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Juneteenth was designated as a federal holiday during 2021 by the United States administration of President Joe Biden.
This act of recognition came in the aftermath of an upsurge in mass demonstrations and electoral mobilizations in response to the rash of police and vigilante killings of African Americans during 2020-2021.
The holiday had been recognized and celebrated within African American communities largely concentrated in Texas and other areas of the South for over a century. After the surrender of the Confederate military forces in early April 1865, the fate of slavery as an economic system was sealed.
Nonetheless, then President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, with immediate effect beginning January 1, 1863. The document did not order the emancipation of all four million Africans held in bondage. The proclamation only applied to those southern states that remained in rebellion against the federal government in Washington, D.C.
The Confederate states which sought to withdraw from the Union were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee. The state of Tennessee was the last to succeed and the first to return to the Union after the defeat of Confederate forces in key areas of the state and the appointment of Andrew Johnson by Lincoln as the military governor in 1862. Also not included in the Emancipation order were the border states of Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky, where slavery existed although they did not withdraw from the U.S. central government.
From the beginning of the war, many enslaved Africans fled the plantations seeking freedom after nearly 250 years of involuntary servitude. Thousands took up residence near Union military camps and were initially labelled as “contraband” and not refugees.
At the same time the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, the enlistment of Africans into the Union military began in earnest. By the conclusion of the Civil War (1861-1865), approximately 200,000 Black people had served in the army and navy of the Union forces.
As it relates specifically to Juneteenth, one source notes that:
“Juneteenth (short for “June Nineteenth”) marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. The troops’ arrival came a full two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth honors the end to slavery in the United States and is considered the longest-running African American holiday. On June 17, 2021, it officially became a federal holiday. Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House two months earlier in Virginia, but slavery had remained relatively unaffected in Texas—until U.S. General Gordon Granger stood on Texas soil and read General Orders No. 3: ‘The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.’”
Yet the struggle to end enslavement began among the African people themselves many of whom rebelled before being captured on the continent and during the course of the Middle Passage, the dangerous and deadly trek across the Atlantic Ocean to the Western Hemisphere, when they were subjected to an entirely dehumanizing process of subordination. Continuing this process of rebellion against enslavement was the multi-faceted forms of resistance being flight from enslavement, revolts and actions within the legal system to demand their emancipation.
Several historians of the antebellum period have observed that the economic system based upon African enslavement was already in decline by the 1850s. The desperation on the part of the landowning planters’ class in the South led to the separation of the states and the eventual Civil War where hundreds of thousands died.
Detroit Gateway to Freedom Monument Damaged and Neglected
The Underground Railroad was a mass network of individuals, organizations and institutions which facilitated the flight and freedom of Africans from bondage in the U.S. The city of Detroit became a major thoroughfare for the Underground Railroad due to its close proximity to Canada where slavery was abolished after 1833.
A rebellion erupted during June and July in 1833, after the Black community freed Thornton and Lucie Blackburn who had escaped enslavement two years before in Kentucky. The couple had been arrested by agents of the slavocracy and placed in detention in Detroit. A court ruling ordered them back into slavery in Kentucky.
In response, two African American women were able to smuggle Lucie out of the jail located in downtown Detroit. Later a group of armed African Americans went to the jail and demanded the release of Thornton. A brawl ensued where Thornton was liberated by the Black community and the couple was transported across the Detroit River to Windsor, Ontario.
Violence in the city continued until July 30 after troops were brought into Detroit. Soon afterwards, a number of racist laws were passed demanding the bonding of all African American residents in the amount of $500 and a 9:00pm curfew. Consequently, many African Americans left Detroit to take up residence in the province of Ontario, Canada where thousands had settled all the way up to the beginning of the Civil War. (See this)
In October 2001, as part of the 300th anniversary commemorations of the founding of Detroit as a colonial outpost by the French, the Gateway to Freedom Monument was dedicated on the banks of the Detroit River facing the nation of Canada. The Indigenous Native Americans underwent a period of displacement and genocide over the next century leaving the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan open to resettlement by Europeans of both French and British descent. African Americans migrated into the city during the 19th and 20th centuries largely spawned by the Underground Railroad and the eventual industrial expansions in shipping, timber, copper, steel and automobiles.
Twenty-one years later, the Gateway to Freedom Monument is in serious decline. An African American tour of the historic sites related to the Underground Railroad revealed this on June 18.
African Americans in the struggle for total freedom continues (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)
In fact, the damage to the monument was documented during June 2021. Apparently, a crowbar was utilized to intentionally rupture the work of art which consists of representations of several leading African Americans involved in the Underground Railroad.
An article published from a Detroit Fox News report on June 2, 2021, featured quotes from Sharon Sexton and Barbara Smith of the Underground Railroad Exploratory Collective. There was uncertainty over who actually owned the monument and where the fund which was created to build the work of art was actually located. The City of Detroit and the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) claimed it would investigate these questions and take action to rehabilitate the structure.
However, more than a year has passed, and the monument remains in a damaged state. This development is indicative of the politics of Detroit where the interests of the majority African American population have been completely eradicated.
Obviously, the current corporate- imposed administration downtown would rather funnel tax revenues, federal pandemic and infrastructural assistance to billionaires. Anything which supports or honors the majority African American population of Detroit is denied and categorized as “illegal”.
The damage to the monument representing self-organization aimed at total emancipation is reflective of U.S. domestic policy as a whole. Although the overwhelming majority of African Americans voted for the current Democratic-dominated administration and Congress in Washington, the principal needs and demands of this constituency have not been addressed.
Those politicians who hold office in Detroit are members of the Democratic Party. Nonetheless, billions of dollars are still being siphoned from tax rolls and federal assistance to ensure the profitability of the ruling class interests. Just recently, yet another scheme to codify an additional $60 million in tax breaks for the Hudson Project led by billionaire Dan Gilbert, has been presented to the City Council, five of whom were subsidized by Rocket Mortgage and associated entities.
In order for the needs of the African American people to be resolved, there must be a reversal of political dependency upon both dominant parties who only serve the bankers, corporate retailers, the Pentagon and industrialists. The same legacy which resulted in the successes of the Underground Railroad should guide the struggle of the workers and oppressed in the 21st century.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Detroit Gateway to Freedom Monument at the Riverfront looking towards Canada, June 18, 2022 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)
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First published on ZME Science in February 2021.
Child labor, unethical promotion, manipulating uneducated mothers, pollution, price fixing and mislabeling – those are not words you want to see associated with your company. Nestle is the world’s largest foodstuff company, and it has a history that would make even hardcore industrialists shiver. We’re gonna look at why Nestle has such a bad reputation and whether or not it deserves it.
Introduction
Just some of Nestle’s more well-known brands. Image via Rasica.
People love to hate, and they really love to hate on big companies – whether or not they have a reason to. I especially dislike it when the latter happens. Companies (big companies included) are the very backbone of our economy, and they often get a bad rep for little or no reason. But sometimes there is a reason, or as in this case, several solid reasons, as we’ll see below. Which brings me to the next point: why are we writing this article? ZME Science is a science website (crazy, right?), and this is not strictly science, at least not in the way our regular articles are. But we also write about environmental issues, especially when they affect many of us, and especially when we can make a difference.
Nestle is a Swiss multinational food and beverage company. According to Wikipedia, their products include baby food, bottled water, breakfast cereals, coffee and tea, confectionery, dairy products, ice cream, frozen food, pet foods, and snacks. Twenty-nine of their brands have sales of over $1 billion a year and have over 8,000 brands. They have 447 factories across 194 countries and employ around 333,000 people. They truly are what you would call a giant. They’re also considered to be one of the best employers in Europe with six LEED certifications and sponsor numerous activities and sustainable projects. Looking at only these stats, it would seem that Nestle is one of the “good guys”… but then why are they so hated? Let’s take it step by step.
Baby Formula and Boycott
We’re in the ’90s, and this is a sad story about poverty, breastfeeding, and greed. Nestle aggressively pushed their breastfeeding formula in less economically developed countries (LEDCs), specifically targeting the poor. They made it seem that their infant formula was almost as good as a mother’s milk, which is highly unethical for several reasons.
This is one of the first Nestle formula ads, from 1911.
The first problem was the need for water sanitation. Most of the groups they were targeting – especially in Africa – didn’t have access to clean water (many don’t to this day), so it was necessary for them to boil the water. But due to low literacy rates, many mothers were not aware of this, so they mixed the formula with polluted water which put the children at great risks. Nestle seems to have knowingly ignored this and encouraged mothers to use the formula even when they knew the risks. Breastfeeding, one of the most important aspects for an infant, especially in unsanitized areas, was cast aside. Baby formula was “the nearest thing in the world”, and this “splendid triumph of care and science” is “so like mother’s milk that the tiny stomach won’t notice the difference”. But the tiny stomach did notice the difference.
“Breastfeeding is unparalleled in providing the ideal food for infants.The optimal way to feed a baby is exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months followed by breastfeeding combined with complementary foods until the child is two years old…” – a 2007 Save the Children report.
Many mothers were able to read in their native language but were still unable to read the language in which sterilization directions were written. Even if mothers understood the need to boil the water, they might not have had the facilities to do so. UNICEF estimates that a formula-fed child living in disease-ridden and unhygienic conditions is between 6 and 25 times more likely to die of diarrhea and four times more likely to die of pneumonia than a breastfed child. Another problem was that mothers tended to use less formula than needed – to make the jar last longer, resulting in many infants receiving inadequate amounts.
But even if the water was boiled, and even if the formula was administered in the right proportion and in the right quantity, it is lacking in many of the nutrients and antibodies that breast milk provides. Breast milk contains the required amount of the nutrients essential for neuronal (brain and nerve) development, and to some extent, protects the baby from many diseases and potential infections. According to the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), Nestle used unethical methods to promote their infant formula to poor mothers in developing countries. But it gets even worse.
Image on the right: Rachael Romero, San Francisco Poster Brigade Boycott Nestle, 1978 poster (Courtesy Inkworks Press Archive, Berkeley, CA)
IBFAN claims that Nestle distributes free formula samples to hospitals and maternity wards; after leaving the hospital, the formula is no longer free, but because the supplementation has interfered with lactation, the family must continue to buy the formula. Nestle denies those allegations… sort of.
“Nestlé takes reports on non-compliance with the WHO Code very seriously and we have endeavored to investigate all allegations brought to our attention, despite the fact that in many cases we are not provided with accurate details substantiating the accusations. This makes it difficult for us to investigate how, where and when the alleged infringement could have occurred. Some of the allegations are several years old before they are brought to public attention, which also could complicate the investigation.”
Health experts were concerned from the very start. It’s been known for quite a while that bottle-feeding infants in impoverished tropical environments, with limited sanitation and refrigeration, can be a recipe for disaster. But Nestlé’s asked that critics should focus on doing something to improve unsafe water supplies, which contributed to the health problems associated with bottle feeding. They also later used this approach to promote their bottled water, using their huge marketing budget to influence people’s behavior, while avoiding denying any direct responsibility.
Today, several countries and organizations are still boycotting Nestle, despite their claims to be in compliance with WHO regulations. There’s even a committee, the International Nestlé Boycott Committee that monitors their practices. Several universities and student organizations have also joined the boycott, especially in the UK.
More recently, the company has also been under head for a study on breastmilk substitutes in India. India’s apex medical research authority asked the company to stop paying study participants, which included pregnant and breastfeeding mothers.
It’s not clear how many lives that were lost directly and indirectly due to this aggressive marketing campaign, and of course, Nestle does not claim responsibility for these tragedies. But it was easy for them, as it was easy for everybody to see the risks and the negative effects their formula was having. It was easy for them to save many lives, but they chose the money instead. Profits before children — check. Let’s move on.
Nestle and Water
Brown admitted that Nestlé currently wastes about 30% of the 700m gallons of water a year it draws from the ground in California. Image via Sum of Us.
Few people know it, but Nestle is actually the world’s largest producer of bottled water. In fact, they’re so keen on their water business (which also involves many of their other products), that they believe water isn’t a universal right. Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe said:
“There are two different opinions on the matter [or water]. The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right. That means that as a human being you should have a right to water. That’s an extreme solution.”
Having access to water is not an extreme solution. It’s what we have called a basic need for centuries. Even Brabeck, after the media attack that followed, backed down. He said that he “believes that water is a human right” and “advocates for universal access to safe drinking water”. But his actions, as well as Nestle’s actions, show that that’s just greenwashing.
At the second World Water Forum in 2000, Nestle pushed for making access to drinking water from a “right” to a “need,” a defining change. Meanwhile, Nestle drains the aquifers it controls as much as possible, without any regards to sustainable usage or environmental concerns. A recent case is the California drought – an issue without precedent in the past 1,200 years. But Nestle doesn’t care. Even as Starbucks recently announced they would transfer their Ethos water bottling facility from California to Pennsylvania, Nestle CEO Tim Brown said: “Absolutely not. In fact, if I could increase [water bottling operations], I would.”
Yes, if he could, he’d increase water bottling operations, even though Nestle has been working without a permit since 1988. Inhabitat reports that the company has been sourcing its water from the San Bernardino National Forest without a permit and they’ve been recently been bumped to the front of the queue for permit renewal (which will take around 18 months), and they can keep working in the meantime as long as they pay a laughable $524 annual fee. Also, California doesn’t know how much water Nestle uses, because they have no legal grounds for making the company divulge this information, and Nestle hasn’t published any reports. An independent analysis puts all their water usage at 1 billion gallons a year.
Arguably, that’s not much when you considering that 500 billion gallons of water that will be saved under Gov. Brown’s new water restrictions, but there’s something absurd and immoral about a private company using as much water as they want while the rest of the state is facing severe restrictions.
But other areas in the world have it even worse than California.
In the small Pakistani community of Bhati Dilwan, a former village councilor says children are being sickened by filthy water. Who’s to blame? He says it’s bottled water maker Nestle, which dug a deep well that is depriving locals of potable water.
“The water is not only very dirty, but the water level sank from 100 to 300 to 400 feet,” Dilwan says. (source)
Indeed, unsustainable usage of aquifer water can lead to a significant decrease in water levels, and can even exhaust the aquifer. That’s right, underground water isn’t the inexhaustible source many people believe it to be. In the case of Bhati Dilwan, people are getting sick because if the community had fresh water piped in, it would deprive Nestle of its money source – bottled water under the Pure Life brand. Greedily using natural resources for profits? Check.
The small village of Bhati Dalwan is suffering a water crisis following the development of a Nestle water bottling facility. Image source.
But when Nestle isn’t trying to privatize water or use it without regards to the environment, it’s simply bottling… tap water. A Chicago-based business has sued the company (again), claiming that the five gallon jugs of Ice Mountain Water they bought were nothing else than tap water. It may come as a shock to you, but nearly half of the bottled water in PET plastic bottles is actually from a tap – though Nestle never advertised this. They know what’s likely going to happen though, as this is almost a dress rehearsal of a previous scandal. Twelve years ago Nestle Waters was sued over allegation of false labeling, and ultimately settled for $10 million in charitable contributions and discounts.
More recently, Nestle expressed their concern to the city of Flint, Michigan, which was undergoing a massive water crisis at the time — a crisis which still takes a toll to this day. Meanwhile, the company was using nearby water reserves for their own bottled water products. Nestle was bottling hundreds of thousands of bottles, paying only $200 to use this natural reserve.
Child labor, abuse, and trafficking
Most people love chocolate, but few know the dirty deals behind chocolate production. The 2010 documentary The Dark Side of Chocolate brought attention to purchases of cocoa beans from Ivorian plantations that use child slave labour. The children are usually 12 to 15 years old, and some are trafficked from nearby countries – and Nestle is no stranger to this practice.
Children labor was found in Nestle’s supply chain. Image via Crossing Guard Consulting.
In 2005, the cocoa industry was, for the first time, under the spotlight. The International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit against Nestle (among others) on behalf of three Malian children. The suit alleged the children were trafficked to Côte d’Ivoire, forced into slavery, and experienced frequent beatings on a cocoa plantation. In 2010, the US District Court for the Central District of California determined corporations cannot be held liable for violations of international law and dismissed the suit – a controversial decision which has since been appealed. But even if Nestle wasn’t legally liable for these abuses, they are, at least morally. But that wasn’t the only case of this kind.
A report by an independent auditor, the Fair Labor Association (FLA), says it found “multiple serious violations” of the company’s own supplier code. It was reported that Nestle hadn’t carried out checks against child labor and abuse. Additionally, many injuries caused by machetes, which are used to harvest cocoa pods, have been reported. Nestle’s excuse can be summed up broadly as ‘everybody does it’:
“The use of child labour in our cocoa supply chain goes against everything we stand for,” says Nestle’s Executive Vice-President for Operations Jose Lopez. “No company sourcing cocoa from the Ivory Coast can guarantee that it doesn’t happen, but we can say that tackling child labour is a top priority for our company.”
The FLA reported that Nestle was fully aware of where their cocoa was coming from and under what conditions, but did little to improve conditions. Child slavery and abuse? Check.
Health Threats
In July 2009, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned consumers to avoid eating any varieties of prepackaged Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough due to risk of contamination with E. coli O157:H7 (a foodborne bacterium that causes illness). In the US, it caused sickness in more than 50 people in 30 states, half of whom required hospitalization. In particular, one woman had a fatal infection before the batch was reclaimed.
“The fact that our product was implicated in Linda Rivera’s 2009 illness and tragic passing was obviously of grave concern to all of us at Nestle,” the company said in a statement. “Since then, we have implemented more stringent testing and inspection of raw materials and finished product to ensure the product meets our high quality standards,” which sort of makes you wonder – why weren’t stringent testing and inspections implemented in the first place?
But this is just a minor incident compared to the 2008 Chinese Milk Scandal. Six infants were killed and 860 were hospitalized with kidney problems after Nestle products were contaminated with melamine, a substance sometimes illegally added to food products to increase their apparent protein content.
In October 2008, Taiwan Health ministry announced that six types of milk powders produced in China by Nestlé contained low-level traces of melamine and were removed from the shelves.
The scandal quickly escalated, with China reporting over 300,000 victims, raising concerns about the security of major food companies operating in China. Two people were executed and several life prison sentences were issued, with the World Health Organization (WHO) referring to the incident as one of the largest food safety events it has had to deal with in recent years.
Nestle denied implication and claimed that all its products are clean, but the Taiwan government linked their products to toxic melamine. As a response, Nestle says it has sent 20 specialists from Switzerland to five of its Chinese plants to strengthen chemical testing.
Pollution
As with any “respectable” large company, Nestle has been involved in several incidents regarding pollution. A 1997 report found that in the UK, over a 12 month period, water pollution limits were breached 2,152 times in 830 locations by companies that included Cabdury and Nestle. But again, the situation in China was much worse.
While people in the US and Europe are slowly becoming more environmentally concerned and some are opting for more sustainable sources of water, Nestle has moved to another market – Asia. Alongside companies such as Kraft or Shell, Nestle made several environmental violations.
Nestle Sources Shanghai Ltd’s bottled water manufacturing plant also made the list for starting operation before its wastewater treatment facilities had passed an environmental impact assessment.
“These are only some of the water pollution violations committed by multinational companies in China, since our website has yet to cover information about air and solid waste pollution,” said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs. “The parent companies in their home countries are models for environmental protection. But they have slackened their efforts in China.”
Another article claims that Nestle capitalizes on China’s already-polluted waters to make a good profit, while Corporate Watch highlights the fact that Nestle continues to extract water illegally from Brazil for their Perrier brand. Although Nestlé lost the legal action, pumping continues as it gets through the appeal procedures, something which can take ten years or more.
Ethiopian Debt
Ethiopia was going through a nation-wide famine. Image via Wikipedia.
In 2002, Nestle made what turned out to be a colossal error: demanding that Ethiopia pay them back a debt of US$6 million. There’s nothing wrong with that per se… if Ethiopia wasn’t facing extreme famine at the time. For a company that has 29 brands that make over $1 billion a year, asking a famine-stricken country to pay you back 6 million seems questionable, to say the least.
Nestle’s claim dates back to the 1970s when the military regime in Addis Ababa seized the assets of foreign companies.
The public roar came almost overnight; with the company receiving 40,000 letters from outraged people, in one of the most famous cases of public opinion beat corporate greed. In the end, Nestle took a U-turn, settling for a partial debt which was also invested in the country’s bouncing back from famine. For Nestle, who initially insisted that the compensation issue was “a matter of principle” and that it was in the best interest of Addis Ababa to settle the demand to repair its record with foreign investors, it was a huge moral defeat. For analysts, it was an exciting case which showed that even giants can falter in the face of public opinion.
“This is a welcome result because it shows that Nestle is not immune to public pressure,” said Phil Bloomer, a senior policy analyst.
A Deal With Mugabe
Striking dubious partnerships to make a profit seems to be a recurring theme. The Swiss multinational made a deal with the wife of the infamous dictator from Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe, buying 1 million liters of milk a year from a farm seized from its rightful owners by Grace Mugabe
Grace has taken over at least six of Zimbabwe’s most valuable white-owned farms since 2002, building a farming empire from illegally confiscated farms, which led to an international boycott, as well as EU and US sanctions. She is known for her ridiculously lavish lifestyle, which includes overseeing the construction of two luxuriant castles. In 2014, she was given a doctorate diploma only three months after signing up for the program. Nestle went forward with the deal though, even as the country’s agriculture-based economy was collapsing and inflation was reaching unheard of levels.
Price Fixing
In Canada, the Competition Bureau raided the offices of Nestlé Canada (along with those of Hershey Canada Inc. and Mars Canada Inc) in an investigation on price fixing. Nestlé and the other companies were subject to class-action lawsuits and ultimately settled for $9 million, without actually admitting liability. Furthermore, former president and chief executive officer of Nestle Canada is facing criminal charges.
In the US, another, larger trial was rejected, because even though it was plausible that the same thing happened in the US, there was no clear evidence of any foul play. The suspicion remained however and still lingers with the company.
Promoting Unhealthy Food and Mislabeling
That Nestle is promoting unhealthy food should come as no surprise, but the level at which they operate it is simply staggering. A recent report by the UK Consumers Association claims that 7 out of the 15 breakfast cereals with the highest levels of sugar, fat, and salt were Nestle products.
“Nestlé claims to be ‘the world’s leading nutrition, health, and wellness company’, but when it comes to food marketing to kids, Nestlé is a laggard, not a leader,” said CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan.
Nestle dismissed all responsibility in promoting healthy food. To pour even more salt in the foods wound, mister Brabeck came out with a dismissive interview in the Telegraph, claiming that he is not obese yet ‘every morning I have a tablet of dark chocolate as my breakfast’ and that it is the perfect balance and contains everything he needs for the day. Hey, after all, who would actually think that Nestle’s cereals are healthy, right?
Image via Vevivos.
But while Nestle’s labels aren’t simply misleading, they have also been downright false. In November 2002, police ordered Nestle Colombia to decommission 200 tons of imported powdered milk, because they were falsely relabeled, not only as a different, local brand, but also with a different production date. A month later another 120 tons suffered the same fate, causing uproar among the Colombian population.
Nestle bringing old powdered milk from a different country and labeling as local and new is not only unethical and illegal, but it poses health hazards for consumers.
Drawing the Line
All major companies have incidents, accidents and scandals. When you have so many people working for you, it’s virtually impossible to maintain a clean sheet. Someone will eventually screw up, someone will eventually do something they should. As I was preparing to write this article, a friend actually asked me if other companies don’t have a similar record, and advised me to look at Mars, for example. What I found was that Mars and other big companies have indeed had their share of scandals (sometimes the same ones as Nestle), but not nearly on the same scale. Nestle has shown, time and time again, that they have few ethics and little interest in a real social responsibility. From promoting their formula to uneducated African mothers to lying about production dates, to using water without a permit to dealing with ruthless dictators, they have often gone the extra mile to make an extra profit – even when the extra mile meant hurting people, directly or indirectly.
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Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Mihai Andrei’s background is in geophysics, and he’s been fascinated by it ever since he was a child. Feeling that there is a gap between scientists and the general audience, he started ZME Science — and the results are what you see today.
Featured image: Nestle’s CEO, Peter Brabeck. (Source: ZME Science)
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 GMO industry — which is funded, propped up and defended by the tech and chemical industries — is now seeking to replace beef, poultry, dairy and fish with synthetic biology, cultured meat, precision fermentation, cellular-based and gene edited foods
Transitioning to cultured meat, made from animal cells grown in a petri dish, is a Great Reset goal for the global food industry. The aim is to control populations by creating dependence on private companies that control the food supply
The EAT Forum, cofounded by the Wellcome Trust, has developed what they call “The Planetary Health Diet,” designed to be applied to the global population. It entails cutting meat and dairy intake by up to 90%, and replacing it largely with foods made in laboratories, along with cereals and oil
Cultured meat (cell-based meat) is produced from animal tissue cells that are grown in fetal bovine serum (FBS) made from the blood of cow fetuses. So, cultured beef relies on the slaughter of both cows and unborn calves, which are drained of their blood while still alive
Plant-based meat alternatives contain no animal fats, only industrial seed oils that are loaded with linoleic acid (LA). Excessive consumption of LA in the modern diet is already one of the key drivers of chronic disease, and plant-based meat substitutes will only worsen the situation
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As reported by Organic Insider,1 the GMO industry — which is funded, propped up and defended by the tech and chemical industries — is now seeking to replace animal products such as beef, poultry, dairy and fish with synthetic biology, cultured meat, precision fermentation, cellular-based and gene edited foods.
Companies involved in creating these kinds of fake foods even participated in this year’s Natural Products Expo West, which has historically been reserved for all-natural and organic companies. Alan Lewis, vice president of advocacy at Natural Grocers commented on the presence of food-tech companies at the 2022 Expo:2
“It seems that even with all the smarts and savvy in the natural products community, we have failed to understand that we are being targeted by a coordinated global campaign to force the adoption of synthetics in natural channels. The campaign is spawn of the notorious GMO lobby, now emboldened and backed by technology moguls.”
The Great Reset in Action
A food goal of The Great Reset was even declared during that Expo. In his keynote presentation, Nick McCoy of Whipstitch Capital stated that “The only way we are going to meet demand, as a planet, is through cultured meat.” It’s an outright lie, but one that works well for those pushing The Great Reset agenda. Key arguments for synthetic meats include:
Sustainability — Raising livestock is unsustainable as it requires large amounts of land. Synthetic meats can be produced using a small land footprint, and it can be produced far faster, to keep up with growing food demands
Combating climate change — It’s environmentally friendlier than raising livestock, which are a source of methane gas
Animal welfare — It’s humane, as no animals are killed for human food
These arguments are all provably false, however, and nothing more than a flimsy veneer to cover the truth, which is that the shift to patented foods is all about creating population control through dependency.
The EAT Forum, cofounded by the Wellcome Trust, has developed what they call “The Planetary Health Diet,”3 designed to be applied to the global population. It entails cutting meat and dairy intake by up to 90%, and replacing it largely with foods made in laboratories, along with cereals and oil.
Their largest initiative is called FReSH, which aims to transform the food system by working with biotech and fake meat companies to replace whole foods with lab-created alternatives. Once tech giants have control of meat, dairy, cereals and oils, they will be the ones profiting from and controlling the food supply, and the private companies that control the food supply will ultimately also control countries and entire populations.
Biotech will eventually push farmers and ranchers out of the equation, thereby eliminating any hope of food security. So, the work being done in the name of sustainability and saving the planet is really all about shifting control over populations to private corporations.
Those corporations, in turn, are funded and/or owned by the same globalist cabal that is trying to “reset” everything else in society. And, just as all the rest of The Great Reset agenda, the planned changes to the food supply are to the detriment of the global population. It’ll cause lower levels of health, more chronic disease and, ultimately, lower life spans.
Synthetic Biology Is GMO Junk Food on Steroids
As noted by Michael Hansen, Ph.D., a senior staff scientist at Consumer Reports, meat and dairy alternatives are all really just junk food and GMOs on steroids. Nothing good can come from transitioning away from real animal foods to manmade alternatives:4
“Companies call these things ‘synthetic biology’ and ‘fermentation technology,’ but these foods are all just GMOs. They are using terms people do not understand, so that people will not realize these are GMO ingredients.
These are often highly processed foods, which are associated with increased calorie intake and weight gain, according to a study5 from the National Institute of Health.
And while these companies may be perceived as tech start-ups, the products they produce are designed to fit into an industrial food system, and society is clearly moving against this trend and toward a more agroecological-based food system.
Additionally, they are introducing novel, genetically-engineered proteins into the food supply that will have unknown potential impacts on the human microbiome and the environment, and these companies are self-affirming GRAS status with the FDA, a voluntary process that is incredibly problematic and falls very, very short of protecting the consumer.”
Cultured Meat Does Not Spare Lives of Animals
Cultured meat,6 or cell-based meat, is produced from animal tissue cells that are then grown into larger slabs. One of its main selling points is that you can eat your beef without harming an animal.
What the PR leaves out, however, is that a key ingredient to grow the cells is fetal bovine serum (FBS), which is made from the blood of cow fetuses. FBS is used because it’s a universal growth medium (meaning any cell can grow in it, whereas other mediums are cell-specific) and contains growth factors that prevent cell death. In 2017, Slate magazine detailed the gruesome process of FBS extraction:7
“If a cow coming for slaughter happens to be pregnant, the cow is slaughtered and bled, and then the fetus is removed from its mother and brought into a blood collection room.
The fetus, which remains alive during the following process to ensure blood quality, has a needle inserted into its heart. Its blood is then drained until the fetus dies, a death that usually takes about five minutes. This blood is then refined, and the resulting extract is FBS.”
This is false advertising at its finest. Eating cultured meat means you’re not merely eating an animal that was killed at the end of its life, you’re eating food made from an animal that was sacrificed before it was even born. That’s a pretty bizarre way to promote animal welfare, if you ask me.
The reality is they need both cows and calf fetuses to make cultured beef. According to Christiana Musk, founder of Flourish*ink, cultured meat is “meat without slaughter.”8 But clearly, that is a lie, seeing how it’s meat involving the slaughter of baby calves.
Just because you’re not eating the meat from that calf does not mean it didn’t die in order for you to eat meat. What’s worse, the meat from that calf was thrown away and its life sacrificed just to drain it of its blood, which strikes me as far more barbaric and inhumane than slaughtering and eating a full-grown cow.
Aside from general ethics considerations, cultured beef does not meet vegetarian requirements,9and one could raise religious objections as well. Jews and Christians, for example, are prohibited — Biblically speaking — from consuming the blood of any animal, and in cultured meat, blood is a key ingredient.
Beyond Meat Faces Class Action Lawsuit for Bogus Claims
At present, Singapore is the only country that has approved cultured meat for commercial sale but, so far, it’s a losing venture. As reported by the Daily Mail,10 FSB sells for $1,000 per liter, so cultured meat would have to sell at $200,000 per pound to break even.
In the U.S. and elsewhere, another type of beef alternative that doesn’t cost a fortune to make has taken the market by storm, namely plant-based meat substitutes such as Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat. I’ve previously exposed the heavy processing and questionable ingredients that go into these products.
Beyond Meat — the primary ingredients11 of which include pea protein, canola oil and rice protein — is now facing a class action lawsuit that alleges the company has been misrepresenting the protein content and/or quality, and the overall nutritional benefit, of nine different products. As reported by ClassAction.org:12
“According to the proposed class action, a number of claims made by the company concerning both protein and nutritional benefits are ‘false and misleading.’
Specifically, the 46-page complaint out of Illinois alleges that the plant-based meat substitute company ‘miscalculates and overstates’ its products’ protein content and protein quality.
The suit also alleges Beyond Meat misleads consumers into believing that its products provide equivalent nutritional benefits to those afforded by traditional meat-based foods …
The case claims that industry-standard testing done by the six plaintiffs revealed that many Beyond Meat items contained less protein than indicated on their respective product labels … Even worse, the suit says, the daily value percentage of protein in each of the items is ‘a small fraction’ of what Beyond Meat claims …
‘For example, Defendant’s Beyond Beef Plant-Based Ground 16oz Patties, which is labeled as ‘20G Per Serving’ and ‘40% DV’ for protein, actually contains 19G Per Serving by nitrogen testing, and 7% DV for protein. This represents an underfill of 5% for protein content and an underfill of 33% for %DV for protein.’”
Beware Unhealthy Fats
Aside from the fact that you don’t get the amount of protein you think you’re getting from Beyond Meat, a far greater concern has to do with the fats it contains — canola oil. There is no animal fat in these plant-based meat substitutes. Instead, you’re getting industrial seed oil, which is the worst fat possible.
High amounts can cause severe problems, as it acts as a metabolic poison that stays put in your cells for up to seven years. I’m convinced excessive LA in the modern diet is a key contributor to all chronic diseases.
To be clear, LA is the one fat you absolutely want to minimize in your diet. Anything above 10 grams a day is likely to cause ill health. To learn more about the harmful mechanisms of LA, see “How Linoleic Acid Wrecks Your Health.” In my view, replacing real animal foods with fake substitutes, regardless of how they’re made, is one of the worst ideas in human history.
Simply put, there are no benefits — not for the environment, human nutrition or animal welfare — only hazards and false claims. So, if you value your health, you would do well to stay clear of animal food substitutes, be they beef, poultry, fish or dairy substitutes.
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***
Instead of clinging to the discredited information warfare narrative that Kiev’s supposedly winning against Russia, the West’s perception managers are now telling the truth about how badly it’s being beat, though with the ulterior motive of generating grassroots support for more arm shipments that couldn’t possibly turn the tide in their proxy’s favor but would allow the military-industrial complex to squeeze at least a few billion dollars more out of taxpayers.
The Associated Press contributed to US-led Western Mainstream Media’s (MSM) decisive shift in the “official narrative” on the UkrainianConflict by admitting that Kiev is outgunned in its latest piece on the topic that was published on June 20. The outlet quoted that former Soviet Republic’s Ambassador to Spain who earlier this month said that his host country’s 200 tons of military aid “was enough for only about two hours of fighting” while a filmmaker-turned-militant tweeted a video describing the guns sent by America as only being worth “like 15 minutes of a fight.”
Curiously, while accurately reporting that Kiev’s Deputy Minister of Defense for procurement told the world’s top military-industrial complex magazine last week that foreign aid only meets 10-15% of his side’s needs, it omitted mentioning what its land forces command logistics commander also revealed in that same interview. He complained that two of the US-provided M777’s six pieces of equipment are damaged “after every artillery contact” and that “This happens every day” even though the Associated Press cited an unnamed lieutenant who praised this equipment for allegedly “demoralizing the enemy”.
Despite that conspicuous piece of disinformation within their article, the Associated Press nevertheless mostly told the truth about how outgunned Kiev actually is, which is hugely humiliating for the West’s military-industrial complex. Be that as it is, however, it can also be spun to support another round of information warfare pressing those governments to contribute even more billions of dollars’ worth of aid to their proxy. After all, they can claim that the NATO proxy war on Russia through Ukraine is “too big to fail” and that years of support are needed exactly as that bloc’s Secretary General recently wrote.
The problem is that this potentially unlimited financial-military commitment to Kiev is becoming increasingly unpopular as proven by an opinion poll published by the European Council on Foreign Relations last week which showed that more EU citizens favor peace over punishing Russia. The Associated Press’ efforts to support the military-industrial complex’s potentially forthcoming information warfare campaign against the West’s own citizens might therefore not bear the fruit that the outlet expected.
In fact, it could even have the opposite effect of making Kiev come off as ungrateful after quoting those from its side who mockingly referred to the aid that they’ve already received. Not only that, but the facts cited within their piece might also be eye-opening for the average European, who had no idea that Kiev was burning through 200 tons of military aid in just two hours. This statistic, which was shared by its Ambassador to Spain who nobody could credibly describe as a so-called “Russian propagandist”, confirms just how wasteful this entire proxy war has become for those taxpayers who are funding it.
The more that the military-industrial complex recruits their allies in the MSM to churn out information products in support of Kiev receiving even more billions of dollars’ worth of military aid from the West, the more likely it is that this might be met with a hostile reaction from their target audience. Some folks might understandably believe that enough is enough since it’s more important for their taxes to be used to help their own people weather their countries’ self-inflicted economic crisis caused by the EU’s compliance with the US’ anti-Russian sanctions demands.
Even the most brainwashed Americans might be disheartened to hear that the earlier cited filmmaker-turned-militant mocked their country’s literally tens of billions of dollars’ worth of arms shipments as only giving Kiev “like 15 minutes of a fight” more than before.
The “official narrative” of the conflict isn’t just decisively shifting but is on the brink of being decisively shattered by none other than the MSM itself in its craze to convince its target audience that they need to sacrifice even more for Kiev than ever before. Quite clearly, their proxy was never winning to begin with despite prior claims to the contrary.
Instead of clinging to that discredited information warfare narrative, the West’s perception managers are now telling the truth about how badly it’s being beat, though with the ulterior motive of generating grassroots support for more arm shipments that couldn’t possibly turn the tide in Kiev’s favor but would allow the military-industrial complex to squeeze at least a few billion dollars more out of taxpayers. As the European Council on Foreign Relations’ latest opinion poll shows, however, people are wising up, realizing that the proxy war is lost, and are no longer interested in definitely supporting it at all costs.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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Last week (June 8-10) there were two summits in Los Angeles, California: the Summit of the Americas hosted by the US State Department and the Peoples Summit hosted by US and international activist organizations. The two summits were held in the same city at the same time but could not be otherwise more different.
Summit of SOME of the Americas
Begun in 1994, in the heyday of US international dominance, the Summit of the Americas is officially a function of the Organization of American States. It is meant to coordinate and consolidate US economic, political and cultural interests. The first summit, held in Miami, served this goal well. The Soviet Union had broken up, severely hurting allies such as Cuba. Neo-liberalism was on the march, even in countries such as Nicaragua where the Sandinistas had been voted out of power. The US had recently invaded Panama, making a murderous example of any country or leader that defied US dictates.
Since 1994, there have been Summits of the Americas every three or four years. The summits in Canada (2001) and Argentina (2005) had large anti-summit protests against capitalist globalization. In Panama in 2015, Cuba was invited to the summit for the first time after a group of countries threatened to boycott the summit if Cuba was again excluded. President Obama met and shook hands with Cuban President Raul Castro. There was widespread agreement and pleasure at the US beginning to normalize relations with Cuba.
March from People’s Summit to Summit of the Americas.
In 2018, the US hostility to Cuba resumed under President Trump. The White House administration referred to Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela as a “troika of tyranny”.
The policy of exclusion continues under the Biden administration and this became a major feature of the just concluded Summit of the Americas. Despite threats to boycott the gathering by many Latin American and Caribbean presidents, the US chose to exclude Cuban, Nicaragua and Venezuela. This resulted in seven country presidents choosing not to attend: Mexico, Bolivia, Honduras, St Vincent, Antigua, Guatemala, El Salvador. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) said simply, “There cannot be a summit of the Americas if all the countries of the American continent do not participate. Or there can be, but …. it is just a continuation of the old policy of interventionism, or disrespect of nations and their peoples.”
As it turned out, the absence of three excluded and seven allied leaders became a predominant feature of the Summit. The ghost of the ten hung over all events. The summit accomplished little with the lack of preparation being compared to a “privileged but lazy student” who does not prepare for a test. The Atlantic analyzed the situation: “The Summit of the Americas, hosted this year by Joe Biden, offers a measure of how far the U.S. has fallen.” The attendance was small and resolutions filled with platitudes with little substance. Criticisms of the US exclusion of countries were openly aired.
The NY Times described the Summit by quoting a former Mexican ambassador who said many countries are “challenging U.S. influence, because U.S. influence has been diminishing in the continent.”
At the Summit of the Americas, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and OAS leader Luis Almagro spoke at a panel about ” Journalistic Freedom”. Journalist Walter Smolarek exposed the farce as he boldly confronted Almagro because of his complicity in the 2019 Bolivian coup and more.
There was a plea from many countries to get beyond conflict and cold war, to genuinely work together to address the looming and already dangerous results of climate change.
The Summit of the Americas was expensive. Just the LA police security cost over $15 million.
People’s Summit panel
Peoples Summit 2022
Two miles away from the Summit of the Americas, the Peoples Summit was held at the Los Angeles Technical Trade College. The Peoples Summit included art and poster pavilion, a huge hall for panel discussions and speeches, and an outdoor pavilion featuring dozens of activist organizations and craftspeople. There was live music and dancing later at night. Over a thousand people attended and spirits were high.
The complex affair was organized by over ten convening organizations. These included the Answer Coalition, International Peoples Assembly, CodePink and unions SEIU 721 and AFT 1521. There were over a hundred individuals providing support and organization for the event. Many activists flew or drove to Los Angeles from across the US. In contrast with the Summit of the Americas , the Peoples Summit operated on a shoestring based on volunteers.
A wide array of domestic and international issues were addressed at the Peoples Summit. They included Health as a Human Right, Gender Violence, Food Sovereignty and Climate Justice, Cultural Resistance, Youth Organizing Strategies, Justice for TPS and Undocumented Community, Lessons from Below and Organizing Unhoused Communities. Plus many more.
Activist displays
In 2020, Los Angeles counted over 66,000 homeless people in the city. The latest survey, from January this year, is going to be released June 22. These and other issues were explored by activists at the Peoples Summit.
A major component of the Peoples Summit was international affairs and the connection to struggles at home. While the US spends well over $800 billion annually on the military, there are virtually no homes being built by the US government. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development offers rental assistance and advice. In contrast, Venezuela has constructed 4 million homes for Venezuelan families.
US censorship and attacks on media critics were further revealed at the Peoples Summit where Julian Assange’s father and brother talked about the world’s most famous imprisoned journalist and publisher. The Wikileaks founder has been imprisoned for ten years, with over three years at Belmarsh maximum security prison. He is now threatened with extradition to the US, a kangaroo court and life imprisonment. His only “crime” has been to reveal the real crimes of the US military and government.
There was an outstanding lineup of speakers each of the three days of the Peoples Summit. These included local activists and indigenous leaders and noted international leaders such as Honduran Bertha Zuniga and Puerto Rican Oscar Lopez Rivera.
The presidents of Cuba and Venezuela, plus Evo Morales, the former president of Bolivia, sent eloquent messages of support to the Peoples Summit.
On Friday June 10 there was a mass march and rally from the Peoples Summit at the community college to the street in front of the Summit of the Americas. The streets of downtown Los Angeles echoed with calls, chats and songs as the march proceeded.
People’s Summit art display
Conclusions
There is growing criticism of US presumptions of supremacy and US foreign policy promoting division and conflict. This was expressed by leaders who stayed away from the Summit of Americas and also many leaders who attended. The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, said frankly,
“It’s wrong that Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua are not here, because as you heard from Bahamas, we need to speak with those with whom we disagree….There’s too much narrow-casting instead of broadcasting. There’s too much talking at, instead of talking with…. And the simple priority must be people, not ideology.”
US exceptionalism and the exclusion of countries is increasingly being challenged. This matches the global criticisms of US unilateral sanctions. At the last UN General Assembly, the vote was 184-2 in denouncing US embargo on Cuba. Seventy percent of world nations believes US sanctions violate international law.
The Summit of the Americas showed the US attempting and failing to impose its will on the hemisphere. The Peoples Summit showed a different vision which is in accord with the wishes of most countries and people.
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***
To consider Scotland’s possible interest in Nato membership in light of the current crisis in Ukraine, we should look at some significant milestones in post-cold war history.
When the cold war was over, Soviet and Russian leaders from Mikhail Gorbachev to Vladimir Putin proposed a new Euro-Atlantic security alliance —“from Dublin to Vladivostok”.
But then Moscow looked on as Nato welcomed as members first Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999, then the Baltic states and other former Eastern bloc countries.
