settle scores, massacre and torture civilians.

More than seven and a half million people lived in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions before the outbreak of hostilities. Many of them were forced to become refugees, to leave their homes. And those who remain – about five million people – are now subjected to constant artillery and rocket fire from neo-Nazi militants. They hit hospitals and schools, arrange terrorist acts against civilians.

We cannot, do not have any moral right to give the people close to us to the torment of the executioners, we cannot but respond to their sincere desire to determine their own destiny. The parliaments of the people’s republics of Donbass, as well as the military-civil administrations of Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, decided to hold referendums on the future of these territories and appealed to us, to Russia, with a request to support such a step.

I would like to emphasise that we will do everything we can to ensure safe conditions for holding referendums and so that people can express their will. And we will support the decision on our future, which will be made by the majority of residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions.

Dear friends!

Today, our Armed Forces, as I have already said, operate on the line of combat contact, which exceeds a thousand kilometers, resist not only neo-Nazi formations, but in fact the entire military machine of the collective West.

In this situation, I consider it necessary to make the following decision – it is fully adequate to the threats we face – namely, to protect our Motherland, its sovereignty and territorial integrity, to ensure the security of our people and people in the liberated territories, I consider it necessary to support the proposal of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff to conduct partial mobilization in the Russian Federation.

Let me repeat that we are talking about partial mobilization, that is, only citizens who are currently in the reserve, and above all those who served in the Armed Forces, have certain military specialties and relevant experience, will be subject to conscription for military service.

Those called up for military service before being sent to the units will necessarily undergo additional military training, taking into account the experience of a special military operation.

The decree on partial mobilization has been signed.

In accordance with the legislation, the chambers of the Federal Assembly – the Federation Council and the State Duma – will be officially informed about this by letters today.

Mobilization measures will begin today, from September 21. I instruct the heads of the regions to provide all the necessary assistance to the work of military commissariats.

I would like to emphasise that Russian citizens called up for military service upon mobilization will receive the status, payments and all social guarantees of servicemen undergoing military service under contract.

I would like to add that the Executive Order on Partial Mobilization also provides for additional measures to implement the state defence order. The heads of defence industry enterprises are directly responsible for solving the tasks of increasing the production of weapons and military equipment and deploying additional production facilities. In turn, all issues of material, resource and financial support of defense enterprises should be resolved by the Government immediately.

Dear friends!

In its aggressive anti-Russian policy, the West has crossed every line. We constantly hear threats against our country, our people. Some irresponsible politicians in the West are  talking about plans to organize the supply of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine – systems that will allow strikes on Crimea and other regions of Russia.

Such terrorist strikes, including those using Western weapons, are already being carried out on border settlements in the Belgorod and Kursk regions. In real time, using modern systems, aircraft, ships, satellites, strategic drones, NATO carries out reconnaissance throughout the south of Russia.

Washington, London and Brussels are directly pushing Kiev to transfer military operations to our territory. Without hiding their intention any longer, they say that Russia must be defeated at all costs on the battlefield  leading to  the loss of all Russian sovereignty,  the complete plundering of our country, and the destruction of Russian political, economic, and cultural existence.

Nuclear blackmail is also used. We are talking not only about the Western-encouraged shelling of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which threatens an atomic catastrophe, but also about the statements of some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO states about the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction against Russia – nuclear weapons. 

For those who allow themselves such statements regarding Russia, I would like to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and in some components – more modern than those of NATO countries. And when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we certainly will use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. It’s not a bluff.

Russian citizens can be sure that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be ensured, I stress this again, by all the means available to us. And those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the same can happen to them.

It is in our historical tradition, in the fate of our people, to stop those who are striving for world domination, who threaten to dismember and enslave our Motherland, our Fatherland. We will do it now, and so it will be.

I believe in your support.

The History of the Liberated Russian Regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye

This article gives the history of the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye regions, which are currently voting in an exercise of self-determination whether to be reunited with Russia.  The regions have been Russian since the time of Catherine the Great in the 1700s.  These are regions where the population has suffered greatly at the hands of Ukrainian neo-Nazis.

Source: en.kremlin.ru

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September 12, 2022, President Biden signed the “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy”

Specified in that order is the development of genetic engineering technologies and techniques “to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers,” as well as genetic technologies to “unlock the power of biological data” using “computing tools and artificial intelligence”

This executive order establishes a fast-tracked pipeline of mRNA shots and other gene therapies that will further the transhumanist agenda to create augmented humans and bring us into a post-human world

Drug makers have clearly expected this free-for-all as they have loads of mRNA candidates in their pipelines. September 14, 2022, Pfizer initiated a Phase 3 study that will test a quadrivalent mRNA-based flu shot on 25,000 American adults

Moderna began its Phase 3 mRNA flu jab trial in early June 2022. Ultimately, Moderna wants to create an annual mRNA shot that covers all of the top 10 viruses that result in hospitalizations each year

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September 12, 2022, President Biden signed the “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy.”1

Specified in that order is the development of genetic engineering technologies and techniques “to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers,” as well as genetic technologies to “unlock the power of biological data” using “computing tools and artificial intelligence.”

Additionally, “obstacles for commercialization” will be reduced “so that innovative technologies and products can reach markets faster.” What we have here is, in a nutshell, the creation of a fast-tracked mRNA pipeline.

When, in June 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration quietly implemented a “Future Framework” scheme2 to deliver reformulated COVID boosters without additional testing, I predicted that this “no testing required” formula would spread beyond COVID shots. And, according to this executive order, that’s exactly what’s about to happen.

In early September 2022, the FDA also put out medically false and misleading COVID booster campaign messages that prove we’ve officially entered the era of transhumanism:

“It’s time to install that update! #UpdateYourAntibodies with a new #COVID19 booster.”3“Don’t be shocked! You can now #RechargeYourImmunity with an updated #COVID19 booster.”4

Is This the Death Knell to Allopathic Medicine?

Historically, gene therapies have had to jump through extra hoops, which is why so few exist on the market. As of 2021, there were 20 gene therapies commercially available.5 The world’s first gene therapy trial didn’t begin until 1990, so this is still a very new field.

The entire gene therapy field actually collapsed overnight in 1999, when a teenage trial participant died from side effects. An FDA investigation concluded research had moved too fast and that safety “had not been put first.”6 Progress, thanks to increased caution, slowed from there on.

Such caution is now being thrown to the wind, and it’s not difficult to predict there will be disastrous ramifications. Millions will die from poorly tested gene therapies and, eventually, medical research and allopathic medicine will both cease to exist, as survivors vow to have nothing to do with that murderous cabal ever again.

The only way they might be able to keep going is if they are in control of people’s brain function and/or able to force drugs under threat of death, or worse — neither of which is impossible at this point, shockingly enough. In the meantime, we’re looking at a cornucopia of mRNA shots coming our way.

mRNA Flu Shots Are in the Works

Not surprisingly, mRNA flu shots are in the works.7 While we probably won’t see mRNA flu shots during the 2022/2023 winter season, there’s every reason to expect they’ll be rolled out next year.

September 14, 2022, Pfizer initiated a Phase 3 study, which will test a quadrivalent mRNA-based flu shot on 25,000 American adults.8 Pfizer is also exploring mRNA technology that uses self-amplifying RNA (saRNA), for potential use in the future.9

Moderna began its Phase 3 mRNA flu jab trial in early June 2022.10 It’s also working on mRNA shots for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and cytomegalovirus (CMV), which is in the herpes family, as well as a SARS-CoV-2-influenza combination shot. Ultimately, Moderna wants to create an annual mRNA shot that covers all of the top 10 viruses that result in hospitalizations each year.11

Its current flu jab candidate, mRNA-1010, encodes for the hemagglutinin (HA) glycoproteins of four different influenza strains, including influenza A/H1N1, A/H3N2, influenza B/Yamagata and B/Victoria. According to Moderna:12

“HA is a major influenza surface glycoprotein that is considered an important target to generate broad protection against influenza and is the primary target of currently available influenza vaccines.”

The Transhumanist Agenda

Over the past three years, I’ve written several articles exploring the transhumanist agenda, which all these mRNA shots and genetic technologies are part and parcel of. Basically, the goal of the transhumanist movement is to transcend biology through technology, and to meld human biology with technology and artificial intelligence.

In September 2020, I posted a video with Dr. Carrie Madej (above), in which she suggested we were standing at the crossroads of transhumanism, thanks to the fast approaching release of mRNA COVID-19 shots.

“One reason why it’s important to know whether synthetic RNA creates permanent changes in the genome is because synthetic genes are patented. If they cause permanent changes, humans will contain patented genes, and that brings up very serious questions, seeing how patents have owners, and owners have patent rights.”

Since these shots are designed to manipulate your biology, they have the potential to also alter the biology of the entire human race. Nearly two years later, we still don’t know the extent to which they might be doing that, yet more fast-tracked and untested gene therapies are on the way.

One reason why it’s important to know for certain whether synthetic RNA ends up creating permanent changes in the genome is because synthetic genes are patented. If they cause permanent changes, humans will contain patented genes, and that brings up very serious questions, seeing how patents have owners, and owners have patent rights.

US Defense Department Aims to Create Human Cyborgs

The hydrogel used to preserve the mRNA can also contain nanobots to create a bioelectric interface capable of connecting to a smartphone or other interface. Novel technologies that measure biological data, such as blood sugar, are based on this. Such technologies will, of course, have immediate ramifications for our privacy.

Who will collect and have access to all this data? Who will be responsible for protecting it? How will it be used? Also, if your cellphone can receive information from your body, what information can your body receive from it, or other sources? Could transmissions affect your mood? Your behavior? Your physical function? Your thoughts or memories?

So far, it doesn’t appear as though the COVID shots have these kinds of capabilities built in, but we do know for a fact that militaries around the world are exploring and working toward such capabilities. In fact, it’s an arms race in its own right.

In his September 14, 2022, Substack article,13 “Human Cyborgs Are Just the Beginning,” Dr. Robert Malone reviewed several of those plans. Certain report titles alone tell the story, such as the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) Biotechnologies for Health and Human Performance Council’s report,14 “Cyborg Soldier 2050: Human/Machine Fusion and the Implications for the Future of the DOD.” It doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination, does it? According to the assessment abstract:

The primary objective of this effort was to forecast and evaluate the military implications of machines that are physically integrated with the human body to augment and enhance human performance over the next 30 years.

This report summarizes this assessment and findings; identifies four potential military-use cases for new technologies in this area; and assesses their impact upon the DOD organizational structure, warfighter doctrine and tactics, and interoperability with U.S. allies and civil society.”

Human augmentation technologies deemed technically feasible by 2050 at the latest include ocular enhancements to improve sight and situational awareness, optogenetic bodysuit to restore or improve muscular strength and control, auditory enhancements, and neural enhancement of the brain for two-way data transfers and brain-to-brain communication.

Changing What It Means To Be Human

In “The Plan to Turn You Into a Genetically Edited Cyborg,” I covered another shockingly dystopian report by the U.K. Ministry of Defense and the German Bundeswehr Office for Defense Planning, published in May 2021.

That report, “Human Augmentation — The Dawn of a New Paradigm, a Strategic Implications Project,”15 reviews the scientific goals of the U.K. and German defense ministries, and they basically mirror that of the U.S. DOD. On page 12 of the report, the concept of the human body as a platform is described, and how various parts of the human platform can be augmented. For example:

  • Physical performance such as strength, dexterity, speed and endurance can be enhanced, as well as physical senses. One example given is gene editing for enhanced sight
  • Psychological performance such as cognition, emotion and motivation can be influenced to activate and direct desired behavior. Examples of cognitive augmentation include improving memory, attention, alertness, creativity, understanding, decision-making, intelligence and vigilance
  • Social performance — “The ability to perceive oneself as part of a group and the readiness to act as part of the team” — can be influenced. Communication skills, collaboration and trust are also included here

They list several different ways to influence the physical, psychological and social performance of the “human platform,” including genetics (germ line and somatic modification), synthetic biology, invasive (internal) and noninvasive (external) brain interfaces, passive and powered exoskeletons, drugs and nano technology, neurostimulation, augmented reality technologies such as external holograms or glasses with built-in artificial intelligence, and sensory augmentation technologies such as external sensors or implants.

As noted in this report, “Human augmentation has the potential to … change the meaning of what it means to be a human.” This is precisely what Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), has stated is the goal of The Fourth Industrial Revolution.16

WEF has been at the center of global affairs for more than 40 years, and if you take the time to dive into WEF’s Fourth Industrial Revolution material, you realize that it’s all about transhumanism. It’s about the merger of man and machine.

This is a dystopian future that WEF and its global allies are actively trying to implement, whether humanity at large agrees with it or not. Importantly, the “Human Augmentation” report readily admits that human augmentation can “directly enhance behavior.”

And, if you think these reports are just brain fodder for geeks in uniforms, think again. The U.K. Defense and Security Accelerator (DASA) is currently, right now, accepting proposals for human augmentation technologies such as those listed above.17 Grants of 70,000 euros ($74,000), will be given to proposals that can provide proof of concept.

We’re Already Being Programmed to Accept Transhumanism

Both the DOD’s “Cyborg Soldier” report and the British/German “Human Augmentation” reports discuss the fact that human augmentation will inevitably widen already existing disparities, inequalities and inequities, and therefore, “efforts should be undertaken to reverse negative cultural narratives of enhancement technologies.”18

In other words, don’t let people come to the conclusion that human cyborgs are a bad idea, because at worst that might prevent their development, and at best, it’ll pitch regular people against the augmented elite, making their efforts to rule the plebs more difficult.

As noted by Malone, “Once again, we are being played before we even know what the playing field looks like.”19

Disturbingly, considering how nontransparent governments have been so far, it’s not inconceivable that technologies capable of influencing thoughts and behaviors would be used on populations without informing anyone, which makes the list of potential risks one takes with each new mRNA injection even longer than it already is.

But we don’t need to be genetically reengineered or have nanobots introduced into our brains to be at risk of outside manipulation. That’s already happening through noninvasive means.

Control Capabilities Go Far Beyond Orwell’s ‘1984’ Vision

In a November 2019 interview with CNN,20 history professor Yuval Noah Harari, a Klaus Schwab disciple, stated that humans are already “hackable,” meaning the technology exists by which a company or government can know you better than you know yourself, and this knowledge can be used for both good and ill.

According to Harari, the available capabilities already go far beyond Orwell’s “1984” authoritarian vision, and it’s only going to become more powerful from here.

He predicted that algorithms will increasingly be used to make decisions that historically have been made by humans, either yourself or someone else, including whether or not you’ll be hired for a particular job, whether you’ll be granted a loan, what scholastic curriculum you will follow and even whom you will marry.

To learn more about the larger issues of transhumanism and the race to merge man with machine and artificial intelligence, check out the Truthstream Media video below.

For example, there are even ongoing attempts to upload the human mind into the cloud, ultimately creating a form of “digital hive mind” where everyone communicates via “Wi-Fi telepathy.” This, despite the fact we still do not fully understand what “the mind” actually is, or where it’s located.

Final Thoughts

I don’t know what it will take to prevent the dystopian post-human world envisioned by Schwab and his technocratic minions, but I suspect education would be a cornerstone of such an endeavor. In order for there to be a resistance, enough people need to be aware of what the plan is, and where we’re actually being led with all these novel therapies and inventions.

In the shorter term, it’s crucial to realize that the fast-tracking of “genetic engineering technologies and techniques to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers” means they’re going to cut corners. Loads of them.

Testing is basically going to be done on the population at large, just as they’ve done with the COVID jabs. The results of such experimentation are relatively predictable. People will be seriously injured and many will die. So, think long and hard before you agree to take any of these forthcoming gene therapies.

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Notes

2 FDA Briefing Document June 28, 2022

3 Twitter FDA September 7, 2022

4 Twitter FDA September 9, 2022

5 Gene Therapy Industry Report 2021

6 Gene Therapy Industry Report 2021

7 Time September 14, 2022

8 Pfizer September 14, 2022

9 Pfizer September 14, 2022

10 Moderna June 7, 2022

11 CNBC January 10, 2022

12 Moderna June 7, 2022

13 RW Malone Substack September 14, 2022

14 Cyborg Soldier 2050: Human/Machine Fusion and the Implications for the Future of the DOD

15 Human Augmentation — The Dawn of a New Paradigm, a Strategic Implications Project May 2021

16 WEF The Fourth Industrial Revolution

17 The Defense Post May 5, 2022

18 Cyborg Soldier 2050: Human/Machine Fusion and the Implications for the Future of the DOD

19 RW Malone Substack September 14, 2022

20 CNN November 26, 2019

Featured image is from Dr. Mercola’s Censored Library

Leicester Riots: When Hindu Nationalism Came to Britain

September 27th, 2022 by Peter Oborne

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Hindus on one side, Muslims on the other. Police officers wielding batons keep the two sides apart.

Close by, cars are being smashed. One is overturned and its driver beaten up. Local residents trapped in their houses, afraid to go out. Masked and hooded men march through the streets. 

This wasn’t a scene in India, a country notoriously prone to outbursts of brutal communal violence. It happened last Saturday night in the British city of Leicester. For locals, it felt close to civil war.

Nothing like this has happened before in Britain’s most multicultural city. In recent months, though, something has changed. Hindu nationalism has come to Britain.

In India, hatred against religious minorities, especially the country’s 200 million Muslims, is growing. It is fuelled by Hindutva, a common term for the Hindu nationalism propagated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary organisation. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi received his political education in the RSS. The ruling party, the BJP, was established in 1951 as its political wing.

Whereas Hinduism is a great and ancient religious tradition, the RSS is modern to its core, modelled on 20th-century European fascism. One of its most influential ideologues, Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar, admired the Nazis and compared Indian Muslims to Jews in Germany.

Growing tension

Today the Hindutva vision – to forge India into a Hindu, rather than religiously plural, nation – is closer than ever to being realised.

In India, this has meant death, terror and destruction, much of it involving attacks on Muslims. But the RSS’s influence is no longer confined to India. It is active in Britain. In Leicester, tensions have been growing amid a series of anti-Muslim attacks.

In May, 30 men attacked a Muslim teenager with bats and poles in the street after asking him whether he was Muslim. One of his arms was broken and he was hospitalised. An unprovoked religious attack, routine in Modi’s India but till now unusual in Britain.

Then, on 28 August, violence escalated. After India defeated Pakistan in a cricket match, a mob chanting “Death to Pakistan” took to the streets of Leicester. The mob attacked a Sikh bystander and a police officer.

In a horrific incident a few nights later, several men stormed through a Hindu majority area, attacking people and property. One man was videoed with a knife in hand, while another pulled a religious flag off a Hindu house.

Around the same time, a 20-year-old Muslim man was confronted late at night by a group of men. They asked if he was Muslim. When he said yes, they attacked him.

The threat escalated once more last Saturday. Around 200 Hindu men, most of them masked and hooded, marched through a Muslim-majority area in East Leicester. As they marched, they shouted “Jai Shri Ram”. This innocuous-sounding Hindu religious statement, meaning “Hail Lord Ram!”, has become synonymous with Hindutva violence in India.

Across the sub-continent lynch mobs have forced Muslims to repeat “Jai Shri Ram”. The crowds that tore down a 16th-century mosque brick by brick in Ayodhya chanted the slogan. Some Hindutva protesters in Leicester, chanting “Jai Shri Ram”, assaulted Muslim bystanders. Local Muslim men confronted the Hindutva protesters. Police kept the groups apart.

More Muslims gradually arrived and at sunset dozens prostrated themselves in prayer in congregation in the middle of Uppingham Road.

A dangerous phenomenon

As night set in violence broke out – from both sides. Muslims attacked one Hindutva marcher in his car, pushing it over onto its side.

A masked man climbed onto a Hindu temple and took down its flag. On Melton Road, as two lines of police officers stood between Hindutva and Muslim protestors, some members of the Hindutva mob threw glass bottles towards the Muslims. “I saw the whole road blocked,” a witness told Middle East Eye. “The police had batons and dogs. They weren’t letting anyone through. I saw police officers scattered throughout the surrounding streets.”

Eventually, police managed to disperse the crowds, but more violence erupted the following evening. Hindus spray-painted the outer wall of a mosque, while Muslims removed a temple flag and set it on fire. Masked men of both groups roamed the streets, before being dispersed by police.

Most press reporting so far suggests that both sides of the conflict are equally to blame, as Faisal Hanif has noted for Middle East Eye. It must be stressed that the picture is confused, and there have been horrifying Muslim assaults on Hindus. But the ugly events of this summer cannot be explained without taking into account the rise of the Hindutva movement in Britain.

This dangerous phenomenon of great importance has so far been almost entirely ignored in the press. But not by India itself. In a dangerous intervention, the High Commission of India in London has painted violence in Leicester as a purely Muslim phenomenon.

An inflammatory press release on Monday stated: “We strongly condemn the violence perpetrated against the Indian Community in Leicester and vandalization of premises and symbols of Hindu religion.”

This is sinister.

Who is Indian?

By only condemning attacks on Hindus, it turns a blind eye to the violence against Muslims. The Indian High Commission is unforgivably taking sides in a religious conflict in a foreign country.

It’s standard practice from Modi’s government to favour Hindus and ignore anti-Muslim violence back home in India – thus allowing fanatical militants to terrorise minorities with impunity. Yet there is an even more disturbing element to the High Commission of India’s press release: it refers to “violence perpetrated against the Indian community”.

In fact, as the Indian High Commission must have known, the clashes were largely between people with an Indian background.

The majority of Leicester’s Muslims are Indian, with many tracing their origins to Gujarat, the site of the 2002 massacre in which Modi, then chief minister of Gujaraat, was implicated. The statement, therefore, suggests that the High Commission recognises Indian Hindus but not Indian Muslims as part of the “Indian community”.

This in itself is a terrifying manifestation of Hindutva ideology, which paints India as a fundamentally Hindu country assaulted by foreign Muslim invasions, so that Indian Muslims today are themselves not a real part of the nation.

MEE approached the Indian High Commission for a comment, but there was no response until this column went to print.

It’s deeply worrying that the Indian High Commission should breach all diplomatic protocol by echoing the ugly language of religious militants back in India. Many Hindus in Leicester reject the Indian High Commission analysis.

We spoke to a young Hindu woman who fears for the safety of her local area. Speaking on condition of anonymity, this is what she told us: “My grandma goes to the Mandir [temple] daily so I don’t feel good about that. Mob mentality is terrifying,” she said.

“This was something that always scared me about the rise of the BJP in India – how that’s going to impact the diaspora. It’s so sad to see – growing up here it’s always been largely peaceful between all communities. This is horrific.”

Shamingly it has suited British politicians to turn a blind eye to the rise of the Hindutva movement in the UK. Cynical electoral politics may be the reason.

Strategic silence

In recent years, the Conservative Party has entered into an unspoken electoral alliance with India’s ruling BJP.

It is often forgotten that Modi was banned from entering Britain after the 2002 massacre of over 1,000 Muslims in Gujarat. But in 2014 Modi was elected as prime minister, and since then the British government has embraced him wholeheartedly.

In April former prime minister Boris Johnson visited India, where he announced new investment deals in technology and posed in photos with Modi. No mention of the murderous attacks on Muslims on the rise throughout the country.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum in the United States considers India the second most likely country to experience mass killings in 2022. Yet, the British government maintains a strategic silence on the matter.

In fact, the Conservatives seem determined to suck up to Modi’s BJP. In May a delegation of Indian opposition politicians were received at a reception in the British parliament. Conservative MPs were noticeably absent, according to a report in the Guardian.

Former Home Secretary Priti Patel is an open admirer of Modi, praising his “dynamic leadership” when she was in government. In 2014, she went to the extraordinary lengths of writing a letter of congratulations to HSS-UK, the overseas wing of the RSS, for their event entitled “RSS: A Vision in Action – a new Dawn”. Patel told its members they “should be very proud of what they have achieved for Britain’s Hindu community.”

The Conservative Party has seen potential for electoral gain in collaborating with the ruling BJP, which responds in kind. In the 2019 general election, the general-secretary of the National Council of Hindu Temples, which has links with the BJP, was suspended after revelations that he had been personally urging people to vote Conservative on social media.

In the same year, the president of the Hindu Forum of Britain was videoed telling an audience that she would ban Labour politicians from Hindu functions. A group called Overseas Friends of BJP UK, meanwhile, invited 300 Indians to a meeting with Conservative candidate Dr Anwara Ali and Conservative MP Bob Blackman.

Blackman has a record of Islamophobic views, is known for retweeting anti-Muslim social media posts by the former leader of the English Defence League Tommy Robinson (he later apologised citing an “error” over the tweet), and sharing a platform with the far-right commentator Katie Hopkins. In 2018 he hosted Hindu nationalist leader Tapan Ghosh in Parliament. Ghosh has called on the UN to “control the Muslim birth rate world over”.

This may help explain why, at the time of writing, there has been no statement on the violence from British Home Secretary Suella Braverman – and little substantial coverage of the story in Britain’s notoriously Islamophobic mainstream press.

It’s time for Britain’s ruling Conservatives to stop ingratiating themselves with Modi – and wake up to his link to far-right communal politics, not just in India but in Britain too.

*

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Peter Oborne won best commentary/blogging in both 2022 and 2017, and was also named freelancer of the year in 2016 at the Drum Online Media Awards for articles he wrote for Middle East Eye. He was also named as British Press Awards Columnist of the Year in 2013. He resigned as chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph in 2015. His latest book is The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam, published in May by Simon & Schuster. His previous books include The Triumph of the Political Class, The Rise of Political Lying, Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran and The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism.

Imran Mulla studies History at Cambridge University.

Featured image: In Leicester, tensions have been growing amid a series of anti-Muslim attacks in recent months (Video screen grab via MEE)

New Zealand Prime Minister Calls for a Global Censorship System

September 27th, 2022 by Jonathan Turley

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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the latest liberal leader to call for an international alliance to censor speech. Unsatisfied with the unprecedented corporate censorship of social media companies, leaders like Hillary Clinton have turned from private censorship to good old-fashioned state censorship. Speech regulation has become an article of faith on the left. Ardern used her speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly to call for censorship on a global scale.

Ardern lashed out at “disinformation” and called for a global coalition to control speech. After nodding toward free speech, she proceeded to lay out a plan for its demise through government regulation:

But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts, inspires, or motivates others to take up arms. To threaten the security of others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in them. What then?

This is no longer a hypothetical. The weapons of war have changed, they are upon us and require the same level of action and activity that we put into the weapons of old.

We recognized the threats that the old weapons created. We came together as communities to minimize these threats. We created international rules, norms and expectations. We never saw that as a threat to our individual liberties – rather, it was a preservation of them. The same must apply now as we take on these new challenges.

Ardern noted how extremists use speech to spread lies without noting that non-extremists use the same free speech to counter such views.   To answer her question on “how do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists” is that you convince people using the same free speech.  Instead, Ardern appears to want to silence those who have doubts.

While referring to a global censorship coalition as a “light-touch approach to disinformation,” Ardern revealed how sweeping such a system would likely be. She defended the need for such global censorship on having to combat those who question climate change and the need to stop “hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology.”

“After all, how do you successfully end a war if people are led to believe the reason for its existence is not only legal but noble? How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists? How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld, when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?”

That is the same rationale used by authoritarian countries like China, Iran, and Russia to censor dissidents, minority groups, and political rivals.  What is “hateful” and “dangerous” is a fluid concept that government have historically used to silence critics or dissenters.

Ardern is the smiling face of the new generation of censors. At least the old generation of censors like the Iranians do not pretend to support free speech and openly admit that they are crushing dissent. The point is that we need to be equally on guard when censorship is pushed from the left with the best of motivations and the worst of means.

As the great civil libertarian Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

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23 September 2022 marks the start of the referendum on integration into the Russian Federation in the Donbass (Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics), Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. Voting conditions in each region vary depending on the security situation.

On this Friday morning, I join a group of four women who are part of their district’s electoral commission at around 8.30 am. Despite the cold and the pouring rain, they are going door-to-door for 12 hours to allow their fellow citizens to vote for the referendum on integration with the Russian Federation, without leaving their homes.

Equipped with a paper list of voters, ballot papers and a portable sealed ballot box, the four women have four days to visit as many voters as possible. The aim is to minimise the number of voters who will have to go to the polling stations on 27 September 2022 to make their wishes known in the referendum on the integration of the DPR into the Russian Federation.

Because of the daily shelling by the Ukrainian army against the residential areas of Donetsk, Gorlovka and Makeyevka, it would be extremely dangerous if long queues formed in front of the polling stations.

So it is the members of the electoral commissions, volunteers, who take the risk in place of the voters, going from house to house, from building to building, to get people to vote in their homes. And on the first day of this referendum on integration into the Russian Federation, the weather does not make things easy.

But despite the risk of bombing, the rain, the mud and their soaked shoes, the four women I accompany continue their duty, and knock on every door. The procedure is almost the same as in a polling station. The voter shows his passport, his identity is checked, he signs opposite his name in the list, fills in his ballot paper and puts it in the sealed ballot box. In the absence of a polling booth and a suitable place (some people vote on their doorstep), the women I accompany simply look away as the person ticks the box that corresponds to their choice.

See the report filmed on site, with French subtitles:

Other teams, like the one followed by Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett, use a binder as a mini voting booth.

The sealed ballot box will only be opened in the evening, once it has been deposited at the district polling station, thus respecting the procedures aimed at ensuring the reliability of the vote. For those who could not (or did not want to) vote at home, the polling stations will be open on 27 September 2022.

In the DPR, the vote is monitored by 129 foreign observers from Italy, France, Russia, Venezuela, Romania, Togo and South Africa. And no less than 542 journalists from DPR, Russia, the UK, China, France, Italy, Portugal, Venezuela and Qatar are covering the event.

In the Kherson region, the security situation allows the referendum on integration into the Russian Federation to be held in polling stations, as can be seen in the images by Patrick Lancaster.

For my part, it comes as no surprise that all the voters I visited this morning are voting for integration into the Russian Federation, and doing so in an ostensible manner. As one of the women who voted today said: “We are for Russia, we want nothing else”.

Another explained her vote for integration in this referendum as “Russia is those who have not betrayed us, those who help us, those who respect our choice, help us and support us”.

It is clear that the recent bombings of the Ukrainian army against civilians did not discourage people from voting. On the contrary, they have strengthened the will of the Donetsk inhabitants to choose integration with the Russian Federation in this referendum.

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Featured image is from Donbass Insider

Will Europe Break with the United States?

September 27th, 2022 by Larry Johnson

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I received a great questions from a German reader who also happens to be a journalist. He asked, “What would be a way and what would be the practical implications if Europe in general and Germany in particular were to break with the US in order to find a European peace and economic framework including Russia? ”

The craven sycophancy demonstrated by Germany, France and the United Kingdom in their passionate embrace of America’s confrontation with Russia is now on life support. Despite continued bombastic threats to keep arming Ukraine until Russia collapses, economic reality is hitting the Europeans like an icy cold shower from a fire hose. Rapid inflation, particularly in the energy sector, is forcing factories and businesses to shutter operations. The de-industrialization of Europe, especially Germany and the UK, has started. German steel plants are closing, German bakeries are trying to figure out how to pay soaring utility bills while still making bread and pretzels and German toilet-paper manufacturer Hakle GmbH has applied for insolvency proceedings in self-administration. If you don’t have a bidet or a bucket full of sand, toilet paper is an essential item. The inflationary spiral may lead to the day where it is cheaper to wipe your ass with a 100 Euro note than three sheets of Hakle.

So, the economic situation in each of the countries is going to create enormous domestic pressure for the respective European governments, which currently are cheer-leading Ukraine and cursing Russia, to rethink their policies. The Russia/Ukraine war already has created significant fissures among EU members, with Hungary refusing to impose further sanctions on Russia. Cold, hungry voters will become increasingly outraged at sending millions of dollars to Ukraine while deprivation multiples from Berlin to London.

Europe’s rift with Russia is huge and Russia is not in a mood to forgive the insults hurled at all things Russian, theft of Russian financial resources and Europe’s facilitation of terrorist attacks on the soon to be new Russian citizens from the oblasts of Kherson, Zaporhyzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia holds the critical trump card–it can turn on the flow of gas and oil essential to rekindle manufacturing and home heating in Europe. But I do not think Russia will do so without a quid pro quo. What could that be?

How about Europe breaking with NATO? Or, more simply put, the break up of NATO. Up to this point Europe has embraced the delusion that Russia cannot function economically without a European market. The last six months of Russia’s Special Military Operation have proven that the opposite is true–without Russia’s key resources Europe is a dead economy walking naked into a frozen winter.

Europe’s two largest trading partners are China and the United States. Europe runs a trade deficit with China. If China demands payment in dollars, rather Euros, then the inflationary pressure on Europe will escalate. Why? Because the value of the U.S. dollar has soared relative to the Euro and British pound sterling. They will have to spend more Euros to buy dollars, which means the trade deficit with China is likely to worsen.

The situation with the United States is the opposite. The United States has run a deficit with Europe who, in turn, has enjoyed a surplus. That surplus will go away or, at a minimum, shrink dramatically. Germany’s ability to export products to the United States will weaken because of the price of the dollar and because European factories will close or cut back on production.

Barring a miracle turnaround–i.e, inflation disappears and the energy crisis dissipates–the situation in Europe will become more dire. The history of these kinds of economic upheaval is littered with the corpses of politicians that insisted on pushing policies that hurt their voters. Germany’s Weimar Republic’s failure paved the way for the rise of Adolf Hitler to power. I am not suggesting a new Hitler is waiting in the wings, but I do believe that the power now wielded by the Greens across Europe will be curtailed or even snuffed out.

The United States is facing its own looming economic disaster. The collapse of the stock market–now down over 20% since the first of the year–is likely to continue. Notwithstanding the Biden administration’s strident insistence that there is no recession, the signs of recession are mounting, especially in the housing market. But the worsening economic picture is not yet sufficient to generate the necessary political pressure among the propagandized American electorate to back away from sending billions to Ukraine. A major shock of stagflation or a collapse of the Ukrainian army, however, could change that calculus.

The United States and Europe are playing a high stakes poker game with Russia. They’ve bet all their chips that Ukraine will either defeat Russia or force Russia to the bargaining table and that Putin, with hat in hand, will crawl on his belly before the western masters and beg for relief. That is insane. But there are many politicians and pundits inhabiting the dark corners of Washington who keenly believe this fantasy.

Russia does not play poker. Russia plays chess and plays it well. Russia’s burgeoning trade and military relations with China, Iran, India and Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Brazil is making Putin’s position stronger, not weaker. The eventual collapse of Ukraine as a result of a wrecked economy and/or battlefield defeats, will be more than a black eye for NATO and, by extension, Europe. It would likely destroy the raison d’etre for NATO. That in turn will lay the foundation for a rapprochement with Russia sans the United States.

The age of the United States’ Colossus is nearing its end. Uncle Sam will no longer have a pack of yipping European Yorkshires, Poodles and Dachshunds on a leash. I think we are on the threshold of a new multi-polar international order that will finally shatter the legacy of European colonialism and American imperialism. As Garland Nixon has wisely noted, “General Winter is on the march.”

*

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Did the CIA lie, cheat and betray its friends and business partners in ways that even Donald Trump might envy? A rapidly unfolding intelligence scandal indicates that the answer is yes.

The dark world of cyber-age espionage is on full display in the unfolding scandal involving the CIA and Crypto AG, the encryption company based in Zug, Switzerland.

Washington Post investigative reporter Greg Miller, drawing on a 96-page CIA report, disclosed that Crypto AG had been secretly purchased in June 1970 by the CIA and the BND, the then West German foreign intelligence service, for $5.75 million.

The BND sold its share in Crypto to the CIA in 1993. Crypto AG, which also collaborated closely with the National Security Agency, was liquidated in 2018.[1]

Crypto AG sold encryption machines to more than 100 governments seeking protection for diplomatic communications and other sensitive records.

Miller explained to National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” that encryption machines

scramble messages and code them and then decode them at the other end so that governments can’t listen to what you’re saying to your diplomats or to your military or to your spies. It’s designed to protect the secrecy of countries communications.

Little did Crypto AG’s customers know that the encryption company they hired to safeguard their sensitive records secretly downloaded them to the CIA and BND.

The CIA history of the Crypto operation called it “the intelligence coup” of the 20th century. The Agency boasted,

foreign governments were paying good money to the U.S. and West Germany to have their most secret communications read by at least two…foreign countries.

According to the CIA history, “Crypto machines supplied roughly 40 percent of all the foreign communications U.S. code breakers processed for intelligence.”[2]

As the Crypto AG scandal unfolded, Swiss public broadcaster SRF revealed that Omnisec, a second Swiss encryption company, also shared the secrets of its government clients with the CIA and the BND.

SRF reported that, “like Crypto, Omnisec had sold manipulated equipment to foreign governments and armies.”

SRF added, “An investigation by the Swiss Parliament…concluded…that Switzerland’s own intelligence service had benefitted from the information gathered by its foreign counterparts through the encryption firm.” Omnisec, one of Crypto AG’s biggest competitors, also sold “manipulated” encryption devices to UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank.[3]

Meanwhile, CovertAction Magazine has obtained new evidence in the PROMIS software affair, a related cyber-espionage scandal during the Reagan administration.

The new evidence involves a secret U.S. plan to distribute PROMIS databases, with “a back door,” to collect intelligence in the Middle East in the mid-1980s.

Modified copies of the database enabled the CIA to download the secrets countries stored on PROMIS.

A letter dated May 14, 1985, from Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds to U.S. Attorney William F. Weld in Boston, outlines a covert plan to distribute PROMIS databases with “a special retrieval unit” in the Middle East.

Letter from Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds to U.S. Attorney William F. Weld in Boston, outlining covert plan to distribute adapted PROMIS databases with “a special retrieval unit” [read: back door] for use in secret U.S. intelligence operations. [Source: Jack Colhoun]

Reynolds wrote,

“As agreed, Messrs. Manucher Ghorbanifar, Adnan Khashoggi, and [Assistant Secretary for Defense] Richard Armitage will broker the transaction of Promise [sic] software to Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz for resales and general distribution or as gifts on his region.”

Reynolds insisted,

“Promise [sic] must have a soft arrival. No paper work, customs, or delay.” He added importantly, “It must be equipped with the special retrieval unit. As before, you must walk the financial experts through the Credit Suisse into National Commerce Bank.”[4]

Ghorbanifar, an Iranian, and Khashoggi, a Saudi, were arms dealers. Mahfouz, a Saudi financier, represented the National Commerce Bank.[5]

Unlike Crypto AG or Omnisec, Inslaw, Inc., which developed PROMIS software in the early 1980s, was not owned by the CIA and the BND. Inslaw, which was privately owned, claimed that senior officials in the Reagan administration conspired with the Department of Justice to acquire PROMIS illegally by driving the company into bankruptcy. Inslaw also asserted that modified PROMIS was used in secret U.S. intelligence operations.

