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Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is asking the company that manages the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) to turn over records after the company failed to fully comply with a previous request seeking information about its “awareness of potential data problems” with the military’s database.
This is the second time Johnson has requested the records from Unissant Inc.
The DMED is the military’s longstanding epidemiological database of service members.
Claiming the DMED data for 2016-2020 was incorrect, the DOD temporarily disabled the database — after whistleblowers came forward — then updated it with accurate figures, which resulted in less of an increase in medical conditions that potentially could be related to the vaccines.
The DOD said the DMED system was taken offline to “identify and correct the root cause of the data corruption.”
Given what Johnson said was the DOD’s lack of transparency, the senator asked his staff to contact Unissant to discuss its “awareness of potential data problems in DMED.”
Johnson, a ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, first sent a formal letter to Unissant on March 7, requesting records related to its management of the DMED.
Unissant responded by stating it was prohibited from answering Johnson’s questions or “providing any details about the work it performs for the Defense Health Agency.”
Johnson’s staff provided Unissant with information from the DOD stating the company did not need the DOD’s consent to answer questions from Congress. A DOD contracting officer informed Unissant that “when it comes to Congressional or Senatorial inquiries, you don’t need my permission” to respond.
Despite approval to release information to Johnson’s office, Unissant requested written approval from its DOD contracting officer to release the information.
“Our letter explains why we are making this request even though you’ve stated we do not need your permission,” the email stated.
The DOD on May 2 gave Unissant permission to provide responsive documents to Johnson’s initial March 7 request, but Unissant’s letter detailing why it needed the DOD’s written permission was omitted from the records provided to his office.
“The records Unissant has provided to date as well as the company’s unclear explanation for requesting DOD’s approval to respond to Congressional inquiries raise additional questions,” Johnson said in a June 14 letter to Kenneth Bonner, president and chief growth officer of Unissant.
Johnson asked Unissant to provide the following additional information no later than June 28.
Johnson wrote:
1. Does Unissant agree with DOD’s claim that “the data in DMED was corrupt for the years 2016-2020 when accessed after September 2021?” If so, please explain why the DMED data for registered diagnoses of certain medical conditions from 2016-2020 was incorrect.
2. Please explain why registered diagnoses of myocarditis in 2021 decreased from 1,239 registered cases as of August 29, 2021, to 273 registered cases as of January 10, 2022. Please explain why the average annual registered diagnosis of myocarditis from 2016-2020 increased from 216 as of August 29, 2021, to 559 as of January 10, 2022.
3. Unissant claimed that on February 10, 2022, DOD discovered the need to “fix DMED monthly data for 2021.” However, emails produced by Unissant show that on Jan. 31, 2022, Unissant’s Vice President Stephen Gehring wrote that, “the team worked over the weekend to identify and resolve the issues” with DMED. Later that day, a DOD employee confirmed that “DMED access was restored after the data was corrected.”
Did Unissant identify the issues discussed on January 31, 2022, in its list of issues relating to DMED (see enclosure)? Were the issues discussed on January 31, 2022, different from the issue identified on February 10, 2022? Did DOD or Unissant discover the issues discussed on January 31, 2022? Please provide all communications showing this.
It does not appear that Unissant provided communications referring or relating to the DMED issue discovered on February 10, 2022 (as requested in the March 7, 2022 letter). Please provide those documents.
4. Provide a list of communications and documents discussing the “need to fix DMED monthly data for 2021” and the communications relating to the DMED issues discovered on Feb. 10, 2022, that Unissant failed to disclose with the previous request.
5. On January 31, 2022, Unissant Vice President Stephen Gehring noted that his team had “worked over the weekend to identify and resolve the issues” with DMED. He added that “the team uncovered other findings in testing that need to be addressed.” What were those “other findings”? Did those finding [sic] relate to issues with DMED? If so, were those findings identified in Unissant’s chart regarding issues relating to DMED (pursuant to the March 7, 2022 letter)?
If these findings were not identified, please provide a description of those findings, when Unissant communicated those findings to DOD, and the status of any corrective action(s).
6. In a March 3, 2022 email provided by Unissant, a Unissant representative informed Unissant officials Kenneth Bonner and Stephen Gehring that as recently as August 2021, DOD and Unissant were aware of problems with DMED but still let it “go live” with those problems. What were the problems? Why did Unissant allow DMED to “go live” if it knew it had problems?
7. On April 22, 2022, Unissant’s President Kenneth Bonner attached a letter to an email to DOD Contracting Officer Kevin Hodge regarding DOD’s permission to release information to Sen. Johnson. This attachment was not included in Unissant’s May 4, 2022 production. Please provide this letter.
8. Unissant’s May 4, 2022 production included several emails between the company’s representatives and DOD officials regarding DMED issues in August 2021. It does not appear those issues were identified in Unissant’s production Exhibit 3 or Exhibit 4 (enclosed). What were those issues, who discovered those issues and when, how long did those issues exist in DMED and when were those issues corrected?
9. Unissant’s May 4, 2022 response noted that because its employees use DOD email addresses to communicate with DOD employees referring or relating to DMED, “Unissant does not have access to these documents and communications.” Does Unissant not maintain records of its employees’ communications between and among Unissant and DOD employees regarding their contracted work?
When performing work on behalf of the federal government, how does Unissant ensure that its employees are following federal record preservation requirements if Unissant cannot access its employees’ documents and communications?
DOD changes DMED data on myocarditis after whistleblowers come forward
The first COVID-19 vaccine was authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on December 14, 2020. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Aug. 24, 2021, issued a memorandum mandating service members receive COVID-19 vaccinations.
According to downloaded data from DMED provided on Aug. 29, 2021, to Johnson’s office, there were 216 cases of myocarditis reported from 2016 to 2021 — an average of 43.2 diagnoses per year.
There were 1,239 cases of myocarditis in 2021 alone — a 2,868% increase over the 2016-2020 average.
According to a spreadsheet based on a complete DMED data set provided by whistleblowers to Johnson’s office in January 2022, figures for myocarditis had changed dramatically since the August 2021 download.
“Total myocarditis diagnoses 2016-2020 increased to 559 from 216 causing the annual average to increase to 111.8 from 43.2 diagnoses per year,” Johnson’s June letter to Unissant stated.
“For the year 2021, myocarditis diagnoses decreased from 1,239 to 263 causing the annual percentage increase to decline from 2,868% to 235% over the 2016-2020 average.”
In other words, after the DOD enforced its vaccine mandate, the database was altered to reduce the increase in myocarditis cases in 2021, compared to the previous four years.
Attorney exposes DMED data at January panel discussion led by Johnson
Attorney Thomas Renz in January told experts during a panel discussion on COVID-19 vaccines and treatment protocols that was led by Johnson, that data provided to him by three whistleblowers showed COVID-19 vaccines were causing catastrophic harm to members of the U.S. military while not preventing them from getting the virus.
Data from DMED provided by whistleblowers — who knew they would face perjury charges if they submitted false statements to the court in legal cases pending against the DOD — showed miscarriages increased 300% in 2021 over the previous five-year average, cancer increased by 300% and neurological disorders increased 1,000% in 2021 over the past five-year average — increasing from 82,000 to 863,000 in one year.
Malignant neoplasms of the esophagus: 894% increase.
Multiple sclerosis: 680% increase.
Malignant neoplasms of digestive organs: 624% increase.
Guillain–Barré syndrome: 551% increase.
Breast cancer: 487% increase.
Demyelinating: 487% increase.
Malignant neoplasms of thyroid and other endocrine glands: 474% increase.
Female infertility: 472% increase.
Pulmonary embolism: 468% increase.
Migraines: 452% increase.
Ovarian dysfunction: 437% increase.
Testicular cancer: 369% increase.
Tachycardia: 302% increase.
Renz also said DMED data showing registered diagnoses of myocarditis had been removed from the database.
Renz told the panel a “trifecta of data” from the DMED and Project SALUS, the DOD’s military-civilian integrated health database, along with human intelligence in the form of doctor-whistleblowers, suggest the DOD and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention withheld COVID-19 vaccine surveillance data since September 2021.
Following Renz’s presentation, attorney Leigh Dundas reported evidence of the DOD doctoring data in DMED to conceal cases of myocarditis in service members vaccinated for COVID-19.
Johnson demands DOD respond to whistleblower claims
Johnson asked the DOD in February what it was doing to investigate whistleblower reports of big spikes in miscarriages, neurological disorders, cancer and other illnesses among members of the U.S. military since its rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.
Johnson also asked if the DOD had removed reports of vaccine-induced myocarditis from the DMED.
The Defense Health Agency on Jan. 26 created and preserved “a full backup of the DMED,” at Johnson’s request.
On Jan. 28, a DOD spokesman told PolitiFact there was a glitch in the DMED database that “gave the false impression that there was a huge spike in miscarriages, cancer and other medical issues among military members in 2021.”
The spokesman said the database had “been taken down to identify and correct the problem.”
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The case reports included in Pfizer clinical trial documents, released June 1 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, reveal a trend of classifying almost all adverse events — and in particular severe adverse events — as being “not related” to the vaccine.
The latest release by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19vaccine documents reveals numerous instances of participants who sustained severe adverse events during Phase 3 trials. Some of these participants withdrew from the trials, some were dropped and some died.
The 80,000-page document cache includes an extensive set of Case Report Forms (CRFs) from Pfizer Phase 3 trials conducted at various locations in the U.S., in addition to other documentation pertaining to participants in Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine trials in the U.S. and worldwide.
The FDA on June 1 released the documents, which pertain to the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the vaccine, as part of a court-ordered disclosure schedule stemming from an expedited Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in August 2021.
CRFs show deaths, severe reactions to the vaccines during Phase 3 trials
The CRFs included in this month’s documents contain often vague explanations of the specific symptoms experienced by the trial participants.
They also reveal a trend of classifying almost all adverse events — and in particular severe adverse events (SAEs) — as being “not related” to the vaccine.
For example:
A female in her early 50s (randomization number 86545) who participated in the trial at the Sterling Research Group in Cincinnati, Ohio, died of an apparent myocardial infarction on Nov. 4, 2020. She had received two doses of the vaccine, on Sept. 10 and Sept. 29, 2020.
The patient had a medical history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, hypothyroidism, osteoarthritis of the knees and attention deficit disorder. Her death was listed as “not related” to the vaccine, and was instead attributed to “hypertensive cardiovascular disease.”
A female in her late 50s (randomization number 220496), who participated in the trial at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, died of cardiac arrest on Oct. 21, 2020. Her death, however, was indicated as “not related” to her vaccinations (which occurred on July 30, 2020, and Aug. 20, 2020) as it “occurred 2 months after last receipt of study agent,” according to her CRF.
The participant’s medical history included obesity, placement of a gastric sleeve, gastroesophageal reflux, sleep apnea, supraventricular tachycardia, hypothyroidism, depression and asthma.
A male in his mid-60s (randomization number 221076) who participated in the trial operated by the Texas-based Ventavia Research Group died of an apparent myocardial infarction on Nov. 28, 2020. He had received the two doses of the vaccine on July 31, 2020, and Aug. 19, 2020.
The participant had a medical history that included a previous myocardial infarction, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, anxiety, bilateral hip pain, type 2 diabetes, fluid retention, angina (intermittent), restless leg syndrome, Vitamin D deficiency, tobacco dependency and the placement of a coronary arterial stent in 2017.
According to the CRF, he sustained the myocardial infarction on Oct. 27, 2020, and was diagnosed with pneumonia the following day. While both diagnoses were classified as “serious” in his CRF, they were both listed as “not related” to the vaccination, with his myocardial infection attributed to a “failed cardiac stent” and the pneumonia simply attributed to “infection.”
A female in her teens (randomization number 104650) was diagnosed with right lower extremity deep vein thrombosis on Nov. 15, 2020, which was still ongoing as of Mar. 29, 2021, the date of the CRF. She was hospitalized and her condition was classified as “serious,” but it was indicated as “not related” to the vaccine, instead attributed to a “fracture” occurring prior to her vaccination on Sept. 11, 2020.
The patient had a medical history including asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and obesity.
A male in his mid-70s (randomization number 227629) participating in the trial at Clinical Neuroscience Solutions Inc. (operating in Florida and Tennessee) sustained a series of adverse events following his vaccinations on Aug. 13 and Oct. 7, 2020.
He was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Aug. 30, 2020, which coincided with several other diagnoses classified as “serious,” including abdominal adhesions (Aug. 29, 2020), altered mental status (Aug. 29, 2020, lasting through Sept. 16, 2020), and acute hypoxic respiratory failure (Aug. 30, 2020). These diagnoses required his hospitalization.
He was also listed as having suffered from congestive heart failure on Aug. 30, 2020, but this diagnosis was listed as “not serious” and as “not related” to the vaccine, but to “prior surgery,” with no further details given. Similarly, his other serious adverse events were listed as being related to “prior” or “previous” surgery, or to “concomitant non-drug treatment.”
Other “non-serious” adverse events listed in this patient’s CRF include hypokalemia, anemia, acute renal failure, sepsis, hyponatremia, leukopenia, small bowel obstruction, aspiration pneumonia, mild concentric left ventricular hypertrophy (symptoms of which were still ongoing as of the CRF date of Mar. 29, 2021) and urinary tract infection.
The patient had a medical history encompassing ongoing hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, gastroesophageal reflux disease, constipation, hiatal hernia and previous diagnoses of small bowel resection, small bowel perforation, inguinal hernia, osteoarthritis in both knees and knee replacement (both knees).
A male in his mid-70s (randomization number 266982) participating in the trial at Boston Medical Center suffered a series of adverse events following vaccination, including pneumonia and peripheral edema. He had received two doses of the vaccine, on Oct. 2, 2020, and Oct. 27, 2020.
The patient was hospitalized for pneumonia on Jan. 20, 2021, in an event classified as “serious” but also as “not related” to the vaccine. However, the cause of his pneumonia was listed in the CRF simply as “un-related to vaccine,” while his peripheral edema diagnosis was attributed to “existing neuropathy.”
During his hospitalization with pneumonia, his blood pressure was measured as high as 179/72, with a heart rate reaching 105 beats per minute and an oxygen saturation level that fell to 92.0. In total, he had three emergency room visits during the observation period.
The patient had a medical history that included type 2 diabetes, alcoholic cirrhosis, hypothyroidism, asthma, sleep apnea, hypertension, diabetic neuropathy, congestive heart failure, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, insomnia, excessive urination, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and HIV-positive status.
A protocol deviation also occurred involving this patient, as his diary was not activated following administration of the first dose of the vaccine.
A male in his early 40s (randomization number 68489) who participated in the trial at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center sustained chronic myelogenous leukemia on Sept. 24, 2020, with the condition ongoing as of the date of the CRF on Mar. 29, 2021.
This was classified as a “serious” and “life-threatening” adverse event, albeit one that did not require hospitalization, but it was listed as “not related” to the vaccination but instead to a “genetic change in stem cells.”
The patient had been vaccinated on Aug. 26, 2020, and Sept. 17, 2020, and had a medical history of asthma and seasonal allergies. Other “non-serious” adverse events he sustained included leukocytosis and thrombocytosis.
A female in her mid-40s (randomization number 49018) who participated in the trial at Clinical Neuroscience Solutions Inc. was diagnosed with kidney stones on Jan. 4, 2021.
This was classified as a “serious” adverse event that required hospitalization, but was listed as “not related” to the vaccine, instead being related, again, to “kidney stone” (sic). She had received the two doses of the vaccine on Aug. 17, 2020, and Sept. 8, 2020.
The patient was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Jan. 27, 2021. Her prior medical history included migraine headaches, hypercholesterolemia and a Tarlov cyst.
A female approximately 30 years old (randomization number 53307) participating in the trial at Boston Medical Center, with nothing to report in her medical history, sustained a shoulder injury related to vaccine administration (SIRVA) on Sept. 9, 2020, with symptoms continuing until Feb. 8, 2021.
This injury was listed as being related to the second dose of the vaccine, which she received on Sept. 9, 2020 (she had previously received her first dose on Aug. 17, 2020).
A female in her late 50s (randomization number 260125) participating in the trial at Clinical Neuroscience Solutions Inc., suffered from acute exacerbation of asthma. The symptoms appeared in mid-December 2020, following her vaccination on Sept. 16, 2020, and Oct. 5, 2020.
Her symptoms were classified as serious but not life-threatening, and she was hospitalized. However, her asthma symptoms were listed as “not related” to the vaccine, instead being related to “asthma” with no further explanation provided. On Jan. 12, 2021, her blood pressure was recorded as 183/130, with a heart rate of 98 beats per minute.
Other less serious adverse events sustained by the patient included injection site pain, body pain, chills and a low-grade fever.
Her medical history included cholecystitis (and a cholecystectomy), herniated disc, total abdominal hysterectomy, bilateral oophorectomy, bilateral salpingectomy, endometriosis, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, rheumatoid arthritis in remission, asthma, seasonal allergies, irritable bowel syndrome and obesity.
A male in his late 20s (randomization number 48413) who participated in the trial at Clinical Neuroscience Solutions Inc., sustained a bilateral pulmonary embolism on Dec. 14, 2020, with symptoms still ongoing as of the CRF date of Mar. 29, 2021.
This was listed as a “serious” adverse event that required hospitalization, but was attributed to the patient’s habit of vaping and his “sedentary lifestyle.” He had received the two doses of the vaccine on Aug. 13, 2020, and Sept. 2, 2020.
Other post-vaccination symptoms listed for the patient included fever, fatigue, headache, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, new/worsened muscle pain, new/worsened joint pain and swelling.
The patient had a medical history that included elevated triglycerides, genital herpes and seasonal allergies, in addition to a vaping habit.
The many serious adverse events – and several deaths – recorded during the Phase 3 trials are also apparent in a separate, massive document, exceeding 2,500 pages, cataloging such adverse events.
This document lists a wide range of adverse events suffered by trial participants classified as toxicity level 4 — the highest and most serious such level.
However, not one of the level 4 (most severe) adverse events listed in this particular document is classified as being related to the vaccination.
Level 4 adverse events listed in the document include but are not limited to the following, many of which occurred in multiple patients:
Acute cholecystitis
Acute respiratory failure
Adrenal carcinoma
Anaphylactic shock
Aortic valve incompetence
Appendicitis
Arrhythmia, supraventricular
Arteriosclerosis
Brain abscess
Cardiac arrest
Chronic myeloid leukemia
Complicated appendicitis/acute appendicitis with necrosis
Small bowel obstruction/small intestinal obstruction
Spontaneous coronary artery dissection
Subarachnoid hemorrhage
Suicidal ideation (and suicidal ideation with attempt)
Syncope
Type 2 diabetes
Worsening of abdominal pain
An “unevaluable event/“unknown of unknown origin”
Similarly, only a small number of toxicity level 3 adverse events were indicated as having been “related” to vaccination. Such adverse events included but are not limited to the following, some of which occurred in multiple trial participants:
Arthralgia
Blood glucose increase/glucose spike
Deafness/hearing loss
Dyspepsia
Hypotension
Lymph node pain
Lymphadenopathy/lymph node swelling
Musculoskeletal chest pain (non-cardiac)
Neutropenia
Pain in fingers/bilateral hands
Pruritus
Pyrexia/febrile syndrome
Severe headache
Shoulder injury related to vaccine administration
Sleep disorder/sleep disturbance
Tachycardia
Urticaria
Ventricular arrhythmia
Vertigo
Page 2,525 of the document in question also lists six trial participant deaths, with causes of death including arteriosclerosis, cardiac arrest, hemorrhagic stroke and myocardial infarction.
An additional document released in this month’s tranche catalogs patients who discontinued their participation in the Phase 3 trial, or whose participation was discontinued by physicians or other medical professionals.
While many patients were discontinued because they could not be located, because of a physician’s orders, because they moved to another region or for other personal reasons, numerous patients ended their participation due to adverse events, including but not limited to the following symptoms:
Acute myocardial infarction
Amnesia
Anorexia
Atrial fibrillation
Cerebral infarction
Congestive cardiac failure
Coronary artery disease
Deafness (unilateral)
Depression
Diabetic foot
Diverticular perforation
Exposure during pregnancy
Eye pain
Gait instability
Gastric adenocarcinoma
Gastrointestinal hemorrhage
Hypertension
Irregular heart rate
Loss of taste and smell
Myalgia
Paraparesis
Parkinsonism
Presyncope
Pulmonary embolism
Pyrexia
Swelling face
Tachycardia
Transient ischaemic attack
Urticaria
Vaccine allergy
Vertigo
In other instances, subjects withdrew because of fears connected to safety concerns related to the vaccine, or discomfort in receiving the second dose.