Three Soviet/Russian presidents—Gorbachev and Putin, along with Boris Yeltsin—then inquired about Russian membership of Nato, and this too was rejected out of hand. It was quite obviously the fulfilment of Nato’s mission laid out by its founding secretary-general, Lord Ismay: “to keep the Soviet Union out, America in, and Germany down.”
The fateful moment—in terms of Russia’s war on Ukraine—came in 2008 at the Nato summit in Bucharest, Romania. The US administration under George W. Bush then proposed—to the consternation of Nato allies, especially France and Germany—a path to alliance membership for Ukraine and Georgia.
This was, for Russia, the ‘red line’. Simply put, and despite American scorn to the contrary, Russia has a relationship with Ukraine—historic, cultural and strategic—that the US cannot understand because it has no equivalent for us Americans.
The sad irony is that over the past three months it has become obvious that Ukraine in Nato is a non-starter—a fact not lost on president Volodymyr Zelensky the day after the Russian invasion began. He said: “Who is ready to give Ukraine a guarantee of NATO membership? Everyone is afraid.”
Furthermore, if someone, such as president Emanuel Macron of France, had had the sense to simply state the truth—that the Bucharest 2008 declaration about Ukraine in Nato was a sham—the war might have been prevented.
What might have been
Another ‘might have been’ preventive measure lay in the Minsk agreements I and II, which followed the 2014 Maidan uprising in Ukraine, the product of the then government’s decision to seek closer ties with Russia.
The Minsk agreements were designed to ease tensions between Ukraine and Russia and were signed on to by both countries, along with France and Germany.
Their main stipulations included a ceasefire and removal of combatants from sensitive areas on both sides of the Ukraine/Russia border, and referenda on autonomy (not independence) for the disputed Donbas regions, Donetsk and Luhansk.
Regrettably, Minsk was never implemented—the main backsliding coming from Kyiv.
This was likely due to two forces: internally, from Ukraine’s far-right military ‘irregulars’, which are by now virtually inseparable from the official armed forces; and externally, from pressure by the Atlanticist states, the US and UK, whose opposition to any recognition of what Russia sees as its legitimate regional concerns has helped drive the crisis from the beginning.
Two points concerning today’s Nato are relevant to the Ukraine crisis. The first is that the history of the alliance over the past 30 years lays bare the lie about Nato as a ‘purely defensive’ entity dedicated to building peace and democratic governance in countries that had suffered under communist despotism in the cold war.
Many of us argued indeed that, if this were so, what country had suffered more under communist rule than Russia? Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are all clearly outside the alliance’s geographical purview, and none posed a direct threat to Nato’s legitimate area of protection.
The US/UK-led massive military assistance to Ukraine not only prolongs the death and destruction but raises the spectre of war between Nato and Russia themselves, with potentially catastrophic global consequences.
These loom as a result of the tension between Ukraine’s increased weaponry expectations and Nato’s willingness to deliver materiel that could expand the war into Russian territory.
On June 10, Ukraine’s defence spokesman Mikhailo Podolyaksaid: “We need parity [with Russia] in heavy weapons”, meaning tanks and armoured vehicles, along with drones and, most especially, multiple-launch rocket systems that could strike deep into Russia.
Second, Nato’s eastward expansion involved an outright lie to Russia, which had given consent to Germany’s unification in exchange for verbal assurances of Nato moving ‘not an inch’ to the east. This means Nato is plausibly seen as a threat to Russia.
To this we can add the US tearing up the anti-ballistic missile treaty, nuclear installations in Poland and Romania and increasingly robust multi-Nato country exercises that encircle Russia, from the Baltics to the Black Sea.
Even Pope Francis has spoken of “Nato barking at Russia’s door”.
Independent Scotland
The Ukraine tragedy and its knock-on consequences should encourage sober consideration of possible Nato membership for an independent Scotland. Several thoughts occur.
First, do we follow Finland and Sweden in seeking Nato membership, or remain in the alliance under an arrangement with the UK? Sweden and especially Finland both have complicated historical relationships, and geographical proximity, to Russia that Scotland does not have.
Nor does Scotland present any strategic threat to Russia or others—apart from the UK’s nuclear submarine fleet capacity at the Faslane base on the Clyde, which, as far as I can see, would be Scotland’s sole value to Nato.
The other element in the current UK nuclear weapons arsenal, Trident, is a perennial source of debate in Westminster. Scotland’s position should be to scrap it—as both hideously expensive and of limited utility. The notion that the UK would launch a nuclear attack without US consent is fanciful.
Second, Nato currently stipulates that 2% of a member state’s GDP be allocated to defence spending as a condition of membership, a level that has until recently only been fulfilled by a handful of states. The ante is very likely to be raised in the post-Ukraine war security environment.
Is this an investment that an independent Scotland with predictable economic challenges and choices feels it necessary to make?
I would also note that pre-war Ukraine had the third largest army in Europe, after Russia and Turkey, and military expenditures were 6% of GDP. Money, to paraphrase the old adage, can’t buy security.
Mediator
Third, a more esoteric but interesting thought: Scotland in a mediator role. I would argue—more in hope than expectation—that after the Ukraine war the US should sideline itself, that this is a European problem, for a European discussion of a European future, and again, Russia will be part of that discussion.
Zelensky has allowed as much in a recent, rather strange address to the nation that basically said: the war will continue, there will be more death and destruction, but ultimately a ceasefire reached and peace restored as a result of diplomatic engagement.
The Ukraine conflict will come to an end—one hopes not with an escalation of hostilities between Russia and Nato, but at the negotiation table, as Zelensky suggests.
It is often forgotten that there were three months of talks in Vienna and Geneva before the outbreak of war in late February, and there are negotiators and proposals on hand from those talks. These can, and must, be reconvened, perhaps with the Minsk agreements on the table for updating.
Beyond Nato, there is a quietly effective European outfit named the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The OSCE has been a presence in areas of conflict such as Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, in the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and it has a high commissioner for minorities to address issues of minority populations in east and central Europe. These are issues that loom ever larger in Europe’s future.
The OSCE’s non-military, mediatory role has quite clearly been curtailed by Nato’s assertion of territorial primacy, but I would argue that this role will be a vital one in the tough discussions on a new Europe.
It might clearly be in Scotland’s best interest to seek a role for itself within the OSCE, rather than one as a minor player within Nato.
The point is that some of Europe’s smaller players—the Scandinavians and the Benelux countries, along with Germany and France—should be called upon to help lay the foundation for a secure European future.
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David Speedie sits on board of the US-based think-tank the American Committee for US-Russia Accord in New York, USA. He was previously director of the programme on US global engagement at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
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***
So Honest Joe Biden is now going to give another $1.2 billion to the Ukrainians on top of the sixty or so billion that is already in the pipeline, but who’s counting, particularly as Congress refused to approve having an inspector general to monitor whose pockets will be lined. The money will be printed up without any collateral or “borrowed” and the American taxpayer will somehow have to bear the burden of this latest folly that is ipso facto driving much of the world into recession. And it will no doubt be blamed on Vladimir Putin, a process that is already well under way from president mumbles. But you have to wonder why no one has told Joe that the whole exercise in pushing much of the world towards a catastrophic war is a fool’s errand. But then again, the clowns that the president has surrounded himself with might not be very big on speaking the truth even if they know what that means.
Having followed the Ukraine problem since the United States and its poodles refused to negotiate seriously with Vladimir Putin in the real world, I have had to wonder what is wrong with Washington. We have had the ignorant and impulsive Donald Trump supported by a cast of characters that included the mentally unstable Mike Pompeo and John Bolton followed by Biden with the usual bunch of Democratic Party rejects. By that I mean deep thinkers about social issues who would not be able to run a hot dog stand if that were what they were forced to do to make a living. But they are real good at shouting “freedom” and “democracy” whenever questioned concerning their motives.
Indeed, opinion polls suggest that there is a great deal of unrest among middle and working class Americans who see a reversion to Jimmy Carter era financial instability, at that time caused by the oil embargo. Well, there is a new energy embargo in place brought about by the Biden Administration’s desire to wage proxy war to “weaken” Russia. Analysts predict that the costs for all forms of energy will double in the next several months and surging energy costs will impact the prices of other essentials, including food. Given all that, the fundamental issue plaguing both Democrats and Republicans is their inability to actually explain to the American people why the country’s foreign and national security policy always seems to be on the boil, searching for enemies and also creating them when they do not exist, even when the results are damaging to the interests of actual Americans.
That a serious discussion of why the United States needs to have a military that costs as much as the next nine nations in that ranking combined is long overdue and rarely addressed outside the alternative media. The 2023 military budget has been increased from this year’s, totaling $858 billion, and, if one includes the constantly growing largesse to Ukraine, approaching a hitherto unimaginable trillion dollars. The military budget has become a major driver of the country’s unsustainable deficits. The deaths of millions of people directly and indirectly in the wars started in 9/11 aside, the wars of choice have cost an estimated $8 trillion.
The Constitution of the United States makes it clear that a national army was only acceptable to the Founders when it was dedicated to defending the country from foreign threats. Do Americans really believe that bearing the burden of having something like 1,000 military bases scattered around the world really makes them safer? The recent rapid collapse of the security situation in Afghanistan suggests that having such bases turns soldiers and bureaucrats into potential hostages and is therefore a liability. One might also suggest that the insecurity currently prevailing in the country can in large part be attributed to the government’s depiction of numerous “threats” in order to justify both the commitment and the expense.
So where does all the money go? And what are the threats? Starting with a war that the United States is de facto though not de jure involved in, Ukraine, what was the Russian threat that demanded Washington’s intervention? Well, if one discards the nonsense of a “rules based international order” or a plucky little democracy Ukraine fighting valiantly against the Russian bear, Moscow did not threaten the United States in any way before the missiles starting flying. Putin sought to negotiate a settlement with Ukraine based on a number of perceived existential Russian national security interests, all of which were negotiable, but the US and its friends were uninterested in compromise while also plying the corrupt Zelensky regime with weapons, money and political support. The final result is a conflict that will likely only end when the last Ukrainian is dead and it includes the possibility that a misstep by the United States and Russia could lead to a nuclear holocaust. To put it succinctly, what is going on does not enhance US national security, nor does it benefit Americans economically.
And then there is China. Biden let the cat out of the bag on his recent trip to the Far East. He stated that the United States would defend Taiwan if China were to attempt to annex it. In saying that, Biden demonstrated that he does not understand the strategic ambiguity that the US and the Chinese have preferred over the past fifty years as an alternative to war. The White House for its part quickly issued a correction to the Biden statement, explaining that it was not true that Washington is obligated to defend Taiwan. Some uber hawkish congressmen have apparently found the Biden gaffe appealing and are promoting a firm US commitment to defend Taiwan, coupled with a $4.5 billion military assistance package, of course.
At the same time, some officials in the Pentagon and the usual gaggle of congressmen also keep warning about the over the horizon threat from China as an excuse to boost defense spending. Most recently, there was alarm over Chinese participation in a meeting in May in Fiji to consider a China-Pacific Islands free trade pact! In reality, the only serious current threat from China is as an economic competitor. A trade war with China would be a disaster for the US economy, which is heavily dependent on Chinese manufactured goods, but Beijing, with its relatively small military budget, does not pose a physical threat to the United States.
And let’s not ignore Iran which has been hammered by economic sanctions and also through the covert killing of its officials and scientists. The US/Israeli war on Iran has also spilled over into neighboring Syria, where Washington actually has troops on the ground occupying the country’s oil producing region and stealing the oil. Iran’s possible expansion of its nuclear program to produce a weapon was effectively impeded through monitoring connected to a multilateral 2015 agreement called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) but Donald Trump, unwisely and acting against actual American interests, withdrew from it. Joe Biden has been warned by Israel not to re-enter the agreement, so he will no doubt comply with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s determination to have Washington continue to apply “extreme pressure” on the Islamic Republic. Does either Iran or its ally Syria threaten the United States in any way? No. Their crime is that they are in the same neighborhood as the Jewish state, which finds the US government easy to manipulate into acting against its own interests.
Finally, in America’s own hemisphere there is Venezuela, which has been elevated to the status of Washington’s most hated nation in the region. Venezuelans have been subjected to increasingly punitive US sanctions, including some new ones just last week, which hurt the poorer citizens disproportionately but have not brought about regime change. Why the animosity? Because the country’s leader Nicolas Maduro is still in power in spite of a US assertion that the country’s opposition leader Juan Guaido should rightfully and legitimately be in charge after a possibly fraudulent election in 2018. The latest therapy applied by the United States on Caracas consisted of blocking the country as well as Nicaragua and Cuba from participating in the recent meeting of the Ninth Summit of the Americas which was held in Los Angeles. A State Department spokesman explained that the move was due to the three countries “lacking democratic governances.” Mexican President Lopez Obrador protested against the move and removed himself from his country’s delegation, saying “There can’t be a Summit of the Americas if not all countries of the American continent are taking part.” The despicable US Senator Robert Menendez of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee then felt compelled to add his two cents, criticizing the Mexican president and warning that his “decision to stand with dictators and despots” would hurt US-Mexico relations. So where was the threat from Venezuela (and Cuba and Nicaragua) and why is the US involved at all? Beats me.
What all of this means is that there is absolutely no standard of genuine national security that motivates the US’s completely illegal aggression in many parts of the world.
What occurs may be linked to a desire to dominate or a madness sometimes described as “exceptionalism” and/or “leadership of the free world,” neither of which has anything to do with actual security.
And the American people are paying the price both in terms of decline in standards of living due to the upheaval created in Ukraine and elsewhere as well as a completely understandable loss of faith in the US system of government. By all means, let us shrink the US military until it is responsive to actual identifiable threats. Let’s elect a president who will follow the sage advice of President John Quincy Adams, who declared that “Americans should not go abroad to slay dragons they do not understand in the name of spreading democracy.” At this point, one can only imagine an America that is at peace with itself and with what it represents while also being considered a friend to the rest of the world.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
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Albert Benavides spent twenty-five years as a revenue cycle management expert. He ran the ultra-complex medical billing operations that exist at some of America’s largest hospitals. At one point he managed the 4th-largest diagnostic laboratory in the country, and he also ran his own billing company for a while.
Albert is one of America’s foremost experts on how medical recordkeeping works, and that makes him also one of America’s foremost experts on the VAERS database. VAERS, you’ll remember, is the database of all the illnesses, ailments, and deaths that take place after somebody gets a vaccine in this country.
Albert has been doing the hard work of closely tracking the VAERS database and how it changes over time. And over the past two months, he says, there has been a dramatic amount of information deleted from the database. Overall, more than 12,500 records have vanished in the past nine weeks, including two thousand hospitalizations, a thousand permanent disabilities, and five hundred and fifty deaths.
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***
On 10 November 1975, the late Chaim Herzog, then Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations and the father of President Isaac Herzog, stood on the podium at the UN General Assembly and dramatically tore up the text of Resolution 3379, adopted that same day.
Resolution 3379 declared that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. Israel was shocked. A major boulevard in Haifa named in honour of the UN was swiftly renamed “Zionism Boulevard” by the Haifa City Council. What a joke of fate: the street once named in gratitude to the UN for declaring in 1947 its support for Israel’s establishment as a state was renamed three decades later due to a different decision of the same organisation.
Chaim Herzog was an immediate superhero in Israel. It was the peak moment of his career. Israelis deemed his theatrical gesture a fitting response to what the country perceived as an act of global antisemitism. Nearly all Israelis, the younger me included, held that opinion at the time. Comparing Zionism to racism? It could only be antisemitism.
Years passed. The UN rescinded that decision in December 1991, but another few decades later, everything looks different again. Zionism, which today is essentially about the preservation of Jewish supremacy in a country inhabited by two peoples, no longer seems too far off from how it was presented in the original UN decision.
Likewise, the gesture made by Herzog senior at the UN podium – shredding the pages of a decision that the majority of the world’s nations had accepted as lawful – seems much less appropriate today than it did at the time.
Human rights violations
What has shifted not an inch since the adoption of Resolution 3379 in 1975 is Israel’s attitude towards international organisations and international law. Nearly half a century later, we find the current Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, doing something similar. On 29 October 2021, he stood on the same stage and tore up the latest annual report of the UN Human Rights Council.
This time, the performance was perceived as repulsive and violent, and earned much less respect. But Erdan also suggested consigning the report to its rightful place in “the dustbin of antisemitism”.
That Israel is not alone in its human rights violations – that other countries behave likewise, but earn far less international censure – is considered adequate to justify Israel’s complete failure to respond to the accusations levelled against it.
It’s like a driver caught speeding recklessly, who tries to avoid legal consequences by saying that everyone drives that way. This is a useless ploy when used on traffic cops, and it should be similarly useless when directed at the institutions of the international community.
So, here is the story in a nutshell: a country established thanks to the power of the UN and the international community acts to undermine the same international bodies the moment they become critical of its behaviour. Just note how compliant Israeli media reports on members of the various international commissions of inquiry into Israeli actions.
Consider the most recent portrayals of Navi Pillay, who spent six years as the UN high commissioner for human rights and now chairs the UN commission of inquiry into Israel’s bombing of high-rise towers in Gaza in May 2021: Pillay “is mistaken”, “hates Israel” or “is an antisemite”.
Shooting the messenger
Not everything was made public on Israel’s efforts to destroy the reputation of Richard Goldstein, who headed the UN team of inquiry into the 2008-09 Gaza war. Still less is known about its attempts to target Fatou Bensouda, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, after she finally summoned the courage to open an inquiry into suspected war crimes by Israel.
Israel repeatedly employs an old but effective strategy: if you cannot handle the message, shoot the messenger. Following the decision to open that inquiry, Bensouda resigned, and nothing has been done since. UN commission members probing the latest Gaza war have been refused entry to Israel, as the government declines to cooperate with their work.
Israel has much to hide. Yet, even that has not provided incentive enough to scale up the investigations.
This is working for Israel. Erdan has just been elected as a vice president of the UN General Assembly. Investigations of Israel are conducted at a suspiciously leisurely pace. Let’s not even mention the word sanctions; what was fine for dealing with Russia just a few weeks after its invasion of Ukraine has never been on the agenda with regards to an amazingly similar occupation, more than half a century old and counting, by Israel.
The result: nobody accused, no accountability, no price exacted and no punishment.
This whole progression has led to an inconceivable situation. It features an occupying power, whose continued occupation is internationally recognised as illegal; whose “temporary” occupation has long since become permanent; and whose security forces commit war crimes in the occupied territories on a regular basis, since that is the only way to overcome the legitimate resistance to the occupation. No one is investigated, charged, tried or punished – not the country itself, nor its citizens who carry out these actions.
Automatic impunity
Since the judicial system in Israel also systematically absolves those who carry out such crimes, a situation is created whereby Israel, its government, its military and other organisations operate with an impunity that is automatic, blind, continuous and almost total.
Soldiers serving in the occupied territories know very well that nearly anything they do is treated as permissible: shooting, killing, abusing, humiliating. They will never be punished, not by Israel nor by anyone else. Every day there are more killings, politically motivated arrests without trial, collective punishment, home demolitions, land confiscation, torture and humiliation, settlement expansion, and exploitation of natural resources.
No one is ever held responsible, beyond those who try to change this distorted situation. If a report is written, Israel will not even read it, and its ambassador will shred the text on the world’s most respected international stage. If anyone dares to launch an inquiry, Israel will quickly make it disappear.
The rest of the world might take a hard line about Israel rhetorically, yet it instantly comes to Israel’s defence in the face of any potentially damaging action. No other country has anything like Israel’s spectrum of impunity. No other army is treated as guiltlessly, despite perpetuating an occupation and committing all the avoidable and unavoidable crimes that are part and parcel of this illegal situation.
Has Israel ever acknowledged even one indefensible action before the international community? Has the international community ever dared to take a genuine step towards bringing the guilty parties to justice?
There has been no accountability whatsoever for the long list of crimes committed in the territories under Israel’s occupation. Just ask Erdan how this works; to keep this system going, you need only to stand at the most respected podium on earth and tear up the evidence of your transgressions.
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Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper’s editorial board. Levy joined Haaretz in 1982, and spent four years as the newspaper’s deputy editor. He was the recipient of the Euro-Med Journalist Prize for 2008; the Leipzig Freedom Prize in 2001; the Israeli Journalists’ Union Prize in 1997; and The Association of Human Rights in Israel Award for 1996. His new book, The Punishment of Gaza, has just been published by Verso.
Featured image: Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, tears up a report from the UN Human Rights Council on 29 October 2021 (Twitter/@giladerdan1)
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A guest of the German talk show program “Maischberger” laid out how European leaders are getting humiliated on the world stage as they continue to prosecute the war in Ukraine against Russia that can no longer be won.
“I am afraid we are now faced with a situation where we now have to face an uncomfortable truth,” said journalist Wolfram Weimer last week. “And that is that Russia has won this war.”
“Now, our chancellor is working with this language template: ‘Russia must not win this war. Ukraine must win,’” Weimer continued.
“I’m just wondering where this is headed politically, because in fact Russia has practically conquered the Donbas in just a matter of a few days. The area gains are huge, they are about as big as Holland and Belgium put together. The land connection to Crimea is there. That means, how is Russia supposed to lose this war now?”
looking at today's map, Russia seems to be pushing westward. Maybe they will take Odessa too and make Ukraine a land locked country. Want to see how Ukraine cheerleaders will spin loss of coastline access as a win pic.twitter.com/maWaSdFgny
Weimer went on to say that Ukraine “does not have the strength” to militarily fight Russia despite receiving billions of dollars of weapons and assistance from the West, and that Russia is “also winning the international game of sanctions.”
“The Chinese have jumped on Russia, the Indians are doing business like never before with Russia, important emerging countries like Brazil and South Africa have left the West — and the federal chancellor has a trip to South Africa, he was embarrassed on the open stage, they don’t want sanctions. They don’t even want to talk about a war of aggression.”
“That means we have also lost this international struggle for the majority. And I’m afraid we have to admit that, and because I assume that Macron’s initiative is based on realpolitick insight, we cannot win this war, we have to end it as quickly as possible and that is also of great value to start a diplomatic initiative,” Weimer said.
“That’s what I actually expect from our federal government, precisely because it was so reluctant to keep the channel to Moscow open, Berlin actually has to present a peace plan and I hope the trip to Kiev will result in [German Chancellor Olaf Scholz] doing so,” he concluded.
The West’s sanctions against Russia have backfired spectacularly.
And as Weimer noted, China, India, and other non-Western countries have ramped up commerce with Russia since the sanctions came into effect.
Meanwhile, because of Ukraine and Russia’s key roles in global food production – namely wheat and fertilizers – food prices in the U.S. and Europe have spiked dramatically.
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US occupation forces in Syria led a convoy of 40 trucks, each filled up with stolen Syrian wheat, into Iraq from Syria, according to an 18 June report from Syrian state news agency SANA.
The report indicates that the US military, along with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), looted large quantities of wheat from the Al-Jazeera region and transported it towards the Al-Waleed border crossing, where it entered Iraq on 18 June.
The report noted that this was not the only convoy filled with stolen goods led by the US military. Another convoy with 36 vehicles, filled with stolen Syrian wheat, crossed Al-Waleed border from the Tal Hamis area.
The US recently deployed military and logistical equipment in nearby Hasakah, Syria.
Damascus considers US presence in northeastern Syria a means of stealing Syrian resources.
US troops also use the Al-Waleed crossing to transfer stolen oil derivatives into Iraq. On 14 May, a US military convoy of 70 oil tankers filled with smuggled fuel crossed the border into Iraq.
A day earlier, 46 US vehicles were reportedly transferred out of Syria through the same border crossing.
US troops and the SDF are in control of most of the oil fields in Hasakah and Deir Ezzor and have been regularly smuggling Syrian oil out of the country to sell it abroad.
Dozens of similar US convoys have been reported over the last year and a half. On 18 December 2021, nearly one hundred oil tankers were smuggled into northern Iraq through the same illegal crossing.
On 10 January, Syrian media reported that the US occupation and one of its various armed groups set up a refinery to process stolen oil in the town of Rmelan in Hasakah governorate.
The US military routinely smuggles Syrian oil into northern Iraq, in a move that is both in violation of international law and as routine practice that shows how deeply entrenched the US is in its occupation of both nations.
The theft of Syrian food and fuel supplies is taking place amid a global food and fuel crisis.
Countries like Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen are already dealing with severe economic and food crises.
Once a major wheat producer, Syria is now facing food shortages. The western-backed war on Syria as well as a recent drought has made Syria more dependent on Russian wheat.
In a 15 March investigation by The Cradle, analyst Léa Azzi highlighted the current situation facing the Levantine nation.
“The Syrian Republic is by no means the only country in West Asia whose food security and living standards are under threat by the implications of Russia’s war with Ukraine. These states will also be inflicted with the burden of rising oil and gas prices which directly increase the cost of shipping, manufacturing, and general prices of goods and services. These in turn will add further strain to families faced with reduced purchasing power.”
“Syria was the only Arab state which was self-reliant in wheat production, and once had the most productive agricultural system in all of West Asia,” Azzi noted.
Just weeks after the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, Kiev banned the exports of rye, barley, buckwheat, millet, sugar, salt and meat until the end of the year.
Western sanctions imposed on Moscow have led to major disruptions in the supply chain, and most countries now face harsh penalties if they continue to do business with Russia, the world’s largest supplier of wheat and major producer of fertilizers.
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Featured image: U.S. Battalion in eastern Syria in 2019 Photo: Creative Commons / U.S. Army Reserve
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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) failed to follow established guidelines for determining cancer risk, ignored important studies, and discounted expert advice from a scientific advisory panel in officially declaring that the weed killer glyphosate was “not likely to be carcinogenic,” a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion saying the agency’s 2020 assessment of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, was flawed in many ways. 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.
The decision comes at a critical time for Monsanto owner Bayer AG. Bayer is 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.
The ruling Friday came in response to legal challenges brought by two groups of petitioners, one led by the Center for Food Safety, representing the Rural Coalition, and the other led by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Though the EPA was the respondent in the case, Monsanto and a slew of large agricultural groups intervened in the case to support the agency.
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The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has questionably authorised emergency use of both the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid-19 injections for use among children aged 6 months and above despite a study conducted at the Seattle Children’s Hospital finding COVID vaccinated children are suffering persistent heart abnormalities.
The study followed up 16 male children, with an average age of 15 years, 3 to 8 months after their initial diagnosis with myocarditis within a short time frame following mRNA vaccination.
The authors used Electrocardiograms and Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (CMR) to examine abnormalities in the heart such as myocardial scarring, fibrosis, strain, and reduced ventricular muscle extension which can be associated with reduced capacity to pump blood and increased risk of heart attack.
The authors found that although there was some measure of resolution after 3 – 8 months most subjects still had some persistent abnormalities.
“Although (initial) symptoms (such as chest pain, and exercise intolerance) were transient and most patients appeared to respond to treatment (solely with NSAIDS such as ibuprofen), we demonstrated persistence of abnormal findings on CMR at (3-8 months) follow up in most patients, albeit with improvement in extent of LGE (a measure of the heart’s capacity to pump efficiently).”
The authors warned:
“The presence of LGE is an indicator of cardiac injury and fibrosis and has been strongly associated with worse prognosis in patients with classical acute myocarditis. A meta-analysis including 8 studies found that presence of LGE is a predictor of all cause death, cardiovascular death, cardiac transplant, rehospitalization, recurrent acute myocarditis and requirement for mechanical circulatory support.”
For those who wish to review a detailed evaluation of this study by a medical expert, you can watch this video –
The long-term health effects of mRNA vaccination are becoming more obvious through published research findings. Meanwhile, the government advisors have their heads in the sand. Their careers have been built upon vaccination and now it seems they are prepared to ignore the obvious deficiencies of mRNA vaccination because the want to kill children.
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Comments Off on FDA “Approves” COVID Vaccine for 6-month-old Babies Despite Study Finding Persistent Heart Abnormalities Among COVID Vaccinated Children
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The British army chief’s policy statement that his island-state should prepare for fighting a war in Europe is aimed at preconditioning the armed forces and the population that funds them into expecting a sustained military deployment to Central & Eastern Europe. That doesn’t mean that they’re fated to enter into hostilities with Russia, but just that the purpose of their deployment would be to function as the geostrategic wedge that was explained, especially in the scenario of the “Big Three” convincing Kiev to accept a ceasefire.
New British Chief of the General Staff Patrick Sandersreportedly claimed that “We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again”, which follows the start of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s coordinated perception management campaign with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for rallying the West to support Kiev for years to come.
“There is now a burning imperative to forge an army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating russia in battle. We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again”, said Sir Patrick. (Sky News)
This military official’s statement is revealing since it shows that the island-state plans to remain a meddling anti-Russian force to be reckoned with in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE). It’s already in a new trilateral alliance with Poland and Ukraine that Johnson reportedly proposed expanding late last month to include the Baltic States as well.
The emerging dynamic is that the junior half of the Anglo-American Axis has been tasked by its senior with dividing and ruling Russia and the EU by exploiting the rabid Russophobia of the bloc’s eastern members in order to drive a wedge between its “Big Three” – France, Germany, and Italy – and Moscow so as to avert any potential future rapprochement between them. Those Three Western European Great Powers just dispatched their Prime Ministers to Kiev last week, during which time it was speculated that they floated a ceasefire proposal. Their interests, unlike their CEE peers’ and the UK’s, rest in de-escalating the UkrainianConflict as soon as possible in order to economically colonize that country.
To explain, they were inspired by the proposal that Zelensky shared during last month’s Davos Summit “to take patronage over a particular region of Ukraine, city, community or industry”, which would be too dangerous and at risk of loss so long as the fighting continues. That’s why they’re working hard to pressure him into conceding territory to Russia so that they can then immediately get to work taking over the most profitable parts of his country. By contrast, the Polish-led CEE region and their new British ally want to indefinitely perpetuate NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine while American decisionmakers seem to be on the fence over which outcome is more advantageous for them.
On the one hand, a perpetual proxy war could atrophy Russian resources and uphold the US’ recently restored unipolar hegemony over Europe on an anti-Russian basis, but it could also backfire by collapsing its proxies’ economies, widening already emerging divisions between them over the conflict (e.g. the “Big Three” vs. UK-CEE), and boggling the US-led West down in Europe instead of focusing more on “containing” China in Asia. A possible “compromise” between these grand strategic visions is for the US to support the gradual de-escalation of the Ukrainian Conflict in light of the increasingly obvious impossibility of Kiev’s victory but ensure that the UK keeps stoking EU-Russian tensions indefinitely.
In practice, this could take the form of supporting the convergence between the Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative” (3SI, with its core being the “Lublin Triangle” that comprises the newly de factoPolish–UkrainianConfederation and Lithuania) and the UK’s regional alliance plans as a structural wedge between Russia and the “Big Three” (France, Germany, and Italy). That could in turn maintain some unbridgeable differences between them (i.e. geopolitical, geo-economic, and military) so as to perpetually prevent any meaningful rapprochement in the future that would risk eroding the US’ recently restored hegemony over the bloc.
With this in mind, the British army chief’s policy statement that his island-state should prepare for fighting a war in Europe makes more sense since it’s aimed at preconditioning the armed forces and the population that funds them into expecting a sustained military deployment to CEE.
That doesn’t mean that they’re fated to enter into hostilities with Russia, but just that the purpose of their deployment would be to function as the geostrategic wedge that was explained, especially in the scenario of the “Big Three” convincing Kiev to accept a ceasefire. Should that happen, then the US would task the UK with dividing Western Europe and Russia via CEE so that the US can refocus on “containing” China instead.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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UK Home secretary Priti Patel has approved the extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the United States.
Assange faces up to 175 years in prison in the United States if convicted of violating the Espionage Act for publishing classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Wikileaks said today that Assange would appeal today’s ruling.
His attorney Jen Robinson condemned the UK for extraditing Assange to a country which once considered assassinating him.
Foreign Press Association Press Conference: Priti Patel discloses decision for Assange’s extradition. (Scrub to 12min for start of conference.) [Source: youtube.com]
In a statement Wikileaks said “It was in Priti Patel’s power to do the right thing. Instead she will for ever be remembered as an accomplice of the United States in its agenda to turn investigative journalism into a criminal enterprise.”
Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute tweeted “The Assange indictment is a dagger at the throat of press freedom. The Biden administration should drop the prosecution, as press freedom groups have repeatedly asked it to do.”
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French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis arrived in Kiev on June 16, where they met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During this trip, the European leaders announced their support for Ukraine’s candidate status for EU membership, however, other reports suggested that they also pressured Zelensky into accepting the loss of Crimea and Donbass.
A day after their visit, the European Commission formally recommended EU candidate status for Ukraine, something that does eventually need approval from all 27 member states of the bloc. Russian President Vladimir Putin said during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum:
“We have nothing against it. It’s their sovereign decision to join economic unions or not… It’s their business, the business of the Ukrainian people.”
Moscow does not oppose Ukraine’s EU membership as the bloc is not a military threat, unlike NATO. Putin said that as far as Ukraine’s economic integration is concerned with the EU, it was their choice and is something that has widespread popularity across Europe, even amongst non-EU member states.
It is recalled that the trip of Macron, Scholz, Draghi and Iohannis to Kiev comes just a day after the visit of EU candidates Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia, whose leaders, Edi Rama, Dritan Abazović and Dimitar Kovačevski, respectively, issued with Zelensky a joint statement in support of granting Ukraine candidate status for EU membership.
However, reports are emerging that the major European powers are attempting to make Zelensky realize that territorial concessions are a reality he must accept.
It is likely that the European powers, despite the incessant pressure from Poland and the Baltic states, accept that Russia will achieve its goals in seizing all of the territory of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Until recently, the EU believed that sanctions would force Russia to end its military operation. Again, the realization has set in that sanctions, which in the interim will certainly remain and perhaps even intensify, will not deter Moscow’s determination from achieving its aims.
In this way, it would appear that Zelensky has no choice but to accept the new reality that Ukraine is once again becoming a territorially smaller country. Kiev appears determined to defy what the Europeans want – a quick conclusion to the war. Due to this, the war will remain protracted, something that the Biden administration wants.
According to a Washington Post article published on June 17, a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe ongoing international deliberations regarding the war in Ukraine, said: “Biden administration officials had discussed the possibility of a protracted conflict with global spillover effects even before February, as US intelligence suggested Putin was preparing to invade.”
The official said that the Biden administration hopes that new weaponry, successive waves of sanctions and Russia’s diplomatic isolation, will make a difference in an eventual negotiated conclusion to the war, potentially diminishing Putin’s willingness to keep up the fight.
The problem from this viewpoint is that Moscow is not diplomatically isolated, but just rather from the West. In fact, the UAE and Saudi Arabia snubbed opportunities to meet with US officials earlier in the war and India has only increased its economic relations with Russia.
Poland and the Baltic states fervently defend the US viewpoint that Russia is isolated and must be opposed at every opportunity, a decision that the rest of the EU took but now feels the effects it had on the economy and domestic politics. For this reason, the EU’s major players want Ukraine to quickly find a way out of the war without publicly announcing it in a direct manner.
The EU seemingly now acknowledges the impossibility of establishing an anti-Russian front. China was never going to be drawn into such a position but perhaps most surprisingly was the European shock that India was less than enthusiastic in unnecessarily ruining its decades long close partnership with Russia.
Effectively, Zelensky has a choice – find a peace with Moscow and open an eventual path towards EU membership, or carry out US orders of a pointless “protracted” war when Ukraine does not have the strength or means to recapture lost territory, which in turn only protracts the suffering and destruction in the country.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
June 21st, 2022 by Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu
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Ethics is very relevant and crucial in our individual and societal lives as human existents interacting with fellow humans and other sentient and non-sentient beings in this Circle-of-Life-and-Existence. As per Immanuel Kant who was the veritable spokesperson and exemplar of Ethical principles and Ethical life, Ethics is both normative and regulative. This means that Ethics is about self-regulation and rule-orientation so that we will be able to navigate our lives in freedom, equity and justice with ourselves, with others, with our society and with our fellow animate and inanimate existents in our ecosystem. For Kant, to ground Ethics in terms of religion & cultural conditioning would make Ethics particular and relative instead of universalizable and objective. This means that using creedal, sectarian, cultural, ethnic and racial norms as basis of Ethics instead of grounding Ethics in our shared Rationality as human beings is divisive and will never be able to unite us as rational and holistic humanity.
Kant insisted on a purely rational and secularized global or universal ethics since he was keenly aware of the divisive nature of religion in the history of Europe during the Medieval Era, the Reformation Period, and even in his day and age. One can see through by a cursory reading of history that religion and so-called moral guidance coming from Scriptures are often utilized by dogmatic religionists to justify vested interest of both repressive governments and exploitative financial elites (bourgeoisie).
Various liturgies and religious rituals are nothing but ways to cover-up injustice in society. Religion is used to exploit the credulity and gullibility of the ordinary people and is oftentimes used to oppress, suppress, marginalize and exploit the suffering masses.
Moreover, one cannot build a Global Ethics utilizing religion since by simply looking at the state of the different religions of the world, one can notice that religions are hopelessly divided into various sects, denominations and dogmatic groupings which makes religion an insidious harbinger of communalism, sectarianism, divisiveness and extremism instead of being a messenger of unity and universal ethics.
Religion which is supposed to bring humans towards authentic existence becomes a denier of intellectual progress and a nemesis of genuine human freedom.
One can only glimpse at world history to see how religion treats those who are considered heretics, non-conformists, religious deviants and those who do not toe-the-line to the dogmas created by religion. These religious dissenters are isolated, maimed, murdered in the name of God, and their individual right to free conscience is being denied and taken away from them!
Therefore the only way for Ethics to be truly universal and global is through the inauguration of a purely rational, secular, humanist and rights-based approach to ethical valuation.
Immanuel Kant made a very clear distinction between Morality and Ethics.
Ethics for Kant must be solely grounded on human rationality that is commonly shared by all humans across culture, creeds, races, ethnicities, and nationalities. Cultural norms and moral values conditioned and imposed through social control by one’s society and religion constitute what Kant termed as “Morality”.
Morality is relative and thus particular from culture to culture. Morality is also particular and relative as it differs from time, climes, places, societies, and circumstances. An ethical valuation that is based on religion, society, and culture is indeed particular and applicable only to such culture and religion. A norm that is considered to be immoral in one culture may be moral in another. An act that is judged as right in one religion may be adjudged as wrong in another. Hence one must transcend cultural norms or religious valuations to be able to search for an objective Ethics that is universalizable to all rational human existents.
Kant was the first philosopher to develop a purely rational, secular, humanist and rights-based approach to Ethics since he insists that all human beings are endowed with rationality to be able to adjudge what is right and wrong and that all our ethical valuations must be determined solely within the confines of Reason to make it universalizable to one-and-all.
Therefore a logical, mathematical and postulative approach to Ethics is possible since all humans can utilize their rationality by appealing to our common endowments as humans: Rationality and Conscience. The maxims of Objective, Mathematically-Postulative and Universalizable Ethics is what Kant referred to as “The Categorical Imperative”.
Although Kant was a devout Lutheran who was expected to believe in the classical Lutheran concepts of original sin and total depravity of humanity (after the Fall of Adam and Eve), Kant strongly subscribed to the optimist view that humans are by nature good and are capable of doing what is right.
For Kant, it is in not listening to our rational conscience and in not deliberating rationally our actions based on the rational and logical criteria of the Categorical Imperative that make us act in terms of particular conduct that carry wrong intentions which produce wrongful actions. Humans are also conditioned by society to act in terms of non-universalizable and wrongful norms that tend to exploit, commodify and objectify fellow humans.
It is in this vein that Kant formulated his most sublime maxim so that fellow humans will not commodify, deceive and coerce fellow humans since these unethical actions prevent fellow humans the unfettered exercise of their full freedom and autonomy to act as authentic human beings. This most beautiful and very profound maxim is poignantly formulated by Kant in this way: “Act only in such a way that you always treat yourself and others as ends-in-itself and NEVER as means to your own end”.
Kant is an Ethical Objectivist but he based his objectivism solely through Reason or Rationality so as to steer away from dogmatic norms given by religion and to distinguish
Ethics from mere cultural conditioning and societal impositions given by a particular culture. It is Reason alone that provides the “Unforced Force” (to borrow another German philosopher in our contemporary era, Jurgen Habermas) and the Logical and Mathematical Imperative towards ethical compliance among reasonable persons. For Kant, as well as for Habermas, universalizability of Ethics simply means that Ethics must go beyond particularity and individual appropriation of what is right and wrong but must strive towards universalizable application for one-and-all.
Objective Reason and Communicative Consensus, not the strategic impositions of one or few hegemons and agenda setters or communication saboteurs, must be reached and arrived through an intersubjective agreement brought about by communication and argumentation of fellow humans. This point must be clearly understood when we hear this Habermasian adage: “Ethics is negotiated”. This means that we can talk about ethical norms and ethical valuation though our utilization of intersubjective consensus using our active and logical engagement of discursive and dialectical Reason (i.e. “The Unforced Force of the Better Argument”). This Kantian and Habermasian Ethics grounded in Rationality is secular and humanistic since it is not a product of an ossified, fossilized and dogmatic morality brought about by religious dogmatism and cultural conditioning but by an appeal to the universal human endowment of Reason and Communication, Rationality and Communicativity which are based on our intrasubjective consensus as human beings desiring justice, equity and freedom for one-and-all.
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Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu is Associate Professor-7 of Philosophy and Asian Studies at the University of the Philippines (UP), Cebu City, Philippines. He was Academic Coordinator of the Political Science Program at UP Cebu from 2011-2014, and Coordinator of Gender and Development (GAD) Office at UP Cebu from 2015-2019.
His research interests include Theoretical and Applied Ethics, Islamic Studies particularly Sunni jurisprudence, Islamic feminist discourses, Islam in interfaith dialogue initiatives, Islamic environmentalism, Classical Sunni Islamic pedagogy, the writings of Imam Al-Ghazali on pluralism and tolerance, Islam in the Indian Subcontinent, Turkish Sufism, Ataturk Studies, Ottoman Studies, Muslim-Christian Dialogue, Middle Eastern Affairs, Peace Studies and Public Theology.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
Given the number of followers of Canadian Singer Celine Dion on Twitter, (924,200 followers), on Facebook more than a million and other networks, we can hope that the misfortunes of this fabulous singer will touch more people than the official sites of EudraVigilance or Vaers [US] more difficult to consult and as a means to inform the public. If only to instill some doubt regarding the dangers of the covid-19 vaccine…
During his speech at the 9th annual Summit of the Americas, President Biden spoke about the power of the democracies in the region and its role to offset a lot of difficulties, in the wake of COVID-19 and inflammatory pressure worsened by “Putin’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine.” He spoke of “coming together” to address climate change and migration in particular.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Israel has been secretly coordinating with the US on many of its airstrikes in Syria, and senior officials at US Central Command have reviewed and approved many plans in recent years.
Any government that is a national-security state needs big official enemies — scary ones, ones that will cause the citizenry to continue supporting not only the continued existence of a national-security state form of government but also ever-growing budgets for it and its army of voracious “defense” contractors.
The Russian president noted how “EU losses due to sanctions against Russia” could exceed $400 billion per year, and that Europe’s high energy prices – something that actually started “in the third quarter of last year” – are due to “blindly believing in renewable sources.”
Following intense Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk on June 13, some Western media sources, in tandem with outlets in Kiev, unsurprisingly claimed that the attack – which killed at least five civilians and struck a busy maternity hospital – was perpetrated by Russian forces. Why Moscow would launch rockets at its own allies wasn’t explained, nor would it make much sense.
Special “partner nations” have been invited to the NATO summit to be held in Madrid, Spain, from June 29-30. In addition to the leaders of the 30 NATO member states, the leaders of South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, the president of Ukraine, and the prime ministers of Sweden and Finland will also be in attendance.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has responded to Lithuania’s partial blockade of Kaliningrad, writing in a statement that they consider the “provocative measures” to be “openly hostile” and warning that the Kremlin may take action to “protect its national interests.”