“The Inslaw Affair,” a September 1992 investigative report by the House Judiciary Committee, found the small Washington, D. C., software firm’s claims credible.

The Judiciary Committee report stated,

“There appears to be strong evidence, as indicated by the findings in two Federal court proceedings as well as by the committee investigation, that the Department of Justice ‘acted willfully and fraudulently’ and ‘took, converted and stole’ Inslaw’s Enhanced PROMIS by ‘trickery, fraud and deceit.’” Further, the report stated, “It appears that these actions against Inslaw were implemented…under the direction of high-level Justice Department officials.”[6]

There has not been a full official accounting of the PROMIS affair. But the May 1985 letter from Assistant Attorney General Reynolds to U.S. Attorney Weld on PROMIS is a good place to start.

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Jack Colhoun is an independent historian of the Cold War (University of Wisconsin, Madison, BA, 1968; York University , PhD, 1976), an investigative reporter and professional archival researcher. Colhoun has written widely on U.S. foreign policy and covert intelligence operations. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Toronto Star, The Nation, The Progressive, National Catholic Reporter,  Covert Action Quarterlyand CovertAction Magazine. Colhoun can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

[1] Greg Miller, “The Intelligence Coup of the Century,” Washington Post, February 20, 2020; Greg Miller interview, “Fresh Air,” National Public Radio, March 20, 2020; for background on Crypto AG, see Wayne Madsen, “Crypto AG: The NSA’s Trojan Whore?” CovertAction Magazine, Winter 1998.

[2] Greg Miller interview, National Public Radio, March 20, 2020; Greg Miller, “Swiss Report: CIA’s Ownership of Crypto Jeopardized Neutrality,” Washington Post, November 11, 2020. 

[3] “Report Claims CIA Controlled Second Swiss Encryption Firm,” Agence France-Presse, November 27, 2020; “Second Swiss Firm Allegedly Sold Corrupted Encryption Spying Devices,” Swiss Public Television SWI, November 26, 2020.

[4] Letter from Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds to U.S. Attorney William F. Weld, Boston, May 14, 1985.

[5] Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin, False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World’s Most Corrupt Financial Empire (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), 37, 134-36; Jonathan Beaty and S. C. Gwynne, The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI (New York: Random House, 1993), 172, 328, 348, 352.

[6] “The Inslaw Affair,” An Investigative Report of the House Judiciary Committee, September 10, 1992, 4-6.

Featured image is from muckrock.com

 

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***

An aerospace industry conference took on more of a tent revival feel on Wednesday when an Air Force general took the stage and sought to fire the audience up about the existential threat he said China posed to the American way of life and the urgent work needed to defeat it.

“I’m untethered as of now,” said Gen. Mike Minihan, the head of Air Mobility Command, in his keynote address at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air Space & Cyber Conference at National Harbor, Maryland. “I do have something to say. I can’t see the clock, I’m going to go ‘till I go. I’m finally that rank.”

The general’s speech was titled ‘The Mobility Manifesto,’ and he turned up the volume as high as the title implies.

“I’m gonna speak not speech!” he said. “Means it’s going to come out a little wobbly at times, maybe stutter, I might get some spittle going … Means that I’m Irish! You’ve certainly already heard that when I talk about things that I love I get emotional! And you’ll hear the passion in my voice.”

As Minihan laid out, the U.S. military is currently not ready “to fight and win inside the first island chain” in the Pacific against the Chinese military in a potential conflict. This is a problem because “your kids grow up subservient to a rules-based order that benefits only one country if we lose this,” he said.

“There is no access to the global commons. There is no ‘free and open.’ There is no rules-based order. So the stakes are incredibly high,” he continued.

The Air, Space & Cyber Conference is the biggest of the year for the Air and Space Forces, filled with star-studded generals, titans of the aerospace industry, and thousands of service members from both the U.S. and from foreign militaries around the world. This year’s event was the largest ever, with 16,000 registrants and standing room only at several of the speaker panels.

Minihan is far from the first speaker at a service-wide conference to warn about the threat of China and the urgency to face it. In fact, the message was so persistent at the 2021 edition of the conference that one reporter made it into a meme. But the general’s passionate tone and one-liners stood out amid the scripted deliveries of most of the other keynote speeches.

“Lethality matters most,” he said. “When you can kill your enemy, every part of your life is better. Your food tastes better. Your marriage is stronger,” Minihan said.

That kind of language would not be unusual coming from other commanders like the former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a retired Marine general whose famous quotes include “There are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot,” and “If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.” But, Minihan is not a former Marine rifle company commander like Mattis was. He’s a C-130 transport plane pilot who now commands the Air Force’s C-17 and C-5 cargo jet fleet, plus C-130s, KC-135, KC-10, KC-46, and other refueling and transport aircraft.

“Why is the mobility guy talking about lethality?” Minihan asked in his manifesto. In answer, he reminded the audience that the Air Force has a kill count which could make even Mattis balk.

“This is who we are. We are lethal. Do not apologize for it!” the general said, after listing distinguished Air Force commanders like Gen. Curtis LeMay and Brig. Gen. Robin Olds, who had no scruples against killing the enemy.

“The pile of our nation’s enemy dead, the pile that is the biggest, is in front of the United States Air Force,” he said. “This is why we mutinied! In 1947,” the year the Air Force separated from the Army as the result of an act of Congress.

Considering the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean, where a fight with China would most likely occur, the U.S. military likely would not be successful if Air Mobility Command can’t get troops, ammunition, and equipment to the fight fast enough.

“There is too much water and too much distance for anyone else to do it relevantly, at pace, at speed, at scale,” Minihan said. “Everybody’s role is critical, but Air Mobility Command is the maneuver for the joint force. If we don’t have our act together, nobody wins. Nobody’s lethal. Nobody’s in position.”

Minihan is no stranger to making bold statements. In January, the general tweeted a photo of a mental health appointment on his calendar along with the words “Warrior heart. No stigma.” Though many military commanders encourage their subordinates to seek mental health, few open up about their own struggles or efforts to seek help, let alone share their own personal calendar.

“Mental health is simply health,” he told Task & Purpose at the time. “There can be no stigma in my headquarters, command, or family.”

Minihan also earned kudos on social media when his official service photo circulated on Reddit last October, shortly after taking the helm of Air Mobility Command. Though most four-star generals sport a chestful of colorful ribbons on their uniforms in their official service photo, Minihan’s bore only three, all of which were unit-based rather than individual awards.

“Gen. Minihan’s decision to wear these three ribbons is in accordance with AFI 36-2903 guidance to wear ‘all or some’ [ribbons], and the some he selected aligns with his team-focused leadership approach,” Lindsey Wilkinson, the deputy director of public affairs for Air Mobility Command, told Task & Purpose at the time.

Airmen say the general backs up his gestures with words and actions. One airman who worked in aircraft maintenance at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas and as a flight engineer at Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas when Minihan was there, told Task & Purpose that the officer “was always approachable, you never felt like you had to be on edge around him.”

Minihan “always truly made you feel as if you were the only person that mattered at that moment when the two of you spoke,” said the airman, who stayed anonymous because they were not authorized to speak with the press.

Image: U.S. Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan, left, Air Mobility Command commander, and Capt. Madeline Slagley, 62nd Maintenance Squadron officer in charge, FaceTime Slagley’s family at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, July 7, 2022. Minihan coined Slagley as a star performer during his visit to JBLM. (Senior Airman Callie Norton/U.S. Air Force)

‘Untethered’ Air Force general: ‘When you kill your enemy, every part of your life is better’

On Wednesday, the general seemed intent on motivating his people and the larger Air Force to move faster in order to protect themselves in the event of a conflict with China. The U.S. is currently not ready to win in the first island chain in the Pacific, but it can be by August 2023 if everyone moves fast enough, he argued.

“They are tailor-making an air force to kill you,” Minihan said, about China. “Not you, hypothetically, you! Look in the mirror. You!”

Other Americans have faced similar odds in the past. The general referenced World War II commanders like Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, Adm. Raymond Spruance and Gen. Ira Eaker, each of whom faced a “quality, quantity, tailor-made force to kill him.” Those commanders prevailed, and so too can today’s U.S. troops if they “generate your courage. Aim the pointy end at the scary place, and execute,” Minihan repeated three times.

It would also help if Air Mobility Command can address four gaps in its capabilities that the general is concerned about: command and control, navigation, maneuvering under fire, and tempo. To bridge those gaps, Minihan urged his troops to get creative. For example, his troops could fly a KC-46 refueling tanker with just one pilot so that other pilots can fly other jets; or stick 16,000 pounds of gas under the wings of a C-130J so it can fly to a forward-deployed fuel bladder where a fighter can use the gas to fill up.

“I don’t think fighter pilots are the only ones that have the birthright to fly an airplane solo,” Minihan said. “In order to generate the tempo required to win, it’s not hard to imagine” a pilot and refueling boom operator sleeping on the bunk of a tanker jet while another pilot and boom operator pulls a shift flying the plane and refueling friendly aircraft.

“I’d rather test that out now than try to figure that out when the shooting’s going on,” he said.

‘Untethered’ Air Force general: ‘When you kill your enemy, every part of your life is better’

Lt. Gen. Michael Minihan, center, pilots a C-130J Super Hercules over Central Arkansas, Sept. 17, 2021. A command pilot with more than 3,400 flight hours, Minihan completed his senior officer course on the C-130J during a recent visit to LRAFB. Minihan was promoted to the rank of General prior to assuming command of Air Mobility Command on Oct. 5, 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Jayden Ford)

But that kind of creativity needs to happen now, the general said, not down the road.

“Nobody is going to care what our plans are for five to 10 years if we lose tomorrow,” he said. “Our toys, our training, our desires are meaningless unless we maneuver them to unfair advantage and unrepentant lethality.”

That was likely why the general chose to be so forceful and passionate in his delivery on Wednesday, and why he chose to call his speech a manifesto.

“I’m not equating the mobility manifesto to things like ‘I have a dream’ or ‘The Declaration of Independence,’” he said. “But I do have intentions, and I do have an opinion, and I do have an objective.”

The general does not have much time to share it, he said.

“We are not ready to fight and win inside the first island chain but we WILL BE in a year,” Minihan said. “‘Well sir, that’s a lot to do in a short time.’ Yeah, no shit.”

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David covers the Air Force, Space Force and anything Star Wars-related. He joined Task & Purpose in 2019, after covering local news in Maine and FDA policy in Washington D.C. David loves hearing the stories of individual airmen and their families and sharing the human side of America’s most tech-heavy military branch. Contact the author here.

Featured image: Gen. Mike Minihan, Air Mobility Command commander, speaks to Team Dover Airmen during an all call at Dover AFB, Delaware, May 5, 2022. (Senior Airman Faith Schaefer/U.S. Air Force).

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***

US regulators on Friday said they would withdraw all remaining portions of the interim registration review decision for the weed killer glyphosate.

The move comes after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion saying the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had violated the law in its assessment of glyphosate, which is the world’s most widely used weed killer and the active ingredient in Roundup and numerous other herbicide products.

The court found that EPA had ignored important studies in its human health safety assessment of the chemical and had also violated the Endangered Species Act. The EPA’s withdrawal comes before an October 1 deadline under which the agency was supposed to have completed its assessment. EPA had asked the court to extend its deadline but the court denied the request.

In its June 17 opinion, the 9th circuit said the agency’s 2020 assessment of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, was flawed in many ways. The federal appeals court ruled that EPA failed to follow established guidelines for determining cancer risk, ignored important studies, and discounted expert advice from a scientific advisory panel. The EPA applied “inconsistent reasoning” in finding that the chemical does not pose “any reasonable risk to man or the environment,” the panel determined.

The court vacated the human health portion of the EPA’s glyphosate assessment and said the agency needed to apply “further consideration” to evidence. The 9th Circuit also said the agency violated the Endangered Species Act in its assessment.

“EPA’s underlying scientific findings regarding glyphosate, including its finding that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans, remain the same,” the EPA said in a statement announcing its withdrawal of the glyphosate decision. “In accordance with the court’s decision, the Agency intends to revisit and better explain its evaluation of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate and to consider whether to do so for other aspects of its human health analysis.”

For the ecological portion of its review, EPA said it intends to consider what risk mitigation measures may be necessary based on the Endangered Species Act consultation for glyphosate and will prepare an analysis of how the weed killer affects monarch butterfly habitat.

EPA said that pesticide products containing glyphosate will not be affected by the withdrawal decision.

Monsanto owner Bayer AG has been seeking to put an end to thousands of lawsuits filed by U.S. Roundup users who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and allege their exposure to the weed killer is to blame for their cancers. Monsanto introduced glyphosate weed killers in 1974 and pushed the chemical to such widespread use that it is considered the world’s most widely used herbicide.

Bayer denies there is any cancer connection to glyphosate and Roundup, and has repeatedly cited the EPA’s assurances of glyphosate safety as a key part of its litigation defense. The company has also said that the backing of the EPA and similar support from other regulators in other countries is more valid than a 2015 assessment by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which found that glyphosate was “probably” carcinogenic to humans.

The IARC finding was based on a review of years of independent, peer-reviewed, published scientific studies. The reviews by the EPA and other regulators focused more heavily on unpublished and non peer-reviewed studies submitted to regulators by Monsanto and other companies involved in making and selling the chemical.

Human health advocates have long been frustrated by what they see as EPA’s flagrant disregard for substantial evidence of a cancer risk, seen in human and animal studies. Internal Monsanto documents, obtained through Roundup litigation discovery and Freedom of Information Act requests, have demonstrated the company deployed multiple strategies to manipulate scientific literature and regulators, including the EPA.

Moreover, the internal corporate documents show Monsanto has long been aware of research showing a connection between the weed killer and cancer, but has sought to bury such research and/or attack and censor scientists who insist there is evidence of a cancer risk.​

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Featured image is from The New Lede

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Electric Cars

September 27th, 2022 by John M. Contino

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***

California seems to fancy itself a bellwether for the rest of the country. Not content to ban all gasoline-powered cars by 2035, California’s Air Resources Board upped the ante last week by decreeing that no new natural gas space and waters heaters were to be sold after 2030, and also “proposed that all big rig trucks must go electric [!]”

Not to be outdone, John Deere wants farmers to switch to electric tractors and combines. Mr. Royal Brown writes:

A close friend farms over 10,000 acres of corn in the Midwest. The property is spread out over three counties. His operation is a “partnership farm” with John Deere… He recently received a phone call from his John Deere representative, and they want the farm to go to electric tractors and combines in 2023. He currently has 5 diesel combines that cost $900,000 each that are traded-in every 3 years. Also, over 10 really BIG tractors. JD wants him to go all electric soon. He said: “Ok, I have some questions. How do I charge these combines when they are 3 counties away from the shop in the middle of a cornfield, in the middle of nowhere? How do I run them 24 hours a day for 10 or 12 days straight when the harvest is ready, and the weather is coming in? How do I get a 50,000+ lb. combine that takes up the width of an entire road back to the shop 20 miles away when the battery goes dead?” There was dead silence on the other end of the phone…

Hey, let’s convert freight rail and ocean container shipping from diesel to electric!

Kent Moss’ recent AT blog laid out the hidden truths behind electric cars, including the massive amount of mining required to manufacture the batteries, which must be replaced every 3-5 years, and which cannot be recycled:

To manufacture each E.V. auto battery, the following material must be processed:  25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper.  All told, suppliers must dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery.

As a rule of thumb, each pound of ore for metals, or brine for lithium, yields @ 1/1000th of a pound of cobalt, lithium, nickel, etc. Surely electrifying the world’s transportation would entail an unsustainable amount of rapacious mining. Even if that were not the case, this country will not blanket the landscape with the unending expanses of windmills and solar panels which would be required to electrically power all these grandiose schemes.

Once the phase-out of the internal combustion engine is too far underway to be easily reversed, we will inevitably be told that we must learn to live with less — fewer cars, boats, ATVs, appliances, snowmobiles, heat, AC, lawns, food, water — you name it. The only rational conclusion is that the goal is not to get us into electric cars, but to get us out of our own cars as much as possible, and into public transportation, bicycles, scooters, walking shoes, and high-density urban housing. Don’t worry, our elite betters will be okay, and as the Great Reset boys like to say, you will owe nothing, own nothing, eat bugs, and be happy, so shut up and pay your taxes!

Electric cars can be fun and exciting, with instantaneous torque and slick designs. However, in the long run we all will fare better if we refuse to buy electric vehicles. We can seriously disrupt these electric lunatic woke plans by not going along with them.

Refusing to cooperate also means not voting Democrat. All Democrats up and down the line are backbencher drones who dare not utter a peep of disapproval as they vote for, or at least acquiesce to, every egregious policy demanded by Pelosi, Schumer, Biden and his host of Obama handlers.

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Russia’s Evolving Attitude Toward the War

September 27th, 2022 by Ted Snider

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***

As early as the end of April, Russia’s view of the war may already have begun evolving from seeing it as a regional war to seeing it as a wider war with the US and NATO. At that time, the voracious provision of weapons combined with training and real-time intelligence on targeting led Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to say that “NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war.” On May 7, the speaker of the Russian Duma drew a similar conclusion. “The US is taking part in the military operations in Ukraine. Today, Washington is basically coordinating and engineering military operations, thus directly participating in the military actions against our country.”

That conclusion has likely been reinforced by Russia’s witnessing of “US military personnel” being “directly involved . . . in critical line functions” in the recent Ukrainian counteroffensive. On September 10, the New York Times reported that the decision by senior Ukrainian officials to increase “intelligence sharing with their American counterparts over the summer as they began to plan the counteroffensive . . . allowed the United States to provide better and more relevant information about Russian weaknesses, according to American officials.” US officials “stepped up feeds of intelligence about the position of Russian forces, highlighting weaknesses in the Russian lines.”

The US increased its assistance to Ukraine beyond the high levels it had already achieved to the point that “Americans had ‘constantly’ discussed with Kyiv ways that Ukraine could blunt the Russian advance in the country’s east.” US chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley “regularly discussed intelligence and military support” with senior Ukrainian military leaders while US defense attaché, Brigadier General Garrick Harmon, “began having daily sessions with Ukraine’s top officers.”

On September 1, CNN reported that the US went so far as to engage in “war-gaming” with Ukraine. The New York Times has confirmed that report and added that the war games suggested that a broader offensive ordered by Zalensky would fail. “’We did do some modeling and some tabletop exercises,’ Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s policy chief, said in a telephone interview. ‘That set of exercises suggested that certain avenues for a counteroffensive were likely to be more successful than others. We provided that advice, and then the Ukrainians internalized that and made their own decision.’” New war games conducted by the US, UK and Ukraine tested and settled on the more limited counteroffensive.

The escalation in US involvement may have led Russia to conclude “that it is now in a direct war with the US, that this is now an American war.” Gilbert Doctorow has also reported that Russia may be signaling that they have reached the conclusion that they are “now fighting NATO, not just Ukraine, and it was time to escalate to all out war.” On September 21, Putin said that Russia is fighting “the entire Western military machine.”

But the Russian view has evolved, not only to see the US as directly involved in the war, but to see the US and its allies as directly involved in preventing a negotiated end to the war.

In negotiations held in March 2022 in Istanbul, Ukraine appeared ready to accept Russia’s settlement and a negotiated settlement seemed possible. Then Kiev changed its mind and turned its back on the proposal. According to Dmitry Tremin, Research Professor at the Higher School of Economics and a member of the Russian International Affairs Council, “Moscow has always suspected that this U-turn, as on previous occasions, was the result of US behind-the-scenes influence, often aided by the British and other allies.”

Moscow’s suspicion has now likely been solidified by three events. Right after the promising Istanbul meeting, then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson rushed to Kiev to correct Zelensky, telling him that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” He told Zelensky that, even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, the West was not.” On August 24, in his dying days as prime minister, he repeated that call, saying that now was not the time to promote a “flimsy plan for negotiation” with Russia.

A frustrating month after the Istanbul meeting, in an April 21 interview, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Turkey did not think the war would last long after the talks. But it did, and Cavusoglu charged that

“There are countries within NATO who want the war to continue.” He said that “following the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, it was the impression that…there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue, let the war continue and Russia get weaker.”

Cavusoglu’s insistence that a settlement was within reach seems to have been confirmed by a September Foreign Affairs article by Fiona Hill and Angela Stent. In the article, Hill and Stent say that “According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”

In a September 21 address, Putin said that he “would like to make public for the first time” that “After the start of the special military operation, in particular after the Istanbul talks, Kiev representatives voiced quite a positive response to our proposals. These proposals concerned above all ensuring Russia’s security and interests. But a peaceful settlement obviously did not suit the West, which is why, after certain compromises were coordinated, Kiev was actually ordered to wreck all these agreements.”

The conjunction of increasingly direct US involvement in the war and increasing evidence that the US is preventing a negotiated end to the war, seems now to have led Russia to the conclusion that Ukraine and the West will never agree to a diplomatic settlement that is acceptable to Russia.

That conclusion entails the realization that Russia will never receive guarantees either that there will be no Ukraine in NATO or that there will be no NATO in Ukraine. Following the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Russia has now likely realized the reality of NATO in Ukraine.

And that crystallizes Ukraine as a security threat to Russia. Even if Ukraine never joins NATO, NATO has taken up house in Ukraine.

In the early stages of the war, Ukraine and Russia were both open to a diplomatic settlement that would create an independent Donbass with a neutral Ukraine outside NATO and NATO outside Ukraine. With the US and NATO contributing more advanced long-range weaponry, training and intelligence to a war that they are becoming increasingly directly involved in while increasingly preventing a negotiated cessation to the hostilities, Russia likely no longer sees that as a possibility. The “fundamental problem” that Russia now sees, according to Dmitri Tremin, is “Russia having to live side-by-side with a state that will constantly seek revenge and will be used by the United States, which arms and directs it, in its effort to threaten and weaken Russia.”

The problem, then, has become a much bigger problem. Russia no longer sees the war as a regional war with Ukraine with a reachable diplomatic solution, but as a wider war being fought in Ukraine with the US and NATO with a diplomatic solution having been prohibited.

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Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.

Featured image is from Donbass Insider

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***

The Trib’s editorial: ‘Ukraine’s counteroffensive succeeds’ is positively ecstatic about the Ukraine counteroffensive retaking their Kharkiv Region.

Screenshot from Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune uses this singular victory in the 7 month Russian offensive as foreshadowing a possible Ukrainian victory in the war. But the Trib omitted that the 1,000 square miles recaptured represents just 2% of the near one fifth of Ukraine under Russian control. At a 2% success rate, that would require 49 more offensives to oust Russia.
But the real issue isn’t who’s winning in the moment. It’s how to stop a war with no military end in sight, and the specter of nuclear confrontation looming. That is only possible with a negotiated settlement that provides cover for both sides to accept a truce and peace treaty.
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The Trib has consistently failed to support any negotiations, promoting instead billions more in US weaponry to prolong the killing for months, if not a year or more. Omitted from any Trib analysis is the tentative March agreement brokered by NATO member Turkey that could have ended the war within the first 2 months. Omitted also is how the UK sent PM Boris Johnson and the US sent Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Kiev to demand Ukraine president Zelensky pass on the possible deal. Why? The West needs to weaken Russia. That’s why this is a US, Russia proxy war.
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The Trib needs to part company with its government determined to spend hundreds of billions, possibly even a trillion or more, to win the proxy war against Russia it’s been provoking for the past 8 years. If the Trib commented on the Cuban Missile Crisis 60 years ago like they are now about the Russo Ukraine war, we’d likely not be around to debate this critical matter of life and death.
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Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

  • Posted in English
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Fascism Returns to Europe’s Centerstage

September 27th, 2022 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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***

The stunning victory of a far-right coalition in Italy’s parliamentary election on Sunday is largely seen from the distinct prospect of Giorgia Meloni becoming the country’s next prime minister, whose hardline views on immigration and the preservation of the “Christian family” are rooted in the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a party founded after World War II by the nostalgic former members of Benito Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship. 

Meloni insists that she isn’t a fascist herself, yet her party’s flag includes the symbol of the old pro-Fascist party— the tricolor flame. Two of Mussolini’s descendants, his granddaughter Rachele and his great-grandson Caio Giulio Cesare, have run under the banner of the party Meloni leads, Brothers of Italy. Meloni insists she isn’t a fascist herself, but her take on Mussolini is: “Everything he did, he did for Italy.”

All this makes the meteoric rise of this politician with a working class background a combustible mix at a juncture when the future of European politics itself seems dark and uncertain, reeling under the economic crisis.

Without doubt, Leon Trotsky’s critique of fascism is the best in the Marxist literature in the 1930s on the subject. Trotsky was the first Marxist theorist to get to the core of the destructive delirium that surrounds fascist phenomenon. Trotsky’s famous passage on the rise of fascism helps understand what is happening.

Trotsky wrote: “The fascist movement in Italy was a spontaneous movement of large masses, with new leaders from the rank and file. It is a plebian movement in origin, directed and financed by big capitalist powers. It issued forth from the petty bourgeoisie, the slum proletariat, and even to a certain extent from the proletarian masses; Mussolini, a former socialist, is a “self-made” man arising from this movement.”

The three pillars of Meloni’s politics are zero-tolerance for illegal immigration, extreme social conservatism and, until recently, belligerent Euro-scepticism. Guardian newspaper wrote: “From Italy to Sweden, Hungary to France, the far right is once again a force to be reckoned with. Its hostility towards immigrants encourages xenophobes everywhere, including in India.” 

In European politics, Italy traditionally played the role of an eager junior partner to the heavyweights that drive decision-making, France and Germany. That is almost certain to change under Meloni. The “known unknown” is as to which route she goes down — a populist such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, intent on exerting ever more control; a pugilist such as Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki; or, a more familiar conservative voice such as Liz Truss? Or, even something entirely different? 

Any whichever way she goes, it matters like hell, because Italy is one of the world’s most wealthy and influential nations — a G7 member and the third biggest economy in the European Union (EU), and a NATO power. That is why the outcome of Sunday’s vote was watched nervously in European capitals and on financial markets. Simply put, the Brothers of Italy, does not inspire confidence that Rome will reclaim its role as a steady European partner — although the manifesto of the incoming centre-right coalition sought to reassure EU neighbours and NATO partners. 

Indeed, Meloni may have to temper — initially, at least — as Italy is the largest beneficiary of NextGenerationEU funds and its economic difficulties are best handled with the EU’s helping hand. That said, there is an important distinction to be made when Maloni’s coalition speaks of “national interest.” Traditionally, Italian leaders pursued national interest by being friends with countries with similar values and interests. Thus, pro-Europeanism and Atlanticism became unquestioned tenets of Italian policy. 

But when Meloni uses the term “national interest”, it has an altogether different connotation linked to the fascist idea of an ethnic concept of nationhood, of glorifying the Roman Empire — somewhat similar to what is happening in India or Turkey today. 

It will come as no surprise if Meloni puts the European Commission bureaucrats in their place and clips the EU’s wings. She candidly said recently, “What will happen is that the gravy train will come to an end.” It is not only that she thinks Brussels is useless, but is also hostile. Citing the EU’s attempts to punish Poland and Hungary for democratic backsliding, she said, “We are facing the most powerful and violent attack against governments of sovereign nations opposing the dictatorship of politically correct ideology.” 

Significantly, Meloni is not alone on this path. Apart from closeness to Hungary’s nationalist leader Viktor Orban, she also happens to be the president of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a pan-European umbrella party that includes Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party as well as increasingly influential parties in countries like Spain and Sweden. Meloni may have the means to tip the balance in the European Parliament in 2024 and influence the allocation of top jobs, including whether to give European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen another term.

Suffice to say, Italy may not anymore be a docile camp follower of France and Germany, but Meloni may have a gang of her own with conservative, authoritarian figures. It will almost certainly mean the weakening of ties with the likes of Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron. Meloni’s approach to the US veers toward the Trumpian right

The million dollar question is where the new Italian government is going stand on the Ukraine question. Brothers of Italy has been critics of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. But its coalition partner the Lega party retains strong links to Moscow, and Meloni will heavily rely on its support. Lega’s leader Matteo Salvini has called for a rethink of EU sanctions against Russia. Salvini draws his voter support heavily from business owners, who have expressed fears that Italy’s economy could be too heavily hit by repercussions from Western sanctions against Russia.

Besides, Meloni will also have to reckon with another of her coalition partners, former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is still the showman of Italian politics and a close friend of President Putin. Berlusconi’s support to the right-wing coalition is indispensable to ensure it has a majority of seats, and as such the controversial ex-premier could still exert significant influence. Meloni’s party has no experience in government, so she will need full support from Berlusconi and Salvini. Suffice to say, in this new matrix, at the very least, Italy’s support for Ukraine could weaken. 

What often goes unnoticed is that Moscow has historically had extensive personal relationships with Italian politicians. It goes back to the 1960s when Italy was home to the largest communist party in Europe. Like in Germany, governments of all stripes in Rome continued to promote economic and energy ties with Russia. From such a perspective, the shift in Italian politics is tectonic, coinciding with the transformation of the war in Ukraine from a slow burning grind to a full-fledged war. It comes amidst stirrings that the EU itself may be going through a profound rethink, as foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s latest remarks with accent on “diplomatic efforts” would suggest. 

Italian elections in the past have often triggered similar trends elsewhere in Europe. Mussolini’s rise in 1920s came ahead of the Nazis in Germany. In a dramatic shift, right-wing nationalists just won in Sweden. The risk to Europe may well not be Giorgia Meloni herself, but how her influence spreads. As a veteran German commentator put it, this is also where “the biggest danger lies — That the EU tries to push her around or isolate her, and that she will resist, with the Italian electorate on her side.” 

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Featured image: Meloni speaking at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida (Photo by Vox España, licensed under CC0)

Will Italy’s Election Foreshadow US Midterms?

September 27th, 2022 by Rep. Ron Paul

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Sunday was an historic election day for Italy. A conservative alliance with a populist flair absolutely trounced the technocrats who had been running the country into the ground for the past several years.

The previous prime minister, former Goldman Sachs banker Mario Draghi, implemented one of the most restrictive – and inhuman – Covid shutdowns, which, along with supporting economically suicidal sanctions against Russia, have left Italy an economic basket case.

Replacing the bland banker will likely be Giorgia Meloni from the right-wing Sons of Italy party. Meloni will be a first for Italy: the first female prime minister. But don’t expect the Left to celebrate it: her name cannot be mentioned in the mainstream media without reference to Mussolini.

Ironically, the democratic victory of Meloni and the rest of the Italian right likely owes a great deal of gratitude to one of Europe’s most undemocratic and anti-democratic leaders: European Union Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen.

On the eve of the Italian elections, the unelected von der Leyen warned Italians that if they voted for the “wrong” parties they would be punished. Asked about the surge of the political opposition in Italy on the eve of the elections, she warned Italian voters, “we will see the result of the vote in Italy. If things go in a difficult direction — and I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland — we have the tools.”

In other words, her message to Italian voters was “yes you can vote, but if you vote in a way I do not approve of, you will be punished.”

Italians rushed to vote in a way she did not approve of. It will be interesting to see what happens.

How does any of this relate to the United States as the US moves closer to the midterm elections? Americans have also been given warnings by the political elites that they dare not vote for the “wrong” candidates or parties.

On September 1st, President Biden issued a warning similar to that of Europe’s von der Leyen. In one of the most bizarre speeches in political history, Biden warned that Trump supporters “…are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love. They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.”

He spoke on a frightening, red-lit stage with US Marines serving as props on either side of him. This was no “Checkers” speech with Nixon speaking wistfully about his cocker spaniel. No, it was a declaration of war against half of the country.

A few weeks ago Sweden threw its left-wing government out and Sunday the Italians did the same. While the political differences in Europe seem more cosmetic than substantive – for example Italy’s presumptive new prime minister supports weapons to Ukraine just like her predecessor – there is still a strong feeling of popular revolt against political elites in the air.

That doesn’t mean things will easily go our way, as there is no automatic libertarian surge. But we must study hard and take advantage of every single opportunity. People are sick of the elites? That means they are likely open to the concepts of non-interventionism and sound money. Let’s help educate them!

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Featured image: Electoral posters in Cascina, Tuscany (Photo by Alexmar983, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

War Drums Beat Louder, World War III Looms Ever Closer

By Joachim Hagopian, September 27, 2022

Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) from nukes destroying the earth in the Cold War days of the US-Soviet arms race has been replaced today by insanely mad neocon DC puppets promoting US “Nuclear Primacy,” or the West’s first strike advantage, plunging humanity headlong into an “end of the world” danger zone risking impending nuclear holocaust.

Whitewashing at Shinzo Abe’s State Funeral

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, September 27, 2022

The reaction from certain figures outside Japan left an impression of distorted admiration.  There was Hillary Clinton’s cloying tribute about Abe being “a champion of democracy and a firm believer that no economy, society, or country can achieve its full potential if women are left behind.”

Liz Truss and the Collapse of the British Pound Sterling. Hyperinflation Looming

By Brett Redmayne-Titley, September 26, 2022

With another unelected Prime Minister continuing the Conservative Party’s forty-year destruction of the British family – sans the rich- and hyperinflation looming above a long predicted economic depression, let us examine the day’s headline on the ascent of Liz Truss.

Charles III, Real King or Servant of the Globalists?

By Julian Rose, September 26, 2022

The death of Queen Elizabeth II and the inheritance of the British throne by her eldest son Charles, can either be viewed as a significant event holding the possibility of positive change, or the further manifestation of a beguiling and deceptive show of imperial/colonial self importance.

Lebanese-Israeli Off-shore Agreement May End the Lebanese Financial Crisis

By Steven Sahiounie, September 26, 2022

Lebanon and Israel are attempting to reach a deal on their shared maritime borders which could solve the financial, social, and political problems that Lebanon has been facing which almost brought the small nation on the Mediterranean Sea to ‘failed-state’ status.

The Plandemic Nut: How a False Hydroxychloroquine Narrative Was Created, and Much More

By Dr. Meryl Nass, September 26, 2022

Hydroxychloroquine has been used safely for 65 years in many millions of patients.  And so the message was crafted that the drug is safe for its other uses, but dangerous when used for Covid-19.  It doesn’t make sense, but it seems to have worked.

Canadian Academics Say Facts on Ukraine Are Russian Propaganda

By Kurt Nimmo, September 26, 2022

According to a gaggle of academics at the University of Calgary, all news reports and opinions contrary to the pretzel twisted narratives of the state on the situation in the Ukraine are nothing less than Russian propaganda and “foreign interference.”

The Radical Enlightenment: The Role of Science in the Battle Between Christianity and Pantheism

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, September 26, 2022

We are all familiar with the Enlightenment (late 1600s to early 1800s), not least because we studied it in our history books in school. We also learned that before the Enlightenment – which brought about the gradual re-introduction of science into society – there were the medieval universities of philosophy, known as Scholasticism, that dominated education in Europe from about 1100 to 1700. What we don’t hear much about is the transition between the two, how science came to dominate thinking, who was involved, and what was there before.

Vaccine Mandate Ruled ‘Invalid’ for Police Association Members in New York

By Tom Ozimek, September 26, 2022

New York police officers have scored a big win in their fight against the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate that cost some their jobs, with a New York Supreme Court judge ruling that the mandate—as it applies to members of the Police Benevolent Association (PBA)—is “invalid” and that fired cops must be given back their jobs.

America’s Open Wound. The CIA Is Not Your Friend

By Edward Snowden, September 26, 2022

How can we judge the ultimate effectiveness of oversight and reforms? Well, the CIA plotted to assassinate my friend, American whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, in 1972, yet nearly fifty years of “reforms” did little to inhibit them from recently sketching out another political murder targeting Julian Assange. Putting that in perspective, you probably own shoes older than the CIA’s most recent plot to murder a dissident… or rather the most recent plot that we know of.

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Whitewashing at Shinzo Abe’s State Funeral

September 27th, 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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War Drums Beat Louder, World War III Looms Ever Closer

September 27th, 2022 by Joachim Hagopian

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From the summary of the 2015 published book entitled Ukraine: ZBIG’s Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated:

Ukraine: ZBIG’s Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated speaks to the historical and geostrategic moves by the West to control the Eurasian landmass: the broken promises and treaties, the geostrategic missteps and, finally, how Grand Chessboard fundamentalism actually catalyzed Russia’s re-emergence as a global power, shifted geostrategic power eastward and, proverbially, snatched defeat from the jaws of a U.S./NATO victory.

Seven years later based on today’s grand chessboard stage, the above scenario imminently appears to be a done deal in the making. With a Friday September 23rd headline claiming World War III is already here from Mike Adams of naturalnews,com, the first two sentences of his article assert:

World War III has already begun. You simply aren’t being told this because your government and dishonest media outlets are dedicated to keeping you in the dark.

Though some may construe this narrative as sensationalized click bait, sadly it does appear World War III is upon us.

With the hectic tempo of doomsday events unfolding this past week in combination with the hyped-up social media buzz of cryptic dire predictions for September 24th that include the “death of America,” now that it’s come and gone, though thankfully nothing so cataclysmic as 9/11 has occurred, arguably the world does appear to be on the verge of earthshaking calamity.

More news breaking stories out of China on Friday September 23rd are reporting that a 50-mile long (80km) military convoy is headed into the Chinese capital Beijing, along with all air and rail travel shut down.

Unconfirmed rumors of a coup overthrowing Xi Jinping now on house arrest are flooding Chinese social media, speculating that members of the CCP old guard have seized control and that an attack on Taiwan is next. on Saturday September 24th, 2022 Newsweek ran a story stating that unsubstantiated reports indicate that the People’s Liberation China Army commanding General Li Qiaoming has replaced Ji Jinping.

Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) from nukes destroying the earth in the Cold War days of the US-Soviet arms race has been replaced today by insanely mad neocon DC puppets promoting US “Nuclear Primacy,” or the West’s first strike advantage, plunging humanity headlong into an “end of the world” danger zone risking impending nuclear holocaust.

And now we’ve entered the age of hypersonic technology where missiles can travel five times the speed of sound, the West currently in a game of playing catch-up to both Russia and China. Numerous military analysts project the West will lose World War III against the East.