Clinical review document glosses over adverse events during trials
Also included in June’s FDA document dump was a 334-page “clinical review” document, which appears to have been approved by the FDA on Apr. 30, 2021, and which presents “pivotal data” from Phase 1/2/3 Study C4591001, conducted in the U.S., along with “supporting” Phase 1/2 data from Study BNT162-01, performed in Germany.
This document refers to both Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which received an EUA from the FDA, and the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine, which received full FDA approval but is reportedly almost impossible to find at vaccination locations in the U.S.
“BNT162b2 has received temporary authorizations for emergency supply in 28 countries and conditional marketing authorizations in 39 countries globally.
“The name of the product supplied under emergency/temporary use authorization for all applicable regions is Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine.
“The name of the product supplied under conditional marketing authorization for all applicable regions is COMIRNATY [COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine (nucleoside modified)].”
The document states that trial participants were administered one of two candidate vaccines, labeled BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 (the latter of which ultimately received an EUA from the FDA), or a placebo. A variety of dosage levels were also tested, ranging from 10 μg to 100 μg for BNT162b1, and 10 μg to 30 μg for BNT162b2.
In Phase 1 of Study BNT162-01, the clinical review reports that “40% to 45% of participants who received BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 across age groups and across dose levels reported one or more AEs [adverse events] from Dose 1 through 28 days (i.e., 1 month) after Dose 2.”
In what will turn out to be a general pattern throughout the clinical review, we are told that “most AEs were considered by the investigator as not related to study intervention and mild to moderate in severity, and all AEs were reported as resolved.”
Some specific adverse events highlighted in this part of the clinical review include:
“Among BNT162b1 recipients, 1 younger participant in the 10 μg group discontinued the study due to a moderate AE of malaise (considered as not related to study intervention) after Dose 1 and 1 younger participant in the 60 μg group discontinued due to a dose-limiting toxicity of pyrexia after Dose 1.
“One older participant in the 20 μg group had an SAE of severe syncope (considered as not related to study intervention) after Dose 1 and study treatment was withdrawn.
“Among BNT162b2 recipients, 1 younger participant in the 10 μg group discontinued the study due to a moderate AE of nasopharyngitis (considered as not related to study intervention) after Dose 1.
“One older participant in the 20 μg group had an SAE of ankle fracture (considered as not related to study intervention) after receiving both doses, was listed as recovering, and remains in follow-up.”
The clinical review also states “no deaths occurred in the Phase 1 part of Study BNT162-01.”
The review adds that “from Dose 1 of BNT162b2 30 μg to the unblinding date, 6 (50.0%) participants in the younger age group and 3 (25.0%) participants in the older age group reported at least 1 AE.”
Specifically, in this portion of the study, “two (16.7%) participants in the BNT162b2 30 μg younger age group and 1 (8.3%) participant in the BNT162b2 30 μg older age group reported at least 1 severe AE,” and “in the BNT162b2 30 μg younger age group, 3 (25.0%) participants reported at least 1 related AE and 1 (8.3%) participant reported 1 severe SAE.”
These specific adverse events, according to the review, were reported in “the system organ class (SOC) of nervous system disorders (3 [25.0%] participants in the younger age group and 1 [8.3%] participant in the older age group), followed by musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders (1 [8.3%] participant in each age group). All AEs by preferred term (PT) were reported by no more than 1 participant.”
The review adds, “from Dose 1 to the unblinding date, 1 participant in the BNT162b2 30 μg younger age group reported a severe SAE (neuritis) that was assessed by the investigator as not related to study intervention,” and “there were no Phase 1 participants randomized to BNT162b2 30 μg or corresponding placebo who died through the data cutoff date of 13 March 2021.”
Review of results from Study C4591001
While “incidences in the BNT162b2 and placebo were similar within the age groups for younger (9.1% vs 11.1%) and older (4.3% vs 8.9%) participants, among those who received BNT162b2 instead of the placebo, “two severe events of myalgia and gastric adenocarcinoma (which was also an SAE) were reported for 2 participants in the … younger age group, both assessed by the investigator as not related to study intervention.”
It is further mentioned that “the only discontinuation due to an AE during this time was the participant in the BNT162b2 younger age group who reported an SAE of gastric adenocarcinoma (discontinued from the study on Day 23 after Dose 1 of BNT162b2).”
Ultimately, from dose 1 to 1 month after dose 2 for participants during the blinded safety follow-up of study C4591001, “the numbers of overall participants who reported at least 1 AE and at least 1 related AE were higher in the BNT162b2 group (30.2% and 23.9%, respectively) as compared with the placebo group (13.9% and 6.0%, respectively).”
Specifically, “severe AEs were reported by 1.2% and 0.7% in in the BNT162b2 and placebo groups respectively, and life-threatening AEs were similar (0.1% in both groups),” and “SAEs and “AEs leading to withdrawal were reported by ≤0.6% and ≤0.2%, respectively, in
both groups,” while “discontinuations due to related AEs were reported in 13 participants in the BNT162b2 group and 11 participants in the placebo group (0.1% in both groups).”
Overall, as reported for this part of the study, “in the younger age group, the number of participants who reported at least 1 AE from Dose 1 to 1 month after Dose 2 was 4233 (32.6%) and 1871 (14.4%) in the BNT162b2 and placebo groups, respectively. In the older age group, the number of participants who reported at least 1 AE from Dose 1 to 1 month after Dose 2 was 2384 (26.7%) and 1177 (13.2%) in the BNT162b2 and placebo groups, respectively.”
The review specifies that “the most frequently reported AEs in the BNT162b2 group … were injection site pain (2915 [13.3%]), pyrexia (1517 [6.9%]), fatigue (1463 [6.7%]), chills (1365 [6.2%]), headache (1339 [6.1%]), and myalgia (1239 [5.7%]),” however, some more serious adverse events that were reported during this stage of the trial included facial paralysis, cardiac disorders, hepatic cirrhosis, cholecystitis/cholecystitis acute, biliary colic, bile duct stone, biliary dyskinesia, lymphadenopathy, appendicitis, optic neuritis and hypersensitivity/anaphylaxis.
Overall, according to the review, “from Dose 1 to 1 month after Dose 2, severe AEs reported during the blinded follow-up period were low in frequency, reported in 1.2% of BNT162b2 recipients and 0.7% of placebo recipients.”
During the “open-label follow-up period,” referring to the period when the initial trial has been completed but participants are invited to continue taking the study drug for an additional period, the review states “three participants originally randomized to BNT162b2 died during open-label follow-up.”
While one of these deaths was reportedly due to a road accident, the other two were attributed to lung metastases and myocardial infarction. However, none of these deaths “were assessed by the investigator as related to study intervention.”
Furthermore, according to the report, during this period “there were 12,006 participants who had at least 6 months of follow-up. Among these, 3,454 participants (28.8%) reported at least 1 AE and 2245 participants (18.7%) reported at least 1 related AE. Severe AEs and SAEs were reported by 2.1% and 1.6%, respectively.”
The review provides data for participants from dose 3 (first dose of BNT162b2) to the data cutoff date. The severe adverse event incidence rate (IR) was 6.0 per 100 PY (patient-years), with specific conditions reported including pulmonary embolisms, thrombosis, urticaria, a cerebrovascular accident and COVID-19 pneumonia.
Here, the review adds that the IR for original placebo participants who had at least 1 life-threatening AE from Dose 3 to the data cutoff date was 0.5 per 100 PY. Only one such life-threatening event, an instance of anaphylactoid reaction, was considered to be related to the vaccination. Other life-threatening, serious adverse events included cardio-respiratory arrest, gastrointestinal necrosis, deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism.
The report also notes, “There were 15 deaths in the BNT162b2 group and 14 deaths in the placebo group from Dose 1 to the unblinding date during the blinded placebo-controlled follow-up period.”
However, the report does not appear to go into detail about the causes of death for either group, other than to state, “None of these deaths were assessed by the investigator as related to study intervention.”
In the “Blinded Follow-Up Period from Dose 1 Through 1 Month After Dose 2,” in the BNT162b2 group, “SAE [serious adverse events] was similar in the BNT162b2 group (0.6%) and in the placebo group (0.5%),” with three SAEs in the non-placebo group deemed to be related to the vaccine. These included ventricular arrhythmia, lymphadenopathy and SIRVA.
During the “open-label follow-up period” for “original BNT162b2 participants,” the report states “one younger participant with no past medical history had a life-threatening SAE of myocardial infarction 71 days after Dose 2 that was assessed by the investigator as related to study intervention.”
However, despite its life-threatening nature, this condition “lasted 1 day and resolved the same day.”
Overall, “from Dose 1 to 6 months after Dose 2, during the blinded and open-label follow-up periods, 190 (1.6%) participants in the BNT162b2 group reported at least 1 SAE,” and “the number of participants who reported at least 1 SAE was 73 (1.1%) and 117 (2.2%) in the younger and older age groups, respectively.”
These SAEs were categorized as neoplasms, infections and infestations, gastrointestinal disorders, hepatobiliary disorders, respiratory/thoracic/mediastinal disorders and injury/poisoning/procedural complications.
An original placebo participant who received BNT162b2 for Dose 3 experienced a severe adverse event that “was assessed by the investigator as related to study intervention; specifically, “an anaphylactoid reaction 2 days post Dose 3” leading to the participant’s withdrawal from the study, despite a reported resolution.
A separate subsection in the report specifically addressed cases of Bell’s palsy and facial paralysis among trial participants. Specifically, “during the blinded placebo-controlled follow-up period, 6 participants developed one-sided facial paralysis (Bell’s palsy): 4 were randomized to BNT162b2 (all male) and 2 were randomized to placebo (1 male; 1 female),” according to the review.
Regarding the four vaccinated trial participants, their ages ranged from 40 to 70, with symptoms appearing three to 48 days after their last dose. Their symptoms were recorded as “mild to moderate in severity,” with duration ranging “from 3 to 68 days,” and with two of these cases “considered by the investigator to be related to study intervention.”
Moreover, “during the open-label follow-up period, 3 participants who received BNT162b2 as Dose 3 or Dose 4 (after originally being randomized to placebo) experienced facial paralysis,” according to the review. These patients were all female, with an age range between 19 and 34. Events were recorded as beginning two to eight days after administration of the third dose, and “were mild to severe.” One case had a duration of 12 days, while the other two cases were ongoing as of the cutoff date of the trial.
Notably, according to the review, “all these events of facial paralysis were considered by the investigator as related to study intervention.”
The review adds, “during the open-label follow-up period for participants originally randomized to BNT162b2, a male participant 51 years of age developed Bell’s Palsy 154 days after receiving Dose 2.” No indication is given as to whether this was deemed to be related to the vaccination or not.
From dose 1 to the unblinding date, heart-related adverse events included “6 acute myocardial infarctions, 4 myocardial infarctions group, and 1 acute coronary syndrome” in the BNT162b2 group.
According to the review, “most of these events had onset distant (ie, >30 days following) to receipt of vaccine or placebo. None of these events were assessed by the investigator as related to study intervention.”
Moreover, “there was 1 participant in the older BNT162b2 age group with pericarditis. The event had an onset of 28 days after Dose 2, was ongoing at the data cutoff date, and was assessed by the investigator as not related to the study intervention.”
Additionally, “there were 8 cases of pulmonary embolism in the BNT162b2 group,” in addition to four hemorrhagic strokes and “2 ischemic strokes, 4 cerebral vascular accidents, 2 transient ischemic attacks” in this group, plus “1 case of thrombocytopenia and 1 case of platelet count decreased.”
Furthermore, “there were 9 thrombotic events in the BNT162b2 group,” including seven instances of deep vein thrombosis, one case of coagulopathy and one case of ophthalmic vein thrombosis.
Regarding autoimmune issues in the BNT162b2 group, the review states “there were 10 autoimmune disease cases identified,” with one case each of “autoimmune thyroiditis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, reactive arthritis, fibromyalgia, systemic lupus erythematosus, alopecia areata, psoriasis,” and two cases of psoriatic arthropathy.
Pregnancies were largely glossed over in the review, which states:
“At the time of the data cutoff date (13 March 2021), a total of 50 participants who had received BNT162b2 had reported pregnancies, including 42 participants originally randomized to the BNT162b2 group and 8 participants originally randomized to the placebo group who then received BNT162b2.”
“In total, 12 participants (n=6 each in the randomized BNT162b2 and placebo groups) withdrew from the blinded placebo-controlled vaccination period of the study due to pregnancy, and 4 participants originally randomized to placebo who then received BNT162b2 withdrew from the open-label vaccination period due to pregnancy.
“These participants continue to be followed for pregnancy outcomes. No births have been reported from individuals who have become pregnant in Study C4591001 as of the time of this submission.
“All pregnancies have a risk of birth defect, loss, or other adverse outcomes. Available data on BNT162b2 administered to pregnant women are insufficient to inform vaccine-associated risks in pregnancy.”
Pfizer concludes vaccines are ‘safe and well-tolerated’
Overall, despite the incidence of severe adverse events — some of which were admitted to be related to the vaccine — and deaths, as well as an admitted lack of data regarding outcomes for pregnant women who participated in the trial, the “safety conclusions” of the review indicate the following:
“Based on Phase 1 data from the FIH Study BNT162-01, BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 were safe and well-tolerated in healthy adults 18 to 55 years of age, with no unanticipated safety findings … and the AE profile and clinical laboratory results did not suggest any safety concerns.
“Based on Phase 1 data from Study C4591001 and Study BNT162-01, BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 were safe and well-tolerated in younger healthy adults 18 to 85 years of age, with no unanticipated safety findings … and the AE profile did not suggest any safety concerns, including up to approximately 6 months after Dose 2 for BNT162b2 30 μg groups.
“Based on Phase 2/3 data from approximately 44,000 participants ≥16 years of age with up to at least 6 months of follow-up after Dose 2 in Study C4591001, BNT162b2 at 30 μg was safe and well-tolerated across age groups … and the AE profile did not suggest any serious safety concerns. The incidence of SAEs and deaths were low in the context of the number of participants enrolled and comparable in BNT162b2 and placebo. The incidence of discontinuations due to AEs was also generally low and similar between BNT162b2 and placebo groups.
“Cumulative safety follow-up to at least 6 months after Dose 2 for approximately 12,000 Phase 2/3 participants originally randomized to BNT162b2, comprising the combined blinded and open-label periods, showed no new safety signals or suggested [any] new safety concerns arising from this period of follow-up.
“Similarly, open-label follow-up of participants originally randomized to placebo from the time of unblinding to receive BNT162b2 until the data cutoff date showed no new safety signals or concerns.
“The AE profile among approximately 44,000 participants ≥16 years of age enrolled to date as of the most recent safety cutoff date (13 March 2021), was mostly reflective of reactogenicity events with low incidences of severe and/or related events. The incidence of SAEs was low and similar in the vaccine and placebo groups. Few participants withdrew from the study due to AEs. Few deaths occurred overall in both the vaccine and placebo groups with no imbalance.
“For participants randomized to placebo and then unblinded to receive BNT162b2 vaccination, open-label data from the time of unblinding to the data cutoff date (13 March 2021) showed no new safety findings or signals.
“Taken together, efficacy and immunogenicity data suggest the BNT162b2 (30 μg) 2-dose regimen induces a strong immune response and provides durable protection from COVID-19 across a spectrum of individuals representative of the population at large for individuals ≥16 years of age: those with or without prior exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and those in higher-risk categories based on age, race, ethnicity, and/or comorbidity.”
As a result, and based on the above data, the review makes a case for the approval of BNT162b2:
“A vaccine program must be implemented expediently and rapidly expanded to have a significant impact on the pandemic course. Licensure of BNT162b2 is likely to enhance vaccine uptake by facilitating supply of vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech directly to pharmacies and healthcare providers/facilities.
“The greatest impact of BNT162b2 licensure may be direct supply to healthcare providers who serve vulnerable populations such as elderly patients and those who live in rural and underserved communities (i.e., individuals who might be unable to navigate the challenges of securing vaccine access using the systems in place for EUA).
“Expansion of vaccine via licensure would ultimately improve the prospect of achieving population herd immunity to bring the pandemic under control.
“Overall, the potential risks and benefits, as assessed by the safety profile and the efficacy and immunogenicity of BNT162b2 (30 μg), are balanced in favor of the potential benefits to prevent COVID-19 in immunized individuals.
“Likewise, the BNT162b2 30 μg benefit and risk profile support further development in pediatric, maternal, and other at-risk populations.”
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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
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Apparently, Volodymir Zelensky‘s popularity in Ukraine is very low. The Ukrainian leader called for a virtual diplomatic meeting with African heads of state, but the event failed completely. Almost all African leaders declined to participate, hampering Zelensky’s plans to make the meeting a pro-Kiev propaganda stage. Meanwhile, the Russian government’s popularity is growing in Africa, where citizens take the streets in support for the special military operation in Ukraine and ask for Russian help in combating terrorism.
On June 20, the Ukrainian president met with representatives of the African Union in order to discuss matters concerning the current conflict situation in Eastern Europe and the role of Africa on the world arena. Of the fifty-five heads of state invited to the meeting, only four attended. The other countries sent only diplomats or ministers, with the heads of state and government not willing to attend, even with the meeting being virtual.
The heads of state who attended the meeting were Macky Sall of Senegal, Alassane Ouattara of Côte d’Ivoire, Mohammed el-Menfi, President of the Libyan Council, and Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo. It is important to note that Sall is the current president of the African Union, which is why his presence was essential for the event to take place. Therefore, his attendance does not necessarily mean an expression of his real desire – even more considering his recent conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the effort to increase Russia-Africa cooperation.
The virtual meeting was operated in secret, behind closed doors. According to official sources, Zelensky reiterated the Ukrainian position on the conflict, calling the Russian operation an unjustified “aggression”. He also commented on the current food crisis affecting Africa as a result of the conflict’s impact on the grain market. According to Zelensky, the African continent is Russia’s “hostage” because food shortages would be the result of such “aggression” and would only end when Russia decided to retreat.
Commenting on the event, Macky Sall took the most neutral and impartial stance possible, demonstrating that the Africa Union did not adhere to Zelensky’s appeals, but was concerned only with African states’ interests and the proper functioning of international law.
“Africa remains committed to respecting the rules of international law, the peaceful resolution of conflicts and the freedom of trade”, he said in a publication in his Twitter account.
It is interesting to note how Zelensky’s attempt to convince African leaders to adhere to the Kiev-Western narrative absolutely failed. Not only did most African heads of state refuse to listen to the Ukrainian leader, but there was no adherence to the pro-Kiev speech on the part of those who attended the conference. For the African Union, the meeting was just a diplomatic formality, with no real gains or changes in position – which reveals that Zelensky’s plans did not work as expected.
This failure, however, was predictable for any realistic analyst. For African leaders, it is really hard to believe the fallacious narrative that Ukraine is a simple “victim” of an “unjustified aggression”. African countries are used to centuries of Western interventionism and violence and the peoples of this continent react to this with strong distrust of everything that Western nations support. As Zelensky is the ally of the US and Europe, he will likely be viewed with suspicion by countries that suffer so much from Western colonialist mentality and praxis.
In addition, there are other factors that need to be mentioned. Zelensky’s arguments that the food crisis is caused exclusively by Russia are no longer able to convince public opinion and state authorities. It is evident that, more than the conflict itself, the crisis has been caused by the sanctions against Russia, which motivates emerging countries to be enthusiastic about the end of these sanctions. Also, there are many reports that Kiev is exporting grain to the US and Europe in exchange for weapons, which is unacceptable.
Furthermore, there has recently been a strong wave of popular support for the operation in Ukraine from citizens of several African countries, especially in the regions most affected by terrorism. After the abandonment that Africa has suffered from the West in terms of security policies and defense cooperation, seeking Russian support has become the greatest hope for the members of the African Union, which is why recently there have been popular demonstrations in support of all Moscow’s actions, alongside requests for help to solve Africa’s internal problems.
In fact, in international relations, nothing matters more than cooperation. Zelensky will not be able to garner African support if he does not show interest or conditions to cooperate with Africa. Kiev currently has nothing to offer African countries, as it is economically broken and militarily virtually neutralized. On the other hand, Russia shows itself as a pillar for African food security and as a hope against terrorism in the continent. It is absolutely expected that in this context the African Union will decline its ties with Kiev and seek to approach the side that offers the best opportunities for cooperation.
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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.
