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***

Dr Jane Ruby spoke to embalmer Richard Hirschman for the Stew Peters Show on Thursday about “strange, rubbery” plugs found in the veins of deceased Americans. Hirschman took a number of photos of the “worms”, which were shown during the interview.

Many vaccinated people who end up on Hirschman’s cutting table have died of a heart attack or stroke. He took long, fibrous strings from one of the bodies. The red part looks like a normal blood clot, but the white fibrous material was not normal, Hirschman said.

The embalmer said a blood clot normally breaks apart easily when touched.

“But this white stuff is pretty strong,” he explained. “It’s very pliable, it’s very hard. It is not normal.”

“I’ve contacted colleagues and they see the same thing,” he told Ruby. Hirschman added that the number of people with these types of “worms” has increased by 50 to almost 80 percent in recent times. “I am very concerned about the future.”

Hirschman is now trying to figure out what the material consists of. “My gut tells me it’s caused by the vaccine. I can’t prove that, but if this is caused by the vaccine, just imagine how many people will die in the future,” he said.

“If this tissue ends up in your brain, you’ll have a stroke. If it gets in your heart, you’ll have a heart attack. People need to know this,” he emphasized.

When asked how often he encounters these mysterious strings, he replied: “On 20-24 of the 35 people I have embalmed this month.”

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Featured image: The curious white strings blocking the arteries and veins of the vaccinated. Screen shot from Rumble

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***

While Ukraine continues to go against Western rhetoric about Russia’s future “invasion” of the country in order to save what can be saved of its economy, the Ukrainian army and Ukrainian neo-Nazi battalions continue their preparations for an offensive against the Donbass, with the help of American mercenaries.

While the Ukrainian authorities are trying to calm down their population in order to avoid an economic collapse, against the background of the failure of the negotiations between Russia and the United States, as well as between the political advisors of the Normandy Format countries, in Ukraine, the preparations of the Ukrainian army and neo-Nazi battalions for an attack on the Donbass continue with the help of Western countries and American mercenaries.

Thus, the spokesman of the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) People’s Militia, Eduard Basurin, announced that the Ukrainian General Staff, under the guidance of American advisers, is finalizing a plan of offensive in the Donbass. The moment of the beginning of the aggression against the People’s Republics will be finally determined after the completion of the formation of the offensive groups and the approval of the operation plan by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.

And while the plan of the offensive is being finalized, the consolidation of Ukrainian army units in the Donbass continues. The command of the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) plans to transfer to the conflict zone in the east of the country three additional brigades – the 72nd mechanized brigade, the 10th mountain assault brigade and the 80th airborne assault brigade, which are considered to be the most combat ready in the Ukrainian army and capable of offensive actions.

These brigades have been fully staffed with personnel, weapons, military equipment and ammunition and have completed their combat preparation. It should be noted that the units of the 80th Airborne Assault Brigade completed their training at the Staritchi training center in the Lvov region. The brigade was trained there in urban combat by instructors from the United Kingdom as part of the Orbital training mission. It is possible that these paratroopers will be deployed in assault groups to clear large cities such as Gorlovka or Donetsk.

The grouping of these brigades is confirmed by the fact that the management of Ukrainian Railways has received instructions from the Ministry of Defence to deliver trains with platforms and wagons to the loading stations of Belaya Tserkov, Kolomyia and Lvov from February 3 to 10, in order to transport weapons, military equipment and personnel of the 72nd, 10th and 80th brigades.

It is also by train that fuel, lubricant and ammunition to replenish the reserves of the troops of the 25th, 36th, 53rd, 54th, and 56th brigades of the AFU arrive in the Ukrainian-controlled Donbass. These trains unloaded their cargo at the stations of Krasnoarmeysk, Druzhkovka, and Zachatovka.

In order to prevent OSCE SMM (Special Monitoring Mission) patrols and local residents from discovering this fact, the commanders of these units were ordered to unload and transport fuel and ammunition to the brigade depots at night, via country roads. In addition, the brigade commanders were instructed to prepare field storage facilities for ammunition at a distance of 15-20 km from the line of contact.

Faced with a shortage of various types of ammunition and shells, Ukraine is trying to get supplies from abroad. To do this, the Ukrainian political leadership is negotiating with NATO countries that still have stocks of old ammunition for the Soviet artillery systems used by the Ukrainian armed forces. For example, Ukraine is discussing with the Czech Republic the possibility of supplying the Ukrainian army with 152 mm artillery shells.