As of June 30, 2022, CNN reports that based on its latest early phase hypersonic testing, the US is floundering to develop a full range of hypersonic warfare that can compete against Russia. Meanwhile, announced on Friday September 23rd, 20022, the Pentagon just awarded a near $1 billion contract to Raytheon-Northrop to build Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missiles for the US Air Force scheduled for delivery in 2027. The problem is, humans are likely to be extinct wiped out in the upcoming world war.

Currently at the precipice of World War III disaster, by malific design our enemy bloodlines have set into motion the West versus the East wartime operations raging in a European and Pacific theater, ignited from fast expanding Ukraine to greater Europe all the way to Pacific Asia’s Taiwan. The globalist plan appears imminent to deploy Eastern powers of Russia, China and Iran to intentionally destroy an already weakened West, currently in freefall decline by design. Luciferians’ road to perdition is sacrificing the Western bloc of nations on today’s two front chopping block. This bleak endgame scenario is further backed by government sourced data on deagel.com, projecting the US population by 2025 to be 65 million people, a colossal culling of over 80% from its current population of 332 million.

The US/NATO has nearly depleted its own weapons stockpile, sent to the Kiev regime where at least 70% ends up sold on Ukraine’s notorious black market. With the West’s arsenal nearly emptied, plus the US fighting force severely weakened by COVID bioweapon mandates, the West has been rendered virtually defenseless in a world war against the combined forces of Russia and China on two fronts, leaving its only viable option nuclear, as in Israel’s Samson Option. If that’s the case, we all lose. This dangerous endgame is the elites’ last stand.

On the 15th of September, less than a week prior to Putin’s nuclear war warning on Wednesday September 21st, a Business Insider article was published entitled “Moscow Could Be Pushed to ‘Nuclear Escalation’ if the US Overreacts to Russia’s Disastrous Invasion of Ukraine, New Report Warns.”

On Tuesday September 20th, CNN, the news network that relishes bringing you bad news that’s almost all lies, reported:

US and Canadian warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday following weekend remarks from President Joe Biden that the US would defend Taiwan in the event it is attacked by China.

On last week’s episode of 60 Minutes, Biden was asked point blank if the US would defend Taiwan if attacked by China. He emphatically repeated his prior commitment to defend Taiwan, even sending US troops, something he stops short of in Ukraine.

The feebleminded president also claims in the same breath that the US still maintains its “one China policy.” Biden’s created an ambivalent mess, inviting upheaval in every corner of the globe that feeds right into the elites’ agenda, minimizing the chance of a peaceful, negotiated settlement between the two Chinese nations, similar to the divide and rule elements keeping the two Koreas apart. Puppets dance to the tune of their puppetmasters every time.

Willfully violating others’ airspace, territorial limits and breeching hostile nations’ national security are invariably prewar indicators accompanied by warmongering rhetoric by world puppet leaders, combined with saber-rattling show-of-force muscle-flexing always to heighten global tensions and conflict. On the one hand, these violations are childish games of intimidation with “my gun’s bigger than yours” taunt, specifically executed to piss off the enemy to escalate conditions to the next level. On the other hand, they’re also a surefire marker and precursor prior to igniting the next major war.

Already this month and next we’re seeing an influx of yet another predictable prewar marker – multiple large-scale joint military exercises. Recently more are ongoing than ever before. Currently China and Russia’s navies are participating in sea operations together.

China is also now immersed in a joint exercise with India, while next month India has scheduled high altitude warfare training with the US Army near the hotly disputed India-China border. Another US-India joint mountainous exercise in late August enflamed the Chinese to no end, but India is attempting to walk the fine line straddling neutrality with both the East and West.

Earlier this month, while immersed in Ukraine, Russia led the Vostok-2022 exercises in northeast Asia involving 50,000 troops belonging to the military forces of China, India, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Syria. For the first time, China deployed forces from all its branches in a single, multinational joint operation with a half dozen other nations. Not to be outdone, not far away at the exact same time, the US and South Korea engaged in wargaming joint maneuvers using artillery, tanks and attack aircraft. This of course enflames North Korea which has always been aligned with Russia and China.

Meanwhile, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un understandably reacts with agitation, as the once on-the-table Korean reunification plan is cast further aside each time the US and South Korea stage another show of force. Kim Jong-un recently said he will never give up his nuclear weapons and missiles as long as the US is deemed such a major threat to his nation’s survival. The East-West divisions have grown exponentially since just a few years ago when Trump managed to stabilize frictions with both Russia and North Korea. Whenever US relations sour toward nations, it motivates them in self-defense to strengthen mutual ties. But then the City of London-Vatican controllers have always historically used the United States as their world bully battering ram, warring against other nations 93% of its time in existence.

On Tuesday September 20th it was announced that four referendums in both the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to decide on whether to be part of Russia would proceed from September 23-27th.

Assuming the people of Kherson, Donetsk, Lugansk and Zaporozhye choose to rejoin Russia, in the future this would render any attacks on these areas as direct attacks against Russia proper. Though this is a major step in the right direction toward finally establishing political stability in the Donbas region, it has come at an enormous, belated cost.

If it had also been simultaneously conducted more than 8 years ago when Crimea opted for annexation in 2014, perhaps millions of lives would have been spared. This confirms that, as a minimum, Putin’s restraint constitutes a huge lapse of judgment.

In any event, the referendum is a huge, decisive positive step. Paolo Raffone, director of the CIPI Foundation, a Brussels-based geopolitical think tank, weighs in:

Once the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions are integrated in the Russian Federation, the game is over. In fact, the US president has repeatedly said that his country is not at war with Russia and that he does not want to commit US troops on the ground to fight Russia nor he wants to use non-conventional weapons. Due to the domestic problems in the US, it would be difficult to reverse such an approach at least until the presidential elections in 2024.

Meanwhile, Biden’s foreign policy “expert,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken took to Twitter to express his disapproval of Putin’s referendum announcement:

Any Russian sham ‘referenda’ in Ukraine would be illegitimate and an affront to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity…

The amount of never-ending hubris and sheer hypocrisy coming out of the filthy mouths of these sorry-ass puppet losers is incredible. The US government as a forever pawn of the planetary controllers, has centuries of historically violating in the most violent, wicked and brutal ways every single principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the rest of the world, with the US overthrowing or militarily invading 75 nations while killing 30 million humans just since World War II. Yet Blinken self-righteously preaches and condemns Russia for protecting its national security. Washington DC’s total disregard for the sanctity of life and “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of all other nations is epic in the annals of shame.

Putin’s television address to his nation this week was delayed by a day, taking place on Wednesday the 21st, announcing his partial mobilization, calling up 300,000 reservists for immediate active military duty. This enormous sized military force definitely exceeds what is required to take down Ukraine, and it cannot be done overnight. This then suggests that it’s not just about fighting in Ukraine but preparing to engage in a much larger war in Europe with the West. This expansion of Russian combat forces is the first-time any troop mobilization has ever occurred in Russia since World War II, adding another grave reminder of what is looming on our horizon as inevitable and seemingly unavoidable.

A September 21st zerohedge.com article pointedly states:

In July 2010, the International Court of Justice issued an “Advisory Opinion” on Kosovo (previously part of Serbia) in which it determined a few important points of international law. Namely:

  1. Unilateral declarations of independence are not illegal under international law.
  2. People’s right to self-determination supersedes territorial integrity.

Washington DC considers itself to be above all international law, still deluding itself as the world’s only superpower living in unipolar fantasyland, hypocritically insisting that its own fabricated “rules based global order” should supersede all international rule of law, which automatically exempts the US from complying with international rule of law. Yet should any other nation violate the US’ arbitrary “rules based global order” yet remain in compliance with international rule of law the rest of the world follows, then all hell rains down as if the DC policymakers are God. The old semantics game and twisted moral principle of “laws for thee, rules for me.”

The Russia-China led coalition quickly gaining global consensus is rudely waking up these magalomanical morons propped up as the West’s puppet leaders. They mindlessly parrot each other reading from the same globalist script. Case in point, at a recent NATO military conference, Estonia’s Defense Minister Martin Herem actually uttered these words:

Collectively we must deny Russia the possibility to change today’s ‘rules-based’ international order.

… where the Western puppet masters and their scripted minions get to arbitrarily make up the rules as they go along. Again, they are all living in a delusional world of literal AI hive-minded insanity, mechanically robotically mouthing these same fantastical lies. These useful idiot tools will soon be discarded by their puppetmasters or meet their unwelcome fate at a military tribunal, sentencing the whole lot of them to execution for treason, including judgment day for their masters as well, after incriminating evidence on them is gathered from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.

Just to affirm how “free” this phony democracy called Ukraine is, legislation to criminalize any citizen in Ukraine including the Donbas that applies for a Russian passport or votes in the upcoming referendums this weekend will be allegedly jailed for up to five years. That’s how tyrannical and desperate Kiev has become as it continues in actuality to lose the war. If it was winning, as the Mockingbird Western media now all insists [again], it would not in desperation resort to these extreme threats of overkill punishment for citizens simply exercising their right to self-determine their own fate through a democratic vote. Dictatorships run by weak autocratic puppets must play its heavy-handed punitive card if it hopes to survive even a little longer but their days are growing shorter.

Rumors this week have emerged that the Governor of the Rothschild affiliated Central Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, has tendered her resignation to President Putin.

Shortly after Putin’s Ukraine intervention began, a Bloomberg article revealed that Nabiullina as head of Russia’s Central Bank attempted to quit after nine years in March 2022, but Putin allegedly forced her to stay on for the last six months. Conjecture that she has adversely been impacted by the US led economic sanctions freezing Russia’s $630 billion foreign assets may have played a factor. In any event, with her banking fate still unknown, overall the West’s leftist media considers the brooch-wearing 58-year old their darling for her monetary skills keeping afloat the Russian economy in spite of its ceaseless sanctions since 2014, all the while labeled a rare “liberal” amidst the demonized Putin regime. This week’s resignation speculation recurred after surfacing in March, and a condition of her purported staying on with Putin was that no military mobilization be implemented.

As recently as 2021, Vladimir Putin made a video (see below) appearance at the World Economic Forum where after Klaus Schwab’s introduction of the Russian president, Putin opened his Davos speech mentioning he and Schwab go way back to 1992, apparently maintaining a 30-year friendship all the while. Shortly after making Schwab’s acquaintance, Klaus’ mentor Henry Kissinger also began his apparent longstanding friendship with Putin, confirmed by Kissinger’s right-hand man Steve Pieczenik boasting that he and his boss in 1999 chose Putin to replace the alcoholic Boris Yeltsin as Russian leader. By association, rubbing elbows with infamously notorious Rothschild agents implicates Rothschild affiliated Russian Central Banker Elvira Nabiullina as well as Putin.

Meanwhile, right after Putin spoke to the nation on Wednesday, according to the Western press, flights from Moscow to Yerevan and Istanbul were reportedly sold out. Countries where visas for Russians are not required – Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, and Serbia, were all suddenly high demand destinations of citizens trying to flee Russia, according to Reuters. As a result, within hours the Moscow government ordered all its airlines to immediately stop selling tickets to men aged 18 to 65.

Just to give you an understanding how news services covering the exact same event completely diverge based on particular biases, the onetime Rothschild owned news service Reuters frames its anti-Putin headline “Putin escalates Ukraine war, issues nuclear threat to West,” while the far more neutral Arab news service Al Arabiya states, “Putin signs decree on mobilization, says West wants to destroy Russia.” Both carry completely different accounts of the same event. Putin is quoted in The Guardian:

To those who allow themselves such statements regarding Russia, I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and for separate components and more modern than those of NATO countries and when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal – this is not a bluff, [adding, Russia had] lots of weapons to reply.

The Russian leader justifies mobilization in response to “the dangers posed by the West,” which “wants to destroy our country.” Clearly from his perspective, Putin is operating with sound moral judgment in self-defense of his nation. Yet from the West’s deceptive point of view, he is always portrayed as the “mad Russian,” most dangerous dictator and bloodthirsty aggressor in this world since Adolph Hitler.

Putin’s Wednesday morning speech articulated an accurate description of some of the typical nefarious activities currently being perpetrated by the West:

Western elites are doing their utmost to preserve their domination and with this aim in view are trying to block and suppress any sovereign and independent development centers in order to continue to aggressively force their will and pseudo-values on other countries and nations.

Again, Putin often makes rational sense. Yet the inverse Luciferian world we’re living in flips everything, so that what is truth is called deception and the lies get passed off as truth. In mainstream corporate Western media, this is 100% true.

Immediately following the Putin speech, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was even more direct:

I cannot but emphasize the fact that today we are at war not so much with Ukraine and the Ukrainian army as with the collective West. At this point we are really at war with the collective West, with NATO, or vice versa – with NATO and with the collective West.

So there it is, NATO versus Russia and Russia versus NATO. For seven months straight, daily Western propaganda slanders Russia as the “unprovoked invader” of Ukraine, when all historical facts clearly prove that the West for over three decades has illegally broken every promise and formal agreement ever made, while refusing for even one minute to respect Russia’s repeated requests to accept its sovereign fundamental right to protect its own national security, even right up to February 24th special operation, while nonstop the West has aggressively provoked tensions and forced Russia to intervene in order to save ethnic Russians, de-Nazify and demilitarize Ukraine from continuing its 8 year ethnic purge in the Donbas, ever since the US illegally overthrew the Kiev government back in 2014.

As if all these latest developments aren’t alarming enough, the US and NATO are working overtime this extremely busy week ratcheting up what seems inevitable at this point – World War III.

On Tuesday September 13th, a group of former prime ministers and foreign ministers from NATO countries released their The KYIV Security Compact, which is a signed pact pledging NATO support for Ukraine, in effect, declaring it a de facto NATO member that puppet Zelensky zealously signed off on already.

These warmongering NATO hawks are led by its chairman former Danish Prime Minister and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Australia’s former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, former UK Foreign Secretary William J. Hague and former ministers from France, Germany, Italy, and Poland, acting as a formal delegation on behalf of NATO clearly taking the Ukraine conflict to another level entirely – from a US/NATO proxy war to a US/NATO direct hot war against Russia, for all intents and purposes, evoking Article 5 of the NATO Charter to directly engage in combative world war against Russia, opening up officially the far wider global war gravely risking nuclear annihilation. This is why Putin is mobilizing 300,000 more soldiers on active duty, because all along US/NATO have been warring against Russia using Ukraine as its incendiary device to ignite World War III.

So, for decades the West has been consistently the only side itching for nuclear war, and seemingly now in response, Putin has been forced to defend his nation and people against destruction. But of course, if Vlad the Bad is merely a controlled opposition Kissinger actor working covertly still with the Rothschild City of London cabal, then it’s all just grand chessboard theater, each playing their scripted role, which it might well be, and with Chinese troops reportedly now on the ground fighting alongside the Russian army, there you have it, a preplanned staged East versus West World War III showdown already playing out right before our eyes.

According to a report dated last Sunday, September 18th, former member of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Hal Turner analyzed and released photos and a brief video sent to him by anonymous intel sources. They clearly show at least one small convoy of Humvees and troop personnel transport vehicles that belong to the PRC captured on film entering Ukraine from the Russian border. Though this evidence is scant in scope and no claims of a large on-the-ground Chinese military presence in Ukraine can be made, nonetheless it does send a clear brazenly sober, alarming message that:

China has just announced to the whole world that it is now militarily standing with Russia, inside Ukraine.

This strongly indicates that the military Russian incursion is opening up into a much wider international conflict between the two largest Eastern global nuclear powers and the US/NATO forces. Moreover, head of the Chinese legislature, Li Zhanshu, met with Putin in mid-September as well as with Duma leaders, and Li Zhanshu told the Duma:

We see that the United States and its NATO allies are expanding their presence near the Russian borders, seriously threatening national security and the lives of Russian citizens… We fully understand the necessity of all the measures taken by Russia aimed at protecting its key interests… We are providing our assistance.

Every single day, Luciferian controllers move us closer and closer to nuclear World War Armageddon. This disturbing development preceded last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Eurasia, where Putin met with Xi Jinping to further discuss how China can “provide assistance,” now with the breaking knowledge that Xi has militarily sent a contingent of his People’s Republic of China’s forces already to the Ukraine warfront. While forces of the East get ready for world war in Ukraine against the West, renewing and strengthening their multipolar strategic military partnership to full advantage, their sights are clearly set on taking on the West in an upcoming world war, the inevitable Eastern warfront in Taiwan awaits in all likelihood to be ignited within the next few weeks or months.

Putin returned home to Moscow after last week’s big summit, displaying a renewed confidence having apparently accomplished what he wanted, in exchange for assurance that his war in Ukraine would soon end “as soon as possible,” made public when India’s prime minister Narendra Modi assertively confronted Putin. Russia appears to have received unanimous support from China’s Xi, India’s Modi, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi and even new Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

While Putin announced his mobilization this week, back in China at a Beijing hosted defense conference, Xi also carried the war drum theme home in his statement quoted in Xinhua News:

It is imperative to conscientiously summarize and apply successful experience in reforms, to master new situations and [understand] the requirements of the tasks, to focus on preparing for wars, and to have the courage to explore and innovate. [Boldface for emphasis]

Shit appears to literally be hitting the fan now. After over a half year of virtually nonstop shelling at the ZaporozhyeNuclear Power Plant by insane Ukraine neo-Nazis, they finally did it. Now it seems we could be on our way to another Fukushima disaster as the plant’s cooling system was allegedly damaged and compromised. A water pipe to the cooling system was hit by an alleged US rocket system missile launcher fired by Ukraine based on a larger sized shelling fragment discovered at the scene. The implications are devastating. Tass News Agency posted the news on Wednesday September 21st. It really does appear that major catastrophic events are now happening and that recent dire predictions for September 24th and 25th might be more than just speculation.

Other than Modi’s lone voice remarking last Friday in dialogue with Putin, “Now is not the time for war,” absolutely no other world leader is even talking peace or exploring any possibility of a nonviolent resolution to all these mounting geopolitical tensions and crises spinning out of control on our planet. This seething ready to explode atmosphere reflects the entire world bracing for the epic shitstorm of monumental biblical proportions erupting just as the elites’ reset implodes economies around the globe. It’s looking very dark as the crimes of the ages expose the genocidal elites plunging us into world war.

There are only a couple Western national leaders who are lone voices in the wilderness abyss, namely from Hungary and Serbia, as the only leaders possessing the courage amidst pressure to toe the line and lie, committing actions that only harm their citizens. Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic just stated:

I assume that we’re leaving the phase of the special military operation and approaching a major armed conflict, and now the question becomes where is the line, and whether after a certain time – maybe a month or two, even – we will enter a great world conflict not seen since the Second World War.

Rutgers University published its research findings last month that if a nuclear war broke out between Russia and the United States, within two years two-thirds of the planet, that’s 5 billion people, would be dead. Yet is this dystopian shockwave of harsh unthinkable reality that humanity is now facing in any way actually going to alter or change the imminent probability of it manifesting as our tragic fate?

The Russian geopolitical strategist and ultra-nationalist Aleksandr Dugin, whose journalist daughter was tragically assassinated last month, recently commented on the ominously dark developments in recent days fast descending upon today’s earth:

We are on the brink of World War III, which the West is compulsively pushing for. And this is no longer a fear or expectation, it is a fact. Russia is at war with the collective West, with NATO and its allies (though not with all of them)… Yet, the threat of a third world war is getting closer and closer. Whether it will come to the use of nuclear weapons is an open question. But the probability of a nuclear Armageddon grows by the day.

As actress Betty Davis said in her 1950 film classic “All About Eve”:

Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.

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Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate, former Army officer and author of “Don’t Let the Bastards Getcha Down,” exposing a faulty US military leadership system based on ticket punching up the seniority ladder, invariably weeding out the best and brightest, leaving mediocrity and order followers rising to the top as politician-bureaucrat generals designated to lose every modern US war by elite design. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In Los Angeles he found himself battling the largest county child protective services in the nation within America’s thoroughly broken and corrupt child welfare system.

As an independent journalist for over 8 years, Joachim has written hundreds of articles for many news sites, like Global Researchlewrockwell.com and currently https://jamesfetzer.org/. As a published bestselling author on Amazon of a 5-book volume series entitled Pedophilia & Empire: Satan, Sodomy & the Deep State, his A-Z sourcebook series exposes the global pedophilia scourge is available free at https://pedoempire.org/contents/. Joachim also hosts the Revolution Radio weekly broadcast “Cabal Empire Exposed,” every Friday morning at 6AM EST (ID: revradio, password: rocks!)

Featured image is from ABC Science 


Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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).

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***

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” – Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

This is a letter to the silent doctor. This is a letter to every physician who senses that the ongoing biofascist putsch is scientifically, morally, and politically wrong, yet maintains a policy of willful ignorance so as to protect their careers. It is not too late to cast off your sordid shackles of inhuman blind obedience. Cast off these lies, these monstrous deceptions, and uphold that sacred oath without which a doctor is but a blackened husk and a soulless lifeless shell.

The profession of medicine is a noble one, but only if informed consent and the principle of “first, do no harm” are upheld. In the absence of this bioethical framework, medicine is transformed into a bloody truncheon to be wielded by tyrants. As Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav has warned, the moral bankruptcy of the German physician during the Third Reich played a critical role in laying the groundwork for the Hitlerian machinery of mass murder.

Moreover, as evidenced by Vioxx, the opioid epidemic, the psychotropic drug epidemic, the overprescribing of benzodiazepines and barbiturates, the CDC childhood vaccine schedule (dozens of mandates coupled with liability protection for the manufacturer), an egregious multi-tier system, and millions of medical bankruptcies pre-Covid, amongst other depravities, the weaponization of American health care has been steadily unfolding for decades.

Nevertheless, it was only with the arrival of the Branch Covidian cult that this weaponization enveloped the world in a deathly shadow, threatening to eradicate bodily autonomy and freedom forever.

In addition to the informed consent ethic and primum non nocere, every critical pillar of medical ethics has been egregiously violated: the Nuremberg Code, early detection and early treatment, off-label prescribing, the distinction between an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) medicine and a medicine fully approved by FDA, the right to visit hospitalized loved ones, the inviolability of electronic medical records, and the importance of stopping a medical experiment when there is unequivocal evidence of harm.

Sir William Osler reminds his fellow physicians of the importance of altruism in Aequanimitas:

“The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head. Often the best part of your work will have nothing to do with potions and powders, but with the exercise of an influence of the strong upon the weak, of the righteous upon the wicked, of the wise upon the foolish.”

Since the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 on transhuman virgin shores, have the three letter agencies been protecting the weak from the strong and the righteous from the wicked?

We have been informed by CNN and other mass media networks that over a million Americans have died from Covid, yet the majority of these deaths involved the elderly and those with significant comorbidities.

Indeed, these were overwhelmingly with Covid deaths, not of Covid deaths. Undoubtedly, many also died due to the suppression of early treatment modalities such as the Zelenko protocol, The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons protocol, and the Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) protocols, as well as dubious hospital treatments as described in Erin Olszewski’s book Undercover Epicenter Nurse: How Fraud, Negligence, and Greed Led to Unnecessary Deaths at Elmhurst Hospital. The squelching of early treatment options involving the use of repurposed drugs coupled with a relentless and utterly hysterical pressure to take an investigational vaccine is emblematic of an inversion of medical ethics.

With what other medical problem does a doctor tell a patient that no early treatments exist and that they should simply go to the nearest emergency room when their condition deteriorates to the point where they are fearful for their life? Is this therapeutic nihilism taught in any medical school in the world? As Argentine physician Hector Carvallo has remarked: one cannot impassively look on while a neighbor’s house is on fire. While there may be multiple ways of offering assistance, doing nothing is indefensible.

A new vaccine typically takes at least ten years to produce, and this is when using traditional methods of vaccine technology. The mRNA vaccines utilize a completely novel technology. It is not possible to do this safely in ten months.

Billions of human beings have been bullied, arm-twisted, and blackmailed into taking an experimental inoculation, thereby violating the brightest of redlines in medicine.

Moreover, this was done while Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, medicines approved by FDA decades ago and which have a long-established safety profile, were relentlessly vilified and demonized despite a robust body of evidence demonstrating efficacy.

The censorship of dissenting voices by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which in turn profited off of the lockdowns, has contributed to the quelling of scientific debate, yet failed to alter the truth. In “Promoting Unlicensed Vaccines is Lawbreaking,” by Dr. Robert Malone, the author writes:

“In my opinion, the FDA and CDC have continued to bypass well established regulatory norms and have permitted outright lawless activities (including prohibited marketing of unlicensed medical products) in their rush to deploy genetic vaccine products for a disease which is readily managed using a wide variety of early clinical treatment protocols.”

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the UK’s Yellow Card scheme, the WHO’s VigiAccess, and EudraVigilance all show strikingly elevated numbers of vaccine adverse events in conjunction with the mRNA vaccine, and there are presently over 30,000 deaths on VAERS, which is unprecedented. (The Lazarus Harvard Pilgrim Health Care report concluded that VAERS typically captures less than 1% of the real vaccine adverse event data).

Steve Kirsch, who has been tireless in his debunking of the official narrative, has analyzed the VAERS data and arrived at an under-reporting factor for the Covid vaccines of 41. There are further signals that warrant investigation, such as the dramatic rise in mortality reported by life insurance companies, and the fact that the leading cause of death in the Canadian province of Alberta for 2021 was “ill-defined and unknown.”

Clearly, the vaccines neither confer immunity nor prevent transmission.

The new claim, that the experimental injections diminish virulence, is preposterous. A vaccine that fails to immunize is an oxymoron. Moreover, how could this be proven with a virus whose fatality rate varies widely contingent on age, weight, and comorbidities? As Osler once quipped in “Chauvinism in Medicine:” “The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.”

Informed Choice Australia has compiled a list of one thousand peer-reviewed studies connecting mRNA vaccine to myocarditis, pericarditis, thrombocytopenia, Guillain-Barré, lymphadenopathy, transverse myelitis, rhabdomyolysis, amongst other serious conditions. Dr. James Thorp, Dr. Jessica RoseDr. Tess LawrieDr. Christof Plothe, Dr. Pierre Kory, and Dr. Roger Hodkinson, along with other distinguished doctors and scientists have expressed concerns about the investigational injections being given to pregnant women, long regarded as a serious breach of medical ethics; and there is evidence that mRNA vaccination may be having an insidious impact on male fertility as well. In “Vascular and Organ Damage Induced by mRNA Vaccines: Irrefutable Proof of Causality,” by Dr. Michael Palmer and Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, the authors conclude that “Overall, these vaccines can no longer be considered experimental—the ‘experiment’ has resulted in the disaster that many medical doctors and scientists predicted from the outset.”

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others have noted, governments around the world have taken advantage of the pandemic to ignore constitutional protocols, impose emergency laws, and rule by executive decree; and this totalitarianization has been particularly prevalent throughout the West. Bereft of a moral compass, the automaton doctor will continue to be used as a pawn to foment tyranny. Because of the leading role played by the American medical industrial complex in orchestrating the biofascist coup, it is vitally important that more American physicians denounce the evisceration of their profession, a profession that is ostensibly one of healing, yet which is ravaging humanity.

The lockdowns have terrorized people from every walk of life, destroying countless jobs, and greatly exacerbating economic inequality, substance abuse, suicide and atomization. An analysis of these medieval measures by Johns Hopkins concluded the following:

“While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

Subjecting children to the Covid mandates, when in the absence of a serious underlying condition they are at statistically zero risk of dying from Covid, is particularly unconscionable. A study done by researchers at Brown on the domestic impact of masking children and closing schools concluded that “children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic.” Ironically, lockdown enthusiast Dr. Leana Wen is now bemoaning the fact that masking has had a deleterious impact on her son’s language development.

Granted, the extraordinary power of the pharmaceutical industry to bribe, bully, and cajole make it difficult to resist this demonic agenda. Nevertheless, it is the collaboration of doctors that give this coup d’état a patina of legitimacy and respectability. Will you continue to remain silent as the forces of darkness pull us inexorably into a vortex of treachery, lawlessness, and unbridled brutality? This is not the end of the biosecurity project, but only the beginning.

Unless reversed, the usurpation of the informed consent ethic by the Nazi medical ethos, which justifies any atrocity if done in the name of “the greater good,” will render this new era of authoritarianism permanent.

The polarization that has ensued following the ascension of this global psyop – the first of its kind – revolves around whether these draconian mandates have been implemented in the name of public health, or whether their real aim is to obliterate democracy and impose a health dictatorship where all but the rich and powerful are relegated to the status of farm animals. Consequently, this dichotomization, which has destroyed countless relationships and torn apart entire families, is first and foremost an ideological struggle between those who believe in informed consent and those that have knelt before the sow’s head of despotism.

Was it for this that you went to medical school, so that you could look the other way while heinous deeds were committed by a ruthless and rapacious cabal? I know at least one of you is listening. Indeed, these barbarities are being perpetrated in your name – in the name of science, medicine, and public health.

*

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David Penner’s articles on politics and health care have appeared in Dissident Voice, CounterPunch, Global Research, The Saker blog, OffGuardian and KevinMD; while his poetry has been published with Dissident Voice and Mad in America. Also a photographer, he is the author of three books of portraiture: Faces of The New Economy, Faces of Manhattan Island, and Manhattan Pairs. He can be reached at [email protected]

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 

Purchase directly from the Global Research Online Store

You may also purchase directly at DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page(NOTE: User-friendly)

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on An Open Letter to the Silent Doctor. The Worldwide “Weaponization of Health”
  • Tags: ,

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.

***

New York police officers have scored a big win in their fight against the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate that cost some their jobs, with a New York Supreme Court judge ruling that the mandate—as it applies to members of the Police Benevolent Association (PBA)—is “invalid” and that fired cops must be given back their jobs.

Judge Lyle Frank said in the Sept. 23 ruling (pdf) that PBA members who lost their jobs for refusing the jab must be “reinstated to the status they were as of the date of the wrongful action.”

While it’s unclear how many PBA members lost their jobs due to the mandate, a City Hall spokesperson told CBS News that more than 1,750 city employees have been fired for refusing to get the shot.

Frank said in the ruling that a key reason why the mandate was illegal is because the city didn’t collectively bargain with the PBA, which represents some 24,000 members of the New York Police Department.

While there were “a multitude of cases” where courts have ruled against challenges to vaccines being a condition of employment, in those instances, the city and the respective union “collectively bargained to include the vaccination mandate as a new condition of employment,” the judge said, adding that that was “not the case here.”

‘Improper Infringement’

PBA President Patrick Lynch hailed the decision in a statement, calling the ruling a victory for the freedom of members to make their own medical decisions.

“This decision confirms what we have said from the start: the vaccine mandate was an improper infringement on our members’ right to make personal medical decisions in consultation with their own health care professionals,” Lynch said.

“We will continue to fight to protect those rights,” he added, saying that the PBA’s fight against the mandate isn’t finished, as city authorities filed an immediate notice of appeal, effectively putting the judge’s decision on ice.

“It is at odds with every other court decision upholding the mandate as a condition of employment,” a spokesperson for the New York City Law Department told CBS News.

The ruling was also praised by two New York City Fire Department (FDNY) union chiefs—Uniformed Firefighters Association President Andrew Ansbro and Uniformed Fire Officers Association President James McCarthy—who said in a statement on Sept. 23 that they would fight to win back firefighters’ jobs lost for refusing to get the vaccine.

“It was only a matter of time before a common sense Judge concluded that the COVID-19 vaccination mandate was never a condition of employment,” the two union heads wrote.

The union chiefs added that they will ask Acting Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh to reinstate FDNY members who were fired or placed on unpaid leave for refusing the jab and for the members to receive back pay.

It wasn’t immediately clear how soon the city’s appeal would be heard, with enforcement of the Manhattan Supreme Court’s decision remaining frozen for now.

*

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.

Tom Ozimek has a broad background in journalism, deposit insurance, marketing and communications, and adult education. The best writing advice he’s ever heard is from Roy Peter Clark: ‘Hit your target’ and ‘leave the best for last.’

Featured image is from SHTFplan.com


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 

Purchase directly from the Global Research Online Store

You may also purchase directly at DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page(NOTE: User-friendly)

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Vaccine Mandate Ruled ‘Invalid’ for Police Association Members in New York

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.

***

New British Prime Minister Liz Truss addresses the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday.

Below is a full transcript of her speech.

Mr President, your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

At the time of its foundation, the United Nations was a beacon of promise.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, this building symbolised the end of aggression.

For many decades the UN has helped to deliver stability and security in much of the world.

It has provided a place for nations to work together on shared challenges.

And it has promoted the principles of sovereignty and self-determination even through the Cold War and its aftermath.

But today those principles, that have defined our lives since the dark days of the 1940s, are fracturing.

For the first time in the history of this assembly we are meeting during a large-scale war of aggression in Europe.

And authoritarian states are undermining stability and security around the world.

Geopolitics is entering a new era – one that requires those who believe in the founding principles of the United Nations to stand up and be counted.

In the United Kingdom we are entering a new era too.

I join you here just two days after Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was laid to rest.

We deeply mourn her passing and we pay tribute to her service.

She was the rock on which modern Britain was built.

And she symbolised the post-war values on which this organisation was founded.

Our constitutional monarchy, underpinned by a democratic society, has delivered stability and progress.

Her Late Majesty transcended difference and healed division. We saw this in her visits to post-apartheid South Africa and the Republic of Ireland.

When she addressed this General Assembly 65 years ago she warned that it was vital not only to have strong ideals but also to have the political will to deliver on them.

Now we must show that will.

We must fight to defend those ideals.

And we must deliver on them for all our people.

And as we say farewell to our Late Queen, the UK opens a new chapter – a new Carolean age – under His Majesty King Charles III.

We want this era to be one of hope and progress…

One in which we defend the values of individual liberty, self-determination and equality before the law…

One in which we ensure that freedom and democracy prevail for all people…

And one in which we deliver on the commitments that Her Late Majesty the Queen made here 65 years ago.

This is about what we do in the United Kingdom and what we do as member states of the UN.

So today I will set out what steps we are taking at home in the UK and our proposed blueprint for the new era we are now in – the new partnerships and new instruments we need to collectively adopt.

Our commitment to hope and progress must begin at home – in the lives of each and every citizen that we serve.

Our strength as a nation comes from the strong foundations of freedom and democracy.

Democracy gives people the right to choose their own path. And it evolves to reflect the aspirations of citizens.

It unleashes enterprise, ideas, and opportunity. And it protects the freedoms that are at the very core of our humanity.

By contrast, autocracies sow the seeds of their own demise by suppressing their citizens.

They are fundamentally rigid and unable to adapt. Any short-term gains are eroded in the long term because these societies stifle the aspiration and creativity which are vital to long-term growth.

A country where Artificial Intelligence acts as judge and jury, where there are no human rights and no fundamental freedoms, is not the kind of place anyone truly wants to live.

It is not the kind of world we want to build.

But we cannot simply assume there will be a democratic future.

There is a real struggle going on between different forms of society – between democracies and autocracies. Unless democratic societies deliver on the economy and security our citizens expect, we will fall behind.

We need to keep improving and renewing what we do for the new era, demonstrating that democracy delivers.

As Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, I am determined that we will deliver the progress that people expect.

I will lead a new Britain for a new era.

Firstly, this begins with growth and building a British economy that rewards enterprise and attracts investment.

Our long-term aim is to get our economy growing at an average of 2.5%.

We need this growth to deliver investment around our country, to deliver the jobs and high wages that people expect, and to deliver public services like the National Health Service.

We want people to keep more of the money they earn, so they can have more control over their lives and can contribute to the future.

Secondly, it means securing affordable and reliable supplies of energy.

We are cutting off the toxic power and pipelines from authoritarian regimes and strengthening our energy resilience.

We will ensure we cannot be coerced or harmed by the reckless actions of rogue actors abroad.

We will transition to a future based on renewable and nuclear energywhile ensuring that the gas used during that transition is from reliable sources including our own North Sea production.

We will be a net energy exporter by 2040.

Thirdly, we are safeguarding the security of our economy – the supply chains, the critical minerals, the food, and the technology that drives growth and protects the health and lives of our people.

We won’t be strategically dependent on those who seek to weaponise the global economy.

Instead, we are reforming our economy to get Britain moving – and we want to work with our allies so we can all move forward together.

The free world needs this economic strength and resilience to push back against authoritarian aggression and win this new era of strategic competition.

We must do this together.

So we are building new partnerships around the world.

We are fortifying our deep security alliances in Europe and beyond through NATO and the Joint Expeditionary Force.

We are deepening our links with fellow democracies like India, Israel, Indonesia and South Africa.

We are building new security ties with our friends in the Indo-Pacific and the Gulf.

We have shown leadership on free and fair trade, striking trade agreements with Australia, New Zealand, Japan and many others, andwe are in the process of acceding to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Rather than exerting influence through debt, aggression, and taking control of critical infrastructure and minerals, we are building strategic ties based on mutual benefit and trust.

And we are deepening partnerships like the G7 and the Commonwealth.

We must also collectively extend a hand of friendship to those parts of the world that have too often been left behind and left vulnerable to global challenges…

Whether it’s the Pacific or Caribbean Island states dealing with the impact of climate change, or the Western Balkans dealing with persistent threats to their stability.

The UK is providing funding, using the might of the City of London and our security capabilities to provide better alternatives to those offered by malign regimes.

The resolute international response to Ukraine has shown how we can deliver decisive collective action.

The response has been built on partnerships and alliances and also on being prepared to use new instruments – unprecedented sanctions, diplomatic action, and rapid military support.

There has been a strength of collective purpose – we have met many times, spoken many times on the phone, we have made things happen.

Now we must use these instruments in a more systematic way to push back on the economic aggression of authoritarian regimes.

The G7 and our like-minded partners should act as an economic NATO, collectively defending our prosperity.

If the economy of a partner is being targeted by an aggressive regime we should act to support them. All for one and one for all.

Through the G7’s $600 billion Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment we are providing an honest, reliable alternative on infrastructure investment around the world, free from debt with strings attached.

And we must go further to friendshore our supply chains and end strategic dependence.

This is how we will build collective security, strengthen our resilience and safeguard freedom and democracy.

But we cannot let up on dealing with the crisis we face today.

No-one is threatening Russia.

Yet, as we meet here this evening…

In Ukraine, barbarous weapons are being used to kill and maim people,

Rape is being used as an instrument of war,

Families are being torn apart.

And this morning we have seen Putin trying to justify his catastrophic failures.

He is doubling down by sending even more reservists to a terrible fate.

He is desperately trying to claim the mantle of democracy for a regime without human rights or freedoms.

And he is making yet more bogus claims and sabre-rattling threats.

This will not work. The international alliance is strong and Ukraine is strong.

The contrast between Russia’s conduct and Ukraine’s brave, dignified First Lady, Olena Zelenska, who is here at the UN today, could not be more stark.