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“The big bankers of the world, who practice the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings and field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no one: they limit themselves to applauding the show. Their officials, international technocrats, rule our countries: they are neither presidents nor ministers, they have not been elected, but they decide the level of salaries and public expenditure, investments and divestments, prices, taxes, interest rates, subsidies, when the sun rises and how frequently it rains. However, they don’t concern themselves with the prisons or torture chambers or concentration camps or extermination centers, although these house the inevitable consequences of their acts. The technocrats claim the privilege of irresponsibility: we are neutral, they say.” — Eduardo Galeano (1)
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Since February 2022 when the Russian operation in Ukraine started, Western media called it an “invasion.” Framed as “war” it became, like all wars, a violation of human rights. However, it could have been understood as an operation to put an end to the abuses perpetrated by the Ukrainian army against Eastern Ukrainians of Russian roots in Donbas.
If the West would have done such a thing it would have been called a “humanitarian mission.” The term, coined by the US, is obviously not to be used by anyone but us; it is exclusive to our armed endeavours in bringing down governments we do not like anymore to replace them with “friendly ones” that would sustain “our kind of democracy.” We did it in Kosovo, in response to what was called an “ethnic cleansing,” and in doing it we destroyed Yugoslavia. We used excuses in Iraq (and many other places) where a bad guy, previously our friend and client, Saddam Hussein, turned into “evil.” Saddam Hussein was captured, found guilty of crimes against humanity and hanged on December 30 2006 before cameras. We watched him on TV. It was the beginning of similar operations and wars. But for Russia to think that it can dare to turn the tables on us, do a military operation of its own to “prevent genocide or crimes against humanity” and get away with it. No, it cannot be; it is an oxymoron, an unthinkable contradiction.
That Putin!
It can become confusing when others start calling their interventions humanitarian, done to protect or preserve the lives of people of their side. It is challenging for us too because “our people” need to be able to easily separate the good from the bad guys, our side from the other one.
Good and evil cannot be mixed and the others are always evil and in need of “fixing.” Historical context often needs erasing too, it can add to the challenge and we want to be able to understand what is going on without reading beyond the 2 to 5 minutes reads of online Media.
So, what if there is no history and we think the world born “as is” in the present, in this case on February 24th with the Russians crossing the line in Ukraine. Trust our Media and our Politicians. It gets easier as time goes by as we no longer remember how they misrepresented reality, or lied to us over the years. It helps that we live in a convenient form of amnesia, a bubble not that different from other bubbles that surround us, never to be pinched by any needle of truth (or doubt) without risking chaos and hysteria. We are children, we need to be protected from truth, ugly and dirty as it often is and generally quite complicated. We prefer it simple!
Ignoring fascism in Ukraine became a must.
I knew about it so I tried to tell my friends but got “silence.” Initially I believed their silence was agreement, even respect for my more “informed” perspective. Later I realized that silence was just that, the end of conversation, a sign for a change of topic. Nevertheless, if you want truth about the Azov Battalion, Stepan Bandera, Ukrainian-Nazis collaborating with German-Nazis during WW2-even managing concentration camps for the Third Reich, you can find it: not everybody is silent. In fact you can learn about how the bad guys who committed crimes against humanity during WW2 became “good guys” after, just read Evan Reif (2). And if you are Canadian, or live in Canada, and want to know more about our government connections to the Azov Battalion in Ukraine you can learn more reading Sonja Van den Ende (3).
History, that necessary evil.
In 2014 Euro-Maidan, a kind of color revolution compliments from the West, forced Viktor Yanukovitch then president of Ukraine to leave his country. It also led to the Donbas self-government decision, to talks about separation from Ukraine and the Minsk accords (1 & 2). In 2014 Yanukovitch himself told the press that he was forced to leave by threats against his life and family.
“Power was taken by nationalists, fascists youngsters who are the absolute minority of Ukraine.” He blamed the “irresponsible policies” of the West for the crisis in the country and said “terror and chaos” were now prevailing in Ukraine. “This is the result of the irresponsible policies of the West, which was supporting the Maidan.” Referring to the square in Kiev where anti-government demonstrations have taken place over the past three months, he said lawlessness and chaos had followed an agreement he signed with his opponents last Friday, brokered by the European Union and intended to end three months of crisis. He had been “compelled to leave” Ukraine after he received threats to his security, (he) apologised “to the Ukrainian people” for not having had more strength to endure the situation. (4)
The attacks on Donbas started soon after Euro-Maidan and went on for 8 years during Minsk negotiations including both Ukrainian parties, France, Germany and Russia.
By 2022 attacks in the Donbas have killed thousands and the region was surrounded by the Ukrainian Army. After Yanukovitch, Petro Poroshenko became president in Ukraine representing Ukraine on the Minsk negotiations. Russians accused him of negotiating in bad faith. In 2019 Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to power in Ukraine -elected on a platform of restoring peace in the Donbas and implementing the Minsk agreement. His position changed once in power. It is possible that he could not do much about bringing peace. The Ukrainian Army had assimilated the political agenda of NATO and the ideology of the Azov Battalion by then. Donbas was not to be allowed to self-government or to leave Ukraine and Crimea’s independence was in question.
Often not mentioned, but before 2014 the EU had a plan called EU Agreement which had much to do with soil. Ukrainian soil, rich in hummus, is in a good percentage “black soil,” much richer than other soils. Ukraine has one fourth of our planet black soil. Of its 42 million hectares of land more than 70 per cent are arable, making Ukraine an agricultural power house. Black soil, also called chernozem or mollisols, exists only in a few places in the world: the Steppes in Ukraine and Russia, the Prairies in the US and Canada, and the pampas in Argentina. Even if monocultures, plowing and climate change are eroding all soils, black soils are still the most productive lands of the world, so valuable that they are called “black gold.”
The IMF World Bank Connection
International finances, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), have played a significant role in the current situation in Ukraine, but we do not hear much about this. In late 2013 a conflict between pro-European Union (EU) and pro-Russian Ukrainians escalated to violent levels (Euro-maidan) leading to the departure of Ukraine then President Yanukovych (in February 2014) and prompting the greatest East-West confrontation since the Cold War. The precipitating factor was Yanukovych rejection of the EU Agreement furthering open trade and integrating Ukraine with the European Union. The EU Agreement was tied to a 17 billion dollars loan from the IMF. Yanukovych instead favored an alternative agreement with Russia including aid worth 15 billion dollars plus a 33% discount on Russian natural gas. (5)
After Yanukovych’s departure a pro-EU government took power and signed the EU Agreement that included an IMF loan.
In May 2014 a 3.5 billion dollars aid program by the WB was announced by its president (Jim Yong Kim) who lauded Ukrainian authorities for accepting WB support. He failed to mention the neo-liberal conditions imposed by the Bank for the money. Conditionalities, as they are called, have been an issue in connection with money loans by IMF/WB. The weight of conditionalities on loaning countries in the developing world include structural adjustment programmes. Thus, in Ukraine, as in other countries, conditionalities predicted increased foreign control of the economy, poverty and inequality (5).
“It remains to be seen, how the WB will improve the lives of Ukrainians and build a sustainable economic future…The IMF austerity reforms will affect monetary and exchange rate policies, the financial sector, fiscal policies, the energy sector, governance, and the business climate.” (5)
Conditions for the loans included government limiting its own power -by removing restrictions to competition, and limiting the role of state control in economic activities. Ukraine, the world’s third largest exporter of corn (fifth of wheat) was now in the hands of bankers and agribusiness and it was also losing control over other natural resources (uranium and other minerals) while facing geopolitical issues rooted in its intention to request NATO membership, a time bomb. (5)
In signing the EU Agreement Ukraine committed to austerity measures to pay the IMF loan -slashing public pensions and wages, reforming public provision of water and energy increasing costs for users, privatizing banks and, most important, ending the moratorium on the sale of land in place since 1996 to protect Ukrainian land from international investors. Ukraine largest international investor, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBDR), has been working towards large-scale privatization of land and expansion of industrial agriculture (agribusiness) since 2014. In August 2019, the World Bank approved a US$ 200 million loan to “restructure Ukraine’s agricultural market” and the “auctioning of state lands.” The announcement of the loan came with President Zelensky’s pledge to move fast on lifting the moratorium on the sale of land. In addition, the moratorium was ruled by the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) as in violation of the right to the protection of property under the European Convention on Human Rights -despite being set in the public interest. ECHR has no enforcement mechanism anywhere, but in Ukraine its national legislation requires the Ukrainian state to implement ECHR’s rulings. (6,7)
Zelensky ordered his government to draft a bill for the privatization of the agricultural land market, the end of the moratorium, and to be open for business by October 1, 2020. People surveyed were opposed to this (by 73%) and against land sales to foreigners (by 81%) so his government delayed finalizing the bill to hold further “consultations with stakeholders”; it was mainly a public relations effort on a done deal. The Land Turnover Law approved staged opening of a land market from July 1st, 2021 until December 31st, 2023 allowing only Ukrainian citizens the purchase of up to 100 hectares of agricultural land. Then, from January 1st 2024 Ukrainian citizens and Legal entities would be able to buy up to 10 000 hectares. But before allowing foreign citizens to buy agricultural land Ukraine will hold a referendum not prior 2024. (6, 7)
The IMF/WB loans together with ECHR ruling against the moratorium successfully privatized pensions, limited government power and forced austerity measures in Ukraine while increasing poverty and giving access of productive agricultural lands to global agribusinesses. In any case even before this some of these lands were already in the hands of powerful oligarchs and Western agribusinesses. Specifics were difficult to document because of off-shore tax havens and land tenure practices. In 2015, however, the Oakland Institute estimated land foreign ownership in Ukraine to be up to 2.2 million hectares and by 2018 the top 10 domestic and foreign agricultural holdings controlled about 2.8 million hectares. Cargill, Bayer, DuPont had made important investments since 2014. Bayer (owner of Monsanto) had also won an anti-monopoly suit in Ukraine and it was very unlikely that it would be further challenged by Ukraine’s antitrust body. The agribusiness sector could consolidate without challenge in Ukraine. (6)
“Under President Zelensky, Ukraine seems to be catering to the Western interest in the take-over of its agricultural sector. A five-year national plan to mobilize private investment in the agriculture and agribusiness sector was launched in 2019 with a budget of US$ 1.2 billion, partly funded by the WB…the way Ukraine is forced to privatize its land and create a land market has no precedent in modern history.” (6)
Indebtedness with IMF/WB demands privatization of public wealth and, rather than expanding Ukraine’s real economy, indebts it more. Increasing inequality and poverty to pay debts is an expected outcome when implementing IMF/WB policies. The results of structural adjustments and austerity not only increase inequality and poverty; it also favors migration to the cities (forming a poverty belt around them) and continental migration (in search of improved living conditions). The EU tempted Ukraine with hopes of becoming an equal standing member of the EU and able to benefit from the “riches of the West.” It also played a role in encouraging Ukraine to apply for NATO membership, despite awareness that such step, openly ignoring security concerns repeatedly raised by Russia, could cause conflict.
Fascism, Privatizations and Structural Adjustments
Ukraine had managed to maintain internal stability despite cultural diversity and it had overcome its history of fascism; the West resurrected fascist ideology through the Euro-Maidan to its own ends. Havoc was created to favor not the interest of Ukraine but EU and US interests, and to enrich global corporations. Social net, sense of community were put at risk, people were made unsafe awhile facing increased violence. Ukrainians on the West against Ukrainians of the East. The EU was relentless, it overlooked all risks. Thus, the EU cannot claim ignorance, deny responsibility; the Russian government expressed security concerns repeatedly for 8 years at Minsk; the EU failed to listen.
In Spain, fascism had emerged to put an end to the Spanish Republic, which had been freely elected to pursue a more equitable society. Fascism was responsible for a civil war that killed hundred of thousands of people and ended imposing the Franco regime (from 1939 to1975), a fascist regime before fascist Italy or Nazi Germany even existed and also longer lasting than either of them. After WW1 an indebted Germany finding no way out also favored an ideology of hatred. The Nazis persecuted people from the Left, Jewish and Roma people, homosexuals and anyone considered different, even children with disabilities. It hurt, exploit them or killed them, sending them to concentration camps and slave labor. Fascism and a war economy precipitated WW2 attacking even those who played blind to it. History proves that poverty and inequality paired with an ideology of organized hate has favored fascism.
In Latin America fascism has often been imposed through military coups, often to end projects focused on achieving basic economic and social rights and true democratization. Inciting hate is not that difficult when people is deprived of basic human needs and rights; and when power, fear and propaganda work together to impose ideologies of hate. Can Europe afford blindness to its own history or allow a US proxy war against Russia using Ukraine to continue? The threat is not limited to Ukraine, not even to Europe, it can become a nuclear confrontation and threaten the entire world. Peace is the only option but negotiations are denied or ignored. Lies and propaganda obscure reality while we continue blindly walking towards a larger, more lethal confrontational event.
Finances: Money behind it all
In the West the term “Russian oligarchs” is freely used but there is no such talk about our own billionaires. American or European oligarchs are not mentioned and yet we have many. It could be dangerous to name the sin in the house of the sinner. At home oligarchy is defined as “rule by the few” bypassing an important detail in the original definition which was “rule by the wealthy few.” Power achieved either through politics or money -boundaries increasingly fluid around both, have made democracy (if ever existed) obsolete, and in name only.
Western nations used it as label to mark its “non-democratic others.” Billionaires use their money power quite openly now, and while they may not be wanting to become any nation’s “president” they occupy high places as “consultants with great power.” We have a sample, with Bill Gates, a Rockefeller apprentice, environment and health guru and friend of Jeffrey Epstein. Soros, the self imposed, open society and international “know it all” on call. And, Zuckerberg, the social media and “metaverse” billionaire, using technology to sell us addictive plastic mask contraptions to blind, alienate and isolate us so we live out of the real world.
In the midst of Western financial capitalism, with apparent total dominion of the world, the Russians crossed the line.
“I say to the Russian oligarchs and the corrupt leaders who bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime: no more…We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.” Biden said in his State of the Union address. (8)
The question: Why did the Russian’s cross the line? Well, the Russians have their own narrative and a plan about this, and they are not alone either. Targeting the Russian elite, a strategy to bring Putin down, has, clearly, not worked. It so happens that it is also quite challenging to implement. Why? Because the US has become a major destination tax-haven for criminal and oligarch wealth from around the world, not just Russia. US charities received billions from Russian oligarchs cleaning their image and reputation. Global wealth is flooding into the US -into luxury real estate in New York and other assets (art, jewelry, cryptocurrency). Business is business: a vast wealth-hiding apparatus including lawyers, accountants and wealth managers, often called “a wealth defense industry” or “agents of inequality,” facilitates the wealth disappearing act. It also uses its political power to block reforms. A first step in fixing this would be to ensure total transparency in the US, including disclosure of beneficial ownership in real estate, trusts, companies and corporations. But, can this be done? (8)
For much of the 20th century, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a small club of rich nations has been setting international tax policy and creating a system that rests on bilateral tax treaties ensuring that corporations doing business outside of their home nation are not taxed twice. God forbid! This global tax order has nations setting their own tax rates and provides space for corporations to manipulate it to evade taxes. Apple became good at gaming the system, moving valuable intellectual property to low-tax jurisdictions while charging fees in high-tax ones. This strategy is called BEPS -domestic tax base erosion and profit shifting. Such tricks, OECD estimates, cost governments worldwide as much as a quarter of a trillion dollars annually in lost revenue.
“Amazon, source of the one of the world’s largest personal fortunes, had paid in 2021 a miniscule 1 million pounds in taxes for a 4 billion pounds in sales in the United Kingdom. (9)
“The Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has used “a network of banks, law firms and advisers in multiple countries,” the New York Times just reported, to invest “billions in American hedge funds.” Along the way, he tapped the expertise and contacts of U.S. high-finance giants ranging from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to BlackRock and the Carlyle Group.(9)
“But the damage the wealth defense industry has wreaked upon the Western world — indeed the whole planet — goes beyond undermining the sanction squeeze on Russia’s oligarchs. These defenders of grand private fortune appear to have placed somewhere between $5 trillion and $8 trillion worldwide beyond the reach of tax collectors…And no nation has done more to spread this contagion than the United States. Anonymous American companies, one World Bank survey has found, played key roles in 85 percent of the over 150 cases of grand corruption that World Bank analysts examined.”(9)
The criminality and arrogance of money should terrorize us. The plans big money may have for us and the world produce nightmares in those of us aware of the power money has. Sam Pizzigati hopes the “war in Ukraine” activates advocacy against oligarchy everywhere, particularly at home. But he is also aware that money will try to force alternative thinking and acting. As long as politicians and the political system remain in the pockets of big money, relevant political change seems unlikely. The game is on the turned table; we cannot even know exactly how long and far the hand of kleptocracy reaches. This conflict is bringing some realities to the forefront. We are seen, partly, the monster in the eye. We may have reached the point where it is impossible to ignore it. Dealing at home, in the West, with the terrorism money is causing will be the political test of our times.
*
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Nora Fernandez is a member of the Executive of Canadian Network on Cuba and Nova Scotia Cuba.
Notes
1. Eduardo Galeano quoted in “Pathologies of Power. Health, Human Rights, and The New War on The Poor” (2005). Paul Farmer, University of California Press.
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).
(This article was first published on August 30, 2021)
There is a worldwide upward trend of vaccine deaths and injuries.
The latest official figures (April 3, 2022) point to approximately:
69,053 Covid-19 injection related deaths and 10,997,085 injuries for the EU, US and UK Combined for a population of 830 million people
But only a small fraction of the victims or families of the deceased will go through the tedious process of reporting vaccine related deaths and adverse events to the national health authorities.
Moreover, the health authorities are actively involved in obfuscating the deaths and injuries resulting from the “unapproved” and “experimental” Covid-19 “vaccine”.
“Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but underreported. … less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. (emphasis added)
***
While we are not in a position to establish precise estimates, we are able to establish the order of magnitude.
Multiply the official figures (registered and recorded) by the relevant parameter to get the REAL NUMBERS of deaths and injuries.
Very High Numbers
Assuming that 10% of deaths and adverse events are reported (a very conservative assumption according to Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc, p. 6)
The Covid-19 “Vaccine” would have resulted in
690,000 deaths and more than 100 million “adverse events” for a combined population of approximately 830 million (UK, EU, US).
Video: The Covid-19 vaccine was launched in mid to late December 2020.
In many countries, there was a significant shift in mortality following the introduction of the mRNA vaccine
In January 2021 at the the very outset of the vaccination program, a mass funeral protest for children who died after receiving a Pfizer vaccine was held in Geneva, Switzerland.(Bitchute Channel, and Telegram channel)
The official figures are manipulated. Vaccine related deaths are often attributed to Covid-19.
Peer reviewed reports confirm the causes of vaccine related deaths and adverse effects (injuries) including among others blood clots, thrombosis, myocarditis, cardiac arrests, fertility.
DO NOT GET VACCINATED.
STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN VACCINATED.
INFORM PEOPLE ACROSS THE LAND ON THE HEALTH RISKS.
TAKE A FIRM STANCE AGAINST THE VACCINE PASSPORT.
The legitimacy of politicians and their Big Money sponsors must be challenged.
We must act with a single voice nationally and internationally.
Our First Task is to disable the fear campaign
The COVID-19 “vaccination” programme should be halted immediately worldwide.
Michel Chossudovsky, November 12, 2021, January 30, 2022, June 22, 2022
***
Introduction
Let us be under no illusions, it’s not only “experimental”, it’s a Big Pharma “killer vaccine” which modifies the human genome. The evidence of mortality and morbidity resulting from vaccine inoculation both present (official data) and future (e.g. undetected microscopic blood clots) is overwhelming.
Numerous scientific studies published independently confirm the nature of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine which is being imposed on all humanity.
The stated objective is to enforce the Worldwide vaccination of 7.9 billion people in more than 190 countries, to be followed by the imposition of a digitized “vaccine passport”. Needless to say this is a multi-billion dollar operation for Big Pharma.
Bill Gates and WHO’s Director General Dr. Tedros
The global vaccine project entitled COVAX is coordinated Worldwide by the WHO, GAVI, CEPI, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in liaison with the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Wellcome Trust, DARPA and Big Pharma which is increasingly dominated by the Pfizer-GSK partnership established barely four months before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis in early January 2020.
The Covid-19 Timeline
Fake figures of covid-19 positive cases and covid-19 related deaths. Lies upon lies.
There is a complex timeline. The covid crisis is marked by several stages leading up to the implementation of mass vaccination Worldwide in December 2020.
A fake Worldwide Public Health Emergency (PHEIC) was announced by the WHO on January 30, 2020 (based on 83 positive cases Worldwide outside China), followed by the onset of the crisis in air travel and international commodity trade (Trump on January 31, 2020), the February 20, 2020 financial crash, the March 11, 2020 lockdown, followed by the second, third waves and fourth waves. When will it end?