Among the Nazis’ first actions after taking power was to dismantle the German trade unions and labour power. By March 1933 the first concentration camp was erected at Dachau, soon to be followed by others, where numerous communists, socialists and other undesirables were interned. The German masses were thereafter transformed largely into devoted followers of Hitler, subjected regularly to Nazi propaganda; much of the techniques of which Gauleiter of Berlin Joseph Goebbels had learnt in the 1920s from Edward Bernays, the influential American propaganda merchant.
Once again, the Ukrainian government demonstrates that it is not interested in cooperating for peace, but in further intensifying its anti-Russian policies. Now, the Kiev Parliament has passed a bill to ban Russian music and literature, boosting the search for “cultural cancellation” against the Russian people.
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Once again, the Ukrainian government demonstrates that it is not interested in cooperating for peace, but in further intensifying its anti-Russian policies. Now, the Kiev Parliament has passed a bill to ban Russian music and literature, boosting the search for “cultural cancellation” against the Russian people. Amidst a context of conflict, the act sounds like a message to Moscow and the Donbass republics, stating that the position Kiev has held for the past eight years will not change anytime soon.
On Sunday, June 19, the Ukrainian legislators approved a veto on Russian music and the sale of Russian books throughout the national territory. The law will act in two ways against Russian cultural products: banning Russian music from the media, public and cultural collective spaces and barring the importation of all written material whose authors have Russian or Belarusian nationality. The distribution of books that are already in Ukrainian territory will also be stopped.
Another important point of the bill is the ban on tours by musicians who have Russian or Belarusian citizenship, with the exception of those who have explicitly positioned themselves condemning the Putin government and the special military operation.
Furthermore, scientific, technical, and academic cooperation agreements involving Russian and Ukrainian individuals or institutions would be ended. In the same vein, some Parliamentarians also voted in favor of banning Ukrainian participation in a regional agreement that promotes cooperation between small businesses within the ex-Soviet community. Some deputies who support the measure said this would be important for what they call “decommunization” of Ukraine – which looks like nothing more than Kiev’s attempt to “cancel” its own history and cultural ties to the region.
The author of the bill is Yaroslav Zhelezniak, an economist who previously served as a direct adviser to the Ukrainian Prime Minister and Minister of Economy. Zhelezniak leads the parliamentary faction of Holos, an ultra-liberal party with a pro-European orientation, and since the beginning of the Russian special military operation, he has stood out for his nationalist activism and for encouraging the intensification of anti-Russian policies, as can be seen in this new bill.
Previously, Russian government’s spokespeople and experts had already criticized the project, claiming it was just another attempt at forced assimilation of the Ukrainian Russian-speaker minority. In fact, by banning cultural items, the Ukrainian government seems to be once again adhering to policies that could be classified as ethnocidal, even more strongly within the scope of the concept of “cultural genocide”, which refers precisely to attempts to suppress the existence of a culture through vertical impositions.
Since 2014, when the law which allowed the use of Russian in official documents in Russian-majority regions was banned, the Maidan Junta has been working to make Ukraine a Russian-culture-free country. These openly racist policies were the fundamental reason for the self-defense insurrections in the east, which resulted in civil war. Over the course of eight years, several other genocidal measures were taken by Kiev, such as the systematic extermination of ethnic Russians, creating a scenario of terror for the local populations so strong that Moscow had no alternative but to launch the current military operation as a measure of humanitarian support for Russian speakers.
The main problem is that since the operation started, instead of renouncing institutional racism, Kiev has demonstrated day after day that it is determined to proceed with its anti-Russian policies. More than that, Ukraine’s western allies have opened a wave of “cancellation” against Russia, trying to forge a reality where the existence of Russia and the Russian people is ignored.
Sanctions that ban Russian products, travels to Russia or the dissemination of information from Russian websites have this clear objective of making it appear that Russia simply “does not exist”. In practice, this only encourages the Maidan Junta to intensify its racism, even though it is at its most fragile moment in eighty years, considering the evident military defeat.
So, once again it seems that the Ukrainian government is not really willing to cooperate for peace but making it clear that the current government is committed to creating a Ukraine where Russian culture does not exist, willing to further intensify the violent assimilation of ethnic minorities, even under military pressure. What this means is that there will possibly be no alternative but to continue carrying the conflict forward until some change takes place.
In this context, Ukraine’s allies should take their own humanitarian principles seriously and help to pressure Zelensky to ban this racist bill and accept the peace conditions, as this is not a matter of conflict of interests between Russia and the West, but of a search for the quickest and most peaceful solution in a conflict that directly affects all Ukrainian citizens.
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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter.
Continua a tenere banco il caso della lista dei “putiniani d’Italia”, pubblicata il 5 giugno 2022 nelle pagine del Corriere della Sera. Un elenco di nomi e cognomi con tanto di foto segnaletiche, di persone attive nel mondo dell’informazione, e non solo, e accusate di fare propaganda nel Belpaese per conto del Cremlino. La coautrice dell’articolo Fiorenza Sarzanini, nonché vicedirettrice del Corsera, ha ribadito più volte che la fonte di queste informazioni sarebbe un dossier stilato dal Copasir, il Comitato parlamentare per la sicurezza della Repubblica. Presto è seguito un rimbalzo di responsabilità tra quotidiano, organi parlamentari e servizi segreti. Tra interrogativi e mani misteriose dietro l’operazione, non sono pochi i passaggi dell’articolo scritto dal duo Sarzanini-Guerzoni che suscitano una certa perplessità.
Innanzitutto, le persone che sono state sbattute in prima pagina come delle streghe cui dare la caccia, non vengono accusate di alcun reato. Non vi sono prove di presunti pagamenti in rubli, o un coinvolgimento politico nelle opinioni espresse. L’unica colpa degli accusati di non si sa bene cosa, è quella di esprimere opinioni che intaccano con la narrativa bellica ufficiale del Governo. Dal giornalista Manlio Dinucci, passando per il fotoreporter Giorgio Bianchi, fino al professore universitario Alessandro Orsini. Un’accozzaglia di nomi senza alcun legame, processati dal primo quotidiano in Italia sulla base del nulla cosmico.
Tante smentite, poche conferme
La vicedirettrice del Corriere Fiorenza Sarzanini ha sempre dichiarato di aver ottenuto le informazioni da un rapporto del Copasir. Il presidente dell’organo, Adolfo Ursoha tuttavia smentitouna qualsiasi attività di dossieraggio, confermando però al contempo l’esistenza di tavoli interministeriali incaricati a studiare l’attività di disinformazione in Italia legata alla Russia. Un processo iniziato nel lontano 2019, su spinta dell’Unione europea e dei partner atlantici. Lo ha spiegato il sottosegretario con delega alla presidenza del Consiglio Franco Gabrielli, dopo aver desecretato il rapporto citato nell’articolo del Corsera. Con grande sorpresa, i nomi stilati dal Corrierenon sono presenti nel documento reso pubblico.
Putin cita Manlio Dinucci: la fake news del Corriere
Non si capisce da dove il Corriere abbia tratto le informazioni riportate nell’articolo. A lasciare ancora di più di stucco sono delle affermazioni che non trovano alcun riscontro nella realtà dei fatti. Passaggi del libro di Dinucci “La guerra. È in gioco la nostra vita” edito da Byoblu, “sono stati citati da Putin nel discorso del 9 maggio per le celebrazioni del Giorno della vittoria”, si legge nell’articolo del Corsera. Rimasta al momento inascoltata la richiesta di Dinucci alla vicedirettrice del Corriere di sapere quali sarebbero i passaggi in questione. “Verificherò”, la risposta di Sarzanini nel corso del confronto esclusivo su Byoblu. Poi il silenzio: nessuna prova di quanto affermato e tantomeno nessuna rettifica.
La notizia viene ripresa dal sottosegretario Bruno Tabacci
E la colossale fake news del quotidiano che si dice impegnato a contrastarle, continua a fare il giro del web e delle emittenti televisive italiane senza alcun contradditorio. Nel corso della puntata di Dimartedì del 14 giugno, il sottosegretario di Stato alla presidenza del Consiglio, Bruno Tabacci è intervenuto sul tema. “Perché Sarzanini cita Dinucci? Perché il libro che lui ha scritto viene citato da Putin nel discorso celebrativo che fa a Mosca”. Una dichiarazione che non ha riscontro alcuno e che non è stata smentita né dal conduttore Floris, né dagli ospiti presenti in studio.
Serve chiarezza sulla vicenda
Queste informazioni su Dinucci e gli altri accusati sono forse presenti in ulteriori report stilati dai servizi dall’inizio del conflitto russo ucraino? Nella traduzione del famoso discorso di Putin non si riscontra infatti quanto riportato dal Corsera. Ad ogni modo, dovrà essere fatta una operazione di trasparenza, tanto decantata dallo stesso Gabrielli in conferenza, e andrà detto una volta per tutte se gli 007 italiani hanno stilato liste di proscrizione, con informazioni non vere, su cittadini che hanno avuto l’unica cattiva idea di essere critici verso la politica estera del Governo.
In ogni caso, il Corriere ha offerto un ottimo esempio di come le fake news possano rapidamente diffondersi su larga scala. Si parte dal basso, con la pubblicazione sul cartaceo e online, per poi giungere nei salotti televisivi a giorni di distanza. Qualcuno pensa forse che sulla fronte degli italiani ci sia scritto: sali e Tabacci?
The Russian Foreign Ministry has responded to Lithuania’s partial blockade of Kaliningrad, writing in a statement that they consider the “provocative measures” to be “openly hostile” and warning that the Kremlin may take action to “protect its national interests.”
Kaliningrad is sandwiched between the EU and NATO members Poland and Lithuania. Supplies from Russia are delivered via rail and gas pipelines through Lithuania – which announced last week that it was banning the rail transit of goods subject to EU sanctions, which include coal, advanced technology, metals and construction materials.
“If in the near future cargo transit between the Kaliningrad region and the rest of the territory of the Russian Federation through Lithuania is not restored in full, then Russia reserves the right to take actions to protect its national interests,” the statement reads.
They have demanded that Lithuania immediately lift the ban on a number of goods to the Kaliningrad region.
Earlier Monday, the Kremlin called Lithuania’s announcement “unprecedented” and “in violation of everything there is.”
“The situation is more than serious and it requires a very deep analysis before formulating any measures and decisions,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in a statement to the press.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said they were simply complying with sanctions imposed by the EU, and that they were taken after “consultation with the European Commission and under its guidelines.”
“Sanctioned goods (will) no longer be allowed to transit Lithuanian territory,” he added.
Kaliningrad governor Anton Alikhanov says that the ban, which was confirmed on Friday, affects roughly 50% of all imports. He urged citizens not to panic-buy…
…to no avail.
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Quite possibly the biggest Russia-West provocation of the entire four-month long war in Ukraine has occurred this weekend, but few in the media establishment seem to be taking notice of the singular event which has the potential to quickly spiral toward a WW3 scenario.
Baltic EU/NATO member Lithuania has implemented a ban on all rail transit goods going to Russia’s far-western exclave of Kaliningrad, after transport authorities initially announced the provocative measure on Friday. “The EU sanctions list notably includes coal, metals, construction materials and advanced technology, and Alikhanov said the ban would cover around 50% of the items that Kaliningrad imports,” Reuters wrote.
This has given way to fears of panic buying breaking out in Kaliningrad Oblast, which is Russian sovereign territory on the Baltic Sea, but which is sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, and is thus reliant on overland shipping for passage via its EU neighbors.
Anton Alikhanov, the governor of the Russian oblast which has a total population of some one million people (with Kaliningrad city including almost 450,000 – and 800,000 total if outlying suburbs are counted) is urging calm:
Urging citizens not to resort to panic buying, Alikhanov said two vessels were already ferrying goods between Kaliningrad and Saint Petersburg, and seven more would be in service by the end of the year.
“Our ferries will handle all the cargo”, he said on Saturday.
Russian officials and media have long warned against what they dubbed Western aims to “blockade”Kaliningrad. Crucially, the EU enforcement measure being implemented from Vilnius marks a complete break in a three decade long treaty that’s been in effect…
Ahead of the new Lithuanian transit ban taking effect, the state railways service was reportedly awaiting final word from the European Commission on enforcing it:
The cargo unit of Lithuania’s state railways service set out details of the ban in a letter to clients following “clarification” from the European Commission on the mechanism for applying the sanctions.
Previously, Lithuanian Deputy Foreign Minister Mantas Adomenas said the ministry was waiting for “clarification from the European Commission on applying European sanctions to Kaliningrad cargo transit.”
Brussels then ruled that “sanctioned goods and cargo should still be prohibited even if they travel from one part of Russia to another but through EU territory,” according to Reuters/Rferl.
In Moscow’s eyes, this is tantamount to laying economic siegeto part of Russia’s sovereign territory and one million of its citizens. When the EU first proposed the blockage of goods as part of the last major sanctions package in early April, Kremlin officials warned of war given Moscow would have to “break the blockade” for the sake if its citizens.
The blockade of the Kaliningrad🇷🇺region may become a reason for the outbreak of war B/T Russia & NATO
🇪🇺has published a PR on the fifth package of sanctions against🇷🇺
The document,in particular, prohibits transit of goods by 🇷🇺&🇧🇾 transport operators through the territory of 🇪🇺 pic.twitter.com/M7k2XAxP0S
According to an April 6th statement in Russia’s TASS by a state Duma official:
Statements from the West about a possible blockade of Kaliningrad is testing the waters, but Russia can ‘break the blockade’ in case these threats become a reality, it has an experience, Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy head of the Federation Council upper house’s Committee for International affairs, said on Wednesday.
“I think that for now, this is a game, testing the waters <…>. In case of a blockade, as they are saying, the Soviet Union knows how to break the blockades, we (Russia as the successor of the Soviet Union – TASS) have vast experience,” the senator said.
“If they want to go to the length of making us break this blockade to save the lives of our people, who live there, we can do this,” Dzhabarov said in a video interview at the press center of Parlamentskaya Gazeta (Parliamentary Newspaper).
He expressed hope, however, that the West “will have enough brains to opt against this”.
Kaliningrad’s governor Alikhanov has already called on Russian federal authorities to prepare tit-for-tat measures against Lithuania in wake of the transit ban.
“These steps are illegal and may entail far-reaching implications for Lithuania and the European Union. In particular, I would like to quote a few paragraphs from the Joint Statement on EU Enlargement, with references to international agreements, the documents which both the European community and the Russian Federation acceded to,” (Alikhanov said Saturday).
Additionally he cited a key condition that was part of Lithuania’s 2004 accession to the EU. He quoted the prior agreement saying that the Baltic state “will apply in practice the principle of freedom of transit of goods, including energy, between the Kaliningrad Region and the rest of Russian territory.”
“In particular, we confirm that there shall be freedom of such transit, and that the goods in such transit shall not be subject to unnecessary delays or restrictions and shall be exempt from customs duties and transit duties or other charges related to transit,” (Alikhanov quoting the Joint Statement)
It’s July 2001, and Australian Prime Minister John Howard is on course for humiliation at the hands of the opposition Labor Party in the looming general election.
Then, a ship carrying a cargo of 433 desperate Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers tries to enter Australian waters. International law says Australia has a duty to let them in. Howard sends in troops, takes control of the ship, and despatches the distressed asylum seekers to detention camps on the tiny island state of Nauru.
He is the revolutionary leader of a far-right government determined to repudiate Britain’s long history as a liberal democracy
Howard announces: “We will decide who comes to this country.” The Labor opposition is outraged, as are international lawyers. Howard surges to a general election triumph.
The mastermind of this brutal but clear-sighted plan was then-unknown political strategist Lynton Crosby, who would ultimately mastermind four consecutive Howard election triumphs.
Fast-forward to the scene in Downing Street earlier this month, as an alarmed Prime Minister Boris Johnson receives news that Tory MPs have launched a mutiny.
With his leadership in peril, Johnson summons his trusted advisers. By far the most powerful and respected is legendary political strategist Crosby – the magician who won Howard four victories, then twice commanded the strategy team that swept Johnson to power in the London mayoral elections. Most recently, he helped propel the prime minister to victory over Labour in the 2019 general election.
Divisive tactics
Crosby’s techniques are effective, but ugly. He is a master of so-called wedge issues that divide national opinion. These issues are designed to galvanise working-class voters who traditionally vote for leftwing parties, while paralysing the leaderships of those same leftwing parties.
The most divisive wedge issue is asylum seekers, as Crosby cleverly spotted in Australia two decades ago.
At that panicky Downing Street meeting earlier this month, there’s little doubt that Crosby would have advised Johnson to change the conversation from the debilitating daily disclosures about prime ministerial sleaze and deceit, and to focus on one of the “wedge issues” that have worked so well for his clients in the past.
So it wasn’t a coincidence that a few days after their meeting, Home Secretary Priti Patel’s floundering plan to export asylum seekers to Rwanda was revived with a vengeance. According to the Spectator: “Johnson’s deputy chief of staff David Canzini, looking ahead to the next general election, has heralded the Rwanda plan as an ideal wedge issue. Aides have been ordered to find more policies in their departmentsthat divide the opposition.”
Canzini, who has a reputation for briefing newspapers more than is perhaps wise or necessary, is Crosby’s point man in Downing Street.
The chartered Boeing 767 booked to take asylum seekers to Rwanda was a fiasco. It didn’t take off, thanks to a last-minute intervention from the European Court of Human Rights.
That wouldn’t have bothered Crosby. His speciality is political campaigning, not responsible government. And no problem as far as Crosby’s client, Johnson, is concerned; the prime minister wins either way.
If the asylum seekers had made it to Rwanda, Johnson would have claimed a stunning policy success in the fight against “illegal immigration”. But failure worked well, too, because now Johnson can cheerfully blame the international court that blocked the flight.
Controversial replay
Lord Chancellor Dominic Raab, whose sworn duty is to uphold the law, is now reportedly examining ways of enabling ministers to ignore rulings from the European court.
Better still from Johnson’s point of view, all this has placed Labour leader Keir Starmer in an excruciating situation. Starmer – as Johnson mercilessly likes to remind him – is a former human rights lawyer. The British prime minister is determined to paint him as an ally of the “activist lawyers” aiming to meddle with British sovereignty.
Pleasingly for the prime minister, experts suggest that Crosby’s strategy might be working. Pollster James Johnson noted on Twitter on Wednesday: “If there is one lesson from British public opinion over the last decade, it is that people don’t like it when others tell Britain what it can and can’t do.”
This means that in political terms, we are seeing a replay of the controversy that established Crosby’s reputation two decades ago. Such tactics are cruel, immoral and unscrupulous – but it may well work.
There are differences. The Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers blocked by Howard in 2001 were hundreds of miles from Australia. The asylum seekers trying to come to Britain simply have to cross the channel. Johnson can’t send in the special forces, as Howard did. Instead, he’s declared war on the rule of law. Expect more international treaties to be ripped up.
There’s now talk that Johnson may withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. This treaty was inspired by Sir Winston Churchill, drafted in large measure by the Tory politician David Maxwell Fyfe and ratified by Britain in March 1951. We were the first nation to do so.
Among the great ideas embodied by the convention are freedom under law, restraint on the power of the state, and a deep understanding of the link between individual liberty and private property.
These are all Conservative ideas. That won’t bother Johnson. It is by now obvious that he is the revolutionary leader of a far-right government determined to repudiate Britain’s long history as a liberal democracy. In the process, he is turning Britain into an international pariah – a British version of Trump’s United States.
Special “partner nations” have been invited to the NATO summit to be held in Madrid, Spain, from June 29-30. In addition to the leaders of the 30 NATO member states, the leaders of South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, the president of Ukraine, and the prime ministers of Sweden and Finland will also be in attendance.
The South Korean presidential office highlighted the significance of such an invitation when they announced on June 10 that President Yoon Suk-yeol would be “the first Korean leader to attend [a NATO summit] after receiving an official invitation from NATO.”
At home, attention is mainly focused on whether a Korea-Japan summit will be held on the sidelines of the NATO summit or whether the first lady, Kim Keon-hee, will accompany Yoon to Madrid. In reality, however, there is far more at stake at this summit.
The upcoming summit is intended to transform NATO, which has focused on European security since its founding in 1949 as a counterforce against the Soviet Union, into a global organization that responds to the “dual threats” of Russia and China.
At this summit, NATO will adopt a new “strategic concept” for the first time since 2010, the core of which concerns strengthening NATO’s military posture and expanding the scope of its activities to the Indo-Pacific region. In June of last year, NATO characterized China as presenting “systemic challenges” and declared that it would keep the expansion of China and Russia’s influence in check at the same time.
As China continues to defend Russia amid the latter’s invasion of Ukraine in February, European countries have grown increasingly wary of Beijing. With China continuously strengthening its military capabilities under the slogan of its so-called “dream of a strong military,” there is a growing consensus among the international community that the possibility of China taking Taiwan by force should be met with a joint response.
In this context, Yoon’s participation in the NATO summit is highly symbolic in its own right.
Currently, three developments are colliding in the international order. The first involves the US rallying its allies and partners to form a network of checks against China. It’s launched the Quad (alongside Japan, Australia and India), AUKUS (along with Australia and the UK), and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and is promoting trilateral military cooperation between South Korea, the US, and Japan as well as strengthening the overall role of NATO.
In response, Chinese President Xi Jinping introduced the “Global Security Initiative” in April. With this initiative, China aims to resist US unilateralism, emphasizing the principles of non-interference in internal affairs, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. By strengthening cooperation with Russia and North Korea, China hopes to bolster collaboration among BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — as well. The goal is to effectively rally as many countries to stand on China’s side as possible in the South Pacific, Central Asia, South America, and the Middle East.
Finally, some countries like India and Saudi Arabia are taking advantage of their size and the leverage their oil and energy resources provide to tightrope walk between the two camps of the US and China.
It is difficult to predict what new order will emerge in the wake of the current turbulence of international affairs. We live in an era of uncertainty, one in which the post-WWII world order is faltering, meaning we cannot rule out the possibility of mass chaos and even war if the international community makes the wrong response.
NATO troops stand in line as French President Emmanuel Macron visits Romania on June 15. (EPA/Yonhap News)
Considering South Korea’s identity as a democratic, export-led manufacturing powerhouse and the challenges posed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, there’s no doubt that South Korea is following the tide led by the US. Last year, former President Moon Jae-in attended the G7 summit and the Summit for Democracy — “a first for a Korean leader.” We at last find ourselves in an era where Korea is no longer able to pursue a foreign policy that seeks maximum gain while maintaining a balance between the US and China.
The problem, however, lies in the details. The diplomacy of the Yoon administration seems to be integrated with the overarching strategy of the US. It appears to lack any sort of custom strategy or approach that takes into South Korea’s unique abilities and geopolitical position.
During his campaign, Yoon stoked anti-Chinese sentiment in Korea with comments like, “The Korean people dislike China.” Ahead of the South Korea-US summit, Yoon even remarked that South Korea would join the Quad without considering the Quad’s delicate internal balance of power, but the US responded by saying they were “not considering” Korean membership for the time being.
Yoon also hurriedly announced he would be attending the NATO summit five days ahead of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
The US has characterized competition with China and Russia as a “confrontation between democracy and authoritarianism.” Indeed, we must stay vigilant when it comes to China and Russia tightening their repressive rule at home and pursuing a hierarchical order centered on great powers with the goal of restoring their empires abroad.
However, we must also stop to ask whether America’s democracy is functioning properly and whether the US’ promise to defend its allies will not be shaken by domestic political changes such as midterm or presidential elections.
While South Korea should play a role in preventing chaos in the international order and preventing armed conflicts on the Korean Peninsula and in Taiwan, it should also continue its efforts to create a buffer between the US and China.
In recent meetings with South Korea, Chinese diplomats have reportedly criticized US foreign policy in East Asia, defended North Korea and Russia, as well as called for South Korea not to interfere in Taiwan’s affairs and not to accept US strategic nuclear weapons on Korean soil.
This is China’s unyielding response to the pro-US foreign policy of the Yoon administration. Although South Korea should not give up on its own strategic goals out of fear of Chinese retaliation, measures should be taken to manage the difficult relationship with China and prepare for contingencies.
As such, South Korea’s overly US-oriented foreign policy and security teams should be stocked with more experts on Chinese affairs.
As the world’s sixth-largest military power and 10th-largest economy, South Korea has the power to shift the balance of the international order through its security cooperation with NATO. The question, then, is whether “first time as president” Yoon will be able to rise to the occasion.
When Kiev’s guilt in attacks on a maternity hospital cannot be denied, it’s simply brushed under the carpet
Following intense Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk on June 13, some Western media sources, in tandem with outlets in Kiev, unsurprisingly claimed that the attack – which killed at least five civilians and struck a busy maternity hospital – was perpetrated by Russian forces.
Why Moscow would launch rockets at its own allies wasn’t explained, nor would it make much sense.
The Donetsk People’s Republic’s foreign ministry reported:
“Such an unprecedented. in terms of power, density and duration of fire, raid on the DPR capital was not recorded during the entire period of the armed conflict [since 2014]. In two hours, almost 300 MLRS rockets and artillery shells were fired.”
The Ukrainian shelling began late morning, resumed in the afternoon, and continued for another two hours in the evening, a deafening series of blasts throughout the city, terrorizing residents and targeting apartment buildings, civilian infrastructure, the aforementioned hospital, and industrial buildings.
Ukrainian bombing of Donetsk renewed just before 6 pm, hitting residential areas across the city for the next two hours.Journalist @EvaKBartlett is reporting from Donetsk. pic.twitter.com/499QeCv9Cq
In the hard-hit Kievskiy district, to the north, the shelling caused fires at a water bottling plant and a warehouse for stationery, destroying it. The building was still in flames when journalist Roman Kosarev and I arrived about an hour after the attack. Apartment buildings in the area also came under fire, leaving doors and windows blown out and cars destroyed.
Fires still burning at a stationary warehouse & a nearby water bottling facility in Donetsk after Ukrainian bombings. Ukraine pounded all over Donetsk today, including a market, killing three civilians, one of which a child. pic.twitter.com/VW8FU529Ek
The destroyed gas station was on a street where I stayed in April, which is completely residential.
DPR head Denis Pushilin said, “The enemy literally crossed all the lines. Prohibited methods of warfare are being used, residential and central districts of Donetsk are being shelled, other cities and settlements of the DPR are also under fire now.”
Hypocritical silence after maternity hospital shelling
In a world where media reported honestly instead of manufacturing its own reality, there would be outrage over Ukraine’s attack on the Donetsk maternity hospital. But history shows that is not a world we live in.
As I wrote last year, Western media and talking heads also diligently avoided condemnation when terrorists attacked or destroyed Syrian hospitals, including the shelling of a maternity hospital in Aleppo, which killed three women.
At the damaged Donetsk hospital, I saw the gaping hole in the roof and remnants of the Uragan MLRS rocket which struck it. Most of the windows of both buildings were blown out.
Images shared on Twitter noted, “Both gynecology and intensive care have been bombed.” Other footage, taken by Donetsk war correspondent Dmitri Ashtrakhan, showed dozens of women, some heavily pregnant, taking shelter in the basement of the shelled maternity hospital.
Were these women and this hospital in Kiev, you can bet Western media would be loudly reporting it 24/7 for weeks. Instead, just as the West has steadfastly ignored Ukraine’s eight years of war on Donbass, they also omit reporting on the hospital.
Grotesquely, some Ukrainian and Western media instead disingenuously reported that it was a Russian attack, not Ukrainian, which terrorized, injured and killed civilians on June 13.
Just as Western media’s lack of reporting, or twisting of the narrative, on Ukraine’s shelling was to be expected, so too was the UN’s weak-worded condemnation, with the Spokesman for the Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, calling it“extremely troubling.” Were the situation reversed and Russia responsible for bombing a Ukrainian maternity hospital, his words would almost certainly have been far stronger.
In fact, they already have been: Three months ago, when Kiev accused Russia of an attack on a maternity hospital, in Mariupol.
Back then, the Guterres emphatically tweeted, “Today’s attack on a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, where maternity & children’s wards are located, is horrific. Civilians are paying the highest price for a war that has nothing to do with them. This senseless violence must stop. End the bloodshed now.”
A strong reaction to what later emerged to be a hoax claim, when the UN itself even admitted it could not verify the story. But a mild reaction to a documented reality in Donetsk.
The UN did, at least, rightly note the attack on the Donetsk maternity hospital was, “an obvious breach of the international humanitarian law.” So there’s that.
The thing is, Ukraine has violated international law for its eight years of waging war on the Donbass republics, using prohibited heavy weapons and targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. This is only the latest incident.
Tears flow for hoax hospital bombing
In March, Western corporate-owned media supported Kiev’s claim that Russia had launched air strikes on a Mariupol maternity hospital, claiming three civilians had been killed. At the time, as reported, “The White House condemned the ‘barbaric’ use of force against innocent civilians, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted that ‘there are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenceless’.”
As it turned out, witnesses reported there hadn’t been any air strike. There were explosions: just as terrorists bombed an Aleppo home in 2016 and used a mildly injured boy for their propaganda against Syria and Russia, so too did Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, setting the stage to incriminate Moscow.
Russia called the accusations “a completely staged provocation,” analyzing photos from the area and noting “evidence of two separate staged explosions near the hospital: An underground explosion and another of minor power, aimed at the hospital building,” and further noting that a “high-explosive aviation bomb would destroy the outer walls of the building.”
Russia also pointed out that the facility had stopped working when Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion expelled staff in late February and militarized the hospital, as Ukrainian forces did elsewhere in Donbass.
Marianna Vyshemirskaya, one of the women featured in the Western propaganda around the hospital, later spoke out and said there was no air strike, and that prior to the alleged event, Ukrainian soldiers expelled all the doctors and moved pregnant women to another building.
She also maintained that she and other women were filmed without warning by an Associated Press journalist dressed in a military uniform and wearing a helmet.
Even three days after Ukraine’s intense bombardment of Donetsk and targeting of the maternity hospital, when still more testimonies have emerged, Western media and politicians remained silent.
The suffering, and deaths, of the people of Donetsk doesn’t fit the Western narrative, so they misreport it or simply just don’t reference it at all, enabling Ukraine to continue to commit war crimes.
The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum has been configured for years now as absolutely essential to understand the evolving dynamics and the trials and tribulations of Eurasia integration.
St. Petersburg in 2022 is even more crucial as it directly connects to three simultaneous developments I had previously outlined, in no particular order:
First, the coming of the “new G8” – four BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China), plus Iran, Indonesia, Turkey and Mexico, whose GDP per purchasing parity power (PPP) already dwarfs the old, western-dominated G8.
Second, the Chinese “Three Rings” strategy of developing geoeconomic relations with its neighbors and partners.
Third, the development of BRICS+, or extended BRICS, including some members of the “new G8,” to be discussed at the upcoming summit in China.
There was hardly any doubt President Putin would be the star of St. Petersburg 2022, delivering a sharp, detailed speech to the plenary session.
Among the highlights, Putin smashed the illusions of the so-called ‘golden billion’ who live in the industrialized west (only 12 percent of the global population) and the “irresponsible macroeconomic policies of the G7 countries.”
The Russian president noted how “EU losses due to sanctions against Russia” could exceed $400 billion per year, and that Europe’s high energy prices – something that actually started “in the third quarter of last year” – are due to “blindly believing in renewable sources.”
He also duly dismissed the west’s ‘Putin price hike’ propaganda, saying the food and energy crisis is linked to misguided western economic policies, i.e., “Russian grain and fertilizers are being sanctioned” to the detriment of the west.
In a nutshell: the west misjudged Russia’s sovereignty when sanctioning it, and now is paying a very heavy price.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, addressing the forum by video, sent a message to the whole Global South. He evoked “true multilateralism,” insisting that emerging markets must have “a say in global economic management,” and called for “improved North-South and South-South dialogue.”
It was up to Kazakh President Tokayev, the ruler of a deeply strategic partner of both Russia and China, to deliver the punch line in person: Eurasia integration should progress hand in hand with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Here it is, full circle.
Building a long-term strategy “in weeks”
St. Petersburg offered several engrossing discussions on key themes and sub-themes of Eurasia integration, such as business within the scope of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); aspects of the Russia-China strategic partnership; what’s ahead for the BRICS; and prospects for the Russian financial sector.
One of the most important discussions was focused on the increasing interaction between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and ASEAN, a key example of what the Chinese would define as ‘South-South cooperation.’
And that connected to the still long and winding road leading to deeper integration of the EAEU itself.
This implies steps towards more self-sufficient economic development for members; establishing the priorities for import substitution; harnessing all the transport and logistical potential; developing trans-Eurasian corporations; and imprinting the EAEU ‘brand’ in a new system of global economic relations.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk was particularly sharp on the pressing matters at hand: implementing a full free trade customs and economic union – plus a unified payment system – with simplified direct settlements using the Mir payment card to reach new markets in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Persian Gulf.
In a new era defined by Russian business circles as “the game with no rules” – debunking the US-coined “rules-based international order” – another relevant discussion, featuring key Putin adviser Maxim Oreshkin, focused on what should be the priorities for big business and the financial sector in connection to the state’s economic and foreign policy.
The consensus is that the current ‘rules’ have been written by the west. Russia could only connect to existing mechanisms, underpinned by international law and institutions. But then the west tried to “squeeze us out” and even “to cancel Russia.” So it’s time to “replace the no-rules rules.” That’s a key theme underlying the concept of ‘sovereignty’ developed by Putin in his plenary address.
In another important discussion chaired by the CEO of western-sanctioned Sberbank Herman Gref, there was much hand-wringing about the fact that the Russian “evolutionary leap forward towards 2030” should have happened sooner. Now a “long-term strategy has to be built in weeks,” with supply chains breaking down all across the spectrum.
A question was posed to the audience – the crème de la crème of Russia’s business community: what would you recommend, increased trade with the east, or redirecting the structure of the Russian economy? A whopping 72 percent voted for the latter.
So now we come to the crunch, as all these themes interact when we look at what happened only a few days before St. Petersburg.
The Russia-Iran-India corridor
A key node of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC) is now in play, linking northwest Russia to the Persian Gulf via the Caspian Sea and Iran. The transportation time between St. Petersburg and Indian ports is 25 days.
This logistical corridor with multimodal transportation carries an enormous geopolitical significance for two BRICs members and a prospective member of the “new G8” because it opens a key alternative route to the usual cargo trail from Asia to Europe via the Suez canal.
The INSTC corridor is a classic South-South integration project: a 7,200-km-long multimodal network of ship, rail, and road routes interlinking India, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia all the way to Finland in the Baltic Sea.
Technically, picture a set of containers going overland [as well as via maritime routes] from St. Petersburg to Astrakhan. Then the cargo sails via the Caspian to the Iranian port of Bandar Anzeli. Then it’s transported overland to the port of Bandar Abbas. And then overseas to Nava Sheva, the largest seaport in India. The key operator is Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (the IRISL group), which has branches in both Russia and India.
And that brings us to what wars from now will be fought about: transportation corridors – and not territorial conquest.
Beijing’s fast-paced BRI is seen as an existential threat to the ‘rules-based international order.’ It develops along six overland corridors across Eurasia, plus the Maritime Silk Road from the South China Sea, and the Indian Ocean, all the way to Europe.
One of the key targets of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine is to interrupt BRI corridors across Russia. The Empire will go all out to interrupt not only BRI but also INSTC nodes. Afghanistan under US occupation was prevented from become a node for either BRI or INSTC.
With full access to the Sea of Azov – now a “Russian lake” – and arguably the whole Black Sea coastline further on down the road, Moscow will hugely increase its sea trading prospects (Putin: “The Black Sea was historically Russian territory”).
For the past two decades, energy corridors have been heavily politicized and are at the center of unforgiving global pipeline competitions – from BTC and South Stream to Nord Stream 1 and 2, and the never-ending soap operas, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) and Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipelines.
Then there’s the Northern Sea Route alongside the Russian coastline all the way to the Barents Sea. China and India are very much focused on the Northern Sea Route, not by accident also discussed in detail in St. Petersburg.
The contrast between the St. Petersburg debates on a possible re-wiring of our world – and the Three Stooges Taking a Train to Nowhere to tell a mediocre Ukrainian comedian to calm down and negotiate his surrender (as confirmed by German intelligence) – could not be starker.
Almost imperceptibly – just as it re-incorporated Crimea and entered the Syrian theater – Russia as a military-energy superpower now shows it is potentially capable of driving a great deal of the industrialized west back into the Stone Age. The western elites are just helpless. If only they could ride a corridor on the Eurasian high-speed train, they might learn something.
If you are not alarmed by what is happening to our largest cities, you should check to see if you still have a pulse. Once upon a time, the beautiful new cities that our forefathers constructed were the envy of the entire planet, but now many of them have degenerated into crime-infested hellholes that are absolutely teeming with violent predators.
Shoplifting has essentially become a national pastime, open air drug markets operate freely right under the noses of indifferent authorities, and addicts pull down their pants and take a dump whenever and wherever they feel like doing so.
Thanks to record levels of illegal immigration, gang membership is absolutely exploding, and human trafficking has reached truly frightening levels.
Of course our steadily thinning police forces are overwhelmed at this point. In fact, police in Seattle are stretched so thin that they often are not able “to take reports from rape victims”. And if you are the victim of a non-violent crime in Seattle, good luck ever getting a police officer to pay attention to your case. From coast to coast, communities are descending into a state of utter lawlessness. So if things are this bad already, what will conditions be like when things really start hitting the fan?
Continuing a trend that we have seen for the last couple of years, crime rates all over the nation just keep going higher and higher.
For example, auto theft, grand larceny and transit crime are all up by more than 50 percent in New York City so far this year…
Data released by the New York City Police Department showed Grand Larceny Auto increased by 51.1% with 5,420 incidents as of June 5 compared to just 3,587 incidents by the same time in 2021.
That category had one of the largest upticks during the most recent crime statistic report covering May 30 to June 5. Grand larceny incidents spiked by 50.1% from 20,659 incidents reported to NYPD as of June 5, compared to the 13,713 reported during the same period last year.
Meanwhile, overall transit crime surged by 53.6% so far this year.
I thought that the new mayor was elected to end the crime wave.
Instead, it appears that it has been supersized.
One way to hide the rapid rise in crime is to decriminalize things that used to be major offenses.
In Portland, voters decided to decriminalize hard drugs, but that just turned the city into an “open air drug market”…
The streets of Portland resemble an ‘open air drug market’ after state officials’ scheme to decriminalize hard drugs led to a surge in overdose deaths, critics claim.
Law enforcement agents say that the streets of Portland are full of homeless addicts openly buying and selling drugs and that signs of drug addiction are actually increasing statewide, Fox News reported.
Photos show the desperate situation in the liberal Pacific Northwest city, where people can be seen shooting up drugs or passed out in broad daylight.
At one time, Portland was one of the most magnificent cities in the entire world.
Now it is a horror show.
On top of all the ordinary crime that is going on, now we are witnessing a very alarming rise in politically-motivated violence.
The Supreme Court decision that will overturn Roe v. Wade is expected to be released this month, and a group known as “Jane’s Revenge” has announced that it is “open season” on those with pro-life views…
The pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge is declaring it “open season” on pro-life groups and crisis pregnancy centers.
The group has a history of damaging property during their protests, and they took credit for the vandalization of a pregnancy resource center in Des Moines, Iowa earlier this month. In a message posted to social media, the group said they broke windows and left graffiti political messages all over the clinic. “It was easy and fun,” the message read.
Sadly, even though the official Supreme Court decision has not even been released yet, there has already been quite a bit of violence.
In fact, it is being reported that there have been more than three dozen attacks on pro-life groups, churches and crisis pregnancy centers in recent weeks…
An armed would-be assassin’s alleged attempt on the life of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh last week is part of a wave of violence, arson, vandalism, and intimidation targeting pro-life groups and government officials since the leak last month of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
There have been more than three dozen such incidents directed at crisis pregnancy centers and churches in at least 20 states and Washington, D.C., according to a tally maintained by LifeNews.com, an anti-abortion site.
The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is rapidly dissipating, and our streets are becoming more uncivilized with each passing day.
If this is happening while economic conditions are still relatively stable, what will happen once things start getting really crazy out there?
In some parts of the world, the food crisis has already reached critical levels. For example, the government of Sri Lanka has actually shortened the work week so that workers will have more time to grow their own food…
Sri Lanka’s federal government on Monday approved a proposal that would shorten the work week of most public sector staff to four days so that workers will have time to farm their own crops, Reuters reported Tuesday, noting the measure aims to combat Sri Lanka’s worsening food shortages caused by a recent economic crisis.
“Sri Lanka’s Cabinet late on Monday approved a proposal for public sector workers to be given leave every Friday for the next three months, partly because the fuel shortage made commuting difficult and also to encourage them to farm,” Reuters reported on June 14.
Over in Africa, the United Nations has stopped feeding approximately 1.7 million citizens of South Sudan because they simply do not have enough funding to feed the rapidly growing throngs of desperately hungry people…
The World Food Programme has been forced to stop providing food aid to around 1.7 million people in South Sudan, because of a lack of funding. The UN-run organization will still reach 4.5 million people, but many will miss out on vital resources.
According to BBC News, over half the population of South Sudan is currently facing hunger due to floods, localized drought, continuing conflict, and rising food prices. Marwa Awad is from the World Food Programme and is in the northern town of Bentiu in South Sudan, where she has been talking to people about the effects the cuts to aid are having.
All of the experts are telling us that the global food crisis is going to get a lot worse as the months roll along.
If the UN has already reached the limit of what they are able to do, who is going to help the millions upon millions of hungry people that will soon need help in order to survive?
Here in the U.S., food production has been affected by a bizarre series of disasters, and we are being warned that much less will be produced this year than originally anticipated. I think that one expert summed up the current situation very well when he warned that “we are teetering on the edge right now”…
Pennsylvania farmers are being “crushed” by the record cost of diesel – so much so, that questions about a food crisis are starting to loom, the Morning Call reported.
One farmer in Lehigh County is quoted as saying: “I’ve got a tractor hooked up to my corn planter out here, no diesel fuel, and I can’t afford to get any.”
That farmer was airing his gripes to Kyle Kotzmoyer, a legislative affairs specialist for the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau. Kotzmoyer then turned around and testified to state lawmakers: “We have reached that point to where it is very close to being a sinking ship. We are teetering on the edge right now.”
If we eventually get to a point where food prices spiral completely out of control and there are widespread shortages, do you think that those living in our core urban areas will respond with grace and patience?
We got a small preview of what is to come during the Arab Spring of 2011. There were serious food shortages around the world that year, and that resulted in tremendous civil unrest.
Here in the United States, most people do not have large amounts of food stored up, and that is especially true in our largest cities.
So we better hope that the rapidly growing global food crisis does not affect us too severely, because the truth is that we are definitely not equipped to handle such a scenario.
Any government that is a national-security state needs big official enemies — scary ones, ones that will cause the citizenry to continue supporting not only the continued existence of a national-security state form of government but also ever-growing budgets for it and its army of voracious “defense” contractors.
That’s, of course, what the current brouhaha about Russia is all about.
It’s really a replay of the Cold War decades, when Americans were made to believe that the Reds were coming to get them, take over the federal government and the public schools, and indoctrinate everyone into loving communism and socialism.
In those Cold War years, Americans citizens were so scared of the Reds that they were willing to ignore — or even support — the dark-side powers that were being wielded and exercised by the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, which are the three principal components of the national-security establishment.
The idea was that if the U..S. government failed to adopt the same dark-side totalitarian-type powers, such as assassination and torture, that the Soviet Union and Red China were wielding and exercising, the United States would end up falling to the Reds and becoming communist.
The Cold War notion was that there was an international communist conspiracy to take over the world that was supposedly based in Moscow — yes, the same Moscow that is now being used, once again, to scare the dickens out of the American people.