The Ukrainians are not just defending their own country – they are defending our values and the security of the whole world.

That’s why we must act.

That’s why the UK will spend 3% of GDP on defence by 2030, maintaining our position as the leading security actor in Europe.

And that’s why – at this crucial moment in the conflict – I pledge that we will sustain or increase our military support to Ukraine, for as long as it takes.

New UK weapons are arriving in Ukraine as I speak – including more MLRS rockets.

We will not rest until Ukraine prevails.

In all of these areas, on all of these fronts, the time to act is now.

This is a decisive moment in our history, in the history of this organisation, and in the history of freedom.

The story of 2022 could have been that of an authoritarian state rolling its tanks over the border of a peaceful neighbour and subjugating its people.

Instead, it is the story of freedom fighting back.

In the face of rising aggression we have shown we have the power to act and the resolve to see it through.

But this cannot be a one-off.

This must be a new era in which we commit to ourselves, our citizens, and this institution that we will do whatever it takes – whatever it takes to deliver for our people and defend our values.

As we mourn our Late Queen and remember her call to this Assembly, we must devote ourselves to this task.

Britain’s commitment to this is total.

We will be a dynamic, reliable and trustworthy partner.

Together with our friends and allies around the world, we will continue to champion freedom, sovereignty and democracy.

And together we can define this new era as one of hope and progress.

Thank you.

Source: gov.uk

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“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” John F. Kennedy.

With another unelected Prime Minister continuing the Conservative Party’s forty-year destruction of the British family- sans the rich- and hyperinflation looming above a long predicted economic depression, let us examine the day’s headline on the ascent of Liz Truss.

“After a drawn-out contest, the country’s ruling Conservative Party on Monday picked Liz Truss to be its new leader and the U.K.’s new prime minister.”

“A Drawn Out Contest” was merely a tepid daily media championship interspersed by a brief commercial break for the three unsubstantial debates. Here, these purported conservatives offered only the path of least resistance featuring more deficit spending repackaged behind their two eager smiles.

Sunak and Truss, as finalists had similar motivations and solid training beforehand. Both are amateur anti-populist, New World Order and World Economic Forum disciples vying to become the next UK PM to wantonly fellate their masters in Brussels, Washington or the House of Lords when not busy servicing Klaus Schwab.

And, well, of course, the Windsors.

“Ruling Conservative Party” was, when using metrics, another media distortion that ignored the fact that the PM was selected by a paltry, yet divisive subset of 0.29% (140,000) of registered British voters. This brash falsehood also failed to remind the reader that the Conservative Party did not win the last national election, it purchased it.

“Leader.” This begs the rhetorical question: “Of what country?”.  As detailed in the recent article, “Britain’s ‘Special Relationship’ and the American Virus”, forty years of Tory leadership have steadily destroyed Britain by using a particularly American economic model. One Prime Minister at a time.

Truss is a graduate of globalist Klaus Schwab and his  World Economic Forum’s “Young Leaders Programme.”  Here, allegiance to country, much less populism, by these graduate “leaders” is verboten. As to Liz Truss, an anti-BREXIT campaigner and former member of the Liberal Party she is committed to rejoining the central planning of the EU and ECB. This made her the perfect choice for this Zionist scholarship.

As to any actual populist bona fides of promoting purely British interests- beyond American wars- the CVs of both are barren. In the aftermath of Selection Day, Sept 5, 2022, not surprisingly 65 per cent of real Britainsaid Truss was “out of touch with ordinary people.”

Since “hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way,” the UK voter will now wait a very long time for redress regarding Truss since the likelihood of the Conservatives soon holding a national election is zero. No matter, what voter would choose opposition by the Labour Party? That opposition was terminated in 2019 with the internal party and media coup that fraudulently forced out of British politics the last sincere populist Labour champion, to be replaced by a House of Lords puppet.

In the meantime, as clearly stated by Truss within mere hours of the “vote”, Brits can now mumble in their beer foam as Britain and the pound sterling are further destroyed without further interruption. Down to 1.129 to the US dollar as of this writing and dropping with every financial press release from number 10.

Truss immediately vowed to provide yet another tranche of deficit spending. The continuation of this forty-year failure in Americanized Keynesian false optimism is based again on a media propagated lie of yet another national emergency.  With inflation trying to go hyper Truss’ plans are madness and will only further debase the English currency and impoverish Britain by destroying what is left of their savings, their wages and their purchasing power.

Investor and hedge fund manager, Bill Blaine assessed the new PM’s economic plan as,

“… simple – pick a bunch of headline generating noisy ideas and back them with some empty bluster about how they will create growth and wealth.”

Looking at her plan from a Tory perspective, certainly the already wealthy will click their heels in applause of their correct choice of PM. In turn, Ms Truss will likely be invited soon to stop by the House of Lords for a visit with the likes of Labour’s Sir Kier Starmer. And afterwards, a toddy.

Or, a gargle?

As polled by YouGov, despite sporting her new Thatcher-ish hairdo, only 12% of UK respondents think Truss will make a “good” or a “great” prime minister. As to her predecessor, fully 55 % of respondents said they thought Johnson was a “poor” or “terrible” PM, but Truss has fared little better with 52% per cent holding the same contempt for this legacy.

Liz Truss is politically remarkable in her sudden rise to power. Straight from Oxford, she began by running her local Conservative Association. Her ten-year path to becoming Foreign Secretary was preceded by her time as Education Minister, Secretary of State for the Environment, Justice Secretary, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary of State for International Trade, President of the Board of Trade, and a Minister for Women and Equalities.

As Foreign Secretary, Truss met with her Russian counterpart Sergev Lavrov and her diplomacy predictably smacked of Americanization. Lavrov described their discussion as “turning out like the conversation of a mute and a deaf person”. Geographically challenged, Truss was also unaware that Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh are actually in Russia.

It has been reported that Truss has direct ties to former MI6 boss Richard Dearlove.  Dearlove’s emails were hacked in May 2022 and these showed that he was also the head of a group called Operation Sunrise. The goal was to undermine former prime minister Theresa May for her failure to deliver Brexit promptly. The emails, his own from 2018-2019, showed that Dearlove directed this effort on behalf of British oligarchs.

Within this tranche were many emails from Dearlove to Truss and visa-a-versa.

However, it was when she vowed to happily go nuclear that Truss sealed the deal for becoming the PM.

John Pienaar of Times Radio advised Truss that if she became prime minister, she would be quickly shown the procedures for launching nuclear missiles from Britain’s Trident submarines. “It would mean global annihilation,” Pienaar said. “I won’t ask you if you would press the button, you’ll say yes, but faced with that task I would feel physically sick. How does that thought make you feel?”

With dead eyes and an emotionless expression, Truss replied, “I think it’s an important duty of the Prime Minister and I’m ready to do that.”

You Reap What You (did not) Vote For

As detailed in, “ Britain’s Special Relationship and the American Virus”, after examining carefully the metrics of the Conservative Party’s forty-year disaster of destroying Britain in mirrored American economic fashion, Truss is indeed no better than Johnson, Blair, May, Brown or Cameron: a fawning British wannabe elitist whistling American tunes past Britain’s graveyard.

The Tories feared a mandated national election, despite Sir Keir Starmer’s wind-up doll championship of the Labour Party, so the Tories rubber stamped Truss’ cabinet choices. Showing political naiveté of Roman proportions Truss dutifully chose a cabinet made up of a pro-American gallery of up-and-comers like Kwasi Kwarteng, who is moving significantly up in class to Chancellor of the Exchequer from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and Suella Braverman, former Attorney General to Home Secretary, an attorney who first passed the bar in New York.

Truss also included previous cabinet appointments, such as Ben Wallace as Defense Secretary. A peculiar return was political Judas Jacob Rees –Mogg whose back stabbing political skills befit his bespectacled undertaker’s garb, an image often shown in Daily Mail headlines worthy of Brutus.

British nationalists, if they still exist, should note that within Truss’ cabinet, all included are devoted members of the backroom “Friends of Israel Society.”  Here, consideration should be given as to where their national loyalties, like those of PM Truss, truly lie. Such is the state of British democracy, thus Americanized into Monocracy.

The election of Truss was anything but an election. What took place was a vote offered only to172,000 Conservative Party “members” who are the faceless circumference of an old-time Conservative Party agenda. Of this group, 18-24-year-olds were provided only 6% of these votes.

Interestingly, as their comment on Truss, fully 20% (30,000+) of this Tory subset of members decided to not vote. 142,000 then cast votes on behalf of the remainder of all of Britain. Only 82,136 voted for Truss.

However, as of July 2020, there are 46.8 million registered UK voters. Using simple math the UK voter might dwell on the result of this long division:

0.17% of British voters put Truss in power.

Further to monocracy– and rigged elections- the Sunday Times reports that Truss is looking into passing a new law that would ban another independence referendum in Scotland until polls show that 60% of the Scottish population supports a new plebiscite.

That’s just a bit too Zelensky, is it not?

Mindful Brits might also recall that the Conservative Party did not win the last national election by popular mandate at the polls. No. After receiving 43.6% of the 2019 vote the Cons also failed to gain a majority in the House. Needing ten seats the Tories did a dirty deal with the Democratic Ulster Party (DUP) and purchased their ten parliamentary seats for £1 Billion in public subsidies.

Only this outrageous mortita put the needed Tory rumps, once again, into the seats of power.

Whistling American Tunes… Past Britain’s Graveyard

Moving on to economic necessity, like her predecessors all Truss can offer as a panacea to the UK’s growing list of problems, is more deficit spending. Anyone with a calculator or the ability to balance a chequebook knows exactly why forty years of accumulated debt has now proven failed. With the worst yet to come.

Truss quickly announced wanting to inject hundreds of billions in utility subsidies to keep the already inflation-impoverished Brits from shivering into open revolt. But the biggest carrot was the new PM’s predictable bail-outs to be given in printed cash to those same utility companies and gas suppliers in yet a further attempt at one directional Trickle-Down economics. Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Truss said, that “it’s fair” that the richest people will benefit the most from her tax cuts.

What say you, Britain?

After more than a year of the BofE denying that a recession was on the way and the reality of inflation, once selected, Truss also promised even more American-style economic failure and “a rightwing agenda of tax cuts – largely funded by borrowing”. This does beg the question as to how this economic oxymoron jives with a truly conservative platform featuring balancing of the national budget and paying off debt, now over 100% of GDP.

But, with the UK economy heading towards hyperinflation, Britain’s plucky new PM assured her ever desperate nation that, “Extraordinary challenges call for extraordinary measures, ensuring that the United Kingdom is never in this situation again.”

Good luck with that.

Her plan starts with long-term gifts to global Big Oil that do nothing for Britain’s energy woes in the short term. Truss will now dutifully lift the UK’s fracking ban as a gift to gas companies, and increase North Sea drilling leases as a gift to oil companies while renewing a focus on accelerating offshore wind farms as a gift to green companies.

None of this will provide an additional kilowatt to the British people for years to come.

However, funding will soon be on the way to corporate bank accounts, as parliament follows suit using the excuse, again, of a trumped-up national emergency. There will be a paltry public tithing in the form of a utility price cap, but this will be paid for with more debt to keep the masses quiet, warm and dull.

“This is the moment to be bold. We are facing a global energy crisis, and there are no cost-free options,” said Truss in a speech before the House of Commons. “We are supporting this country through this winter and next, and tackling the root causes of high prices so we are never in the same position again.”

The new prime minister said the two-year “energy price guarantee” means average household bills for electricity and heating will be no more than £2,500 sterling (US$2,899) per year capping a typical household bill at its current average of £1,971. Before this announcement, the country’s cap on energy bills was set to increase to £3,500  (US$4,059) per year beginning in October. This would have represented an 80 per cent increase from the current average annual bill of £1,971 (US$2,286).

But, Britains will be the ones paying for their own bribe. Conservative estimates of how much the price cap will cost put the final price tag at around £100 billion (US$115.97 billion). Other estimates put the actual cost to British taxpayers as high as £200 billion(US$231.66 billion) an increase amounting to 10% of current GDP.

Notably, PIMCO’s Gene Frieda said in The Financial Times that the Truss government’s decision to cap domestic energy prices for households is analogous to the UK’s failed exchange-rate peg of 30 years ago.

Ironically, sterling plunged to a thirty-seven-year low on the three-decade anniversary of “Black Wednesday” (Sept. 16, 1992), when the pound famously crashed out of the European Monetary System’s exchange rate mechanism. At the time, the Bank of England couldn’t stop the pound’s plunge, even with interest rate hikes and spending billions to prop up FX markets. Billions that, this time, are not available unless printed.

The pound dropped again today.

The Bank of England is set to bail out UK energy companies that face financial difficulties due to rising energy prices, The Guardian reported. The bailout fund will offer as much as another £40 billion (US$46 billion) in loans to “struggling” energy companies. Truss’ price cap plan means that energy suppliers will “receive funding from HM [His Majesty’s] Government” to cover the difference between what they are legally allowed to charge consumers and what the wholesale market rates for energy are. This guarantees to maintain profits.

The government is set to finance this massive expense largely by borrowing tens of billions of pounds to fund just the first few months of the price cap program. As currently drawn up, the price cap package includes £130 billion (US$150.83 billion) of spending on household bills until April 2024, and a £67 billion (US$77.73 billion) discount scheme for the energy bills of businesses for twelve months.

The added expense is expected to dramatically increase the U.K.’s national debt which is already £2.3 trillion (US$2.67 trillion).

Truss might do well in the future to consider the words, this week, of US president, Joe “The Big Guy” Biden….

“I am sick and tired of trickle-down economics. It has never worked…”

Worse for Britain and the pound, if wholesale gas prices soar the subsidy scheme could skyrocket from £200 Billion to unknown multiples as prices rise and the currency value continues to plunge.

Truss’ massive deficit spending package will be financially very difficult to sustain and politically impossible to remove.

Crisis? What Crisis?!

Why are the UK’s utilities climbing as fast as in Europe when Britain gets nearly 50% of its oil and natural gas from the massive Scottish-controlled North Sea fields and another 30% of gas from Norway?

Also, right now Europe is still importing over 1 million barrels of Russian crude daily and has been doing so for the last month. The sanctions are not yet in effect. The EU is stocking up before the taps turn dry. Despite sanctions Russia is exporting some 3.32 million barrels of crude daily by sea, Bloomberg calculations have shown, which means Europe is still buying a third of that, while it still can. With the Russian ruble at all-time highs, this means that nothing has changed since June when the embargo was approved and that Europe will indeed have to find alternative oil suppliers at a time of likely higher prices.

Russia has been blamed for shutting down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. The media has failed to report the crucial fact that, first Canada deliberately refused to deliver the essential repaired turbine back to Russia’s Gazprom – its owner – but instead sent it to Siemens in Germany, where it is now. Siemens Germany is essentially under American control. Both the German and Canadian governments refuse to grant a legally binding sanction exemption for transferring the turbine to Russia. No turbine? No gas.

“Energy policy over the past decade has not focused enough on securing supply,” boldly stated Truss.

Of course, the PM was moot as to which British political party should be assigned blame for this result.

Beyond expressing universal support for these massive corporate cash bail-outs the British media does not speak a word to the British public regarding the backroom and legally mandated “Bail-ins” that will steal from UK bank depositor’s savings to pay for failed banks. This was documented in the recent article, “When Your Bank Fails, Don’t Walk…Run!”

Brits and their prostitute media would do well to ask their new parliamentary hand-maiden some very important questions about the premise for these rising utility costs, and of Truss’s willingness to gut Britain to support a proven to be corrupt neo-Nazi, American-inspired puppet regime in Kyiv, while Britain suffers.

Quiet Desperation

In perhaps a final sign that Truss’ upcoming tenure is doomed, the Queen, that progenitor of the theft of Britain by the House of Windsor has died a mere thirty-six hours after the new PM kissed her signet ring. If Truss’ presence did not kill off the Queen, she will certainly kill Britain.

Aside from being the world’s number one in postcard sales, what did the Queen do for Britain besides being a tourist attraction who spawned a cadre of budding elitists and an alleged paedophile while regularly asking for “more” from the realm’s public coffers rather than selling, perhaps, one of her tiaras or a castle or two?

The full breadth of Britain will this day, September 19, 2020, cry for the dead majesty of Britain, thus buried with their Queen along with the last remnants of a once great society. Both chucked into a deep dark hole below Westminster Abbey, soon to be forgotten.

Britain will next collectively fawn with cheering approval during the orgy of public spending on The Royals for the upcoming coronation of the new King, a man who, like Truss, has never given a wit for the British public interest, merely his personal gain at the expense of His expendables.

As Britain freezes in the dark this Winter, the public would do well to renew their interest in reading books. Within those long shelved offerings is a many-volume rap sheet of the new King Charles III, a man who has already been conjuring the reign of King Charles I as he, then, raped and pillaged his fortune in the name of the crown.

The release of the Panama Papers in 2017 showed in detail the disdain of the new King for his country. Like the other billionaires still haunting the House of Lords, bonnie Prince Charlie also stashed his ill-gotten booty in offshore bank accounts so that the UK pauper got not a penny via his paying taxes. The new King, actually only half English by birth, and likely the stepfather to a fool of a bastard son has a very tidy few Billions stashed far away from British scrutiny.

Now, Charles III will be gifted, also, the realm. Tax-free.

Might the new King be asked to pay his back taxes before his coronation? This would certainly pay for his crowning- if not an NHS hospital or two.

Not bloody likely!

But on the Coronation Day of King Charles III, a desperate Britain, if not the once mighty Welsh and the Scots, might also remember Liz Truss and her true popularity on the previous Selection Day.

Then, Britain would do well to consider, with optimism and hope, what can be done when pushed. That time, too long ago, when the British rescued Britain.

Of that refreshing morning when, in a single stroke, a new beginning was forged by a very different “crowning”of, then, King Charles I, on the bloody steps before White Hall, January 30, 1649.

Metaphorically, of course…

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Brett Redmayne-Titley has spent the last twelve years documenting the “Sorrows of Empire.” He has authored over 200 articles all of which have been published and often republished and translated by news agencies worldwide. An archive of his published work can be found at watchingromeburn.uk. He can be contacted at live-on-scene ((@)) gmx.com

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is by Tim Hammond / No10 Downing Stree / Creative Commons

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Charles III, Real King or Servant of the Globalists?

September 26th, 2022 by Julian Rose

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The death of Queen Elizabeth II and the inheritance of the British throne by her eldest son Charles, can either be viewed as a significant event holding the possibility of positive change, or the further manifestation of a beguiling and deceptive show of imperial/colonial self importance.

It’s too early to know which way the pendulum will swing, but well over half the British public still supports the existence of a Monarchy and turns out in large numbers to express their approval of the theatre that remains an enduring part of the British love affair with ‘tradition’ and the uncopromisingly expensive and pompous spectacle that surrounds the great majority of royal occasions.

King Charles III takes the throne at a time of great uncertainty and insecurity for all people, not just the population of Great Britain. The United Kingdom, like many other countries, is locked into a seemingly insoluble set of political and economic upheavals, all symptomatic of the dominant globalist regime of the past three/four decades.

Most of what provides the appearance of worldly significance for the UK comes from what is referred to as its ‘special relationship’ with the USA. This means letting US top brass decide the UK’s role in the geopolitical machinations of an international power struggle and then entering into collusion with UK officialdom over how this will be financed and spun by the global media.

The brutal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were largely Anglo-American planned and executed events taken-up later by the European Union as a show of what is called ‘International solidarity’.

But recently a whole new dimension of power has imposed itself on the socio-economic and cultural pattern of the UK, Europe, North America and beyond. This power heist is that of the World Economic Forum (WEF) operating in full collaboration with the United Nations (especially its World Health Organisation) along with the corporate giants that dominate the global economy.

This is especially true when it comes to the machinations of the privately controlled and debt creating central banking system that’s led by the secretive and almost unknown Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

Controversially, King Charles III has been revealed to be in very close collaboration with the WEF’s executive director Klaus Schwab. In 2020, Charles gave the opening address to the WEF Summit at Davos where The Great Reset was formally announced.

The Great Reset, let us remind ourselves, comprises ‘The Green New Deal’, ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’, the UN’s ‘Seventeen Sustainable Goals’ and the ‘Zero CO2’ Global Warming/Climate Change imperative that originated at The Club of Rome, itself an active participant in this small cabal of ‘hidden government’ which seeks total domination of global affairs and global wealth.

The vast majority of the public have no idea that their new king appears to support the imposition of The Great Reset, which according to Klaus Schwab, involves merging human beings into digitally controlled ‘trans-human’ cyborgs that will represent ‘a great advancement’ of civilisation here on Earth. Indeed, Schwab’s chief advisor, Yuval Noah Harari, recently stated “We will create non-organic humans…we will do better than God”.

As Prince, Charles made a name for himself as an upholder of environmental causes, traditional architecture and organic farming. How is it possible that he could stand shoulder to shoulder with Klaus Schwab giving support to his widely stated claim that, as part of The Great Reset, the human race will have to live on a diet of petri-dish propagated laboratory foods and processed insects? Not to mention Schwab’s now famous declaration that under The Great Reset “You will own nothing, and will be happy”.

Many see Charles as having a broadly humanitarian outlook and a certain ease with working class people and farmers. But, as a stated supporter of The Green New Deal, he is putting his weight behind the end of independent family farming by introducing in its place sterile robotic agricultural mechanisms, synthetic laboratory foods and ‘rewilded’ countryside, likely offering shooting and hunting opportunities for the privileged, but little artisan or useful silvicultural activity for those skilled people who traditionally provide the stewardship of our countryside and rural communities.

The new king was schooled in the ‘environmental sustainability’ movement of the 1980’s and 1990’s. Leading non governmental figureheads of this movement adopted an elitist view on how to manage the resource base to counteract so-called ‘Global Warming’. They believed in the false science of the government backed International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its wholly contrived rhetoric that Global Warming is the result of excessive CO2 production of industrial nations and that only a major cut back in the use of fossil fuel could ‘save the planet’.

This belief is the basis of the WEF’s entire policy agenda, including achieving ‘Zero CO2’ by 2040.

Stopping Global Warming is the excuse for collapsing the present economy and shifting all energy production into a fake green programme of centralised and corporate owned ‘alternative’ power sources, drawing heavily on scarce finite resources of rare minerals and use of high energy demanding metals for the construction of large scale wind and photovoltaic energy farms.

Could Charles, famed for his support of organic agriculture, really be in support of the WEF’s plan to subject the general public to a diet of insects, cultured fake meat and dairy products to replace real food by 2030? Is he so high-tech appeased to believe in the proclamation by Schwab that “At the end, what the Fourth Industrial Revolution will lead to is a fusion of our physical, our digital and our biological bodies.”

As Charles takes the throne an extraordinary clash of powers are playing-out their end game agenda. On the one hand, the vast corporate global power matrix is backing a frighteningly mechanistic, digital and algorithmically controlled future. A future dominated by weaponised 5, 6 and 7G electro magnetic wave pulses powering control-grid based ‘Smart Cities’ to be inhabited by disenfranchised country dwellers.

On the other hand, a new wave of awareness is rising which holds Man as sacred and his environment as a priceless gift in need of a whole new form of benign and common sense stewardship that contains the true and human-scale values of real ecology.

King Charles will swear his Coronation Oath on his official day of inauguration. His mother did the same at her Coronation in 1953. This oath states that the King will remain loyal to protecting the well being and safety of his subjects and to guard the independent sovereignty of the nation.

His mother, for whatever reason, failed the citizens of Great Britain in this respect. She sold-out to the globalists and supranational authority of the European Union.

UK citizens have clawed-back one of these losses. Will King Charles III be true to his Coronation Oath? Will the rulings of 1215 Magna Carta re-emerege from their present obscurity and be proclaimed as the foundation for the future of the British Isles? Will the never revoked constitutional Common Law of the people rise-up to force the lawless elite cabal off their Masonic pedestals of power?

Perhaps the people of Great Britain will finally wake-up to the fact that the royal chimera played-out daily on their TV screens is nothing but a tool of simple deception that’s designed to soften and obscure the stark realities of a world governed by fascist sentiments and an advanced array of high-tech weaponry for the imposition of the digital hypnosis of the masses.

Whichever way it goes, ‘waking-up’ remains the highest imperative and we, the people, need to recognise – and act on – our rightful and lawful authority to lead, and not leave it to the unelected and unaccountable masters of pomp and spin.

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher.  He is President of The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside and Co-founder of the Hardwick Alliance for Real Ecology HARE. His latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is strongly recommended reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is by Mark Jones, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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.

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Lebanon and Israel are attempting to reach a deal on their shared maritime borders which could solve the financial, social, and political problems that Lebanon has been facing which almost brought the small nation on the Mediterranean Sea to ‘failed-state’ status.

US envoy Amos Hochstein and White House Middle east coordinator Brett McGurk have been shuttling between two hotels in New York City while trying to seal a deal between the two neighbors who have been officially at war since 1948.  The sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly have presented an opportunity for indirect negotiations between the two, with the US in the middle.

All three nations sense the urgency to come to an agreement amid Hezbollah’s threat to defend Lebanon’s offshore energy resources by force if necessary.  The Lebanese army is incapable of militarily defending Lebanon, and Hezbollah is the only resistance force capable of deterring the encroachment of borders or territorial waters. Hezbollah officials have said they would endorse a deal reached between Lebanon’s government and Israel.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati traveled to New York Monday ahead of the United Nations General Assembly at his own expense as a cost-saving measure.  Recently, Mikati addressed a letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres stressing the cost and effect of the Syrian refugees on the Lebanese economy.  The UN has declined to support a Lebanese initiative to return Syrians home.

Both Israeli and Lebanese officials seem optimistic about an upcoming agreement, with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid saying he has “cautious optimism” and Lebanese President Michel Aoun saying, “The negotiations on the maritime border [between Lebanon and Israel] are in their final phase.”

Both Israel and Lebanon claim a 330-square-mile area of the Mediterranean Sea with an estimated value in the billions of dollars.

Offshore oil and gas production for Lebanon could spell the end of the worst economic crisis in the world in modern history, according to the World Bank.

Lebanon’s Energy Minister Walid Fayad announced Monday they will take over Russian gas company Novatek’s 20 percent share in a consortium licensed to explore two offshore blocs after the Russian gas giant pulled out in August.  The consortium is led by France’s TotalEnergies and includes Italy’s Eni.

Lebanon’s second licensing round initially approved in April 2019 in just two blocs, has been extended several times and increased to cover all eight remaining offshore blocs.

Laury Haytayan, a Lebanese oil and gas expert, said “It’s important to understand if there are any financial commitments on the Lebanese state and how they are going to fulfill these commitments considering the financial situation in the country.”

On September 4, Lebanese protesters staged a rally in the coastal city of Tyre, near the maritime border with Israel. Their banners affirmed Lebanon’s right to offshore gas revenues.

Lapid said on Monday Israel will begin production in the Karish gas field in the Mediterranean “as soon as possible.”  This decision threatens to raise tensions with Hezbollah, as the Karish gas field is contested, and not a part of the ongoing negotiations between Lebanon and Israel.

Israel set up a gas rig at Karish in June, saying the field is part of its UN-recognized exclusive economic zone; however, Lebanon insists Karish is in disputed waters.

Tensions between Lebanon and Israel have increased since the arrival of a floating production and storage vessel to the Karish field in June, which is an encroachment on Lebanon’s waters, and in July the Israeli military shot down three unarmed Hezbollah drones flying over the Karish field.  On September 16, the Israeli energy ministry announced the imminent start of the “next stage” of its Karish field gas exploration project.

The Lebanese lira hit a new low on Monday, trading at LL 39,000 to the dollar amid protests decrying Lebanon’s financial crisis.  From 1992 to 2019 the lira was exchanged for LL 1,500.00 to the dollar.

The Lebanese government removed all fuel subsidies last week which sent gasoline prices skyrocketing, while the state electricity provider has faced fuel shortages which has blacked-out homes. On Monday, the Iranian embassy in Beirut announced that a donated fuel shipment will depart for Lebanon in “one or two weeks.”

The Association of Banks said Wednesday that Lebanon’s banks will remain shut indefinitely, citing ongoing “risks” to employees following a spree of seven bank hold-ups last week by depositors seeking access to their own money held frozen in the banks.

The decision was taken on the advice of caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi.

George Al-Hajj, Head of the Bank Employees’ Union worried that the recent hold-ups which were not prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law would encourage other depositors from trying the same.  The Ministry of the Interior said they are working on a plan to protect banks and their staff, which amount to about 50,000 people employed in the banking sector.

Banque du Liban Governor, Riad Salameh, is regarded by many as part of the corrupt political elite who have enriched themselves at the expense of the people.  An arrest warrant was issued in his name, but he has avoided the law, with many accusing him of being above the law.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation led by Ernesto Ramirez-Rigo, and including the IMF Resident Representative in Lebanon, Frederico Lima, completed its three-day visit to Lebanon on Wednesday by announcing that the IMF advocates that the rate of the Banque du Liban’s Sayrafa platform become the only rate.  The IMF commented that having multiple exchange rates opens the door for corruption. Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri were among the many officials consulted.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva met with Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati on Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, where she assured him that the IMF “was keen to reach an agreement with Lebanon as soon as possible.”

Ramirez-Rigo said that Lebanon and the IMF would reach a final agreement on a financial aid package “between the end of September or early October.”

Fall meetings between the IMF and the World Bank are to take place in Washington, DC.  from October 10-16, which may mean that the IMF is hoping to attend with the Lebanese plan confirmed.

The IMF voiced disappointment in the lack of progress by Lebanon in implementing reforms, and the delay in adopting the 2022 budget, which is still held up in Parliament infighting.

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

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On 28 July 2022, the Administrative Chamber of the High Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands granted a request by the Asociación Liberum and ordered the Spanish Ministry of Health and the pharmaceutical agency AEMPS to disclose the vaccine contracts with the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Janssen.

Asociación Liberum, a national human rights association, had requested this evidence as part of its lawsuit against the Covid passport, but both the Ministry of Health and the drug agency have refused to comply with this court order by the deadline set. Asociación Liberum announced this on 6 September.

The government’s justification for the contracts were confidential because they were drawn up by a coordination committee and were part of the “pre-contractual agreements concluded by the European Commission” with the pharmaceutical companies. Moreover, the publication of the data could harm the vaccine market.

In an interview, Ascociación Liberum spokesperson Luis Maria Pardo said: “Can you imagine the Guardia Civil entering the Ministry of Health to seize these documents?”

Because this is exactly what has to happen now, he said, since the Supreme Court’s decision is legally binding. Added to this is the fact that the government had not appealed against this order. The Ministry of Health and the AEMPS are obliged to hand over the original documents to the judiciary.

There was no discussion about this, Pardo stressed. That is why his organisation has again demanded that the Supreme Court of the Balearic Islands implement the ruling. The lawyer hopes that this request will be granted as soon as possible.

In addition, Pardo pointed out that those responsible in the Ministry of Health and the Medicines Agency could be prosecuted “for disregarding the court’s decision”. In that case, the state security forces would indeed have to be deployed – and the Guardia Civil would have to storm the Ministry of Health to seize the documents.

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Featured image: Palma City Hall. (Source: Wikipedia)


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 

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***

This is the most important article I ever wrote, because it cracks open the plandemic nut. Perhaps more appropriate, it lances the pandemic boil so all can see/smell the putridness inside.

I began writing on this subject on my blog in May 2020 and kept adding items. Because I only had 1,000 subscribers when I posted it to Substack in March, I am posting it again for the other 12,000 plus.

It is remarkable that a large series of events taking place over the past months produced a unified message about hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), and produced similar policies about the drug in the US, Canada, Australia, NZ and western Europe.  The message is that generic, inexpensive hydroxychloroquine (costing only $1.00 to produce a full course) is dangerous and should not be used to treat a potentially fatal disease, Covid-19, for which there are no (other) reliable treatments.

Hydroxychloroquine has been used safely for 65 years in many millions of patients.  And so the message was crafted that the drug is safe for its other uses, but dangerous when used for Covid-19.  It doesn’t make sense, but it seems to have worked.

In the US, “Never Trump” morphed into “Never Hydroxychloroquine,” and the result for the pandemic is “Never Over.”  But while anti-Trump spin is what characterized suppression strategies in the US, the frauds perpetrated about hydroxychloroquine and the pandemic include most western countries.

Why do I say “Never Over”?  I am expanding on this claim with a), b), c) on August 30. Later in the paper additional evidence is provided.

a) Because if people were treated with HCQ at the onset of their illness, over 99% would quickly resolve the infection, avoiding progression to the late stage disease characterized by cytokine storm, thrombophilia and organ failure. Despite claims to the contrary, this treatment is very safe.  (Yet outpatient treatment is banned in many US states.) UPDATE Jan 15: The CDC forgot to rewrite its guidance on malaria and hydroxychloroquine during Covid.  CDC says hydroxychloroquine “can be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers…”  Only “when it is used at higher doses for many years, a rare eye condition called retinopathy has occurred.

b) If people were treated prophylactically with this drug (using only 2 tablets weekly) as is done in some areas and in some occupational groups in India, there would probably be at least 50% fewer cases after exposure. (Such treatment is currently banned in much of the US, including in my state of Maine.)

c) Protocols for in-hospital treatment (that were unknown during the initial peak of illness in the US and Europe) using HCQ and individually selected blood thinners, steroids, vitamins, zinc and other drugs such as used at NYU, have significantly reduced mortality of the very small number of people who might still progress to a serious illness. (The FDA, however, recommends against the use of HCQ outside of clinical trials, and the CDC and NIH recommend against it.)

If we followed a), b) and c) the result would be much briefer periods of infectiousness, lower viral loads, less severe illness and considerably less transmission.  The R zero (average number of people each case infects) would drop below one and the pandemic would soon die out.

Were acts to suppress the use of HCQ carefully orchestrated?  You decide.

Might these events have been planned to keep the pandemic going?  To sell expensive drugs and vaccines to a captive population?   Could these acts result in prolonged economic and social hardship, eventually transferring wealth from the middle class to the very rich?  Are these events evidence of a conspiracy?

Here is a list of what happened, in no special order. Please help add to this list if you know of other actions I should include.  This will be a living document, added to as new information becomes available.

I have penned this as if it is the “To Do” list of items to be accomplished by those who pull the strings.  The items on the list have already been carried out.  One wonders what else might be on their list, yet to be carried out, for this pandemic.

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1.  You stop doctors from using the drug in ways it is most likely to be effective (in outpatients at onset of illness).  You prohibit use outside of situations you can control.

Situations that were controlled to show no benefit included 3 large, randomized, multi-center clinical trials (Recovery, Solidarity and REMAP-Covid), the kind of trials that are generally believed to yield the most reliable evidence. However, each of them used excessive hydroxychloroquine doses that were known to be toxic and may have been fatal in some cases; see my previous articles here and here. And a 4th Chinese study that also used excessive doses (3.6 g HCQ in the first three days and 800mg/day thereafter, comparable to the above studies) also found no benefit from HCQ.

2.  You prevent or limit use in outpatients by controlling the supply of the drug, using different methods in different countries and states.  For example, in New York state, by order of the governor, hydroxychloroquine could only be prescribed for hospitalized patients.  In Nevada, the governor outright prohibited both prescribing and dispensing chloroquine drugs for a Covid-19 diagnosis. In New Jersey, the Department of Consumer Affairs required a positive test result before a chloroquine prescription could be dispensed or prescribed. Even back in March, pharmacy boards were coordinating to restrict its use.

France has issued a series of different regulations to limit prescribers from using it.  France’s Health Minister also changed the drugs’ status from over-the-counter (OTC) to a drug requiring a prescription on January 13.

3.  You play up the danger of the drug, emphasizing side effects that are very rare when the drug is used correctly. You make sure everyone has heard about the man who died after consuming hydroxychloroquine in the form of fish tank cleaner. Yet its toxicity at approved doses is minimal. Chloroquine was added to table salt in some regions in the 1950s as a malaria preventive, according to Professor Nicholas White in his study for the Recovery trial.

4.  You limit clinical trials to hospitalized patients, instead of testing the drug in outpatients, early in the illness, when it is predicted to be most effective.

Finally, but not until May, you have Fauci’s NIAID conduct a trial in outpatients, using hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin, but you only enroll 20 patients, after planning for 2,000. You reduce the duration of followup from 24 weeks to 13 days post treatment. You cancel the study after only 5 weeks, claiming inadequate enrollments, even though you have 11 study sites to enroll patients.

5.  You design a series of clinical trials to give much too high a dose, ensuring the drug will cause harm in some subjects, sufficient to mask any possible beneficial effect.  You make sure that trials in 400 hospitals in 35 countries (Solidarity) plus most hospitals in the UK (Recovery) use these dangerous doses, as well as additional sites in 13 countries (REMAP-Covid trial). There were additional Covid-19 trials that used similar excessive doses, such as PATCH, which I have not yet addressed.

6.  You design clinical trials to collect almost no safety data, so any cause of death due to drug toxicity will be attributed to the disease instead of the drug.

7.  You issue rules for use of the drug based on the results of the UK Recovery study, which overdosed patients. Of course the Recovery results showed more deaths in the hydroxychloroquine arm, since they gave patients 2.4 g in the first 24 hours, 800 mg/day thereafter. Furthermore, the UK has the 2nd highest death rate in the world for Covid-19 (Belgium is 1st), so simply conducting the trial in the UK may have contributed to the poor results.

8.  You publish, in the world’s most-read medical journal, the Lancet, an observational study from a massive worldwide database named Surgisphere (which includes 96,000 hospitalized Covid cases) that says use of chloroquine drugs caused significantly increased mortality.  This was said to be the paper to end all controversy about HCQ and Covid-19.  You make sure that all major media report on this result. This was to be the nail in the coffin for hydroxychloroquine. Then you quickly have 3 European countries announce they will not allow doctors to prescribe the drug. Soon additional countries ban its use for Covid.

9.  You do your best to ride out any controversy over the veracity of this paper, never admitting culpability. Even after hundreds of people criticized this Lancet observational study due to easily identified fabrications–the database used in the study did not exist, and the claimed numbers of cases did not agree with known numbers of cases–the Lancet held firm for two weeks, which served to muddy the waters about the trial, until finally 3 of the 4 coauthors (but not the Lancet nor the author who purportedly owned the database) retracted the study. Neither the authors nor the journal have admitted responsibility, let alone explained what it was that induced them to coauthor and publish such an obvious fraud.

You made sure very few media reported that the data were fabricated, the “study” was fraudulent, and the drugs were actually safe. Even though the story of the database company, Surgisphere, was full of scandalous details, most media ignored it.  The story of the study’s retraction went largely unnoticed by the public.  You made sure most people remember the original (false) story: that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine frequently kill patients.