For further details on the Timeline see Chapter II of
The March 11, 2020 Lockdown and Its Devastating Social and Economic Consequences
Starting on March 11, 2020, 44,279 so-called confirmed RT-PCR “positive cases” (Worldwide out of China) and 1440 Covid deaths were used to justify:
social confinement,
the lockdown and closure of 190 national economies, crisis of the global economy,
extensive corporate bankruptcies in key sectors of economic activity,
the outright elimination of small and medium sized enterprises,
the triggering of poverty and mass unemployment,
social distancing, the face mask, no social and family gatherings,
devastating impacts on mental health,
an engineered crisis of the national health system,
the closure of schools, colleges and universities,
the closure of museums, concert halls, cultural and sport events,
institutional collapse and the disruption of civil society.
The stated objective has always been to save lives.
The outcome of these policies have literally destroyed people’s lives. Millions of people Worldwide have been driven into extreme poverty.
And then ten months later the Covid-19 vaccine has come to our rescue.
It was announced in early November 2020 and launched Worldwide in late December.
The fear campaign has spearheaded compliance and acceptance to higher authority.
.
The mRNA Vaccine
The mRNA vaccine was presented as an everlasting solution, as a means to curbing the epidemic, saving lives, reopening our shattered national economies and restoring a sense of normality in our daily lives.
A massive propaganda campaign was initiated in support of the vaccine.
A fake promise of a new life. A return to reason and normalcy.
All of this turned out to be an illusion, spearheaded by lies and fabrications.
The ideology of the financial elites and the billionaire foundations was imposed: The vaccine was upheld as a means to carrying out the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset”:
“You’ll Own Nothing and Be Happy”: a stylized future predicated on debt and extreme poverty coupled with a ‘killer vaccine”.
What is envisaged under “The Great Reset” (Klaus Schwab, image left) is a scenario whereby the global creditors will have appropriated by 2030 the World’s wealth, while impoverishing large sectors of the World Population.
The billionaire elites do not hide their intent. In 2030 “You’ll own nothing, And you’ll be happy.”
Video: Michel Chossudovsky provides a broad picture of the ongoing crisis which is destroying people’s lives Worldwide.
The video below was initially published by Vimeo in late 2020, prior to launching of the vaccine in December 2020. It was taken down on March 5, 2022 as an act of censorship directed against Global Research.
Video: The Worldwide Corona Crisis: Prof Michel Chossudovsky
To view the video on Bitchute and/or enter a comment, click the link to Bitchute
Lies through omission: the dramatic trend in mortality and morbidity related to the vaccine (confirmed by official sources) since early January 2021 had been carefully obfuscated.
“Killer Virus” or “Killer Vaccine”?
The first question which stands out is: Do We Need a Vaccine?
The answer is NO! There is no scientific basis whatsoever which justifies the gene-edited vaccine as a means to saving lives and protecting people’s health Worldwide.
The alleged “scientific justification” for the vaccination program relies on the three simple and misleading “phrases” or “labels” which are totally invalid:
SARS-COV-2 is a “killer virus”
There is a rising Worldwide trend of covid-19 infection,
People are dying as a result of the covid-19 infection.
Refutation of Above Statements
1. SARS-CoV-2 is “a killer virus”.
That’s the cornerstone of the 24/7 fear and media disinformation campaign upheld by persistent statements by politicians and national health authorities.
Both the peer-reviewed as well the WHO, CDC “official” definitions of SARS-CoV-2 say exactly the opposite. Their definitions of SARS-2 repeal their own lies. (For details see Appendix)
2. There is a Rising Worldwide Trend of Covid-19 infection.
This alleged trend is said to be corroborated by a rapidly increasing number of covid positive cases.
The methodology used to generate these figures is dependent upon the WHO sponsored Real Time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (rRT-PCR) test, the estimates of which are tabulated Worldwide by the national health authorities.
While the estimates of the rRT-PCR have been questioned from the very outset,it is now confirmed by the WHO in a January 20, 2021 advisory that the rRT-PCR test adopted as a means to detecting SARS-COV-2 positive cases is TOTALLY invalid. (This pertains to Covid positive data tabulated since late January 2020). (See Appendix)
3. People are Dying as a Result of the Covid-19 Infection.
We are told that there is a rising trend of Covid-19 mortality. Namely deaths which are allegedly the result of the SARS-2 viral infection.
There is ample evidence that these Covid-19 related probable causes of death and the underlying data on Covid-19 mortality are manipulated by the national health authorities. Tests, autopsies and postmortems are not conducted. The mortality statistics pertaining to Covid-19 are TOTALLY invalid. (see Appendix which focusses on the US covid related mortality data )
In summary,
1. there is no killer virus,
2. the measurement of covid positive cases is invalid,
3. the Covid-19 mortality data are manipulated.
All of these statements are amply documented. For details see Appendix to this article below.
I should mention that the so-called “emergency use” clause tojustify an experimental and unapproved vaccine is also invalid. Why? Because the emergency use criterion relies on erroneous estimates of the rRT-PCR covid positive cases (fake) and Covid-19 related mortality data, both of which are invalid. (See Appendix)
The Vaccine. Hidden Agenda?
The vaccine does not save lives nor does it contain the pandemic, because there is no pandemic. It’s a money-making operation for Big Pharma in the hundreds of billions of dollars (see data below).
Moreover, it’s not a one time vaccine jab. Several doses are contemplated. It is slated to extend over a period of at least two years.
It is applied Worldwide without exceptions. Not a single country with the exception of Burundi, Tanzania and Haiti had the courage to refuse the “killer vaccine”.
While there is no reliable evidence, it is worth noting that the presidents of Tanzania and Burundi died under mysterious circumstances.
Haiti was until recently the only country in the Western Hemisphere which refused categorically to implementing the mRNA vaccine. In a bitter irony, immediately following president Jovenel Moise’s assassination (July 7, 2021), president Joe Biden promptly sent half a million vaccine doses (and more to come) (courtesy of Uncle Sam) which were delivered by COVAX to Port au Prince six days later on July 14.
This first shipment to Haiti was part of a US Aid program consisting of 500 million doses of the “killer vaccine” which is slated to be sent to a large number of developing countries (For further details see below).
Mortality and Morbidity: While there is “No Killer Virus”, there is a “Killer Vaccine”.
UPDATE: The latest official figures (April 3, 2022) point to approximately:
69,053 Covid-19 injection related deaths and 10,997,085 injuries for the EU, US and UK Combined for a population of 830 million people
But only a small fraction of the victims or families of the deceased will go through the tedious process of reporting vaccine related deaths and adverse events to the national health authorities.
Moreover, the health authorities are actively involved in obfuscating the deaths and injuries resulting from the “unapproved” and “experimental” Covid-19 “vaccine”.
“Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but underreported. … less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. (emphasis added)
These are official statistics based on a formal process of registration of deaths and injuries. The actual number of deaths and injuries triggered by the mRNA vaccine are much higher.
A small fraction of the victims or families of the deceased will go through the tedious process of reporting vaccine related deaths and injuries to the national health authorities. In this regard, according to a study conducted by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc., fewer than 1% of vaccine related adverse effects are reported. (see Electronic Support for Public Health–Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (ESP:VAERS, p. 6).
Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but underreported. … less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. (emphasis added)
Multiply the figures by the relevant parameter to get the REAL numbers. we are talking about very high numbers.
There is Worldwide upward trend of vaccine related mortality and morbidity which is amply documented. Peer reviewed reports confirm the causes of vaccine related deaths and injuries including among others blood clots, thrombosis, myocarditis, fertility.
Video: Impact of Covid Vaccinations on Mortality (December 2020- April 2021). Selected Countries
Source: HeathData.org
Hidden Injuries: The Microscopic Blood Clots
The persons vaccinated will not be immediately aware of the injuries incurred. The latter in most cases are not discernible, nor are they recorded. While “Big Blood Clots” resulting from the vaccine are revealed and reported by those vaccinated, an important study by Canada’s Dr. Charles Hoffe, suggests (yet to be fully confirmed) that the mRNA vaccine generates “microscopic blood clots”.
“The blood clots we hear about which the media claim are very rare are the big blood clots which are the ones that cause strokes and show up on CT scans, MRI, etc.
The clots I’m talking about are microscopic and too small to find on any scan. They can thus only be detected using the D-dimer test.”
“These people have no idea they are even having these microscopic blood clots. The most alarming part of this is that there are some parts of the body like the brain, spinal cord, heart and lungs which cannot re-generate. When those tissues are damaged by blood clots they are permanently damaged.
“These shots are causing huge damage and the worst is yet to come.”
Hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake. This is the largest and most expensive vaccine project in World historywhich is slated to be financed by tax dollars Worldwide, putting an obvious strain on the public debt of numerous countries.
The vaccine program is accompanied by a “timeline” consisting of recurrent mRNA inoculations over “the next two years and beyond”. As documented above, it will have devastating impacts on mortality and morbidity Worldwide.
What is at stake is a multi-billion dollar Big Money operation for Big Pharma with Pfizer in the lead.
Pfizer-BioNTech (allied with Moderna Inc) is in the process of consolidating its Worldwide (near monopoly) position by pushing out its major competitors including AstraZenaka and Johnson and Johnson (J & J).
Pfizer has been pressuring politicians to endorse their mRNA vaccine. It’s political lobbying is also directed against its Big Pharma competitors. According to Bureau Investigates report:
One official who was present in the unnamed country’s negotiations described Pfizer’s demands as “high-level bullying” and said the government felt like it was being “held to ransom” in order to access life-saving vaccines.
Ironically, in the EU, the reported deaths and injuries were used by the European Commission to cancel the renewal of the contract with AstraZeneka, despite the fact that there were substantially more deaths and injuries associated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
In April 2021, the EU Commission confirmed that it would “end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry”. “The Pfizer shot will take precedence”. Never mind your followup dose with AstraZeneka, the health authorities have instructed people to get their second or third jab with Pfizer or Moderna (thereby visibly violating medical norms).
Having sidelined its competitors, Pfizer-BioNTech has jacked up the price of the vaccine vial. Pfizer has literally cornered both the EU and US markets. A near global vaccine monopoly is in the making.
The European Union
In mid-April 2021 the President of the European Commission confirmed that Brussels is in process of negotiating a contract with Pfizer for the production of 1.8 billion mRNA vaccine doses, which represents 23 percent of the World’s population.
That’s exactly four times the population of the 27 member states of the European Union (448 Million, 2021 data), which confirms that several followup doses of the “killer vaccine” are envisaged, despite the trend in mortality and morbidity which the governments and the media are attempting to suppress as part of a hideous disinformation campaign.
Pfizer and the US Market
A similar pattern is occurring in the US and Canada. In July 2020, Pfizer signed a $1.95 billion contract with the U.S. government for 100 million doses. And then in December 2020 another 100 million doses were delivered.
In Canada, another 35 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine vials are slated to be delivered.
And now July 2021 the Biden administration has ordered 200 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine. “for children’s shots and possible boosters”
But that’s not all: in early June 2021, Biden ordered 500 million Pfizer-BionTech doses of the “killer virus” to be sent as “US Aid” to developing countries (courtesy of Uncle Sam). What is the underlying intent?
In most Western countries including the US and Canada, the retail price of the vaccine is “Free”.
In the US, the purchase of 900 million doses of Pfizer-BionTech vaccine vials is Big Money for Big Pharma: Massive profits for Pfizer, all of which are slated to be financed by tax revenues coupled with a dramatic expansion of the US public debt.
#1. Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. U.S. sales were $2.038 billion; global sales were $5.833 billion.
#2. Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. U.S. sales, $1.358 billion; global sales, $1.733 billion.
Recently announced (23 July 2021), Pfizer has jacked up the price of its vaccine vial from $19.50 to $28.00.
Multiply $28.00 by three vaccine doses per person for a World population of 7.9 billion, What do you get?
This is not an estimate, it’s an “order of magnitude”: 663.6 billion dollars ($28.00 x 3 x 7.9 billion = $663.6 billion).
It is all for a good cause: save lives?
We are talking about a multi-billion dollar operation at tax payers expense, which has resulted in a pattern of vaccine related deaths and injuries. And the governments are fully aware of what is happening.
Pfizer’s Criminal Record
Is Pfizer “a reliable partner” as claimed by the EU Commission President van der Leyen?
A global vaccine monopoly is unfolding controlled by a company which has a criminal record (2009) with the US Department of Justice.
It was not the routine civil class action law suit waged against the pharmaceutical industry. It was a criminal indictment for “fraudulent marketing”. While there were no arrests, Pfizer was so to speak “Put on Parole” under a US DOJ indictment.
In a historic US Department of Justice decision in September 2009, Pfizer Inc. pleaded guilty to criminal charges. It was “The Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement” in the History of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Pfizer to Acquire A Near Monopoly of the Global Covid Vaccine Market
And now among all major Big Pharma actors, it’s a company with a criminal record which has established a de facto near monopoly at a World Level.
Can we trust a Big Pharma vaccine conglomerate which pleaded guilty to criminal charges by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) including “fraudulent marketing” and“felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act”?
‘Fraudulent marketing” in the case of the Pfizer-BioNTech’s “killer vaccine” is a gross understatement. What is the Value of Human Life? There is no monetary value to human life
Can we trust the politicians in high office who granted these multibillion Euro/dollar contracts to Pfizer, which are funded by tax revenues?
Is this a “mistake” on the part of the national health authorities? The experimental mRNA “vaccine” has resulted in an upward trend in mortality and morbidity Worldwide. Meanwhile, Big Pharma profits are in the hundreds of billions.
And governments, acting on behalf of Big Pharma are pressuring people to get vaccinated to no avail imposing penalties to those who refuse.
National health authorities claim that the Covid-19 “vaccine” will save lives. That’s a lie.
Do we Know What’s inside the Pfizer Vaccine Vial?
The causes of vaccine related deaths and injuries have not been addressed by the health authorities.
What is inside the vaccine vial? National health authorities have not made public the results of their lab exams. It is unclear as to whether those lab exams of the vaccine vials have been conducted.
Below is a review of the analysis and laboratory research conducted by the independent Quinta Columna Spanish team.
Graphene Oxide Nano-particules
According to lab exams conducted by the Spanish Quinta Columna research team, graphene oxide nano-particles have been detected in the vial of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine.
The preliminary results of their research (analysis by electron microscopy and spectroscopy) are far-reaching. Graphene oxide is a toxin which triggers thrombi and blood coagulation. It also has an impact on the immune system. Graphene oxide accumulated in the lungs can have devastating impacts.
Video: Interview with Ricardo Delgado Martin
The results of the Spanish study, yet to be fully confirmed and ascertained, suggest that the recorded vaccine related deaths and “adverse events” (quoted above for the EU, UK and US) could be the result of graphene oxide nano-particles contained in the Covid vaccine vial.
This is a controversial study. There are scientists and medical doctors who disagree with the results of the Spanish study.
The evidence has to be either ascertained or refuted. What is required is that independent scientists and health professionals conduct their own lab analysis of the contents of the vaccine vial.
Similarly, we call upon the national health authorities of the 193 member states of the UN which are currently vaccinating their people, to conduct their own study and analysis of the vaccine vial. And if graphene-oxide is detected, the vaccination program should immediately be discontinued.
Also of significance, (acknowledged by national health authorities) graphene oxide nano-particles are also contained in the face mask.
The Electromagnetic Properties of the mRNA Vaccine
What is triggering the electromagnetic effects which have been detected in people who have been vaccinated?
These effects have been amply documented and confirmed by independent sources including those vaccinated. The national health authorities have failed to provide an explanation.
The data from official sources quoted above confirm unequivocally that the Covid-19 “vaccine” has resulted in an upward trend in vaccine related mortality and morbidity.
In turn, the studies of Dr. Charles Hoffe and the Spanish Research Team (Quinta Columna) which remain to be fully ascertained, point to possible “future impacts” of the vaccine on human health.
According to official data based on reported / registered deaths and injuries, there is no doubt: this is a “killer vaccine”.
So why are governments pressuring people to get vaccinated?
Heads of State and heads of government Worldwide are being pressured, bribed, coopted and/or threatened by powerful financial interests into accepting the Covid vaccine consensus.
The vaccine passport is the endgame, which constitutes a transition towards digital tyranny.
At the time of writing, the vaccine passport has already been imposed in several countries including France and Italy.
In France, this was not an initiative of president Emmanuel Macron (it was imposed upon him). Macronis a political proxy acting on behalf of the financial and billionaire foundations. Macron is a former bank staff of the Rothschilds.
In turn, the Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi (former president of the European Central Bank) is an instrument of Goldman Sachs.
Bill Gates has play a key role. His foundation finances the WHO.
He has developed ties at a personal level with numerous heads of state and heads of government in all major regions of the World with a view to effectively carrying out this vaccine project.
The global capitalist elites control the so-called “classe politique”. The governments are liars.
From the very outset, the unspoken objective of the corona crisis (based on lies and deception) was to ultimately impose the contours of a Worldwide totalitarian regime, entitled “Global Governance” (by unelected officials). In the words of the late David Rockefeller:
“…The world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” (quoted by Aspen Times, August 15, 2011, emphasis added)
The Global Governance scenario imposes an agenda of social engineering and economic compliance.
The “intellectual elite” referred to by David Rockefeller is made up of numerous generously funded “scientists”, technocrats and “scholars” (e.g. Drosten, Neil Ferguson, et al) whose models and research findings have been used to justify the lockdown policies and the “killer vaccine”.
The mRNA vaccine should be halted and discontinued immediately Worldwide
The Protest Movement. Bastille 2.0
Acts of protest and resistance must question the legitimacy of both the financial architects of this crisis as well as the governments involved in imposing the vaccine:
The legitimacy of politicians and their powerful corporate sponsors must be questioned, including the police state measures adopted to enforce the closure of economic activity, the imposition of a digital vaccine passport as well as the wearing of the face mask, social distancing, etc.
This network must be established (nationally and internationally) at all levels of society, in towns and villages, work places, parishes. Trade unions, farmers organizations, professional associations, business associations, student unions, veterans associations, church groups would be called upon to integrate this movement.
The first task would be to disable the fear campaign and media disinformation as well put an end to Big Pharma’s Covid vaccination programme.
The corporate media should be directly challenged, without specifically targeting mainstream journalists, many of whom have been instructed to abide by the official narrative. This endeavour would require a parallel process at the grassroots level, of sensitizing and educating fellow citizens on the nature of virus, the impacts of the vaccine and the lockdown.
“Spreading the word” through social media and independent online media outlets will be undertaken bearing in mind that Google as well as Facebook are instruments of censorship.
The creation of such a movement, which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of the financial elites as well as the structures of political authority at the national level, is no easy task. It will require a degree of solidarity, unity and commitment unparalleled in World history.
It will also require breaking down political and ideological barriers within society (i.e. between political parties) and acting with a single voice.
We must also understand that the “corona project” is an integral part of the U.S. imperial agenda. It has geopolitical and strategic implications. It will also require eventually unseating the architects of this diabolical “pandemic” and indicting them for crimes against humanity. (Michel Chossudovsky, December 2020. With some minor changes)
In the words of Doctors for Covid Ethics:
“The Gene-based “Vaccines” are Killing People. Governments Worldwide Are Lying to You the People, to the Populations They Purportedly Serve”
About the Author
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.
He has undertaken field research in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific and has written extensively on the economies of developing countries with a focus on poverty and social inequality. He has also undertaken research in Health Economics (UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), UNFPA, CIDA, WHO, Government of Venezuela, John Hopkins International Journal of Health Services (1979, 1983)
He is the author of twelve books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015).
He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at [email protected]
Below are details on the three main criteria outlined at the outset of this article which are used to uphold the official narrative as well as justify the implementation of a Worldwide vaccination program with a view to saving lives.
1. there is no killer virus
2. the measurement of covid positive cases is invalid
3. the Covid-19 mortality data is manipulated.
Much of the analysis and statements below are contained in Chapter III of Michel Chossudovsky’s E-Book entitled
SARS-CoV-2 is presented and upheld as “a killer virus”. That’s the cornerstone of the 24/7 fear and media disinformation campaign upheld by persistent statements by politicians and national health authorities.
It is a killer virus? Both the peer-reviewed as well the WHO, CDC “official” definitions of SARS-CoV-2 say exactly the opposite. Their definitions of SARS-2 repeal their own lies.
Screenshot The Hill, March 19, 2020
Lies through omission: the media has failed to reassure the broader public.
Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses which may cause illness in animals or humans. In humans, several coronaviruses are known to cause respiratory infections ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The most recently discovered coronavirus causes coronavirus disease COVID-19.