Ironically, however, the American right wing, which was the leader of America’s anti-communist crusade during the Cold War, was teaching that socialism was an inherently defective paradigm. They would cite free-market economists like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman to show that socialism was doomed to fail.
Alas, American conservatives were never able to see the contradiction in their position. On the one hand, they were claiming that socialism was an inherently defective system that was doomed to fail. On the other hand, they were claiming that America and the rest of the world was in grave danger of falling to the supposed international communist/socialist conspiracy to take over the world that was supposedly based in Moscow.
The fact is that there was never any danger whatsoever of a Soviet or Chinese invasion and takeover of the United States. It was always an overblown threat designed to keep Americans afraid — and to keep the national-security establishment and its voracious army of “defense” contractors in power and in “high cotton.”
Oh sure, there was always the possibility of nuclear war, but that was the last thing that China or Russia wanted, especially given the vast superiority of America’s nuclear arsenal. It’s worth mentioning though that the Pentagon and the CIA constantly claimed, falsely, that the Soviet nuclear arsenal was vastly superior to that of the United States. Again, they had to keep Americans afraid as a way to maintain their power and their budgets.
When the Cold War was suddenly over, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA freaked out. That was the last thing they expected or wanted. They needed the Cold War. How else could they keep Americans afraid? What if Americans began demanding the restoration of their founding governmental system of a limited-government republic, which would necessarily entail the dismantling of the national-security state form of governmental structure?
That’s when they turned on their old partner and ally, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Throughout the 1990s, Saddam became the new official enemy. Day after day, it was “Saddam! Saddam! Saddam! He is the new Hitler! He is coming to get us with his WMDs!” And the vast majority of Americans bought into the new official scaremongering, no matter how ridiculous it was.
Meanwhile, however, the Pentagon and the CIA were going into the Middle East with a campaign of death and destruction, one that would end up producing another big scary official enemy — terrorism — and, to a certain extent, Islam. Even though commentators continually warned the Pentagon and the CIA that their deadly and destructive interventionist campaign would produce terrorist blowback, the Pentagon and the CIA continued pressing forward, with the result being the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, the USS Cole, the U.S. embassies in East Africa, the 9/11 attacks, and the post-9/11 attacks. Americans now had a new official enemy — possibly one than was scarier than communism — and the national-security state was off to the races with more power and more money.
Then came the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the Global War on Terrorism.
They milked that for some 20 years, keeping Americans deathly afraid of the terrorists and the Muslims, who had supposedly been planning the takeover of America as part of a centuries-old conspiracy to establish a worldwide caliphate, one that would require every American citizen to live under Sharia law.
But throughout the entire war on terrorism and war on Islam, they never gave up on restoring China and Russia as big, scary official Cold War enemies. That’s what is going on today. The Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA know that Americans are losing some of their fear of the terrorists and the Muslims, especially now that the Pentagon and the CIA are no longer killing people in Afghanistan.
Their big problem, however, is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is proving that Russia is a second-rate military power, one that can’t even conquer a third-rate power like Ukraine. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, it’s hard to convince people that America is in grave danger of falling to the Reds — I mean, the Russians — when a crooked and corrupt third-rate regime in Ukraine isn’t even falling to the Russians.
Where do the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA go from here? They will undoubtedly continue indoctrinating Americans into living in deep fear of the Russkies and the Chinese Reds. Don’t be surprised if they gin up another crisis with North Korea, which is always a good-standby official enemy. There is always Iran, of course, or Cuba, Venezuela, or Nicaragua — maybe even (communist) Vietnam again — given that fear of the Reds is always a good one on which to rely. And since they are still killing people in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, as well as in Africa, there is always the possibility of terrorist blowback that will reinvigorate the Global War on Terrorism and Islam.
The solution to all this official-enemy mayhem? Americans need to overcome the fear of official enemies that has been inculcated into them by the national-security establishment as part of their decades-old crooked and corrupt racket. Once that happens, it will be possible to restore America’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic and get back on the road to liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Israel has been secretly coordinating with the US on many of its airstrikes in Syria, and senior officials at US Central Command have reviewed and approved many plans in recent years.
Israel frequently bombs Syria and frames the operations as strikes against Iran or Hezbollah, although the air raids often kill Syrian government troops and members of Iraq’s Shia militias. The latest Israeli airstrikes on Syria disabled the Damascus International Airport, marking a significant escalation in the air campaign.
Current and former officials told the Journal that the main focus of the coordination is on airstrikes that pass near al-Tanf garrison, a US military base in southern Syria near the border with Jordan. The officials said that the “vast majority” of the strikes passing through that area had been approved by the US.
The Israelis started flying airstrikes near al-Tanf in 2017 to avoid Syrian air defenses. The officials said that Israel notifies CENTCOM of its plans ahead of time. The command conducts a review of the operation and also notifies the secretary of defense and joint chiefs chairman. Israel has also notified Russian forces at the Khmeimim Air Base in western Syria of planned strikes.
The report said that the US doesn’t review all Israeli operations inside Syria, and doesn’t help Israel pick its targets. A significant number of Israeli airstrikes in the country don’t pass al-Tanf, including the strike on Damascus Airport.
The US has about 1,000 troops stationed in eastern Syria. On paper, the presence is about supporting the Kurdish-led SDF against ISIS, but the occupation is also about putting pressure on Damascus. The US maintains crippling economic sanctions on Syria, preventing the country from rebuilding after over 10 years of war.
The Journal report is the first time that the close US-Israeli coordination on airstrikes in Syria has been reported. But the US has always tacitly endorsed the operations as it never condemns them.
In 2019, Brett McGurk, the top Middle East official on President Biden’s National Security Council, penned an op-ed where he outlined his ideal Syria policy after resigning from the Trump administration over unfulfilled plans to withdraw from the country. In the article, McGurk said the US should support Israeli airstrikes in Syria.
Back in February, when Russia went into Ukraine to denazify and disarm the country, the corporate media declared brave and patriotic Ukrainians would push the Russians out and eventually retake Crimea and the Donbas. In order to do this, we were told, the US must provide tens of billions of dollars in lethal aid.
Months later, as Ukraine’s losses to the overwhelming firepower of Russian artillery made it obvious they were losing—and badly, hundreds of soldiers dying every week—the lying corporate media in the West began to admit the truth: short of direct NATO involvement, it doesn’t matter how many high-tech weapons the US funnels into Ukraine, there is simply no way to defeat the Russians and kick them out of the country.
This does not mean the US will turn its back on Ukraine. It appears the US will double-down on its expensive effort to keep Zelenskyy and the Nazis in power while attempting to kill as many Russians as possible.
But here’s the rub—you will pay for this, and dearly. From the crown jewel of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, The Washington Post.
President Biden on June 14 issued his most expansive warning yet that there would be a significant price for Americans to pay as a result of the war in Ukraine, one that he argued was worth the cost in the name of supporting a fledgling democracy.
On a day when he announced the next escalatory step — and the one most likely to reverberate in the United States — Biden also called for further sacrifice.
“This is a step that we’re taking to inflict further pain on Putin, but there will be costs as well here in the United States,” Biden said as he announced a ban on Russian oil imports.
“I said I would level with the American people from the beginning. And when I first spoke to this, I said defending freedom is going to cost. It’s going to cost us as well in the United States.”
In other words, you will be expected to lower your standard of living significantly as a debt-addicted state continues Biden’s war against Russia in support of Ukrainian oligarchs, fascist ultranationalists, and the second most corrupt government in the world.
Archive. Prior to Russian Invasion
The corporate media, of course, still lies through omission. It rarely mentions the nazi-loving “battalions” rolled into Ukraine’s national guard. Moreover, the corporate media continues to claim the prominence of Nazis would not be possible with a Jewish president.
Since the war, Zelensky has been playing the Jewish card to get money from Israel and to try to pretend he is not a Neo-Nazi which means a “new” version of Nazism that believes still in ethnic cleansing, but their targets are Russians, not Jews.
The “objective” Newsweek is pushing the “Zelensky can’t be a Nazi because he’s a Jew” fable.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the leader of a government Putin claims is dominated by Nazis, is a Jew and Russian speaker himself, and the grandson of a man whose family was murdered in the Holocaust. Zelensky’s family history reveals that Putin’s denazification claim is both baseless and cruel.
Adding the Holocaust to the argument makes it more difficult to argue that Ukraine is in fact a nazified country with a blood-lust for Russians, including Russian-speakers in the Donbas, Crimea, Mariupol, Odesa, and elsewhere in Ukraine. Of course, the majority of Ukrainians don’t want to kill Russians or burn them alive like the neo-Nazis did to forty-two anti-Maidan activists in Odesa. Most Ukrainians want to live normal lives, as normal as life can be in a rapidly deteriorating state.
In the months ahead, we can expect the fighting in Ukraine to slowly wind down. However, this does not mean Ukraine and its enabler, the United States government, will admit defeat and negotiate a post-war agreement. On the contrary, I believe the US will begin a destabilizing guerrilla war against the people of the Donbas, Luhansk, and southern Ukraine.
On June 6, The New York Times ran an article detailing the move toward guerrilla tactics in the Donbas.
In the past month, Ukrainian partisans claim, insurgents have attacked Russian trains and killed dozens of Russian soldiers, as well as supporting the Ukrainian military’s counterattacks. Their claims are impossible to independently verify. The partisans also have established a virtual Center of National Resistance, which features instructions for things like setting up ambushes and what to do if arrested.
The Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, passed a law prior to the Russian invasion that in essence makes every citizen of Ukraine a partisan warrior.
“According to the law, national resistance is an integral part of the comprehensive defense of the state, which includes a set of measures for the widest possible involvement of citizens of Ukraine in ensuring military security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, deterring and repelling aggression.” (Emphasis added.) “The bill provides that within the framework of the territorial defense system, it is also possible to create volunteer formations of territorial communities that are allowed to use their own hunting weapons,” (Interfax-Ukraine reported on January 1, 2022, a month before Russia invaded).
It is curious the war in Ukraine so perfectly dovetails with the end of the highly exaggerated “pandemic” that conditioned billions of people to follow even the most illogical and petty of mandates handed down by government bureaucrats and “experts.”
Following the sacrifices imposed by the covid operation, the world was blindsided with energy shortages, empty grocery shelves, broken supply lines, backlogged port deliveries, social and political disarray, and now the highest inflation in decades (the government claims the inflation rate is 8%; others say it is closer to 16% and climbing).
Because far too many Americans have extremely short memories when it comes to politics, the IMF and others can get away with blaming Russia for economic woes that are the fault of the government, central banks, and especially the Federal Reserve, the latter guilty of pumping trillions of fake dollars into the economy (primarily the stock market), thus priming inflation.
“Global economic prospects have been severely set back, largely because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the International Monetary Fund will have you believe.
Inflation has become a clear and present danger for many countries. Even prior to the war, it surged on the back of soaring commodity prices and supply-demand imbalances. Many central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, had already moved toward tightening monetary policy. War-related disruptions amplify those pressures. We now project inflation will remain elevated for much longer. In the United States and some European countries, it has reached its highest level in more than 40 years, in the context of tight labor markets.
Add to this Joe’s demand you suffer for the neo-Nazis of Ukraine. Joe and his coterie of warmongering Democrats and neocons, however, will not suffer. They are prized by the financial elite for their ruthless policies resulting in misery, death, and eventually a global tyranny as imagined by the Davos crowd.
“…the richest among us have been siphoning an increasing share of wealth from the masses since at least the early 1980s, if not earlier. It is confirmation of the argument I made in my book Letter to the One Percent, that the “financialization” of America has not been beneficial to most of us, that on the contrary it has taken advantage of our ignorance and our weakness, and that the economic troubles that plague our land — everything from slow growth to low savings to frequent crises — will not stop until the balance of power shifts away from the plutocrats who prey on average Americans like you.”
The war in Ukraine, the idiocy of blaming Putin while ignoring the threats Russia faces from Nazis on its periphery, is also part of that notorious financialization.
The message for the savvy yet conscienceless investor: Buy Raytheon stock.
By chance I picked a copy ofA Fearless Heartwhile browsing at my upstate Roscoe library. I find it’s a memoir that also explains the teaching of mindfulness for which its author, Thupten Jinpa, had become well known.
I didn’t recognize the writer’s name. Nor was I particularly interested in mindfulness training. Yet my attraction to the book cover couldn’t have been entirely chance. As an anthropologist I spent many years of my life engaged in the field of Tibetan Studies and I’d written a great deal aboutTibetan history and culture. That bond began long before I completed my PhD at the University of London.
It started in 1964 when I joined the British Save The Children Fund project in Simla, India, helping to establish a new school for Tibetan refugees where many families settled after their escape from Tibet in 1962. In the opening pages of Jinpa’s memoir, he notes that he’d been a pupil at this school when the Dalai Lama visited. I remembered that I myself was a member of the teaching staff who,along with the rest had welcomed the revered Tibetan leader to the school. This meant that Jinpa and I had been there at the same time: he, a 7-8 year-old boy, and I, the 20-something headmistress.
Among the few photographs we had arranged those days were class photos. Hmmm. I might still have three black and white class portraits pasted in one of my (hardcopy) scrap books. Perhaps Jinpa was in one of them. It didn’t take long, leafing through my collection to locate the pictures. But how would I know which child among the 70 pupils neatly lined up with their teachers was the now famous Dr. Jinpa? Or if he was there at all? After digitizing the three photos, I found Jinpa’s email address, and send them on to him.
Would he remember his childhood at the refugee school more than a half century ago?
Within a few days, I received his excited reply. Not only did he remember his years at the primary school (and this headmistress). He recognized himself.
That was especially exciting for his wife and children, since this was the only snapshot that he had of himself as a child. It was certainly a delight for me, and justification for keeping those old photos in good condition. It’s all the more gratifying that the photo itself continues to circulate, most recently in a BBC film, “Mission Joy”.
Jinpa has become an eminent member of the international Buddhist community. He lectures and leads seminars in many parts of the world. Significantly, he helped establish the teaching of ‘mindfulness’, a core principle of Buddhist meditation, in Western psychology. And he remains active teaching the practice at centers across Europe and the USA.
Before his studies abroad and his marriage, Jinpa had been a monk in India. In that capacity, he became a favorite translator of the Dalai Lama and they worked closely together for several years. Even today, on special occasions the Dalai Lama calls on Jinpa. One such time was the filming of “Mission Joy: Finding Happiness in Troubled Times”. The 2021 film records the wonderfully warm dialogue between Bishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. Besides being good friends and esteemed religious figures, they’re fellow Nobel Peace Laureates.
I suppose it was Thupten Jinpa’s participation as translator on the “Mission Joy” movie set that a reference arose to the conditions of Tibetan refugee children 60 years ago.
To illustrate that minor but not inconsequential historical moment, where did Jinpa turn?
A rare 1966 class photo that had recently come into his possession.He offered it to the film’s editors; so there he is in genuine black and white (b/w photo above, middle row, 4thfrom the left) with his 24 bright-eyed young classmates– a historical peep slipped in with the wisdom and laughter of these iconic world leaders.
And yes, we ourselves—teacher and former pupil– had a reunion in 2019, after his presentation at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City
The World Health Organization is set to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the end of June 2022 over Covid-19 vaccine-induced shingles which all member states including the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Europe are legally obliged to respond to.
The world is being told that Monkeypox is on the rise in countries such as the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada, and most of Europe.
But evidence suggests this is a lie, and it is actually a cover-up of the adverse consequences of Covid-19 vaccination.
But either way, the Emergency Committee of the World Health Organization is set to meet on Thursday 23rd June 2022, to assess whether the Covid-19 vaccine-induced shingles outbreak (allegedly Monkeypox) represents a public health emergency of international concern.
And under the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), states have a legal duty to respond promptly to a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, meaning we could be about to witness COVID 2.0.
How do we know monkeypox is a cover-up for Covid-19 vaccine-induced shingles and other ailments?
Well first take a look at these two maps side by side. One shows countries where cases of “monkeypox” have been reported to the WHO since May 2022, and the other shows the main distribution of the Pfizer Covid-19 injection by country.
Apart from a couple of countries, there isn’t really any difference, and every country that has reported alleged cases of monkeypox since May 2022 where it was not already endemic, is a country that also distributed the Pfizer Covid-19 injection.
And chickenpox is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, and just like its close relative the herpes simplex virus, it becomes a lifelong resident in the body.
And like its other cousin, genital herpes, varicella may be silent for many years, hiding out inside nerve cells and can reactivate later, wreaking havoc in the form of the excruciating skin disorder, shingles, which is a blistering, burning skin rash.
Unfortunately, or fortunately; depending on whether you chose to get the Covid-19 injection, official Government data and confidential Pfizer documents strongly suggest the Covid-19 injection may be reactivating the dormant chickenpox virus or herpes virus due to the frightening damage it does to the immune system.
This is most likely what has just happened to Justin Bieber, leaving one-half of his face paralysed, and forcing him to cancel his upcoming tour.
On June 10th, he released a video in which he revealed half of his face is paralysed after being diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, leading to the cancellation of his upcoming tour.
Ramsay Hunt Syndrome is caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox and occurs when a shingles outbreak affects the facial nerve near one of your ears. In addition to the painful shingles rash, Ramsay Hunt syndrome can cause facial paralysis and hearing loss in the affected ear.
The condition typically affects people over the age of 60, unless you’ve been vaccinated against Covid-19, which has, in turn, decimated your immune system, leading to reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus.
The following chart shows the real-world Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness among the triple vaccinated population in England according to the UK Health Security Agency Week 3, Week 7 and Week 13 Vaccine Surveillance reports of 2022 –
A negative vaccine effectiveness indicates immune system damage because vaccine effectiveness isn’t really a measure of the effectiveness of a vaccine. It is a measure of a vaccine recipient’s immune system performance compared to the immune system performance of an unvaccinated person.
There’s plenty more official Government evidence out there, but the above chart alone proves that the Covid-19 injections damage the immune system and that damage continues to worsen by the week.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attempted to delay the release of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine safety data for 75 years despite approving the injection after only 108 days of safety review on December 11th, 2020.
But in early January 2022, Federal Judge Mark Pittman ordered them to release 55,000 pages per month. They released 12,000 pages by the end of January.
Since then, PHMPT has posted all of the documents on its website. The latest drop happened on June 1st 2022.
One of the documents contained in the data dump is ‘reissue_5.3.6 postmarketing experience.pdf’. Page 21 of the confidential document contains data on adverse events of special interest, with one of these specifically being herpes viral infections.
According to the document by the end of February 2021, just 2 months after the Pfizer vaccine was granted emergency use authorisation in both the USA and UK, Pfizer has received 8,152 reports relating to herpes infection, and 18 of these had already led to multiple organ dysfunction syndrome.
The following chart shows the number of Google searches in the UK for ‘shingles’ and the dates of when the first, second and third doses of the Covid-19 injection were administered –
The following chart shows adverse events to the Covid-19 injections reported to the CDC relating to herpes, shingles and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome up to 13th May 2022.
It also shows the number of adverse events reported against the Flu Vaccines, all vaccines combined (excluding Covid-19 injections) and the HPV/Smallpox vaccines between 2008 and 2020 –
As you can see the Covid-19 injections have caused the most herpes-related infections, and this is within 17 months. When comparing these to the number of flareups reported against the HPV/Smallpox vaccines in 13 years, these numbers are extremely concerning.
This isn’t because so many people have been given a Covid-19 injection either. Official CDC numbers actually show 1.7 billion doses of influenza vaccine alone were administered between 2008 and 2020. Whereas, as of 6th May 2022, 580 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine had been administered in the USA.
The following chart shows the rate per 1 million doses administered of adverse events related to herpes, shingles and multiple organ syndrome –
The rate of herpes-related infections reported as adverse reactions to the Flu jabs is 0.75 adverse events per 1 million doses administered. But the rate of herpes-related infections reported as adverse reactions to the Covid-19 injections is 31.31 adverse events per 1 million doses administered.
That’s a 4,075% difference, and indicative of a very serious problem. A serious problem that is being caused by the fact the Covid-19 injections decimate the immune system.
But you are being told this immune system damage and herpes flare-ups are a result of a monkeypox outbreak, curiously occurring in several countries for the first time in 50 years. And it just so happens every country that is allegedly suffering a monkeypox outbreak happens to be a country where the Pfizer vaccine was administered.
And now, the World Health Organization is set to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the end of June 2022 which all member states including the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Europe are legally obliged to respond to.
This means we could be about to witness Covid-19 2.0 as a cover-up for the consequences of administering an experimental Covid-19 injection to millions of people.
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“When the Lie becomes the Truth, there is No Moving Backwards” (Michel Chossudovsky)
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The EU has released its guidelines for the implementation of online censorship. It’s the roadway to tyranny. It’s Orwell’s Ministry of Truth 2022.
The unspoken objective is to sustain government propaganda and “fake news” by the mainstream media while systematically curtailing freedom of expression and independent analysis throughout the European Union. It is also an attempt to literally bankrupt independent media (financially) through a process of demonetization.
The new Code brings together a more diverse range of stakeholders than ever, empowering them to contribute to wide-ranging improvements by signing up to precise commitments relevant to their field. Such commitments include demonetising the dissemination of disinformation; guaranteeing transparency of political advertising; enhancing cooperation with fact-checkers; and facilitating researchers access to data.
Supporting platforms and industry to meet their commitments under the Code of Practice on Disinformation feeds in to the European Commission’s commitment to a more transparent, safe and trustworthy online environment.
Needless to say, The 2022 Strengthened Code does not address the REAL mainstream media practice of fake news, nor does it question the lies of senior government officials.
“Disinformation related to the coronavirus crisis and Russia’s war in Ukraine clearly show that we need stronger tools to fight online disinformation.
Outright lies regarding the deadly impacts of the Covid-19 Vaccine. Amply documented, the Covid-19 Vaccine has triggered from the outset in December 2020 an upward trend in mortality and morbidity. The evidence is overwhelming. National governments Worldwide are Lying to You the People, to the populations they purportedly serve.
What is at stake is a comprehensive totalitarian project with a view to sustaining official lies and fake science on behalf of the financial elites. The President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is complicit in suppressing the truth on behalf of Big Pharma. If you have doubts, read the bombshell Secret Report by Pfizer, which is now in the public domain (released under FOI).
“More Transparency” points to the Elimination of Freedom of Expression in Online Publishing
Sofar the EU Digital Strategy (with a view to tackling alleged online disinformation) has enlisted Facebook (owned by Meta), Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok.
In this regard, the EU has put forth a detailed Code of Practice which contains 44 commitments and 128 specific measures.
Demonetization
The first objective is entitled “Demonetisation: cutting financial incentives for purveyors of disinformation”. It’s intent is to prevent the independent online media from raising revenue through advertising and/or donations.
The Real “purveyors of disinformation” and “fake news”, namely the mainstream media conglomerates are not affected. Quite the opposite: The main source of their multibillion dollar online revenue is advertising.
“The Code will strengthen the measures to reduce manipulative behaviour used to spread disinformation (e.g. fake accounts, bot-driven amplification, impersonation, malicious deep fakes”…They will be also required to periodically review the list of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) employed by malicious actors”…
Who are those “Malicious Actors”?
Malicious actors are routinely involved to actions which contribute to the destabilization and suppression of the independent media.
It takes on various forms. In the course of the month of April 2022, Global Research was the object of a cyber attack involving a daily average of up to 10 million malicious requests, originating simultaneously from several countries, the objective of which was to paralyze our website.
Other procedures adopted by Facebook and Twitter consist in providing a malicious label to independent media articles:
The EU initiative is to “be better protected from disinformation” to enable online readers “to access authoritative sources”.
The objective is also “to empower” the so-called “fact-checking community”, which is largely controlled by the corporate media in alliance with Facebook, Google et al in liaison with corrupt government officials.
“Steps ahead”.
The EU calls for the rapid implementation of the Code:
Signatories will have six months to implement the commitments and measures to which they have signed up. …
… The established Task Force, which will meet as necessary and at least every six months, will monitor and adapt the commitments in view of technological, societal, market and legislative developments.
Censorship is Mandatory
It is worth noting that while the 2018’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, is “self regulatory”, the revised version adopted on 16 June 2022 is slated to become mandatary:
“the Code aims to become a mitigation measure and a Code of Conduct recognized under the co-regulatory framework of the DSA.”
This insidious project is tantamount to the establishment of a European ‘Ministry of Truth”
in blatant violation of the constitutional provisions of the EU’s 27 member states. It goes far beyond Hitler’s propaganda apparatus led by Joseph Goebbels.
“JosephGoebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, 1933-1945, formulated a principle that if a lie is told often enough, it becomes accepted as the truth.” (Brian Willson)
“A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”- Joseph Goebbels
The dystopian premises of Orwell’s 1984 are now embedded in an advanced online digital communications technology.
Repeated media lies 24/7 are part of a fear campaign.
In turn, the methodology of persistent and repetitive lying inserted into an advanced digital environment has a far greater reach than the repulsive propaganda model proposed by Goebbels to Adolph Hitler.
The European Commission will Finance the “Fact Checkers”
The real purveyors of media disinformation namely the corporate media and its “fact checkers” are not only exempt from these provisions, the EU Commission has promised to generously finance the “fact checkers” (at tax payers expense) which operate under the auspices of the multi-billion dollar corporate media conglomerates including Reuters (owned by the Thomson Family):
“… The Code works towards ensuring fair financial contributions for fact-checkers’ work and better access to fact-checkers to information facilitating their daily work”. (emphasis added)
This project of the European Commission must be forcefully rejected.
It is a model of censorship in derogation of fundamental human rights. It’s a criminal undertaking under Nuremberg.
As the Nuremberg prosecutor stated:
“The use made by the Nazi conspirators of psychological warfare is well known. Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack…. In the propaganda system of the Hitler State it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.” (emphasis added)
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Covid 19 is not a disease, but a weapon used to re-trigger the so-called “pre-existing conditions” of the person affected using an unknown technique and often damage the lungs, brain or other organ. The nature of this weapon, how it enters the body, whether it stays there, whether and how it can be removed again, and what its actual, possibly longer-term purpose is, is unknown.
The fact that the new corona virus has not been detected should not further mislead us into assuming that there is no problem with the so-called Covid 19 “disease”.
Covid feels like:
A program is unwound in your body.
It begins, for example, with a kind of mind control, namely the destruction of the psychic power together with the physical one and the enforcement of a suicidal indifference towards life, including one’s own. An extreme weakening happens on all levels and the opposite of every joy of life occurs, a miserable feeling of the end that spreads in you. This lasts for the first 4 days, approx. Question: Does this have something to do with a weakening of the lungs, which may also occur without a previous lung disease? (relationship lungs and grief)
Within the body, weak points are docked one after the other, as if a software program is running that can affect all organs, parts of the body, even the bones and touches the whole of life, right down to birth, and of course it is different for everyone.
This causes fever and sometimes severe and long-lasting pain. It awakens so-called pre-existing conditions that we are not always aware of. Some of them are reactivated as if there had been no healing and as if the body’s memory of healing had not existed. The wisdom of the body is turned off. All old illnesses, injuries and even unknown traumas can resurface. This process takes about 4 days, by which time most of the symptoms will subside and only the most stubborn will remain.
To what extent the lungs or the brain are a particular target, and in what form, remains to be seen. Since older people automatically have more “previous illnesses”, they are more at risk – “more vulnerable” – and are therefore more likely to end up in the hospital. Children, on the other hand, rarely get Covid because they usually don’t have any previous illnesses worth mentioning, or they show such effects that are additionally produced.
In the clinic, those who are ill then die “from and with Corona”, i.e. from and with the previous illnesses triggered by the Covid weapon (and the fear campaign), among other things, along with the type of treatment there, especially the lungs. This explains the new language used around it.
It is therefore precisely the various forms of lung and other organ diseases that are to be examined that are not necessarily related to previous illnesses. Vascular diseases, lack of oxygen, etc. So far, however, these have been treated in the same way in the clinics, up to intubation and death by asphyxiation. Why? (WHO patent)
In this way, hardly anyone is already “negative” on the 5th day and can test free if they were really attacked by Covid and not just had the flu. On the contrary, it must be expected that the program in the body, i.e. a kind of programmed nanomachine, will still be there and can be used again. This machine must be a combination of nano-, AI- and eventually bio- and EM-technology, in any case a cutting-edge product of the 4th industrial revolution in the field of micro-technologies, which have the recognized purpose of transforming man and his body. It is a first step to transhumanism.
So this is not (only) about spike proteins or poisoning, for example with snake venom. Rather, it is a technological attack with a “bio” weapon in the sense that it attacks the biology of the body, as if it were mechanical hardware and software (psyche), and breaks it down into its specific components, i.e. mortifies , where there has already been a problem/injury/wound/illness, more so in older people. The mobilization of previous illnesses then also conceals the similarities and additional effects/destructions that are expressed in “Long Covid”, among other things, i.e., Covid is not a disease in its own right insofar as it forcibly brings back the illnesses that the person has gone through, as if there had been no cures. The body is therefore forced to deal with old diseases again, as if it had not already done so successfully. His healing memory is removed and first erased.
But Covid may also cause new diseases and even permanently, so it still has other “tasks” to fulfill or those that are actually at stake.
Without a good immune system, however, the body cannot master the attack of which it was a victim.
Therefore, it is crucial to take the right medication immediately when the symptoms start. The question remains as to what happens to the body in the Covid patient in the long run, and whether it can be “expelled” or whether it can be “thrown on” again later from the outside, e.g. when 5G is switched on (EM).
Covid is a mockery beyond compare. Because everyone “sicks” first of their own illnesses. He/she is therefore “to blame” for everything him-/herself. What morals! This hides the actual damage and changes that (should) be initiated with this weapon.
It is currently not possible for those affected to prove that all this is the case. It is therefore important to collect and sift through experiences, which are different for everyone. Since the new corona virus has not been proven – “isolated” – many people think that there is no disease or only “mild” courses. The opposite is the case.
What should also happen is a comparison with vaccine effects and substances. Is Covid already a pre-vaccination or something else?
Vaccinated persons are to be questioned. How is it the opposite or similar to Covid? Comparison of the applied technique. Comparison of the resulting diseases. In the case of vaccination, the diseases are new, in the case of Covid, they are often old.
These are all the results of the first irreversible global human experiments with products of the 4th industrial revolution in the field of alchemical microtechnologies, which mortify and reassemble into the state of the sick, dead or „transhuman“…
A debate is urgently needed.
*
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Dr. Claudia von Werlhofis Prof. Emerita of Political Science and Women’s Studies at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. She is the author of many books and has worked hard to make Rosalie Bertell’s important book Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War on Geoengineering available in German, Spanish, Italian, French and English again. Claudia was the founder of the Planetary Movement for Mother Earth (PMME) in 2010.
She is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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***
The Tsilhqot’in Struggle
On 26 March 2018, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau addressed the history of the six Tsilhqot’in chiefs who had been arrested during a sacred peace-pipe ceremony and subsequently hanged for their part in a war to prevent the spread of smallpox by colonialists:
“We recognize that these six chiefs were leaders of a nation, that they acted in accordance with their laws and traditions and that they are well regarded as heroes of their people.”
“They acted as leaders of a proud and independent nation facing the threat of another nation.”
“As settlers came to the land in the rush for gold, no consideration was given to the rights of the Tsilhqot’in people who were there first,” Trudeau said. “No consent was sought.”
In recent years, the Tsilhqot’in people were engaged in a long, drawn-out fight to gain sovereignty over their unceded territory, spurred by the attempts of Taseko Mines to situate an open-pit copper-and-gold mine near the trout-rich Teẑtan Biny (Fish Lake). Also proposed was “destroying Yanah Biny (Little Fish Lake) and the Tŝilhqot’in homes and graves located near that lake, to make way for a massive tailings pond.”
Sometimes the law works (even colonial law), and sometimes it doesn’t. Neither the Tsilhqot’in or Delgamuukw legal precedents have, so far, buttressed the Wet’suwet’en people’s fight against the encroachment of a pipeline corporation.
In the unceded territory of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, corporate Canada and the government of Canada are violently seeking to ram a pipeline through Wet’suwet’en territory despite its rejection by all five hereditary chiefs; i.e., no consent has been given for the laying of a pipeline.
The Gidimt’en land defenders of the Wet’suwet’en turned to the international forum and made a submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous People on the “Militarization of Wet’suwet’en Lands and Canada’s Ongoing Violations.” The submission was co-authored by leading legal, academic, and human rights experts in Canada, and is supported by over two dozen organisations such as the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and Amnesty International-Canada.
The submission to the UN was presented by hereditary chief Dinï ze’ Woos (Frank Alec), Gidimt’en Checkpoint spokesperson Sleydo’ (Molly Wickham), and Gidimt’en Checkpoint media coordinator Jen Wickham. It makes the case that forced industrialization by Coastal GasLink and police militarization on Wet’suwet’en land is a repudiation of Canada’s international obligations as stipulated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
Their submission states:
Ongoing human rights violations, militarization of Wet’suwet’en lands, forcible removal and criminalization of peaceful land defenders, and irreparable harm due to industrial destruction of Wet’suwet’en lands and cultural sites are occurring despite declarations by federal and provincial governments for reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. By deploying legal, political, and economic tactics to violate our rights, Canada and BC are contravening the spirit of reconciliation, as well as their binding obligations to Indigenous law, Canadian constitutional law, UNDRIP and international law.
Sleydo’ relates the situation:
We urge the United Nations to conduct a field visit to Wet’suwet’en territory because Canada and BC have not withdrawn RCMP from our territory and have not suspended Coastal GasLink’s permits, despite the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination calling on them to do so. Wet’suwet’en is an international frontline to protect the rights of Indigenous peoples and to prevent climate change. Yet we are intimidated and surveilled by armed RCMP, smeared as terrorists, and dragged through colonial courts. This is the reality of Canada.
In the three large-scale police actions that have transpired on Wet’suwet’en territory since January 2019, several dozens of people have been arrested and detained, including legal observers and media. On 13 June 2022, the Unist’ot’en Solidarity Brigade expressed outrage that the BC Prosecution Service plans to pursue criminal contempt charges against people opposed to the trespass of Wet’suwet’en territory, including Sleydo’.
Treaty Treatment
The Wet’suwet’en are on their ancestral unceded lands. Would it have made a difference if they had signed a treaty with the colonial entity?
The book We Remember the Coming of the White Man (Durville, 2021), edited by Sarah Stewart and Raymond Yakeleya, does not augur a better outcome for the First People.
We Remember adumbrates how the treaty process operates under colonialism:
When our Dene People signed Treaty 11 in 1921, there had been no negotiation because the Treaty translators were not able to translate the actual language used in the document. There was not enough time for our People to consult with each other. Our Dene People were given a list that had been written up by bureaucrats declaring the demands of Treaty 11. They dictated to the Dene, ‘This is what we want. You have to agree, and sign it.’ We did not know what the papers contained. (p ix)
Treaties and contracts signed under duress are not legally binding. Forced signing of a treaty is on-its-face preposterous to most people with at least half a lobe. It is no less obvious to the Dene of the Northwest Territories:
How can you demand something from People who cannot understand? That’s a crime. I have often said that Treaty 11 does not meet the threshold of being legal. In other words, when we make a treaty, it should be you understand, I understand, and we agree. In this case, the Dene did not understand. (p x)
Unfortunately, the Dene trusted an untrustworthy churchman. The Dene signed on the urging of Bishop Breyant, a man of God, because they had faith in the Roman Catholic Church. (p x)
Oil appeals to those with a lust for lucre. This greed contrasts with traditional Dene customs. Walter Blondin writes in the Foreword,
We Dene consider our land as sacred and owned by everyone collectively as it provides life…. [T]here were laws between the families that insured harmony and sharing. No one was left behind to face hardships or starve when disasters such as forest fires devastated the lands. The Dene laws promoted sharing, and this was taken seriously as failure to follow these laws could lead to war and bloody conflict. (p 3)
The Blondin family of Norman Wells (Tlegohli) in the Northwest Territories experienced first hand the perfidy of the White Man. The Blondins gave oil samples from their land to the Roman Catholic bishop for testing. The Dene family never received any report of the results. Later, however, a geologist, Dr Bosworth staked three claims at Bosworth Creek that were bought by Imperial Oil in 1918. (p 5-6)
Imperial Oil told the families: “You are not welcome in your homes and your traditional lands and your hunting territory.” The Dene people were driven out. “Elders say, ‘It was the first time in living memory where the Dene became homeless on their own land.’” (p 6)
The Blondin family homes were torn down with possessions inside and pushed over the river bank. “No apology or compensation was ever received from Imperial Oil. Imperial Oil considered Norman Wells to be ‘their town—a White Man’s town’ and the Blondin family and other Dene were not welcome.” (p 6)
“Treaty 11 became the ‘treaty for oil ownership.’” (p 8)
“One hundred years after the fact, the Dene can see the collusion between the British Crown, Imperial Oil [now ExxonMobil] and the Roman Catholic Church in the fraud, theft and embezzlement of Dene resources.” (p 10)
Sarah Stewart writes, “Treaty 11 was a charade to legitimize the land grab in the Northwest Territories.” The land grab came with horrific consequences. Stewart laments that the White Man brought disease, moved onto Dene lands and decimated wildlife, and that the teaching of missionaries and missionary schools eroded native languages, cultures, and traditions. (p 14)
Indigenous People, whose land it was, were never considered equal partners in benefiting from the resource. As Indian Agent Henry Conroy wrote to the Deputy General of Indian Affairs in January 1921, the objective was to have Indigenous people surrender their territory ‘to avoid complications in the exploitation of oil.’ (p 15)
Filmmaker Raymond Yakeleya elucidates major differences between the colonialists and the Dene. He points to the capitalist mindset of the White Man: “‘How can we make money off this?’ Dene People are not motivated by that.” (p 24) A deep respect and reverence for all the Creator’s flora and fauna and land is another difference. “When you kill an animal, you have a conversation with it and give it thanks for sharing its body. There are special protocols and ceremonies you have to go through.” (p 28)
While Yakeleya acknowledges that not all missionaries were bad, (p 30) he points to a dark side:
A major confusion came to our People with the coming of the Catholic missionaries. I see the coming of the Black Robes as being a very, very dark cloud that descended over our People. All of a sudden you have people from another culture with another way of thinking imposing their laws. We see that they did it for money, control, and power. I heard an Elder say to me once that the Christians who followed the Ten Commandments were the same people who broke all of them.
The first time we ever questioned ourselves was with the coming of the Christians and to me, I think there was something evil that came amongst our People…. The missionaries were quick to say our ways were the ways of the devil, or the ways of something not good…. Now we see they are being charged with pedophilia and other crimes. (p 29)
As for the discovery of oil, Joe Blondin said, “The Natives found it and never got anything out of it and that’s the truth.” (p 159) As for Treaty 11, John Blondin stated emphatically, “We know that we did not sell our land.” (p 171)
At the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry in Fort McPherson [Teetł’it Zheh], Dene Philip Blake spoke words that resonate poignantly with the situation in Wet’suwet’en territory today:
If your nation chooses … to continue to try and destroy our nation, then I hope you will understand why we are willing to fight so that our nation can survive. It is our world…. But we are willing to defend it for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren. If your nation becomes so violent that it would tear up our land, destroy our society and our future, and occupy our homeland, by trying to impose this pipeline against our will, but then of course we will have no choice but to react with violence. I hope we do not have to do that. For it is not the way we would choose…. I hope you will not only look on the violence of Indian action, but also on the violence of your own nation which would force us to take such a course. We will never initiate violence. But if your nation threatens by its own violent action to destroy our nation, you will have given us no choice. Please do not force us into this position. For we would all lose too much. (p 229)
The Nature of Colonialism and Its Treaties
Spoken word poet Shane L. Koyczan captures the nature of colonialism in Inconvenient Skin (Theytus Books, 2019):
150 years is not so long
that the history can be forgot
not so long that
forgiveness can be bought with empty apologies
or unkept promises
sharpened assurances that this is now
how it is
take it on good faith
and accept it
except that
history repeats itself
like someone not being listened to
like an entire people not being heard
the word of god is hard to swallow
when good faith becomes a barren gesture
there were men of good faith
robbing babies from their cradles
like the monsters we used to tell each other about
ripping children out of their mother’s arms
to be imprisoned in the houses of god
whose teachings were love
did no one hear?
did god mumble?
god said love
but the things that were done
were not love
our nation is built above the bones
of a genocide
it was not love that pried apart these families
it is not love that abandons its treaties
*
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Kim Petersen is a scuba diver, independent writer, and former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Twitter: @kimpetersen.
Featured image: Wet’suwet’en fishing site on Bulkley River and the entrance of Moricetown Canyon, in Moricetown, British Columbia, Canada. Fishermen capture the running salmon there (mostly cohoes, at that time of year) using nets in order to tag them, after which they are released on the other side of the rapids. (Licensed under FAL)
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The wearing of the face mask started in the immediate wake of the official announcement of the covid-19 lockdown on March 11, 2020.
Worldwide, people have been instructed to wear the mask.
And then one year later, we are told that in some cases it may contain a poisonous substance.
On April 2, 2021 Health Canada acknowledged the presence of graphene nano particles inside the Face Mask allegedly to protect our health as well as prevent the spread of the “deadly virus”.
According to Health Canada: “Face Masks which contain Graphene Oxide May Pose Health Risks”.
It took more than a year for Health Canada to acknowledge that certain unnamed brands of the face mask contain graphene nano-particles:
“There is a potential that wearers could inhale graphene particles from some masks, which may pose health risks.”
“A number of individuals have come forward in Quebec reporting breathing problems, headaches, skin complaints and other adverse effects from the ‘healfiber’ masks,” they said at the time in a memo urging people to stop using them or any other mask that contains graphene. (emphasis added)
The face masks were carefully designed. The specifics of the face mask were then outlined. Production under contract was then outsourced to manufacturing entities including several Chinese companies. The Shandong based Shengquan Group is a major supplier, selling hundreds of millions of face masks Worldwide.
Can Graphene Nano-Particles Enter the Body?
Who designed the face mask containing graphene particles? Not the Chinese manufacturer.
One would expect that Health Canada (back in March 2020) would have been involved directly or indirectly in reviewing and identifying the Face Mask brands containing graphene nano-particles prior to their sale and mass distribution.
Who approved the production of a face mask which contains a poisonous substance?
In an earlier March 2021 unpublished memorandum to the province’s and territories, Health Canada recommended users to “stop purchasing and using face masks containing nanoform graphene”(quoted in a study by Andrew Maynard)
Visibly this March 25, 2021 memorandum was amended. No brand names are mentioned in Health Canada’s April 2, 2021 advisory.
Health Canada has ordered the removal from sale and distribution (Solely) of face masks which are explicitly labelled “contain graphene or biomass graphene”. The advisory does not apply to face masks brands (containing graphene) which do not display an explicit acknowledgement on the product label.
According to Health Canada:
Graphene is a novel nanomaterial (materials made of tiny particles) reported to have antiviral and antibacterial properties. Health Canada conducted a preliminary scientific assessment after being made aware that masks containing graphene have been sold with COVID-19 claims and used by adults and children in schools and daycares. Health Canada believes they may also have been distributed for use in health care settings.
Novel nano-material? Nonsense! Graphene was first isolated in 2004 at the Physics Department of the University of Manchester by Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov: Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010.
Graphene is by no means “novel”. Moreover, the impacts on human health are amply documented:
“In recent years there have been a number of comprehensive reviews on the potential toxicity of graphene, including this 2018 paper by Bengt Fadeel and colleagues, and this one by Vanesa Sanches and colleagues. Both are solid reviews by highly respected research teams. And both indicate that, while the toxicity of graphene is complex and may be low in some cases, it isn’t negligible.