Military field hospitals near Konstantinovka, Kurakhovo, Volnovakha and Mariupol, urgently return patients undergoing treatment to their duty stations for outpatient treatment. Military hospital commanders have been instructed to prepare storage locations for blood donations and to be ready to deploy additional beds. Medical personnel were trained in the deployment and operation of casualty reception and triage points.

According to the information of the DPR intelligence services, the leaders of the military-civilian administrations of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions were ordered to update the plans for the evacuation of people living in the frontline settlements, and also to check the vehicles and facilities intended for the transportation and accommodation of evacuees.

DPR intelligence sources have also noted an increase in the activities of Ukrainian neo-Nazi organizations. In the recruitment points in the cities of Kharkov, Belaya Tserkov, Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk, fighters are recruited from among Ukrainian citizens who have experience in combat operations in the Donbass in order to provide training for other recruits.

In Sumy, the neo-Nazi organization Corpus National has established a military training camp run by neo-Nazis who fought in the Donbass in the summer of 2014. According to some reports, instructors from the American mercenaries companies Forward Survey Group and Academi are also involved in training fighters.

The neo-Nazis have also established cooperation with volunteer organizations to provide their fighters with protective gear, tactical uniforms and medical kits. A fundraising campaign has also been launched to purchase vehicles and equipment for the neo-Nazi assault groups.

As can be seen the preparations of the Ukrainian army and neo-Nazi battalions to conduct an offensive against the Donbass continue, while Ukraine officially complains about the American hysteria about the military situation, and declares that the invasion of the country by Russia is not for tomorrow.

Faced with this situation, the Union of Donbass Volunteers, based in Russia, began to form units to take part in the defence of the DPR and LPR (Lugansk People’s Republic) in case of an attack from Ukraine.

“We confirm the statement of the DPR people’s militia. Through the channels of the Union of Donbass Volunteers, we have also received information confirming the fact that Ukraine is preparing for a large-scale aggression using prohibited weapons against the Donbass republics. In this regard, the Union of Donbass Volunteers declares that we will not stay away from these events. Russian volunteers have started to form units to take part in the defence against Ukrainian aggression, should it occur. We are currently completing the processes of training the command and staff of Russian volunteers and are ready to act to defend the People’s Republics against the aggressive actions of the criminal Ukrainian side,” said Andrei Pinchuk, the head of the Donbass Volunteer Union.

A measure announced, while today the Ukrainian army opened fire with heavy machine gun against the village of Yasnoye, in DPR, damaging a residential building, but fortunately without causing casualties among civilians.

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Featured image is from Donbass Insider

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***

 

It is over. Putin has won.

Victoria Nuland, the neoconservative warmonger appointed Undersecretary of State by the White House fool, announced Washington’s surrender when she called on China to use its influence with Russia to save Ukraine from invasion. She thus acknowledges what everyone had already concluded: the US and NATO lack the capability.

Washington’s surrender followed the request of the Ukrainian president that Washington stop the “Russian invasion” propaganda as there were no signs of an invasion being prepared and Washington’s rhetoric was too provocative.

Germany refused flyover permission to the UK for arms deliveries to Ukraine. Two NATO members announced that they would not send troops if NATO got involved in Ukraine. Washington saw the writing on the wall.

Most countries saw Washington’s refusal to agree to the Russian mutual security proposal as unreasonable and dangerous. Moreover, Washington’s strategy of arming and training the Ukrainians and provoking them into a major attack on the Donbass Russians has failed.

Ukraine knows that Russia will not permit any significant damage to Donbass. Moreover, Ukrainians are unsure they could even defeat the Donbass army, which is probably armed with the new Russian high impact weapons.

Ukraine understands that Russia can wipe out its forces with conventional missiles without sending troops across the border. The Ukrainians also know that no one will be coming to their aid. The Pentagon itself announced that no US troops will be sent to Ukraine.

The fact that Washington publicly rejected the Russian proposal means nothing as Washington has no alternative but to accept it. The Russian foot came down hard, as it needed to do, and everyone including Washington understands that Ukraine will never be a member of NATO.

Th US/NATO missile bases in Poland and Romania will be quietly removed over time. Washington will continue to bluster and threaten but is unable to take any action. The diplomatic Russians will allow Washington to save face in some arranged way.