10.  You ensure federal agencies like FDA and CDC hew to your desired policies.  Some examples:  a) FDA advised use only in hospitalized patients (too late) and later advised use restricted to only clinical trials (which are limited, are difficult to enroll in, have been halted prematurely, or may use excessive doses).

b) you have FDA make unsubstantiated and false claims, such as:  “Hospitalized patients were likely to have greater prospect of benefit (compared to ambulatory patients with mild illness) and claim the chloroquine drugs have a slow onset of action. If that were really true, they would not be used for acute attacks of malaria or in critically ill patients with Covid. (Disclosure:  I once dosed myself with chloroquine for an acute attack of P. vivax malaria, and it worked very fast.).

c) although providing treatment advice is a large part of its mission, CDC instead refers clinicians to the NIH guidelines, discussed below.

d) Despite the fact that Belgium’s COVID treatment guidelines repeatedly mention that the doses of HCQ in the Recovery and Solidarity trials were 4 times the cumulative dose used in Belgium, you make sure the Belgian guidelines, paradoxically, only recommend use of HCQ within clinical trials.

11.  You make sure to avoid funding/encouraging clinical trials that test drug combinations like hydroxychloroquine with zinc, with azithromycin, or with both, although there is ample clinical evidence that such combinations provide a cumulative benefit to patients. For example, one study that did look at this combination had no funding.

12.  You have federal and UN agencies make false, illogical claims based on models (or invention) rather than human data.  For example, you have the FDA state on June 15 that the dose required to treat Covid is so high it is toxic, after the Recovery and Solidarity trials have been exposed for toxic dosing.  This scientific double-speak gives some legal cover to the clinical trials that overdosed their patients. According to Denise Hinton, RN, the FDA’s Chief Scientist (yes, a registered nurse without scientific qualifications is the Chief Scientist at FDA), or perhaps a clumsy FDA wordsmith:

“Under the assumption that in vivo cellular accumulation is similar to that from the in vitro cell-based assays, the calculated free lung concentrations that would result from the EUA suggested dosing regimens are well below the in vitro EC50/EC90 values, making the antiviral effect against SARS-CoV-2 not likely achievable with the dosing regimens recommended in the EUA. The substantial increase in dosing that would be needed to increase the likelihood of an antiviral effect would not be acceptable due to toxicity concerns.”

You have a WHO report claim toxic doses are needed. This is nonsense since:

  • In 2005, CDC researchers showed strong effects against SARS-1 at safely achievable concentrations.  Here is the relevant quote, “The infectivity of coronaviruses other than SARS-CoV are also affected by chloroquine, as exemplified by the human CoV-229E [15]. The inhibitory effects observed on SARS-CoV infectivity and cell spread occurred in the presence of 1–10 μM chloroquine, which are plasma concentrations achievable during the prophylaxis and treatment of malaria (varying from 1.6–12.5 μM) [26] and hence are well tolerated by patients.” A reader asked me to note that this study was done in tissue culture.
  • the drug at normal doses is being tested in over 30 different medical conditions (see clinicaltrials.gov), and
  • reports from many different countries say that the drug is effective for Covid-19 at normal doses, while a high dose chloroquine treatment trial was halted in Brazil and a preprint of the study was posted April 11, or perhaps April 7, after finding that drug effects were causing ventricular arrhythmias and deaths. JAMA published the results in their April 24 edition.
  • Toxicity in the Brazilian study was seen after only 3 days of treatment, during which 3.6 grams of chloroquine were administered. But the Solidarity (3.2 grams of hydroxychloroquine in 3 days), Recovery (3.6 grams of hydroxychloroquine in 3 days) and REMAP-Covid trials (3.6 grams of hydroxychloroquine in 3 days) continued overdosing patients until June, or probably longer in the case of REMAP-Covid, despite Brazil’s evidence of deaths by overdose.

Tellingly, JAMA editor Gordon Rubenfeld wrote in April, after the Brazilian study came out in JAMA, “if you are prescribing HCQ after these JAMA results, do yourself and your defense lawyer a favor. Document in your medical record that you informed the patient of the potential risks of HCQ including sudden death and its benefits (???).” 

13.  You create an NIH Guidelines committee for Covid treatment recommendations, in which 16 members have or had financial entanglements with Gilead, maker of Remdesivir. The members were appointed by the Co-Chairs.  Two of the three Co-Chairs are themselves financially entangled with Gilead.  Are you surprised that their guidelines recommend specifically against the use of hydroxychloroquine and in favor of Remdesivir, despite a Chinese Phase III study showing no benefit, which was mistakenly posted on the WHO website, then taken down?  The guidelines authors deem their recommendations the new “standard of care.” Additional remdesivir studies have shown no clear mortality benefit.

You create an NIH treatment guidelines summary that cherry picks the literature to claim HCQ provides no benefit.

14.  You frighten doctors so they don’t prescribe hydroxychloroquine, if prescribing it is even allowed in their jurisdiction, because prescribing outside the new NIH “standard of care” leaves them open to both malpractice lawsuits and potential loss of license.  For example, Michigan’s Medical Licensing Board issued the following:

“Prescribing hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine without further proof of efficacy for treating COVID-19 or with the intent to stockpile the drug may create a shortage for patients with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, or other ailments for which chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are proven treatments. Reports of this conduct will be evaluated and may be further investigated for administrative action… It is also important to be mindful that licensed health professionals are required to report inappropriate prescribing practices.” 

In other words, Michigan pharmacists are required to snitch on doctors prescribing the drugs for Covid.

You further tell doctors (through the FDA) they need to monitor a variety of lab parameters and EKGs when using the drug, although this was never advised before, which makes it very difficult to use the drug in outpatients. You have the European Medicines Agency issue similar warnings. In Australia only physicians in certain specialties are allowed to prescribe the drug for Covid. And in Queensland, physicians or pharmacists who do not comply (for example, by prescribing the drug for prevention of Covid) face up to 6 months’ imprisonment and a fine up to $13,000 Australian dollars.

15.  You manage to control the conduct of most trials around the world by specially designing the WHO-managed Solidarity trials, currently conducted in 35 countries. WHO halted hydroxychloroquine clinical trials around the world, twice. The first time, May 25, WHO claimed it was in response to the (fraudulent) Lancet study.  The second time, June 17, WHO claimed the stop was in response to the Recovery trial results.  Recovery used highly toxic doses of hydroxychloroquine in over 1500 patients, of whom 396 died.  You stop the trial before the data safety monitoring board has looked at your data, a move that is unlikely to be consistent with trial protocol. WHO’s trial in over 400 hospitals overdosed patients with 2.0 g hydroxychloroquine in the first 24 hours.  The trial was halted 3 days after the toxic doses were exposed (by me). The trial involved doctors around the world typing minimal patient information into an online WHO platform, which assigned the patient a treatment.

The only “safety” information collected during the trial was whether patients required oxygen, required a ventilator, or died. This effectively masked the adverse effects of the drugs tested.

I should mention that WHO’s initial plan for its Solidarity trial entirely omitted the chloroquine drugs, but they were added at the urging of participating nations. WHO’s fallback position appears to have been to use toxic doses.

16.  You have the WHO pressure governments to stop doctors prescribing hydroxychloroquine.

17.  You have the WHO pressure professional societies to stop doctors prescribing hydroxychloroquine.

18.  You make sure that the most-consulted US medical encyclopedia, UptoDate, advises physicians to restrict hydroxychloroquine to only clinical trials, citing the FDA.

19.  You have the head of the Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Tony Fauci, insist the drug cannot be used in the absence of strong evidence…while he insisted exactly the opposite in the case of the MERS coronavirus outbreak several years ago, when he recommended an untested drug combination for use…which had been developed for that purpose by his agency.  And while he was bemoaning the lack of evidence, he was refusing to pay for trials to study hydroxychloroquine, and cancelled two NIAID-sponsored trials of outpatient HCQ before completion. And he changed the goalposts on the Remdesivir trial, not once but twice, to make Remdesivir show a tiny bit of benefit, but no mortality benefit. Yet don’t forget, Fauci was thrilled to sponsor a trial of a Covid vaccine (partly owned by his agency) in humans, before there were any data from animal studies.  So much for Fauci’s requirement for high quality evidence, before risking use of drugs and vaccines in humans.

20.  You convince the population that the crisis will be long-lasting. You have the 2nd richest man in the world, and biggest funder of the WHO, Bill Gates, keep repeating to the media megaphone that we cannot go back to normal until everyone has been vaccinated or there is a perfect drug.  (The Gates Foundation helped design the WHO Solidarity trial, which says only that it has multiple funders,  helped fund the Recovery trial, and Gates is heavily invested in Covid pharmaceuticals and vaccines.)

21.  You have CDC (with help from FDA) prevent the purchase of coronavirus test kits from Germany, China, WHO, etc, and fail to produce a valid test kit themselves. The result was that during January and February, US cases could not be tested, and for months thereafter insufficient and unreliable test kits made it impossible to track the epidemic and stop the spread.

22.  You have trusted medical spokesmen lie to the public about the pandemic’s severity, so precautions weren’t taken when they might have been more effective and less long-lasting.  Congress was repeatedly briefed about the pandemic in January and February, which scared several Congress members enough that they sold off large amounts of stock, risking insider trading charges.  Senator Burr is one of them, currently under investigation for major stock sales on February 13.

Yet Dr. Fauci told USA Today on February 17 that Americans should worry more about the flu than about coronavirus, the danger of which was “just miniscule.” Then on February 28, Drs. Fauci and Robert Redfield (CDC Director) wrote in the New England Journal:

“…the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”

23.  You destroy the reputation of respected physicians who stand in your way.  Professor Didier Raoult and his team in Marseille have used hydroxychloroquine on over 4,000 patients, reporting a mortality rate of about 0.8%.  (The mortality rate of patients given hydroxychloroquine in the Recovery trial was 25.7%.) Raoult is very famous for discovering over 100 different microorganisms, and finding the long-sought cause of Whipple’s Disease.  With this reputation, Raoult apparently thought he could treat patients as he saw fit, which he has done, under great duress.  Raoult was featured in a New York Times Magazine article, with his face on the magazine cover, on May 12, 2020.  After describing his considerable accomplishments, the Times very unfavorably discussed his personality, implied he conducted unethical trials without approval, and using anonymous sourcing produced a detailed hit piece. Raoult is now considered an unreliable crank in the US.

UPDATE:  Raoult has now (November 13) been legally charged with ethics violationsin France for propounding and using HCQ in Covid patients.

You gather a group of Yale professors to dispute their Yale professor colleague Harvey Risch, an MD, PhD epidemiologist, on his publications and vocal support of the benefits of HCQ for Covid. Their first argument is that he is not an infectious disease doctor.  Notably, the first signer of the statement opposing Dr. Risch is an economist.

Physician and state senator Scott Jensen of Minnesota is being investigated by his state medical board due to anonymous complaints about ‘spreading misinformation’ and giving ‘reckless advice’ about COVID in interviews. Jensen was previously selected as “Family Physician of the Year” in his state. Now his medical license is at risk, not because of how he treated a patient, but for what he said outside of the office. Unprecedented.

UPDATE:  Jensen was exonerated.

24.  You have social media platforms ban content that does not agree with the desired narrative.  As YouTube CEO and ex-wife of Google founder Sergey Brin, Susan Wojcicki said,

“YouTube will ban any content containing medical advice that contradicts World Health Organisation (WHO) coronavirus recommendations. Anything that would go against World Health Organisation recommendations would be a violation of our policy.”

25.  When your clinical trials are criticized for overdosing patients, you quickly have Oxford-affiliated, Wellcome Trust-supported scientists at Mahidol University publish papers (a literature review with modeling and a modeling study) purporting to show that the doses used were not toxic. You develop a new method to measure hydroxychloroquine in a handful of Recovery patients who were not poisoned.  However, there are 2 problems you forgot with this approach:

  • The Brazilian data, including 16 deaths, extensive clinical information and documented ventricular arrhythmias, are much more persuasive than a theoretical model of hydroxychloroquine pharmacokinetics.
  • Either the drug is too toxic to use, even at normal doses, for a life-threatening disease, or even extremely high doses are safe.  You can’t have it both ways.

Oxford is the institution running the Recovery trial, and invented a Covid vaccine that already has 400 million doses on order.  The Wellcome Trust funded the Recovery trial.

26.  You change your trial’s primary outcome measures after the trials have started, in order to prevent detection of drug-induced deaths (Recovery) or to make your drug appear to have efficacy (NIAID Remdesivir trial).

27.  You stop manufacturers from supplying the drug. Shortly after the fraudulent Lancet paper came out, Sanofi announced it would no longer supply the drug for use with Covid, and would halt its two hydroxychloroquine clinical trials. One of the cancelled Sanofi trials was expected to test 210 outpatients early in the course of disease. The trial remains suspended at the time of writing, while the Lancet paper was retracted 13 days after publication.  You surely don’t want a trial of hydroxychloroquine treatment early in the disease, since it might show an excellent effect.

Sanofi (a pharma company) began acting like a regulator.  From the Australian DOH’s Therapeutic Goods Administration website:

Sanofi, the supplier of one of the hydroxychloroquine products marketed in Australia (Plaquenil), has also written to health professionals reinforcing that hydroxychloroquine is not approved for use in Australia for treatment of COVID-19 outside the confines of a clinical trial. Sanofi also reinforced some of the known risks of prescribing hydroxychloroquine, in particular potentially serious cardiac issues. Globally, Sanofi has received an increased number of reports of serious cardiac issues, including deaths, in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine, This appears to be more common in patients also treated with other medicines that can affect the heart.

Then Sanofi started collecting information on all off-label use of hydroxychloroquine in New Zealand and Australia.  Why is Sanofi, a drug manufacturing company, becoming a surveillance/enforcement mechanism intended to frighten medical providers from using the drug for Covid, which use is by definition “off label.” Sanofi alternatively suggests one may report (anonymously or not) others’ off-label use to New Zealand’s Pharmacovigilance Center or the Australian equivalent.

And see this: Novartis will supply HCQ only under certain conditions, and halted its HCQ trial due to lack of enrollments, although enrollment was not an issue for its other COVID trials.

28. You attempt to retract published papers that provide evidence to support use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID.

29. You have your ‘bought’ scientists conceal their financial conflicts of interest in their HCQ clinical trials and publications as well as in the guidelines they produce.

30. You can get your experimental, unlicensed drugs tested, much more expeditiously and cheaply than under ordinary circumstances, on Covid patients in large clinical trials, but only as long as no drug is designated effective for the condition. This opportunity only lasts while the “standard of care” for early Covid disease is nothing more than supportive measures, since no drug is deemed effective.

31. You have a research organization with big Pharma members (A.O.K.I.) pressure the Russian Ministry of Health to remove hydroxychloroquine from its treatment guidelines.

32. You stopped use of hydroxychloroquine, allegedly in response to the fabricated Lancet study, in France, Italy and Belgium (countries with very high COVID mortality rates) then Portugal then Switzerland. But Switzerland restarted using HCQ 15 days later. This created a natural experiment in Switzerland. About 2 weeks after hydroxychloroquine use was halted, death rates approximately tripled, for about 15 days. Then, after its use was allowed again, two weeks later death rates from Covid fell back to their baseline. (Thanks to FranceSoir:

http://www.francesoir.fr/societe-sante/covid-19-lhydroxychloroquine-marche-une-preuve-irrefutable)

33.  You reverse an old trick of clinical trials, to mask benefit of hydroxychloroquine.  The trick was to replace the saline placebo with a substance that is being used by many clinicians and in many trials against Covid, thus by comparison likely to reduce the positive effect of your tested medication. This was done in trials both at NYU and at University of Washington, using vitamin C or vitamin C plus folate respectively as placebos.

34. You have the chief medical officers of Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the director of the UK’s National Health Service, write to UK doctors, a) urging them to enroll their Covid patients in one of 3 national clinical trials, two of which greatly overdosed patients with hydroxychloroquine, and b) stopping their use of “off license treatments” outside of a trial. Yet again, we encounter a veiled threat against clinicians actually attempting to treat the primary SARS-Cov-2 infection. The chief doctors wrote:

While it is for every individual clinician to make prescribing decisions, we strongly discourage the use of off-licence treatments outside of a trial, where participation in a trial is possible… Any treatment given for coronavirus other than general supportive care, treatment for underlying conditions, and antibiotics for secondary bacterial complications, should currently be as part of a trial, where that is possible.”

35.   You have a state Pharmacy Board refuse to dispense hydroxychloroquine outside of clinical trials on June 15, citing the FDA recommendation for use only in trials.  You issue this new regulation on the same day that FDA publishes its recommendation, indicating prior coordination. But when your regulation is exposed on July 14, you immediately rescind it.

36.  You have the IMF offer rapid financing to Belarus, but only if it follows the recommended model of Covid response and imposes quarantines, isolation and curfews.

37.  A group of doctors went to Washington DC July 27-28.  They called themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors” and gave a press conference and livestream talks about the Covid-19 pandemic as well as about the need for physicians to be able to prescribe HCQ freely.  While the media sparsely attended the press conference, the livestream got millions of views. And within hours, their livestream was banned by Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.  Twitter was said to additionally ban comments about its ban. Then Squarespace took down the Frontline Doctors’ website.

Today, Bitchute is hosting their press conference. So is Brighteon. In those media that do discuss the event, the group is tarred for providing misinformation.

38. After the HCQ issue got so much attention on social media, you impose another ban on July 29 on the prescribing of HCQ for Covid, starting July 30 in Ohio, using its Pharmacy Board to dictate to physicians what they may not prescribe. (A repeat of #35 in a different state.) Ohio, with the governor’s approval, had first limited hydroxychloroquine dispensing on March 22. At least 3 other states limited its dispensing at the same time.

This ban got so much attention that Republican Governor Mike DeWine rescinded it the next morning. DeWine claimed to agree with FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, who said in a July 30 TV interview that the prescribing of HCQ is between a doctor and patient. This is in accord with FDA law; but then, why was FDA silent when pharmacy boards, governors and other state entities prevented the prescribing of this FDA-approved drug in their jurisdictions?

39.  After having Google take down physician James Todaro’s article on hydroxychloroquine for 4 months, you allow it to resurface right before Google’s (and Facebook’s and Amazon’s and Apple’s) CEOs testify before Congress on July 29 on censorship and abuse of power. You have Twitter warn that Todaro’s article is at an unsafe link.

40.  After massive attention to the banning of the videos posted by the physician group ‘America’s Frontline Physicians’ and its website, you make intense efforts to discredit the physicians involved.

MedPageToday claimed it “could find no evidence that any of the speakers worked in hospitals with significant numbers of COVID-19 patients.” But the doctors claimed they used the drug early and prevented hospitalizations and deaths.  With over 4.4 million Americans diagnosed with Covid, what doctor hasn’t seen a Covid patient?

USAToday blared the headline: ‘America’s Frontline Doctors’ may be real doctors, but experts say they don’t know what they’re talking about.

You have USA Today review and publish detailed information on the licenses, practice locations and malpractice histories of the doctors who spoke out. USAT reporters claim these doctors are not experts and lack knowledge about the use of HCQ in Covid-19, despite the fact that most work in primary care, urgent care or emergency medicine and report using the drug for Covid. Yet no one asks how many years ago ‘expert’ Tony Fauci last treated a patient? ‘Expert’ Deborah Birx’ medical license expired in 2014, so she hasn’t treated a Covid patient either.  BTW, she worked in Fauci’s lab between 1983 and 1986.

41.  Hydroxychloroquine use is truly the wedge issue for understanding and turning around the pandemic.  If hydroxychloroquine works reasonably well as a prophylactic and treatment for Covid-19, it could potentially end the severity of the pandemic, greatly reduce transmission, and return us to life as we knew it.  You must make use of the levers of government, plus mainstream media and social media, to stop that from happening.

So, just in case doctors thought the Frontline Doctors’ video, or a new study from Spain showing the drug’s usefulness meant they should use hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid, you must act fast. You use Representatives at a Congressional health subcommittee hearing on July 29 to threaten doctors about one use of the drug last April, in veterans who were nursing home patients.  Per the Washington Post:

“doctors at the 238-bed nursing home dosed [30] patients with what came to be called a “covid cocktail” for more than two weeks in April, often over the objections of nurses and without the full knowledge of residents’ families. At least 11 residents received the drug even though they had not been tested for covid-19, The Post found.”

I have treated patients in nursing homes, and one rarely discusses medication changes with family, unless the patient is seriously ill.  When nursing home residents were dying like flies last April, when tests were hard to come by, and confirmed diagnoses few and far between, doctors used this medicine to try to prevent nursing home deaths during a pandemic. And now they are being scapegoated for doing so.

The WaPo article does not even tell us whether the patients survived, thrived or were harmed. The article hardly makes sense. Its only purpose is to blacken the drug and the physicians who use it.

Yet on August 27, with respect to HCQ’s use in nursing homes, Senators Warren, Wyden and Casey demanded that FDA and Medicare/Medicaid explain how they are tracking it, and also demanded an Inspector General investigation into its recent use in nursing homes. “The Trump Administration owes us answers on the use of an ineffective drug like hydroxychloroquine in nursing homes — the epicenter of the pandemic,” Elizabeth Warren said in a statement.

42.  You use state Medical Licensing Boards to threaten doctors who claim there is a cure for Covid-19.

43.  You have Dr. Fauci discredit published observational studies that show benefit during a Congressional hearing, demanding randomized controlled trials.  Fauci never tells the Committee he has cancelled the one randomized controlled trial of HCQ that his agency, NIAID, had promised to conduct on HCQ.  NIAID claimed that it could not enroll enough subjects, and the study was cancelled after only 20 were enrolled.  However, Fauci told the Committee that 250,000 Americans have shown interest in participating in trials of a Covid vaccine. It is difficult to reconcile such extreme lack of interest in a treatment trial, and such massive interest in a vaccine trial.

Doctors who wrote studies showing HCQ benefit, even when used late (50% mortality reduction) have defended their work from Fauci’s criticism of it to Congress.

44.  You erode the doctor’s primary responsibility to the patient, replacing it with the need to perform clinical research. This is the first time I have ever heard such a thing in the US: research physicians are pressuring frontline doctors not to veer from protocol-determined treatment, even when patients enrolled in treatment trials are at risk of death. ‘Helping future patients’ is the rationale provided.

Need I say this was the justification for the Nazi doctors’ experiments? It was not accepted at Nuremberg and it shouldn’t be accepted now. Medical ethics are no mystery. As published in the JAMA, and accepted worldwide, the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki, a.k.a. “Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects” states,

While the primary purpose of medical research is to generate new knowledge, this goal can never take precedence over the rights and interests of individual research subjects.

One of the Nuremberg Principles says essentially the same thing.

45. You use the term “stellar” to describe the Recovery trial in the August 5, 2020 NY Times, but avoid any hint that the Recovery trial’s hydroxychloroquine arm gave 1500 patients a toxic, potentially lethal dose, of whom over 25% died.

46.  You censure and oust from the Detroit Democrats a state legislator because she credited HCQ for saving her life when she had Covid-19, and she publicly thanked President Trump for bringing the drug to her attention. It had been extremely difficult for her to obtain the drug, because her governor, Gretchen Whitmer, had banned use of the drug for Covid.

47.  Despite assuring you control the outcome of the vast majority of randomized clinical trials of the chloroquine drugs, you have been thwarted by physician researchers in DetroitSpainItalyFranceSaudi Arabia who publish their observational results with hydroxychloroquine, showing the drug dramatically reduces mortality from Covid.

Doctors in Turkey, the US and Canada, and the US show that HCQ’s cardiac toxicity is negligible. So you have frontman Tony Fauci repeatedly dismiss this evidence from thousands of patients, since it did not come from randomized controlled trials.  See c19study.com for a compilation of 99 (58 peer reviewed) studies of the chloroquine drugs in Covid-19, and convince yourself what the overall data truly show.

48.  You have Wikipedia write the following about Covid and HCQ:  “all clinical trials conducted during 2020 found it is ineffective and may cause dangerous side effects.”  The footnotes refer to only a handful of trials, while a compilation of all 99 studies (of different types, including meta-analyses and observational studies) on the drug in Covid-19 tells a completely different story.

49.  You electronically disappear articles favorable to HCQ. A meta-analysis preprint of 41 studies of EARLY HCQ use, written by US physicians, is posted at this link on the ResearchGate site which hosts a collection of academic papers. The article rapidly disappeared from the link.  Here is a brief description of the article:

Prodromos et al., Preprint, doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.29781.65765 (meta analysis)

Hydroxychloroquine is Effective and Safe for the Treatment of COVID-19, and May be Universally Effective When Used Early Before Hospitalization: A Systematic Review

Meta analysis of 41 studies concluding: “HCQ has been shown to have consistent clinical efficacy for COVID-19 when it is used early in the outpatient setting, and in general would appear to work better the earlier it is used. Overall HCQ is effective against COVID-19. There is no credible evidence that HCQ results in worsening of COVID-19. HCQ has been shown to be safe for the treatment of COVID-19 when responsibly used.”

A reader (later) sent me another working link for the full text here.

50.  Can we begin to connect the dots between those who fraudulently suppressed effective treatments for Covid-19, and those who wish to maintain the pandemic crisis to remake the world? Today, on 9/11, Oxford epidemiologist Dr. Peter Horby, a principal investigator for the Recovery trial in which 396 people who were overdosed with hydroxychloroquine died, retweeted a tweet from the World Economic Forumabout the environmental benefits of using bicycles.  Horby added, “This is where we need to be headed.”

51.  From Anthony Fauci, who has perhaps done more than any other person to besmirch the value of HCQ and prevent Covid patients being treated effectively, comes a statement that seems to hearken to the World Economic Forum sentiment in #50 above.  Fauci blames the pandemic (which his actions prolong) on humans damaging nature.  And he suggests we must learn to live differently, in harmony with nature.

And now, suddenly, I understand why it is so important to claim the pandemic came from human encroachment on bat territory, and not from a lab accident. Because human encroachment is being positioned to take the blame for Covid-19. (SARS-1, Ebola and SARS-2 are claimed to have arisen from humans living too close to bats, eating them and getting infected, starting epidemics–but this has not been proven for either SARS epidemic, nor proven for the Ebola epidemics.). This is not Fauci waxing eloquent about nature. This is Fauci, America’s Doctor, starting the conversation about how the human population, not the bat virus, is the real underlying problem.

The quote below was published in the journal Cell, in the final paragraph, on September 3 by Fauci and Morens:

“The COVID-19 pandemic is yet another reminder, added to the rapidly growing archive of historical reminders, that in a human-dominated world, in which our human activities represent aggressive, damaging, and unbalanced interactions with nature, we will increasingly provoke new disease emergencesWe remain at risk for the foreseeable future. COVID-19 is among the most vivid wake-up calls in over a century. It should force us to begin to think in earnest and collectively about living in more thoughtful and creative harmony with nature, even as we plan for nature’s inevitable, and always unexpected, surprises.”

Are they hinting that a reduced human population will be less susceptible to pandemics? Or that rural populations need to move?

52.  Even though the famous Mehra/Desai Lancet paper claiming HCQ and CQ caused hugely increased deaths was exposed as a total fabrication by the Lancet editor and retracted on June 4, the Washington Post today, on September 11, links to its favorable May 22 story about the Mehra/Desai paper–using it as the sole evidence for yet another false claim of the danger of hydroxychloroquine.
This despite the fact that the WaPo reported on June 2  about concerns regarding the paper’s authenticity. The New York Times ran at least 3 articles about the fabricated Mehra/Desai paper here, here and here, and you know the WaPo reads what the NYT reports.

You neuter criticism electronically by making it hard to read.  I commented on the 9/11 article in the WaPo, and its gratuitous slur against HCQ, in which WaPo cited as authority a fabricated paper.  I used the online comment form.  I am a subscriber. The WaPo printed my comment, but my comment seems to be the only comment whose words extend beyond the right margin, and are chopped off. How odd.
53.  When all else fails, would you really try to blow up much of the world supply of hydroxychloroquine?

According to the Taiwan English News:

An explosion at a pharmaceutical factory in Taoyuan City left two injured and caused a fire early this afternoon, December 20…

Liberty Times reported that the factory produces hydroxychloroquine APIs, and is the world’s second largest HCQ raw material supplier.

Another source tells the same tale.  The Pharmaceutical company is named Sci Pharmtech Inc. The explosion was huge and spread to five other companies.

54.  Big mistake. You meant to expunge all official information about the safety of hydroxychloroquine.  But you forgot to remove CDC’s malaria treatment guidance, which still tells the truth about the drug. A 2 page information sheet is available online on the CDC website.  It might disappear after I post this. CDC’s guidance states,

Who can take hydroxychloroquine? Hydroxychloroquine can be prescribed to adults and children of all ages. It can also be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers.

What are the potential side effects of hydroxychloroquine? Hydroxychloroquine is a relatively well tolerated medicine. The most common adverse reactions reported are stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, and headache. These side effects can often be lessened by taking hydroxychloroquine with food. Hydroxychloroquine may also cause itching in some people. All medicines may have some side effects. Minor side effects such as nausea, occasional vomiting, or diarrhea usually do not require stopping the antimalarial drug. If you cannot tolerate your antimalarial drug, see your health care provider; other antimalarial drugs are available.

How long is it safe to use hydroxychloroquine? CDC has no limits on the use of hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of malaria. When hydroxychloroquine is used at higher doses for many years, a rare eye condition called retinopathy has occurred. People who take hydroxychloroquine for more than five years should get regular eye exams.

  • Overdose of antimalarial drugs, particularly hydroxychloroquine, can be fatal.

55.  Twitter censored the Brazilian Ministry of Health for tweeting to citizens that they should seek early treatment for Covid, as the sooner they get treated, the better the result. (The harmful US recommendation is to stay home and do nothing until you require hospitalization.)

This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible. Later it was completely removed. It used to be an illustration for this article, but it’s gone now.

56.  You have the WHO issue guidance that HCQ should not be used for Covid, based on 6 multicenter trials that included over 6,000 patients. Six!  Scores of trials using much larger numbers of patients demonstrated benefit, but these were omitted from the WHO review.

Of course, included in these six trials (and accounting for about half the patients in WHO’s review) are the Recovery and Solidarity trials that overdosed subjects on hydroxychloroquine and caused 10-20% higher mortality than in the placebo subjects who received no treatment!

If effect, WHO is confirming that when you poison patients with excessive doses they do not do well. I concur that poisonous doses of HCQ  or anything else should never be used in patients.

Will WHO comment on the only real question, which is the value of using therapeutic doses early in the course of illness? The results of over 200 studiesspeak for themselves.

Why aren’t the families of subjects who died in these trials bringing charges? Was information on which drugs their family members received withheld from them to prevent that from happening?

57.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is still up to their dirty tricks smearing hydroxychloroquine. Yet another paper has come out of U. Washington, paid for by BMGF, that claims HCQ isn’t helpful for early treatment (despite dozens of studies to the contrary). If you read the new paper carefully, you learn that HCQ actually did help, but the authors massaged the data to remove statistical significance… and shut the trial down prematurely.  My analysis is here.

58.  It is important to keep banging the drum that says, not only don’t the drugs work, but they are dangerous, to boot. And so we have a new meta-analysis designed to do just that.

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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 

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America’s Open Wound. The CIA Is Not Your Friend

September 26th, 2022 by Edward Snowden

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“Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.” ― Baruch Spinoza

It hasn’t been a month since President Biden mounted the steps of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, declaring it his duty to ensure each of us understands the central faction of his political opposition are extremists that “threaten the very foundations of our Republic.” Flanked by the uniformed icons of his military and standing atop a Leni Riefenstahl stage, the leader clenched his fists to illustrate seizing the future from the forces of “fear, division, and darkness.” The words falling from the teleprompter ran rich with the language of violence, a “dagger at the throat” emerging from the “shadow of lies.”

“What’s happening in our country,” the President said, “is not normal.”

Is he wrong to think that? The question the speech intended to raise—the one lost in the unintentionally villainous pageantry—is whether and how we are to continue as a democracy and a nation of laws. For all the Twitter arguments over Biden’s propositions, there has been little consideration of his premises.

Democracy and the rule of law have been so frequently invoked as a part of the American political brand that we simply take it for granted that we enjoy both.

Are we right to think that?

Our glittering nation of laws observes this year two birthdays: the 70th anniversary of the National Security Agency, on which my thoughts have been recorded, and the 75th anniversary of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The CIA was founded in the wake of the 1947 National Security Act. The Act foresaw no need for the Courts and Congress to oversee a simple information-aggregation facility, and therefore subordinated it exclusively to the President, through the National Security Council he controls.

Within a year, the young agency had already slipped the leash of its intended role of intelligence collection and analysis to establish a covert operations division. Within a decade, the CIA was directing the coverage of American news organizations, overthrowing democratically elected governments (at times merely to benefit a favored corporation), establishing propaganda outfits to manipulate public sentiment, launching a long-running series of mind-control experiments on unwitting human subjects (purportedly contributing to the creation of the Unabomber), and—gaspinterfering with foreign elections. From there, it was a short hop to wiretapping journalists and compiling files on Americans who opposed its wars.

In 1963, no less than former President Harry Truman confessed that the very agency he personally signed into law had transformed into something altogether different than he intended, writing:

“For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble…”

Many today comfort themselves by imagining that the Agency has been reformed, and that such abuses are relics of the distant past, but what few reforms our democracy has won have been watered-down or compromised. The limited “Intelligence Oversight” role that was eventually conceded to Congress in order to placate the public has never been taken seriously by either the committee’s majority—which prefers cheerleading over investigating—or by the Agency itself, which continues to conceal politically-sensitive operations from the very group most likely to defend them.

“Congress should have been told,” said [Senator] Dianne Feinstein. “We should have been briefed before the commencement of this kind of sensitive program. Director Panetta… was told that the vice president had ordered that the program not be briefed to Congress.”

How can we judge the ultimate effectiveness of oversight and reforms? Well, the CIA plotted to assassinate my friend, American whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, in 1972, yet nearly fifty years of “reforms” did little to inhibit them from recently sketching out another political murder targeting Julian Assange. Putting that in perspective, you probably own shoes older than the CIA’s most recent plot to murder a dissident… or rather the most recent plot that we know of.

If you believe the Assange case to be a historical anomaly, some aberration unique to Trump White House, recall that the CIA’s killings have continued in series across administrations. Obama ordered the killing of an American far from any battlefield, and killed his 16 year-old American son a few weeks later, but the man’s American daughter was still alive by the time Obama left.

Within a month of entering the White House, Trump killed her.

She was 8 years old.

It goes beyond assassinations. Within recent memory, the CIA captured Gul Rahman, who we know was not Al-Qaeda, but it seems did save the life of Afghanistan’s future (pro-US) President. Rahman was placed in what the Agency described as a “dungeon” and tortured until he died.

They stripped him naked, save a diaper he couldn’t change, in a cold so wicked that his guards, in their warm clothes, ran heaters for themselves. In absolute darkness, they bolted his hands and feet to a single point on the floor with a very short chain so that it was impossible to stand or lie down – a practice called “short shackling” – and after he died, claimed that it was for his own safety. They admit to beating him, even describing the “forceful punches.” They describe the blood that ran from his nose and mouth as he died.

Pages later, in their formal conclusion, the Agency declares that there was no evidence of beating. There was no of evidence torture. The CIA ascribes responsibility for his death to hypothermia, which they blamed on him for the crime of refusing, on his final night, a meal from the men that killed him.

The CIA claimed the complaints of a man they tortured to death — regarding the violation of his human rights — were evidence of a “sophisticated level of resistance training.”

In the aftermath, the Agency concealed the death of Gul Rahman from his family. To this day, they refuse to reveal what happened to his remains, denying those who survive him a burial, or even some locus of mourning.

Ten years after the torture program investigated, exposed, and ended, no one was charged for their role in these crimes. The man responsible for Rahman’s death was recommended for a $2,500 cash award — for “consistently superior work”.

A different torturer was elevated to the Director’s seat.

The Judgment of Solomon, Rubens, 1617

This summer, in a speech marking the occasion of the CIA’s 75th birthday, President Biden struck a quite different note than he did in Philadelphia, reciting what the CIA instructs all presidents: that the soul of the institution really lies in speaking truth to power.

“We turn to you with the big questions,” Biden said, “the hardest questions. And we count on you to give your best, unvarnished assessment of where we are.  And I emphasize ‘unvarnished.’”

But this itself is a variety of varnishing — a whitewash.

For what reason do we aspire to maintain — or achieve — a nation of laws, if not to establish justice?

Let us say we have a democracy, shining and pure. The people, or in our case some subset of people, institute reasonable laws to which government and citizen alike must answer. The sense of justice that arises within such a society is not produced as a result of the mere presence of law, which can be tyrannical and capricious, or even elections, which face their own troubles, but is rather derived from the reasonand fairness of the system that results.

What would happen if we were to insert into this beautiful nation of laws an extralegal entity that is not directed by the people, but a person: the President? Have we protected the nation’s security, or have we placed it at risk?

This is the unvarnished truth: the establishment of an institution charged with breaking the law within a nation of laws has mortally wounded its founding precept.

From the year it was established, Presidents and their cadres have regularly directed the CIA to go beyond the law for reasons that cannot be justified, and therefore must be concealed — classified. The primary result of the classification system is not an increase in national security, but a decrease in transparency. Without meaningful transparency, there is no accountability, and without accountability, there is no learning.

The consequences have been deadly, for both Americans and our victims. When the CIA armed the Mujaheddin to wage war on Soviet Afghanistan, we created al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden. Ten years later, the CIA is arming, according to then-Vice President Joe Biden, “al-Nusra, and Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.” After the CIA runs a disinformation operation to make life hard for the Soviet Union by fueling a little proxy war, the war rages for twenty-six years — far beyond the Union’s collapse.

Do you believe that the CIA today — a CIA free from all consequence and accountability — is uninvolved in similar activities? Can you find no presence of their fingerprints in the events of the world, as described in the headlines, that provide cause for concern? Yet it is those who question the wisdom of placing a paramilitary organization beyond the reach of our courts that are dismissed as “naive.”

For 75 years, the American people have been unable to bend the CIA to fit the law, and so the law has been bent to fit the CIA. As Biden stood on the crimson stage, at the site where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were debated and adopted, his words rang out like the cry of a cracked-to-hell Liberty Bell: “What’s happening in our country is not normal.”

If only that were true.