“The most common symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, dry cough, and tiredness. … These symptoms are usually mild and begin gradually. Some people become infected but only have very mild symptoms. Most people (about 80%) recover from the disease without needing hospital treatment. Around 1 out of every 5 people who gets COVID-19 becomes seriously ill and develops difficulty breathing.”
“…the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”
“Influenza (Flu) and COVID-19 are both contagious respiratory illnesses, but they are caused by different viruses. COVID-19 is caused by infection with a new coronavirus (called SARS-CoV-2) and flu is caused by infection with influenza viruses. Because some of the symptoms of flu and COVID-19 are similar, it may be hard to tell the difference between them based on symptoms alone, and testing may be needed to help confirm a diagnosis. Flu and COVID-19 share many characteristics, but there are some key differences between the two.”
If the public had been informed and reassured that Covid is “similar to Influenza”, the fear campaign would have fallen flat.
2. The Measurement of Covid Positive Cases is Invalid
We are told that there is a pandemic characterized by a rising Worldwide trend of Covid-19 infection. This alleged trend is said to be corroborated by a rapidly increasing number of covid positive cases.
The methodology used to generate these figures is dependent upon the WHO sponsored Real Time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (rRT-PCR) test, the estimates of which are tabulated Worldwide by the national health authorities.
While the estimates of the rRT-PCR have been questioned from the very outset,it is now confirmed beyond doubt that the rRT-PCR test adopted as a means to detecting the SARS-COV-2 virus cases is TOTALLY invalid.
(This pertains to Covid positive data tabulated since late January 2020).
The Real Time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (rRT-PCR) test was adopted by the WHO on January 23, 2020 as a means to detecting the SARS-COV-2 virus, following the recommendations of a Virology research group (based at Charité University Hospital, Berlin), supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (For Further details see the Drosten Study)
Exactly one year later on January 20th, 2021, the WHO retracts. They don’t say “We Made a Mistake”. The retraction is carefully formulated. (See original WHO document here)
While the WHO does not deny the validity of their misleading January 2020 guidelines, they nonetheless recommend “Re-testing” (which everybody knows is an impossibility).
The contentious issue pertains to the number of amplification threshold cycles (Ct). According to Pieter Borger, et al
The number of amplification cycles [should be] less than 35; preferably 25-30 cycles. In case of virus detection, >35 cycles only detects signals which do not correlate with infectious virus as determined by isolation in cell culture…(Critique of Drosten Study)
The World Health Organization (WHO) tacitly admits one year later that ALL PCR tests conducted at a 35 cycle amplification threshold (Ct) or higher are INVALID. But that is what they recommended in January 2020, in consultation with the virology team at Charité Hospital in Berlin.
If the test is conducted at a 35 Ct threshold or above (which was recommended by the WHO), segments of the SARS-CoV-2 virus cannot be detected, which means that ALL the so-called confirmed “positive cases” tabulated in the course of the last 14 months are invalid.
Below is the WHO’s carefully formulated “Retraction”. The full text with link to the original document is in annex:
WHO guidance Diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2 states that careful interpretation of weak positive results is needed (1). The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load. Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology. (emphasis added)
WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases (2). This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.
“Invalid Positives” is the Underlying Concept
This is not an issue of “Weak Positives” and “Risk of False Positive Increases”. What is at stake is a “Flawed Methodology” which leads to invalid estimates.
What this admission of the WHO confirms is that the estimate of covid positive from a PCR test (with an amplification threshold of 35 cycles or higher) is invalid. In which case, the WHO recommends retesting: “a new specimen should be taken and retested…”.
The WHO calls for “Retesting”, which is tantamount to “We Screwed Up”.
That recommendation is pro-forma. It won’t happen. Millions of people Worldwide have already been tested, starting in early February 2020. Nonetheless,we must conclude that unless retested, those estimates (according to the WHO) are invalid.
Another issue which has bearing on the Validity of the rTC-PCR test is that the SARS-1, (2003) was used in the PCR-test as a proxy for SARS-COV-2, because no information was available pertaining to the “isolation” and “identity” of SAR-CoV-2. This was recommended to the WHO on the grounds that the genetic fragments of SARS-1 are similar to those of SARS-CoV-2.
What it also implies is that statement regarding “variants” and mutations pertaining to SARS-CoV-2 are totally meaningless inasmuch as the PCR test from the outset included a similar 2003 virus as a proxy for SARS-CoV-2. i.e. mutations in relation to what? SARS-2 or SARS-Co-2 (the identity of which has not been made public.
The RT-PCR data cannot under any circumstances be used to justify the imposition of a vaccine, which is presented to public opinion as a means to saving lives, when in fact it is leading to an upward trend in vaccine related mortality and morbidity.
3. The Covid-19 Mortality Data is Manipulated
We are told that there is a rising trend of Covid-19 mortality, namely deaths which are allegedly the result of SARS-2 viral infection.
There is ample evidence that these Covid-19 related “probable” causes of death and the underlying data on Covid-19 mortality are manipulated by the national health authorities.
In the US, the mortality statistics pertaining to Covid-19 are TOTALLY invalid.
Will COVID-19 be the underlying cause of death?This concept is fundamental.The underlying cause of death is defined by the WHO as “the disease or injury that initiated the train of events leading directly to death”.
What the CDC is recommending with regards to statistical coding and categorization is that COVID-19 is expected to be the underlying cause of death “more often than not.”
The CDC combines these two criteria. “underlying cause of death”, more often than not.
The above directive is categorical. Below are CDC concepts and justifications
“The underlying cause depends upon what and where conditions are reported on the death certificate. However, the rules for coding and selection of the underlying cause of death are expected to result in COVID- 19 being the underlying cause more often than not.”
“What happens if certifiers report terms other than the suggested terms?”
There are no loopholes. These CDC directives have contributed to categorizing Covid-19 as the recorded “cause of death”. Two fundamental concepts prevail throughout:
The “underlying cause of death”
The “More Often than Not” Clause which falsifies the Cause of Death
And these criteria are imposed despite the fact that the RT-PCR test used to corroborate the “cause of death” provides misleading results.
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 the UK’s Office for National Statistics revealing that between January 2021 and March 2022 a total of 69,466 people died within 28 days of COVID-19 vaccination, and a further 109,408 people died within 60 days of vaccination in England.
In the months between the press conference in July 2020 and January 6, 2021, Dr. Gold was asked to present on numerous occasions about physician free speech and her experience of being fired for prescribing early treatment to COVID-19 patients. By this time, she had also founded America’s Frontline Doctors, a division of the Free Speech Foundation.
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.
As reported by Organic Insider, 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.
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.
During president George W. Bush’s two terms in office (2001-2009), his administration’s policies typically favoured America’s richest, and whose wealth had already increased greatly since the early 1980s under neoliberal policies.
On June 10, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) in Paris asked for sentences ranging from five years to life imprisonment for 20 defendants in the trial for the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris which took the lives of 130 people and injured more than 350. In the course of the trial, it was proven that the defendants were following Radical Islam, or were influenced by the political ideology.
The government of Canada has confirmed that 80 percent of “COVID” deaths are “fully vaccinated” deaths, which completely defies the official government claim that the shots are perfectly “safe and effective” and help “stop the spread.”
The allegations of shelling of a maternity facility in Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) worry the UN Secretary-General Spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, who added that this is an apparent violation of international humanitarian law.
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.
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On June 10, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) in Paris asked for sentences ranging from five years to life imprisonment for 20 defendants in the trial for the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris which took the lives of 130 people and injured more than 350. In the course of the trial, it was proven that the defendants were following Radical Islam, or were influenced by the political ideology.
On January 7, 2015, a deadly assault took place at the office of a magazine, Charlie Hebdo. A pair of terrorists following Radical Islam armed with assault rifles burst into the office and murdered 11 people. Over the next 48 hours, six more people were killed in the attacks in Paris and the surrounding area.
The November 13 attack was claimed by Al Qaeda, but the attacker had pledged his allegiance to ISIS. France had been targeting ISIS positions in Iraq since September 2014. Following the horrific attacks in Paris, French President Francois Hollande pledged more than $850 million to fund counterterrorism schemes.
On August 19, 2014, President Hollande confirmed in an interview with the French media Le Monde that France had been directly supplying arms to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in their role in the US-NATO attack on Syria for regime change. France had provided weapons including 12.7-mm machine guns, rocket launchers, body armor, and communications equipment. French intelligence officers were present in Syria, in areas then controlled by the FSA and their Al Qaeda and ISIS partners.
According to the Qatari official, Hamad bin Jassim, the US-NATO attack on Syria, using Radical Islamic terrorists as foot soldiers, was coordinated by the US CIA office in Southern Turkey, and all the money and weapons sent to the terrorists were coordinated through the Americans. In 2017, President Donald Trumpshut down the CIA operation in Turkey. Since then, the conflict in Syria has turned into a stalemate, with only Idlib under the control of Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists, with weapons, funding, and protections provided to them by President Erdogan of Turkey, and food and humanitarian supplies provided to the terrorists, their families, supporters, and civilians held as human shields, by the United Nations World Food Programme.
According to Le Monde, France’s leftist party, New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), has supported the US-NATO attack on Syria for regime change, and the Socialist Party in France, (PS), has stood on a foreign policy platform that supports the FSA and their Al Qaeda and ISIS allies as “freedom fighters” in a democratic revolution. The NPA issued a resolution in September 2013 in support of the continued supply of weapons to the terrorists in Syria, who were murdering, raping, maiming, and kidnapping unarmed civilians daily.
In September 2013, NPA spokesman Olivier Besancenot called on Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to give weapons to the armed terrorists in Syria. He advised the government not to heed the advice of others who cautioned that the weapons might end up in the hands of terrorists who could harm France or French interests.
It has been said you shouldn’t feed a monster, because it could turn to kill you. France has fed the Radical Islamic terrorists in Syria, and the terrorists who killed and maimed French people in Paris were following the same political ideology as those terrorists in Syria, who were using French weapons, and being trained and advised by the French military.
However, in a Paris courtroom, the families of the victims and the survivors of the November 13, 2015 attack will experience some justice for the suffering caused by those following Radical Islam, which President Emmanuel Macron has declared war on. When will the millions in Syria who have suffered, be made homeless, and lost loved ones have their day of justice? When will the Syrian people have their day in court against the US, UK, and France for their role in funding and providing the weapons to the terrorists who have destroyed Syria?
US occupation forces to steal the oil and keep an eye on ISIS
On June 15, the US-led coalition forces arrested three ISIS members in a daring airdrop mission. The senior ISIS leader is an explosive expert, as well as a drone specialist. Two of his fellow terrorists were arrested with him northeast of Aleppo in the Jarablus countryside.
The ISIS members were in an area occupied by Radical Islamic terrorists who are aligned with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the occupation forces in Idlib, who have a long history of harboring ISIS members. The US occupation forces have previously killed the ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi and his successor Al-Qurashi in Idlib. Turkish occupation forces have military outposts in Idlib which protect the terrorists from Russian or Syrian attacks.
Syrian conflict and the US-NATO support of terrorists in Syria
According to US General Wesley Clark, the Pentagon had shown him a list of seven countries the US had earmarked for regime change, and Syria was on the list. In the spring of 2011, the plan was put into motion in Deraa, a small and insignificant agricultural town on the Jordanian border with Syria. That spot was chosen as the epicenter of the Syrian conflict due to the proximity to the US military base in Jordan, which served as one of the staging areas of the US-NATO attack on the Syrian people.
The war on Syria may have been devised in Washington, DC. but French President Nicolas Sarkozy spearheaded the attack on Syria, in close coordination with US President Barak Obama, and UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
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They say that the first casualty of war is the truth. Nevermore so was this the case in the current war in Ukraine. The mainstream media in the West have become stenographers for the new Cold War being pursued by American imperialism.
They refuse to critically examine the massive supplies of weapons by the West to Ukraine and refuse to acknowledge the many war crimes being committed by the Ukrainian armed forces on a daily basis. If you want to find out what is really going on in the war zone that is Eastern Ukraine then you have to talk to journalists with integrity who are actually based in the Donbass.
I have spoken with French journalist Christelle Neant who is co-founder of Donbass Insider and is based in Donetsk. She gives her views on many of the key issues regarding the current conflict in Ukraine.
Dr. Leon Tressell: Can you explain your motives in establishing Donbass insider? How long have you been covering the war in the Donbass?
Christelle Neant: I cover the Donbass war for six years. Donbass Insider was established to offer an independent platform to publish articles about the situation in the Donbass, in Ukraine, in Russia, and in some related countries like Syria, or Belarus. Here several journalists, authors, and volunteers, can publish their reports, articles or researches. The motives were to show the facts, that mainstream media hide about the Donbass war, for people in the West to better understand what is the real situation, and the origins of it.
Copyright Christelle Neant, with permission to use the photo
DLT: I recently communicated with Amnesty International regarding the abduction of Mikhail & Aleksander Kononovich who are leading members of the outlawed Leninist Communist Youth Union by the Ukrainian security services. In the ensuing email exchange, the representatives of Amnesty International stridently condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the many ‘war crimes’ it is alleged to have committed in Ukraine. Let me be clear I condemn attacks on civilians by military units of Russia or Ukraine. Having said this, there was no acknowledgement by the Amnesty representative of the war crimes committed by successive Ukrainian governments who are responsible for the artillery shelling of civilian settlements in Donetsk and Lugansk over the last 8 years. This is an issue that the Western media and political elites refuse to acknowledge, instead they hysterically denounce Russian aggression in Ukraine since late February of this year. In recent weeks the Ukrainian army has stepped up its shelling of Donetsk, often using Western supplied weaponry, leading to many civilian deaths. Why do you think that Ukraine is stepping up its shelling of civilians in Donetsk? Can you tell us about your own first hand experience of Ukrainian shelling of civilians in the Donbass?
CN: I think Ukraine is stepping up its shelling of civilians in Donetsk, but also in Gorlovka, Yasinovataya, and Stakhanov (in LPR) for several reasons :
1) They feel they are losing ground, and they understand the front will move, preventing them to continue such terror shelling. And they have a mentality of « If we cannot retake it, then nobody will have it ». So they shell while they still can to destroy what they cannot reconquer.
2) They know Russia will pay to rebuild infrastructures and housings destroyed during the war, so the more they destroy, the more the financial burden will be heavy for Russia.
3) They want to terrorise the population, to push them to demand authorities to take back units which are on other parts of the front, in order to protect them from shellings. The aim is to divert units which are currently more on the north, in Severodonetsk and near Slavyansk, thus slowing the advance of Russian army, and DPR-LPR militias.
DLT: Western narratives regarding the current war in Ukraine include the claim that Ukraine is a democracy under attack from Russian imperialism. Part and parcel of this narrative, which is aimed at making Ukraine more palatable to Western audiences, is to dismissing out of hand the role of neo-Nazi military formations in the current conflict.
In a recent email to me a representative of Amnesty International stated that members of neo-Nazi battalions from the early period of the civil war have been disbanded and merged with regular Ukrainian army and that some of them were punished for their crimes.
The representative went on to assert that Russian propaganda attempts to portray these groups as “rogue, irregular forces based on extreme ideology and acting outside of official chains of command and control and committing gross human rights violations’’ is merely part of Moscow’s misinformation and disinformation campaign regarding Ukraine.
The Amnesty representative also dismissed Russian narratives which imply “that they remain paramilitaries outside of official chains of command and control, that they espouse fascist/Nazi/extremist ideology, terrorize Russian-speaking population in eastern and southern Ukraine, and enjoy full impunity for their crimes under a direct protection of the Ukrainian authorities.’’ This representative from Amnesty concluded their remarks on this issue by claiming that Russia is blaming its ‘numerous apparent war crimes’, on “Ukrainian Nazis.’’ Is the representative of Amnesty International giving an accurate portrayal of the role played by neo-Nazi military formations in the current conflict?
CN: What this Amnesty representative is saying is a pure lie. The war crimes of the Azov regiment — alone — in Mariupol have been proven by hundreds of public testimonies of civilians to Russians, but also independent media. This regiment is part of the National Guard of Ukraine, which is under the direction of the Interior ministry !
These units are not outside the official chain of commandment, they are inside it ! Even at the very top-level, as Dmitro Yarosh, a neo-nazi, a founder of one of these neo-Nazis battalions, was promoted as an adviser to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian army ! And Russia is not claiming these groups are not in the commandment chain.
Out from some commanders of the Tornado battalion, who were condemned because their crimes were too horrible to hide them, all the other neo-Nazis criminals in Ukraine are free. Even the ones who killed people in Odessa on 2 May 2014. Moreover, Zelensky liberated the condemned commanders of Tornado this year, to send them to fight the Russian army !
My colleague, Laurent Brayard, who investigates these neo-Nazis battalions, just discovered there are more than 40 of these neo-Nazi battalions in Ukraine ! These people are real neo-Nazis and fascists. They use Nazi symbols, take their ideology from Stepan Bandera, a collaborator of the Nazis, and a real anti-Semitic person ! And they do not hide their Russophobia, calling to destroy everything Russian.
DLT: The United States and it is European allies have sent billions of dollars worth of weaponry to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Western media portray these arms deliveries as essential aid to help Ukraine defend itself from Russian military aggression. Over the course of the last three months I have come across sources which claim that Ukraine is not using the weapons that have been supplied from the West to actually fight Russian Armed Forces. Some of these sources claim that Ukraine is using the heavy weaponry it has been supplied with to attack civilian settlements in the Donbass. Besides this, I have come across numerous claims that Western supplied weapons are being sold by corrupt Ukrainian officials on the dark net. In your opinion is that any evidence to substantiate any of these claims regarding Ukraine’s use of Western supplied weaponry?
CN: Yes there are a lot of announces on the darknet to sell Western weapons sent to Ukraine. Screenshots of a lot of them are circulating on the internet. Concerning the use of western weapons by Ukrainian army against civilians, it is proved by the fact that some 155 mm shells which Ukrainian soldiers fired on Donetsk, were found intact, or big parts have been found with the marking indicating clearly it is 155 mm shells. This calibre is typical of NATO, and not used in the Russian army. The most recent ones are even French ! LU-211 shells, fired by Caesar canons provided by Paris to Kiev. And these shells were fired on purely civilians areas, and killed innocent Donbass civilians.
DLT: The recent increase in artillery shelling of Donetsk is causing a lot of death and destruction. What actions have the DPR authorities taken to protect civilians? How are ordinary people coping with this increase in attacks?
CN: The aerial defence has been increased as well as counter-battery artillery, thus decreasing the length of such shellings against civilians. Ordinary people are used to shelling since eight years, so most of them just live their life normally, others are staying a much as possible at home.
DLT: It would appear that most political parties on the Left in the West refuse to acknowledge the suffering of civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk and merely focus on criticising Russia for its alleged war crimes. Take Germany for example where so called ‘Left’ groups such as the Greens/SPD fully support sanctions and sending weapons to arm Ukraine. Why do think this is?
CN: The defence policy of the EU countries is defined by NATO. I think this is sufficient to explain why most of the parties (left or right) of EU countries are supporting the US-NATO policy. These parties are for the EU, thus for the NATO policy too.
DLT: The current war is causing great suffering to both Ukrainian and Russian speaking civilians. I hope it does not lead to lasting animosity between these two peoples who have a long shared history together. Do you see any hope for the future that the ordinary people of both countries can peacefully coexist?
CN: I think this hope will be defined by decisions make in Washington. They are the ones who pushed these two people one against each other artificially, by supporting, and financing these far-right movements in Ukraine. As Russians say, hope is the last to die, but on this I am not really optimistic.
If you would like to help the journalists of Donbass Insider replace their car which was destroyed by Ukrainian army shelling, then click on this link.
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Featured image: Car belonging to Donbass Insider after it was destroyed by Ukrainian artillery shelling in the district of Petrovski, in the west of Donetsk city on 4 June 2022. Picture source: Donbass Insider
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The political West seems to have lost any semblance of understanding geopolitics and diplomacy, while some might argue it has completely lost grasp of logic and reality. The belligerent power pole simply refuses to let go of the notion it has supposedly “won” the (First) Cold War. While this idea might have held some ground during the 1990s and early 2000s, the last decade and especially the start of this one has been anything but victorious for the political West.
The tremendous amount of power and influence of the US and its allies partially benefited numerous new client states, most of which owe their very existence to the political West. In order to create them, the US/NATO bombed and dismantled sovereign nations, such as Serbia/Yugoslavia or Libya, or simply invaded and destroyed countless others, such as Iraq or Afghanistan.
After Lybia, the political West has been unable to completely destroy yet another country and murder millions with impunity, as they had been doing for well over half a millennium now. It has been suffering one humiliating defeat after another in the last nearly 10 years.