All that is necessary at this point is that the diplomats in the Russian foreign ministry, who tend to put too much faith in signed documents, and Russian hardliners understand that Washington’s rejection of the proposal has been rendered meaningless and that Putin has won.

The world has adjusted to Russia’s inflexible demand and unmatched military superiority backed up by China.

In view of the appearance on the scene of long overdue Russian assertiveness, I expect Washington to draw in its horns and to move toward a more cooperative and peaceful position.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

For over two years now, populations across the Western world have been bombarded with public messaging incantations that boil down to one basic formula: Freedom = Compliance. However, the formula appears to have lost its magic.

Despite the aggressive use of Neuro Linguistic Programming and Behavioral Nudging to “reframe” the government’s pandemic response as an effort to save humanity from a deadly virus with a 99% survival rate, the world has seen just how badly the self-styled Western “elite” can miscalculate, and overestimate its own intelligence. Contrary to the typical conspiracy theory script where everything goes just as planned, the establishment’s historic miscalculation is no exception, but rather the rule. Oligarchies by their hubristic and prideful nature have always been prone to miscalculation. The demise of every empire across history serves as a constant reminder.

In reality, the Western elite’s uncreative cynical outlook on average working-class people and their outright disdain for hard-working citizens has caused them to underestimate the natural creative impulses of people in a time of crisis. So, we see the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” phenomenon burning right through all the hard work and diligent behavior modification programs imposed by Western governments over decades of deception.

Despite the Western establishment’s best efforts, one quick strategic blow has left the Canadian government and its Five Eyes allies completely flatfooted and outflanked. Citizens have tasted victory and have in essence now turned the tide in the battle over morale and perception, a battle that lies at the heart of any real victory in war. As events in Canada have demonstrated, the efforts to put the “genie back in the bottle” will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

From a strategic standpoint, we can observe that the recent implosion of the narrative matrix is of the Western “elite’s” own making. It is the product of their disdain and low estimation of the people they have been tirelessly trying to subvert and “reframe” for so many years. Citizens everywhere are now rejecting the dystopian liberal borg cube that has been so aggressively sold using a series of empty slogans, including “Flattening the Curve,” “Build Back Better” and the need for a “Great Reset.” From “the benefits outweigh the risk” to the battle over “misinformation,” slogan after slogan has flopped.

As the Proverb says, “Pride cometh before the fall.” The oligarchy and their technocratic elite’s blindness has reached biblical proportion, almost guaranteeing that they have sown the seeds of their own destruction (at least for now). Because they view human beings like beasts to be herded, controlled by threats of punishment and reward, pain and pleasure, the human response to tyranny has come as a genuine surprise, so much so that the Canadian Prime minister was whisked away after declaring the Canadian Freedom Convoy a “fringe minority” only a few days earlier. As “fringes” become majorities and once unknown individuals become world-leaders, so “the last will be first and the first will be last.”

The decrepit Western financial establishment’s own ill-informed and perverse view of humanity has allowed the creative minorities to catch it by surprise. Now, virtually anything they try to stop the revolt will likely blow back in their faces.

The lesson: the old psy-ops formulas no longer work; the hypnotic spells no longer have average people spell-bound; and the tireless efforts to reframe official narratives now look painfully obvious. The failures of the Western elite and its Five Eyes intelligence operation has demonstrated how uncreative and devoid of actual insight into human processes their self-styled “elites” are. And this innate creative spark is precisely what should serve as the bedrock of development, cooperation, and dialogue among all nations.

Now that people are no longer behaving like dogs in a Pavlovian experiment, spurred on by punishment and reward, media mouth pieces and government bodies across the West have no idea how to “reframe” events in their favor. Their messaging tactics stand exposed as the empty and meaningless platitudes of a decaying liberal borg cube. Alas, it turns out that technocrats and their World Economic Forum masters are nowhere near as smart as they believed.

Like old Olympian Gods blinded by their pride and hubris, their estimation of their own powers of insight caused them to be caught by surprise by a group of humble Canadian truckers. A few humble truckers have ignited a critical mass which now represents a global revolt against Western oligarchical forces.