When it comes to inhaling graphene, the current state of the science indicates that if the material can get into the lower parts of the lungs (the respirable or alveolar region) it can lead to an inflammatory response at high enough concentrations.” Andrew Maynard
Health Canada ignores and distorts the scientific evidence (quoted above). It dispels the impacts on human beings (amply documented), it casually refers in its advisory (below) to “toxicity in animals”:
Health Canada’s preliminary assessment of available research identified that inhaled graphene particles had some potential to cause early lung toxicity in animals. However, the potential for people to inhale graphene particles from face masks and the related health risks are not yet known, … The health risk to people of any age is not clear.
Until the Department completes a thorough scientific assessment and has established the safety and effectiveness of graphene-containing face masks, it is taking the precautionary approach of removing them from the market while continuing to gather and assess information. (Health Canada advisory dated April 2, 2021, emphasis added)
Since the writing of this article, Health Canada has come up with an UPDATE dated July 13, 2021 which essentially removes and invalidates its earlier advisory on the grounds (according to Health Canada) that the graphene nano-particles “are not shed from these masks in quantities that are likely to cause adverse lung effects”.
Despite the scientific evidence, Health Canada does not consider Graphene as “a health risk”.
Case closed.The earlier pro forma restriction on graphene (a poisonous substance if it enters the body) has now been lifted.
Ironically, Health Canada acknowledges that they “did not find evidence that biomass graphene provides any added antimicrobial, or antiviral protection”.
If graphene does not protect Canadians from the virus, what on earth is the purpose of having graphene nano-particles in the face mask?
It would appear that there are “divisions” within Health Canada regarding the alleged “positive effects” of the graphene particles as an instrument of “anti-viral protection”.
Who pressured Health Canada to lift the restriction on Graphene?
And why is graphene contained in face masks sold and distributed Worldwide?
Who is calling the shots? Is there an unspoken agenda?
UPDATE (July 13, 2021): Health Canada previously advised Canadians not to use face masks that contain graphene after a preliminary assessment identified some potential for inhaled graphene particles to cause early lung effects in animals (e.g., early signs of inflammation). As a precaution while a risk assessment was ongoing, Health Canada directed all known importers and distributors of these masks to remove four mask models from one manufacturer, Shandong Shengquan New Materials Co. Ltd., from the market.
Health Canada has reviewed the available scientific literature along with data provided by Shandong Shengquan New Materials Co. Ltd., related to the biomass graphene contained within its four models. The review found that biomass graphene particles are not shed from these masks in quantities that are likely to cause adverse lung effects.
Health Canada also determined that the filtration performance of these masks meets the performance standard listed on the label. The Department did not find evidence that biomass graphene provides any added antimicrobial, or antiviral protection.
As a result, given the evidence supporting the safety and effectiveness of these products, Health Canada is permitting the sale of the four Shandong Shengquan New Materials Co. Ltd. mask models to resume in Canada (see models listed below).
No other graphene face masks are currently permitted for sale in Canada. Consumers should notify Health Canada by submitting an online complaint form should they become aware of other graphene masks being sold in Canada.
Companies wishing to sell graphene masks must first provide evidence to Health Canada demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of their models, as the risks with using graphene masks may vary depending on mask design.
***
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“I am not going to the summit because not all of the countries of the Americas were invited…I believe in the need to change the policy that has been imposed for centuries, the exclusion, the desire to dominate, the lack of respect for the sovereignty of the countries and the independence of every country…There cannot be a Summit of the Americas if all of the countries of the American continent do not participate…We consider that to be the old policy of interventionism, of a lack of respect for nations and their peoples.” – Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (June 6, 2022) [1]
During his speech at the 9th annual Summit of the Americas, President Biden spoke about the power of the democracies in the region and its role to offset a lot of difficulties, in the wake of COVID-19 and inflammatory pressure worsened by “Putin’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine.” He spoke of “coming together” to address climate change and migration in particular. [2]
One very notable feature of this group was the absence of more than a third of the heads of state through the entire conference including the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. This boycott was, apparently triggered by the announcement that Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela would not be welcome in Los Angeles. His rationale was reportedly a lack of respect for democracy and human rights in the three countries. Even the Brazilian President Jair Balsonarohad threatened not to come until a personal envoy from President Biden himself caused him to change his mind.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, in attendance at three summits, said that the Americas had to seem united with a well-attended meeting at a time of tensions with Russia and China. If this is valid, then the lack of participation would be a more prominent feature than any agreement the leaders in attendance ended up signing. [3]
But there is a more enduring legacy besetting the summit is that the much loathed Munroe Doctrine is finally realizing its day of reckoning. With even their long-term ally Columbia about to switch to the left of centre Gustavo Petro at the end of this weekend it seems as though Latin Americans have had enough of US-style “democracy.”
This episode of the Global Research News Hour attempts to review the impact of many empty seats at the Summit of the Americas and examine whether the trend is one which the United States has no hope of reversing.
In our first half hour, Stephen Sefton from northern Nicaragua joins us again to share his sense of where the people of the country stand, and his appraisal of the president’s chances of continuing the doctrine of imperial splendor in the foreseeable future. Later on, journalist Arnold August weighs in on the evidence that Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau secretly and clandestinely supports the exclusion and subsequently the imperial agenda of the two Northern Powers. Finally, Ajamu Baraka checks in at the close of the show to explain the Black Alliance for Peace calling for Latin America and the Caribbean to boycott the summit altogether, and how the US is not only arrogant for seeing themselves as protectors of democracy and human rights, they are caught in the grip of “a collective national psychosis.”
Stephen Sefton is a renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, his articles appear on Tortilla Con Sal. He is actively involved in community development work focusing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
Arnold August is an award-winning journalist and author of three acclaimed books. His three books on Cuba-US-Latin America have been acclaimed by experts in the field. In 2013, he was awarded the Félix Elmuza Award by the Association of Cuban Journalists and contributes to outlets in English, Spanish and French in many parts of the world. He serves as a Contributing Editor for The Canada Files.
Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the U.S. based United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) and the Steering Committee of the Black is Back Coalition.
CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.
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Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.
CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am.
Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.
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First published on June 19, 2022
***
The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) mission is to do away with the democratic process and give all ownership and control to the deep state
They openly share and promote this to the world, as if it’s inevitable that their plan for a Great Reset will one day come to fruition
The dystopian society that they envision strips individuals of their autonomy in favor of global, tyrannical control
From mind control using sound waves to smartphones built in to your clothing and body, WEF promotes widespread censorship and control
WEF plans to “recalibrate” free speech, education for children and the idea that individuals should own their own property; you’ll “own nothing and be happy” is one of their most popular dictums
*
If you’re not familiar with the World Economic Forum (WEF), prepare to be astounded. This international organization is run by German engineer and WEF founder Klaus Schwab and other members of the technocratic elite. Their mission is to do away with the democratic process and give all ownership and control to the deep state.
If this sounds far-fetched, like a conspiracy theory, you’ll be surprised to know that WEF doesn’t hide their agenda. On the contrary, they openly share it and promote it to the world, as if it’s inevitable that their plan for a Great Reset will one day come to fruition. The dystopian society that they envision strips individuals of their autonomy in favor of global, tyrannical control.
10 Creepy Dictates of the WEF
Just how chilling is WEF’s vision of the future? You’ve got to read their own words to find out. While few of their dictates are heavily picked up by the media, they have a way of infiltrating the collective psyche nonetheless. The Vigilant Citizen recently compiled 10 of the most incredulous — and scary — notions that WEF has championed, in no particular order.1
1. Infiltrating governments — It is WEF’s intention to penetrate and capture governments around the world in order to do away with democracy and establish a globalized world run by a “self-selected coalition of multinational corporations, governments (including through the UN system), and select civil society organizations (CSOs).”2 “This is the exact opposite of a democracy,” The Vigilant Citizen points out.3
Going even further, Schwab, WEF’s owner and chairman, told Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2017, “What we are very proud of, is that we penetrate the global cabinets of countries with our WEF Young Global Leaders.”4 In fact, WEF maintains a “Young Global Leaders” program,5 a five-year indoctrination into their principles.
Its goal is to create world leaders who don’t answer to their people but to their bosses at WEF. Graduates of the program include world leaders who are “suspiciously in lockstep” with WEF’s Great Reset, such as:6
Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada
Emmanuel Macron, president of France
Mark Zuckerberg, cofounder and CEO of Facebook
Other Young Global Leader graduates include Germany’s Angela Merkel and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, along with at least half of Canada’s cabinet.7 Sponsors of WEF’s Young Global Leaders Program include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google — “I wonder why Google censors and shapes information to be in exact support of the World Economic Forum’s narrative?” comedian JP Sears asked, satirically, in March 2022.8
2. Sound wave mind control — “Non-invasive neuromodulation” is touted as a “new era of healthcare” by WEF in a 2018 article that’s since been scrubbed from the internet, but is preserved by the Internet Archive.9 Initially discussed as a tool for managing Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, the article — titled “Mind control using sound waves?” — quickly takes a turn:10
“But what happens if this technique for altering our brain waves escapes regulation and falls into the wrong hands? Imagine a dictatorial regime with access to the tricks and tools to change the way its citizens think or behave.”
In an interview with Antoine Jerusalem, a professor of engineering science at Oxford University, the WEF article describes controlling neuronal activity in the brain by directing mechanical vibrations to a certain region.
While it’s stated that this process hasn’t yet been fine-tuned, Jerusalem said, “I can see the day coming where a scientist will be able to control what a person sees in their mind’s eye, by sending the right waves to the right place in their brain.”11
The article then makes the case that, since somebody is going to harness this form of mind control, it might as well be WEF — “If we want to lead that dance 10 years from now, we need to start researching today … Politicians should remember that if we don’t do it, then somebody somewhere will do it anyway … potentially unregulated.”12
3. Pills with microchips in them — At WEF’s 2018 meeting, Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla described the U.S. FDA’s approval of the first “electronic pill.” The tablet contains a biological chip that enters your stomach and is capable of sending signals that the pill was, in fact, taken — to ensure compliance. “So imagine the applications of that, the compliance.
The insurance companies would know that the medicines that patients should take, they do take them,” Bourla said.13
4. Praise for lockdowns
Public health policies that restrict movement, ban international travel and close schools and businesses, commonly known as lockdowns, were implemented in virtually every country around the globe during the pandemic, beginning in China, then Italy and spreading like wildfire from there.
Lockdowns caused immense human suffering in the form of job losses, social isolation and suicides, with little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.14 WEF, however, “would love to see ‘covidian’ life become permanent,” The Vigilant Citizen reported,15 as evidenced by the video above, which WEF quickly deleted after backlash.
The video, titled “Lockdowns are quietly improving cities around the world,” praises lockdowns’ role in reducing human activity and leading to the “Earth’s quietest period in decades.”16
5. Dystopian plans for the future — WEF has also released videos showing a “peek at our future,” which include people in masks, plenty of hand sanitizer and QR codes, plus further adjustments away from society as we know it and toward an increasingly isolated, virtual world. In one of WEF’s examples of “how our lives could soon look,” it’s suggested that you could be identified by your heartbeat.17
This is necessary because facial recognition technology is often thrown off by face masks, but “your heartbeat is just as unique as your face.” NASA has invented a system using a laser that can identify people by heartbeat alone. WEF also promotes increasingly teaching children using digital technology and asks, while showing a photo of a person wearing a mask alone, outdoors, “What pandemic-era changes would you like to become permanent?”18
In terms of education, WEF also envisions a “reimagining” of current classrooms with a heavy focus on virtual reality and artificial intelligence technologies, along with investments in “reskilling and upskilling.”19
According to WEF, textbooks, notebooks and pencils should no longer be viewed as critical learning tools, due to “environmental pressures.” Instead, education should be digitalized and “coupled with the metaverse” so that students can learn in a virtual environment.20
6. The Great Reset — WEF’s Great Reset involves changing everything from future global relations and the direction of national economies to “the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons.”21
Part of the plan involves the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which Schwab has been discussing since at least 2016 and “is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres.”22
In terms of government, the Revolution will bring new technological powers that allow for increased population control via “pervasive surveillance systems and the ability to control digital infrastructure.”23 It also intends to do away with capitalism. The Vigilant Citizen explains:24
“While capitalism is based on a self-regulating system of offer and demand, the Great Reset looks to redefine the way businesses are evaluated through new parameters. The main one: Compliance with the elite’s social and political agendas.”
A propaganda video released by WEF25 talks about their plan to usher in stakeholder capitalism, in which private corporations — not elected leaders — become trustees of society, putting your privacy and data, your food and your freedom at risk.
To get to this point, the video’s narrator states, is “all about getting the right people in the right place at the right time.”26 “In other words, the system would be rigged and compliance with a wider agenda would be mandatory in a new economy,” The Vigilant Citizen pointed out.27
7. Recalibration of free speech — The censorship and regulation of the internet is high on WEF’s agenda, as it would serve as a starting point to recalibrate free speech. This notion was introduced by Australian eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant at WEF’s 2022 Davos meeting, during which she called for a “recalibration of free speech” and a “recalibration of a whole range of human rights …”28
In saying this, they’re openly calling for censorship. “Free speech is, in fact, binary. Either it exists or it doesn’t. And they clearly don’t want it to exist,” The Vigilant Citizen explained.29
8. Digital passports in your clothing — While technology doesn’t appear to have advanced to the point that implantable microchips are being used as brain-machine interfaces to control your thoughts, what does exist today are vaccine passports, which can progress to digital IDs, which then lead to central bank digital currencies (CBDC) — the endgame.
CBDCs appear to be inevitable; it’s not a question of if they’re going to have them, but when. Once CBDCs become widespread, they’ll be able to control everything, as it will be difficult to survive without them. They don’t have to put a microchip into your arm to gain this immeasurable control — they’ll be able to track and control your every move via CBDCs.
To ensure that you can be traced and tracked at all times, WEF announced that clothing of the future will contain built-in digital passports — and they’re slated to reach the market in 2025.30
9. Smartphones in your body — By 2030, you won’t need to worry about carrying a cellphone or wearing clothing with a built-in digital passport, because WEF is planning to launch smartphones that will be implanted directly into your body. This information was released by Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark at the 2022 Davos meeting and coincides with the rollout of 6G technology.31
While 6G networks are still in their infancy, Lundmark stated that they will make smartphones as we know them today obsolete while “physical and digital worlds will grow together.”32 “Many of these things will be built directly into our bodies,” he added,33 echoing the transhumanism movement, which has an ultimate goal of controlling the human population.
Many people regard transhumanism as turning human beings into robots, but it actually describes a social and philosophical movement that involves the development of human-enhancement technologies.34
Elon Musk’s company Neuralink involves a surgically implanted microchip that’s connected to your brain and synced with AI, with the goal of one day allowing humans to control artificial limbs or even engage in telepathy. Musk described it as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires,”35and, according to India Today, the company “released a video where a macaque was seen playing Ming Pong.”36
While transhumanism may one day use technologies that are physically embedded in the human body or brain to offer superhuman cognition or forms of mind control, keep in mind that at this time transhumanism is already occurring, not from an implantable device but through mass formation psychosis and the manipulation of information.
10. You will own nothing and be happy — One of the Great Reset’s “new normal” dictums is that you’ll own nothing and be happy. This is part of WEF’s 2030 agenda,37 and a plan is already in place to make it happen. In their “8 predictions for the world in 2030,” WEF stated:38
“‘I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes,’ writes Danish MP Ida Auken. Shopping is a distant memory in the city of 2030, whose inhabitants have cracked clean energy and borrow what they need on demand.
It sounds utopian, until she mentions that her every move is tracked and outside the city live swathes of discontents, the ultimate depiction of a society split in two.”
Part of the plan to do away with autonomy is that all products become services. The Vigilant Citizen reported:39
“In this dystopian future, there are no products you can own. Only “services” that are rented and delivered using drones. This system would make all humans completely dependent on WEF-controlled corporations for every single basic need. There would be absolutely no autonomy, no freedom, and no privacy. And you’ll be happy.”
A Theme of Ultimate Control
One theme that runs through WEF’s multiple agendas is control. “They want to control what we think, where we go, what we say, what we eat, and what we wear,” The Vigilant Citizen reported, adding:40
“Do you know who agrees with the WEF? China. Censorship is widespread, a social credit system controls people’s behaviors and COVID is still used as an excuse for massive lockdowns and total population control. Not to mention the literal concentration camps. Despite all of this, Chinese officials are constantly present at WEF meetings. Why? Because China is basically a laboratory for the WEF’s policies.”
If you want to fight back and opt out, choose elected officials who do not support WEF, and boycott companies — like Google — that are intertwined with it. It’s also urgent that we all take steps to remain free, sovereign individuals, which can be as straightforward as:41
Be guided by your own critical thinking and what your heart and soul know is right
Choose bravery over obedience
*
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***
First published by Global Research on May 27, 2021
As official government data is emerging in Europe and the USA on the alarming numbers of deaths and permanent paralysis as well as other severe side effects from the experimental mRNA vaccines, it is becoming clear that we are being asked to be human guinea pigs in an experiment that could alter the human gene structure and far worse. While mainstream media ignores alarming data including death of countless healthy young victims, the politics of the corona vaccine is being advanced by Washington and Brussels along with WHO and the Vaccine Cartel with all the compassion of a mafia “offer you can’t refuse.”
The alarming EMA Report
.
On May 8 the European Medicines Agency (EMA) an agency of the European Union (EU) in charge of the evaluation and supervision of medical products, using the data base EudraVigilance which collects reports of suspected side effects of medicines including vaccines, published a report that barely warranted mention in major mainstream media.
Through May 8, 2021 they had recorded 10,570 deaths and 405,259 injuries following injections of four experimental COVID-19 shots: COVID-19 mRNA VACCINE of MODERNA (CX-024414); COVID-19 mRNA VACCINE of PFIZER-BIONTECH; COVID-19 VACCINE of ASTRAZENECA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19); and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 VACCINE (AD26.COV2.S).
A detailed analysis of each vaccine gives the following:
The Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA gene-edited vaccine resulted in the largest fatalities– 5,368 deaths and 170,528 injuries or nearly 50% of the total for all four.
The Moderna mRNA vaccine was second with 2,865 deaths and 22,985 injuries. That is to say, the only two gene manipulated mRNA experimental vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, accounted for 8,233 deaths of the total registered deaths of 10,570. That’s 78% of all deaths from the four vaccines currently in use in the EU.
And among the serious side effects or injuries recorded by the EMA, for the two mRNA vaccines which we focus on in this article, for the Pfizer “experimental” vaccine, most reported injuries included blood and lymphatic system disorders including deaths; cardiac disorders including deaths; musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders; respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders, and vascular disorders.
For the Moderna mRNA vaccine, most serious injuries or causes of death included blood and lymphatic system disorders; cardiac disorders; musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders; disorders of the central nervous system.Note that these are only the most serious injuries related to those two genetically manipulated mRNA vaccines. The EMA also notes that it is believed that only a small percent of actual vaccine deaths or serious side effects, perhaps only 1% to 10%, are reported for various reasons. Officially more than 10,000 persons have died after receiving the coronavirus vaccines since January, 2021 in the EU. That is a horrifying number of vaccine-related deaths, even if the true numbers are far greater.
CDC as well
.
Even the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) a notoriously political and corrupt agency with for-profit ties to vaccine makers, in its official Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), shows a total of 193,000 “adverse events” including 4,057 deaths, 2,475 permanent disabilities, 25,603 emergency room visits, and 11,572 hospitalizations following COVID-19 injections between December 14, 2020 and May 14, 2021. That included the two mRNA vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, and the far less prevalent J&J Janssen vaccine. Of the reported deaths, 38% occurred in people who became ill within 48 hours of being vaccinated. The official US vaccine-related death toll is greater in just 5 months than all the vaccine-related deaths from the past 20 years combined. Yet the major media worldwide and the US Government virtually bury the alarming facts.
Some 96% of the fatal results were from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the two variants funded and promoted by the Gates Foundation and Tony Fauci’s NIAID with the experimental mRNA genetic technology.
Moreover, Dr. Tony Fauci, the US Biden Administration vaccine czar and his NIAID Vaccine Research Center co-designed the Moderna mRNA vaccine and gave Moderna and Pfizer each $6 billion to produce it. That’s also a blatant conflict of interest as Fauci and his NIAID are allowed to financially benefit from their patent earnings in the vaccine under a curious US law. The NIAID developed the coronavirus spike proteins for the development of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines using taxpayer money. They licensed it to Moderna and Pfizer.
“never seen in nature…”
In a tragic sense, the experience with reactions to the two unprecedented mRNA experimental vaccines since rollout in unprecedented speed “warp speed” as the US Government called it, is only now beginning to be seen, in real trials of human guinea pigs. Few realize that the two mRNA vaccines use genetic manipulations that never before have been used in humans. And under the cover of urgency, US and EU health authorities waived normal animal trials and did not even approve the safety, but gave an “emergency use authorization.” Moreover, the vaccine makers were made 100% exempt from damage litigation.
The general public was reassured of the vaccine safety when Pfizer and Moderna published reports of 94% and 95% “efficacy” of these vaccines. NIAID’s Fauci was quick to call it “extraordinary” in November 2020, and Warp Speed was off and running as was the stock price of Pfizer and Moderna.
Peter Doshi, Associate Editor of the British Medical Journal pointed to a huge flaw in the 90+% reports for efficacy of Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. He noted that the percentages are relative, in relation to the select small healthy young test group, and not absolute as in real life. In real life we want to know how effective the vaccine is among the large general population.
Doshi points to the fact that Pfizer excluded over 3400 “suspected COVID-19 cases” that were not included in the interim analysis. Moreover individuals “in both Moderna and Pfizer trials were deemed to be SARS-CoV-1- (the 2003 Asian SARS virus) positive at baseline, despite prior infection being grounds for exclusion,” Doshi notes. Both companies refused to release their raw data.
Pfizer in-house scientists did their tests. In short 95% is what Pfizer or Moderna claim. We are told, “Trust us.” A more realistic estimate of the true efficacy of the two vaccines for the general public, using data supplied by the vaccine makers to the FDA, shows the Moderna vaccine at the time of interim analysis demonstrated an absolute risk reduction of 1.1%, while the Pfizer vaccine absolute risk reduction was 0.7%. That is very poor.
Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, says, “Ideally, you want an antiviral vaccine to do two things . . . first, reduce the likelihood you will get severely ill and go to the hospital, and two, prevent infection and therefore interrupt disease transmission.” As Doshi notes, none of the trials were “designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.” Moderna’s chief medical officer even admitted that, “Our trial will not demonstrate prevention of transmission.”
Possible effects of mRNA vaccines
In a major new study just published in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice and Research, Dr. Stephanie Seneff, senior scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Dr. Greg Nigh, Naturopathic oncology specialist, analyze in detail the possible pathways in which the experimental mRNA vaccines of Pfizer and Moderna could be causing such adverse effects in the vaccinated. First they point out that both the Pfizer and Moderna gene-edited vaccines are highly unstable: “Both are delivered through muscle injection, and both require deep-freeze storage to keep the RNA from breaking down. This is because, unlike double-stranded DNA which is very stable, single-strand RNA products are apt to be damaged or rendered powerless at warm temperatures and must be kept extremely cold to retain their potential efficacy.” Pfizer recommends minus 70′ Celsius.
The authors point out that to keep the mRNA from breaking down before it could produce protein, both vaccine makers substitute methyl-pseudouridine to stabilize RNA against degradation, allowing it to survive long enough to produce adequate amounts of protein antigen. The problem they point out is that, “This form of mRNA delivered in the vaccine is never seen in nature, and therefore has the potential for unknown consequences… manipulation of the code of life could lead to completely unanticipated negative effects, potentially long term or even permanent.”
PEG Adjuvants and Anaphylactic Shock
For various reasons to avoid using aluminum adjuvants to boost the antibody response, both mRNA vaccines use polyethylene glycol, or PEG, as adjuvant. This has consequences. The authors point out, “…both mRNA vaccines currently deployed against COVID-19 utilize lipid-based nanoparticles as delivery vehicles. The mRNA cargo is placed inside a shell composed of synthetic lipids and cholesterol, along with PEG to stabilize the mRNA molecule against degradation.”
PEG has been shown to produce anaphylactic shock or severe allergenic reactions. In studies of prior non-mRNA vaccines, anaphylactic shock reactions occurred in 2 cases per million vaccinations. With the mRNA vaccines initial monitoring revealed that, “anaphylaxis occurred at a rate of 247 per million vaccinations. This is more than 21 times as many as were initially reported by the CDC. The second injection exposure is likely to cause even larger numbers of anaphylactic reactions.” One study noted, “PEG is a high-risk ‘hidden’ allergen, usually unsuspected, and can cause frequent allergic reactions due to inadvertent re-exposure.” Among such reactions are included life-threatening cardiovascular collapse.
This is far from all the undeclared risks of the experimental mRNA coronavirus vaccines.
Antibody-Dependent Enhancement
Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) is an immunological phenomenon. Seneff and Nigh note that, “ADE is a special case of what can happen when low, non-neutralizing levels of… antibodies against a virus are present at the time of infection. These antibodies might be present due to… prior vaccination against the virus…” The authors suggest that in the case of both Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, “non-neutralizing antibodies form immune complexes with viral antigens to provoke excessive secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and, in the extreme case, a cytokine storm causing widespread local tissue damage.”
To be clear, normally cytokines are part of the body’s immune response to infection. But their sudden release in large quantities, a cytokine storm, can cause multi-system organ failure and death. Our innate immune system undergoes an uncontrolled and excessive release of pro-inflammatory signaling molecules called cytokines.
The authors add that pre-existing “antibodies, induced by prior vaccination, contribute to severe pulmonary damage by SARS-CoV in macaques…” Another cited study shows that the much more diverse range of prior exposures to coronaviruses such as seasonal flu experienced by the elderly might predispose them to ADE upon exposure to SARS-CoV-2.” This is a possible explanation for the high incidence of post-mRNA vaccination deaths among elderly.
The vaccine makers have a clever way of denial as to the toxicity of their mRNA vaccines. As Seneff and Nigh state, “it is not possible to distinguish an ADE manifestation of disease from a true, non-ADE viral infection.” But they make the telling point, “In this light it is important to recognize that, when diseases and deaths occur shortly after vaccination with an mRNA vaccine, it can never be definitively determined, even with a full investigation, that the vaccine reaction was nota proximal cause. “
The authors make numerous other alarming points including emergence of auto-immune diseases such as Celiac disease, a disease of the digestive system that damages the small intestine and interferes with the absorption of nutrients from food. Also Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) that causes progressive muscle weakness and paralysis. Additionally, Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) in which a person has unusually low levels of platelets — the cells that help blood to clot– could occur following vaccination “through the migration of immune cells carrying a cargo of mRNA nanoparticles via the lymph system into the spleen… ITP appears initially as petechiae or purpura on the skin, and/or bleeding from mucosal surfaces. It has a high risk of fatality through haemorrhaging and stroke.”
These examples are indicative of the fact that we are literally exposing the human race via untested experimental gene edited mRNA vaccines to incalculable dangers which in the end may exceed by far any potential risk of damage from something which has been called SARS-Cov-2. Far from the much-touted miracle substance proclaimed by WHO, Gates, Fauci and others, the Pfizer, Moderna and other possible mRNA vaccines clearly hold potentially tragic and even catastrophic unforeseen consequences. Little wonder some critics believe it is a disguised vehicle for human eugenics.
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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.
F. William Engdahl is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook
Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index
List Price: $25.95
Special Price: $18.00
This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.
The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.
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***
During the visit of a delegation from the Donetsk People’s Republic to Syria, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad announced the official launch of the procedure for the recognition of the two Donbass republics (DPR and LPR) by his country.
On 13 June 2022, an official delegation led by DPR Foreign Minister Natalia Nikonorova arrived in Syria to continue the cooperation process started between the two countries three years ago.
In 2019, the DPR participated for the first time in the “Rebuild Syria” trade fair, dedicated to the reconstruction of Syria, alongside some 30 other countries. Following this first successful participation, a DPR delegation returned to Syria in 2021, not only to participate again in Rebuild Syria, but also to establish contacts with the Baath Party in order to strengthen cooperation between the two countries.
In total, in 2021, the DPR delegation visited Syria three times in order to lay a solid foundation for cooperation and interaction between the two countries, especially in the economic sphere. The major result of 2021 was the signing of a cooperation agreement between the Donetsk Republic public movement and the Syrian Baath Party.
This multi-day visit of the DPR delegation to Syria is thus a continuation of the diplomatic work started three years ago by the young Donbass republic. The DPR delegation, led by Foreign Minister Natalia Nikonorova, includes First Deputy Head of the DPR Administration Gennady Lebed, Minister of Culture Mikhail Jeltiakov, First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Peressada, Deputy Chairman of the People’s Council Sergei Prokopenko and People’s Council Deputy Valery Skorokhodov.
On 14 June, the DPR delegation met with the Deputy Secretary General of the Baath Party, Hilal al-Hilal, in the presence of Russian Duma Deputy Dmitry Sablin.
The two sides noted tangible progress in the implementation of the agreement on interaction and cooperation signed in December 2021 between the state movement “Donetsk Republic” and the Baath Party, and also discussed a wide range of options for deepening cooperation between the republics, in particular, on the economic front.
In this context, the DPR Foreign Minister particularly emphasized that the port of Mariupol is now fully operational again, and drew attention to the prospects for trade cooperation with Syria by sea.
Later, DPR Foreign Minister Natalia Nikonorova met her Syrian counterpart, Faisal al-Meqdad. During the meeting, Natalia Nikonorova gave an overview of the conflict in the Donbass and the current situation.
Fayçal al-Meqdad noted the parallels in the fate of the peoples of Donbass and Syria, and condemned the policy of the United States and Western countries in supplying Ukraine with heavy weapons and thus becoming complicit in the crimes committed in Donbass.
He expressed confidence that the joint efforts of the DPR people’s militia and the Russian armed forces would help to liberate Donbass from the Ukrainian regime and establish peace and tranquillity in the republics. Faisal al-Meqdad also expressed his desire to see the establishment of interstate cooperation and the comprehensive development of relations with the two Donbass republics.
At the end of the meeting, the two foreign ministers came to the mutual conclusion that there is great potential for developing areas of bilateral cooperation between the DPR and Syria. An agreement was reached on the implementation of joint measures to establish direct interaction between the two republics in the field of protection of citizens’ interests, as well as in the economic, cultural and scientific fields, among others.
The day ended with a meeting between the DPR delegation and the Speaker of the Syrian Parliament, Hammouda Sabbagh. This was an opportunity for Natalia Nikonorova to suggest the creation of a parliamentary friendship group between the DPR and Syria. In order to work jointly on the details of the creation of such a group, the deputies of the DPR People’s Council invited their Syrian colleagues to visit them in Donetsk.
Mr Sabbagh expressed his interest in this proposal and indicated his readiness to provide a response on this matter from the Syrian Arab Republic in the near future. He also drew attention to the fact that the Syrian people fully support the Donbass and the joint special military operation to liberate the DPR and the LPR from the Ukrainian regime.
Two days after this meeting, on 16 June 2022, the DPR delegation met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The latter reiterated the words of his Foreign Minister about the common path of the peoples of Donbass and Syria in their struggle against the US and other Western countries, and expressed his confidence in the rapid and successful completion of the operation to liberate the territories of the DPR and the LPR and hoped that peace would be restored as soon as possible.
Bashar al-Assad also noted that Syria was ready to recognize the DPR and the LPR, and announced the official launch of the procedure for recognizing the two Donbass republics. He noted that his Foreign Minister would immediately receive ad-hoc instructions from him.
The Syrian President asked Natalia Nikonorova to convey his greetings to DPR leader Denis Pushilin and his gratitude for his active stance in developing constructive and fruitful relations with Syria.
The Foreign Minister in turn conveyed the greetings of the Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the entire Donbass people. She also expressed her gratitude to Mr Assad for his support and willingness to strengthen cooperation with Donbass.
Furthermore, Natalia Nikonorova suggested to Mr Assad to consider the possibility of Syria’s participation in an international tribunal against representatives of Ukrainian armed groups who are accused of committing crimes against the inhabitants of Donbass.
She also expressed the government’s full readiness for a dynamic and mutually beneficial rapprochement between the DPR and Syria.
According to the Head of the Lugansk People’s Republic, Leonid Passetchnik, Syria is not the only country willing to recognize the independence of the DPR and the LPR, but he did not specify which other countries would be ready to take this step.
“Syria is ready. In any case, the Syrian President has made a statement that he is ready to recognize the DPR, and of course the LPR. A number of other countries are at the stage of possible preparation. There are a number of foreign countries that are ready to recognize us,” he said.
According to War Gonzo journalists, Russian MP Dmitry Sablin reported that Bashar al-Assad proposed to isolate the West at this meeting.
“We have to build relationships with each other as if the West did not exist. The West thinks it is the centre of the world. They thought that Russia could not live without McDonald’s. We have to build a relationship in which the West has no place. And the Western countries will feel that they are the ones who are isolated from the rest of the world,” the Syrian President was quoted as saying.
According to the same source, Bashar al-Assad was very interested in the subject of the Mariupol tribunal, believing that it was a necessary measure to prove to the world the atrocities that the West is capable of in order to achieve its goals.
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Introduction
On the afternoon of March 9th, 2022, the current White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, used the United States government official Twitter account, @PressSec, to make the following claims (among several others):
“We took note of Russia’s false claims about alleged U.S. biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine. We’ve also seen Chinese officials echo these conspiracy theories.”
We took note of Russia’s false claims about alleged U.S. biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine. We’ve also seen Chinese officials echo these conspiracy theories.
“This is preposterous. It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent.”
This is preposterous. It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent.
“It’s Russia that continues to support the Assad regime in Syria, which has repeatedly used chemical weapons. It’s Russia that has long maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law.”
It’s Russia that continues to support the Assad regime in Syria, which has repeatedly used chemical weapons. It’s Russia that has long maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law.
“Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them. It’s a clear pattern.”
Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them. It’s a clear pattern.
When it comes to allegations of preposterous conspiracy theories and disinformation about false flag operations involving chemical weapons, the privileges afforded to Ms. Psaki allow her to avoid being accused of spreading propaganda and conspiracy theories, roughly synonymous with false claims.
For example, many people questioned the veracity of reports that Assad had used chemical weapons on his own citizens, but these claims were allegedly debunked by fact-checkers as characteristic of far-right conspiracy theories.
For making such claims, the Huffpost, acting as fact-checker, labeled Piers Robinson, Professor of Journalism at the University of Sheffield, and other academics involved with The Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (WGSPM), a “useful idiot” and “pro-Russian propagandist” along with calling for his dismissal from his teaching post for being a “9/11 Truther.” I doubt the table that turned on Piers Robinson will turn, also, on Jen Psaki.
I have not studied in depth the empirical claims about Assad’s alleged chemical weapons attacks, nor am I currently learned on empirical claims about biological or chemical weapons labs in Ukraine – though recently, a sitting Republican U.S. Senator accused a former Democratic U.S. Representative of being “a treasonous liar” for asserting that U.S.-based bio labs in Ukraine were under threat by the invading Russian military forces.
This is a remarkable tacit admission oddly made public. What I have studied is the nature of claims-making and how empirical claims operate in terms of conspiracy discourse. This is the first in a series of essays on the topic of conspiracy discourse. Rather than elaborating on what I personally or professionally believe to be evidence of criminal conspiracies, I am interested in discussing the nature of how people talk about conspiracies. In order to better understand how and why some claims of concerted and surreptitious wrongdoing are taken seriously (i.e. as credible) while others are not (i.e. as incredible), I have attended to labels designed to tarnish an individual’s ethos should they make such claims.
Supporting existing empirical research, what I have found is that the labels “conspiracy theorist” and “conspiracy theory” act as a tool of propaganda for those who attempt to defend official, authorized accounts of historically significant events from socially disturbing questions.
Those proffering and defending official, authorized accounts can use the same rhetoric as skeptics, yet only (or more often than not) the skeptics are scoffed at and scorned, sometimes with serious consequences. Take for instance James Tracey, a former communications professor who has noted that while credible allegations of “false flag” events have been quite common in non-U.S. news media, often times referring to them as legitimate tactics and strategies used in warfare, the use of “false flag” in U.S. news media associates the term with hoaxes related to conspiracy theories and propaganda. Now, take into consideration James Tracey’s public Wikipedia entry, which begins with the claims that he “is an American conspiracy theorist and former professor who has espoused the view that some American mass shootings did not occur, but are hoaxes.”
Compare this to the official statements issued by the current White House press secretary, and consider why it is that one person is labeled a “conspiracy theorist” and the other is not (nor likely will be). After all, it is now considered to be the case that Jen Psaki spread misinformation about the nature of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. Again, I cannot say what the truth of the situation is.
My interest in the nature of conspiracy discourse developed while I was taking a course on Social Movements during my final Ph.D. seminar at Oklahoma State University in the spring of 2012. My term paper, “’9/11 Was an Inside Job’? Discursive Opportunities and Obstructions for the 9/11 Truth Movement,” developed into my 2014 doctoral dissertation, “Discourse Among the Truthers and Deniers of 9/11: Movement-Counter-movement Dynamics and the Discursive Field of the 9/11 Truth Movement.”
Since 2011, I have conducted dozens upon dozens of face-to-face interviews with street activists when they gather for their annual demonstrations at “ground zero” during the memorial events for “9/11.” I have also spent countless hours conducting an online ethnography via Facebook, and I have spoken with hundreds of individuals about their concept of “9/11.” If you care to read my doctoral work, you will see that I discuss the difference between discursive devices such as “9/11,” which I often place within quotation marks, as compared to references to actual historical events, such as those of September 11, 2001.
Lastly, in that work, I devoted an entire chapter to discussing what the counter-movement of anti-conspiracists asserts is one among many hallmarks of conspiracy theorists, the tactic of “just asking questions.” Are we not allowed to ask questions, lest we be labeled a “conspiracy theorist?” Are there certain types of questions we are and are not allowed to ask, and who decides what are considered conspiracy theories and thereby who are the conspiracy theorists?
In this first installment, I discuss some of the discourse surrounding the alleged origins of the terms “conspiracy theorist” and “conspiracy theory,” which I refer to as the conspiracy label.
No, the CIA did not invent the conspiracy label, but the agency might have helped promote and popularize it as a pejorative. Whether or not operatives did is a matter of an empirical investigation into the rise of the label’s use. The fact of the matter is that there exists a network of functioning and well-funded organizations in operation today that carry out the mission of de-legitimizing what are regarded as “conspiracy theories.”
Origins of the Conspiracy Label
If you say, “The CIA invented the term ‘conspiracy theorist’,” you open yourself to being labeled a conspiracy theorist.
Like many aspects of conspiracy discourse, the expression itself immediately smacks of some type of logical fallacy, in this case, circular reasoning. If we were to say that a conspiracy theorist is a person who espouses conspiracy theories, we would need to take the next step, identifying what a conspiracy theory is and is not. In this case, simply alleging that the Central Intelligence Agency invented a disparaging label designed to dissuade people from making such claims is reasoning enough for many people to use the conspiracy label. Many online fact-checkers can be located in a search for “CIA invented conspiracy theorist” that illustrate my point, which is that it is not at all clear what exactly is meant by “conspiracy theorist” because it is not at all clear what is meant by “conspiracy theory.” These are crucial facts that many people, especially those who reflexively follow and obey power, tend to miss. To complicate matters further, it is not clear what the truth of the situation is, which is the entirety of the problem called into question when conspiracy theories are raised. Dismissing them on their face would again be circular reasoning, i.e. “you’re wrong because you’re wrong.” So, we need to investigate the matter.
One fact-checking site that has investigated the matter is AAP FactCheck, which “is accredited by the Poynter Institute’s International Fact Checking Network and adheres to its rigorous protocols,” and bills itself as “Trusted Accurate Impartial” [sic]. The purported impartiality of AAP FactCheck comes into question with the derogatory title of their fact-checking piece, “Tinfoil hats not needed to repel CIA ‘conspiracy theorist’ creation claim [sic].” Whether or not the “tinfoil” hat reference is derogatory depends on who takes offense, and at least some people do consider it an insult. Here is the AAP FactCheck analysis of the CIA-conspiracy label connection:
“Adjunct Professor Stephen Andrews from the History Department at Indiana University Bloomington, told AAP FactCheck: ‘There is overwhelming evidence the term ‘conspiracy theory’ was used long before the creation of the CIA in the 1940s.’”
So, case closed, right? If the phrase “conspiracy theory” was used before the CIA was created, then the CIA could not have created the phrase. Notice here, though, that the title of the piece uses the phrase “conspiracy theorist” whereas the passages use “conspiracy theory.” Does the difference matter? Maybe, but let’s not split hairs (yet). I would rather quibble over the terms “invented” and “created.” Many results, for example, in a search for “CIA invented conspiracy theorist” claim that the CIA helped to popularize the phrase rather than claiming they had invented or created it. The distinctions are noteworthy.
One time while teaching Introductory Sociology, I was lecturing about myth-making processes, and I used the examples from the discourse surrounding flat Earth myths and the myth that Coca Cola (and Norman Rockwell) had created the modern depictions of Santa Claus. The notion that “At one point, everyone thought the Earth was flat,” as stated in an advertisement for Windows Vista, is itself a myth.
In the ad is pictured a Christopher Columbus-era sailing vessel, indicating the reference is to some storybook version of Columbus convincing kings and queens that he would not sail off the edge of the Earth if he ventured West.
Aside from the thousands of years of history of studying the shape of the Earth that even a child could understand, which is often simplified as just being round, ask yourself how on Earth could everybody everywhere hold the same exact belief about the Earth’s shape before there existed anything resembling a global information network? (Even with the Internet, there remains an annoying subculture of misinformed – or misguided – people keeping the myth of the flat Earth alive.)
So, people who believe that what the ad says is true are themselves succumbing to a myth about people believing in that myth – this is not circular reasoning, yet it is reifying, a concept I will pick up in a follow-up essay. But, did Coca Cola invent Santa?
After that particular lesson, I recall that I had a student approach me and adamantly assert that “Coca Cola did not invent Santa Claus.” “No,” I said, “and I didn’t say they did. I said they helped to popularize the modern image of Santa Claus. Big difference.” (One wonders if that young person still believed in the Santa Claus conspiracy, but more on that in the next essay.)
Now, take for instance the description of a YouTube video that currently has 945,000+ views on a channel, Vice, that has 15.4 million subscribers: “For as long as they’ve existed, conspiracy theories have been laughed off by the mainstream for being too ‘far-fetched’.” What does this even mean? How could this be?
Does all of the so-called “mainstream” (whatever that means) share the same opinions and background assumptions? How and why could that be? What social institutions and organizations could produce such an outcome, or is it a spontaneous coincidence that multitudes would share the same attitudes and, thus, form an emergent norm from the ground up?
And, for how long have conspiracy theories existed? Were the Founding Fathers of the USA conspiracy theorists when they wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence? As an example of what can be laughed off by the mainstream, the author of a webpage titled, “In 1967, the CIA Created the Label ‘Conspiracy Theorists’,” makes the following claims (complete with the same image included in the blog post):
But those were the bad old days …Things have now changed.
The CIA Coined the Term Conspiracy Theorist in 1967
That all changed in the 1960s.
Specifically, in April 1967, the CIA wrote a dispatch which coined the term ‘conspiracy theories’ … and recommended methods for discrediting such theories. The dispatch was marked ‘psych’ – short for ‘psychological operations’ or disinformation – and ‘CS’ for the CIA’s ‘Clandestine Services’ unit.” [sic]
It is somewhat true to say “the CIA wrote [the] dispatch,” though an organization cannot do such a thing, only individuals operating within organizations can perform such actions as authoring memorandums. It is false to say the CIA or individuals operating within “coined the term ‘conspiracy theories’.”