The failed invasion of Syria, the failed takeover of Crimea and the defeat in Donbass, the botched invasion of Venezuela, the humiliating defeat in Afghanistan and the ongoing defeat in Ukraine are some of the most prominent examples. Naturally, the damage inflicted is still quite severe, but it’s less severe than in Iraq, which was ravaged and burned to the ground multiple times in several decades, or former Yugoslavia and Libya, which have been plunged into (still ongoing) chaos, unlikely to end any time soon.
The vast majority of those who suffered (and continue to suffer) under the jackboot of Western neoliberal “freedom and democracy” are in the Global South, the most exploited part of the world, resulting in most of its population living in abject poverty.
The principal reason is none other than the political West, with its parasitical policies, invasions, (neo)colonialism, currency dominance, etc. During the (First) Cold War, Russia was instrumental in the liberation and development of the Global South. The superpower invested incredibly large amounts of money and resources to help these countries. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. However, after 1991, Western (neo)colonial overlords returned in full force. But, this time, it was “different”. The masters were bringing “freedom and democracy”, the new “white man’s burden” and yet another euphemism for colonialism.
While the political West spent decades transferring its “dirty” industries to the Global South and using its world reserve currency dominance to extract natural resources from the world, the US/EU started implementing so-called “green economies” and “sustainable development”.
The result was a relatively clean and quite comfortable lifestyle for most of the political West. Although exploitation and (neo)colonialism were giving results, it wasn’t enough, because it never is for greedy corporate oligarchs. The Global South was now “responsible” for all the world troubles, including terrorism, climate change, pollution, etc. Let’s all forget about who created, funded and armed the terrorists, who moved their heavy industry to the Global South and who has been invading, murdering and exploiting everyone else.
However, the people of the Global South haven’t forgotten and never will. They still remember who was actually helping them, and who was the force behind nearly all of their misery. This is precisely why the world, and especially the Global South, refused to follow the clinically Russophobic diktat of the political West. It took time, but the people and their leadership finally started recovering from the trauma of Western aggression and (neo)colonialism, so they simply started looking after their own interests.
Turns out the national interests of the world diverge significantly from those of the political West. India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar summed it up perfectly: “Somewhere, Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems. That if it is you, it’s yours, if it is me, it is ours.” The statement quite clearly applies to the whole political West.
Needless to say, the belligerent power pole didn’t take this lightly. The “noncompliant” world (which is around 80% of the global population) soon became known as the “fence sitters“. As if the Global South and the rest of the world owe anything to the political West and are obligated to follow it – an increasingly insignificant portion of the planet, which has no more than 15-18% of the world population, a large portion of which comes from numerous client states under Washington DC (and to a lesser extent, Brussels) control.
If anything, it’s the political West which owes most of its prosperity and comfort to the world, which has been giving its natural resources and labor in exchange for worthless paper the political West keeps printing without check. In other words, nothing. And if anyone was to ever refuse to essentially be robbed by the political West, they’d suddenly become “violators of human rights” or similar worthless phrases, which not even the Western leadership bothers to properly define anymore. Luckily, those days are gone now, as the belligerent power pole is now effectively in a state of unstoppable decline on all levels.
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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
A versão mais recente dos documentos da vacina Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 levanta questões sobre a frequência com que os eventos adversos experimentados pelos participantes dos ensaios clínicos foram relatados como “não relacionados” à vacina.
O cache de documentos de 80.000 páginas lançado em 2 de maio pela Food and Drug Administration (FDA) dos EUA inclui um extenso conjunto de Formulários de Relatório de Caso (CRFs) de ensaios da Pfizer realizados em vários locais nos EUA.
Os documentos também incluem o “ terceiro relatório provisório ” dos ensaios da BioNTech realizados na Alemanha (acompanhado de uma sinopse deste relatório e um banco de dados de eventos adversos desse conjunto específico de ensaios).
A FDA divulgou os documentos, que pertencem à Autorização de Uso de Emergência (EUA) da vacina, como parte de um cronograma de divulgação ordenado pelo tribunal decorrente de uma solicitação acelerada da Lei de Liberdade de Informação (FOIA) arquivada em agosto de 2021.
Eventos adversos durante os testes de vacinas da Pfizer nos EUA geralmente relatados como ‘não relacionados’ à vacinação
A Pfizer realizou uma série de testes de vacinas em vários locais nos EUA, incluindo o Centro de Saúde Langone da Universidade de Nova York, Rochester Clinical Research e Rochester General Hospital (Rochester, Nova York) e a J. Lewis Research, Inc. Foothill Family Clinic (Salt Lake City, Utah).
Os documentos da Pfizer divulgados este mês pela FDA incluíam uma série de CRFs para pacientes que sofreram algum tipo de evento adverso durante sua participação nos testes da vacina COVID-19.
Como os documentos revelam, apesar da ocorrência de uma ampla gama de sintomas, incluindo eventos cardiovasculares graves, quase nenhum foi identificado como “relacionado” à vacina.
Esses eventos adversos graves, mas “não relacionados” incluíram:
Parada cardíaca e insuficiência respiratória aguda, com necessidade de hospitalização, sustentada por um paciente que então estava “perdido” (não pôde ser localizado para continuação da participação no estudo)
Dor no peito (exigindo hospitalização, posteriormente listada como isquemia cardíaca)
Dos CRFs encontrados nos documentos divulgados neste mês, apenas um evento adverso está claramente especificado como relacionado à vacinação: um participante que sofria de artrite psoriática, sem histórico prévio da doença.
Além disso, vários CRFs indicaram exposição durante a gravidez (ver aqui e aqui ), ou durante a gravidez do parceiro (ver aqui e aqui). No entanto, os documentos fornecidos não parecem ter fornecido nenhum acompanhamento em relação a quaisquer resultados ou eventos adversos potenciais para os participantes, seus parceiros ou seus bebês recém-nascidos.
Em alguns casos, enquanto os CRFs alegaram que os eventos adversos sofridos pelos pacientes não estavam relacionados à vacina, sua causa não foi especificada, simplesmente indicada como “outra”, enquanto em outro caso, a obstrução “não planejada” do intestino delgado e os ataques de pânico de um participante foram listados como não relacionados à vacinação, apesar de nenhum histórico médico relevante referente aos SAEs (eventos adversos graves) em questão.
A Pfizer ocultou informações críticas dos reguladores?
É difícil tirar conclusões concretas sobre qualquer caso específico a partir dos dados fornecidos pelos CRFs e resumos de ensaios de vacinas.
No entanto, o que chama a atenção é o grande número de eventos adversos – muitas vezes graves e muitas vezes exigindo a hospitalização dos pacientes envolvidos – que foram determinados como “não relacionados” à administração da vacina COVID.
Os documentos da Pfizer divulgados anteriormente também incluíam discrepâncias no registro de eventos adversos.
De acordo com a jornalista investigativa Sonia Elijah, essas discrepâncias incluem:
Os participantes do estudo foram inseridos na “população saudável”, mas na verdade estavam longe de serem saudáveis.
Os números SAE foram deixados em branco.
Os códigos de barras estavam faltando nas amostras coletadas dos participantes do estudo.
A segunda dose da vacina foi administrada fora da janela do protocolo de três semanas.
Novos problemas de saúde foram descartados como “não relacionados” à vacinação.
Um número notável de pacientes com um período de observação exatamente da mesma duração – 30 minutos, com muita pouca variedade nos tempos de observação e levantando questões sobre se os pacientes foram observados adequadamente ou foram colocados em risco.
Curiosidades referentes às datas de início e término dos SAEs – por exemplo, um diabético “saudável” sofreu um ataque cardíaco “sério” em 27 de outubro de 2020, mas a data “final” para este SAE está listada no dia seguinte, mesmo embora o paciente tenha sido diagnosticado com pneumonia no mesmo dia.
Datação impossível: no exemplo acima mencionado do paciente que sofreu um ataque cardíaco e pneumonia, o indivíduo em questão morreu mais tarde, mas a data da morte é indicada como o dia anterior ao registro do paciente como tendo ido a uma visita “doente de COVID”.
Equipes não cegas, que estavam cientes de quais pacientes receberam a vacina real ou um placebo, foram responsáveis por revisar os relatórios de eventos adversos, potencialmente levando à pressão para minimizar os eventos relacionados ao COVID nos vacinados ou para indicar que os eventos adversos estavam relacionados à vacina.
Outros eventos adversos foram indicados como “sem gravidade”, apesar de internações extensas, de até 26 dias no caso de um paciente que sofreu uma queda classificada como “não grave”, mas com lacerações faciais sustentadas como resultado da queda foram atribuídas à hipotensão (pressão arterial baixa).
Muitas dessas práticas parecem aparecer nos documentos relacionados ao julgamento divulgados este mês.
Especialistas médicos e científicos que falaram com o The Defender expressaram preocupações semelhantes sobre o que a parcela de documentos deste mês revela e abordaram casos de eventos adversos “desaparecidos”.
“Estou mais preocupado com o ‘desaparecimento’ de pacientes. Não se pode conduzir um teste válido e simplesmente omitir os resultados que não agradam!”
“Com as histórias sobre Maddie de Garay e Augusto Roux surgindo, eu me pergunto quantos outros participantes foram descartados para esconder eventos/efeitos adversos da vacina.”
“Se você observar os dados do VAERS [Sistema de Relatório de Eventos Adversos de Vacinas], as vacinas COVID-19 são as mais perigosas já introduzidas na população.”
O Dr. Madhava Setty, anestesista certificado pelo conselho e editor científico sênior do The Defender, disse:
“O rótulo ‘não relacionado’ que os investigadores usam para desviar a atenção dos EAs [eventos adversos] é um ponto poderoso que se sustenta por si só. Nós não empurramos isso a fundo o suficiente.”
“De forma equivalente, podemos dizer que o benefício escasso e de curta duração dessas fotos também é ‘não relacionado’ usando seus ‘padrões’. Com que fundamento eles podem dizer que seu produto está prevenindo infecção (o que não é mais) ou morte (marginalmente)?”
“Eles não podem ter as duas coisas. Eles não podem reivindicar um benefício por meio de resultados de curto prazo enquanto negam que os efeitos colaterais de qualquer tipo estejam relacionados ao seu produto.”
“Esse é o objetivo de fazer um julgamento. Você não pode provar a causa, apenas a correlação estatisticamente significativa.”
Setty forneceu mais contexto para suas observações em um artigo de abril de 2022 para The Defender e em uma apresentação de março de 2022, na qual discutiu o número desses eventos adversos e como a Pfizer os escondeu (timestamp 24:00).
Na visão de Setty:
“Há uma grande probabilidade de má conduta acontecendo. [Denunciante da Pfizer] Brook Jackson diz que os PIs [investigadores principais] foram descobertos. Se for verdade, seria muito fácil para os pesquisadores aumentar os EAs no grupo placebo, ignorando alguns dos EAs no grupo da vacina.
“A Pfizer afirma que 0,5% dos receptores de placebo sofreram um evento adverso grave em comparação com 0,6% no grupo da vacina. Foi assim que esses eventos foram obscurecidos.”
O corpo de evidências existente indica que a Pfizer “está ocultando informações críticas dos reguladores”, disse Setty:
“O argumento decisivo está no memorando para o VRBPAC [Comitê Consultivo de Vacinas e Produtos Biológicos Relacionados] (Tabela 2, populações de eficácia), onde eles nos mostram que cinco vezes mais pessoas no grupo da vacina foram retiradas do estudo do que o placebo dentro sete dias da sua segunda injeção para ‘desvios de protocolo importantes’.”
“Em um julgamento tão grande, as chances de que poderia ter acontecido coincidentemente são infinitesimalmente pequenas (menos de 1 em 100.000).”
“Além disso, meses depois, aconteceu a mesma coisa no ensaio pediátrico (Tabela 12). Desta vez, seis vezes mais crianças foram retiradas do teste após a segunda dose.”
“Existem, é claro, diferenças de procedimento ao administrar um placebo versus a vacina de mRNA, mas por que isso não aconteceu após a primeira dose também?”
“Matematicamente, isso é o mais próximo que você pode chegar de eliminar qualquer ‘sombra de dúvida’. Com uma alegação formal de um coordenador do estudo que afirma a mesma coisa [referindo-se ao denunciante Brook Jackson], podemos ter certeza de que a Pfizer está ocultando informações críticas dos reguladores”.
Ensaios da BioNTech na Alemanha afirmam poucos eventos adversos ‘relacionados’ à vacina
O estudo BioNTech na Alemanha testou várias dosagens de duas fórmulas de vacina COVID-19, rotuladas BNT162b1 e BNT162b2 – esta última concedida pela FDA aos EUA.
O último cache de documentos da Pfizer sugere um padrão, semelhante ao dos testes nos EUA, de não relatar eventos adversos relacionados à vacina.
De acordo com o terceiro relatório provisório, datado de 20 de março de 2021, entre os participantes do estudo que receberam a vacina candidata BNT162b2 concedida aos EUA nos EUA:
87% dos participantes mais jovens relataram reações locais solicitadas e 88% relataram reações sistêmicas solicitadas, com 10% relatando reações sistêmicas solicitadas de Grau 3 ou superior.
87% dos participantes mais jovens experimentaram reações locais solicitadas “leves” e 35% experimentaram reações locais solicitadas “moderadas”.
88% dos participantes mais jovens experimentaram reações sistêmicas solicitadas “leves” e 38% experimentaram reações sistêmicas solicitadas “moderadas”. Conforme consta no relatório:
“As reações sistêmicas solicitadas mais frequentemente relatadas de qualquer gravidade foram fadiga (n=40, 67%), seguida de cefaleia (n=32, 53%), mal-estar (n=24, 40%) e mialgia (n=23, 38%). Os demais termos de sintomas foram menos frequentes.
“Para náusea, dor de cabeça, fadiga, mialgia, calafrios, artralgia e mal-estar, cada sintoma foi avaliado como grave em <10% dos participantes.”
43% dos participantes mais jovens relataram um total de 51 TEAEs não solicitados (eventos adversos emergentes do tratamento, referindo-se a condições não presentes antes do tratamento ou que pioraram em intensidade após o tratamento) dentro de 28 dias da primeira ou segunda dose, nove dos quais foram considerados estar “relacionado” com a vacinação. Um participante nesta categoria recebeu um TEAE avaliado como Grau 3 ou superior, mas “que foi avaliado como não relacionado pelo investigador”.
Os TEAEs entre os participantes mais jovens incluíram hipoestesia, linfadenopatia, palpitações cardíacas, inflamação do ouvido externo, blefarite, dor de dente, dor torácica não cardíaca, infecção por cestoide, herpes oral, amigdalite, dor no pescoço, insônia, anosmia e dismenorreia.
Nenhum evento adverso grave emergente de tratamento não solicitado (TESAEs) ou mortes foram relatados entre os participantes mais jovens, mas uma participação descontinuada devido a nasofaringite moderada.
Um participante mais jovem “descontinuado devido a um EA moderado (nasofaringite)”.
86% dos participantes mais velhos relataram reações locais solicitadas, com 6% relatando reações locais solicitadas de Grau 3 ou superior, 78% relatando reações locais solicitadas “leves” e 36% relatando reações locais solicitadas “moderadas”.
72% dos participantes mais velhos relataram reações sistêmicas solicitadas, com 11% desses participantes sustentando reações sistêmicas solicitadas de Grau 3 ou superior, 69% sustentando reações solicitadas “leves” e 36% sustentando reações solicitadas “moderadas”.
33% dos participantes mais velhos relataram um total de 20 TEAEs não solicitados, quatro dos quais foram determinados como “relacionados” à vacinação. Entre os participantes mais velhos, 8% relataram um TESAE de Grau 3 ou superior, com “um evento avaliado como relatado pelo investigador”.
Um participante mais velho relatou ter sofrido um “TESAE” não relacionado” (uma fratura no tornozelo).
TESAEs entre os participantes mais velhos incluíram dor nas costas, dor no peito, lesão facial, aumento da lipase, aumento da amilase, espasmos musculares, dor musculoesquelética, dor no tendão, intolerância ortostática, cólica renal, dermatite seborreica e “respiração dolorosa”.
Entre os participantes do estudo que receberam a vacina candidata BNT162b1 (não concedida EUA):
86% dos “participantes mais jovens” relataram reações localizadas solicitadas (esperadas) (permanecendo em uma parte do corpo), com 18% relatando reações locais solicitadas de Grau 3 ou superior, 86% dos participantes mais jovens relatando reações locais solicitadas “leves” e 54 % relatando reações locais solicitadas “moderadas”.
92% dos participantes mais jovens relataram reações sistêmicas solicitadas (se espalhando para outras partes do corpo), com 44% relatando reações sistêmicas solicitadas de Grau 3 ou superior, 90% relatando reações sistêmicas solicitadas “leves” e 74% experimentando reações sistêmicas solicitadas “moderadas”.
O relatório afirma:
“As reações sistêmicas solicitadas mais frequentemente relatadas de qualquer gravidade foram fadiga (n=68, 81%), dor de cabeça (n=66, 79%), mialgia (n=51, 61%), mal-estar (n=50, 60% ) e calafrios (n=47, 56%). Os demais termos de sintomas foram menos frequentes.
“Para náuseas, vômitos, diarreia, mialgia, artralgia e febre, cada sintoma foi avaliado como grave em ≤ 10% dos participantes.”
45% dos participantes mais jovens relataram um total de 83 TEAEs não solicitados (inesperados) dentro de 28 dias após o recebimento da primeira ou segunda dose.
Um total de 51 desses TEAEs não solicitados foram relatados como “relacionados” à vacinação, enquanto 2% dos participantes sofreram TEAEs de Grau 3 ou superior (quatro no total), “dos quais três eventos foram avaliados como relacionados pelo investigador”.
Nenhum TESAE ou mortes não solicitadas foram relatados nesta categoria.
De acordo com o relatório, entre os participantes mais jovens, os TEAEs incluíram:
“’Distúrbios gerais e condições no local de administração’ relatados por 9 participantes (11%)”, incluindo doença semelhante à gripe e hematoma no local da injeção.”
“’Distúrbios do sistema nervoso’ relatados por 10 participantes (12%)”, incluindo pré-síncope, hiperestesia, parestesia e dor de cabeça.”
“’Distúrbios respiratórios, torácicos e mediastinais’ relatados por 9 participantes (11%)”, incluindo tosse e dor orofaríngea.”
Outros sintomas incluíram dor nas costas, dor torácica musculoesquelética, síndrome cervicobraquial, distúrbio do paladar, distúrbio do sono, depressão, alucinação, dismenorreia, prurido e pitiríase rósea, enquanto um participante necessitou da excisão (remoção) de um papiloma.
Um participante mais jovem descontinuou a participação no estudo, “devido a um EA moderado (mal-estar)”, enquanto outro participante descontinuou a participação “devido à toxicidade limitante da dose”.
83% dos “participantes mais velhos” relataram reações locais solicitadas, mas nenhuma foi relatada como Grau 3 ou superior, enquanto 83% das reações locais solicitadas foram “leves” e 42% foram “moderadas”.
92% dos participantes mais velhos relataram reações sistêmicas solicitadas, com 28% dos participantes experimentando reações sistêmicas solicitadas de Grau 3 ou superior, 89% experimentando reações sistêmicas solicitadas “leves” e 61% experimentando reações sistêmicas solicitadas “moderadas”.
De acordo com o relatório:
“As reações sistêmicas solicitadas mais frequentemente relatadas de qualquer gravidade foram cefaleia (n=29, 81%), fadiga (n=27, 75%), mialgia (n=18, 50%) e mal-estar (n=18, 50%). Os restantes termos de sintomas foram menos frequentes.”
36% dos participantes relataram um total de 24 TEAEs não solicitados dentro de 28 dias da primeira ou segunda dose, nove dos quais foram avaliados como “relacionados” à vacinação.
Dos participantes desta categoria, 11% relataram TEAEs de Grau 3 ou superior (quatro eventos no total), sendo um desses eventos avaliado como “relacionado” à vacinação.
Os TEAEs relatados pelos participantes mais velhos incluíram dor orofaríngea, nasofaringite, disfunção da bexiga, distúrbio do sono, dor musculoesquelética e dor torácica musculoesquelética, polaquiúria, enxaqueca, síncope e alopecia.
Um participante mais velho que recebeu o candidato BNT162b1 sofreu uma TESAE (síncope), e não houve mortes nesta categoria.
É importante notar que nenhuma das participantes de nenhum dos candidatos à vacina estava grávida, o que levanta questões sobre a recomendação e administração da vacina a mulheres grávidas, apesar da ausência de dados de ensaios clínicos.