To add to this awakening, Western audiences may notice that many Eurasian countries have also begun taking fate into their own hands. Despite the Goliath-like strength and “shock and awe” approach of Western military interventionism in the last decades, we can see the power and acumen of the military industrial complex dissolving as regime change and color revolution efforts in Syria, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia have all either faltered or faded.

This means both Western and Eastern countries may now consider engaging in real dialogue premised not on the survival of the fittest or the will to power by a small elite, but a common recognition of the mutual interests and shared creative spark found in all humankind. Whether expressed in the major economic transformation of the once cultural-revolution ravished China, the phoenix-like rebirth of a once shock-therapized Russia, or the now burgeoning people’s revolt led by humble truckers in a once meek country like Canada, the age of psy-ops and geopolitical divisions may be transcended by an age of human creative solidarity, universal freedom and global progress.

Rather than “building back better” and “resetting” the world (and its population levels), Canada and the rest of the West can seize the opportunity to flush the financially bloated and bankrupt speculative Wall Street/City of London system that controls its degenerate political class and find a common footing among a multi-polar order.

Unfortunately for the “elite,” this means the people of the West may finally be ready to leave the liberal borg cube behind and trade compliance for freedom.

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David B. Gosselin is a writer, researcher, and poet based in Montreal. He is the founder of The Chained Muse poetry website and New Lyre Magazine. Follow him on Substack at Age of Muses.

Featured image is from Flickr

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***

On January 29^th, The Washington Post published an op-ed by the well-known Yale historian Timothy Snyder, titled “Putin’s case for invading Ukraine rests on phony grievances and ancient myths.” In a key passage, the article reads:

Last July, Vladimir Putin supplied the mythical basis for Russian war propaganda in an essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” The essential idea is that Russia has the right to Ukraine because of things that happened a thousand years ago in Kyiv. … It takes some fanciful thinking to see here a reason for Russia to invade Ukraine in the 21st century, as it seems prepared to do. … Putin’s idea is that Ukraine is a fraternal nation because of how he personally feels about the past. This is known as imperialism. It flies in the face of the basic legal principle of state sovereignty and the basic moral principle of democracy.

Putin’s article did NOT assert that “Russia has the right to Ukraine because of things that happened a thousand years ago in Kyiv.” It didn’t even assert that “Russia has the right to invade Ukraine.” Furthermore, the allegation that Putin’s view that’s expressed there advocates “imperialism” that “flies in the face of the basic legal principle of state sovereignty and the basic moral principle of democracy” is likewise a bald-faced lie.

Moreover, Russia’s Government has consistently denied that it has any intention to invade Ukraine, but instead asserts that if Ukraine invades Donbass, then Russia will not allow that invasion to conquer the residents there.

Russia’s position has consistently been that only the people who live in Donbass have the right to determine whether or not—and the terms under which—they will be ruled by the government in Kyiv.

This government was installed (against the will of more than 90% of them) in February 2014 when the democratically elected President of Ukraine was forcibly overthrown by what the U.S. Government calls a “democratic revolution,” and by what Russia’s Government and the head of the “private-CIA” U.S. firm Stratfor, and many historians, call a coup—imposed by the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.

A key goal of the coup was to replace Russia’s naval base on Crimea by a new U.S. naval base there (which Obama was not able to do, though his coup conquering Ukraine otherwise succeeded).

Maidan Square after violent protests in February 2014 that resulted in the overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine led by Viktor Yanukovych. [Source: moderndiplomacy.eu]

Russian Victory Day in Sevastopol, May 9, 2014. [source: wikipedia.org]

Several of the mercenaries that the U.S. hired (some from Georgia, for example, as shown in these videos) subsequently confessed to having participated in the coup. The U.S. afterwards charged Putin with “aggression against Ukraine,” and with “seizing Crimea,” and issued sanctions against Russia for that.

Here are some key passages from Putin’s article (the article that Snyder lies about):

The determination of nationality, particularly in mixed families, is the right of every individual, free to make his or her own choice. But the fact is that the situation in Ukraine today is completely different because it involves a forced change of identity. And the most despicable thing is that the Russians in Ukraine are being forced not only to deny their roots, generations of their ancestors but also to believe that Russia is their enemy. … And I will say one thing—Russia has never been and will never be “anti-Ukraine.” And what Ukraine will be—it is up to its citizens to decide.