After all, the term existed before the CIA was created, right? In any case, “the mainstream” can reflexively laugh off the notion that an organization, like the CIA – or rogue agents within, plotted to weaponize the conspiracy label to function as a tool of propaganda and cultural hegemony.
I am typically careful to even say that the CIA helped popularize the conspiracy label. After all, it could easily be misinterpreted as me claiming the CIA created, coined, or invented the term. One person who takes the distinction, as well as conspiracy theories, seriously is Michael Butter, author of numerous scholarly texts on conspiracy theories as well as a blog post titled, “There’s a conspiracy theory that the CIA invented the term ‘conspiracy theory’ – here’s why.” If you are the nitpicking type, compare this passage with that from AAP FactCheckers above:
“There are even two versions of this conspiracy theory. The more extreme version claims that the CIA literally invented the term in the sense that the words ‘conspiracy’ and ‘theory’ had never been used before in combination. A more moderate version acknowledges that the term existed before, but claims that the CIA intentionally created its negative connotations and so turned the label into a tool of political propaganda.”
“The more moderate version has been particularly popular in recent years for two reasons. First, it is very easy to disprove the more extreme claim that the CIA actually invented the term. As a search on Google Books quickly reveals, the term ‘conspiracy theory’ emerged around 1870 and began to be more frequently used during the 1950s. Even die-hard conspiracy theorists have a hard time trying to ignore this. Second, the more moderate version received a big boost in popularity a few years ago when American political scientist Lance DeHaven-Smith propagated it in a book published by a renowned university press.”
According to the publisher of Lance deHaven-Smith’s book, Conspiracy Theory in America (pictured above), it “raises crucial questions about the consequences of Americans’ unwillingness to suspect high government officials of criminal wrongdoing.” And, as noted above, for raising such questions, deHaven-Smith opens himself to the conspiracy label, i.e being labeled a “conspiracy theorist.”
I will return to deHaven-Smith’s book in a follow-up essay, but here is how one self-styled conspiracy theory debunker, journalist David Aaronovitch, **states the matter** about raising socially disturbing questions about historically significant events, i.e. posing “conspiracy theories”:
“Since 2001, a primary technique employed by more respectable conspiracists has been the advocation of the ‘It’s not a theory’ theory. The theorist is just asking certain disturbing questions because of a desire to seek out truth, and the reader is supposedly left to make up his or her mind. The questions asked, of course, only make sense if the questioner really believes that there is indeed a secret conspiracy.”
Presumably, I and any other credentialed scholar would be considered “respectable conspiracists” if we raise socially disturbing questions about the official accounts of historically significant events. One might wonder if we indeed must believe in a secret conspiracy, for if a conspiracy weren’t a secret, would it be a conspiracy? Moreover, what does it mean to say that the questions “only make sense if the questioner really believes…?” Am I not allowed to ask such questions as to why it is, for example, that a third skyscraper collapsed in Manhattan on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, without automatically being thought of as a conspiracy theorist, respectable or not? Doubt has been cast on the official explanation of that particular aspect of “9/11” in full-length book form as well as part of a major university study. Why can I not ask questions about why and how that particular event occurred and why the official explanation of it seems to be so severely undermined by competing narratives without retribution by those who would wield the conspiracy label? Who gets to decide what questions are permissible and what gives them such power and authority to decide?
Organizations Behind the Conspiracy Label
So, did the CIA help to popularize the conspiracy label? Who knows? If you ask Snopes, which bills itself as “the internet’s go-to source for discerning what is true and what is total nonsense,” they refer you back to Michael Butter’s essay, which is published by The Conversation: **
“The Conversation is a nonprofit, independent news organization dedicated to unlocking the knowledge of experts for the public good. We publish trustworthy and informative articles written by academic experts for the general public…”
The publishers, editors, and contributors of the publication in which this essay appears might say much of the same thing, but since we, for various reasons and capacities, open ourselves to be targets of the conspiracy label, the veracity of our claims can more easily be called into question and by those very same sources allegedly debunking claims about the CIA’s role in promoting the conspiracy label. Why is this the case? Is it just coincidence that the very label used to discredit those who question its origins and uses is in fact a label that serves by its use the interests of powerful, secretive, legitimating institutions and interest groups otherwise entrenched in maintaining the status quo?
In line with this question, James Rankin authored his doctoral study in pursuit of the origins of the conspiracy label’s pejorative connotations, thus acting as a hegemonic tool of cultural control. He identified three root sources, Karl Popper’s 1945 book, Open Society and Its Enemies, Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” and a CIA memo from 1967, Dispatch 1035-960, “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report.”
Popper argued that while conspiracies do sometimes happen, they are not typically carried successfully to fruition, which is an argument Michael Shermer uses to surmise why conspiracy theories are dismissable prima facie. One criticism of Popper contends with the fact that conspiracies abound throughout history, and while any given conspiracy theory can be wrong, dismissing a conspiracy theory offhand because it is a proposition that a conspiracy has occurred is illogical and disingenuous with respect to scientific practice.
Hofstadter’s essay is a mixture of selective attention to some alleged conspiracies throughout history, such as those about Freemasons and the Illuminati, and armchair psychological theories about how and why the “paranoid style” of “contemporary right-wing thought” led people to believe communists had infiltrated key social institutions in the 1940s and ’50s. Hofstadter’s essay continues to be influential among academicians who study conspiracy theorists.
As recently as 2021, a group of academics used his essay as the basis for their hypotheses, which they used to reach the conclusion that “paranoid ideation” and “distrust of officialdom” couple with conservatism to facilitate the “conspiratorial mindset.” (Never mind that their results explain only half of the variance.) As noted in a philosopher’s article published by The Conversation, consider that the conspiracy label’s discursive function is:
“similar to that served by the term “heresy” in medieval Europe. In both cases these are terms of propaganda, used to stigmatise and marginalise people who have beliefs that conflict with officially sanctioned or orthodox beliefs of the time and place in question.”
“If, as I believe, the treatment of those labelled as “conspiracy theorists” in our culture is analogous to the treatment of those labelled as “heretics” in medieval Europe, then the role of psychologists and social scientists in this treatment is analogous to that of the Inquisition.” [sic]
But was the term originally meant to be pejorative?
“Of course the term is pejorative,” notes Hofstadter at the outset of his 1964 essay, a reference to the “paranoid style” of conspiratorial thinking. As evidenced in a scholarly source from 2007 and a book published in the popular press in 2018, the use of the conspiracy label, both in the form of “conspiracy theorist” and “conspiracy theory,” increased in usage in newspapers, books, and academic articles starting in the mid-1960s.
Now, was this in any way connected to the CIA memo, Dispatch 1035-960? How can one say for sure? If the CIA did not meet its goal of providing “material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries,” a clause included in self-recognition that the CIA was authorized to operate only outside of the USA, then we might suspect their general efficacy.
As Rankin pointed out in his doctoral thesis, one popular rebuttal to claims about large-scale conspiracies involving government is that it is too large of a bureaucracy to be able to carry out such conspiracies as the JFK assassination or events of September 11, 2001. This squares with Popper’s and Shermer’s reasoning, which is that most conspiracies fail. So, did the CIA fail in its mission to “employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics [of the Warren Commission report]?” We cannot say for certain, and the reason is twofold.
First, if we implicate the CIA in a secretive mission to undermine the work of citizen sleuths in investigating historically significant events in ways not sanctioned by officialdom, then we automatically run the risk of being targeted with the conspiracy label. Once issued, its target is immediately suspect of harboring a “paranoid style” of thought that need not be taken seriously (and that might even be harmful). Why run the risk? There exists no scientific study that tracks the rise of counteracting narratives to “JFK conspiracy theories” from the late ’60s on. I suspect that even if that were to happen, the study would be ignored or treated as an outgrowth of the “paranoid style.” Second, consider that there are today several large-scale efforts to combat the rise of conspiracy theories and other types of mis-, dis-, and malinformation, or what the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) simply refers to as MDM. CISA and its MDM team help disseminate propaganda and counter-propaganda in the form of Toolkits, such as is revealed in the following statement:
“These Toolkit resources are designed to help State, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) officials bring awareness to misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories appearing online related to COVID-19’s origin, scale, government response, prevention and treatment. Each product was designed to be tailored with local government websites and logos.”
Several organizations align with the organizational goals of CISA as related to its anti-MDM efforts. The Alliance for Science, for instance, covers several conspiracy theories about COVID-19, noting that the “virus escaped from a Chinese lab” claim “has the benefit of at least being plausible.” As reported by the BBC, “the controversial claim that the pandemic might have leaked from a Chinese laboratory – once dismissed by many as a fringe conspiracy theory – has been gaining traction.” The New York Post has documented the history of censoring the hotly contested “lab leak theory” by powerful and influential people and organizations, noting that the director of the “National Institutes of Health, immediately decreed this view to be a conspiracy theory that will do ‘great potential harm to science and international harmony’.”
The Alliance for Science is active in the fight against MDM. At the end of its page on COVID-19 conspiracy theories is this passage:
“How to recognize and debunk conspiracy theories
It is important to speak out and combat online misinformation and conspiracist narratives, whether on COVID or climate change or anything else. This handbook (PDF) by John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky, both of whom have extensive experience in combating climate denialism, is an essential tool.
Note: As in previous coverage, it is our policy to avoid linking directly to websites and social media feeds that promote misinformation and conspiracy theories, so as not to drive traffic to them and give them higher visibility.“
Understandably, rather than sending readers to the sources of the conspiracy theories they address, they want you to refer to their own sources, such as The Conspiracy Theory Handbook. That handbook is similar in structure to the Toolkits provided by CISA, but it is not of the scholarly caliber of The Handbook of Conspiracy Theories, edited by Michael Butter and Peter Knight – this is the same Michael Butter whom I cited above with reference to the CIA’s role in popularizing the conspiracy label as a pejorative. In the Acknowledgements section, Butter and Knight state the following with regard to the origins of their handbook:
“This project results from the C.O.S.T. Action (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) project C.O.M.P.A.C.T. (Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories), whose generous funding enabled us to establish a network of scholars in Europe and beyond working on this interdisciplinary topic (www.conspiracytheories.eu).”
Following their link, you can find COMPACT’s Guide to Conspiracy Theories, which has two main sections, “Understanding Conspiracy Theories” and “Recommendations for Dealing with Conspiracy Theories.” Mind you, they do not suggest engaging in an honest investigation into the empirical claims of “conspiracy theorists.” Rather, they suggest techniques for rebutting conspiracy theories in ways intended to set conspiracy theorists on course to conventional, mainstream ways of understanding the world. Regardless of whether or not the CIA helped popularize the conspiracy label as a pejorative to be used to de-legitimate those who pose socially disturbing questions about historically significant events, there exists a consortium of groups and organizations in mutual support of that cause.
Conclusion
One might wonder if any of the anti-conspiracist toolkits, handbooks, or guides will be applied to those in power and positions of authority. After all, Press Secretary Jen Psaki has alleged that other countries will use “false flag” operations – this term is a keyword cited as a sign of a conspiracy theory; she denied conjectures of compromised political officials as being merely “**Russian disinformation,**” postulations now considered factual; and has recently claimed that the Russians “hacked our election” in 2016, a statement that might easily be interpreted as a conspiracy theory by any number of academics who study the topic. Existing research suggests that Psaki will get a pass while those of us who dare to raise disturbing questions contrary to officialdom will face the inquisition.
When the Bush W. administration’s framing of the events of September 11, 2001 took root in corporate media explanations of the event, it became a Sisyphean task to try and offer counter-explanations or even pose questions to the officialdom of “9/11.” The official accounts were activated by a cascade of voices echoing through a network of organizations and institutions with interests in amplifying the drumbeats that marched the U.S. and allied military forces to wars extending throughout the Middle East and through the succeeding Obama administration. Now that the drum beats seem to be signaling a change in the venue of the war theater, and considering corporate media is acting as the DOD’s megaphone, what will happen to those voices raising socially disturbing questions directed toward the current administration?
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Richard G. Ellefritz is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of The Bahamas. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology at Oklahoma State University after successfully defending his dissertation on how the conspiracy label is used to avoid offering direct and rigorous rebuttals to empirical claims made by so-called conspiracy theorists. His research interests range from conspiracy discourse to pedagogical techniques, and his main occupational focus is on teaching a variety of courses in the social and behavioral sciences.
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Western intelligence agencies are once again acting illegally, stealing data around the world and violating the sovereignty of the countries.
In a recent report revealed by the Chinese media, details of the data capture power of the so-called “Five Eyes”, the data sharing network of the secret services of the five Anglophone powers, were shown. In just a month, billions of data were stolen, and phone calls violated, creating a scenario of insecurity of privacy around the planet.
The report comes from a cybersecurity agency called Anzer, which gave information to the Chinese newspaper Global Times last Monday, June 13th.
In all, 97 billion global internet data were stolen, in addition to 124 billion phone records infringed in the last thirty days alone. The main agencies reported by Anzer are US intelligence organizations, but there is also involvement of all agents participating in the scope of the “Five Eyes”, which brings together the secret services of the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
According to Anzer’s agents, such clandestine operations – called “black hand operations” – are mostly carried out by Tailored Access Operations (TAO), which is the cyber warfare agency that directly serves the US National Security Agency (NSA).
The report says that recently increasingly powerful cyber weapons have been used in data theft operations, being capable of indiscriminately capturing information from billions of internet users around the world simultaneously.
An anonymous expert quoted by Global Times commented on the topic saying:
“The NSA’s global indiscriminate intrusion has long been supported by a vast and sophisticated network of weapons platforms, of which TAO is an important weapon maker. Some of these weapons are dedicated to the products of US internet giants such as Apple, Cisco and Dell, and have been developed with the support and full participation of these internet giants (…) The US is taking highly engineered cyber weapons as the winning advantage in future cyber warfare, and is investing resources and increasing chips regardless of cost, bringing endless hidden dangers to global cyber security”.
One of the main advanced cyber espionage instruments used by the NSA/TAO to maintain this type of massive data theft strategy is the so-called NOPEN. Such a weapon had already been denounced by the Global Times, in May, and consists of a mechanism capable of accessing various types of confidential information on any equipment using the Unix/Linux system. Indeed, the weapon is used not only to steal secret files, but also to redirect network communication and view information on other computers connected to the assaulted one.
Now, however, it is revealed in the Anzer’s report the existence of another platform used by the NSA to carry out such operations, dubbed the “boundless informant”. Such a weapon, hitherto unknown, would have an even greater ability to collect, manage and analyze massive data, expanding TAO’s ability to steal information, which explains the power to acquire so much data in such a short period of time (97 billion in 30 days).
In fact, these reports point out that clandestine cyber activities have been systematically practiced by official agencies of the governments of some of the main world powers, mainly the US.
It is a delicate and controversial finding. In general, there is a consensus among experts that cyber weapons should only be used for specific and circumscribed operations, considering that their potential for privacy violations can unnecessarily affect the security of individuals. When it is revealed that US and every Five Eyes country systematically promotes this sort of infringement, it sets a precedent for other nations to respond with the same attitude, culminating in worldwide data insecurity.
To avoid this, it is necessary to neutralize the threats already identified, creating mechanisms to prevent the Five Eyes’ agencies from continuing to steal information.
A joint reaction on the part of international society is urgently needed. It is not acceptable that cyber weapons are used indiscriminately and put data security at risk. In a progressively technologically integrated world, all individuals are threatened by these clandestine activities, which makes the current situation really unsustainable.
The practice of “black hand operation” must be eradicated from the cyber battlefield. Perhaps the only way to do this is through a new international treaty of global dimension, which counts on the goodwill of all the world potentials to sign a document renouncing the use of weapons that promote indiscriminate data theft.
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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Science sat the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter.
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Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that an internal investigation by Israeli police into the attack against unarmed mourners during the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Aqla concluded that, despite evidence of misconduct, no police officers will be punished.
Shireen Abu Aqla, the Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist, was murdered by Israeli forces on 11 May.
The funeral, which took place on 13 May, was met by Israeli police dressed in riot control gear, who charged at and beat attendees and pallbearers carrying the coffin covered in the Palestinian flag.
The shocking image of police brutally attacking the pallbearers, who almost dropped the casket carrying Abu Aqla spread around the world, causing international outrage at Israeli police conduct.
#Palestine Israeli occupation forces harass Palestinians during the burial of Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Aqla. pic.twitter.com/nrteefydKz
“Obviously the images that emerged were unpleasant and could have been different, but overall the police acted well in a complex and violent incident,” said a senior Israeli police officer.
The internal investigation was launched in May and submitted on 15 June by the Police Operations Division to Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai.
Anton Abu Aqla, the brother of Shireen, slammed the internal investigation by the Israeli police.
“We don’t care what Israel says or does. Everything is clear from the photos. The police are the aggressors,” he said. “They are trying to cover up their actions and mistakes.”
Images posted on social media showed Israeli police beating attendees who wanted the coffin wrapped in the Palestinian flag. Israel has prohibited the display of the Palestinian flag since its occupation of the eastern part of Jerusalem, and its subsequent annexation in 1980.
Ahead of the funeral, the Israeli government had imposed a number of restrictions, including on the number of mourners attending the service and on the use of Palestinian flags and posters.
The occupying forces also stormed the home of Shireen Abu Aqla earlier in the day, in an attempt to tear down a Palestinian flag that was placed in her honor.
While the police conducted an investigation into their response to the funeral for Abu Aqla, the Israeli army decided it would not investigate their murder of Abu Aqla.
Al Jazeeraconfirmed the veracity of a video which showed the moments leading up to the murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqla by Israeli occupation troops.
The video corroborated eyewitness accounts, which said there were no clashes in the area as the team of journalists prepared to cover Israeli raids in the West Bank city of Jenin.
Shortly after the murder of Abu Aqla, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett attempted to dodge responsibility, saying she was likely killed by Palestinian gunfire.
Extremist Israeli settlers taunted Abu Aqla during the controversial Flag March on 29 May, chanting “Shireen is dead.”
According to Palestinian news agency WAFA, at least 55 Palestinian journalists have been killed since 2000, with no one ever being held responsible.
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Featured image: Casket of slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqla almost hits the ground due to assaults by Israeli forces against unarmed pallbearers on 13 May 2022. (Photo credit: Screenshot / Washington Post)
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“We would definitely have wanted a different Summit of the Americas. The silence of those absent challenges us. So that this does not happen again, I would like to state for the future that the fact of being the host country of the Summit does not grant the capacity to impose a ‘right of admission’ on the member countries of the continent.” President of Argentina and president pro tempore of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (CELAC), Alberto Fernández, at the Summit of the Americas, June 10, 2022, Los Angeles.
While hosting the Ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles last week, the Biden administration sought to ostracize Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela by excluding them due to an alleged “lack of democratic space and human rights situations”.
The resulting backlash caused these three countries to be the most discussed topic inside and outside the summit venue, as governments and social movements in Latin America and the Caribbean questioned whether the United States has the right or moral authority to pass judgment on the form of government each nation chooses.
There was also plenty of skepticism about whether the Organization of American States (OAS), which has served as an instrument for advancing US hegemony in the region, really promotes the interests of the countries of the hemisphere. American scholar and activist Cornel West called this “a Malcolm X moment” in which the chickens are coming home to roost.[1] How did we get here?
Sanctioning itself out of business
The United States has targeted Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela for regime change, particularly through economic warfare in the form of unilateral coercive measures, commonly called sanctions. The U.S. now wields illegal sanctions on over a third of humanity living in 42 countries.[2]
This blunt instrument seeks to push a nation’s population to revolt against its government, and sanctions were stepped up against Venezuela even during the time of pandemic. Though the tactic rarely succeeds, as the Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan people know, sanctions impact the poorest and most vulnerable citizens, particularly children, and cause thousands of deaths, in contravention of the Charters of the United Nations and the OAS. Consequently, sanctioned countries have been looking for ways around the U.S. dollar-dominated banking system. They were further pushed towards this when the U.S. undermined that very system by confiscating the gold and foreign reserves of Venezuela, then Afghanistan, and now Russia, as economist Michael Hudson has explained.[3]
The Biden administration should have realized by now that nations are no longer blindly following its orders to isolate countries it seeks to punish. For example, although corporate media depict a world united against Russia since February 24 of this year, a vast majority of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (in this case representing the majority of humanity), have refused to impose sanctions on Russia.[4] And when it comes to following Washington’s dictates on voting at the U.N., the picture is not as black and white as it is painted in the global North.
In the recent U.N. General Assembly vote about Russia’s membership in the Human Rights Council—a campaign led by the U.S.—although 92 countries followed Uncle Sam’s lead, 82 countries (including giants such as India, China, Brazil, and South Africa) either abstained or voted against the U.S. initiative. They clearly represent the overwhelming majority of humanity, and actually include 13 countries in the Americas.[5] Of course, the strongest precedent for rejection of U.S. policy has been 29 years of near-unanimous annual votes in the U.N. General Assembly demanding the lifting of the criminal U.S. blockade on Cuba.
People’s Summit, Los Angeles (credit photo, Alina Duarte)
Governments reject U.S. arrogance
The exclusion of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba from the Summit of the Americas caused several heads of state to boycott the summit, with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador leading the way by saying that the selective invitations showed “disrespect of countries’ sovereignty and independence”.
The presidents of Bolivia, Honduras, Guatemala, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines followed his example, while El Salvador and Uruguay stayed away for their own reasons. During the June 6-10 gathering, diplomats representing several governments used the podium to denounce the exclusion of the three countries and called for an end to sanctions, especially the blockade on Cuba. They also questioned whether any country has the right to judge the democracy of other nations, and called for a revamping of the OAS as an inter-American institution. These remarks were echoed by the heads of state of Belize, Argentina, Chile, and several CARICOM countries.It is as if Washington were unaware that there has been a second emancipation underway in Latin America for more than two decades, and that U.S. efforts to turn back the clock on the advance of regional independence and the diversification of trading partners only serve to further undermine its waning influence in the region.
Immigration resolution, in the absence of key nations
News reports after the Summit of the Americas ended questioned the validity of what is purported to be the Biden administration’s greatest accomplishment during the gathering—a declaration on migration —because it was discussed in the absence of the leaders of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, the main sources of migration to the U.S. in recent years.[6] It is in any case an extremely paltry initiative that is unlikely to have any significant effect on numbers heading north.
The Summit took place during the trial of former Bolivian President Jeanine Áñez, who seized power after an OAS facilitated a coup d’etat in Bolivia in 2019, a fact not lost on many of the attendees, including the Bolivian representative. It was also raised by members of the audience during the Summit’s sessions, including Walter Smolarek who managed to speak from the floor for several minutes calling out OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro for his complicity in the massacres at Sacaba and Senkata during the Bolivian coup, and leaving Almagro almost speechless. Journalist Eugene Puryear pointed out the hypocrisy of the U.S. in shunning leaders it disagrees with while welcoming others, such as Ariel Henry of Haiti, who is accused by the judge who oversaw the case of murdering his predecessor.[7] President of Colombia, Iván Duque, whose government appears unable to stop the ongoing massacres and assassinations of human rights defenders, community leaders, and ex-combatants of the FARC, was also invited to the summit. And during the same session in which Secretary of State Blinken tried to present his administration as a worthy example of journalistic freedom, independent journalist Abby Martin challenged such a characterization by asking about U.S. client states implicated in murders of journalists, such as Palestinian-U.S. citizen Shireen Abu Akleh at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces.[8]
The Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans Biden did invite
The administration did extend invitations to some people from the scorned countries to participate in the Summit’s Civil Society Dialogue. In the case of Cuba, Norges Rodríguez, a telecommunications specialist, and Yotuel, the Cuban rapper living in Spain who became famous on July 11, 2021 for his song “Patria y Vida,” were present. The latter was the subject of an extensive exposé about his ties to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).[9] Mr. Rodríguez, for his part, bragged about bringing photos from last year’s protests in Cuba to be displayed at the Summit, and remarked that he was there to raise awareness about the threat posed by the three excluded governments.[10]
Some Nicaraguan opposition journalists affiliated with outlets that have received funding from the Chamorro Foundation, known to channel funding from USAID and the NED, were invited to the Summit of the Americas, including Lucía Pineda of “100% Noticias” and others from “Confidencial.”[11] Other invitees, such as Francisca Ramírez, who calls herself a “peasant leader” in the anti-canal movement, are part of the militant opposition to the government and is alleged to have been one of the architects of the violent roadblocks that paralyzed Nicaragua for three months during a bloody coup attempt in 2018.[12]
As for Venezuela, at least Washington realized that it was not prudent to impose its puppet Juan Guaidó on the summit, as he has become an embarrassment. But it did invite Guaidó’s former “ambassador” to the UK, Vanessa Neumann,[13] who is under investigation by the Venezuela’s Attorney General’s office for involvement in blocking Venezuela’s gold reserves held by the Bank of England.[14] She resigned as Juan Guaidó’s diplomatic envoy to the UK in December 2020, expressing concern that “The future of Guaidó’s leadership is not clear within the opposition.”[15]
Given that the Summit was supposed to work on topics such as “Health and Resilience,” “Our Green Future,” and “Accelerating the Transition to Clean Energy,” one might wonder whether inclusion of these civil society actors who benefit from U.S. funding is merely intended to give a veneer of legitimacy to the unilateral approaches of U.S. policy, while undermining true multilateralism. The fact that these individuals further Washington’s regime-change narratives is just icing on the cake.
The peoples of the Americas unite
Meanwhile, peace and justice activists held their own summits in Los Angeles (June 8 to 10) and in Tijuana, Mexico (June 10 to 12), calling for social justice, respect for national sovereignty, and international workers’ solidarity. Both Summits also called for the immediate release of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab, who is being detained by U.S. authorities in violation of the Vienna Convention of 1961, setting a dangerous precedent for diplomatic missions around the world.[16]
The People’s Summit
People’s Summit Assembly, Los Angeles (credit photo, Alina Duarte)
The People’s Summit for Democracy in Los Angeles, endorsed by over 250 grassroots organizations and attended in-person and on-line by thousands, had strong participation from tenants’ rights groups that criticized the U.S. government for staging its event in the city with the highest homelessness rate in the country.[17]
The three-day event included teach-ins and protests with speeches denouncing the U.S. government hypocrisy of claiming to be a champion of democracy and human rights abroad while racism, poverty, voter suppression and an inequitable justice system afflict millions at home. Despite the LAPD’s refusal to grant a permit, the event culminated in a protest outside the Biden administration’s summit, prominently displaying the flags of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. The final declaration of this alternative summit states:
“This Summit we have built together has been a bridge across organizations, movements, regions, languages, and borders. We are creating bonds between us and unity across our different struggles. While the time we have spent together is coming to a close, we affirm the ongoing fight for a more just world and rededicate ourselves to it.”[18]
People’s Summit protest march heads for the Summit of the Americas (credit photo, Media Ninja)
The People’s Summit ended up generating a situation contrary to the wishes of the Biden administration. On Friday, June 10, thousands walked the streets of Los Angeles demanding an end to the blockade against Cuba, as well as an end to economic warfare against Venezuela and Nicaragua. A massive mobilization that contrasted with the vacuum at the Summit of the Americas inside and outside the venue.
The Workers’ Summit
Worker’s Summit brings banners to the U.S. border wall, Tijuana (credit photo: Teri Mattson)
The Workers’ Summit in Tijuana also had extensive social movement and union participation, including in-person attendance by grassroots leaders from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who were denied visas for the Los Angeles events. The peoples’ representatives of these three countries explained the advances their revolutionary societies have made in terms of housing for low-income people, socialized medicine, and free education through the highest level. There was a call to consolidate joint solidarity for the three countries against U.S. aggression, and to maintain ties among workers and social movements across national boundaries, in order to disseminate reliable information about what is happening in the different countries, take joint action when feasible, and learn from each other’s struggles. The final declaration of the workers summit states:
“We are witnessing a process of recolonization over the people. This is expressed in the excessive growth of racism, poverty, unemployment, job insecurity, environmental deterioration of territories, criminalization of migration, and gender and cultural violence. For this reason, we call upon the programmatic unity of the American continent’s workers, peasants, and progressive and popular forces to reflect, debate, and take concrete action to combat the labor and social violence applied to our peoples by the U.S. and Canadian governments.”[19]
The Summit proposes “To hold an annual meeting in Tijuana, Mexico, with the workers and social movements of the Americas to express solidarity with the peoples of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua and their revolutions to repudiate unilateral coercive measures against sovereign governments.”
Alison Bodine (Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice, Canada) urged delegates to build on the unity forged during the international encounter:
“When we leave the Workers Summit in Tijuana we need to solidify the unity that we have built over the last two days. We need to develop collaboration and teamwork with patience, confidence, and trust, to forge a united front that can work with consistency, cooperation and creativity to build a campaign that is strong enough to end imperialist attacks, sanctions and blockades against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.”
North South Solidarity
Both the People’s Summit and the Workers’ Summit, then, in response to the exclusive Summit of the Americas, established new bonds of solidarity and the promise of North-South ongoing collaboration.
It does indeed appear that the Biden administration’s effort to isolate the revolutionary governments of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela was not just a failure but a remarkable own-goal. Instead, North-South solidarity among the peoples of “Our America” was strengthened, despite their being excluded from the official summit. Cuban trade union leader Rosario Rodríguez Remos summed up the situation well when she said, “The time has come for the dog to stop following the master.”
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According to a 2011 Health Grades report, the incidence rate of medical harm occurring in the U.S. is estimated to be over 40,000 harmful and/or lethal errors daily
In 2014 10.5% of American doctors admitted they’d made a major medical mistake in the last three months
In 2016, Dr. Marty Makary published a report showing an estimated 250,000 Americans die from medical mistakes each year — about 1 in 10 patients — making it the third leading cause of death, right after cancer and heart disease
The World Health Organization’s Surgical Safety Checklist, developed by Makary, has been proven to reduce adverse event rates and save lives
In 2019, RaDonda Vaught, a registered nurse, was indicted for reckless homicide for administering the wrong drug to an elderly patient who died. She was found guilty and in May 2022, was sentenced to three years probation. It’s the first time a medical professional has been charged over a medical mistake that did not involve fraud or intentional malice. Many now worry this may prevent openness and transparency about unintentional medical mistakes
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In July of 2000 I was still receiving a print subscription to JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) and I was shocked that they actually published an article1 from Barbara Starfield, who had an MPH (master of public health) from Johns Hopkins.
Why was I shocked? Because I looked at the data in the article (see below) that physician mistakes were the third leading cause of death in the United States. My article on it went viral and that meme became very popular in 2000, but I was rarely acknowledged as the person who was responsible for it.
Deaths Per Year (From 2000)
12,000 — unnecessary surgery
7,000 — medication errors in hospitals
20,000 — other errors in hospitals
80,000 — infections in hospitals
106,000 — non-error, negative effects of drugs
These total to 225,000 deaths per year from physician or health care mistakes and are only surpassed by heart disease and cancer.
Starfield’s Ironic Tragedy — A Victim to What She Chronicled
Ironically, Starfield became a statistic to her own research. She died suddenly in June 2011, a death her husband attributed to the adverse effects of the blood thinner Plavix taken in combination with aspirin. However, her death certificate makes no mention of this possibility. In the August 2012 issue of Archives for Internal Medicine2 her husband, Dr. Neil A. Holtzman, writes, in part:
“Writing in sorrow and anger, I express up front my potential conflict of interest in interpreting the facts surrounding the death of my wife, Dr. Barbara Starfield … Because she died while swimming alone, an autopsy was required. The immediate cause of death was ‘pool drowning,’ but the underlying condition, ‘cerebral hemorrhage,’ stunned me …
Barbara started taking low-dose aspirin after coronary insufficiency had been diagnosed three years before her death, and clopidogrel bisulfate (Plavix) after her right main coronary artery had been stented six months after the diagnosis.
She reported to the cardiologist that she bruised more easily while taking clopidogrel and bled longer following minor cuts. She had no personal or family history of bleeding tendency or hypertension.
The autopsy findings and the official lack of feedback prompted me to call attention to deficiencies in medical care and clinical research in the United States reified by Barbara’s death and how the deficiencies can be rectified. Ironically, Barbara had written about all of them.”
2022 Updated Medical Mistakes Stats
The video above features an interview between Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. Marty Makary, a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins, in which they discuss the prevalence of medical mistakes in conventional medicine and advancements in in patient safety.
Makary is also a public health researcher, a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the editor-in-chief of MedPage Today (the second-largest trade publication in medicine), and the author of two best-selling books.
As a busy surgeon, Makary has worked in many of the best hospitals in the country and can testify to the power of modern medicine. But he’s also witnessed a medical culture that leaves surgical sponges inside patients, amputates the wrong limb, overdoses patients because of sloppy handwriting or enters prescriptions into the wrong patient chart.
Medical Mistakes Are Commonplace
According to a 2011 Health Grades report,3 the incidence rate of medical harm occurring in the U.S. was estimated to be over 40,000 harmful and/or lethal errors daily. Makary cites a 2014 Mayo Clinic survey of 6,500 American doctors, 10.5% of whom admitted they’d made a major medical mistake in the last three months.
He also cites a 2015 study by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital that showed about half of all operations involved some kind of medication error. That study and corresponding press release have since been removed and are no longer available online, Makary says. Possibly because the hospital was embarrassed by the results.
In 2016, Makary and his research team published a report showing an estimated 250,000 Americans die from medical mistakes each year4 — about 1 in 10 patients — which (at that time) made it the third leading cause of death, right after cancer and heart disease.
According to Makary, that number may be higher, because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not collect vital statistics on medical errors. A death cannot be recorded as a medical error as there’s no code for it.
Of course, since they didn’t do autopsies on every death, that number could also be lower, so the final estimate they came up with was between 125,000 and 350,000 deaths per year.
Another widely-cited study5 published in 2013 had estimated the annual death toll for medical mistakes in the U.S. at 400,000 a year,6 Makary says. But whatever the true number, and whether it’s the third cause of death or the ninth, medical mistakes are clearly a serious and too-frequent problem.
An estimated 30% of all medical procedures, tests and medications may also be completely unnecessary,7 and each of these unnecessary interventions opens the door for a medical mistake that didn’t need to happen.
Many doctors have long been concerned about the frequency of medical mistakes, unnecessary testing and overtreatment, but the culture was such that it dissuaded open discussion and transparency.
It’s really only in the past decade or so that doctors and hospital administrators have started being more honest about these problems. Now, a case (discussed below) in which a nurse was charged and found guilty of negligent homicide after accidentally administering the wrong medication threatens to undo much of that progress.
Milestones in Patient Safety
In medical jargon, a “near miss” refers to a medical mistake that could have resulted in patient harm, but didn’t, and “preventable adverse event” refers to a medical mistake that does result in harm to the patient.
A “never event” is one that should never happen, regardless of circumstance. One example of a “never event” would be leaving a surgical instrument or sponge inside the patient.
In 2008, Medicare decided it would no longer pay for “never events,” in an effort to deincentivize sloppiness. Shortly thereafter, private insurance companies followed suit. The following year, in 2009, the World Health Organization organized a committee to address patient safety, as, worldwide, it was becoming apparent that many patients were dying from the care and not just from disease.
At the time, Makary had just published a surgery checklist for Johns Hopkins, and the WHO invited him to present it to the newly formed committee on patient safety. This checklist eventually became known as the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist.8 To this day, it hangs on operating room walls across the world.
Later investigations have revealed this pre-op checklist does in fact reduce adverse event rates and save lives. If a loved one is in the hospital, print it out, bring it with you and confirm that each of the 19 items has been done.
This can help you protect your family member or friend from preventable errors in care. It’s available in several languages, including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Farsi, German, Italian, Norwegian and Swedish.
Opioid Overdose Is a Leading Death Among Young Adults
As of 2017, opioid overdoses have been the leading cause of death among Americans under the age of 50.9 The most common drugs involved in prescription opioid overdose deaths are methadone, oxycodone (such as OxyContin®) and hydrocodone (such as Vicodin®).10
Lawsuits that have made their way through the judicial system in recent years have shown opioid makers such as Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family, knew they were lying when they claimed opioids — which are chemically very similar to heroin — have an exceptionally low addiction rate when taken by people with pain.
As a result of their lies, doctors handed out opioids for pain as if they were candy. Even Makary admits to being fooled by the fraudulent PR. “That is a form of medical mistake,” he says, adding “I’m guilty of it myself. I gave opioids out like candy, and I feel terrible about it.”
In recent years, the medical industry has cracked down on prescription opioids, making them harder to obtain, but many patients still struggle with addiction, and fentanyl-laced products obtained illegally are still causing many unnecessary deaths.
The RaDonda Vaught Case
In this interview, Makary also reviews the RaDonda Vaught case which, as mentioned earlier might reverse much of the progress achieved with regard to openness and transparency about medical mistakes.
Vaught was hired as a nurse at Vanderbilt hospital in 2015. Two years later, on Christmas eve in 2017, she was taking care of a patient named Charlene Murphy, a 75-year-old woman admitted for a subdural hematoma (a brain bleed). Murphy made a rapid recovery and after two days she was ready to go home.
The doctor ordered one last scan while she was in the hospital, so Vaught brought her to the scanner and ordered Versed (midazolam), a sedative commonly used to help the patient lay still. The hospital had installed an automated drug dispensary system, the alerts of which often had to be overridden due to poor coordination between the electronic health records and the pharmacy.
On this fateful day, Vaught typed “ve” into the system to pull up Versed, but by default, the system populated the search with “vecuronium,” a potent paralyzing agent. Vaught didn’t realize the mistake, and overrode the alert. Now, vecuronium is a powder, and most experienced nurses would know that Versed is a liquid.
Vaught, however, didn’t catch the discrepancy and suspended the powder with saline as indicated and gave it to Murphy, who subsequently died inside the scanner.
“The nurse [Vaught] immediately feels horrible; says exactly what she did, recognized her mistake as the patient was deteriorating, and felt ‘I may have caused this,’” Makary says. “[She] admitted [and] reported this whole thing; was 100% honest. I mean, [she] even said, subsequently, that her life will never be the same, that she feels that a piece of her has died.”
In 2019, Vaught was indicted for reckless homicide.11,12 She was found guilty and in May 2022, was sentenced to three years probation with judicial diversion,13 which means her criminal record can be expunged if she serves her probationary period with good behavior. Her nursing license was also revoked.
Should Medical Mistakes Be Prosecuted?
Now, while Vaught immediately admitted her mistake, Vanderbilt hospital, for its part, appears to have been trying to cover it up.
“Vanderbilt had documentation where two neurologists listed the cause of death as the brain bleed. It was deemed, essentially, a natural cause of death. This was reported to the medical examiner,” Makary says.
An investigation by the Tennessean revealed Vanderbilt did not report the death to state or federal officials as a preventable adverse event, as is required by law. Instead, they fired Vaught and immediately negotiated an out-of-court settlement with the family, which included a gag order.
So, it wasn’t the family that brought charges against Vaught but rather a team of district attorneys in Davidson county. Vaught’s case is the first of its kind, and has triggered emotional reactions across the country among doctors and nurses alike, as everyone knows how easily and frequently medical mistakes occur.
According to the Tennessean, “The case has put a spotlight on how nurses should be held accountable for medical mistakes.” But should they? Never before has a medical professional been criminally charged for a medical mistake that didn’t involve intentional fraud or malice. As noted by Makary:
“One of the principles of patient safety that we have been advocating throughout the entire 23 years of the patient safety movement in America has been the concept ‘just culture’ — a doctrine which says that honest mistakes should not be penalized … That is a doctrine that has enabled people to speak up about this epidemic of medical mistakes in the United States …
In my opinion, we have had decades of progress in patient safety, about 23 healthy years of significant improvements in the culture of safety and the way we approach safety, undone with a single group of assistant young district attorneys that decided to go after one individual at the exclusion of doing anything about a hospital that, unlike the nurse, did not admit to anything initially and broke the law.
There’s a preliminary statistic that 1 in 5 nurses are quitting during the pandemic. Now, some of that is pandemic burnout, some of it’s a number of [other] factors, but a lot of nurses are leaving the profession and there’s this feeling that they don’t feel valued, and this [case] has been a bit of a smack in their face.
So, hospitals around the country that are dealing with critical nursing staffing shortages are trying to pay attention to the concerns that nurses have about this case. I have talked to lawmakers at the state level in different states who are thinking about passing protections for nurses. It’s delicate, but this is now a conversation that has surfaced.”
US Is an Unmitigated Failure at Treating Chronic Illness
The U.S. has the most expensive health care in the world, spending more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined (Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia). If the U.S. health care system were a country, it would be the sixth largest economy on the entire planet.
Despite that, the U.S. ranks last in health and mortality when compared with 17 other developed nations. We may have one of the best systems for treating acute surgical emergencies, but the American medical system is clearly an unmitigated failure when it comes to treating chronic illness.
The fact that properly prescribed and administered drugs kill well over 100,000 every year in the U.S. should really be food for some serious thought. For starters, drug safety needs to become a priority, not an afterthought.
Indeed, one of Starfield’s points of contention was the lack of systematic recording and studying of adverse events, and her own death highlights this problem. It was the Plavix-aspirin combination that actually killed her, yet if it hadn’t been for an autopsy and her husband insisting on an adverse event report, no one would ever have been the wiser about such a connection.
Only a tiny fraction of all adverse drug reactions are ever reported to the FDA; according to some estimates, as few as 1%. In order to truly alert the FDA to a problem with a product they’ve approved, they must be notified by as many people as possible who believe they have experienced a side effect.
By filing a report, you help make medicine safer for everyone. So, if you believe you’ve experienced a side effect from a drug, please report it. Simply go to the FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator page, find the phone number listed for your state, and report your adverse reaction.
In all, preventable medical mistakes may account for one-sixth of all deaths that occur in the U.S. annually.14 To put these numbers into even further perspective, medical mistakes in American hospitals kill four jumbo jets’ worth of people each week.15
According to statistics published in a 2011 Health Grades report,16 the incidence rate of medical harm occurring in the U.S. may be as high as 40,000 harmful and/or lethal errors DAILY. According to co-author John T. James, Ph.D.:17
“Perhaps it is time for a national patient bill of rights for hospitalized patients. All evidence points to the need for much more patient involvement in identifying harmful events and participating in rigorous follow-up investigations to identify root causes.”
Many Tests and Treatments Do More Harm Than Good
Overtesting and overtreatment are also part of the problem. Instead of dissuading patients from unnecessary or questionable interventions, the system rewards waste and incentivizes disease over health.
According to a report by the Institute of Medicine, an estimated 30% of all medical procedures, tests and medications may in fact be unnecessary, at a cost of at least $750 billion a year.18 To learn which tests and interventions may do more harm than good, browse through the Choosing Wisely website.
It’s also important to be aware that many novel medical treatments gain popularity over older standards of care due mostly to clever marketing, opposed to solid science. An investigation by the Mayo Clinic published in 2013 proved this point. To determine the overall effectiveness of our medical care, researchers tracked the frequency of medical reversals over the past decade.
They found that reversals are common across all classes of medical practice, and a significant proportion of medical treatments offer no patient benefit at all.
In fact, they found 146 reversals of previously established practices,19 treatments and procedures over the previous 10 years. The most telling data in the report show just how many common medical treatments are doing more harm than good. Of the studies that tested an existing standard of care, 40.2% reversed the practice, compared to only 38% reaffirming it.
The remaining 22% were inconclusive. This means that anywhere between 40 and 78% of the medical testing, treatments and procedures you receive are of NO benefit to you — or are actually harmful — as determined by clinical studies.
Safeguarding Your Care While Hospitalized
Knowing that medical errors can and do frequently occur, what can you do to ensure your safety, or the safety of a loved one, who has to go to the hospital? Makary offers the following suggestions:
“Every hospital has a patient relations department and if things just don’t seem right, if you feel that you’re not communicating effectively with your care team, if you feel care is not coordinated, if you have a concern or there was an error, you can call the patient relations department. They’ve got somebody on call 24/7. That’s basically a standard thing in the hospitals now.