Como os documentos mostram, uma ampla gama de efeitos adversos foi relatada, incluindo condições cardiovasculares e do sistema nervoso, a maioria dos quais foi determinada como não relacionada à própria vacinação.
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Four out of every five new deaths being blamed on the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) in Canada are occurring in people who took all of the “vaccine” injections as demanded by the Justin Trudeau regime.
The government of Canada has confirmed that 80 percent of “covid” deaths are “fully vaccinated” deaths, which completely defies the official government claim that the shots are perfectly “safe and effective” and help “stop the spread.”
Amazingly, those who took three injections (the two primaries plus a “booster”) account for 70 percent of all deaths – suggesting that the more Fauci Flu shots a person gets, the more likely he or she is to end up a statistic.
Epidemiology data from the Canadian government, which is reported sporadically and “when[ever] they feel like it,” according to Exposé News, clearly shows that getting needled for Chinese Germs does not protect against either infection or death.
This data is skewed, as you might imagine, because of the timeframe used, which is designed to deceive. (Related: Remember when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitted that “most” new cases of the Omicron variant are being detected in the fully jabbed?)
“Unfortunately, the Government of Canada is attempting to deceive the public by providing a tally of cases, hospitalisations and deaths that stretches all the way back to December 14th 2020,” the Exposé explains.
“By doing this they’re able to include a huge wave that occurred in January 2021 when just 0.3% of the population of Canada was considered fully vaccinated.”
Don’t be fooled: Getting jabbed for covid is likely to sicken or kill you
Fortunately, use of the so-called “Wayback Machine” allows a more accurate look at the data that the Canadian government does not want people to see, which shows something much different when performing independent mathematical calculations.
The Exposé was able to determine that the most recent “waves” of covid, including hospitalizations and deaths, occurred not among the unvaccinated, but primarily among the fully vaccinated.
“Canada recorded 429,335 Covid-19 cases between 14th Feb and 29th May 2022, and 376,451 of those cases were among the vaccinated population,” the independent news outlet reported. “With 11,211 cases among the partly vaccinated, 138,086 cases among the double vaccinated, and 227,154 cases among the triple vaccinated.”
“This means the unvaccinated population accounted for 12% of Covid-19 cases between 14th Feb and 29th May, whilst the vaccinated population accounted for 88%, 60% of which were among the triple jabbed.”
Similarly with hospitalizations, Canada’s hospitals saw a massive influx of new patients between February 14 of this year and May 29. Nearly all hospitalization cases were people who had been either double or triple jabbed.
“This means the unvaccinated population accounted for just 22% of hospitalisations, whilst the vaccinated population accounted for 78%, 63% of which were among the triple jabbed,” the Exposé revealed.
Then we have deaths, which during the same time period mostly occurred in people who were double or triple jabbed. Over these 15 weeks, 4,954 people died from “covid” in Canada, at least officially speaking, and 3,796 of these deaths occurred in the double or triple injected.
“If you don’t find these figures that concerning, perhaps you will once you realise between 30k and 50k Canadians are getting their third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine every single day,” the Exposé reports, providing a very clear and disturbing picture of what is really happening to people who take these so-called “vaccines.”
“But now, despite the Government of Canada clearly trying desperately to conceal it, a bit of time, effort, and simple math has revealed 88% of cases, 78% of hospitalisations and 77% of deaths were recorded among the fully vaccinated population between 14th Feb and 29th May 2022.”
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The allegations of shelling of a maternity facility in Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) worry the UN Secretary-General Spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, who added that this is an apparent violation of international humanitarian law.
Dujarric stated that “we have seen the media reports about a maternity hospital in Donetsk. This is extremely troubling. Any attack on civilian infrastructure, especially health facilities, is a clear violation of international law.”
Earlier on Monday, the DPR’s envoy to the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of the Ceasefire Regime (JCCC) reported significant shelling of towns and communities throughout the republic by MLRS and different caliber artillery, including an unprecedentedly intense and persistent shelling of Donetsk. One of the rounds exploded and set fire to the nearby maternity hospital.
In recent days, the Ukrainian military has aggressively bombarded the DPR. The most severe escalation since 2014 occurred on May 30, when Ukrainian troops utilized 155mm artillery and US M777 howitzers, as well as four missiles from the Smerch multiple launch rocket system, resulting in civilian deaths.
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Es wurde oft gesagt, Washington sei der Bauch der Bestie und die Schweiz der Kopf der Bestie. Betrachtet man eine Reihe von Fakten, so ist dies wahrscheinlich nicht weit von der Wahrheit entfernt.
Die Schweiz beherbergt eine Reihe von höchst zweifelhaften Institutionen und Organisationen.
Nehmen wir das Weltwirtschaftsforum (World Economic Forum – WEF) – die nicht gewählte NGO mit ihrem nicht gewählten Chef Klaus Schwab, die ihren Sitz in Cologny, einem Vorort von Genf, hat. Dieses nicht gewählte, aber mega-reiche Gremium von “Erleuchteten” mit steuerfreiem Status tut so, als ob es über unsere Zukunft, die Zukunft der Welt und buchstäblich die Zukunft der Menschheit entscheiden könnte.
Einmal im Jahr, meist in der zweiten Januarhälfte, versammelt das WEF etwa 2000 bis 3000 Oligarchen und Möchtegern-Koryphäen in Davos, Schweiz, um (oft in geheimen Räumen abseits der Öffentlichkeit) darüber zu diskutieren, wie man die Welt verbessern kann. Nein, natürlich nicht für uns, das Volk, sondern für sich selbst, die Elite.
Ihre Privatjet-Pilgerreise in die Schweiz hinterlässt einen CO2-Fußabdruck, der der “Klimawandel”-Agenda ins Gesucht spuckt; genau der von der Elite der Welt aufgedrängten Klima-Agenda.
Dieses Jahr, 2022, war eine “Covid-Ausnahme”, und das WEF Welt-Treffen fand im Mai statt, immer noch in Davos, unter dem üblichen Polizei- und Geheimdienstschutz. Allerdings mit einer geringeren Anzahl von Persönlichkeiten und Staatsoberhäuptern. Das riecht ein wenig nach “Deglobalisierung”.
Zweitens befindet sich in der Schweiz auch die Bank für Internationalen Zahlungsausgleich (BIZ), ein kolossaler runder Turm, der Ähnlichkeiten mit den Darstellungen des “Turms von Babel” aufweist, der als Akt der Rebellion gegen Gott gebaut worden sein soll. Ist die physische Ähnlichkeit der beiden Türme ein seltsamer Zufall? – Siehe dies.
Die BIZ befindet sich in Basel, an der Grenze zu Deutschland. Sie wurde 1930 mit dem erklärten Ziel gegründet, die Schuldenzahlungen Deutschlands an die Sieger des Ersten Weltkriegs zu “verwalten”. In Wirklichkeit diente sie eher der Vorbereitung und Finanzierung des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Die BIZ leitete Geld von der US-Notenbank (FED) an Hitler-Deutschland weiter – auch zur Finanzierung von Hitlers Krieg, insbesondere gegen die Sowjetunion.
Der erste Vorsitzende und Präsident der BIZ (1930-1933) war Gates McGarrah. Er stammte aus dem Direktorium der US-Federal Reserve, der amerikanischen Notenbank. Die offizielle Aufgabe der BIZ bestand darin, “die deutschen Reparationen und die Schulden der Verbündeten zu begleichen und neue Einrichtungen für das internationale Bankwesen zu entwickeln”.
Interessanterweise wurde Gates McGarrah am 30. August 1924 zum amerikanischen Direktor des Generalrats der Reichsbank, der 1876 gegründeten Zentralbank Deutschlands, ernannt, die er bis 1945 leitete. Diese Tätigkeit übte er teilweise parallel zu seiner Aufgabe als Vorsitzender und Präsident der BIZ aus, von der er 1933 zurücktrat. Siehe dies.
Die USA sind dafür bekannt, auf mehreren Festen gleichzeitig zu tanzen. In diesem Fall finanzierten sie ihren Feind im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Adolf Hitler, um die UdSSR zu bekämpfen, die offiziell ein Verbündeter der USA gegen Deutschland war. Die Finanzierung wurde über die BIZ in Basel abgewickelt.
Die Sowjetunion erlitt enorme Verluste (die Schätzungen schwanken zwischen 25 und 30 Millionen), aber die sowjetische Armee besiegte Hitlers Armee, was der Beginn des Untergangs des deutschen Nationalsozialismus war.
Es steht außer Frage, warum der russische Präsident Putin mit aller Entschiedenheit gegen die Nazi-Führung und die Nazi-Streitkräfte – die Asow-Bataillone – in der Ukraine vorgeht. Die Asow-Bataillone kämpften mit Hitlers Nazi-Armee im Zweiten Weltkrieg gegen die Sowjetunion.
Heute sitzt die BIZ, eine extrem geheime Behörde, immer noch in Basel in einem babylonischen Turm und verwaltet die Pyramidenfonds des westlichen Währungssystems – über die Zentralbanken des Systems in der ganzen Welt. Das Gebäude hat mehrere unterirdische Stockwerke, in denen ein großer Teil der Goldreserven und anderer Vermögenswerte der Zentralbanken der Welt gelagert wird.
Die BIZ befindet sich größtenteils in Kontrolle der Familie Rothschild, die de facto einen enormen Einfluss auf das weltweite Finanzsystem hat – die Vielzahl der Währungen, von denen die meisten westlichen Währungen nach dem Vorbild des US-Dollars gemäß dem Federal Reserve Act von 1913 allmählich zu Fiat-Währungen geworden sind. Seit 2001 folgt der Euro, der oft als kleiner Bruder des US-Dollars bezeichnet wird, der gleichen betrügerischen Pyramiden-Doktrin.
Drittens verfügt die Schweiz auch über eines der geheimsten internationalen Bankensysteme der Welt mit Tentakeln von Dienstleistungen und Netzwerken, die rund um den Globus reichen. Trotz zahlreicher “Versuche” ausländischer Staaten, insbesondere der USA, das Schweizer Bankgeheimnis zu brechen, konnte es nie wirklich durchbrochen werden, da die mächtigen internationalen Oligarchen und Finanzinstitute ein vitales Interesse an dem geheimen Bankenzentrum Schweiz haben.
Der Pandemie-Vertrag: Tyrannei der Weltgesundheit
Schliesslich, aber nicht zuletzt, ist die Schweiz auch Sitz der Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO), die nun darauf vorbereitet wird, die gesundheitliche Souveränität der 194 WHO-Mitgliedsländer durch einen sogenannten “Pandemievertrag” zu übernehmen. Dies würde die WHO buchstäblich zu einer WHT machen – einer Weltgesundheitstyrannei.
Die erste Abstimmungsrunde in der vergangenen Woche ging für die WHO verloren, vor allem dank eines Blocks von 47 afrikanischen Ländern, die gegen den Vertrag stimmten. Aber das ist noch lange nicht das Ende. Der Pandemievertrag war ein Vorschlag der Biden-Administration – siehe: “Demokraten”. Aber er wurde sofort von der Schweiz, der EU und einer Reihe anderer, meist westlicher Länder unterstützt.
Dieser Pandemievertrag wird, wenn er umgesetzt wird, die globale Landschaft verändern und Sie und mich einiger unserer grundlegendsten Rechte und Freiheiten berauben. Täuschen Sie sich nicht: Der WHO-Pandemievertrag ist ein direkter Angriff auf die Souveränität der Mitgliedsstaaten und ein direkter Eingriff in Ihre körperliche Autonomie.
Video: Digitale Tyrannei und der QR-Code: Peter Koenig und Michel Chossudovsky
Der Pandemie-Vertrag ist die “Hintertür” zu “Global Governance” und digitaler Tyrannei. Er ist das Ende der “repräsentativen Demokratie”.
Obwohl der Pandemievertrag bereits im Dezember 2021 von der Biden Administration vorgeschlagen und natürlich von der Schweizer Regierung begrüßt wurde, erfuhr die breite Schweizer Öffentlichkeit erst im April davon. Geheimhaltung und Diktatur sind längst zur Norm geworden, und wir fantasieren immer noch von “Demokratie”?
Die Schweiz, der Kopf der Bestie, ist sich der illegalen und mehr als fragwürdigen Machenschaften, die sich auf ihrem Territorium abspielen, wohl bewusst. Seit Langem. Doch damit nicht genug: Die Schweiz ermutigt sie und zieht alle Fäden zusammen: Die Weltzentralbank (BIZ); das WEF, Meister der Globalisierung, das mit WEF-Wissenschaftlern aus der WEF-Akademie der “Young Global Leaders” in die Regierungen der Welt “eindringt” (Klaus Schwab); und nicht zuletzt die Weltgesundheitsorganisation, die WHO, alias die Weltgesundheitstyrannei.
Die Schweizer Regierung ist sich der laufenden Verbrechen auf ihrem Territorium bewusst. Warum stoppt sie sie nicht?
Weil es sich um Weiss-Kragen Delikte handelt?
Die über Geheim-Massnahmen, wie „Notrecht“ (vorerst bis 2031) legalisiert wurden?
Erinnern Sie sich an Klaus Schwabs lächerliches Diktum: “Sie werden nichts besitzen, und Sie werden glücklich sein”? Nun, es sieht so aus, als würde diese Aktion beginnen, sorgfältig geplant in, ja, der Schweiz.
Die Schweizer Sozialdemokraten und andere Mitte-Links-Parteien schlagen vor, “arme” Menschen zu subventionieren – wobei “arm” (noch) nicht national definiert ist, zum Beispiel mit einer Reihe von landesweiten Indikatoren; auch gibt es in der Schweiz keinen landesweiten Mindestlohn. Diese befristeten Zahlungen pro Familie würden die Menschen und Familien von staatlichen Zuwendungen abhängig machen. Stattdessen sollte ein existenzsichernder Mindestlohn für Arbeit definiert und durchgesetzt werden, nicht als Subvention.
Das Problem ist nicht die Höhe der “temporären” Subvention, sondern die Abhängigkeit, die sie schafft.
In Kombination mit 5G und möglicherweise bald 6G, Künstlicher Intelligenz (KI, alias AI = Artificial Intelligence), der Robotisierung der Menschheit, oder wie Yuval Noah Hariri sagt,
“Menschen sind hackbare Tiere und können gechipt und in ‘Transhumane’ verwandelt werden”.
Solche Menschen können durch ferngesteuerte Bewusstseinsmanipulation glücklich gemacht werden, so dass sie selbstgefällig sind und die von der Elite angeordneten Grausamkeiten belächeln.
Ist Ihnen aufgefallen, dass die sogenannten Demokraten (in den USA), die Sozialdemokraten, die Sozialisten, die Grünen oder andere Mitte-Links- oder ganz linke Parteien sich allmählich an die globalistische Agenda verkaufen? Es scheint, als ob sie nicht wüssten, was sie in eine Richtung treibt, die ihren ursprünglichen Zielen zuwiderläuft: sich für bessere Arbeitsbedingungen, für souveräne Arbeitnehmerrechte und für nationale Unabhängigkeit einzusetzen.
All das haben sie mit Bravour getan, bis Mitte bis Ende der siebziger Jahre, als sie allmählich und scheinbar unbemerkt von einer neoliberalen und CIA-Agenda zur Zerstörung sozialer / sozialistischer Bewegungen in Europa vereinnahmt wurden.
Daher könnte eine “vorübergehende staatliche Subvention für die Armen” der erste Schritt zu einem Universellen Grundeinkommen (UBI – Englisch: Universal Basic Income) sein, einem Regierungsprogramm, bei dem jeder erwachsene Bürger regelmäßig einen bestimmten Geldbetrag erhält.
Bei einem gechippten, geistig manipulierbaren Transhumanen à la Hariri könnte das UBI zu einem lächelnden jungen Erwachsenen führen, der nichts besitzt, aber glücklich ist.
Alles, was er besaß, wurde von der One Word Tyranny (OWT) gestohlen oder konfisziert, aber sein / ihr Gehirn ist 5G-manipuliert, um glücklich zu sein. Das wäre eine letzte wichtige Errungenschaft der 4. industriellen Revolution von Klaus Schwab, der Agenda 2030 und des Great Reset.
Die offizielle Beschreibung des Grundeinkommens lautet: Die Ziele eines Grundeinkommenssystems sind die Linderung von Armut und der Ersatz anderer bedarfsorientierter Sozialprogramme, die möglicherweise einen größeren bürokratischen Aufwand erfordern.
In der Schweiz wurde der Vorschlag für ein Grundeinkommen in einer Volksabstimmung (6. Juni 2016) mit mehr als 75 % der Stimmen abgelehnt. Drängt die Schweizer Regierung nun durch die Hintertür darauf, um dem Great Reset des WEFs zu entsprechen?
Hariri ist einer der engsten Verbündeten und Berater von Klaus Schwab – er ist ganz auf Schwabs Linie der 4. industriellen Revolution. Ist Hariri, mit seinem arroganten Imponiergehabe, in dem er den Großteil der Menschen auf der Welt als “nutzlose Esser” bezeichnet, nur Panikmache, oder ist er real?
Entscheiden wir uns für Ersteres, denn die Angst ist immer noch die stärkste Waffe der dunklen Sekte. Und Schwab und seinesgleichen können eindeutig als eine niedrig schwingende Klasse betrachtet werden, weit unter dem Licht.
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Es gibt noch weitere Gründe, warum die Schweiz ein Vorreiter für Klaus Schwabs Great Reset und für die Umsetzung der dunklen Seite der UN-Agenda 2030 sein könnte.
Die private Verschuldung der Schweiz machte im Dezember 2021 171,70 % ihres nominalen BSP (Brutto-Sozialprodukt) aus. Das ist einer der höchsten Werte der Welt. Siehe hier.
Das einzige Land des globalen Nordens, das die Schweiz bei der privaten Verschuldung überholt, sind die Vereinigten Staaten mit einer privaten Verschuldung im Verhältnis zum BSP von 228 % im Jahr 2021. Siehe dies.
Beide Länder sind perfekte Vorreiter für die “Enteignung” – hin zum Nichts-Besitzen und Glücklichsein. Mit dem WEF, der BIZ, dem weltweiten Netzwerk des internationalen Bankwesens, das im Kopf der Bestie sitzt, sowie der mit Warpgeschwindigkeit fortschreitenden monetären Digitalisierung und acht weiteren Jahren, um die Ziele der Agenda 2030 zu erreichen, steht die Schweiz gut da, um zu zeigen, wie der Great Reset aussehen könnte.
Die Betonung liegt auf “könnte” – denn es wird nicht passieren. Die Menschen werden sich wehren. Ein diabolischer Plan dieses Kalibers kann nicht gelingen.
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In der Schweiz hat die private Überschuldung mit dem Schweizer Bankensystem zu tun. Wie in vielen Ländern sind die meisten privaten Liegenschaften mit Hypotheken belastet.
Die Besonderheit in der Schweiz ist, dass Hypotheken nicht getilgt werden müssen. Wenn Sie Ihre Hypothek nicht ausnahmsweise zurückzahlen, gehört Ihnen Ihr Haus nie wirklich.
Hypothekarisch belastete Immobilien werden oft von Generation zu Generation weitergegeben. Das macht Sie zur leichten Beute für Enteignungen, wenn die Wirtschaft entgleist, die Inflation in die Höhe schießt, die Zinsen rapide steigen, die Arbeitslosigkeit zunimmt – all das kann und wird natürlich manipuliert.
Künstlich erzeugte Finanzkrisen haben wir in den letzten 30 Jahren in unterschiedlichem Ausmaß erlebt. Eine der schlimmsten war der Finanzkollaps von 2008/10, der Griechenland gezielt zerstört hat. Eine gute Krise reicht aus, damit private Banken Häuser enteignen und ihre “Besitzer” mit nichts als einem Lächeln auf die Straße setzen.
Das könnte heute wieder passieren. Tatsächlich hat es bereits begonnen – steigende Inflation, rasant steigende Zinsen – und Bingo, die Bank übernimmt, und Sie besitzen nichts mehr. Das macht Sie noch nicht glücklich, aber in Kombination mit einem gehackten 5G-Gehirn, einer gechippten Glückspille, einem Chip unter Ihrer Haut oder besser, Sie sind bereits gechippt durch die giftigen, mit Graphenoxid beladenen Nicht-Vaxxen, die ab Dezember 2020 in Ihren Körper zwangsinjiziert wurden, könnten Sie sich bald glücklich fühlen und nichts mehr besitzen.
Was derzeit – halb im Verborgenen – vor sich geht, ist ein anschaulicher Vorläufer des Smileys des Great Reset: “Nichts besitzen, aber glücklich sein, weil die Regierung mir alles gibt, was ich brauche”.