Putin, as well as François Hollande of France, and Angela Merkel of Germany, brought the Donbass government and the Ukraine government together in 2015 and got the Donbass and Ukraine to sign onto an agreement in Minsk, promising that those two then-warring parties would call a truce until both of them would agree to negotiate together and arrange some degree of autonomy for Donbass within the Ukrainian federation.

Leaders of Belarus, Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine at the February 11-12, 2015, summit in Minsk. [Source: wikipedia.org]

However, after it was all signed, Ukraine (with backing from the U.S.) steadfastly refused to negotiate at all with Donbass.

Merkel, Hollande and Putin had worked together to get the Minsk accords agreed to and signed by the two sides, but the Ukrainian side then stonewalled, refusing to comply with the agreement. Putin’s consistent position has been the same as Hollande’s and Merkel’s on this, and remains so to this day: BOTH sides must comply. (Donbass has always been willing, but Ukraine never.)

The rest of Putin’s article is a history of the relationship that has existed between Russia and Ukraine. Snyder’s article that alleges to be about Putin’s article ignores that history, just as he lies about the rest of the article. And that is from a professor at Yale.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Featured image is from washingtonpost.com

Big Tech in coordination with Big Pharma is categorically zeroing in on dissidents who are critical of the official COVID-19 narrative. 

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***

We cannot even begin to formulate a response to the COVID-19 fraud until citizens snap out of the deadly slumber of narcissism and decadence, of passivity and consumption, that permeates every aspect of our lives.

We call out to all citizens of the world to stand up and to fight together against this COVID-19 slavery and genocide.

If you think, however, that this campaign can be won without immense personal sacrifice, without daunting risks, and without total moral commitment, I suggest that you watch CNN news, or some other source of alternative reality that suggests a logic wherein chaos reigns, a selfishness that holds sway, and a community wherein extreme isolation is the norm.

COVID-19, it is not any disease. It is a disease of the heart, in both the physical and the spiritual sense. Moreover, is it a virus that infects the mind and lacerates the soul.

It is also a disease of civilization, fed by moral corruption that festers out of sight, deep down among our values and principles, at the foundations of who we are.

 

It would be impossible for such a blatant fraud to undo so many if we were not afflicted by a blindness of the mind.

And so we find ourselves, at this late date, like King Oedipus, who demanded that the truth be told to him, a truth that his advisors wanted to shield him from.

When King Oedipus forced himself to see the truth, in spite of his long denial, and the denial of those around him who wished to avoid anything unpleasant, he learned that he himself had been the cause of the horrible plagues sweeping his nation.

He had killed his own father without knowing who he was. He had married his own mother without knowing who she was. And he had engaged in the most horrid actions in complete ignorance.

Is that not us? Did we not allow pharmaceutical corporations to gradually increase the vaccines that are given children over the last 30 years without stopping to think about what was happening? Did we not ignore the exponential increase in the assets of the super-rich over that 15 years, and decide not to dwell on what the ultimate implications would be of such a class society?

Did we not see how global finance slowly took control of our government and reduced it to a shell, to a toy for the amusement of banks and multinational corporations?

Like Oedipus, we knew something was terribly wrong with the United States, but we did not want to face the truth. And now, that we are forced to see the horrid consequences of our actions everywhere we look, we cannot avoid the torment of Oedipus.

What was King Oedipus’ torment? His torment was that everything that he looked at, including his beloved wife and daughters, everything reminded him of his evil actions. Ultimately he was driven to put out his eyes in despair, and through that act, through that acquired blindness, he learned to see, to perceive things as they are, not as he wished them to be, for the first time.

Enough is enough. There is no time left for polite words, no time left for compromises with the rich and powerful, no time left for twisted, half-truths that spare us from acknowledging how our own failure to serve as citizens allowed this horrific monster to spawn in the dank waters of indifference.

Enough is enough!

Professors!

There you were, in your comfortable offices, reading articles in established reputable journals, articles that presented impossible fairytales about a COVID-19 pandemic. You knew from the start that this narrative made no sense, that it flew in the face of everything you learned in graduate school. Yet you went along with it; you told your friends and your family that this fraud was the truth. Worst of all, you taught your students that these lies were truths.

It was a horrific blasphemy, an insult to the intellectual training you received—none of that training was free, none of it belongs to you.

It was paid for with the tax dollars of working people. It was supported by the sacrifices of scholars and librarians over the last three thousand years.