The Death of Achilles, Rubens

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Joe Biden’s presentation to the U.N. General assembly

Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, my fellow leaders, in the last year, our world has experienced great upheaval: a growing crisis in food insecurity; record heat, floods, and droughts; COVID-19; inflation; and a brutal, needless war — a war chosen by one man, to be very blunt.

Let us speak plainly.  A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded its neighbor, attempted to erase a sovereign state from the map.

Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter — no more important than the clear prohibition against countries taking the territory of their neighbor by force.

Scroll down for full transcript

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Below is the full transcript of his speech.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.

Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, my fellow leaders, in the last year, our world has experienced great upheaval: a growing crisis in food insecurity; record heat, floods, and droughts; COVID-19; inflation; and a brutal, needless war — a war chosen by one man, to be very blunt.

Let us speak plainly.  A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded its neighbor, attempted to erase a sovereign state from the map.

Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter — no more important than the clear prohibition against countries taking the territory of their neighbor by force.

Again, just today, President Putin has made overt nuclear threats against Europe and a reckless disregard for the responsibilities of the non-proliferation regime.

Now Russia is calling — calling up more soldiers to join the fight.  And the Kremlin is organizing a sham referenda to try to annex parts of Ukraine, an extremely significant violation of the U.N. Charter.

This world should see these outrageous acts for what they are.  Putin claims he had to act because Russia was threatened.  But no one threatened Russia, and no one other than Russia sought conflict.

In fact, we warned it was coming.  And with many of you, we worked to try to avert it.

Putin’s own words make his true purpose unmistakable.  Just before he invaded, Putin asserted — and I quote — Ukraine was “created by Russia” and never had, quote, “real statehood.”

And now we see attacks on schools, railway stations, hospitals, wa- — on centers of Ukrainian history and culture.

In the past, even more horrifying evidence of Russia’s atrocity and war crimes: mass graves uncovered in Izyum; bodies, according to those that excavated those bodies, showing signs of torture.

This war is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state, plain and simple, and Ukraine’s right to exist as a people.  Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe, that should not — that should make your blood run cold.

That’s why 141 nations in the General Assembly came together to unequivocally condemn Russia’s war against Ukraine.  The United States has marshaled massive levels of security assistance and humanitarian aid and direct economic support for Ukraine — more than $25 billion to date.

Our allies and partners around the world have stepped up as well.  And today, more than 40 countries represented in here have contributed billions of their own money and equipment to help Ukraine defend itself.

The United States is also working closely with our allies and partners to impose costs on Russia, to deter attacks against NATO territory, to hold Russia accountable for the atrocities and war crimes.

Because if nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequences, then we put at risk everything this very institution stands for.  Everything.

Every victory won on the battlefield belongs to the courageous Ukrainian soldiers.  But this past year, the world was tested as well, and we did not hesitate.

We chose liberty.  We chose sovereignty.  We chose principles to which every party to the United Nations Charter is beholding.  We stood with Ukraine.

Like you, the United States wants this war to end on just terms, on terms we all signed up for: that you cannot seize a nation’s territory by force.  The only country standing in the way of that is Russia.

So, we — each of us in this body who is determined to uphold the principles and beliefs we pledge to defend as members of the United Nations — must be clear, firm, and unwavering in our resolve.

Ukraine has the same rights that belong to every sovereign nation.  We will stand in solidarity with Ukraine.  We will stand in solidarity against Russia’s aggression.  Period.

Now, it’s no secret that in the contest between democracy and autocracy, the United States — and I, as President — champion a vision for our world that is grounded in the values of democracy.

The United States is determined to defend and strengthen democracy at home and around the world.  Because I believe democracy remains humanity’s greatest instrument to address the challenges of our time.

We’re working with the G7 and likeminded countries to prove democracies can deliver for their citizens but also deliver for the rest of the world as well.

But as we meet today, the U.N. Charter — the U.N. Charter’s very basis of a stable and just rule-based order is under attack by those who wish to tear it down or distort it for their own political advantage.

And the United Nations Charter was not only signed by democracies of the world, it was negotiated among citizens of dozens of nations with vastly different histories and ideologies, united in their commitment to work for peace.

As President Truman said in 1945, the U.N. Charter — and I quote — is “proof that nations, like men, can state their differences, can face them, and then can find common ground on which to stand.”  End of quote.

That common ground was so straightforward, so basic that, today, 193 of you — 193 member states — have willingly embraced its principles.  And standing up for those principles for the U.N. Charter is the job of every responsible member state.

I reject the use of violence and war to conquer nations or expand borders through bloodshed.

To stand against global politics of fear and coercion; to defend the sovereign rights of smaller nations as equal to those of larger ones; to embrace basic principles like freedom of navigation, respect for international law, and arms control — no matter what else we may disagree on, that is the common ground upon which we must stand.

If you’re still committed to a strong foundation for the good of every nation around the world, then the United States wants to work with you.

I also believe the time has come for this institution to become more inclusive so that it can better respond to the needs of today’s world.

Members of the U.N. Security Council, including the United States, should consistently uphold and defend the U.N. Charter and refrain — refrain from the use of the veto, except in rare, extraordinary situations, to ensure that the Council remains credible and effective.

That is also why the United States supports increasing the number of both permanent and non-permanent representatives of the Council.  This includes permanent seats for those nations we’ve long supported and permanent seats for countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

The United States is committed to this vital work.  In every region, we pursued new, constructive ways to work with partners to advance shared interests, from elevating the Quad in the Indo-Pacific; to signing the Los Angeles Declaration of Migration and Protection at the Summit of the Americas; to joining a historic meeting of nine Arab leaders to work toward a more peaceful, integrated Middle East; to hosting the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit in — this December.

As I said last year, the United States is opening an era of relentless diplomacy to address the challenges that matter most to people’s lives — all people’s lives: tackling the climate crisis, as the previous spoker [sic] — speaker spoke to; strengthening global health security; feeding the world — feeding the world.

We made that priority.  And one year later, we’re keeping that promise.

From the day I came to office, we’ve led with a bold climate agenda.  We rejoined the Paris Agreement, convened major climate summits, helped deliver critical agreements on COP26.  And we helped get two thirds of the world GDP on track to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

And now I’ve signed a historic piece of legislation here in the United States that includes the biggest, most important climate commitment we have ever made in the history of our country: $369 billion toward climate change.  That includes tens of billions in new investments in offshore wind and solar, doubling down on zero emission vehicles, increasing energy efficiency, supporting clean manufacturing.

Our Department of Energy estimates that this new law will reduce U.S. emissions by one gigaton a year by 2030 while unleashing a new era of clean-energy-powered economic growth.

Our investments will also help reduce the cost of developing clean energy technologies worldwide, not just the United States.  This is a global gamechanger — and none too soon.  We don’t have much time.

We all know we’re already living in a climate crisis.  No one seems to doubt it after this past year.  We meet — we meet — much of Pas- — as we meet, much of Pakistan is still underwater; it needs help.  Meanwhile, the Horn of Africa faces unprecedented drought.

Families are facing impossible choices, choosing which child to feed and wondering whether they’ll survive.

This is the human cost of climate change.  And it’s growing, not lessening.

So, as I announced last year, to meet our global responsibility, my administration is working with our Congress to deliver more than $11 billion a year to international climate finance to help lower-income countries implement their climate goals and ensure a just energy transition.

The key part of that will be our PEPFAR [PREPARE] plan, which will help half a billion people, and especially vulnerable countries, adapt to the impacts of climate change and build resilience.

This need is enormous.  So let this be the moment we find within ourselves the will to turn back the tide of climate demastation [sic] — devastation and unlock a resilient, sustainable, clean energy economy to preserve our planet.

On global health, we’ve delivered more than 620 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to 116 countries around the world, with more available to help meet countries’ needs — all free of charge, no strings attached.

And we’re working closely with the G20 and other countries.  And the United States helped lead the change to establish a groundbreaking new Fund for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response at the World Bank.

At the same time, we’ve continued to advance the ball on enduring global health challenges.

Later today, I’ll host the Seventh Replenishment Conference for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.  With bipartisan support in our Congress, I have pledged to contribute up to $6 billion to that effort.

So I look forward to welcoming a historic round of pledges at the conference resulting in one of the largest global health fundraisers ever held in all of history.

We’re also taking on the food crisis head on.  With as many as 193 million people around the world experiencing acute — acute food insecurity — a jump of 40 million in a year — today I’m announcing another $2.9 billion in U.S. support for lifesaving humanitarian and food security assistance for this year alone.

Russia, in the meantime, is pumping out lies, trying to pin the blame for the crisis — the food crisis — onto sanctions imposed by many in the world for the aggression against Ukraine.

So let me be perfectly clear about something: Our sanctions explicitly allow — explicitly allow Russia the ability to export food and fertilizer.  No limitation.  It’s Russia’s war that is worsening food insecurity, and only Russia can end it.

I’m grateful for the work here at the U.N. — including your leadership, Mr. Secretary-General — establishing a mechanism to export grain from Black Sea ports in Ukraine that Russia had blocked for months, and we need to make sure it’s extended.

We believe strongly in the need to feed the world.  That’s why the United States is the world’s largest supporter of the World Food Programme, with more than 40 percent of its budget.

We’re leading support — we’re leading support of the UNICEF efforts to feed children around the world.

And to take on the larger challenge of food insecurity, the United States introduced a Call to Action: a roadmap eliminating global food insecurity — to eliminating global food insecurity that more than 100 nation member states have already supported.

In June, the G7 announced more than $4.5 billion to strengthen food security around the world.

Through USAID’s Feed the Future initiative, the United States is scaling up innovative ways to get drought- and heat-resistant seeds into the hands of farmers who need them, while distributing fertilizer and improving fertilizer efficiency so that farmers can grow more while using less.

And we’re calling on all countries to refrain from banning food exports or hoarding grain while so many people are suffering.  Because in every country in the world, no matter what else divides us, if parents cannot feed their children, nothing — nothing else matters if parents cannot feed their children.

As we look to the future, we’re working with our partners to update and create rules of the road for new challenges we face in the 21st century.

We launched the Trade and Technology Council with the European Union to ensure that key technologies — key technologies are developed and governed in the way that benefits everyone.

With our partner countries and through the U.N., we’re supporting and strengthening the norms of responsibility — responsible state behavior in cyberspace and working to hold accountable those who use cyberattacks to threaten international peace and security.

With partners in the Americas, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific, we’re working to build a new economic ecosystem while — where every nation — every nation gets a fair shot and economic growth is resilient, sustainable, and shared.

That’s why the United States has championed a global minimum tax.  And we will work to see it implemented so major corporations pay their fair share everywhere — everywhere.

It’s also been the idea behind the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which the United States launched this year with 13 other Indo-Pacific economies.  We’re working with our partners in ASEAN and the Pacific Islands to support a vision for a critical Indo-Pacific region that is free and open, connected and prosperous, secure and resilient.

Together with partners around the world, we’re working to ser- — secure resilient supply chains that protect everyone from coercion or domination and ensure that no country can use energy as a weapon.

And as Russia’s war rolls [sic] — riles the global economy, we’re also calling on major global creditors, including the non-Paris Club countries, to transparently negotiate debt forgiveness for lower-income countries to forestall broader economic and political crises around the world.

Instead of infrastructure projects that generate huge and large debt without delivering on the promised advantages, let’s meet the enormous infrastructure needs around the world with transparent investments — high-standard projects that protect the rights of workers and the environment — keyed to the needs of the communities they serve, not to the contributor.

That’s why the United States, together with fellow G7 partners, launched a Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment.  We intend to collectively mobilize $600 billion
in investment through this partnership by 2027.

Dozens of projects are already underway: industrial-scale vaccine manufacturing in Senegal, transformative solar projects in Angola, first-of-its-kind small modular nuclear power plant in Romania.

These are investments that are going to deliver returns not just for those countries, but for everyone.  The United States will work with every nation, including our competitors, to solve global problems like climate change.  Climate diplomacy is not a favor to the United States or any other nation, and walking away hurts the entire world.

Let me be direct about the competition between the United States and China.  As we manage shifting geopolitical trends, the United States will conduct itself as a reasonable leader.  We do not seek conflict.  We do not seek a Cold War.  We do not ask any nation to choose between the United States or any other partner.

But the United States will be unabashed in promoting our vision of a free, open, secure, and prosperous world and what we have to offer communities of nations: investments that are designed not to foster dependency, but to alleviate burdens and help nations become self-sufficient; partnerships not to create political obligation, but because we know our own success — each of our success is increased when other nations succeed as well.

When individuals have the chance to live in dignity and develop their talents, everyone benefits.  Critical to that is living up to the highest goals of this institution: increasing peace and security for everyone, everywhere.

The United States will not waver in our unrelenting determination to counter and thwart the continuing terrorist threats to our world.  And we will lead with our diplomacy to strive for peaceful resolution of conflicts.

We seek to uphold peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits.

We remain committed to our One China policy, which has helped prevent conflict for four decades.  And we continue to oppose unilateral changes in the status quo by either side.

We support an African Union-led peace process to end the fight in Ethiopia and restore security for all its people.

In Venezuela, where years of the political oppression have driven more than 6 million people from that country, we urge a Venezuelan-led dialogue and a return to free and fair elections.

We continue to stand with our neighbor in Haiti as it faces political-fueled gang violence and an enormous human crisis.

And we call on the world to do the same.  We have more to do.

We’ll continue to back the U.N.-mediated truce in Yemen, which has delivered precious months of peace to people that have suffered years of war.

And we will continue to advocate for lasting negotiating peace between the Jewish and democratic state of Israel and the Palestinian people.  The United States is committed to Israel’s security, full stop.  And a negotiated two-state solution remains, in our view, the best way to ensure Israel’s security and prosperity for the future and give the Palestinians the state which — to which they are entitled — both sides to fully respect the equal rights of their citizens; both people enjoying equal measure of freedom and dignity.

Let me also urge every nation to recommit to strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime through diplomacy.  No matter what else is happening in the world, the United States is ready to pursue critical arms control measures.  A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

The five permanent members of the Security Council just reaffirmed that commitment in January.  But today, we’re seeing disturbing trends.  Russia shunned the Non-Proliferati- — -Proliferation ideals embraced by every other nation at the 10th NPT Review Conference.

And again, today, as I said, they’re making irresponsible nuclear threats to use nuclear weapons.  China is conducting an unprecedented, concerning nuclear buildup without any transparency.

Despite our efforts to begin serious and sustained diplomacy, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea continues to blatantly violate U.N. sanctions.

And while the United States is prepared for a mutual return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action if Iran steps up to its obligations, the United States is clear: We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.

I continue to believe that diplomacy is the best way to achieve this outcome.  The nonproliferation regime is one of the greatest successes of this institution.  We cannot let the world now slide backwards, nor can we turn a blind eye to the erosion of human rights.

Perhaps singular among this body’s achievements stands the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is the standard by which our forebears challenged us to measure ourselves.

They made clear in 1948: Human rights are the basis for all that we seek to achieve.  And yet today, in 2022, fundamental freedoms are at risk in every part of our world, from the violations of — in Xinjiang detailed in recent reports by the Office of U.N. — U.S. — reports detailing by the U.S. [U.N.] High Commissioner, to the horrible abuses against pro-democracy activists and ethnic minorities by the military regime in Burma, to the increased repression of women and girls by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

And today, we stand with the brave citizens and the brave women of Iran who right now are demonstrating to secure their basic rights.

But here’s what I know: The future will be won by those countries that unleash the full potential of their populations, where women and girls can exercise equal rights, including basic reproductive rights, and contribute fully to building a stronger economies and more resilient societies; where religious and ethnic minorities can live their lives without harassment and contribute to the fabric of their communities; where the LGBTQ+ community individuals live and love freely without being targeted with violence; where citizens can question and criticize their leaders without fear of reprisal.

The United States will always promote human rights and the values enshrined in the U.N. Charter in our own country and around the world.

Let me end with this: This institution, guided by the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is at its core an act of dauntless hope.

Let me say that again: It’s an act of dauntless hope.

Think about the vision of those first delegates who undertook a seemingly impossible task while the world was still smoldering.

Think about how divided the people of the world must have felt with the fresh grief of millions dead, the genocidal horrors of the Holocaust exposed.

They had every right to believe only the worst of humanity.  Instead, they reached for what was best in all of us, and they strove to build something better: enduring peace; comity among nations; equal rights for every member of the human family; cooperation for the advancement of all humankind.

My fellow leaders, the challenges we face today are great indeed, but our capacity is greater.  Our commitment must be greater still.

So let’s stand together to again declare the unmistakable resolve that nations of the world are united still, that we stand for the values of the U.N. Charter, that we still believe by working together we can bend the arc of history toward a freer and more just world for all our children, although none of us have fully achieved it.

We’re not passive witnesses to history; we are the authors of history.

We can do this — we have to do it — for ourselves and for our future, for humankind.

Thank you for your tolerance, for listening to me.  I appreciate it very much.  God bless you all.  (Applause.)

Source: whitehouse.gov

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  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Joe Biden’s Speech at the UN General Assembly. “A War Chosen by One Man… No One threatened Russia”

FDA Tells the Vaccine-injured: “Thanks for sharing”

September 26th, 2022 by Steve Kirsch

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).

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***

20 vaccine injured travelled to Washington DC to meet with lawmakers and the FDA. Peter Marks was too busy to meet with them in person, so they met on a 1-hour zoom call.

Here’s the article on Trial Site News describing what happened when 20 vaccine injured went to Washington DC to meet with the FDA and members of Congress.

Basically, they thanked the 20 people for sharing their stories. From the article:

“The data is not sufficiently robust,” Dr. Peter Marks said repeatedly. “With these low rates, it’s very hard to know what you’re looking at.” The word “rare” was used, and, of course, the phrase “1 in a million.”

And then there was this: “That’s not to say we won’t continue to look.”

I have vaccine injury reports from over 1,000 people. They are sorted by number of symptoms from a list of 145 symptoms that I found are associated with COVID vaccine injuries. Stuff like:

  1. Inability to talk
  2. Bleeding behind my eyes

You know, stuff like that that you rarely see.

There is clearly a cause and effect here when you realize that most of these people are perfectly healthy before the shot (few if any symptoms from my list) and then suddenly develop 40 to 86 symptoms from the list. This happens to people vaccinated with the COVID vaccine over and over again.

My survey is not exhaustive; there are millions of vaccine injured. So for each case reported here, multiply it by at least 1,000 others with similar symptoms.

So there are an estimated 100,000 people in America with 30 or more common vaccine symptoms.

I am persona non grata at these FDA meetings

Unfortunately, I am never invited to any of these meetings with the FDA.

Furthermore, the massive amounts of data I’ve collected on the vaccine injured (this particular survey is just one example) is never shared with Dr. Marks by any of the people who meet with him.

And of course, Dr. Marks ignores my direct emails to him.

Relative frequency of the 145 symptoms in my survey

Click here to enlarge the image.

This is the reporting rate for each of the 145 symptoms of the 1,017 people who responded to my survey. I have the full contact info for all of these victims.

Dr. Nath

In addition to Dr. Peter Marks at the FDA, Dr. Avindra Nath at the NIH has been spending a lot of time looking for an association between the vaccines and side effects for more than a year. He still hasn’t been able to find an association.

Specifically, Dr. Nath at the NIH has been investigating vaccine injuries of more than 500 vaccine-injured people for more than a year and he recently told the press that he has not been able to find a link between the vaccines and injuries. I reached out to Dr. Nath for his reasoning, but he refuses to talk to me. Please read my article on Dr. Nath, a man who values his position at NIH more than the lives of millions of Americans.

I offered to share all my data with him, but he wasn’t interested. Maybe that’s why he’s not able to figure out the cause and effect here.

Here are some articles about Dr. Nath:

  1. Shining light on the vaccine injured (Feb 1, 2022) summarizes Dr. Nath’s work.
  2. The NIH now knows that the COVID vaccines can cause death 1 year from the vaccination date (April 25, 2022). Dr. Nath knows this person who died a year after his vax. The death was caused by the vaccine. The coroner confirmed it. But Dr. Nath doesn’t consider death a vaccine injury.
  3. COVID vaccine victim? Meet Dr. Avindra Nath of the NIH (April 26, 2022)
  4. My email to Dr. Nath at NIH asking him how long he thinks they can keep hiding the injuries (Aug 4, 2022)

For more information on the survey, the data, and the stories of the injured in the survey

  1. Vaccine injured detailed reports from the first 95 people (of over 1,000) who reported to my database (21 pages)
  2. The public records of over 1,000 vaccine injured people, sorted by # of symptoms. This database has extensive info on each of the vaccine injured including why they believe their injuries were caused by the vaccine.
  3. The survey form that was used to collect the data, showing the 146 symptoms I asked about
  4. The article about the survey entitled, “Know anyone who was injured or killed by the COVID vaccines? Please register them now.”
  5. Marsha Gee, one of the most COVID vaccine injured people in the world who answered the survey. She developed 78 symptoms from my list. I guarantee you that all of her symptoms were pre-existing in the survey form at the time she filled it out. When I first saw her entry, I thought I was being pranked. I wasn’t.

Some day they will look at the data I’ve collected

I hope that someday, one of the vaccine injured will share this article with Dr. Marks or Dr. Nath and ask them how they can explain this data and why they weren’t interested in seeing it.

I claim that this data is impossible to explain if the vaccines are safe.

I’m happy to share the full contact information of each of the over 1,000 injured with the FDA, but nobody in authority seems to be interested in pursuing this.

Maybe someday.

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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 

Purchase directly from the Global Research Online Store

You may also purchase directly at DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page(NOTE: User-friendly)

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***

After weeks of keeping the public and virtually all members of Congress in the dark, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin today released the details of their secret deal that Manchin demanded as payment for voting to pass the Inflation Reduction Act.

The text of this legislative side deal overwhelmingly benefits the fossil fuel industry. It contains the most significant loss of protections under the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act since at least the George W. Bush administration, when Republicans had full control of Congress.

Today’s measure remains substantially the same as an earlier leaked draft that was influenced by the American Petroleum Industry. It would potentially make dozens, if not hundreds, of large-scale fossil fuel projects every year eligible for truncated review under the National Environmental Policy Act, gravely harming environmental justice communities and weakening environmental protections overall.

The legislation would also slash the states’ powers under the Clean Water Act’s section 401 to object to federal projects, such as oil and gas pipelines, that harm state interests. And it would weaken states’ abilities to control permitting of transmission projects.

“We’ll never get off fossil fuels if Congress keeps greasing the skids to make it ever easier to approve dirty gas pipelines, refineries and other polluting infrastructure,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We don’t need to gut the Clean Water Act and other bedrock environmental laws to build out wind and solar energy. Any member of Congress who claims this disastrous legislation is vital for ramping up renewables either doesn’t understand or is ignoring the enormous fossil fuel giveaways at stake. This measure cuts off communities’ rights to voice concerns about dangerous projects.”

The legislation would deem all necessary permits for the Mountain Valley Pipeline by all federal agencies to be approved without further action, including exempting the pipeline from the requirements of the Endangered Species Act. Construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline has already resulted in over 350 violations of water quality-related protections. Completing the pipeline would push two endangered species — the Roanoke logperch and the candy darter — much closer toward extinction.

“Congress ramming through the approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline would cause yet another environmental justice catastrophe and drive two beautiful, endangered fish to the edge of extinction,” said Hartl. “People of conscience shouldn’t perpetuate more injustices just to pad the profits of the fossil fuel industry. Mindless approval of fracked gas pipelines was Donald Trump’s dream, so why is Congress doing this now when lawmakers know better?”

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The digital dollar is the endgame. No matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, this will be the permanent and inescapable enslavement the ruling classes of the globe desperately need in order to remain in power.

You will own nothing, while a handful of people will own everything. You will exist if they allow it, be stolen from if they don’t like what you said, and be ruled over in a dystopia that makes our current situation pale in comparison.

A “white paper” published on the White House website calls for the creation of a “digital dollar” that, of course, will be controlled by the ruling class.  Much like the Federal Reserve currently has the sole role and responsibility to develop and print fiat currency with which they already control the population to some extent. But the difference here is that if all money was digital, the government and central banks will be one and the same. They could (and would) monitor our bank accounts; monitor all of our transactions; impose barriers to purchases of certain “unfavored” items, and even block access to our money or limit how much of it we could spend.

They will take what they want, and cut off your ability to spend for as long as they want.

“A United States central bank digital currency (CBDC) would be a digital form of the U.S. dollar. While the U.S. has not yet decided whether it will pursue a CBDC, the U.S. has been closely examining the implications of, and options for, issuing a CBDC,” the White House policy paper notes before touting the digital dollar’s “benefits.”

Of course, they’ve decided to pursue this. We all should know by now that they will need to fully control humanity if they expect to remain in power. Hopefully, enough people will see through this and the agenda will fail.

“At last year’s Summit for Democracy, President Biden spoke about the importance of using technology ‘to advance democracies to lift people up, not to hold them down.’ If the U.S. launches its own CBDC, it should advance this democratic vision,” the authors wrote.

In a democracy, you’re supposed to get to choose your master and who to serve. That doesn’t make anyone any less a slave.

We had better figure out how to untie against these sociopaths or we face a very bleak future.

*

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Say Only What We Want to Hear, or We Will Take Away Your Livelihood

September 26th, 2022 by Thorsteinn Siglaugsson

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***

The attacks on free and open discussion are becoming more and more widespread. Now, as Toby Young explains in an article this morning, the payment service PayPal has closed the accounts of the Daily Sceptic, which often publishes criticism of the government policy in various matters. 

PayPal has also closed the account of the Free Speech Union, which provides support to people whose freedom of opinion is under attack, for example those fired from their jobs because of their opinions. PayPal has even gone as far as to close the rarely used personal account of Toby Young, who is in charge of both the Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union, and is also associate editor of The Spectator, one of the world’s most respected newspapers.

As Toby reports in his article, the company has offered no explanation for this move.

When payment services or banks begin to act in this way, it should dawn upon us what a serious threat to free and open exchange of opinions we are facing. Not only can you be fired from your job, your very possibility to make a living will be taken away also.

Now, there is little doubt that many people think that as long as their own opinions are allowed, everything is fine, even if other opinions are forbidden. But that position, apart from being morally wrong, is based on an utter lack of understanding of the threat we face; the question is not if, but when it will be your own opinions that are censored, your own livelihood taken away.

“Okay to ban right-wing bullshit” a thoughtless leftist might think. “Okay to ban communist propaganda” the thoughtless right-winger might think. But as Toby points out in his article, it is in fact also left-wing media outlets that PayPal is now attacking, not just right-leaning ones like the Daily Sceptic.

PayPal’s actions are based on blatant opposition to the freedom of expression, opposition that until recently one thought belonged to the scrap-heaps of history. But we are now seeing more and more examples of this. The other day, people were arrested and taken to prison in Britain for protesting against the monarchy in the vicinity of funeral parades for the late Queen. And most people thought nothing of it, although attempts to silence the opinions of opponents of the monarchy had not been seen since the 15th century.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is currently awaiting extradition and life imprisonment in the United States for publishing information inconvenient to the government, but most people take this lightly. Those are just two of countless recent examples, which clearly show what is going on and where we are heading.

Freedom of expression is a fundamental value that concerns us all, no matter where we stand in politics, what our religion is or our preferences in life. We must have the maturity and moral standing to defend it unconditionally, no matter how annoying or inappropriate we might find the views currently being attacked.

If we do not stand up now for the freedom of expression, next time it will be our own views getting censored, our own livelihood taken away.

*

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Thorsteinn Siglaugsson is an Icelandic consultant, entrepreneur and writer and contributes regularly to The Daily Sceptic as well as various Icelandic publications. He holds a BA degree in philosophy and an MBA from INSEAD. Thorsteinn is a certified expert in the Theory of Constraints and author of From Symptoms to Causes – Applying the Logical Thinking Process to an Everyday Problem.

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***

According to a gaggle of academics at the University of Calgary, all news reports and opinions contrary to the pretzel twisted narratives of the state on the situation in the Ukraine are nothing less than Russian propaganda and “foreign interference.”

“Our research team has been collecting more than 6.2 million Tweets globally since January 2022 to monitor and measure Russian influence operations on social media,” Jean-Christophe Boucher, Jack Edwards, Jenny Kim, Abbas Badami, and Henry Smith write collectively for the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.

We find that pro-Russian narratives promoted in the Canadian social media ecosystem on twitter are divided into two large communities:

1) accounts influenced by sources from the United States and

2) those largely influenced by sources from international sources from Russia, Europe, and China.

In other words, any news, despite its country of origin, is “Russian propaganda” if it does not support US, European, and Canadian narratives on the war in the Ukraine.

“First, pro-Russian discourse on Canadian Twitter blames NATO for the conflict suggesting that Russia’s invasion was a result of NATO’s expansionism or aggressive intentions toward Russia,” the authors argue.

There can be no doubt, since the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO has pushed its armaments and soldiers, at the behest of the US, ever closer to the border of Russia. The US made a promise to not move further to the East. Of course, history demonstrates how such promises made by the US State Department are routinely broken.

James Goldgeier writes for War On the Rocks:

More than a quarter-century ago, in February 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev discussed NATO’s future role in a unified Germany. Baker told Gorbachev that “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east” and agreed with Gorbachev’s statement that “Any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable.” (Emphasis added.)

David K. Shipler, writing for Washington Monthly, explains how unclassified documents

tell the story of how American officials led the Russians to believe that no expansion would be undertaken by NATO, then later nearly doubled the size of the alliance. Russian and American transcripts and summaries of high-level meetings, posted in recent years by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, record multiple assurances in the early 1990s.

“Second, it is suggested that Western nations are propping up fascists in Ukraine, thus justifying Russia’s actions,” the authors write.

The fourth narrative justifies the invasion by framing it as a war waged against a state that is either fascist or heavily fascist-influenced. They point to the presence of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in the Ukrainian National Guard as proof. The Tweets spread the common Russian government talking point that Ukraine is run by a fascist regime.

Source: Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics

One has to wonder if these esteemed academics bothered to delve into factual historical information about Ukrainian “fascism.” Following the US-orchestrated violent coup in 2014, these ultranationalist “fascists” (akin to Nazi ethnic cleansing racists) gained influence within the Ukrainian government and military.

Three members of the Nazi-saluting Svoboda were positioned as members of the first post-coup government. The co-founder of Svoboda, Andriy Paruby, was parliamentary speaker for five years. He founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine along with Oleh Tyahnybok (seen giving a Nazi salute in the above-linked photo). The party’s Wolfsangel logo (basically a rearranged Nazi swastika) and its ultranationalistic philosophy are not “Russian disinformation,” but indisputable historical facts.

According to the propaganda media in the West, Mr. Paruby has changed his ways and has become a respectable member of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament. He was a leader of the so-called (and laughably titled) “Revolution of Dignity” (the US-orchestrated Maidan Revolution) that violently overthrew the elected leader of the country, Viktor Yanukovych.

Paruby is an admirer of Stepan Bandera, a Nazi Germany collaborator responsible for mass murdering Jews, Russians, communists, Poles, and other minority groups during WWII.

Despite the counter-reality pronouncements of narrative pushing academics tenured at “prestigious” universities, the fact is the ultranationalist movement in Ukraine has grown in scope and influence.

The Times of Israel reported in January, a month before Russia’s special operation to eliminate the Ukraine’s genocidal and Bandera worshipping ultranationalists:

Expressions of admiration for Bandera and other collaborators have increased in scope and status following the 2014 revolution in Ukraine, which toppled the regime of Viktor Yanukovych amid claims that he is a Russian stooge, and triggered an armed conflict with Russia.

Although the corporate propaganda media in the West will not tell you about the influence of ultranationalism in a revival of “Ukrainian identity,” Risyad Sadzikri of the Indonesian Student Association For International Studies (ISAFIS), writes,

Since the Euromaidan protest toppled the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich government in 2013–2014, many ultranationalist organisations founded or gained notoriety in Ukrainian politics. For example, the Svoboda Party is known for its radical stance in the parliament of Ukraine (the Verkhovna Rada) even before the Euromaidan incident. The Right Sector (Pravyi Sektor) is also known for fighting the riot police and amassing assault weapons in the protest.

It should be noted that these “fascist” (racist) political parties are not uniformly supported by the people of the Ukraine. During the 2019 Ukraine Parliamentary Election, the Svoboda Party only achieved 2.15 per cent of votes. This dismal political outcome, however, is of little relevance in the most corrupt country in Europe.

According to ISAFIS,

…the ultranationalist already has a place in the politics of Ukraine, especially when it comes to street politics and violence. Ultranationalist organisations and militias often attack human rights activists, LGBTQ+, or even Jews and Romani people in the street. The tragedy has occurred repeatedly that such violence is deemed a usual routine in Ukrainian cities, damaging the image of Ukraine in the international community. Worse, the police act passively towards the ultranationalist violence and usually prefer to stop the counter-protest against the ultranationalist.

Canada, not unlike the US, claims to be a “democracy” (this would naturally include the right to free speech and lively debate without censorship), and yet its current leader, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has acted like a dictator as of late. Trudeau insists the Freedom Convoy opposed to vaccinating truckers crossing the US-Canada border are “extremists.”

From corporate media propaganda outlet MSN:

Trudeau’s Federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino blamed extremist groups for helping organize the protests, and repeated allegations that some involved wanted to overthrow the Liberal government.

This is the real “fake news” and “disinformation.” It is, as well, part of an overall objective in the West to silence any criticism of the state, its policies, no matter how lethal or detrimental, and characterize all opposition as extremism that must be dealt with harsh retribution.

This, contrary to what the egghead academics at the University of Calgary have written, is the real definition of fascism—authoritarian suppression of all criticism and the criminalization of free speech, a process now well underway.

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***

Scientific studies show huge numbers of bots are spreading pro-Western disinformation on social media, demonizing China, Russia, and Iran. 90% of bots posting about the proxy war in Ukraine push pro-NATO propaganda.

Two studies published this August expose how large numbers of fake accounts are spreading pro-Western and pro-NATO propaganda on social media, while demonizing US geopolitical adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran.

An investigation by scholars in Australia found that more than 90% of bots posting on Twitter about the proxy war in Ukraine were promoting pro-Ukraine propaganda, whereas just 7% were promoting pro-Russia propaganda.

A separate report co-authored by researchers at California’s Stanford University and a notorious US government contractor called Graphika revealed a large propaganda network on social media “that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives in the Middle East and Central Asia.”

The study detailed a “series of covert campaigns” on social media, which spread disinformation and fake news in a way that “consistently advanced narratives promoting the interests of the United States and its allies while opposing countries including Russia, China, and Iran.”

These two investigations are part of a growing body of evidence showing how Western governments and their allies have weaponized social media platforms and turned them into weapons in a new cold war.

90% of bots posting about Ukraine proxy spread anti-Russian propaganda

A scientific study published by researchers from Australia’s University of Adelaide found that, of the bots on Twitter posting about the proxy war in Ukraine, 90.16% spread pro-Ukraine propaganda, while only 6.8% spread pro-Russia propaganda. (3.04% of the bots showed what they called “mixed behaviour,” publishing both pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian messages.)

The scholars, from the university’s School of Mathematical Sciences, cannot in any way be considered pro-Russian. In fact, two of the co-authors disclosed that their work is funded by the Australian government through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects.

But the academics set out to investigate how “Both sides in the Ukrainian conflict use the online information environment to influence geopolitical dynamics and sway public opinion,” and they let the facts speak for themselves.

The researchers analyzed more than 5.2 million tweets, retweets, quote tweets, and replies between February 23 and March 8 that used the hashtags #(I)StandWithUkraine, #(I)StandWithRussia, #(I)StandWithZelenskyy, #(I)StandWithPutin, #(I)SupportUkraine, or #(I)SupportRussia. (The scholars used both the versions #StandWithUkraine and #IStandWithUkraine, with and without the “I.”)

Ukraine Russia bots graph

They found that the vast majority of bots tweeted pro-Ukraine propaganda, specifically the hashtag #StandWithUkraine.

Their study noted that the proxy war in Ukraine “emphasises the role social media plays in modern-day warfare, with conflict occurring in both the physical and information environments.”

“Social media is a critical tool in information warfare,” the academics wrote.

They cited another investigation that found that 19% of overall interactions on Twitter are directed from bots to real accounts, the vast majority in the form of retweets (74%) and mentions (25%).

Pro-Western propaganda network on social media exposed

A separate study also published in August offered further insight into how social media is weaponized to spread pro-Western propaganda.

Titled “Unheard Voice: Evaluating five years of pro-Western covert influence operations,” the report was co-authored by the Stanford Internet Observatory and an infamous intelligence company called Graphika.

Graphika is notorious for working closely with the US government, contracting with the Pentagon, DARPA, and the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Given its links to US intelligence agencies, Graphika’s role in this study could be seen as an example of a “limited hangout” – it provides a small glimpse into US information warfare activities, while covering up the vast majority of its operations.

Although it is very limited in scope and has clear biases, the document does show how pro-Western propaganda networks on social media accuse China, Russia, and Iran of being “imperialist” while praising the US government.

The pro-Western disinformation operations primarily used Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp (which are owned by Meta), as well as YouTube, Twitter, and Telegram.

Some of the fake accounts involved in the coordinated propaganda campaign posed as “independent news outlets,” “political analysts,” or “teachers.”

The Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika succiently described the operation as “Fake News, Fake Faces, Fake Followers.”

They wrote in the executive summary of their report (emphasis added):

Our joint investigation found an interconnected web of accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and five other social media platforms that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives in the Middle East and Central Asia. The platforms’ datasets appear to cover a series of covert campaigns over a period of almost five years rather than one homogeneous operation.

These campaigns consistently advanced narratives promoting the interests of the United States and its allies while opposing countries including Russia, China, and Iran. The accounts heavily criticized Russia in particular for the deaths of innocent civilians and other atrocities its soldiers committed in pursuit of the Kremlin’s “imperial ambitions” following its invasion of Ukraine in February this year. To promote this and other narratives, the accounts sometimes shared news articles from U.S. government-funded media outlets, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and links to websites sponsored by the U.S. military.

The document explained that the propaganda accounts “created fake personas with GAN-generated faces, posed as independent media outlets, leveraged memes and short-form videos, attempted to start hashtag campaigns, and launched online petitions.”

The Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika described their investigation as “the most extensive case of covert pro-Western IO [influence operations] on social media to be reviewed and analyzed by open-source researchers to date.”

The firms acknowledged that, “With few exceptions, the study of modern IO has overwhelmingly focused on activity linked to” Western adversaries “in countries such as Russia, China, and Iran.”

Some of the language used in the report reflects the blatant bias of the firms, which referred to China, Russia, and Iran disparagingly as “authoritarian regimes.”