Wenn sie nicht JETZT gestoppt wird, ist die Schweiz auf dem besten Weg, ein Spitzenreiter für Klaus Schwabs Reset zu werden. Wir, das Volk, können und müssen das verhindern.
Alternativen: Frieden und Demokratie
Die Schweiz könnte ihren Kopf der Bestie leicht in einen Kopf des Friedens und der Demokratie verwandeln. Die Schweiz könnte zu ihrer legendären verfassungsmässigen “Neutralität” zurückkehren, die sie schon vor Jahrzehnten aufgegeben hat, indem sie die selbstzerstörerischen Sanktionen der USA und der EU gegen Russland aufhebt und damit der völlig korrupten und dystopischen Welt zeigt, was echte menschliche und gesellschaftliche Werte sein könnten.
Es erfordert Charakter und politischen Willen, eine starke Regierung, die dem Druck aus Washington und Brüssel widersteht.
Aber es wäre machbar. Die Schweiz hat wie kein anderes sogenanntes “neutrales” Land eine starke, jahrhundertealte Tradition der verfassungsmäßigen Neutralität. Es ist höchst unwahrscheinlich, dass die Schweiz dafür “bestraft” würde, dass sie sich nicht an die kriminellen, die Wirtschaft und Souveränität beeinträchtigenden Sanktionen des Westens hält.
Im Gegenteil, die Schweiz könnte ein leuchtendes Beispiel für Neutralität und Nichteinmischung in die Angelegenheiten anderer Nationen sein.
Diese Position der Neutralität und des “brückenbauenden Vermittlers” könnte durch die Position der Schweiz im UNO-Sicherheitsrat (UNSC) noch verstärkt werden. Heute, am 9. Juni, stimmt die UNO-Generalversammlung über fünf der zehn nicht ständigen Mitglieder des UNO-Sicherheitsrats ab. Die Schweiz ist ein Kandidat, der wahrscheinlich angenommen wird.
In der Zwischenzeit ist das Resultat bekannt. Die Schweiz wird für die nächsten zwei Jahren als nicht-permanentes Mitglied im UNO-Sicherheitsrat mitwirken.
Indem sie die rationalen und moralischen Qualitäten eines Kopfes des Friedens und der Demokratie annimmt, könnte die Schweiz eine Friedensvermittlerin für Länder werden, die sich im Konflikt befinden, wie die Ukraine und Russland, alias die USA und Russland. Die Schweiz könnte die dunkel schwingenden Kultorganisationen WEF, WHO und BIS – denen sie eine Residenz auf ihrem Boden gewährt – dahingehend beeinflussen, dass sie menschenfreundlich werden und sich um Konfliktlösungen und mehr Verteilungsgerechtigkeit zum Wohle der Menschen bemühen; dass sie die Menschenrechte fördern und nicht den Verkauf von Waffen.
Im Grunde genommen könnte die Schweiz darauf bestehen, dass das WEF sich an sein edles Mission Statement “Committed to Improving the State of the World” hält.
Und wenn das nicht klappt, kann eine Schweiz die den Frieden als ihre Mission vertritt, den Organisationen die sich nicht an diese gesellschaftsliebenden Rollen halten, die Tür weisen.
Klingt krass, und unmöglich?
Nichts ist unmöglich in der heutigen Welt. Das sehen wir jeden Tag besser.
“Frieden ist Liebe, und Liebe ist Frieden”
Die Schweiz könnte das dystopische, orwellsche “Krieg ist Frieden und Frieden ist Krieg” in das verwandeln, was es in einer rationalen und friedliebenden Welt sein sollte – “Frieden ist Liebe und Liebe ist Frieden”.
Diese neue / alte Rolle der Schweizer Neutralität könnte nur ein Gewinn sein – ein Gewinn für alle.
Sie könnte eine Erleuchtung weit über die Grenzen der Schweiz hinaus auslösen und sogar die mächtigen Finanzgiganten dazu bewegen, eine höhere Ebene der Koexistenz mit den Bewohnern dieser einzigartigen Mutter Erde, des Universums, anzustreben und eine gerechtere Verteilung der großzügigen Ressourcen von Mutter Erde zu finden.
Warum eigentlich nicht? Sobald sich das kollektive Bewusstsein über die materiellen Werte erhebt, werden Milliarden und Billionen zu bloßen Zahlen und stellen keine Werte und kein “Ansehen” mehr dar.
Es wäre ein Anstoß zum Sieg der Völker über Konflikte, Hass und Neid, es könnte wirklich ein gewaltiges “We shall Overcome” werden.
Nennen Sie mir einen guten Grund, warum der menschliche Geist nicht die Fähigkeit haben sollte, dies wahr werden zu lassen. Und denken Sie daran – KEINE Furcht ist unsere stärkste Waffe gegen die dunklen Widersacher.
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Übersetzt mit www.DeepL.com/Translator (kostenlose Version)
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
Comments Off on Die Schweiz, das geheime Bankensystem und der “Great Reset” des WEF: Ist die Schweiz Nummer Eins in “Du wirst nichts besitzen und du wirst glücklich sein”?
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Introduction. The Presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2009)
During president George W. Bush’s two terms in office (2001-2009), his administration’s policies typically favoured America’s richest, and whose wealth had already increased greatly since the early 1980s under neoliberal policies.
The Bush administration reduced taxes without clear justification, while many ordinary American families could no longer guarantee a college education for their children. The latter were left with the option of enlisting in the US Armed Forces, in order to receive education benefits.
Inequality and poverty were rising sharply in the world’s most powerful state. By 2007, 34.6% of private wealth in America was concentrated in the hands of 1% of the country’s society, the ultra elite. Near the end of Bush’s presidency, the top 20% of earners in America had accumulated 85% of the nation’s wealth. By 2010 there were around 48 million Americans unemployed among those aged between 17 and 64.
Bush’s White House dispatched billions of taxpayer dollars to fund the social services of often extremely conservative, faith based organisations (Catholic and evangelical Protestantism, both forms of Christianity). The political goal of these groups was to erode American democracy and to establish a theocratic state; that is a nation in which religious figures rule in God’s name.
The evangelicals further wish to amend the constitution, by claiming that the US is a Christian country. Less than two-thirds of Americans, 63%, now identify themselves as believers in Christianity. White evangelical protestants consist of a modest 14.5% of the American population, and the percentage is dropping.
Nevertheless, in the first decade of this century the evangelicals controlled more than 60 religious organisations. In just one year (2004) evangelical groups received $2 billion in donations from the Bush administration, and they have viewed Bush as one of their own, not without reason. Bush is a very religious man and, as the president reportedly said in July 2003, he is “driven with a mission from God”.
Karl Rove, the political consultant who influenced Bush’s victorious 2000 and 2004 election campaigns, believed success depended on the white evangelical vote. A massive 78% of Americans from this ethnicity group voted for Bush in November 2004, having risen from 68% four years before.
Conservative to far-right evangelicals have, in fact, been gradually gaining influence in America since the 1960s, particularly within the Republican Party. The evangelicals enjoy increased involvement in social areas, relating to the perceived persecution of religious schools, along with their views on the place of men and women in society, and also on marriage, divorce, homosexuality and abortion. Patrick J. Buchanan, the American political commentator, went so far as to say that a “cultural war” within America was “as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself” because the cultural war “is for the soul of America”.
Despite growing support from Christian groups like the evangelicals, Bush’s overall popularity in America was declining as the years flicked by. In the days after the 9/11 atrocities against America in September 2001, Bush’s approval ratings stood at between 86% to 90%. By November 2008 it had plummeted to 25%. A poll from May 2008, conducted by CNN/Opinion Research Corp., revealed that 71% of Americans disapproved of how Bush was running the country, and that he was the most “unpopular president in modern American history”.
The Bush-Obama Transition. Obama Served the Interests of “Big Money”
Harvard University professor Lawrence Katz said “this is truly a lost decade [2000-2009]”. It was also a lost decade in the military sphere, regarding defeats on the ground. When the Bush presidency was coming to a close in 2008, he was no longer speaking of “victory” or “winning” in Iraq, with US military forces having failed to subdue and control the country.
The US Congressional Budgeting Office estimated the long-term price of the war in Iraq could reach up to $4.5 trillion. Much of the colossal spending has been at the expense of the American taxpayer. In August 2021, it was calculated too that Washington had spent at least $2.3 trillion on military operations chiefly in Afghanistan, after a 20 year war in that country. The $2.3 trillion estimate includes money spent on US military actions in Pakistan, which shares a 1,640 mile border with Afghanistan.
America has traditionally been led by white Anglo-Saxon protestants (WASP), those usually belonging to the ruling classes who had long overseen the US financial system. The assumption to power in January 2009 of an African-American leader, Barack Obama, was a symptom of the decline of white America. It perhaps seemed to constitute a setback to the Anglo-Saxon governing elite.
However, the American historian Noam Chomsky pointed out on 20 June 2013,
“I really didn’t expect very much from Obama. I wrote critically about him even before the primaries, just quoting his website. It was pretty clear that his campaign was smoke and mirrors”.
President Obama continued to serve the centres of power, in some ways at least. Even before his inauguration in early 2009, Obama proposed another trillion dollar bailout for the major banks. Who were among those that had funded Obama’s all important election campaign from 2007-2008? He received $1,034,615 from Goldman Sachs, a leading American investment bank. Goldman Sachs dispensed with only $234,595 to the candidacy of Obama’s challenger, John McCain.
Another powerful investment bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co., donated $847,895 to Obama. McCain received a mere $336,605 from JPMorgan Chase & Co. Citigroup Inc., yet another large American bank, furnished Obama’s campaign with $755,057, while the same corporation gave McCain’s campaign $330,502. Obama also received a donation of $817,855 from Google, among many others.
Obama’s campaign raised more than 3 times as much cash from bankers and financial corporations, in comparison to that of McCain. Moreover, Obama’s election chances were bolstered by cash injections from institutions like the University of California which forked out $1,799,460, and Harvard University, $900,909. Apparently these educational centres see no conflict of interest in bankrolling presidential elections.
Bush’s performance, a Republican president, with his reputation harmed further during the financial crisis of 2007-08, had convinced the Wall Street business executives that a Democratic Party candidate (Obama) would be a safer bet than a Republican Party candidate (McCain). Obama’s campaign was engineered by crafty and relentless propaganda, “public relations” in modern parlance, which proved more effective when compared to his Republican rival.
A year into Obama’s presidency the US State Department recognised, in a report it compiled in the first 4 months of 2010, that there were at least 36 active conflicts smouldering across the globe; and that the risk of war was increasing worldwide, especially in poor countries where corruption reigned, access to weapons financing was easy, and in which instability was severe in neighbouring states. The conflicts were spreading especially in the Middle East, the Caucasus and Africa.
What the US State Department did not mention, was that Washington had a very considerable role in fanning the flames of war. Brazilian scholar Moniz Bandeira observed how in November 2014, “Russia’s Deputy Minister of Defense, Anatoly Antonov, rightly accused the United States of being responsible for two-thirds of the military conflicts that flared up in the last decades, including those in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, by taking advantage of economic and social difficulties, in addition to various ethnic and religious conflicts, intervening under the pretext of expanding democracy”.
Obama’s Neoconservative Foreign Policy. Encirclement of Russia and China
During Obama’s two-term presidency (2009-2017), US foreign policy was based to an extent on the neoconservative doctrines of the Bush White House; but it can be pointed out, Obama was not as aggressive as his predecessor. Only 2 European states joined NATO during the Obama era, Croatia and Albania in April 2009, and the groundwork for that was laid by Bush. In comparison, 7 European countries joined NATO during Bush’s tenure, but one could argue the real number was 9 with Albania and Croatia.
Obama did continue large-scale attempts to encircle Russia and China, while expanding Washington’s international drone assassination campaign. The Obama administration “had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine” in February 2014, according to the president himself on CNN the following year. This was a virtual admission of an American-backed putsch in Kiev. Geopolitical analyst George Friedman said “it truly was the most blatant coup in history” which installed a Western-friendly regime in Kiev, and that Russia “wants a Ukraine that is neutral”.
Relating to China, Obama set out clearly, in January 2012, a new strategic plan through which the US would confront China’s growing power. On 5 January 2012 Obama stressed at the Pentagon, “We will be strengthening our presence in the Asia Pacific, and budget reductions will not come at the expense of that critical region”. Strengthen it he did, by enhancing the US military to hem China in close to its frontiers, with US naval and army bases, warships, bombers and submarines.
We can take note that much of the American military presence is ensconced around the waters in China’s sphere of interest. In mid-May 2020 a 500 foot long American destroyer, the USS Rafael Peralta, was spotted sailing in the Yellow Sea 116 nautical miles from the coast of Shanghai, China’s most populous city.
The previous month on 17 April 2020 another formidable US destroyer, the USS McCampbell, was seen in the Yellow Sea just 42 nautical miles from the Chinese city of Weihai. The US continues to hold a major strategic advantage over its adversaries, the fruits of which were secured mostly in the Second World War. US military officials speak regularly of conducting “freedom of navigation” operations in the South China Sea, which the Americans regard as “international waters”. The Chinese and Russians are not quite afforded the luxury of conducting “freedom of navigation” exercises in the Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico, near American shores.
In June 2015 president Obama approved the American National Military Strategy (2015 NMS). This singled out Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as the countries that are most strategically challenging to US hegemony. Yet the National Military Strategy made the rather glaring concession that “none of these nations are believed to be seeking direct military conflict with the United States or our allies”.
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Shane Quinn, Journalist and renowned Historian, focussing on geopolitics and the history of World War II, based in Ireland. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Sources
Jo Adetunji, “Understanding evangelicalism in America today”, The Conversation, 4 August 2021
“Religion plays big role in Bush presidency”, ABC News, 21 May 2001
Noam Chomsky, Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy, with David Barsamian (Hamish Hamilton; 1st edition, 5 Dec. 2017)
Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA (Springer 1st ed., 23 June 2017)
Patrick J. Buchanan, “Address to the Republican National Convention”, American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, 17 August 1992
Paul Steinhauser, “Poll: More disapprove of Bush than any other president”, CNN, 1 May 2008
RT, “US responsible for two-thirds of all military conflicts – Russia’s top brass”, 27 November 2014
Elena Chernenko, Alexander Gabuev, “‘In Ukraine US interests are incompatible with the interests of the Russian Federation’, Stratfor chief George Friedman on the roots of the Ukraine crisis”, US-Russia.org, 17 January 2015
Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st ed., 4 Feb. 2019)
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Costs of War, August 2021
“President Bush Participates in Signing Ceremony with NATO Secretary General De Hoop Scheffer for NATO Accession Protocols for Albania and Croatia”, Bush White House Archives, 24 October 2008
TeleSUR, “Ukraine One Year On From The President’s Ousting”, 22 February 2015
Matt Compton, “President Obama Outlines a New Global Military Strategy”, Obama White House Archives, 5 January 2012
Kristin Huang, “US destroyer spotted off coast of Shanghai as PLA Navy begins 11-week exercise in Yellow Sea”, South China Morning Post, 15 May 2020
History of World War II: Operation Barbarossa, the Allied Firebombing of German Cities and Japan’s Early Conquests
By Shane Quinn
The first two chapters focus on German preparations as they geared up to launch their 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, called Operation Barbarossa, which began eight decades ago. It was named after King Frederick Barbarossa, a Prussian emperor who in the 12th century had waged war against the Slavic peoples. Analysed also in the opening two chapters are the Soviet Union’s preparations for a conflict with Nazi Germany.
The remaining chapters focus for the large part on the fighting itself, as the Nazis and their Axis allies, the Romanians and Finns at first, swarmed across Soviet frontiers in the early hours of 22 June 1941. The German-led invasion of the USSR was the largest military offensive in history, consisting of almost four million invading troops. Its outcome would decide whether the post-World War II landscape comprised of an American-German dominated globe, or an American-Soviet dominated globe. The Nazi-Soviet war was, as a consequence, a crucial event in modern history and its result was felt for decades afterward and, indeed, to the present day.
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Six months after America’s Frontline Doctors’ viral video of their press conference on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, Founder Dr. Simone Gold traveled to a rally for health freedom in Washington, D.C., to speak on January 6, 2021. In the months between the press conference in July 2020 and January 6, 2021, Dr. Gold was asked to present on numerous occasions about physician free speech and her experience of being fired for prescribing early treatment to Covid-19 patients. By this time, she had also founded America’s Frontline Doctors, a division of the Free Speech Foundation.
On January 6th, Dr. Gold was scheduled to speak alongside about a dozen other presenters after President Trump’s appearance at the rally. Shortly before her speech, Dr. Gold was advised all speeches were canceled. After hearing this, Dr. Gold was amongst thousands swept into the Capitol building when the doors were opened from the inside. While inside, Dr. Gold decided to deliver her remarks there. When an officer asked her to leave, she did. The media coverage post January 6 showed violent scenes but that was not Dr. Gold’s observation of the day. Subsequently, Dr. Gold was arrested and prosecuted for entry into the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Dr. Gold reached a plea agreement for entering a restricted building. Her sentencing is scheduled today, June 16, 2022. Dr. Gold did express regret for entry into the Capitol building but is facing the consequences of free speech in modern day America. Like most January 6 defendants, she is a victim of selective prosecution – the defining feature of corrupted governments.
For comparison’s sake, consider that there were hundreds of arrests for violent protests in association with President Trump’s Inauguration in 2017. The government subsequently dropped all of those charges, including charges against people who were actually disrupting Congress from inside the Congressional gallery while Congress was in session. With the January 6 arrests, the government has not only not dropped the charges of nonviolent persons in public spaces, such as Dr. Gold, it has aggressively violated defendants’ civil rights at nearly every turn.
There are innumerable well-documented instances of January 6 defendants not receiving due process noted in the book January 6 authored by Julie Kelly. For example, some defendants have been held in prison for nearly 18 months pretrial. In Dr. Gold’s case, she peacefully gave a speech on medical freedom in the public Rotunda. This resulted in the government violently arresting her by breaking down her door, sending 20 SWAT officers (including 12 of them with AR15 guns pointing at her from two feet away), loss of freedom, loss of movement and loss of other Constitutionally protected civil rights. Such inequitable treatment based upon political preference shows the collapse of the rule of law. For people interested in learning the truth about January 6, please watch Capitol Punishment.
In addition, the government has aggressively not arrested or prosecuted certain highly visible individuals seen on videotape who waived people into the building. The government and the January 6 Congressional Committee have aggressively not shown 14,000 hours of closed-circuit security footage. The government and the January 6 Congressional Committee have not disclosed how many FBI agents and assets were in the crowd. And the media lied when it stated five officers were killed – exactly no officers were killed, although five officers ostensibly committed suicide or otherwise died in the months following January 6. The one person who was killed, Ashli Babbitt, a petite unarmed 35-year-old female military veteran, was killed by a Capitol police officer, who was never charged.
Dr. Gold remains committed to her activism for physicians’ free speech. Dr. Gold, quoting George Washington said: “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” For over two years now, We the People have been under attack. Our Constitutional rights have been chipped away. The First Amendment has been annihilated. Before 2020, we could have never imagined the government of our democracy stripping away our rights as it has. We have watched the Orwellian scene unfold before our eyes.
A concerted effort has been undertaken to “cancel” physicians who do not follow the mainstream narrative. Dr. Gold has been targeted by these attacks since the White Coat Summit in July 2020 when she shared the news of lifesaving medications alongside many esteemed colleagues, now numbering in the tens of thousands. The California Medical Board subsequently threatened Dr. Gold’s license with an unfounded claim she was sharing “dangerous disinformation.”
The attempted silencing of this one doctor was just a preamble for what is to come throughout the nation. California Assembly Bill 2098, an official government censorship bill, has just been passed through the House in California. This outrageous bill puts a gag order on doctors in exchange for a California medical license. Without a license, a doctor cannot practice medicine. When a doctor has a license revoked in any state, it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for that doctor to obtain a license in another state. This is career-ending. Further, AB 2098 proposes to violate the privacy of the doctor/patient relationship and create a brand new category of “unprofessional conduct” against doctors who provide education and early treatment for Covid-19. AFLDS has prepared a comprehensive Issue Brief on AB 2098.
As we consider the results of Dr. Gold’s sentencing, one thing is clear. We are still far away from the change that is needed. The First Amendment is crumbling before us, and we must continue to stand for what is right. Never will we give in to the threats of government. Dr. Gold risked her career when she stood against the mainstream narrative to save lives. Now, she stands here boldly, risking her freedom, to choose what is right over what is comfortable. We must learn to be so bold and continue to stand together against the tyranny we face.
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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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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.
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First published on June 19, 2022
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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
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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
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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
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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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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”