You used your education, your social status and your skills as a writer to present falsehoods as facts, propaganda as truth, and political manipulation as policy.

You allowed classes to be cancelled, universities, schools, to be shut down, and a pathetic online exchange to take the place of teaching. You knew it was not justified, you know that it is had never been done to schools, even in wars, and yet you went along with it.

And many of you took payments, seen and unseen, to write editorials for newspapers, to publish articles for so-called “peer review journals,” and, on occasion, to appear on television for bogus interviews. The purpose of this operation was to convince the public that experts agreed with false stories that the media fed them.

Declaration of The Establishment of a Provisional Government for the United States of America

You used the trappings of authority with which you have been invested to glorify and legitimate a travesty, to put angel’s wings on a demon and to open the doors of ell wide open so that universities, research institutions and academic journals could be reduced to brothels, and all scientific and academic debate be poisoned by a gangrene of the mind.

You knew that every word that you read in the newspapers was wrong. Yet you read them anyway, you repeated anyway, and you gave it a legitimacy through your fancy words, or your cowardly silence, that it would not have had otherwise.

You were afraid, but not afraid that the Gestapo would take you away in the middle of the night. No. You were just worried that you might not get that promotion, that grant, that perhaps you might not be able to publish that book, or that you might not have the money for your kids’ private school tuition.

For two years, you, a teacher, someone who has an understanding of the world that working people will never have, supported this crime.

But now, enough is enough.

Stop your criminal actions! Stop your immoral behavior. Adhere to the highest principles and cease and desist immediately!

Government officials and politicians! 

You convinced yourself that it was fine to follow the policies fed to you by banks and corporations, and the billionaires who hid behind them. You told yourself that it was not your problem, that it was just the inevitable circumstances, that you had no choice but to violate the Constitution, the law and your conscience.

You convinced yourself that the criminal concentration of power and the deception of the population by the government was just political realism, not something to worry yourself about.

And you watched in silence as the techniques for inducing mass psychosis through the use of fear-promoting false reports, masks to train for compliance, and social distancing to break down bonds between community and family members were implemented.

You know the true nature of this campaign, but you looked the other way, you tried to drown your feelings of guilt in fine food, vacations with the family and the acquisition of property and assets.

You knew that you were no longer working for the government, for the people anymore, but rather working for an international criminal syndicate, a shadow government that makes policy in secret.

Yet you kept signing those secret contracts with investment banks, pharmaceutical corporations, and private intelligence firms. You did so without batting an eye. You thought you were being so sophisticated, that you understood political reality.

You permitted the making of health and financial policy, through classified directives put out by private intelligence firms working for the super-rich—and you assumed that no one would ever know how you had betrayed the people.

But now, enough is enough.

Stop your criminal actions! Stop your immoral behavior. Adhere to the highest principles and cease and desist from these actions immediately!

Officers in the Military and intelligence!  

Your job is to protect the nation and to risk your lives defending our nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. You have obtained tremendous benefits that are only appropriate if you adhere to that code and if you are ready to risk your lives for the nation, if you are willing to make sacrifices for the greater good.

But you have intentionally ignored your vows and stuck your snouts deep into the national security trough to suck up all the money flowing down. You have betrayed your honor and forfeited your status. You are not entitled to anything but the just desserts of your fine work.

So many of you have grown so familiar with corruption that it was second nature to rubber stamp the Covid-19 operation.

It did not even occur to you that this was a Pearl Harbor, a historic sneak attack that demanded commitment and sacrifice now, not later.

No, COVID-19 was not another opportunity to make money on the side, to buy a house in the countryside, to make ugly deals with twisted people for benefits off the books.

The result of your indolence and your perfidy? The United States, and the world, suffered the greatest attack in history, one that has already killed hundreds of thousands, millions, and will kill many millions more. You turned your glance the other way when a global totalitarian regime, whose name cannot be spoken, was launched to replace the Constitution and the United States.

You played stupid. You, the brave soldier, were a coward, an accomplice, a collaborator.

You acted as if the missiles and tanks of North Korea and Iran were the threat when real the threat was international banks and corporations, and the super-rich who live right here, at home.

You followed the orders of generals who did not follow the Constitution, did not adhere to the rule of law, and did not strive to protect our citizens. They, and you, were happy to sell the people out to privatized intelligence and military firms who were paid in full to tear the United States apart for profit using the ghastly weapon COVID-19.