Despite the many limitations of the study, however, the fact that it was co-published by an elite university and a notorious intelligence-linked US government contractor makes it impossible to deny that Western government are using social media platforms to spread disinformation and wage information warfare against their geopolitical adversaries.

Central Asia propaganda accuses China and Russia of ‘imperialism’ while praising the US

The Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika investigation analyzed the pro-Western disinformation campaign by dividing its work into three regions: Central Asia (primarily in the Russian language), Iran (in Persian), and the Middle East (in Arabic).

Although these pro-Western propaganda operations were conducted in different languages, many of their talking points and tactics overlapped.

The Central Asia-themed disinformation was mostly in Russian, although some accounts posted in regional languages like Kazakh and Kyrgyz.

In addition to using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Twitter, and Telegram, the Central Asia propaganda also employed the Russian social media apps VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki.

social media propaganda US Tajikistan

The report found that the disinformation operation involved creating a “sham media outlet” focused on Central Asia called Intergazeta. It “repeatedly copied news material with and without credit from reputable Western and pro-Western sources in Russian, such as Meduza.io and the BBC Russian Service.”

Other accounts in the propaganda network “copied or translated content from U.S.-funded entities, such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the independent Kazakh news outlet informburo.kz.”

They also created petitions using the US-based website Avaaz. One demanded that Kazakhstan should leave the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military alliance with Russia.

Another petition called on Kyrgyzstan to minimize Chinese influence. And two more insisted that Kazakhstan should ban Russian TV channels.

social media propaganda petitions Kazah ban Russian TV

The Central Asia disinformation network accused Russia and China of “imperialism,” while constantly spreading pro-US propaganda.

The fake accounts demonized Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, its military intervention in Syria, and its security partnership with several African nations.

The Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika report noted that the disinformation operation also “concentrated on China and the treatment of Chinese Muslim minorities, particularly the Uighurs in Xinjiang province.”

The fake accounts accused China of “genocide” against its Uyghur minority, and spread fake news stories alleging that Beijing harvest the organs of Muslims.

social media propaganda China Uyghurs organs

Persian-language anti-Iran propaganda network

The report identified another network of propaganda focused on Afghanistan. These fake accounts attacked Iran and accused it of having too much influence in the neighboring country. To do so, they posted disinformation from websites supported by the US military.

This propaganda included outlandish fake news, alleging for instance that Iran is trafficking the organs of Afghan refugees, or claiming that Tehran is supposedly forcing Afghan refugees to fight in militias in Syria and Yemen.

social media propaganda Iran Afghan refugees organs

Like the Central Asia-focused disinformation operation, this anti-Iran network included “accounts claiming to be independent media outlets, [which] shared U.S.-funded Persian-language media,” from US state propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Radio Farda and VOA Farsi.

The fake accounts also shared “content from sources linked to the U.S. military,” such as websites sponsored by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

And they reposted material from Iran International, an anti-Iranian propaganda outlet based in Britain and funded by the Saudi monarchy.

The Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika wrote that this propaganda campaign was “critical of the Iranian government and often used a sarcastic tone to mock Iranian state media and other parts of the state apparatus.”

Some of the fake accounts engaged with actual Iranians on Twitter, trying to get real people involved in the operation.

They emphasized attacks on Tehran’s foreign policy. The report noted, “Anti-government accounts criticized Iran’s domestic and international policies and highlighted how the government’s costly international interventions undermined its ability to care for its citizens.”

The fake accounts excoriated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), demonized resistance groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, and condemned Iran for its political alliance with Russia.

social media propaganda anti Iran IRGC cartoon

Arabic-language Middle East propaganda network

Another disinformation network identified in the Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika report focused on spreading Arabic-language propaganda related to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.

These fake accounts claimed Iran had too much influence in the region. They demonized Yemen’s revolutionary group Ansarallah (also known as the Houthi movement), and attacked Russia’s foreign policy.

The report noted that some “accounts on Twitter posed as Iraqi activists in order to accuse Iran of threatening Iraq’s water security and flooding the country with crystal meth.”

“Other assets highlighted Houthi-planted landmines killing civilians and promoted allegations that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would lead to a global food crisis,” it added.

social media propaganda Iran Iraq disease

Some of the accounts falsely posed as Iraqis, and compared Iran to a “disease” destroying Iraq.

At the same time, they demonized Iraqi Shia militias and portrayed them as puppets of Tehran.

The propaganda campaign accused Iran of an “imperialist project in the Middle East.”

The report noted that this disinformation operation also “amplified the narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin planned to induce a global food crisis that would hit less economically developed countries the hardest.”

At the same time, the fake accounts praised the United States, and particularly its soft-power arm USAID.

Part of the disinformation network even spread propaganda heroizing the US soldiers who are illegally occupying Syrian territory.

social media propaganda US soldiers Syria

*

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This article was first published September 26, 2022

***

Commemorating the September 11, 1973 Chile Coup d’Etat

On the morning of September 21, 1976, a car bomb took the lives of Orlando Letelier, Minister of Foreign Relations and Ambassador to the U.S. under Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende (1970-1973), and Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a 25-year-old fundraiser for the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a left-wing think-tank in Washington, D.C.

The Chevrolet Malibu in which they were traveling exploded near Sheridan Circle in Washington, D.C., on Embassy Row. Ronni’s husband Michael survived the bombing with minor wounds, cursing the “fascists” who had killed Letelier and his young wife.

Two years after the bombing, the U.S. Justice Department prosecuted nine co-conspirators, including five Cuban-Americans associated with the right-wing anti-Castro movement, along with an American expatriate living in Chile, Michael Vernon Townley, an explosives expert and right-wing terrorist born in 1942 in Waterloo, Iowa who worked for the Chilean security services (DINA) and CIA

Townley wound up accepting a plea bargain that limited his sentence to ten years (he only served five before being freed in the Witness Protection program). He saw himself as a soldier in the fight against communism and Letelier as an enemy combatant who had been carrying on a battle against the Chilean government.[2]

Townley claimed that DINA director Manuel Contreras, a CIA asset from 1974 to 1977, had ordered Letelier’s assassination through his chief of operations, Pedro Espinoza, and that a DINA operative named Armando Fernández, had helped him surveil Letelier.[3]

According to historian Alan McPherson, Contreras—who in 1995 was sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in the Letelier and Moffitt murders—was “an archetypal Cold War psychopath.” He harbored “a murderous paranoia about “subversives” and was “responsible for the murder or ‘disappearance’ of about a third of the roughly 3,000 people killed by [Augusto] Pinochet’s [fascist] regime.”

Preventing the Threat of a Good Example

An admirer of Spanish fascist Francisco Franco, Pinochet came to power in a CIA-backed coup in 1973 that ousted Salvador Allende.

Allende was a medical doctor who had helped found Chile’s Socialist Party in 1933. He had become the Nixon administration’s public enemy number one because of what Noam Chomsky once termed the “threat of a good example”—namely the institution of socialist policies that would inspire other nations to develop their economies independently from Washington.

After his election as President, Allende emphasized that Chile was “not Cuba in 1959,” in that “the right has not been crushed here by popular uprising. It has only narrowly been beaten in elections. Its power remains intact. It still has its industries, banks, land, and its allies in the army.”

Allende as such outlined a six-year program of gradual social and economic change to lay the foundations for a legal revolution from capitalism to socialism. Its aim was to establish public ownership over the country’s mines and factories, whose profits would find their way into public investment and social services rather than into the pockets of the wealthy.[4]

On December 21, 1970, a month and a half after his inauguration, President Allende proposed a constitutional amendment to nationalize Chilean copper because, as he explained, “the total value of all the capital accumulated in Chile over the last four hundred years has left its frontiers.”[5]

At the time, two major U.S. copper corporations, Anaconda and Kennecott, controlled 80% of the Chilean copper industry, which accounted for about four-fifths of Chile’s export earnings.[6] Allende was willing to pay compensation, though Anaconda and Kennecott wanted millions more than what the Chilean government felt was just.[7]

Lessons from the 1973 Coup in Chile - Part 1 - Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

Source: dsausa.org

Even before Allende’s inauguration, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon ordered a massive covert intervention in Chile code-named FUBELT, whose end goal was regime change.[8]

In collaboration with Chile’s upper-middle and upper classes, the CIA was committed to sabotaging Chile’s economy by fomenting strikes and “creating a coup climate by propaganda, disinformation and terrorist activities to provide a stimulus and pretext for the military to move.”[9]

CIA Operation FUBELT To Undermine Allende | Forging Memory

President Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his National Security Adviser and Secretary of State on October 1, 1973. [Source: forgingmemory.org]

When the coup was carried out on September 11, 1973, Allende was murdered. The Chilean military subsequently carried out hundreds of executions by firing squad and mass arrests.[10]

The Swedish Ambassador to Chile at the time, Harald Edelstam, who helped hundreds escape persecution, estimated that 10,000-15,000 people were killed in the first three months after the coup as the Chilean military had orders to kill anyone who resisted.[11]

Among those who were detained and narrowly escaped death at Dawson Island concentration camp was Letelier, a lawyer and economist who had first started his career working in Chile’s Department of Copper when he developed his support for Allende’s nationalization policy.[12]

One of Many Victims of Operation Condor

According to Letelier, the day after the coup, he was taken out of his jail cell blindfolded before a firing squad, though one of the sergeants yelled “Halt!” and his life was spared—temporarily.[13]

After his release to Venezuela, Letelier moved to Washington, D.C., to work for IPS, where he developed a study of U.S.-Chilean relations during the Allende years and began to plan for a resistance movement to General Pinochet with other exiled Chilean Socialist Party leaders.[14]

DINA’s assassination campaign was part of Operation Condor—a CIA-driven effort modeled after the Phoenix Program in Vietnam in which Southern Cone intelligence services coordinated their efforts to hunt down left-wing dissidents, including civilian politicians.

Victims of Operation Condor, by Country

Victims of Operation Condor. [Source: bennorton.com]

The U.S. government provided crucial support for Operation Condor through police training programs and the establishment of blacklists and a communications infrastructure based in the Panama Canal Zone, as well as the political backing of U.S. officials, chief among them former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

operation condor graphic

Source: bennorton.com

In September 1974, in a prelude to the assassination of Letelier, Michael Townley built a car bomb to assassinate General Carlos Prats, Pinochet’s predecessor as chief of the Chilean Armed Forces and an Allende loyalist who had the potential for leading a progressive-military coalition to overthrow Pinochet.

Letelier was the next target because he had been a) effective in cultivating alliance with Democratic Party senators and in lobbying for the cut-off of U.S. military aid to Chile; b) had helped initiate a Dutch embargo of Chilean products; c) had denounced Pinochet’s atrocities at a large rally in Madison Square Garden; and d) was working to develop plans for a new world economy that would undercut the power of large corporations.

Just before his death, Letelier published an article in The Nation magazine arguing that the human rights abuses of the Pinochet regime were inextricably linked to the institution of free-market economic reforms promoted by “the Chicago Boys”—or conservative economists who followed the ideas of Milton Friedman.[16]

Complicity of U.S. Government and CIA

The U.S. government was complicit in Letelier’s murder because of the Nixon and Ford administration’s strong support for General Pinochet’s regime and covert support for the deadly Operation Condor, of which Letelier’s murder was a part.

The same year that Letelier was assassinated, Pinochet had personally complained to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about Letelier’s activities, in a conversation in which Kissinger assured the dictator that “we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do.”

Michael Townley had learned explosives skills from Frank Sturgis and CIA experts in Miami, and worked in Chile under David Atlee Phillips in an effort to block Allende’s election in 1970.

The CIA not only trained the main culprits, but also aided in the cover-up.

During the FBI investigation, it withheld information that Deputy Director Vernon Walters, a few weeks before the assassination, had learned about a covert mission in Washington by two Chilean intelligence officers, Juan Williams and Alejandro Romeral.

The CIA, then under the directorship of George H.W. Bush, had received a phone call in August 1976 establishing the presence of agents Williams and Romeral in Washington.

After the killing, the CIA promoted disinformation that DINA was innocent and that Letelier and Moffitt had been killed by a leftist so Letelier could be transformed into a martyr.[17]

A Death Not Entirely in Vain

Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt’s assassination at the hands of CIA-trained forces provides a chilling reminder of the blowback associated with U.S. foreign policies during the Cold War.

The U.S. support for fascist regimes abroad in that period resulted in a huge spike in international terrorism that extended to the U.S. itself.

Condor-type operations could easily re-emerge today with the advent of a new Cold War, and as part of a backlash against the ascendancy of the political left in South America.

Washington’s influence, however, and appeal of fascist ideas in Latin America are not as strong as they once were.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is an heir of the Pinochet tradition, is more and more isolated in the region and poised to lose power in October elections, while socialist governments have survived recent CIA-backed coup attempts in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia.

Chile is currently governed, meanwhile, by a young left-leaning president, Gabriel Boric, who has repudiated not only Pinochet but also the Chicago Boys, saying that, “if Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave.”

This would have been music to the ears of Orlando Letelier, whose struggle for a more just economic order may yet be fulfilled.

*

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

  1. According to Spartacus Educational, Townley’s father Vernon had worked for the CIA in the Philippines and was appointed head of the Ford Motor Company in Chile. In 1958, he helped fund the campaign of conservative Jorge Alessandri who narrowly defeated Salvador Allende in Chile’s presidential election. 

  2. John Dinges and Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 362. 
  3. Alan McPherson, in Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet’s Terror State to Justice (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), provides evidence that Pinochet himself gave the orders for the assassination. 
  4. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 27. 
  5. Idem. Allende also established a sweeping land-reform program designed to redistribute land to the poor and took measures to nationalize Chile’s banks. Economic productivity increased during his tenure and unemployment declined until the CIA joined forces with Chile’s upper-middle and upper classes to sabotage the successful socialist experiment. 
  6. Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability(New York: The New Press, 2003), 84. 
  7. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 47. 
  8. Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 1, 2. 
  9. Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 14. 
  10. Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 153. When Mississippi Senator James Eaatland told Pinochet on a visit to Washington that he wanted to “hang all the communists” and “put all rabble rousers in jail,” Pinochet replied to him: “that’s exactly what I’m doing.” In Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 302, 303. 
  11. Harald Edelstam interview by Phil Ochs, July 31, 1974, Woody Guthrie Museum Archive, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Characterizing Allende as a “peaceful, cultivated and humane man,” Edelstam told Ochs that the Chilean military used tanks and bombs to destroy textile and other factories where workers tried to resist the coup. 
  12. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 31, 32. 
  13. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 66, 67. 
  14. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 87. 
  15. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 158, 161. Leighton survived the attack but his wife was left paralyzed and he retreated from politics afterwards and the Christian Democrat-Popular Unity Alliance withered. 
  16. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 7, 11, 23, 171. 
  17. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 243. 

Featured image: Source: americasquarterly.org

Rafael Correa: ‘They Have Already Destroyed Assange’

September 26th, 2022 by Président de l'Équateur Rafael Correa

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***

Declassified sits down with the former president of Ecuador who granted Julian Assange asylum in London. He talks about dealing with the British, how the US seeks to control his country and the lawfare campaign against him.

On a cloudy Saturday morning in the middle of June 2012, Australian journalist Julian Assange walked into the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge, London.

He was a hunted man. Over the past two years, he’d been revealing the secrets, in alliance with the world’s largest newspapers, of the US’s so-called War on Terror, an extraordinary explosion of violence which had been raging for more than a decade.

Britain’s Supreme Court had days before approved his extradition to Sweden to be questioned over sexual assault allegations, for which he was never charged. The case was dropped in 2019 after a review of the evidence.

This obscure embassy in London had barely garnered a single line in the news media in its history. But over the next seven years it would become a global story involving assassination plots, industrial levels of surveillance, and finally the British police forcibly evicting Assange in April 2019.

When Assange walked into the embassy, the president of Ecuador was Rafael Correa, a US-trained economist who had assumed power five years before in 2007. He was a key figure in the “pink tide” of left-wing governments that took office across Latin America in the 2000s and would serve for a decade.

Correa is now living in Brussels, Belgium, after himself being granted political asylum to avoid persecution by Ecuador, the state he once headed.

In an ironic twist of fate, Correa and Assange, who has been in maximum-security Belmarsh prison for three and a half years, now share a lawyer as they both battle extradition. We are meeting at the offices of this lawyer. A giant Free Assange sign greets visitors at the entrance.

In a dark wood panelled room looking out onto the street, Correa tells me of that June day his foreign minister told him Assange had entered the embassy in London. “We started studying his case,” Correa says.

In August 2012 – “after two months of studying his dossier” – Correa’s government granted Assange asylum to protect him from persecution by the US government for his journalistic activities.

“There was not any possibility for him to have a fair process, that was not possible,” Correa says. “I refer to the United States, there was too much public pressure, government pressure, media pressure against him.”

British negotiations

Over the next five years, his government would enter protracted negotiations with the British authorities, who had enacted a secret campaign, codenamed Operation Pelican, to get Assange out of the embassy. Correa is withering about the UK’s attitude to these negotiations.

“They are historically an imperial power so they believe sometimes they continue with this power,” he says of the British. “Anyway, against us that doesn’t work. And, yes, they were very rude. They wanted to impose their laws, their criteria, and we didn’t accept that.”

He continues:

“We have, as a sovereign country, the right to grant asylum to anybody without giving any explanation. But we gave an explanation because we considered the British, the American government, the Swedish government, but we didn’t have to do that.”

Correa says British pressure escalated soon after Assange entered the embassy.

“There was a moment where the British authorities threatened us that they would enter our embassy,” Correa says. “But that was against international rights and absolutely illegal, but also silly…Why? Because they have many more embassies around the world than we do.”

He pauses.

“So if they gave to the world such a bad example, the worst consequences will be against them. Because later, without any pretext, any reason, anybody could enter, in any country, their embassies.”

Ironically, the British pressure was much more blunt than Correa was receiving from the Americans.

“Frankly, I don’t remember the American government threatening us like the British government when they said that they can enter our embassy,” Correa says. “We didn’t receive from the American government, as long as I remember, any threat like this.”

With Assange granted asylum by a friendly country like Ecuador, he should have been allowed safe passage out of the UK.

“Of course, the British are used to being obeyed, not to negotiate with a third-world country,” Correa says. “They tried to deal with us like a subordinate country.”

Then Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patiño with Julian Assange at the embassy in London, 16 June 2013. (Photo: Xavier Granja Cedeño / Ecuador foreign ministry)

‘No possibility of fair process’

Correa tells me he has only ever spoken to Assange once, when he was interviewed by him for The Julian Assange Show, a short-lived interview series mostly done before he went into the embassy.

“I don’t know Julian Assange,” Correa tells me. “I have never talked to him on the telephone or met him in person. You want my honest personal position? I don’t agree with all the things that Julian Assange did, but that is irrelevant.”

He adds:

“The main point here is that he didn’t have any possibility of having a fair legal process in the United States. So absolutely we had a sovereign right to grant Julian Assange political asylum.”

But Correa is not optimistic about the end goal of the Americans and British now they have their hands on him.

“They want to kill him,” he says. “They are destroying him. They already destroyed him. My lawyer, and we are having this interview in my lawyer’s office in Brussels, well, he’s also Julian Assange’s lawyer and he can tell you that he’s absolutely destroyed as a human being. So they already destroyed Julian Assange.”

Correa continues:

“What they want to do is make an example of Julian Assange: you can see what happened with someone who dared to reveal our secrets. But what secrets did Julian Assange reveal? War crimes. We have to thank him. Instead of that they are killing him.”

Will Assange ever be free again? I ask. “I am very pessimistic. I don’t think so. They want to make an example of Assange: you cannot pass these red lines, you cannot deal with us, you cannot reveal our crimes. That is the message.”

He continues:

“I realise very well, I was president for ten years, that countries must have confidential information. But there are limits. You cannot hide war crimes. And even more, you can find a double standard here. Why? Because strictly speaking, Julian Assange didn’t publish the information.

“The information was published by the New York Times, by Der Spiegel in Germany, by El Pais in Spain, the Guardian in the UK. Why are they not being punished, being persecuted? Because they are the strongest part of the chain. They selected the weakest part of the chain: Julian Assange.”

‘Captured by the CIA’

When Assange was in the Ecuadorian embassy it likely became the most surveilled premises in the world. In June, the British government admitted that Julian Assange’s long-time lawyer Jennifer Robinson was likely the subject of “covert surveillance which breached her human rights”. Ecuadorian officials inevitably received the same treatment.

“We knew that moment there – and we continue to know – that we were under surveillance,” Correa says. “Even more, we engaged a special security company in order to protect the embassy, to protect Julian Assange, it was called UC Global from Spain. And they betrayed us. They sold the information to the CIA. They were, if you want, captured by the CIA.”

It was later revealed that it was worse than surveillance. In September 2021, Yahoo News published a story based on the testimony of 30 ex-US officials showing the CIA had sketched plans to kidnap or kill Assange in London. Correa says he read the article. Did it shock him?

“Of course, but it didn’t surprise me because we are used to that. This is Latin America’s history.” He adds: “One thing is very clear: for the American government Julian Assange is an enemy” and they want to “destroy his freedoms, his reputation, and perhaps his life”.

It has been striking over recent years how Latin American leaders have led the fight for Assange’s freedom, from Cristina Kirchner in Argentina to Evo Morales in Bolivia.

Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has even shown the infamous Collateral Murder video in his presidential press conference, offered Assange asylum and handed President Biden a letter when they met pleading for Assange’s release.

Why is it this continent leading this press freedom case of world-historical importance?

“I don’t have an answer for that,” Correa says. “I am surprised, shocked, because Julian Assange was betrayed by journalists around the world, by governments around the world, by his own government, the Australian government.”

He adds:

“If we had an Ecuadorian citizen suffering these kinds of pressures, persecution, illegal situation, our duty is to defend him, but the Australian government doesn’t care.”

Press freedom 

When Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador, much of the British press was looking for attack lines. One major one was that Correa was cracking down on press freedom in Ecuador.

The Financial Times, for example, wrote: “Assange was overlooking Correa’s worsening record when it comes to respecting freedom of the press”.

“That is propaganda,” Correa tells me. “Can you give me an example of an attack against press freedom? But because we always looked for the truth, because we used to respond to the lies of some journalists, we are against press freedom…It’s because we are against lies, against manipulation.”

Correa’s administration was trying to break up the oligarchal control of the media, which is particularly pronounced in Latin America.

In fact, one example of the attack on press freedom cited by the FT was an anti-monopoly law which proposed shareholders and directors of media companies with more than 6% of national media companies should divest to other non-media interests.

“You have to be absolutely aware that the instrument used to maintain the status quo in Latin America is the media,” Correa tells me. “You have to ask this question: to whom does this media belong? To the elites in order to continue with the control of our countries. And they are going to be against any government trying to change the really hard, tough Latin American situation. For instance, we continue to be one of the most unequal regions in the world.”

Regional strategy

When Correa stepped down in 2017, the candidate nominated to fight the next election for his Alianza País party was Lenín Moreno. Moreno had been Correa’s vice president for six years, but after he won the 2017 election, he flipped.

Correa’s relatively moderate social democratic programme saw extreme poverty in Ecuador nearly halve, inequality fall dramatically, and social spending as a percentage of GDP nearly double.

But Moreno began steadily undoing the progressive reforms of the Correa administration, reintegrating Ecuador into the Washington Consensus economic infrastructure—and getting close to the US.

A campaign of what has been termed “lawfare” was launched against officials from the Correa administration. Many had to flee the country.

Moreno’s successor as vice president, Jorge Glas, was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison on bribery charges. He was released in April this year, but was rearrested the following month. Correa himself was targeted.

It’s a regional strategy, not just against me,” Correa says. “It’s against [former Brazilian president] Lula, against Evo Morales. Cristina Kirchner…So when you have this kind of real strategy, there is no coincidence. It’s a regional strategy and that can happen only if the American embassies in our countries are backing that.”

Correa believes his administration’s granting of asylum to Assange is partly to blame.

“Of course part of this political persecution that I have received is because of Julian Assange. Also I cancelled the agreement to have an American base in our country in 2009. I stopped that. These are things that the American authorities do not forgive.”

In 2009, Correa refused to renew the lease for the US military base at the coastal city of Manta in western Ecuador. “We’ll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami — an Ecuadorian base,” he said. The Americans didn’t agree.

Any left-wing leader in Latin America knows that their biggest foe is the US, which has designated the Western Hemisphere as its area of influence since 1823. But during recent history, US methods of ridding the region of unwanted governments have diversified away from straight military coups like Guatemala in 1954 or Chile in 1973.

“It’s very difficult to have, especially in South America, a military invasion from the United States, that is not possible,” Correa says. “But there are more fine, if you want, ways in order to destabilise a government that they don’t like. For instance, financing the opposition groups, for instance, NGOs, and they receive this money, the financing, from the National Endowment for Democracy that everybody knows is the financial branch of the CIA.”

President Trump meets with Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, in the Oval Office of the White House, 12 February 2020. (Photo: Joyce N. Boghosian / White House)

Lawfare

But Correa says it’s not just the US that wants him and his legacy destroyed. “There is also the media hate, the elite hate…to try to conserve, to maintain the status quo. We are a danger for the status quo. We are a danger for their privileges.”

In April 2020, an Ecuadorian court sentenced Correa to eight years in prison after finding him guilty on corruption charges. Correa was accused over a $6,000 paymentto his private account, which he says was a loan.

“Eight years prison for a payment of $6,000,” he says. “One of the proofs is that I received from a common fund that we had at the presidency. They said that they were bribes. $6,000 put in my personal account in a public bank. But they have nothing. It’s just a set up against us.”

The sentence came hours before he was going to register himself as a candidate in the 2021 presidential election.

“In this way, they prevented me from returning to my country,” he says. “They prevented me from being a candidate and they made Lasso president.”

Guillermo Lasso, a rightwing banker who was embroiled in the Pandora Papers offshore tax leaks, narrowly won the 2021 election.

“They are not just stealing our reputation, our stability, they are stealing our democracies,” Correa says. “But because all these attacks are against left-wing leaders, nobody cares.”

The same thing happened in Brazil when Lula was put in prison in 2018 on corruption charges, which were eventually shown to be politically motivated. He was in prison for the elections the same year.

“They prevented Lula from being a candidate and they made Bolsonaro, a fascist, president of Brazil,” Correa adds.

The betrayal

Up until 2017, Moreno had been an ally and a key figure in the ‘Citizens’ Revolution’ that transformed Ecuador during Correa’s 10 years in charge. Why did he suddenly flip when he became president and try to destroy the whole movement he had been part of?

“One of the strongest hypotheses is that Lenín Moreno is corrupted,” Correa tells me. “We realise very well now. We didn’t know that moment there, but now we know that he had a secret account in Panama. We have the number, we have everything.

“So perhaps the American government knew that before us, and they put Moreno under control. Otherwise it’s very difficult to understand what was the switch of Moreno from our political programme, progressive programme, to the far right programme and to be absolutely subordinate to the United States.”

He continues:

“One proof is that just one week after Lenín Moreno took office, he received Paul Manafort, the campaign chief of Donald Trump, and Moreno offered to Manafort to give Assange to the American government.

“You have several testimonies of people who were in this meeting in Ecuador in the presidential palace one week after Lenín Moreno took office. So that moment there, he was negotiating with Julian Assange already.”

In April 2019, likely as part of this deal, Moreno rescinded Assange’s asylum and invited the British police into the Ecuadorian embassy to snatch the WikiLeaks founder. It was a watershed moment.

“The country was humiliated,” Correa says. “Nobody else will trust Latin American countries in order to look for a political asylum. The damage is huge. It’s huge and lasting. And, even more, it is against our constitution. You can see the Article 41 of our Constitution. This article explicitly prohibits giving to the persecutors someone persecuted. So he [Moreno] broke our constitution.

“But there is no problem as long as you are acting according to the United States government or according to the media, the elites, and against Correa, that is perhaps the most important point.”

It is clear that the pressure and stress of the extradition case and the turmoil in Ecuador has had a personal impact on Correa. He speaks quickly, rushing to express his defence against the constant attacks. He has a noticeable nervous energy, tapping his foot on the floor incessantly.

I ask Correa how he feels about it all.

“For me it’s very hard,” he says. “It’s very sad, very disappointing, that it happened. We have to continue fighting in order to recover the country.”

Charles and Camilla

Correa says that Britain had a particularly colonial way of dealing with his country.

“We tried to have a good relationship with any country in the world but in a framework of mutual respect,” he tells me. “But it’s clear that the UK disrespects a country like Ecuador, it was not just the case of Julian Assange.”

Recently, Evo Morales told Declassified that Britain still has a “totally colonial mindset”. I ask Correa if he agrees. “Unfortunately, yes,” he replies and then gives another example.

“In 2009, the British ambassador called me and told me that Prince Charles with Camilla will come to the country to visit our Galapagos Islands. We were very honoured to have Prince Charles and Camilla. But the British ambassador not just told me, but ordered me, to receive Prince Charles on Sunday. And I told him, ‘Come on, ambassador, Sunday is my family day. I work from Monday until Saturday and try to dedicate my Sundays to my family.’”

British ambassador Linda Cross insisted on Sunday. Correa then remonstrated “but he’s coming for vacation so we can receive him on Monday, we have a very nice ceremony at the Presidential Palace every Monday, the changing of the Presidential Guard. It was a very beautiful ceremony. We can invite Prince Charles with Camilla. There are a lot of people in the central park in front of the presidential palace. He can say hello to them.”

Ambassador Cross continued to insist it must be Sunday.

“Finally, I sent my vice president to receive Prince Charles and Camilla, and I realised very well that they didn’t forgive me because next year I had to go to London. I was invited by the London School of Economics and other universities to give some speeches. And nobody received me as president of Ecuador at the airport in London.”

This treatment is indicative of a continent that doesn’t exercise the British government, says Correa.

“We are not important for the UK government.”

*

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Matt Kennard is chief investigator at Declassified UK. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. Follow him on Twitter @kennardmatt

Featured image: Former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa. (Photo: Phil Miller / Declassified UK)

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***

 

 

Australia has a mixed relationship with the United Nations Human Rights Committee.  Irritation, dismissal and even the occasional openly hostile comment, have registered.  But in 1994, the Toonen decision filtered through the Australian legal process, leading the federal government to remove archaically noxious provisions in the Tasmanian criminal code criminalising sodomy.

The UNHRC has since found Australia’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to be patchy.  In November 2017, the body released its observations in a five-year review of the Commonwealth’s record noting glaring problems of protection in such areas as refugees and asylum seekers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, gender-based violence, the rights of LGBTI people and racism and religious intolerance.

The then Australian Human Rights Commissioner Edward Santow was left red-faced in making his responding remarks.

“The core message from the UN Human Rights Committee was that we must work harder and smarter to protect the human rights of all people in Australia.”

Since that report, climate change activism, conducted through various legal systems and processes, has become increasingly influential.  The plight of specifically vulnerable populations, including First Nations Peoples and children before the impacts of such unaddressed change, has become an increasingly active area of litigation and contention.

The September 22 decision by the UNHRC regarding the human rights of Australia’s Torres Strait Islanders vis-à-vis climate change is yet another step in the journey of redress.  In their decision, the Committee, after examining a joint complaint filed by eight Australian nationals and six of their children, found that Australia had failed to adequately protect Indigenous Torres Strait Islanders against the adverse impacts of climate change, thereby violating their rights to enjoy their culture and be free from arbitrary interferences with their private life, family and home.

The authors of the complaint hail from the four islands of Boigu, Masig, Warraber and Poruma.  As the decision notes, they “reside in low-lying islands [and] are among the most vulnerable populations to the impact of climate change.”  Citing observations by the Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA), the effects of climate change are outlined, including impacts on the islands, marine and coastal ecosystems and resources, and, by virtue of that, “the life, livelihoods and unique culture of Torres Strait Islanders.”

Other climatic phenomena are also noted, including rises in sea level causing flooding and erosion, and rises in temperature producing instances of coral bleaching, reef death, a decline in seabeds and the reduction of “nutritionally and culturally important marine species.”

Each island has faced a number of specific challenges: the village on Boigu has become an annual recipient of heavy flooding.  A small area of the island has been detached by relentless erosion.  A cyclone in March 2019 caused severe flooding and erosion while destroying infrastructure on Masig. A metre of land is lost each year, while family graves have been destroyed by tidal surges.  Warraber has witnessed high tides and strong winds, inundating the village centre every two or three years.  Poruma has lost much of its sand over the past few decades.

The Committee noted that Australia had failed “to adopt timely adequate adaptation measures to protect the authors’ collective ability to maintain their traditional way of life, to transmit to their children and future generations their culture and traditions and use of land and sea resources”.  While seawall construction had, in some cases, been completed and was in others ongoing, the delays in initiating them constituted a violation of the “positive obligation to protect the authors’ right to enjoy their minority culture” under Article 27 of the ICCPR.

For those same reasons, the Committee also found that Article 17, which imposes positive obligations on the State party to take measures protecting home, private life and family, was breached.

While the Committee majority did not find that the Australian government had violated the right to life (Article 6 of the ICCPR), Committee Member Duncan Laki Muhumuza thought otherwise.  Despite Canberra’s mitigating measures, “there is an appalling outcry from the authors that has not been addressed and hence, the authors’ right to life will continue to be violated and their lives endangered.”  Australia was, just as the Netherlands was deemed in the Urgenda Foundation case of 2019, liable for preventing foreseeable loss of life from the impact of climate change.

In response to their findings, the Committee concluded that Australia, as a State party, had to provide adequate compensation to the complainants for harm suffered; engage them in meaningful consultations on necessary assessments; continue implementing necessary measures to continue a safe existence; review the effectiveness of such measures and resolve deficiencies as soon as practicable.

Yessie Mosby, one of the claimants from the Torres Strait Islander applicants, left few in doubt about the findings.  “I am over the moon.  I thank heavenly father, I thank my ancestors and I thank all the people who fought and helped us in this case.”

Mosby was prompted to make the application to the Committee after finding what he claims to have been his great-grandmother’s remains disturbed by rising seas.  “We were picking her up like shells off the beach,” he claimed.  “That drove me to stand and fight for our future generations.”

The significance of this decision lies in developing an alternative avenue for complainants in the field of environmental law and human rights.  According to Committee member Hélène Tigroudja, the finding “marks a significant development as the Committee has created a pathway for individuals to assert claims where national systems have failed to take appropriate measures to protect those most vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change on the enjoyment of their human rights.”  While such decisions are non-binding on governments, they do have a degree of persuasive heft.

The previous Coalition Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, made a point of ridiculing efforts to cap emissions and rein in the rapacity of the fossil fuel industry.  The man who will forever be associated with brandishing a lump of coal in parliament had little time for the plight of Pacific Island states or First Nations people facing the worst effects of climate catastrophe.  The residents from Boigu, Masig, Warraber and Poruma will be anticipating a rather different response from the Labor government of Anthony Albanese.

*

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

Featured image: Torres Strait Islands (Photo by Kelisi, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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***

“Lest we forget, the birth of modern physics and cosmology was achieved by Galileo, Kepler and Newton breaking free not from the close confining prison of faith (all three were believing Christians, of one sort or another) but from the enormous burden of the millennial authority of Aristotelian science. The scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not a revival of Hellenistic science but its final defeat.” (David Bentley Hart)

Introduction

We are all familiar with the Enlightenment (late 1600s to early 1800s), not least because we studied it in our history books in school. We also learned that before the Enlightenment – which brought about the gradual re-introduction of science into society – there were the medieval universities of philosophy, known as Scholasticism, that dominated education in Europe from about 1100 to 1700. What we don’t hear much about is the transition between the two, how science came to dominate thinking, who was involved, and what was there before.

The study of early science texts in the monastic schools contrasted with the superstitious and pantheistic thinking of ordinary people in the form of religious and political dissidents who also advocated early forms of communitarian ideology. The Scientific Revolution (1543-1687), carried out by people such as Nicolaus Copernicus(1473–1543), Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), Francis Bacon (1561–1626), René Descartes (1596–1650), Isaac Newton(1642–1727), etc., changed the way people thought about nature and created a profound crisis for the church, and the scientists themselves who had to figure out the role of god in this new way thinking, as well as deal with the dissidents who saw in the new science the basis for a democratic and socialist organisation of society itself. The legacy of the Enlightenment today, then, is the two traditions of liberal christianity and science on the one hand, and materialist pantheism, republicanism and socialism on the other. Both sides incorporated science as part of their ideology, but used it for very different ends.

Image: The only known image of Toland

“He was an assertor of Liberty
A lover of all sorts of Learning
A speaker of Truth
But no man’s follower, or dependant”

(John Toland’s self-composed epitaph emphasised his lifelong devotion to freedom,
knowledge, and individualism; a distinctly humanist approach to living.)

Scholasticism

From earliest times monasticism employed scientific learning to further the life of the monks and their understanding of the bible. Science was important for time-keeping and seasonal rites. Astronomy was particularly important for Christmas and the calculation of Easter dates each year. With the emergence of medieval universities in the 12th century much emphasis was laid on the rediscovered Aristotle and other scientific Greek thinkers. The monks even used the dialectical method in their discussions, a Greek method for establishing the truth through reasoned argumentation.

Dialectics were later on to become an important part of Marxist analysis of history in place of the determinism of the bible, whereby different opposing forces produce a revolutionary change after a long period of evolution, as opposed to the fixed aspect of god’s creation since the beginning of time, as described in the book of Genesis, for example. However, the dialectic was used in Scholasticism to reconcile Christian theology with scientific philosophy not to further the ends of science itself.

In a way it could be argued that the church was endeavouring to combat the rising new interest in science as it posed a threat to the basics of church thinking and teaching. The rise of Aristotelian ideas and their interpretation by the medieval Andalusian philosopher Averroes generated controversies in Christendom that led to the Catholic Church taking steps to deal with their implications, with Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) laying down an an acceptable interpretation of Aristotle, and the condemnation of Averroist doctrines in 1270 and 1277.

Thirteen propositions were listed as false and heretical, some related to Averroes’ doctrine of the soul and others directed against Aristotle’s theory of God as a passive unmoved mover. For example, the propositions “That human acts are not ruled by the providence of God”, “That the world is eternal”, and “That there was never a first human” had obvious signs of influence from scientific investigation and threatened basic tenets of Christian theology.

Moreover, Averroes argued that “scriptural text should be interpreted allegorically if it appeared to contradict conclusions reached by reason and philosophy.”  The motive of Scholasticism then was to bring reason to the support of faith by using argumentation to silence all doubt and questioning while, at the same time, maintaining that faith was more important than reason.