It’s important to have an advocate with you anytime you get medical care or you’ve got a loved one in the hospital. It’s amazing how it seems that the care is just overall much better, holistic, comprehensive and coordinated when there’s a family member or loved one there, taking notes, asking questions …
Ask about the medication that’s being given to you. You should know what it is and what it’s for, and you should ask your doctor or whoever walks in the room if they’ve washed their hands …
This is the sort of new dialogue that we are trying to promote to make the patient a participant in their care and not just a bystander. When you do it, what I’ve noticed the more educated they are, or their surrogate is, the better the care is. You are in the middle of a very complicated system of care when you’re in the hospital. The more you can be aware of what’s happening, the safer the care.”
Once you’re hospitalized, you’re immediately at risk for medical errors, so one of the best safeguards is to have someone there with you. Dr. Andrew Saul has written an entire book20 on the issue of safeguarding your health while hospitalized.
Frequently, you’re going to be relatively debilitated, especially post-op when you’re under the influence of anesthesia, and you won’t have the opportunity to see the types of processes that are going on. This is particularly important for pediatric patients and the elderly.
It’s important to have a personal advocate present to ask questions and take notes. For every medication given in the hospital, ask questions such as: “What is this medication? What is it for? What’s the dose?” Most people, doctors and nurses included, are more apt to go through that extra step of due diligence to make sure they’re getting it right if they know they’ll be questioned about it.
If someone you know is scheduled for surgery, you can print out the WHO surgical safety checklist and implementation manual, which is part of the campaign “Safe Surgery Saves Lives.” The checklist can be downloaded free of charge here. If a loved one is in the hospital, print it out and bring it with you, as this can help you protect your family member or friend from preventable errors in care.
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A tracking tool installed on many hospitals’ websites has been collecting patients’ sensitive health information—including details about their medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s appointments—and sending it to Facebook.
The Markup tested the websites of Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America. On 33 of them we found the tracker, called the Meta Pixel, sending Facebook a packet of data whenever a person clicked a button to schedule a doctor’s appointment. The data is connected to an IP address—an identifier that’s like a computer’s mailing address and can generally be linked to a specific individual or household—creating an intimate receipt of the appointment request for Facebook.
On the website of University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, for example, clicking the “Schedule Online” button on a doctor’s page prompted the Meta Pixel to send Facebook the text of the button, the doctor’s name, and the search term we used to find her: “pregnancy termination.”
Clicking the “Schedule Online Now” button for a doctor on the website of Froedtert Hospital, in Wisconsin, prompted the Meta Pixel to send Facebook the text of the button, the doctor’s name, and the condition we selected from a dropdown menu: “Alzheimer’s.”
The Markup also found the Meta Pixel installed inside the password-protected patient portals of seven health systems. On five of those systems’ pages, we documented the pixel sending Facebook data about real patients who volunteered to participate in the Pixel Hunt project, a collaboration between The Markup and Mozilla Rally. The project is a crowd-sourced undertaking in which anyone can install Mozilla’s Rally browser add-on in order to send The Markup data on the Meta Pixel as it appears on sites that they visit. The data sent to hospitals included the names of patients’ medications, descriptions of their allergic reactions, and details about their upcoming doctor’s appointments.
Former regulators, health data security experts, and privacy advocates who reviewed The Markup’s findings said the hospitals in question may have violated the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The law prohibits covered entities like hospitals from sharing personally identifiable health information with third parties like Facebook, except when an individual has expressly consented in advance or under certain contracts.
Neither the hospitals nor Meta said they had such contracts in place, and The Markup found no evidence that the hospitals or Meta were otherwise obtaining patients’ express consent.
“I am deeply troubled by what [the hospitals] are doing with the capture of their data and the sharing of it,” said David Holtzman, a health privacy consultant who previously served as a senior privacy adviser in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, which enforces HIPAA. “I cannot say [sharing this data] is for certain a HIPAA violation. It is quite likely a HIPAA violation.”
University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center spokesperson George Stamatis did not respond to The Markup’s questions but said in a brief statement that the hospital “comport[s] with all applicable federal and state laws and regulatory requirements.”
After reviewing The Markup’s findings, Froedtert Hospital removed the Meta Pixel from its website “out of an abundance of caution,” Steve Schooff, a spokesperson for the hospital, wrote in a statement.
As of June 15, six other hospitals had also removed pixels from their appointment booking pages and at least five of the seven health systems that had Meta Pixels installed in their patient portals had removed those pixels.
The 33 hospitals The Markup found sending patient appointment details to Facebook collectively reported more than 26 million patient admissions and outpatient visits in 2020, according to the most recent data availablefrom the American Hospital Association. Our investigation was limited to just over 100 hospitals; the data sharing likely affects many more patients and institutions than we identified.
Facebook itself is not subject to HIPAA, but the experts interviewed for this story expressed concerns about how the advertising giant might use the personal health data it’s collecting for its own profit.
“This is an extreme example of exactly how far the tentacles of Big Tech reach into what we think of as a protected data space,” said Nicholson Price, a University of Michigan law professor who studies big data and health care. “I think this is creepy, problematic, and potentially illegal” from the hospitals’ point of view.
The Markup was unable to determine whether Facebook used the data to target advertisements, train its recommendation algorithms, or profit in other ways.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, did not respond to questions. Instead, spokesperson Dale Hogan sent a brief email paraphrasing the company’s sensitive health data policy.
“If Meta’s signals filtering systems detect that a business is sending potentially sensitive health data from their app or website through their use of Meta Business Tools, which in some cases can happen in error, that potentially sensitive data will be removed before it can be stored in our ads systems,” Hogan wrote.
Meta did not respond to follow-up questions, but Hogan appears to be referencing a sensitive health information filtering system that the company launched in July 2020 in response to a Wall Street Journal article and New York Department of Financial Services investigation. Meta told the investigators that the filtering system was “not yet operating with complete accuracy,” according to the department’s February 2021 final report.
The Markup was unable to confirm whether any of the data referenced in this story was in fact removed before being stored by Meta. However, a recent joint investigation with Reveal found that Meta’s sensitive health information filtering system didn’t block information about appointments a reporter requested with crisis pregnancy centers.
Internally, Facebook employees have been blunt about how well—or not so well—the company generally protects sensitive data.
“We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as ‘we will not use X data for Y purpose.’ ” Facebook engineers on the ad and business product team wrote in a 2021 privacy overview that was leaked to Vice.
The Meta Pixel is a snippet of code that tracks users as they navigate through a website, logging which pages they visit, which buttons they click, and certain information they enter into forms. It’s one of the most prolific tracking tools on the internet—present on more than 30 percent of the most popular sites on the web, according to The Markup’s analysis.
In exchange for installing its pixel, Meta provides website owners analytics about the ads they’ve placed on Facebook and Instagram and tools to target people who’ve visited their website.
The Meta Pixel sends information to Facebook via scripts running in a person’s internet browser, so each data packet comes labeled with an IP address that can be used in combination with other data to identify an individual or household.
HIPAA lists IP addresses as one of the 18 identifiers that, when linked to information about a person’s health conditions, care, or payment, can qualify the data as protected health information. Unlike anonymized or aggregate health data, hospitals can’t share protected health information with third parties except under the strict terms of business associate agreements that restrict how the data can be used.
In addition, if a patient is logged in to Facebook when they visit a hospital’s website where a Meta Pixel is installed, some browsers will attach third-party cookies—another tracking mechanism—that allow Meta to link pixel data to specific Facebook accounts.
And in several cases we found—using both dummy accounts created by our reporters and data from Mozilla Rally volunteers—that the Meta Pixel made it even easier to identify patients.
When The Markup clicked the “Finish Booking” button on a Scripps Memorial Hospital doctor’s page, the pixel sent Facebook not just the name of the doctor and her field of medicine but also the first name, last name, email address, phone number, zip code, and city of residence we entered into the booking form.
The Meta Pixel “hashed” those personal details—obscuring them through a form of cryptography—before sending them to Facebook. But that hashing doesn’t prevent Facebook from using the data. In fact, Meta explicitly uses the hashed information to link pixel data to Facebook profiles.
Using a free online tool, The Markup was also able to reverse most of our hashed test information that the pixel on Scripps Memorial Hospital’s website sent to Facebook.
Scripps Memorial didn’t respond to The Markup’s questions but it did remove the Meta Pixel from the final webpages in the appointment booking process after we shared our findings with the hospital.
On other hospitals’ websites, we documented the Meta Pixel collecting similarly intimate information about real patients.
When one real patient who participated in the Pixel Hunt study logged in to the MyChart portal for Piedmont Healthcare, a Georgia health system, the Meta Pixel installed in the portal told Facebook the patient’s name, the name of their doctor, and the time of their upcoming appointment, according to data collected by the participant’s Mozilla Rally browser extension.
When another Pixel Hunt participant used the MyChart portal for Novant Health, a North Carolina–based health system, the pixel told Facebook the type of allergic reaction the patient had to a specific medication.
The Markup created our own MyChart account through Novant Health to further investigate and found the Meta Pixel collecting a variety of other sensitive information.
Clicking on one button prompted the pixel to tell Facebook the name and dosage of a medication in our health record, as well as any notes we had entered about the prescription. The pixel also told Facebook which button we clicked in response to a question about sexual orientation.
“Our Meta pixel placement is guided by a third party vendor and it has been removed while we continue to look into this matter,” Novant spokesperson Megan Rivers wrote in an email.
Epic Systems, the software company behind MyChart, has “specifically recommended heightened caution around the use of custom analytics scripts,” Stirling Martin, a senior vice president for the company, wrote in an email.
Facebook is able to infer intimate details about people’s health conditions using other means—for example, the fact that a person “liked” a Facebook group associated with a particular disease—but the data collected by pixels on hospitals’ websites is more direct. And in sharing it with Facebook, experts said, health care providers risk damaging patients’ trust in an increasingly digitized health system.
The Markup found that filling out a survey through Novant Health shared sensitive information like sexual orientation with Facebook via the Meta Pixel. Source: www.novantmychart.org
“Almost any patient would be shocked to find out that Facebook is being provided an easy way to associate their prescriptions with their name,” said Glenn Cohen, faculty director of Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. “Even if perhaps there’s something in the legal architecture that permits this to be lawful, it’s totally outside the expectations of what patients think the health privacy laws are doing for them.”
Legal Implications
Facebook’s data collection on hospital websites has been the subject of class action lawsuits in several states, with mixed results.
Those cases involve types of data that health law experts said are sensitive but less regulated than the health information The Markup documented the Meta Pixel collecting.
In 2016, a group of plaintiffs sued Facebook and a handful of health systems and organizations, alleging that the organizations had breached their own privacy policies and several state and federal laws—including wiretapping and intrusion on seclusion statutes—by collecting data via tracking technology on the health care providers’ websites.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed that case in 2017 for a variety of reasons, including that the plaintiffs failed to prove that Facebook had collected “protected health information,” as defined by HIPAA. Rather, the court found, Facebook had tracked plaintiffs on public-facing pages of the websites—such as the homepage or informational pages about diseases—where there was no evidence that the plaintiffs had established a patient relationship with the provider.
In 2019, plaintiffs brought a similar class action lawsuit in Suffolk County Superior Court against Massachusetts-based Partners Healthcare System, which has since changed its name to Mass General Brigham, alleging that the system had violated patients’ privacy and its own policies by installing the Meta Pixel and other tracking tools on its websites.
The parties settled the case in January, with Mass General Brigham denying the allegations and admitting no wrongdoing or liability but paying $18.4 million to the plaintiffs and their attorneys. After the settlement, Mass General Brigham appears to have removed Meta Pixel and other tracking tools from many of its hospitals’ websites—but not all of them.
When The Markup tested the website of Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, clicking the “Request Appointment” button on a doctor’s page caused the Meta Pixel to send Facebook the text of the button, the doctor’s name, and the doctor’s field of medicine. Mass General did not respond to The Markup’s request for comment.
As with all such data we found the Meta Pixel collecting, it was sent to Facebook along with our computer’s public IP address.
“When an individual has sought out a provider and indicated that they want to make an appointment, at that point, any individually identifiable health information that they’ve provided in this session, in the past, or certainly in the future, is protected under HIPAA and could not be shared with a third party like Facebook,” Holtzman said.
The U.S. Department of Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights “cannot comment on open or potential investigations,” spokesperson Rachel Seeger wrote in an emailed statement.
“Generally, HIPAA covered entities and business associates should not be sharing identifiable information with social media companies unless they have HIPAA authorization [from the individual] and consent under state law,” said Iliana Peters, a privacy lawyer with the firm Polsinelli who previously headed HIPAA enforcement for the Office for Civil Rights.
Patients have the right to file HIPAA complaints with their medical providers, who are required to investigate the complaints, Peters said, adding, “I would hope that institutions would respond quickly to those types of complaints so that they aren’t escalated to a state or federal regulator.”
“Plausible Deniability“
Most of the hospitals The Markup contacted for this story did not respond to our questions or explain why they chose to install Meta Pixel on their websites. But some did defend their use of the tracker.
“The use of this type of code was vetted,” wrote Chris King, a spokesperson for Northwestern Memorial Hospital, in Chicago. King did not respond to follow-up questions about the vetting process.
King said that no protected health information is hosted on or accessible through Northwestern Memorial’s website and that “Facebook automatically recognizes anything that might be close to personal information and does not store this data.”
In fact, Meta explicitly states in its business tools terms of service that the pixel and other trackers do collect personally identifiable information for a variety of purposes.
Houston Methodist Hospital, in Texas, was the only institution to provide detailed responses to The Markup’s questions. The hospital began using the pixel in 2017, spokesperson Stefanie Asin wrote, and is “confident” in Facebook’s safeguards and that the data being shared isn’t protected health information.
When The Markup tested Houston Methodist’s website, clicking the “Schedule Appointment” button on a doctor’s page prompted the Meta Pixel to send Facebook the text of the button, the name of the doctor, and the search term we used to find the doctor: “Home abortion.”
Houston Methodist doesn’t categorize that data as protected health information, Asin wrote, because a person who clicks the “Schedule Appointment” button may not follow through and confirm the appointment, or, they may be booking the appointment for a family member rather than for themself.
“The click doesn’t mean they scheduled,” she wrote. “It’s also worth noting that people often are exploring for a spouse, friend, elderly parent.”
Asin added that Houston Methodist believes Facebook “uses tools to detect and reject any health information, providing a barrier that prevents passage of [protected health information].”
Despite defending its use of the Meta Pixel, Houston Methodist Hospital removed the pixel from its website several days after responding to The Markup’s questions.
“Since our further examination of the topic is ongoing, we elected to remove the pixel for now to be sure we are doing everything we can to protect our patients’ privacy while we are evaluating,” Asin wrote in a follow-up email.
Facebook did not launch its sensitive health data filtering system until July 2020, three years after Houston Methodist began using the pixel, according to the New York Department of Financial Services’ investigation. And as recently as February of last year, the department reported that the system’s accuracy was poor.
That type of Band-Aid fix is a prime example, privacy advocates say, of the online advertising industry’s inability to police itself.
“The evil genius of Facebook’s system is they create this little piece of code that does the snooping for them and then they just put it out into the universe and Facebook can try to claim plausible deniability,” said Alan Butler, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
“The fact that this is out there in the wild on the websites of hospitals is evidence of how broken the rules are.”
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As our world spirals toward the catastrophe of nuclear war, there has never been a greater need for a new global balancing, a rejection of great power, war, exploitation, and aggression. Now more than ever, we need to reject the brutal unipolar agenda of the United States, the dividing up of the world between hostile powers, and the suppression of the rights of the many in the interests of the few. Nowhere is this clearer than the possession of nuclear weapons: only nine states possess these ultimate weapons of mass destruction, yet they can hold the rest of the world to ransom with their nuclear terror.
The struggle for a genuinely multipolar world, aligned only with the world’s people, not military blocs, has peace and disarmament at its heart: this is as true now as it was 60 years ago when the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was founded. As well as opposition to colonization and economic subjection, those founding the movement championed self-determination and equality in states’ relations, and they also agreed on their opposition to military blocs, their commitment to world peace, and a very strong advocacy of global nuclear disarmament. That thread has remained a constant ever since, and today we continue to see the countries of the Global South leading global disarmament initiatives.
Virtually the entire Global South is self-organized into internationally recognized nuclear weapons-free zones, originating in the 1960s. In 1968, a nuclear-weapons-free zone was established by 20 countries in Latin America, renouncing the acquisition and siting of nuclear weapons on their territories. Signatories to this treaty, the Treaty of Tlatelolco, also agreed to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) jurisdiction over their nuclear power facilities. In return, nuclear weapons states agreed not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against any of the signatory states. The Treaty of Rarotonga was signed in 1985, and prohibited nuclear explosive devices in the South Pacific, as well as banning the testing and use of nuclear explosive technologies. The African nuclear weapons-free zone was formalized in 1996 by the signing of the Treaty of Pelindaba, following the disarmament by South Africa of its apartheid-era nuclear weapons.
There has been strong regional development in disarmament, led by the Global South, but there have also been-and continue to be-global attempts made too. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), negotiated during the 1960s, which came into force in 1970, was in large part initiated by India, to bring proliferation and spiraling arsenals under control. India and Pakistan both declined to join the NPT, asserting that it enshrined nuclear haves and have-nots in law-a two-tier, double standards system. Regrettably, they both went on to test and develop their own arsenals. But the point was correct-nuclear weapons states did not comply with their NPT obligations to disarm. Indeed, they have subsequently attempted to reinterpret the NPT as allowing them to retain nuclear weapons.
The West Departs
In the early years of the 21st century, in the context of the so-called “war on terror,” U.S. President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair attempted to shift the international legal framework governing nuclear weapons. They tried to overturn the disarmament requirement, focusing on preventing more countries from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Their goal was to reinterpret the NPT as legitimizing the possession of weapons by existing nuclear states, while using it as the justification for confrontation with states accused of proliferation. They claimed that a new document was needed to reflect the drastic changes in international security conditions, including the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The reality was that the U.S. and UK were researching new weapons and would be prepared to use them even against a non-nuclear weapons state, as well as developing weapons for confrontation with more powerful states such as Russia or China. This was the real driver of nuclear proliferation, together with the U.S. determination to make Israel the only nuclear weapons state in the Middle East.
A New Path
It was frustration with the NPT that led to the founding of the Humanitarian Initiative on the consequences of nuclear weapons in 2013. This initiative came to fruition in the form of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which entered into force in January 2021.
The treaty makes nuclear weapons illegal for the first time, outlawing the development, possession, and deployment of nuclear weapons by participating states.
The treaty currently has 61 states parties that are legally bound by the treaty, and many more that are in the process of coming on board. The countries of the Global South are at the forefront of achieving this treaty; they understand any nuclear weapons use by states in the Global North will disastrously affect their own populations, lands, and food production. As has always been their position, any possession of nuclear weapons is unacceptable; no hands are safe hands when it comes to nuclear weapons.
In a remarkable development, the treaty also places obligations on signatories to assist victims of nuclear weapons use and testing. It requires environmental remediation for lands contaminated by nuclear testing. It also explicitly recognizes the disproportionate impact of nuclear weapon activities on Indigenous peoples, because of the choices made by colonial nuclear powers for their testing sites. For example, many of the UK tests were conducted on the Australian First People’s territories in Emu Field and Maralinga, contaminating large parts of South Australia. France conducted nuclear tests in its former colonies, including 17 in Algeria and 193 in French Polynesia. These historic wrongs must be righted.
The initiatives of the global majority for peace and disarmament show that another world is possible. War is terrible. In all wars, people suffer, and war’s consequences last for generations. Countless people’s futures are destroyed, as we see in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Palestine, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and the Sahel. The priorities of humanity are the fight against inequality and poverty, tackling the climate crisis, and expanding access to health and vaccines. Massive spending by states on military production and destruction is a criminal waste of resources. Military alliances do not solve our problems, but dialogue, demilitarization, and international cooperation do.
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Kate Hudson is the general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She is a leading anti-nuclear and anti-war campaigner in the United Kingdom and internationally.
All Global Research articles can be read in51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
“What is most concerning, at no point did anyone from the Metropolitan police from December 20th 2021 up to and including the 22nd of February 2022 make contact with any of the victims, any of the witnesses, or any of the world renowned experts who were offering their evidence and expertise to assist The Metropolitan Police. It is also believed not one of the alleged offenders were spoken to or contacted.” – Mark Sexton, former police officer. Participant in the legal team filing a criminal complaint of Gross Negligence Manslaughter and Misconduct in Public Office. [1]
Numerous lines of evidence detailed on numerous sites including Global Research from hundreds of medical and scientific sources around the world, including highly revered experts like Sucharit Bhakdi, Peter McCullough, Harvey Risch, and so on, have documented the severe injuries and deaths coinciding with the application of the COVID vaccine.
Citizens everywhere are taking note, and legions of lawyers are stepping up prepared to address a likely crime against humanity.
The legal firm PJH Law Solicitors came up with an interesting approach. They brought the case to the attention of the criminal investigators at the Hammersmith Police station and the Metropolitan Police Station. [2]
They claimed based on their evidence that the public office in the United Kingdom was responsible for corporate manslaughter, gross negligence causing injury and death, and serious misconduct. They alleged that the same people responsible for creating the SARS-CoV-2 virus containing a harmful spike protein also funded the solution, the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
They claimed the “vast, fully documented, irrefutable and damning” evidence was “supplied by many world renowned experts in the field of medicine, cardiology, immunology, science, data, lawyers, barristers, serving and retired nurses and doctors and retired police constables.” They had “over four hundred victim and witness statements” and supplied over ten weeks electronic files, memory sticks, videos and other forms of evidence. Among numerous other allegations. [3]
The Met police have since reportedly dropped the case. But several questions linger about how and at what level the evidence was rejected.
Why were none of the witnesses contacted? Why supply the link to submit evidence?
Why did they tell the complainants that they had major notes and investigations one week, and yet a spokesperson told Reuters:
“While the assessment continues, to date there is nothing to indicate that a crime has been committed and no criminal investigation has been launched.”
This quandary may speak to an even more interesting result. But given the efforts in question, the Global Research News Hour felt it was urgent to bring this case to the attention of our listeners.
In our first half hour, we had discourse with the lead lawyer himself, Philip Hyland. He talks about the weight of the evidence, the implications of the Met closure of the case, and the failures of so-called media “fact-checks.”
In the name of balancing the debate, we followed with another interview with high profile promoter of the COVID-19 Vaccine Dr Peter Hotez. He spoke not only of the evidence supplied in the previous interview but also about some of the other points raised by critics, including the recent and damaging Pfizer Dump of Documents as a result of a freedom of information request.
Philip Hyland is a lawyer who founded the group PJH Law in 2002 based in Stamford Lincolnshire in England.
Dr. Peter Hotez serves as founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also Director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair in Tropical Pediatrics, and University Professor of Biology at Baylor College of Medicine.
VIDEO and transcript of interview with Philip Hyland.
Philip Hyland: We were gathering evidence and looking at an injunction to take out against the Medical Health Regulatory Authority that licenses drugs and medical devices in the UK, because the evidence collected suggested that there were statistically significant increases in certain conditions like myocarditis and pericarditis. Plus there was statistically significant increase in deaths. In some male cohorts, it was 10% additional deaths post vax and all that. And I think that women it was about 8% increasing number of deaths. And then we had the issue of increase in certain conditions like myocarditis and pericarditis. A lack of information on spontaneous abortions plus what appeared to be bad batches circulating. And all that put together, when we look at what happened in the past, if a medicine caused, or could have caused those amounts of adverse events, they would normally be withdrawn.
But with the SARS COV 2 vaccine there seemed to be, at best, an indifference by the regulator as to what adverse events were happening, and there didn’t seem to be too much enthusiasm for collecting data and… and I think we can compare that with how SARS COV 2 deaths were treated in that any death within 28 days of a positive test was put down as a SARS COV 2 death, whereas any death 28 days from vaccination was a, subjected to complete indifference.
Except when we looked at it, we saw that the bad batch issue was a key issue that the regulator wasn’t addressing, but the flip side of that coin is that the regulator hadn’t authorized hydroxychloroquine and zinc. And hadn’t authorized Ivermectin. Now you can say what you like about those two therapeutics, and there’s been a lot said, anything from horse tranquillizer onwards, but what I don’t think anyone can dispute, judging by the data collected at VigiAccess, which is the World Health Organization database, I don’t think anyone can dispute that those drugs or therapeutics, or medicines are safe. I don’t think anyone can dispute that.
Global Research: Well, actually, there are a lot of experts in the WHO who appear in the mainstream media who do. They’ll say that the hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work and that the Ivermectin, that these things could be actually deadly for a… So they say they’re going to continue doing tests but so far it’s not proven…
PH: Yeah, I mean what terms to gather by is official figures and the World Health Organization collect data on safety, and the data collected on HCQ zinc has been created since 1968 and the data on Ivermectin since about 1994, and both drugs or medicines have got very good safety records. And I don’t think that’s in dispute. I think what’s in dispute is whether they work. But on the flip side of that, we’ve got a vaccine where the safety doesn’t look to be particularly good, and alsoaccording to the figures, we got a vaccine that doesn’t appear to work as advertised and so when we look at, and if we’re going back to last December, Public Health Scotland had got some figures out which they compare a hundred thousand of the vaxxed population against a hundred thousand of the unvaxxed population, and there’s a far higher incidence of COVID and deaths in the vaccinated population, and that increase was statistically significant. I think… off the top of my head… it’s about 1.5 per hundred thousand in the unvaccinated and depending on how many boosters we had it went up to about 3.4 per 100,000 if you’ve had four boosters.
So I think when you look side by side, the vaccine has got safety and efficacy issues. The alternatives don’t really have safety issues, there’s fierce debate as to whether they both, Ivermectin and HCQ and zinc work. But it’s part of a Metropolitan Police complaint, we had gathered evidence from clinicians who had used these HCQ and Ivermectin in clinic with good results. So what we went into the Met police for on the 20th of December, the seriousness come back to the public office, but it really covered the whole gamut of the COVID response, the tests that weren’t reliable, the use of toxic psychology, misrepresentation of figures, suppression of safe alternatives, plus a haphazard and, we’d say, grossly negligent roll out of the vaccine and so we were given a prime reference number, and we were also given a Dropbox facility or box upload center to upload documents, so as far as we were concerned, the Met police were investigating.
GR: The Met police says that two months ago, that an assessment of all the available evidence, it’s clear that no criminal offences are apparent, that the Metropolitan Police will not be launching a criminal investigation and no further action will be taken in relation to the allegations.
PH: I won’t say too much other than a press release issued by the Met didn’t catch what the crime reference number catches, which was a whole gamut of alleged criminality from testing through to haphazard and we’d say grossly negligent vaccine roll-out and all points in between. It just focussed on the vaccine. And that wasn’t, that wasn’t the only crime that was alleged. It was a bigger crime. So the Met police issued a, in my view, a misleading statement saying that they’ve looked into allegations of suppression of information on the vaccine except there were no crimes committed. But the criminal complaint was far wider than that.
So…so where we are at the moment is in rather an unhappy situation of we complain to the independent office or ombudsman to police complaints about the police’s failure to look into this properly, and my own analysis of the situation is that the police we were interacting with did want to investigate it but the police at the head of the organization didn’t, and squashed it. That’s my own reading of the situation.
And so we’ve now got a complaint in with the office that regulates the police about the failure to investigate, but the Met police were giving mixed messages because when we went in to see them, we went in to see them on December the 20th, January 28th, February the 12th off the top of my head, and on those two occasions, January 28th we took in a witness who’s a very experienced journalist actually. She rounded 9/11. But she’d also used HCQ for the last 15 years for a chronic condition she had. And what we went into the police on the 28th of January, – I’ve got the dates right _ was this: that before the recovery trial used 2400 mg, a standard of care on that trial, an eyewitness said that as a frequent user of HCQ, if you’d given her 2400 mg she would have been hospitalized because the standard dosage is between 200 and 400.
Yet patients on this trial were given in the first 24 hours a dosage of 2400 and of course the trial was abandoned because it was killing too many patients, but that that’s not surprising if you’re giving 8 to 10 times the normal dose. And not only that, but we did have evidence that the two principal investigators on that trial had been warned that 2400 mg in the trial protocol was too much of a dose. And I think they were also warned that the optimal time for using HCQ and zinc is at the early onset of the disease, not when the disease has progressed. So we, our allegation was that the trial was basically flawed by dosing the patients at the wrong stage of disease when their organs were inflamed and it’s an anti-inflammatory and also dosing at the wrong level.
We brought along a witness and the police took all the details. We’d also given her, given the police, Tess Lawrie’s evidence relating to Ivermectin and her exchanges with, I think it’s Andrew Hill, [inaudible]in the video, and we just said, isn’t that a coincidence. There are too many competitors, if you like, that HCQ and zinc and Ivermectin were both not recommended but look as though they were set up to fail. Given the trial protocol of HCQ and zinc and given what Professor Hill said to Tess Lawrie where he was alleged to have set up, I’ve seen the video, he came under pressure from the sponsors and when I looked at it, both the HCQ trial and the Ivermectin non-recommendation both had sponsors in common, indirectly, which was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Of course, that foundation via its trustees who stood to benefit from vaccination because Bill Gates is on record as saying that he looks for 20 return…20 fold return on vaccine investments. Yet his foundation appeared to be, either indirectly or directly, influencing the outcome of competitors to vaccination.
So to the neutral, like myself, I did see something there for the police to investigate as to whetherprivate money with a vested interest had influence the outcome of knocking out HCQ and Ivermectin, and to the detriment of public health. Because even if you think Ivermectin is false developer, and HCQ is harmful, particular stations, citizens, individuals, in my view, should have been able to have a choice between these medicines over here, which have been around for since ‘94 and 1968 or this new shiny vaccine with a novel experimental mode of action.
And that’s partly informed consent process, whereby individuals should be offered, or should have a discussion about what alternatives there are to the treatment on offer. But I think at the same time in Canada and America and all around the world and a lot of people haven’t been around access to HCQ and haven’t been around access to IVM, and I think…or Ivermectin, and I think in South Africa certainly, in America there have been court cases where the courts have ordered Ivermectin to be used and people have literally come off their ICU beds.
And I think there’s some countries in Europe, maybe Slovenia or the Czech Republic, that use Ivermectin. And I’ve discussed this with Tess Lawrie, she said have a look at the data in Peru, where they used Ivermectin until I think October – November ‘21, and to great effect … yet in Peru when the president changed, they went on a vaccine roll out which then proved successful. So I think what this illustrates to a lay person like myself is that if you give the big pharmaceutical companies the right to set their own exam, mark their own exam, moderate their own exam, and so be regulator that they pass the exam, that you really rely on the good faith of big pharma companies to stay honest and reliable, and they’re recorded data. I think if you certainly look at one company that caught by their criminal record.
So, yeah, I’ve sidetracked a little bit, so, we went into Met Police on the 28th of January just to go through the suppressed alternatives, and I think on the 12th of February thereabouts we went into the police because via Tess Lawrie, we got a vial or vill, however you pronounce it, of vaccine, I think it was Pfizer (or) AstraZeneca – I believe it was Pfizer – analysed and it had, it had substances in it that weren’t on the packaging, and which tied in with results from Almeria University and other places in Spain, graphene, I think it was graphene oxide or something like that in the vaccine. So we took that down to the police. And when we took that back to the police, they said on the database they’ve got over 70 pages of notes and investigations. Yet about a week later they said that there’s no further action and no crimes were being committed.
GR: Well, you said you took it a batch of it to a lab and then had it analyzed?
PH: That wasn’t me. It was Dr. Tess Lawrie. We were involved at the periphery of that with Dr. White. He got the batch analyzed, and it had graphene and, from memory, graphene… I’m not a scientific brain, but it had substances in there that weren’t on the label. So we took that to the police and we also sent it to MI5 which is our military intelligence and also actually a former agent of MI5 also handed it in to Military Intelligence as well or emailed it in. And what we understand, I’ve got no way of corroborating it, it had this certain faction within MI5 that is quite sympathetic to vases they were saying about the COVID response has been at best a criminally negligent over-reaction and at worst a deliberate operation to almost to mislead the public as to the severity of the illness in order to get them to take the vaccine and roll out a political agenda of vaccine cards.
GR: Well I’m just wondering, there’s a been a lot of fact checks in the mainstream media? They say that it’s not proven that there’s graphene, that that’s a mythology, and also talking about the fact that just because you have a, get a crime number doesn’t necessarily mean they’re investigating at all. What do you say to that?
PH: Okay, so on the fact checks, the fact checks are basically around, run by large companies but I got associations with big business and with the WEF. But…when you look at the Kenyan Catholic doctors in 2015, they took a sample of, I can’t remember what the vaccine was, and got it analyzed, and they said that had anti-fertility substances in. Of course, that got fact checked at the time and, excuse the lan—I don’t know whether you’ve got this expression in Canada, but it was pooh-poohed by the fact checkers, load of rubbish of course it hasn’t got anti-fertility substances in. But the last time I looked at that, there was an issue with women’s fertility in Kenya, and I think about 900,000 women were infertile.
So you have—I think that’s the problem throughout SARS COV. Everyone is looking for a reliable information. And because you’ve got what the mainstream media puts out, in my view, not strictly balanced version of events, and then you’ve got the independent media which puts out probably more balanced version of events, and then you got the fact checkers in the middle, acting as referee. And I know, having been fact-checked myself, by Full Fact, but when they fact check me, some of what they said was factually wrong.
So they said that we’d gone into the police station and handed in a large number of documents on the 20th of December. That is factually incorrect. But if you go to Full Facts, that’s what happened, but I was there. So Full Facts are denying my lived experience, which is, we went in, and all we handed them was a sheet of paper with a list of expert witnesses, Professor Bhakdi, Dr. McCullough, Dr Ardis, Dr. Pierre Kory, Robert F Kennedy Jr, all these people agreed to be witnesses to the police, we had them on one sheet of paper, so how can that be hundreds of pages of documents? But if you go to the fact-checkers, that is the factual record, and that factual record doesn’t align with what happened.
And when we wentto Hammersmith police on the 20th, they actually told us don’t bring any documents because CID will lose them. That’s why they gave us a document upload facility, which, by the way, is still open. So, you’re right, fact checkers referee factual disputes, but as with any referee, with any, whatever the referee is refereeing, people who are being refereed also, always going to say the referee is biased. And that’s almost the nature of referee, in that if you’ve got opposing views, and fact check comes down on one side, the other side’s going to say they’re biased.
So I don’t set too much in store with fact-checkers in relation to the police saying they weren’t investigating, that doesn’t tally with my lived experience. Because on the 20th of December we were told that they would investigate.
Mark Sexton went in on the 5th of January and was told that they were investigating, it’s a large investigation, that they need outside resources.
28th of January I went in with others and we’re told they were investigating.
The 12th of February we went in and they said they were investigating.
And then it’s either the 14th of February or 22nd of February the Met said they weren’t investigating the suppression of information on vaccine safety. And that to me narrowed down what the crime we alleged, and was itself misleading, so my own analysis is that the top of the police didn’t want to investigate, and the people we were talking to did see that there were grounds to investigate.
GR: What sounds like an interesting… As opposed to just bringing into a typical court case, let a judge decide. But I think we’re at the end of our time Mr. Hyland. Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. Thanks again.
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***
Since June 7, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been engaged in a so-called “Eurasian Tour” aimed at reaffirming and expanding Venezuelan cooperation with numerous states in North Africa, West Asia, and likely beyond. He has already visited Algeria, Turkey, Iran, and Kuwait. He has spoken with the future leader of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and signed numerous economic cooperation agreements with the aforementioned states, agreements which involve collaboration “in the political, cultural, economic, oil, petrochemical and tourism fields,” as well as in the areas of agriculture and food production. While in Iran, he also announced that direct flights from Caracas to Tehran would begin on July 18.
At the time of this writing, Maduro is in Qatar, and his next stop is unknown. One would expect him to pay a visit to one of the leading countries in the Eurasian Union, such as Russia or Kazakhstan, given that his trip is officially labelled a “Eurasian” tour and that Delcy Rodriguez, vice president of Venezuela, spoke virtually at the 2022 Eurasian Economic Forum in Bishkek to urge greater investment between Venezuela and the regional bloc.
With each new stop, Maduro has announced increased economic ties with states which the United States has labelled as both enemies and friends. These agreements come on the heels of the Biden administration’s disastrous ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, which sought to continue the political isolation of Venezuela despite the regional turn toward re-engagement.
¡Tremenda Noticia! A partir del #18Jul, se abrirá el vuelo Caracas – Teherán, con el fin de promover el turismo y la unión entre ambos países, a través de paquetes que nos permitan compartir turistas. Sin duda, las relaciones entre Irán y Venezuela, se fortalecen y expanden. pic.twitter.com/NUNdDBjWj8
Biden’s decision to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela from the summit—a matter on which Justin Trudeau refused to comment—was met with widespread protest across Latin America and the Caribbean. The heads of state of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines refused to attend the summit in protest of the exclusions, while the leaders of Chile, Argentina, and the thirteen Caribbean states of CARICOM attended the meeting but expressed their disapproval of the Biden administration’s actions.
Opponents of Biden’s decision to arbitrarily rule upon the legitimacy of states in the Western Hemisphere organized their own parallel summit in Los Angeles. It was called the People’s Summit. Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel, former Bolivian president Evo Morales, and Nicolás Maduro recorded video messages addressed to the organizers and participants of the summit, thanking them for their solidarity and expressing the need to found a new social, political, economic, and cultural paradigm in the hemisphere.
In Maduro’s address, which he recorded during his Eurasian Tour, the president spoke of his “hope for a new humanity without imperialist hegemony, without neocolonialism, without neoliberalism,” and cited his international state visits as an indication of Venezuela’s continued economic recovery and resistance.
Now we have been on this Eurasian tour—but we are passing through Algeria, which is in North Africa—engaging in an in-depth dialogue with the governments, with the people, learning from the experiences, of the responses, of the public policies that are being implemented in different countries…The world is much bigger than the dominance and arrogance of Washington…an empire in decline, that wants to behave as if it were still the hegemonic and dominant empire of the world and of our America…Please know and be assured that Venezuela has resisted. Venezuela is moving forward and is recovering.
2021 was Venezuela’s first year of economic growth since the simultaneous drop in oil prices and onset of US sanctions almost a decade ago, and Maduro claims that “in 2022, we are seeing the expansion of the comprehensive recovery of our economy…and, in general, of the Bolivarian Revolution.”
This economic recovery has been accompanied by a number of significant international and domestic political victories for the Bolivarian Revolution. In October of last year, Maduro was invited to attend the meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Mexico as Venezuela’s legitimate president. Shortly thereafter, the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won a landslide victory in regional elections that saw the participation of every major opposition party—the fifth electoral victory for the left in four years. As Leonardo Flores explains, there are five main reasons behind the PSUV’s November 2021 victory: good governance in health, housing, and food; the improving economic situation; the unity of the left; and the division and persistent unpopularity of the right wing opposition within Venezuela. With the economy continuing to improve and the opposition as disorganized as ever, the PSUV will likely hold onto power for years to come.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has announced its intention to permit select US and European oil companies to begin investment negotiations with Venezuela, indicating a slight alleviation of the US government’s maximum pressure campaign against the Bolivarian Revolution.
It would seem that, after years of economic devastation, political instability, and thwarted US coup attempts (six in total according to Justin Podur and Joe Emersberger, authors of Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela), the Revolution has weathered its nadir. After hitting bottom and holding out, Maduro and the popular revolutionary process of which he is the figurehead have nowhere to go but up. Meanwhile, the right wing opposition, led by self-appointed president Juan Guaidó, is more powerless than ever. Any clear-headed observer can see the writing on the wall: the Bolivarian Revolution is here to stay.
With Maduro in power and Guaidó thoroughly discredited, some centrist Canadian papers like the Globe and Mail are now calling for a “reset” to Canada-Venezuela relations. If Canada truly wants a reset of relations, however, it will need to be—and should rightfully be—on the Venezuelan government’s terms.
When it comes to the Bolivarian Revolution, Canada has a lot to atone for. Senior Canadian government figures have boasted about interfering in domestic Venezuelan politics affairs while acting in their official diplomatic capacity in the country, including by “emboldening Venezuela’s opposition” and “work[ing] to get the country’s opposition parties to coalesce” behind Guaidó. This anti-democratic meddling was only one aspect of Canada’s anti-Bolivarian crusade, which included participation in the catastrophic US-led sanctions campaign through its leading role in the Lima Group.
Now, all the imperialistic efforts of Canada and its allies have come to naught. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans are dead as a result, and shamefully, Canada still recognizes Juan Guaidó as the president of Venezuela. And while Canada’s man continues to playact as president, Maduro is travelling around the world and representing his country while signing actual economic agreements with actually existing states.
Everyone reading this knows that Canada will never admit its role in sowing the political and economic destabilization that has resulted in the deaths of so many Venezuelans over the past eight or so years. It is not even a possibility—imperialist arrogance runs too deep across the Canadian elite. What is possible, however, is that Canada implicitly admits its folly by maturing away from its imaginary Venezuelan president and beginning a process of reengagement with the real Venezuelan president, who, like it or not, is currently enjoying an international victory lap.
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Owen Schalk is a writer based in Winnipeg. He is primarily interested in applying theories of imperialism, neocolonialism, and underdevelopment to global capitalism and Canada’s role therein. Visit his website at www.owenschalk.com.
Featured image: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro delivers a press conference, June 14, 2022. Photo from Twitter.
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***
The resumption of Indo-Pak trade by itself wouldn’t influence either side’s stance towards the Kashmir Conflict, but it would strongly hint that Islamabad has tacitly shifted its position if this happens without Delhi reversing its abrogation of Article 370 like former Prime Minister Khan’s government demanded as a prerequisite for this occurring.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Bhutto told the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad on Thursday that the prior government’s disengagement from India doesn’t serve his country’s interests. Dawn, which is regarded as very close to the incumbent authorities who scandalously ousted former Prime Minister Khan in early April and should thus be regarded as a credible source when reporting on its official’s statements, said the following in their article about his speech: “The foreign minister contended that if Pakistan had achieved economic engagement with India in the past, it would have been in a better position to influence Delhi’s policy and prevented both countries from taking extreme positions.”
For as wishful as that scenario sounds, it’s not realistic. While Indo-Pak trade would be mutually beneficial with respect to improving their largely impoverished populations’ lives, neither nuclear-armed neighbor would be compelled to unilaterally concede on issues that they regard as being in their national interest, nor would their military be deterred from defending such as they see it. The Kashmir Conflict is regarded altogether differently by both state parties, and they’re not going to let bilateral trade influence their stance towards it. Nevertheless, Foreign Minister Bhutto might have actually been implying something else if one attempts to read between the lines.
While it’s admittedly speculative at this point, he probably wasn’t all that serious about bilateral trade influencing either country’s politicians or their military. Rather, while acknowledging that India hasn’t provided a “conducive environment” for economic re-engagement according to Dawn’s report, Pakistan’s top diplomat might have been hinting that the new authorities favor a gradual return to the pre-2019 status quo. In the event that the strict policy of former Prime Minister Khan’s government is “moderated” in any tangible way such as the resumption of trade with India despite Delhi not reversing its abrogation of Article 370 like Islamabad demanded, then it would be a concession from Pakistan.
Furthermore, any move in that direction would also hint that the new authorities tacitly accept that Delhi will never reverse that decision and that it thus represents the “new normal”. From there, it might just be a proverbial hop, skip, and a jump away from reviving the spirit of the so-called “Musharaff Plan” that would simply result in turning the Line of Control (LoC) into the international border. Regardless of whatever anyone on either side of the LoC thinks about that, it’s difficult to argue with the scenario sequence that was just described with respect to what the resumption of Indo-Pak trade absent the reversal of Delhi’s August 2019 decision per the demand of Islamabad’s prior government would imply.
Once again, nobody should doubt the mutual benefits of economic re-engagement, but nor should they believe that it would influence either conflicting party’s political or military decisions in and of itself since each side regards their respective stance as being in their objective national interests. Nevertheless, interpretations thereof can theoretically change so it also shouldn’t be discounted that the group that scandalously ousted former Prime Minister Khan might be considering the “recalibration” of their approach to the Kashmir Conflict, which Foreign Minister Bhutto might have been tasked with “gently” introducing to the public on the unrealistic pretext that he put forth.
To put it another way, the resumption of Indo-Pak trade by itself wouldn’t influence either side’s stance towards the Kashmir Conflict, but it would strongly hint that Islamabad has tacitly shifted its position if this happens without Delhi reversing its abrogation of Article 370 like former Prime Minister Khan’s government demanded as a prerequisite for this occurring. In that event, this development would be yet another piece of evidence contradicting the “official narrative” that he was ousted purely for economic reasons that his replacements claimed had nothing to do with changing his foreign policy. Whether that would for the best or worst when it comes to the Kashmir Conflict would be for Pakistanis to decide.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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***
While a few are asking why DeSantis won’t get with the program to jab every man, woman, and child in America, the real question is why the 49 other governors have, especially Republicans.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may be the only sane governor in the country. All of the others, whether Republican or Democrat, pre-ordered Covid jabs for kids under the age of five. Meanwhile, DeSantis is getting attacked by corporate media. According to the Miami Herald:
Every state has placed an order with the federal government to ensure coronavirus vaccines for young children are delivered as soon as regulators authorize their use — except for one. Florida missed a Tuesday deadline to request delivery of COVID-19 pediatric vaccines for children under 5, guaranteeing a delay in access for parents across the state, according to two U.S. government sources.
All other 49 states placed pre-orders, which will be delivered in two tranches beginning as early as Monday to thousands of pediatricians’ offices, children’s hospitals, pharmacies and health centers across the country. Those facilities in Florida will not have access during this time and will remain without supply until Florida places an order.
Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for the Florida Department of Health, confirmed the department “chose not to participate” in the vaccination program because the state health department is not following federal public health recommendations.
“The Florida Department of Health has made it clear to the federal government that states do not need to be involved in the convoluted vaccine distribution process, especially when the federal government has a track record of developing inconsistent and unsustainable COVID-19 policies,” Redfern said.
The Miami Herald is not alone in posting vaxx-friendly hit pieces against Florida and DeSantis. But a funny thing happened that may have caught corporate media by surprise. The people in Florida aren’t outraged. In fact, even Democrats who are actively opposed to DeSantis haven’t made a big fuss about this. Why? Because it appears the people aren’t nearly as concerned about jabbing small children as media and government want them to be.
Lest we forget, Covid-19 poses such an infinitesimal risk to young children that it’s almost statistically insignificant.
Sadly, responses to the statement that any death to any young child is “statistically insignificant” will draw predictable responses. They’ll say,
“if only one child can be saved…” or “no child’s death is insignificant.”
These emotion-driven responses may actually hold some weight if it weren’t for two facts. First, the jabs do not work anywhere near what we are still being told, let alone the promise of “100% effective” that dominated narratives for weeks when the jabs were first rolled out.
Second, and this is a big one, the intentionally blurry statistics surrounding vaccine adverse reactions indicate MORE kids and young adults die from the jabs than from Covid-19 itself. These “safe and effective” injections, as the U.S. government and corporate media call them, are neither safe nor effective, statistically speaking.
It is a disgrace that every single governor except DeSantis has put in orders for Pfizer's kill shots for babies.Rather than be distracted by soap opera news this is what every red state conservative must be focused on. These governors must be made to give an account for genocide
You say that like it’s a BAD thing: Miami Herald’s attempt to DRAAAG DeSantis over COVID-19 pediatric vaccines only makes him MORE popularhttps://t.co/yxExbVdsFJ
While a few are asking why DeSantis won’t get with the program to jab every man, woman, and child in America, the real question is why the 49 other governors have, especially Republicans. Is DeSantis the only sane governor in America?
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Comments Off on Why Did 49 Governors Pre-Order Deadly COVID Jabs for Kids Under 5? “MORE Kids and Young Adults Die from the Jabs than from Covid-19 itself”.
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Our thanks to CTV for having brought this article to our attention.
***
The Justin Trudeau brand is in trouble.
The 2015 fresh prince of politics with the celebrity hair and rock star aura is heading into a 2022 summer of inflation-driven Canadian discontent as a faded force of personality in need of an exit strategy.
You know there’s a reputation hit happening when Trudeau becomes the unnamed star of a children’s book “How the Prime Minister Stole Freedom,” a satire about his handling of the Freedom Convoy and vaccination mandates, which now sits atop the Amazon Canada bestseller list.
On a more serious vein, there’s an alarm sounding over his leadership style when former top bureaucrat Paul Tellier unleashes in Policy Options magazine, warning Trudeau’s control freakdom of an office is “in the process of destroying the public service … and the word ‘destroying’ is not too strong.”
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***
Last year, the International Energy Agency made headlines by calling for an end to new oil and gas exploration by the end of the year. A few months later, the IEA was calling for more oil.
This week, the secretary-general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, said that investing in new oil and gas production was “delusional”, calling on “all financial actors to abandon fossil fuel finance” and focus on renewables instead.
But the UN’s most senior official did not stop there. Guterres then went on to say that
“The only true path to energy security, stable power prices, prosperity and a livable planet lies in abandoning polluting fossil fuels — especially coal — and accelerating the renewables-based energy transition.”
This is a sentiment shared by the head of the IEA, too, on numerous occasions. Like Guterres, the IEA’s Fatih Birol is a staunch supporter of the energy transition, which he sees as the only way forward. Unlike Guterres, Birol seems willing to allow for the fact that we still need oil, and lots of it.
Last month, Birol warned of even higher oil prices during the summer because of strong demand, expressing hope that several large oil producers would increase their output this year.
“I very much hope that the increase coming from [the] United States, from Brazil, Canada this year, [will] be accompanied by the increase coming from the key producers in Middle East and elsewhere,” Birol told CNBC in an interview on the sidelines of the Davos gathering.
“Otherwise, we have only one hope that we don’t have big trouble in the oil markets in summer, which is hoping … that the Chinese demand remains very weak.”
In other words, the IEA’s head, unlike the head of the UN, acknowledged the fact that the world is consuming ever-growing volumes of oil, and the fact that these volumes cannot come from wind parks and solar farms in what could be seen as a big win for realism.
Guterres, meanwhile, is not only calling for the end of oil but is also telling university graduates to avoid getting a job in the oil and gas industry, calling these companies “climate wreckers” and warning that “accountability is coming for those who liquidate our future.”
Meanwhile, a barrel of Brent crude is trading above $121, West Texas Intermediate is trading for over $119 per barrel, and OPEC just reported that its output last month had declined. Libya is on its last oil legs, producing about a tenth of what it was producing at the start of the year.
U.S. shale companies have flatly refused to upend their plans following calls from President Biden—another energy transition devotee—to pump more, Saudi Arabia appears reluctant to tap its spare oil capacity, and Russia is redirecting oil flows under sanctions, although few believe it would be able to place all barrels that currently go to Europe elsewhere, predicting a substantial loss of output.
The oil market imbalance, then, may be about to deepen further, making oil even more expensive, highlighting its vital importance for every economy in the world, including Mr. Guterres’ very own Portugal, a leader in renewable energy and a country dependent on oil imports because it ended its own oil and gas production as part of its transition.
Speaking of renewables, the UN’s secretary-general is not the only one eager to see a lot more money being poured into wind and solar. The European Commission’s leadership is likewise eager for this. It has even suggested cutting red tape for new wind and solar projects in order to speed up the buildup in renewable energy capacity.
Taking care of the demand side, the European Parliament recently voted in favor of a ban on internal combustion engine car sales, to enter into effect in 2035. This means that EVs must go from 0.5 percent of all cars in the European Union to 100 percent in eight years. Nobody is calling this delusional.
Talking about the costs of the transition to renewables is also something that is not being talked about much, although news about metals and minerals prices is making it to the public. Despite this news, neither Guterres, the Biden administration, nor the EU administration seems willing or able to make the connection with their renewable energy plans, which are about to become even more expensive than they were. Meanwhile, the price of oil keeps rising.
Denying a certain reality because it is too far from your preferred reality is perhaps a form of self-preservation. This form of self-preservation, however, cannot go on forever because sooner or later, actual reality asserts itself, often painfully.
Calling oil and gas investment “delusional” might sit well with climate activists in June but come winter, when these activists, just like everyone else, will have to pay for heating, things might look differently, especially in Europe, as less sunlight reaches the surface in the northern hemisphere and wind speeds decline as they tend to do during the winter.
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Irina Slav is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.
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***
Ladies and gentlemen, we face a grave danger. The leader of a major European power wants to make territorial revisions. He is surrounded by hostile powers who threaten him. He does not seek war with other countries but if the hostile powers continue to encircle him, he will fight. A European war looms.
You probably think I’m talking about the current crisis between Russia and the Ukraine, but I’m not. I’m talking about Europe just before World War II began in September 1939. At that time, Hitler wanted small territorial revisions with its Polish neighbor. East Prussia was cut off from the rest of Poland by a band of territory called the Polish Corridor.
“The losses of territory to Poland were, for most Germans, the indelible grievance against Versailles. Hitler undertook a daring operation over this grievance when he planned co-operation with Poland. But there was a way out. The actual Germans under Polish rule might be forgotten—or withdrawn; what could not be forgiven was the ‘Polish corridor’ which divided East Prussia from the Reich. Here, too, there was a possible compromise. Germany might be satisfied with a corridor across the corridor—a complicated idea for which there were however many precedents in German history. German feeling could be appeased by the recovery of Danzig. This seemed easy. Danzig was not part of Poland. It was a Free City, with its own autonomous administration under a High Commissioner, appointed by the League of Nations. The Poles themselves, in their false pride as a Great Power, had taken the lead in challenging the League’s authority. Surely, therefore, they would not object if Germany took the League’s place. Moreover, the problem had changed since 1919. Then the port of Danzig had been essential to Poland. Now, with the creation of Gdynia by the Poles, Danzig needed Poland more than the Poles needed Danzig. It should then be easy to arrange for the safeguarding of Poland’s economic interests, and yet to recover Danzig for the Reich.”
The British responded by guaranteeing Poland’s western boundary against Germany. They also issued a guarantee to Romania, even though there had been no threat to that country. As a result of the guarantee, Poland refused to negotiate with Germany. War broke out, and Poland was destroyed. The great Murray Rothbard tells us what happened:
“And as a direct result, Poland was destroyed. Hitler’s ‘demands’ on the Poles were almost non-existent; as Taylor points out, the Weimar Republic would have scorned the terms as a sell-out of vital German interests. Hitler at most wanted a ‘corridor through the Corridor’ and the return of heavily-German (and pro-German) Danzig; in return for which he would guarantee the rest. Poland resolutely refused to yield’ one inch of Polish soil,’ and refused even to negotiate with the Germans, and this down to the last minute.”
Murray draws an important lesson from what happened then. This lesson provides the key to keeping us out of a nuclear war today. And of course a nuclear war would destroy the world. Here is what Murray says:
“[Polish Foreign Minister Józef] Beck clearly knew that Britain and France could not actually save Poland from attack. He relied to the end on those great shibboleths of all ‘hard-liners’ and other ‘crackpot realists’ everywhere: X is ‘bluffing’; X will back down if met by toughness, resolution, and the resolve not to give an inch. (Just as in the case of Finland, when the ‘X is bluffing’ line of the hard-liners is shown to be sheer absurdity, and X has already attacked, the ‘hard-liner’ turns, self-contradictorily, to the dictum that not ‘one inch of sacred soil’ will be given up, no peace while the enemy is on our soil, etc., which completes the ruin of the country by its ‘hard-line’ rulers. This is what Beck did to Poland.) As Taylor shows, Hitler had originally not the slightest intention to invade or conquer Poland; instead, Danzig and other minor rectifications would be gotten out of the way, and then Poland would be a comfortable ally, perhaps for an eventual invasion of Soviet Russia. But Beck’s irrational toughness blocked the path.”
Now we have the background we need to understand what’s going on today. Russia is surrounded by a hostile NATO alliance. The propagandists for brain-dead Biden like to say that Putin had Ukraine surrounded. But in fact, the US and its NATO satellites had Russia surrounded. In the years before the current crisis, we had ample opportunity to reach a compromise settlement. Instead, we kept the option of membership in NATO open to Ukraine and overthrew a Ukrainian President who was pro-Russian. “At the Kremlin. . . in a speech in November 2021] Putin drew his red line:
‘The threat on our western borders is … rising, as we have said multiple times. … In our dialogue with the United States and its allies, we will insist on developing concrete agreements prohibiting any further eastward expansion of NATO and the placement there of weapons systems in the immediate vicinity of Russian territory.’
A story in The New York Times exposes what brain-dead Biden and the gang of neo-cons that controls him have in store for us. According to an item that was published April 26,
“When Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III declared Monday at the end of a stealth visit to Ukraine that America’s goal is to see Russia so ‘weakened’ that it would no longer have the power to invade a neighboring state, he was acknowledging a transformation of the conflict, from a battle over control of Ukraine to one that pits Washington more directly against Moscow. . . in word and deed, the United States has been gradually pushing in the direction of undercutting the Russian military.
It has imposed sanctions that were explicitly designed to stop Russia’s military from developing and manufacturing new weapons. It has worked — with mixed success — to cut off the oil and gas revenues that drive its war machine. . . over the longer term, Mr. Austin’s description of America’s strategic goal is bound to reinforce President Vladimir V. Putin’s oft-stated belief that the war is really about the West’s desire to choke off Russian power and destabilize his government. And by casting the American goal as a weakened Russian military, Mr. Austin and others in the Biden administration are becoming more explicit about the future they see: years of continuous contest for power and influence with Moscow that in some ways resembles what President John F. Kennedy termed the ‘long twilight struggle’ of the Cold War.
Mr. Austin’s comments, bolstered by statements by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken about the various ways in which Mr. Putin has ‘already lost’ in the struggle over Ukraine, reflect a decision made by the Biden administration and its closest allies, several officials said on Monday, to talk more openly and optimistically about the possibility of Ukrainian victory in the next few months as the battle moves to the Russian-speaking south and east, where Mr. Putin’s military should, in theory, have an advantage.
Let’s make sure we understand this. Critics of US policy have pointed out for a long time that America has surrounded Russia with nuclear bases. It helped overthrow a pro-Russian government in the Ukraine. Naturally, this made Putin nervous. He does not want an invasion of Russia though the Ukraine, as happened in World War II, when Russia lost millions of lives. Now, the brain dead Biden gang of neocons is saying to Putin, “You are exactly right! We do want to degrade Russia to a minor power and use the Ukraine as a base for attack!”
Nothing could be more certain to lead to nuclear disaster. The Russians warn us about this A story in The Guardian says:
“Russia’s foreign minister has accused Nato of fighting a proxy war by supplying military aid to Ukraine, as defence ministers gathered in Germany for US-hosted talks on supporting Ukraine through what one US general called a ‘very critical’ few weeks.
He also warned that the risks of nuclear conflict were now ‘considerable’. . . When asked about the importance of avoiding a third world war, Lavrov said: ‘I would not want to elevate those risks artificially. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it.’”
If it weren’t for the US arms shipments to the Ukraine, Russia and the Ukraine would quickly arrange a settlement that would protect Russia’s security interests. Those in control know this, but they don’t want a peaceful settlement along these lines. They want to rule the world. They don’t want countries that reject US supremacy to have a role in the world.
“Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Tuesday that the entire ‘global international security order’ put in place after World War II is at stake if Russia gets away ‘cost-free’ following its invasion of Ukraine. . . ‘What’s at stake is the global international security order that was put in place in 1945. That international order has lasted 78 years. . . Milley’s warning about the potential global implications of Russia’s actions in Ukraine also underscores the current sense of urgency felt by the US and its allies as the war enters what they say is a critical juncture.. . Shortly after Milley’s interview, [Defense Secretary]Austin also stressed the importance of moving quickly to provide Ukraine with the military aid it needs, saying during a news conference that the US and other allies and partners ‘don’t have any time to waste’ when it comes to providing crucial assistance to counter Russia as their invasion continues.
Is there anything we can do to de-escalate the situation? The greatest Congressman in American history, Dr. Ron Paul, whom we are here today to honor, has the answer. America should end its encirclement of Russia and disband NATO. Let’s look at his vital message to us: “When the Bush Administration announced in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would be eligible for NATO membership, I knew it was a terrible idea. Nearly two decades after the end of both the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War, expanding NATO made no sense. NATO itself made no sense.
Explaining my ‘no’ vote on a bill to endorse the expansion, I said at the time:
NATO is an organization whose purpose ended with the end of its Warsaw Pact adversary… This current round of NATO expansion is a political reward to governments in Georgia and Ukraine that came to power as a result of US-supported revolutions, the so-called Orange Revolution and Rose Revolution.
Providing US military guarantees to Ukraine and Georgia can only further strain our military. This NATO expansion may well involve the US military in conflicts unrelated to our national interest…
Unfortunately,. . . , my fears have come true. One does not need to approve of Russia’s military actions to analyze its stated motivation: NATO membership for Ukraine was a red line it was not willing to see crossed. As we find ourselves at risk of a terrible escalation, we should remind ourselves that it didn’t have to happen this way. There was no advantage to the United States to expand and threaten to expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep. There is no way to argue that we are any safer for it.
NATO itself was a huge mistake. . . I believe as strongly today as I did back in my 2008 House Floor speech that, ‘NATO should be disbanded, not expanded.’ In the meantime, expansion should be off the table. The risks do not outweigh the benefits!”
The saddest part of this whole manufactured crisis is that it should make absolutely no difference to us whether Russia controls Ukraine. How is that a threat to the United States? Whatever Biden and his neocon advisers say, America should stay out of conflicts that are none of our business. As usual, Murray Rothbard put it best. “In the context of the 1980 Afghan war, he quoted Canon Sydney Smith – a great classical liberal in early 19th century England who wrote to his warmongering Prime Minister, thus: “For God’s sake, do not drag me into another war!
I am worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending Europe, and protecting mankind; I must think a little of myself.
I am sorry for the Spaniards – I am sorry for the Greeks – I deplore the fate of the Jews; the people of the Sandwich Islands are groaning under the most detestable tyranny; Baghdad is oppressed, I do not like the present state of the Delta; Tibet is not comfortable. Am I to fight for all these people?
The world is bursting with sin and sorrow. Am I to be champion of the Decalogue, and to be eternally raising fleets and armies to make all men good and happy?
We have just done saving Europe, and I am afraid the consequence will be, that we shall cut each other’s throats. No war, dear Lady Grey! – No eloquence; but apathy, selfishness, common sense, arithmetic!”
The same people who imposed Covid-tyranny on us now want us to risk war with Russia. Let’s stop them before it’s too late.
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***
On May 18, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a Norwegian named Jens Stoltenberg, stood on a stage, flanked by the ambassadors to NATO of Finland and Sweden, Klaus Korhonen and Axel Wernhoff, respectively.
It was one of those made-for-television moments that politicians dream of — a time of high drama, where the ostensible forces of good are faced off against the relentless assault of evil, which necessitates the intervention of like-minded friends and allies to help tip the scales of geopolitical justice toward those who embrace liberty over tyranny.
Left unsaid was the harsh reality that hundreds of miles to the east the military forces of Russia and Ukraine were locked in deadly combat on Ukrainian soil. Also left unsaid was the role played by NATO in facilitating that conflict.
But the gathering had not been convened for the purpose of self-reflection on the part of the civilian head of NATO. Instead, it was to commemorate the furtherance of the very same policy of expansion of the alliance which had helped trigger the ongoing fighting between Ukraine and Russia.
“Thank you so much for handing over the applications for Finland’s and Sweden’s membership in NATO,” Stoltenberg continued. “Every nation has the right to choose its own path. You have both made your choice, after thorough democratic processes. And I warmly welcome the requests by Finland and Sweden to join NATO.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, center, after receiving letters of application from Klaus Korhonen, ambassador of Finland and Axel Wernhoff, ambassador of Sweden on May 18. (NATO)
The day prior, May 17, Finland’s parliament voted 188-8 to join NATO, breaking its multi-decade tenure as a neutral country. Finland’s actions followed a similar debate and vote on the part of the Swedish legislative body, the Riksdag.
Both nations cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as their respective motivation to transition from neutrality to membership in an alliance whose behavior has itself transitioned over the years. From an exclusively defensive identity, NATO has embraced expansion both in terms of its own size and in its scope — by undertaking military operations outside of the confines of Europe that were both offensive and designed to promote political change in the targeted countries.
Historical Ignorance
The historical ignorance captured in the actions of Finland and Sweden was astounding regarding the role played by NATO in triggering the very conflict political leaders cited as the reason to seek the protection of alliance membership. It was as if a family whose house had been set afire sought shelter in the home of the arsonist in order to shield itself from the services of the fire department.
There was also an absolute ignorance of their own respective histories. The idea that Finland would cite Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine as the trigger for breaking its decades-long pledge of neutrality is particularly troublesome. It is as if Finland forgot its own troubled past, in particular its role in the so-called War of Continuation in 1941-1944, where Finland allied itself with Nazi Germany in its war of subjugation against the Soviet Union, following the 1939 Soviet attack on Finland.
Finnish troops participated in the siege of Leningrad, where over a million Soviet civilians lost their lives. Only by pledging to become neutral in perpetuity did Finland avoid the logical consequences of its actions, namely dismemberment and elimination as a sovereign state. The Soviet Union and later Russia both were adamant in making sure Finnish soil would never again be used as a launching pad for foreign aggression against Russian territory. Finland appears to have forgotten both the pledge it had made, and the reasons behind that pledge.
NATO ambassadors Klaus Korhonen of Finland and Axel Wernhoff of Sweden, with letters of application on May 18. (NATO)
Sweden, too, cites the Russian military invasion of Ukraine as the reason for ending centuries of neutrality. But the Swedish politicians behind this decision have yet to explain what exactly it is about the Russian action that sets it apart from, say, the behavior of Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
If the slaughter of tens of millions of civilians and the destruction of nations were not enough to push Sweden off its neutral perch between 1939-1945, it is hard to see how Russia’s actions, which did not take place in a vacuum, but rather in the context of eight years of conflict in the Donbass which killed over 14,000 people and the threat to Russian security posed by an expanding NATO, could be cited in good faith as a legitimate cause of action.
“You are our closest partners,” Stoltenberg continued. “And your membership in NATO would increase our shared security.” That he said this with no apparent recognition of the irony contained in those words, and that the ambassadors of Finland and Sweden were able to avoid shuffling in embarrassment, is a testimony to either hubris-driven self-delusion, collective ignorance of historical context, or both.
Stoltenberg moved on to the final scene in this one-act drama.
“The applications you have made today are an historic step,” he told the Nordic ambassadors.
“Allies will now consider the next steps on your path to NATO. The security interests of all Allies have to be taken into account. And we are determined to work through all issues and reach rapid conclusions. Over the past few days, we have seen numerous statements by Allies committing to Finland’s and Sweden’s security. NATO is already vigilant in the Baltic Sea region, and NATO and Allies’ forces will continue to adapt as necessary.”
Stoltenberg closed the made-for-television family special with words that would soon come back to haunt him. “All Allies agree on the importance of NATO enlargement. We all agree that we must stand together. And we all agree that this is an historic moment, which we must seize.”
Enter Erdogan
Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan addressing a North Atlantic Council meeting in 2019. (NATO)
A happy ending? Not so fast. Enter Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who decided he would crash Stoltenberg’s scripted moment. Not all NATO members were in accordance with the bid by Finland and Sweden to join the alliance. Since NATO is a consensus-driven organization, all it takes to ruin this made-for-TV moment was one disaffected member. That member was Turkey.
“As all NATO allies accept Turkey’s critical importance to the alliance,” Erdogan wrote in a guest essay he penned for The Economist on May 30,
“it is unfortunate that some members fail fully to appreciate certain threats to our country. Turkey maintains that the admission of Sweden and Finland entails risks for its own security and the organization’s future. We have every right to expect those countries, which will expect NATO’s second-largest army to come to their defense under Article 5, to prevent the recruitment, fundraising and propaganda activities of the PKK [the Kurdish People’s Party], which the European Union and America consider a terrorist entity.”
Erdogan called for the extradition from Sweden of “members of terrorist organizations” as a pre-condition for Turkey considering its application for NATO membership. Erdogan also demanded that both Sweden and Finland end their respective arms embargoes against Turkey, imposed in 2019 in response to Turkey’s incursion into northern Syria that targeted Kurdish groups affiliated with the PKK.
“Turkey stresses that all forms of arms embargoes — such as the one Sweden has imposed on my country — are incompatible with the spirit of military partnership under the NATO umbrella. Such restrictions not only undermine our national security but also damage NATO’s own identity.”
Kurdish PKK guerillas in Kirkuk, Iraq, April 24,2016. (Kurdishstruggle via Flickr)
As things stand, neither Finland nor Sweden appears prepared to accede to Erdogan’s demands. Despite high-level meetings between delegations from both Finland and Sweden with Turkish officials, no headway appears to have been made.
According to Fahrettin Altun, an adviser to Erdogan, neither Finland nor Sweden have put anything discernable on the table. Turkey, Altun told a Swedish newspaper, needs more than just words. “It is not right that Finland and Sweden waste NATO’s time at this critical moment,” Altun declared.
A similar incursion in 2019 triggered the arms embargo against Turkey that Erdogan now demands be lifted. And the hue and cry that can be anticipated from human rights groups if Turkey follows through with its threat to invade northern Syria will not only make it virtually impossible for either Sweden or Finland to give Erdogan the concessions he is demanding, but also further strain Turkish relations with other NATO members, such as the United States, France and Great Britain, all of whom view Turkey’s presence in northern Syria as complicating their ongoing operations inside Syria targeting the Islamic State (IS). The fact that the U.S., France and the U.K. have allied themselves with the YPG in this effort only muddies the waters.
Stoltenberg will convene the annual NATO summit in Madrid on June 29. NATO has much on its plate, with trying to craft a viable response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine topping the list.
Stoltenberg had hoped that he could use the applications of Finland and Sweden as a foundation from which he could project an atmosphere of strength and optimism around which NATO could plot a path forward.
Instead, the NATO secretary general will preside over an organization at war with itself, unsure of its future and unable to provide a cohesive answer to the problems with Russia which originated from the very policies of expansion Stoltenberg was trying to continue through the now abortive membership applications of Finland and Sweden.
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Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.
Featured image: Letters of application to NATO from Finland and Sweden, presented to Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on May 18. (NATO)
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***
Five months after breaking the story of the CEO of One America insurance company saying deaths among working people ages 18-64 were up 40% in the third quarter of 2021, I can report that a much larger life insurance company, Lincoln National, reported a 163% increase in death benefits paid out under its group life insurance policies in 2021.
This is according to the annual statements filed with state insurance departments — statements that were provided exclusively to Crossroads Report in response to public records requests.
The reports show a more extreme situation than the 40% increase in deaths in the third quarter of 2021 that was cited in late December by One America CEO Scott Davison — an increase that he said was industry-wide and that he described at the time as “unheard of” and “huge, huge numbers” and the highest death rates that have ever been seen in the history of the life insurance business.
The annual statements for Lincoln National Life Insurance Company show that the company paid out in death benefits under group life insurance polices a little over $500 million in 2019, about $548 million in 2020, and a stunning $1.4 billion in 2021.
From 2019, the last normal year before the pandemic, to 2020, the year of the Covid-19 virus, there was an increase in group death benefits paid out of only 9 percent. But group death benefits in 2021, the year the vaccine was introduced, increased almost 164 percent over 2020.
Here are the precise numbers for Group Death Benefits taken from Lincoln National’s annual statements for the three years:
2019: $500,888,808
2020: $547,940,260
2021: $1,445,350,949
Here are the key numbers for 2021, below, shown on the company’s annual statement that was filed with the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services. These are national numbers, not state-specific:
Lincoln National is the fifth-largest life insurance company in the United States, according to BankRate, after New York Life, Northwestern Mutual, MetLife and Prudential.
The company was founded in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1905, getting the OK from Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln, to use his father’s name and likeness in its advertising.
It’s now based in Radnor, Pennsylvania.
The annual statements filed with the states do not show the number of claims — only the total dollar amount of claims paid.
Group life insurance policies, in most cases, cover working-age adults ages 18-64 whose employer includes life insurance as an employee benefit.
How many deaths are represented by the 163% increase? It is not possible to determine by the dollar figures on the statements.
But the average death benefit for employer-provided group life insurance, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, is one year’s salary.
If the average annual salary of people covered by group life insurance policies in the United States is $70,000, this may represent 20,647 deaths of working adults, covered by just this one insurance company. This would represent at least 10,000 more deaths than in a normal year for just this one company.
The statements for the three years also show a sizable increase in ordinary death benefits — those not paid out under group policies, but under individual life insurance policies.
In 2019, the baseline year, that number was $3.7 billion. In 2020, the year of the Covid-19 pandemic, it went up to $4 billion, but in 2021, the year in which the vaccine was administered to almost 260 million Americans, it went up to $5.3 billion.
The statements show that the total amount that Lincoln National paid out for all direct claims and benefits in 2021 was more than $28 billion, $6 billion more than in 2020, when it paid out a total of $22 billion, which was less than the $23 billion it paid out in 2019, the baseline year.
A $6 billion increase in expenses is something few companies could absorb, but Lincoln National has been working to do just that — by increasing sales of new insurance polices.
In the press release accompanying its annual report, and in its press release announcing the first quarter 2022 results — in which the company announces a $41 million loss in its Group Protection business — it trumpets an increase in sales. For first quarter 2022 that increase was 42 percent. The company also mentions that premiums have gone up 4 percent.
Interestingly, in the press release accompanying the first-quarter 2022 results, Lincoln National attributes the $41 operating million loss to “non-pandemic-related morbidity” and “unusual claims adjustments.”
“This change was driven by non-pandemic-related morbidity [emphasis added], including unusual claims adjustments [emphasis added], and less favorable returns within the company’s alternative investment portfolio.”
Morbidity, of course, means disease. A lot of people are sick.
This matches what I was told by OneAmerica in January in emails following the publication of my story in The Center Square — that it was not only deaths of working-age people that shot up to unheard-of levels in 2021, but also short- and long-term disability claims.
Annual statements for other insurance companies are still being compiled and reviewed. So far, Lincoln National shows the sharpest increases in death benefits paid out in 2021, though Prudential and Northwestern Mutual also show significant increases — increases much larger in 2021 than in 2020, indicating that the cure was worse than the disease — much worse.
Lincoln National’s stock price fell from about $70 a share on January 3 to $50 a share this week, and last month, a new CEO was installed. It doesn’t appear to be a sudden change, but could have been timed to assuage major shareholders who have no idea what’s really happening and may think that a fresh face and fresh ideas can turn this around. Could I suggest instead an honest and thorough assessment of what’s really driving these stunning numbers?
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Margaret Menge is a journalist with 20 years of experience as a reporter and editor for newspapers magazines, websites: US News & World Report, News of the Highlands, Miami Herald Company, UPI, InsideSources, Langley Intelligence Report, The Center Square.
Comments Off on Breaking: Fifth Largest Life Insurance Company in the US Paid Out 163% More for Deaths of Working People Ages 18-64 in 2021. Total Claims/Benefits Up $6 Billion
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***
Far too often, the elite U.S. press has been a reliable mouthpiece for Washington’s dubious foreign policies. That was true during the Cold War, except for a brief period of disillusionment and dissent once the Vietnam War became such an obvious debacle. That period of more vigorous scrutiny and skepticism did not last long, however. When George H. W. Bush launched his drive for U.S. military intervention in the Persian Gulf to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other elite outlets were fully on board with that agenda, as their shamelessly biased treatment of the relevant issues confirmed. That pro-interventionist bias became even more flagrant during the Balkan crises of the 1990s, the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Washington’s subsequent campaigns for forcible regime change in Libya and Syria. There was very little daylight between the official U.S. government positions on those issues and the dominant media narratives.
A similar pattern has emerged with press coverage of the war in Ukraine. Once again, pro-interventionist accounts dominate the airwaves and the leading editorial and op-ed pages. That was especially true of the first weeks of the war, when the media overwhelmingly supported the argument that America must “stand with Ukraine.” The imbalance has eased slightly as concerns about the costs and risks of the Biden administration’s policy of lavishing military and financial aid on Kiev mount. Nevertheless, hawks still provide the vast majority of commentaries on the war in top-tier establishment forums.
The elite U.S. press has even served as a conduit for outright Ukrainian propaganda. During the early weeks of the war, American news outlets circulated the story about the “Ghost of Kiev”—the fighter pilot who supposedly became an ace in a matter of days by shooting down numerous Russian warplanes. That account had all the characteristics of transparent propaganda, and the Ukrainian military ultimately conceded that the story was fictional. In the meantime, however, it had served its purpose to influence credulous Western audiences.
Multiple unfiltered stories from Ukrayinska Pravda, New Voice of Ukraine and other Ukrainian media outlets routinely have appeared on Yahoo’s daily news feed, often accounting for a third or more of the site’s top dozen stories. Press releases from Ukraine’s government also have appeared in the U.S. media, at times without even an acknowledgment that the accuracy of those official accounts could not be confirmed. Moreover, there are virtually no competing stories from Russian news sources, creating an even greater pro-Ukraine imbalance. A similar imbalance has been evident on the principal social media platforms.
Much of the bias in news coverage of Ukraine and other high-profile U.S. foreign policy issues is brazen. However, there also are more subtle, insidious manifestations. A new report from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) highlights one important example. Looking at the front pages of the New York Timesduring the first full calendar month of the 2003 Iraq War and the first full calendar month of the current Ukraine war, FAIR demonstrated that a difference in the scope and nature of the coverage was substantial:
In April 2022, there were a total of 179 stories on the Times’ front page, and 79 (44%) concerned the Ukraine invasion. All but three were located at the top of the page (i.e., with no articles above them), where editors put the stories they consider to be the most important of the day. Fully 75% of all top-of-the-page stories were about the Ukraine war. Not a single day went by without a Ukraine story being published on the top of the page, and on 14 different days only stories about Ukraine were published on the top of the front page.
The contrast between the coverage of the two wars is striking. The report noted that, “In May 2003, when there were 226 stories on the front page, only 41 of them (18%) reported on the Iraq invasion. Thirty-two of those were at the top of the page, with nine below; 25% of all top-of-the-page stories were dedicated to the Iraq War.”
The FAIR researchers highlighted the significance of that difference. A “major conflict launched by the country where the paper is published was given less than half as many front-page articles—and a third of the top of the front page, where highest-priority stories are placed—compared to a war in which that country was not directly involved. Six days out of the month, the paper did not feature a single Iraq story at the top of the page, and the top-of-the-page stories were never exclusively about Iraq.”
That disparity suggests just how much the elite media’s flagship publication had cast its lot with Ukraine’s cause and the policy agenda of the Biden administration. Another portion of the FAIR report noted that coverage on the nightly news shows at ABC, CBS, and NBC exhibited a similar pattern.
The study also discovered a stunning difference between accounts of civilian populations’ suffering in the two wars. “Of the 79 front-page New York Times stories on the war in Ukraine in May 2022, 14 of them were primarily about civilian deaths as a result of the Russian invasion, all of which appeared at the top of the page,” the report found. The extent of the coverage was arguably warranted. As the report added, “By the beginning of May, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (5/2/22) estimated that there were at least 3,153 civilian deaths in Ukraine.”
The Times’s handling of civilian suffering during the early phase of the Iraq War was quite different, however. In the first full calendar month of the conflict, there was only one story on the front page about civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S. military. The FAIR researchers note that the lack of coverage “did not reflect a lack of civilian casualties during this period: Iraq Body Count estimated that at least 7,984 civilian deaths had occurred by the end of May 2003.” In other words, the civilian carnage was roughly twice as bad as it has been in Ukraine. Emphasizing that point, though, would have caused discomfort in Washington. Conversely, highlighting the suffering of civilians in Ukraine caused by Russian forces is fully consistent with the policy agenda of the U.S. national-security apparatus.
It should surprise no one that members of the elite press are again helping to advance a dangerous U.S. policy. It is a familiar pattern, and one that violates the supposed mission and purpose of an independent press. The news media should adopt aloof relationships with U.S. policymakers and serve as the public’s watchdog with respect to questionable foreign-policy initiatives. Instead, the elite press—the portion of the media with the greatest reach—is once again serving as the national-security state’s lapdog.
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Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The American Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more than 1,100 articles on international affairs. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy(forthcoming, September 2022).
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What is the reliability of the “information system on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict” is confirmed by this latest episode: Senator Bruno Tabacci, Undersecretary of State for the Presidency of the Council, credits the Corriere’s fake news: “Dinucci’s book quoted by Putin in the celebratory speech in Moscow.”
The desecrated document on “Disinformation in the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict,” compiled by the Republic’s Security Information System, attributes the presence of neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine and Russophobia to “narratives of Russian propaganda,” and presents “attacks on Zelensky’s image” as the fruit of Russian propaganda. What the real situation is emerges from the reports released by the Ukrainian news agency itself. These include the banning of the Socialist Party of Ukraine and the confiscation of its assets, measures taken against ten other political parties; Zelensky’s order to destroy 100 million Russian books, including all the classics of Russian literature, because they “spread Evil.” While Russian and Belarusian athletes are excluded from 125 international competitions, at an international boxing competition in Hungary a Ukrainian athlete displays the neo-Nazi Azov flag and refuses to remove it.
The desecreted document also attributes to Russian propaganda reports that there are 30 bio-laboratories in Ukraine linked to the Pentagon and a network of U.S. and European companies. There is plenty of evidence, however, from a U.S. investigative journalism agency and other sources, not only of their existence but of their activities consisting of developing and testing pathogenic viruses for biological warfare. The Russian government asked the United Nations to send a commission of inquiry to Ukraine, but received a sharp refusal. What the dangers posed by the bio-laboratories in Ukraine are to the whole of Europe and the world is also denounced by Tultsi Gabbard, a U.S. politician from the Democratic Party.
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This article was originally published on byoblu.
Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and chief medical advisor to President Biden, tested positive for COVID-19, his office said Wednesday.
The NIAID said Fauci, 81, tested positive for the virus through a rapid antigen test and is currently “experiencing mild symptoms.”
“Dr. Fauci will isolate and continue to work from his home,” the statement said. “Dr. Fauci will follow the COVID-19 guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] and medical advice from his physician and return to the NIH [National Institutes of Health] when he tests negative.”
This is the first time Fauci, who is quadruple-vaxxed against COVID-19, has announced he’s tested positive for the virus.
The NIAID confirmed Fauci received four COVID-19 vaccine doses, including two boosters.
Despite testing positive, Fauci today testified remotely during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, where he was grilled about the federal response to the pandemic.
“Our current vaccines have maintained their effectiveness for preventing severe COVID-19,” Fauci said, referring to the Omicron variant during his opening statement. “Individuals who have received only their primary vaccine regimen have a greater likelihood of getting infected with the Omicron variant than with previous variants.”
“Importantly, booster shots have been shown to significantly reconstitute and enhance the level of antibodies that neutralize the Omicron variant and in sub-lineages,” he added.
In May 2021, in an interview on MSNBC, Fauci said people who got vaccinated would not get infected.
“When people are vaccinated, they can feel safe that they are not going to get infected.” —Fauci
In another interview, in Jun. 22, 2021 with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Fauci said:
“The situation is so clear, the data affirm if you get vaccinated you are protected, even with the Delta variant — which by the way has a greater capacity to spread from person to person — and when you’re infected it has a greater likelihood of giving you serious disease. We know that as a fact.”
“It’s as simple as black and white,” Fauci said. “You’re vaccinated, you’re safe. You’re unvaccinated, you’re at risk. Simple as that.”
Pfizer’s clinical trials of Paxlovid excluded vaccinated individuals
According to Pfizer’s high-risk and standard-risk clinical trials, vaccinated individuals who received a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine within 12 months of screening were excluded from clinical trials that assessed the safety and efficacy of the drug.
“Paxlovid would be significantly more effective in people who have not been primed by vaccination or prior infection, so the trial supporting its use serves to exaggerate the benefit that most people would see from the medication,” Fenyves said.
Although Pfizer began a clinical trial of Paxlovid in vaccinated high-risk individuals, the trial combines vaccinated and unvaccinated patients, potentially clouding the issue, Fenyves said. “More importantly, results of the trial will not be made available until November 2022.”
Fenyves pointed out that Americans have seen scandals with drugs like Vioxx being sold despite known cardiovascular risks and OxyContin contributing to the opioid epidemic due to lax oversight, and a “much-needed independent review” of Paxlovid’s pharmaceutical clinical trial was needed.
Fenyves said Pfizer’s first trial was designed to overstate the efficacy of Paxlovid because the company’s goal was to maximize sales, but he was surprised the U.S. government would buy $5 billion worth of Paxlovid without requiring the pharma giant to show how the drug performs in high-risk people who have been vaccinated or previously infected.
CDC admits Paxlovid causes rebound COVID-19 symptoms in some patients
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on May 24 issued a health advisory to people taking Pfizer’s Paxlovid. Walensky warned the drug could lead to a rebound in COVID-19 symptoms, but claimed the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks.
“If you take Paxlovid, you might get symptoms again,” Walensky told CBS News. “We haven’t yet seen anybody who has returned with symptoms needing to go to the hospital. So, generally, a milder course.”
People who experience a “COVID-19 rebound” after treatment with Paxlovid can be contagious even if they don’t have any symptoms, researchers warned.
The CDC, citing case reports and concerns that relapsed patients could spread the virus, advised users to isolate themselves for another five days if symptoms rebound.
“I am shying away from giving it to people who are very low-risk, and are not terribly ill, particularly people who are vaccinated and boosted,” Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of public health and epidemiology for Northwell Health, told Reuters.
Pfizer, in an email, said it is monitoring the issue but believes the return of detectable SARS-CoV-2 is uncommon and not “uniquely associated” with its drug. “We have not seen any resistance emerge to date in patients treated with Paxlovid,” a Pfizer spokesperson told Reuters.
As The Defender reported last month, NIH researchers said they would investigate how often and why coronavirus levels rebound in some patients who complete a five-day course of Paxlovid.
Clifford Lane, deputy director for clinical research at the NIAID, told Bloomberg it was a priority and a “pretty urgent thing for us to get a handle on.”
Lane said the agency is discussing with scientists at the CDC possible epidemiological and clinical studies to examine post-Paxlovid rebound.
In response to reports of patients relapsing after taking Paxlovid, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla suggested they take more of the treatment, contrary to the established protocol, prompting a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official to contradict Bourla.
“There is no evidence of benefit at this time for a longer course of treatment (e.g., 10 days rather than the 5 days recommended in the Provider Fact Sheet for Paxlovid) or repeating a treatment course of Paxlovid in patients with recurrent COVID-19 symptoms following completion of a treatment course.”
As The Defender reported in March, Pfizer stands to make $54 billion in sales from its COVID-19 vaccine and Paxlovid.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Children’s Health Defense chairman and chief legal counsel, told The Defender that taxpayers are paying billions for vaccines that don’t work, they get COVID-19 anyway and then they pay billions more for an inferior treatment.
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Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.
Ukrainian bombing of Donetsk renewed just before 6 pm, hitting residential areas across the city for the next two hours.
A rare 1966 class photo that had recently come into his possession.
This insidious project is tantamount to the establishment of a European ‘Ministry of Truth”