On a political level Thomas Aquinas’ ideas reflected the hierarchical thinking of the church in that he considered “monarchy is the best form of government, because a monarch does not have to form compromises with other persons. Aquinas, however, held that monarchy in only a very specific sense was the best form of government – only when the king was virtuous is it the best form; otherwise if the monarch is vicious it is the worst kind.” Yet, “unless an agreement of all persons involved can be reached, a tyrant must be tolerated, as otherwise the political situation could deteriorate into anarchy, which would be even worse than tyranny.”

John Toland (1670–1722), the Irish rationalist philosopher, threw a spanner into the works when he suggested in his book, Christianity Not Mysterious (which was ordered to be burnt), that “the divine revelation of the Bible contains no true mysteries; rather, all the dogmas of the faith can be understood and demonstrated by properly trained reason from natural principles”, i.e., Natural Law – the “system of right or justice held to be common to all humans and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society.” In this case, the rules set by the Church.

From a political perspective Toland took a pantheistic approach to religion, the idea that god was ‘immanent’ or ‘in’ nature and not ruling over nature. Therefore, if nature had no need of hierarchy, then man had no need either. Toland believed that there was no need for hierarchy in the church or the state, “bishops and kings, in other words, were as bad as each other, and monarchy had no God-given sanction as a form of government.”

The Scientific Revolution

Image: Portrait of Newton at 46 by Godfrey Kneller, 1689

“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” (Galileo Galilei)

By the early 18th century the new science and mechanical philosophy initiated by the Scientific Revolution had profoundly changed society as “developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature.” An ideological battle developed between Christian philosophers like Leibniz who tried “to locate the origin of force in a vast spiritual universe, and ultimately therefore in God” [1] and the Newtonians who believed in a “divine presence operated as an immaterial “aether” that offered no resistance to bodies, but could move them through the force of gravitation”, that is, an immanent or omnipresent god that was simply a part of nature.

Out of this influence of Newton there arose Enlightenment Deism, the idea that the universe is “a vast machine, created and set in motion by a creator being that continues to operate according to natural law without any divine intervention”. Deism would allow the scientists to continue doing science without the fear of excommunication from the Church, worried about the implications of mechanical philosophy on God’s role in the universe. Leibniz, critical of this theological sleight of hand, quipped: “God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion.”

Deism emphasized the concept of natural theology (that is, God’s existence is revealed through nature). Therefore, “Enlightenment Deism consisted of two philosophical assertions: (1) reason, along with features of the natural world, is a valid source of religious knowledge, and (2) revelation is not a valid source of religious knowledge.” In practice this meant the rejection of (1) all books (including the Bible) that claimed to contain divine revelation (2) the incomprehensible notion of the Trinity and other religious “mysteries”, and (3) reports of miracles, prophecies, etc. Thus, as Margaret C. Jacob writes:

“The new mechanical philosophy banished spiritual agencies, inherent tendencies, and anima from the universe. In their place were put explanations based upon those natural properties capable of mathematical calculation. Nature had to be observed and experienced, and wherever possible given mathematical expression. The physical universe became a place with spatial dimensions within which bodies moved at measurable speeds. Bodies moved one another by impulse, that is, my pushing one another and to explanations of the natural world based upon impulse we commonly ascribe the term ‘mechanical’.” [2]

For Leibniz though, this was political, as he perceived the new naturalistic and materialistic explanations of the universe were being used by ‘politically dangerous men’ to “disestablish churches and weaken the power of kings and courts.” [3]

The trial of Giordano Bruno by the Roman Inquisition. Bronze relief by Ettore Ferrari, Campo de’ Fiori, Rome.

Pantheism and Materialism

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?
(Lollard priest John Ball) 

Of course, Toland’s pantheism, Aquinas’s fear of anarchy, and Leibniz’s dread of politically dangerous men were all rooted in an awareness of “popular heresy and social protest coming from the lower orders of society.” [4] There were rumblings of dissent associated with radical groups steeped in centuries of paganism that had never been fully overcome by Christian theology. Pantheistic ideas could be found in animistic beliefs and tribal religions globally “as an expression of unity with the divine, specifically in beliefs that have no central polytheist or monotheist personas.” The idea of a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god was not recognised. The 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) popularised pantheism in the West through his book Ethics along with the earlier Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), an Italian friar who evangelized about a transcendent and infinite God, but was eventually burned at the stake in 1600 by the Roman Inquisition. As Jacob noted:

“The pantheistic materialism of seventeenth-century radicals owed its origin to the magical and naturalistic view of the universe which Christian churchmen and theologians had laboured for centuries to defeat. At the heart of this natural philosophy lay the notion that nature is a sufficient explanation or cause for the existence and workings of man and his physical environment. In other words, the separation of God from Creation, creature from creator, of matter from spirit, so basic to Christian orthodoxy and such a powerful justification for social hierarchy and even for absolute monarchy,  crumbles in the face of animistic and naturalistic explanations. God does not create ex nihilo; nature simply is and all people (and their environment) are part of this greater All.” [5]

Indeed, the earlier pagan religious practices had co-existed with Christianity, many of which the church had co-opted but the worship of saints (and Mary) almost seemed almost like the continuation of polytheism. As Christopher Scott Thompson writes:

“Paganism in this broader sense did not end with the Christian conversion, because it was never limited to “organized religion” in the first place. Regular people all over Europe continued to leave offerings for the fairies and the dead many centuries after the official conversion to Christianity. They didn’t think of themselves as “pagans” in any formal sense, but they still thought of the world around them as being filled with spirits and their daily spiritual practices reflected this worldview. They still believed in local fairy queens and fairy kings, entities that would have been understood as gods before the Christian conversion. They also retained a semi-polytheistic worldview in the veneration of saints, many of which were not recognized as saints officially by the church and a few of which were originally pre-Christian gods.”

Furthermore, the radical peasants used elements of paganism and and communitarian ideas in the bible to underpin their struggle against oppression by kings, queens, landowners and the aristocracy:

“Peasants resisting feudalism sometimes turned to this tradition of magic and spirit worship for aid against their oppressors. For instance, Emma Wilby’s The Visions of Isobel Gowdie documents how folk beliefs about fairy kings and the malevolent dead were used by magic practitioners in 17th century Scotland to curse feudal landowners. […] These practices existed alongside organized religion yet distinct from it, before the Christian conversion and after it. People cultivated relationships with the spirits of nature, the dead and other entities for help with their practical daily problems — including how to effectively resist oppression.”

In England, for example, the radicals organised in groups such as the Diggers, Ranters, Levellers, Muggletonians, Familists and Quakers, some of whom believed that the “Scripture foretold of a democratic order where property would be redistributed” [6], for example, in Acts 2:

“42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”

Woodcut from a Levellers document by William Everard

Materialism reflected the pagan, pantheistic worldview, as it “holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions” (The idea that man created god, in stark contrast to the idealist view that god created man). This materialism was eventually combined with the aforementioned dialectics to form the basis of Marxian philosophy and change radical group ideology from pantheistic communitarianism to atheistic socialism. Thus, the non-hierarchical aspect of pantheism found its natural home in radical communitarian thought which was rejected by conservative forces, as Jacob states:

“At every turn they rejected mechanistic explanations that hinged upon the power of matter unassisted by spiritual forces separate from the natural order. To their mind, scientific materialism, whether mechanistic or pantheistic in its inclination, justified atheism, social levelling, political disorder, in short the turning of ‘the world upside down’.” [7]

The desire to turn ‘the world upside down’ was exhibited most famously by the religious and political dissidents known as the Diggers. They put their ideas into practice when they took over some common land in Surrey:

“The Council of State received a letter in April 1649 reporting that several individuals had begun to plant vegetables in common land on St George’s Hill, Weybridge near Cobham, Surrey at a time when harvests were bad and food prices high. Sanders reported that they had invited “all to come in and help them, and promise them meat, drink, and clothes.” They intended to pull down all enclosures and cause the local populace to come and work with them. They claimed that their number would be several thousand within ten days. “It is feared they have some design in hand.””

Their leader, Gerrard Winstanley (1609–1676) was an English Protestant religious reformer, political philosopher, and activist. The radical nature of the Diggers’ ideology is demonstrated in the difference between the Diggers and the Levellers, as, while the Levellers sought to “level the laws” (while maintaining the right to the ownership of real property), Winstanley sought “to level the ownership of real property itself, which is why he and his followers called themselves “True Levellers”.”

Winstanley underpinned this radical ideology in combined passages from the bible and pantheist thinking in his writings:

“In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another. And the Reason is this, Every single man, Male and Female, is a perfect Creature of himself; and the same Spirit that made the Globe, dwels in man to govern the Globe; so that the flesh of man being subject to Reason, his Maker, hath him to be his Teacher and Ruler within himself, therefore needs not run abroad after any Teacher and Ruler without him, for he needs not that any man should teach him, for the same Anoynting that ruled in the Son of man, teacheth him all things… And so selfish imaginations taking possession of the Five Sences, and ruling as King in the room of Reason therein, and working with Covetousnesse, did set up one man to teach and rule over another; and thereby the Spirit was killed, and man was brought into bondage, and became a greater Slave to such of his own kind, then the Beasts of the field were to him.”

Conclusion

While ultimately the Digger movement failed, the Enlightenment developed out of the Scientific Revolution as the 17th century bequeathed two contradictory traditions to the future. On the one hand there was the predominant “moderate and liberal Christianity wedded to the new science and supportive of strong monarchy within a constitutional framework” while, on the other hand, a republican tradition “in conformity with a pantheistic and materialistic understanding of nature.” [8] Two opposing traditions that are very much to the fore in politics today.

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here.  He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

[1] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.27

[2] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.2

[3] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.31

[4] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.3

[5] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.3/4

[6] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.43

[7] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.45

[8] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.36

Featured image: The French Academy of Sciences was established in 1666.

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On the first day of the United Nations General Assembly, Colombian President Gustavo Petro made his first address to the body. The speech sharply deviated from those of his conservative predecessors. Petro did not shy away from calling out global North countries for their role in the destruction of the environment and in the perpetuation of the War on Drugs, as a symptom of their capitalist greed. He accused

“You are only interested in my country to spray poisons on our jungles, to take our men to jail and put our women in exclusion. You are not interested in the education of the child, but in killing the jungle and extracting coal and oil from its entrails. The sponge that absorbs the poison [the rainforest] is useless, they prefer to throw more poisons into the atmosphere.”

This is Petro’s first trip to the United States since he was inaugurated in August. He was received on Sunday night September 18 by hundreds of supporters in Queens, NY who manifested their support to his administration’s commitment to working for peace and ensuring the wellbeing of the Colombian people.

Below is a full transcription of his speech on September 20, 2022 to the United Nations General Assembly.

I come from one of the three most beautiful countries on Earth.

There is an explosion of life there. Thousands of multicolored species in the seas, in the skies, in the lands…I come from the land of yellow butterflies and magic. There in the mountains and valleys of all greens, not only do the abundant waters flow down, but also the torrents of blood. I come from a land of bloody beauty.

My country is not only beautiful, it is also violent.

How can beauty be conjugated with death, how can the biodiversity of life erupt with the dances of death and horror? Who is guilty of breaking the enchantment with terror? Who or what is responsible for drowning life in the routine decisions of wealth and interest? Who is leading us to destruction as a nation and as a people?

My country is beautiful because it has the Amazon jungle, the ChocóWar  jungle, the waters, the Andes mountain ranges, and the oceans. There, in those forests, planetary oxygen is emanated and atmospheric CO2 is absorbed. One of these CO2 absorbing plants, among millions of species, is one of the most persecuted on earth. At any cost, its destruction is sought: it is an Amazonian plant, the coca plant, sacred plant of the Incas. [It is in] a paradoxical crossroads.

The jungle that tries to save us, is at the same time, destroyed. To destroy the coca plant, they spray poisons, glyphosate in mass that runs through the waters, they arrest its growers and imprison them. For destroying or possessing the coca leaf, one million Latin Americans are killed and two million Afro-Americans are imprisoned in North America. Destroy the plant that kills, they shout from the North, but the plant is but one more of the millions that perish when they unleash the fire on the jungle. Destroying the jungle, the Amazon, has become the slogan followed by States and businessmen. The cry of scientists baptizing the rainforest as one of the great climatic pillars is unimportant.

For the world’s power relations, the jungle and its inhabitants are to blame for the plague that plagues them. The power relations are plagued by the addiction to money, to perpetuate themselves, to oil, to cocaine and to the hardest drugs to be able to anesthetize themselves more. Nothing is more hypocritical than the discourse to save the rainforest. The jungle is burning, gentlemen, while you make war and play with it. The rainforest, the climatic pillar of the world, disappears with all its life.

The great sponge that absorbs planetary CO2 evaporates. The savior forest is seen in my country as the enemy to be defeated, as the weed to be extinguished.

Coca and the peasants who grow it, because they have nothing else to grow, are demonized. You are only interested in my country to spray poisons on our jungles, to take our men to jail and put our women in exclusion. You are not interested in the education of the child, but in killing its jungle and extracting coal and oil from its entrails. The sponge that absorbs the poison is useless, they prefer to throw more poisons into the atmosphere.

We serve them only to fill the emptiness and loneliness of their own society that leads them to live in the midst of drug bubbles. We hide from them their problems that they refuse to reform. It is better to declare war on the jungle, on its plants, on its people. While they let the forests burn, while hypocrites chase the plants with poisons to hide the disasters of their own society, they ask us for more and more coal, more and more oil, to calm the other addiction: that of consumption, of power, of money.

What is more poisonous for humanity, cocaine, coal or oil? The dictates of power have ordered that cocaine is the poison and must be pursued, even if it only causes minimal deaths by overdose, and even more by the mixtures necessitated by clandestinity, but coal and oil must be protected, even if their use could extinguish all of humanity.

These are the things of world power, things of injustice, things of irrationality, because world power has become irrational. They see in the exuberance of the jungle, in its vitality, the lustful, the sinful; the guilty origin of the sadness of their societies, imbued with the unlimited compulsion to have and to consume. How to hide the loneliness of the heart, its dryness in the midst of societies without affection, competitive to the point of imprisoning the soul in solitude, if not by blaming the plant, the man who cultivates it, the libertarian secrets of the jungle.

According to the irrational power of the world, it is not the fault of the market that cuts back on existence, it is the fault of the jungle and those who inhabit it. The bank accounts have become unlimited, the money saved by the most powerful of the earth will not even be able to be spent in the time of the centuries. The sadness of existence produced by this artificial call to competition is filled with noise and drugs. The addiction to money and to having has another face: the addiction to drugs in people who lose the competition, in the losers of the artificial race in which they have transformed humanity.

The disease of loneliness will not be cured with glyphosate [sprayed] on the forests. It is not the rainforest that is to blame.

The culprit is their society educated in endless consumption, in the stupid confusion between consumption and happiness that allows the pockets of power to fill with money. The culprit of drug addiction is not the jungle, it is the irrationality of your world power. Try to give some reason to your power. Turn on the lights of the century again. The war on drugs has lasted 40 years, if we do not correct the course and it continues for another 40 years, the United States will see 2,800,000 young people die of overdose from fentanyl, which is not produced in our Latin America. It will see millions of Afro-Americans imprisoned in its private jails.

The Afro-prisoner will become a business of prison companies, a million more Latin Americans will die murdered, our waters and our green fields will be filled with blood, the dream of democracy will die in my America as well as in Anglo-Saxon America. Democracy will die where it was born, in the great western European Athens. By hiding the truth, they will see the jungle and democracies die. The war on drugs has failed.

The fight against the climate crisis has failed. There has been an increase in deadly consumption, from soft drugs to harder ones, genocide has taken place in my continent and in my country, millions of people have been condemned to prison, and to hide their own social guilt they have blamed the rainforest and its plants. They have filled speeches and policies with nonsense. I demand from here, from my wounded Latin America, to put an end to the irrational war on drugs. To reduce drug consumption we do not need wars, for this we need all of us to build a better society: a more caring society, more affectionate, where the intensity of life saves from addictions and new slavery. Do you want less drugs? Think of less profit and more love. Think about a rational exercise of power.

Do not touch with your poisons the beauty of my homeland, help us without hypocrisy to save the Amazon Rainforest to save the life of humanity on the planet. You gathered the scientists, and they spoke with reason. With mathematics and climatological models they said that the end of the human species was near, that its time is no longer of millennia, not even of centuries. Science set the alarm bells ringing and we stopped listening to it.

The war served as an excuse for not taking the necessary measures. When action was most needed, when speeches were no longer useful, when it was indispensable to deposit money in funds to save humanity, when it was necessary to move away from coal and oil as soon as possible, they invented war after war after war. They invaded Ukraine, but also Iraq, Libya and Syria.

They invaded in the name of oil and gas. They discovered in the 21st century the worst of their addictions: addiction to money and oil. Wars have served them as an excuse not to act against the climate crisis. Wars have shown them how dependent they are on what will kill the human species.

If you observe that the peoples are filling up with hunger and thirst and migrating by the millions towards the north, towards where the water is; then you enclose them, build walls, deploy machine guns, shoot at them. You expel them as if they were not human beings, you reproduce five times the mentality of those who politically created the gas chambers and the concentration camps, you reproduce on a planetary scale 1933.

The great triumph of the attack on reason. Do you not see that the solution to the great exodus unleashed on your countries is to return to water filling the rivers and the fields full of nutrients? The climate disaster fills us with viruses that swarm over us, but you do business with medicines and turn vaccines into commodities. You propose that the market will save us from what the market itself has created. The Frankenstein of humanity lies in letting the market and greed act without planning, surrendering the brain and reason. Kneeling human rationality to greed.

What is the use of war if what we need is to save the human species? What is the use of NATO and empires, if what is coming is the end of intelligence? The climate disaster will kill hundreds of millions of people and listen well, it is not produced by the planet, it is produced by capital.

The cause of the climate disaster is capital. The logic of coming together only to consume more and more, produce more and more, and for some to earn more and more produces the climate disaster. They applied the logic of extended accumulation to the energy engines of coal and oil and unleashed the hurricane: the ever deeper and deadlier chemical change of the atmosphere. Now in a parallel world, the expanded accumulation of capital is an expanded accumulation of death.

From the lands of jungle and beauty. There where they decided to make an Amazon rainforest plant an enemy, extradite and imprison its growers, I invite you to stop the war, and to stop the climate disaster. Here, in this Amazon Rainforest, there is a failure of humanity.

Behind the bonfires that burn it, behind its poisoning, there is an integral, civilizational failure of humanity. Behind the addiction to cocaine and drugs, behind the addiction to oil and coal, there is the real addiction of this phase of human history: the addiction to irrational power, to profit and money. This is the enormous deadly machinery that can extinguish humanity.

I propose to you as president of one of the most beautiful countries on earth, and one of the most bloodied and violated, to end the war on drugs and allow our people to live in peace. I call on all of Latin America for this purpose. I summon the voice of Latin America to unite to defeat the irrational that martyrs our bodies. I call upon you to save the Amazon Rainforest integrally with the resources that can be allocated worldwide to life.

If you do not have the capacity to finance the fund for the revitalization of the forests, if it weighs more to allocate money to weapons than to life, then reduce the foreign debt to free our own budgetary spaces and with them, carry out the task of saving humanity and life on the planet. We can do it if you don’t want to. Just exchange debt for life, for nature. I propose, and I call upon Latin America to do so, to dialogue in order to end the war. Do not pressure us to align ourselves in the fields of war.

It is time for PEACE.

Let the Slavic peoples talk to each other, let the peoples of the world talk to each other. War is only a trap that brings the end of time closer in the great orgy of irrationality.

From Latin America, we call on Ukraine and Russia to make peace. Only in peace can we save life in this land of ours. There is no total peace without social, economic and environmental justice. We are also at war with the planet. Without peace with the planet, there will be no peace among nations. Without social justice, there is no social peace.

*

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Featured image: Gustavo Petro addressed the UN General Assembly on September 20, 2022. Photo: UN

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***

The Marshall Islands decide to halt talks with the US regarding the extension of the conditions of the Compact of Free Association over a 70-year-long dispute regarding nuclear testing.

The Marshall Islands suspended major discussions with the US on Friday over longstanding concerns, stretching back 70 years, pertaining to nuclear testing on the atolls in the middle of the Pacific.

Talks in Majuro to extend the conditions of the Compact of Free Association, an important international agreement between the United States, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau, were called off.

The Marshall Islands have refused to continue discussions unless Washington addresses the persistent health, environmental, and economic difficulties caused by US nuclear testing on the picturesque atolls from 1946 to 1958.

During the second round of negotiations in July, the Marshalls presented a potential settlement deal to US negotiators, but have received no response.

Marshall Islands’ parliament’s speaker, Kenneth Kedi, said “We submitted our proposal in writing, but there has been no answer or counter-proposal from the US,” adding that “We are negotiating in good faith.”

The Marshallese team renegotiating the deal is refusing to fly to Washington for additional talks.

Kedi said Friday that it was “not prudent to spend over $100,000 for our delegation to travel to Washington” unless their problems were addressed.

According to a statement issued by the US embassy in Majuro, Joseph Yun, the US special envoy for Compact negotiations, will meet with Islands’ President David Kabua next week in Washington “to continue to advance the discussions.”

Marshall Islands-US relations

In the midst of persistent tensions between Beijing and Washington, the Marshall Islands nation is one of the most important US allies in the Pacific.

The US’ attitude, however, delays the pace of the discussions, straining ties between the Marshall Islands and Washington on the eve of next week’s summit of Pacific Island leaders at the White House.

The previous 20-year financing arrangement ends at the end of September 2023, therefore US officials hoped for a quick resolution to the Compact talks.

However, the Marshall Islands’ grievances over nuclear testing continue to be ignored by the US administration.

The chairman of the country’s National Nuclear Commission, Alson Kelen, said

“The cancellation of the talks indicates the seriousness of this issue for the Marshall Islands,” adding that “This is the best time for us to stand up for our rights. We live with the problem (from the nuclear tests). We know the big picture: bombs tested, people relocated from their islands, and people exposed to nuclear fallout. We can’t change that.”

Kelen argued, instead, that

“What we can do now is work on the details for the funding needed to mitigate the problems from the nuclear legacy.”

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Featured image is from Al Mayadeen English

US “Nuclear Primacy” and “Blitzkrieg Nuclear War”: Russia Responds to America’s Plan to Win World War III

By Eric Zuesse, September 24, 2022

The U.S. Government no longer designs nuclear weapons to prevent World War III, but instead to win World War III.

The Rise of Trussonomics

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, September 26, 2022

Kwasi Kwarteng, the newly minted Chancellor of the Exchequer, has given us a sense of what Trussonomics looks like in his “mini budget” announced on September 23.  In line with this new policy, undertaken at a time of stroppily rising inflation (currently 9.9%), more fiscal stimulus is promised: £30 billion per year (or 1.2% of GDP), and mammoth subsidies to soften energy bills with costs that could rise to £150 billion.

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By Dr. Naomi Wolf and Kristina Borjesson, September 25, 2022

After author and women’s health journalist Dr. Naomi Wolf was de-platformed and attacked on Twitter, discovery granted in two freedom of speech lawsuits revealed that the CDC had colluded with social media to censor her.

“The Woman King”: Traditional Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade

By Abayomi Azikiwe, September 25, 2022

An historical fictionalized account centered around the Agojie, the woman warriors of the Dahomey civilization in West Africa encompassing what is modern day Republic of Benin, comes at a time when Africa is continuing to exert its personality and viewpoints on continental and global issues.

What Was COVID-19?

By Emanuel Pastreich, September 25, 2022

As we survey the wreckage that was our civilization, as we are pushed and shoved by our fellow citizens now reduced to waves and waves of the zombie apocalypse, we are forced to ask ourselves the big question.

Ukrainian Army War Crimes Include Shelling of Ambulences, Firetrucks, and Rescue Workers in the Donbass Republics—Similar to Israelis and U.S. Backed Terrorists in Syria

By Eva Bartlett, September 25, 2022

In the more than eight years of bombing the civilians of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, Ukraine has committed untold numbers of war crimes. These include bombing residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools, parks—including with prohibited heavy weapons and banned cluster munitions—and, since late July, raining banned “Petal” mines down on populated civilian areas, including the very center of Donetsk, including as recently as September 7.

Criticizing the British Monarchy Now a Criminal Offense

By Kurt Nimmo, September 25, 2022

It should probably not be a surprise average Britons protesting against the expensive relic known as the Crown were arrested during the ostentatious funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth II.

Defending Palestinian Civil Society. Understanding Canada’s Role

By Michael Welch, Michael Lynk, and Bianca Mugyenyi, September 25, 2022

On August 18, in Ramallah, a massive Israeli army convoy proceeded to the offices of seven Palestinian civil society organizations, raided them, confiscated equipment, and sealed the entrances closed with an iron plate. The organizations were branded illegal on the suspicion (never proven) that these organizations were linked with terrorism.

Is It Time to Dissolve the British Commonwealth?

By Dr. Mathew Maavak, September 24, 2022

Commonwealth membership benefits for the most part are pretty much nonexistent. This begs the question of why an aspiring superpower like India would demean itself by remaining in a colonially-defined international compact. A quick glance at the Commonwealth map will reveal a scattered morass of mediocrity, inequality and/or poverty.

Criticism of the Pharma Cartel and Its ‘Business with Disease’ Is Becoming Mainstream

By Paul Anthony Taylor, September 24, 2022

Pointing out that research into medicines can be done separate from the pharma industry, at universities and other independent research institutes, Smiers argues that substantial research funds should be established, fed from public funds, with independent committees deciding which diseases and researchers funding should be directed towards.

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‘Dear Friends’ Xi and Putin: Project Unity

September 26th, 2022 by Ray McGovern

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In the official Chinese and Russian statements regarding Thursday’s meeting between Presidents XI Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Samarkand lies not a scintilla of evidence that China’s support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has weakened.

In my view, if Putin decides to up the ante in Ukraine, Xi would be likely to support him. Most analysts of China doubt that this would extend to China’s stirring up trouble in the South China Sea or opposite Taiwan, but most Chinese analysts did not expect China to tolerate, much less endorse, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So your guess is as good as mine.

Underneath the ‘Dear Friend’ professions of solidarity lies a concrete-reinforced commitment, so to speak, indeed a China-Russia entente that bespeaks an intention to coordinate closely – including before any major military initiatives against the U.S. or its proxies.

Some of the mutual statements of solidarity may sound boilerplate, but it is important to remember that the boilerplate has acquired additional steel reinforcement, so to speak, in the crucible of this year 2022. Each country has pledged strong support for the other’s “core interests” – for Russia, re. Ukraine; for China, re. Taiwan.

The “core interest” mutual support was given prominence in the official Chinese readout of the Putin-Xi conversation:

“President XI emphasized that China will work with Russia to extend strong mutual support on issues concerning each other’s core interests….

“President Putin noted that the world is undergoing multiple changes, yet the only thing that remains unchanged is the friendship and mutual trust between Russia and China.

“The Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination is as stable as mountains. … The Russian side is firmly committed to the one-China principle and condemns provocative moves by individual countries on issues concerning China’s core interests. Russia will consolidate and deepen bilateral and multilateral communication and collaboration with China and expand cooperation in key areas such as trade and energy.”

In his remarks, Putin emphasized the “key role” played by “the foreign policy tandem of Moscow and Beijing” in ensuring global and regional stability and took another potshot at the undefined “rules-based” order promoted by Washington. He also expressed appreciation for “our Chinese friends’ balanced position in connection with the Ukraine crisis.”

Putin also fleshed out the progress in Russia’s trade with China:

“Last year, trade grew by 35 percent to over $140 billion. In the first seven months of this year, our trade increased by another 25 percent. I am convinced that by the end of the year we will reach new record high levels, and in the near term, as agreed, we will bring our annual trade to $200 billion or more.”

On a personal note, in the early 60s when I was responsible for analyzing Sino-Soviet relations, mutual trade amounted to $200 million. Granted: bilateral relations back then were in the pits. But still, $200 million to $200 billion is something we never imagined in our wildest dreams.

The Chinese and Russians can thank the reckless-feckless team of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, as well as their immediate predecessors for helping that increase to be as large as it it.

Finally, right after the Xi-Putin meeting yesterday, ABC’s Martha Raddatz read the following words of wisdom into the TV camera:

“Given what has happened in Ukraine, with Russia losing territory and its forces exposed as weak and hapless, even if Russia gets nothing [from XI], the meeting will signal an anti-Western bond which is significant – it IS significant.”

I believe Martha got that last part right. We shall have to wait and see how this all plays out regarding Ukraine and Taiwan.

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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

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The Rise of Trussonomics

September 26th, 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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It’s impossible to know whether the new British Prime Minister is genuinely serious about constructive policy or not.  She is certainly interested in greasing palms and calming the storms, if only to delay the inevitable.  Having proven herself the shallowest of candidates to succeed her disgraced, not wholly banished predecessor, Liz Truss has leapt into economic policy as her starting point.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the newly minted Chancellor of the Exchequer, has given us a sense of what Trussonomics looks like in his “mini budget” announced on September 23.  In line with this new policy, undertaken at a time of stroppily rising inflation (currently 9.9%), more fiscal stimulus is promised: £30 billion per year (or 1.2% of GDP), and mammoth subsidies to soften energy bills with costs that could rise to £150 billion.

Cuts have been promised across the board, from income tax to stamp duty on home purchases.  The 45% additional rate of income tax for those earning above £150,000 will be scrapped, leaving the rate of 40% for those having incomes above £50,271.  A cut in the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 19% will be brought forward to April 2023.  Corporation tax would remain at 19%, and not increased to 25% as had been initially planned.

High tax rates, the Chancellor claimed in a Commons statement, “damage Britain’s competitiveness”.  The focus, instead, should be on growth.  “For too long in this country, we have indulged in a fight over redistribution.  Now, we need to focus on growth, not just how we tax and spend.”  It was time to get away from the “vicious cycle of stagnation” and focus, instead on “a virtuous circle of growth”.

This is a curious statement, given that virtue here will only shine upon those on the wealthy scale, who will be receiving twice as much aid in softening their living costs as the poorest.  Companies, notably oil and gas entities, will also continue to rake in staggering profits without fear of windfall taxation.

While one should never treat the markets as omniscient, there was something ironic in how Kwarteng’s announcement was greeted in an environment of high natural gas prices, sluggish growth and labour shortages.  The sacred British pound received a terrible battering, falling to a 37-year low against the US dollar.  Government bonds were sold off at a rate unseen since 1989, when the Tory heroine, Margaret Thatcher, was still clinging to power.

Another feature of the new policy is that old neoliberal favourite, deregulation.  This is hardly surprising, given that two authors of the 2012 tribute to the free market, Britannia Unchained, now occupy the posts of prime minister and chancellor.

Having witnessed the vicious effects of an unregulated financial sector – think the Great Financial Crisis, subprime mortgages, vigilante banks – Truss is putting economic history to one side.  By way of example, the bankers’ bonus cap will be done away with.  Not even predatory businesses should be shackled in Truss’s Britain.  The credo of Gordon Gekko can be assured of a revival.

Despite this grand salute to the market, the Truss economic turn has not impressed conservative finance outlets.  The Economistpicked up on a parallel between Truss and US President Ronald Reagan, who gave us that unfortunate, deservedly maligned term Reaganomics.  On coming to power, Reagan promised to reduce federal taxation at a time of peaking inflation rates and high interest rates.

In his characteristically dim-witted way, the optimistic Gipper decided that tax cuts and deregulation was the way to go.  Storms were not so much to be calmed down as stirred.  In August 1981, the shock through the US economic system was registered with a tax cut heftier than any seen since the First World War.  In doing so, the concept of Reaganomics demonstrated that Conservatives were less keen on responsible thrift and balanced budgets than scale and populist disruption.

The Economist, however, choses to see Reaganomics as right for its time, though it even concedes that returns from the program were “mixed”.  Trussonomics is quite something else.  “Reaganomics was accompanied by a strengthening dollar.  So were Donald Trump’s tax cuts in 2018, which also happened alongside monetary tightening.”  While the US dollar appreciated, the British pound has slumped and rumpled.

Privateer outlets such as the Wall Street Journal are not with Truss on her bingeworthy enterprise either.  Note is made that the Britain of today is not held in the grip of powerful unions or governed by high corporate tax rates.  State owned businesses have, for the most part, been privatised.  Red tape has been slashed.  Their deluded point: Reaganomics or Thatcherite slash and burn did its work, leaving neoliberalism victorious.  Now was not the time to re-invent that wheel.

There is also the niggling issue of borrowing credentials.  Truss’s fiscally strapped Britain, unlike that of Thatcher’s (is that possible?), faces a current account deficit and debt beyond 100% GDP.  The figure will bulge with tax cuts and the energy package.  The WSJ is keen to lecture Truss on this, and typically anthropomorphises the market as an unruly pet in need of pacifying. “To mitigate all these problems the government should have taken care to prepare the markets, explain its position and project a confident future for the country’s finances.  Instead it has merely promised that its independent forecasting body will show the effects of all the extra borrowing by the end of the year.”

The nightmarish effect here is that the Bank of England is left to hold the reins on inflation using monetary policy while the fiscal buccaneers cut loose and raid the treasury.  Truss and Kwarteng add the catnip, thereby driving the economy to heated hysterics; the BOE will have to bring in the sedative, lower the temperature and detain the pleasure seekers.  The situation will not cure the structural defects in an ailing Britain, but by then Truss may well have vanished into the increasingly dense undergrowth of the country’s doomed and forgotten prime ministers.

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

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First published on GR in April 2022.

Fidel Castro’s secret service chief once estimated that 634 attempts were made against the Cuban leader’s life. 

From exploding cigars to poisoned pills, Washington’s campaign to assassinate Castro remains an infamous case of Cold War covert action.

The presence of a revolutionary government in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, was intolerable for the US government.

What is less well known is that Britain collaborated with Washington’s anti-Castro operations in the early 1960s.

A Foreign Office document, classified for six decades and only recently released at the National Archives, reveals British diplomats discussed the “disappearance” of Castro with the CIA.

In November 1961, Thomas Brimelow, a high-flying British diplomat in Washington, went with his colleague Alan Clark to meet the CIA.

Clark, who was visiting America from his post at the British embassy in Havana, offered US intelligence a window into Cuba – a country the state department had pulled out from.

After opening statements, the CIA men cut to the chase, asking Clark “whether the disappearance of Fidel Castro himself would have serious repercussions” in Cuba.

Brimelow’s minutes of that meeting, marked “secret and personal”, show the British duo did not protest the unsubtle allusion to Castro’s assassination.

Clark responded that “Raoul Castro had been nominated as Fidel’s successor”, and “he might succeed in taking Fidel’s place if adequate time were allowed”.

More frankly, Clark added:

“If Fidel were to be assassinated, then it was less certain that there would be a smooth takeover. The [state] apparatus, which was apparently strong enough to cope with a gradual changeover, might not cope with a sudden crisis”.

The revelations raise fresh questions about how much Britain knew of Washington’s secret efforts to topple Castro.

The subversive discussion came months after the White House had cut off diplomatic relations with Havana and attempted a failed invasion at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs.

Just days after the UK-CIA meeting, President John F. Kennedy authorised Operation Mongoose – a secret programme to remove Castro by any means necessary.

The following year, Clark became first secretary at the British embassy in Washington. Brimelow ultimately went on to run the Foreign Office and receive a life peerage.

‘Most impressed’

While the UK was generally sympathetic to the White House’s goal of removing Castro, British officials were more critical of US strategy – most pointedly during the botched Bay of Pigs invasion.

Diplomatic relations between the US and Britain also soured over the issue of sanctioning Cuba throughout 1962.

Clark was not exclusively dismissive of the Castro government. At the CIA meeting, he argued that

“the revolution had brought some appreciable good to a large number of people”, adding that “the people who had thus benefited did not yet realise the price that they were paying and would have to pay”.

Nonetheless, declassified files show that the British embassy in Havana continued to share intelligence with Washington on the military, political and economic situation in Cuba.

In January 1962, Britain sent a report to the Pentagon on a military parade in Havana, replete with sketches of Cuba’s military apparatus.

It was “largely based on our own direct observations; we had the Ambassador and Head of Chancery on the stands, three members of the staff in the crowds lining the route and two more watching the proceeding on television”, one British cable noted.

The Americans were appreciative. “This is just to say how very grateful the Pentagon are for the excellent reports… about the military parade. They are most impressed by the effort put into it and the detailed results you all obtained”, another telegram shows.

In March 1962, the Pentagon insisted once again “how grateful they are for all the previous information on the military situation in Cuba”.

Months later, the US outlined “priority targets” for Britain in its gathering of military information in Cuba.

“Almost all of these ‘targets’ are in the Havana area, and they have been selected as they are almost all in areas which members of the Embassy might be able to visit”, wrote one British official following a top secret discussion with the Pentagon.

The Foreign Office declined to comment on the revelations.

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John McEvoy is an independent journalist who has written for International History Review, The Canary, Tribune Magazine, Jacobin and Brasil Wire.

PayPal Goes on Rampage Closing Out Accounts

September 26th, 2022 by Jorgen Soby

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PayPal has gone on a rampage by blocking organizations they don’t like access to their services. 

The Free Speech Union (FSU) is one of several organizations that just lost access to the financial platform. 

“PayPal has demonetised the Free Speech Union. It is not uncommon for financial companies like PayPal to withdraw services from individuals or groups who express politically contentious views, but this is the first time an organisation that defends people’s right to express such views has been demonetised. This is a new low and takes us one step closer towards a Chinese-style social credit system in which those who do not toe the party line are shut out of the financial system,” states their press release.

FSU defines itself as “non-partisan, mass-membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members.” But according to PayPal, this platform doesn’t deserve access to its services.

PayPal is a financial platform that allows anyone to make a living or maintain a business by receiving financial transfers without requiring personal bank information for every transaction.

Another organization shut down by PayPal is Law-or-Fiction, which consists of lawyers fighting against the legality of vaccine restrictions.

Additionally, PayPal shut down Gays Against Gr**mers, an organization that opposes teaching gender ideology in schools. Gays Against Gr**mers noted that PayPal is okay with providing its services to an organization called MAP (Minor Attracted Persons). MAP is a term used to normalize pedophilia.

And The Daily Sceptic (online media) was also banned by PayPal this week.

“PayPal has closed the accounts of the Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union, a new low in Big Tech’s war on free speech. Not only can you not express certain views, you can’t defend people’s right to express them,” the Daily Sceptic stated.

Many people have been cancelling their PayPal accounts in protest. The #CancelPayPal hashtag is actively gaining momentum on Twitter.

Some people and institutions have advocated for using cryptocurrencies to prevent third-party interference while transacting.

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