But now, enough is enough.

Stop your criminal actions! Stop your immoral behavior. Adhere to the highest principles and cease and desist from these actions immediately!

Judges and Lawyers!

You knew the law and you knew how the federal government and local government are supposed to function. You watched as the entire judicial system on which citizens depend to defend them against international corporations and their parasite operatives was torn apart after January, 2020.

You saw how the court system was defanged and neutered, how the Congress was made into a circus whose clowns had no say in policy and who most certainly cared nothing about the people they represented.

And yet, you who have the special training, the expertise, and the intimate knowledge that working people can never obtain, chose, against the Constitution, against the interests of the nation, and against your own conscience, to aid and abet the billionaires and to betray the common men and women of the United States.

It is not philosophers or artists, poets or dreamers who decide the value of things these days. Nor is it lawyers or judges, bureaucrats or professors. That critical job belongs to investment bankers and their parasite friends.

But you, the representatives of the law that citizens depend on, allowed these secret forces to hide themselves behind you. You enabled them to carry out this COVID-19 reign of terror and you blocked the efforts of citizens to defend themselves.

When secret law was passed that made it impossible to even process legal responses to these illegal acts, you willingly helped out. When large swathes of the government were taken over by a shadow regime, you looked the other way.

But now, enough is enough.

Stop your criminal actions! Stop your immoral behavior. Adhere to the highest principles and cease and desist from these actions immediately!

Doctors!

Your responsibility is the greatest. You took the Hippocratic Oath to work for the health of your patients and you are paid lavishly for that service in our society.

Yet you readily went along with the, unscientific and unhealthy COVID-19 regulations, and you used your status in the eyes of the public to promote a hoax, a fraud, that you knew was deadly and that you knew benefitted the rich and powerful.

You stood with the rich against your own patients, encouraging them to have dangerous PCR tests, to engage in unscientific social distancing and to receive deadly mRNA vaccines.

You have violated the most basic ethical principles of medicine; you have turned your back on the Nuremberg Code of 1947 and turned medicine into a war on citizens, turned science into mind-numbing propaganda.

We cannot call you a doctor anymore. You are a monstrosity and you became that way not because the rich threatened your life but just hinted a reduction in the benefits if you did not comply.

But now, enough is enough.

Stop your criminal actions! Stop your immoral behavior. Adhere to the highest principles and cease and desist from these actions immediately!

Parents!

Yes, I am so sorry, but we must talk about what you did, too.

But you knew full well that these orders for masks were stupid, that this vaccine rollout made no sense, and that the social distancing rules at school were nonsensical and deeply damaging for the kids.

You saw those occasional postings on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere that suggested another, more horrific interpretation than what was constantly repeated on television. You sensed truth in those conspiracy theories, but you, out of cowardice, out of selfishness, and for your own petty convenience, decided to look the other way.

You did permanent damage to your own children. You hid the truth from them, and you reinforced at home the lies that they were exposed to at school.

You thought that your duty as a parent was to keep the kids happy, comfortable, and to enjoy your time with them.

But that was never your job. Your job was to do your best to protect your children, to stop them from exposure to deadly vaccines, and to pull them out of school, if necessary, and tell them the bitter truth about what has happened to our society.

You found it easier to lie to them than to protect them, easier to repeat the fictions from the news than to speak the truth, and easier to be the image of a parent than to take the actions necessary to be one.

But now, enough is enough.

Stop your criminal actions! Stop your immoral behavior. Adhere to the highest principles and cease and desist from these actions immediately!

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This article was originally published on US Provisional Government.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Maxim Buzhansky, a Member of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament), said that several European countries have territorial claims against Ukraine. In his opinion, revanchist sentiments come from Poland, Romania and Hungary. Buzhansky emphasized that Kiev’s weakness plays into the other three countries hands and provides an opportunity to revise the history of the region.

“These attempts […] call into question the legality of Transcarpathia, Bukovina and Western Ukraine as being part of Ukraine,” Buzhansky said December 23.

The parliamentarian clarified that Warsaw, Budapest and Bucharest are handing out passports to ethnic Poles, Romanians and Hungarians in Ukraine, thus creating a potentially explosive situation. According to Buzhansky, Hungary is openly pursuing a policy of tearing away several regions and at some point, may send troops to “protect the Hungarian population.”

When discussing Poles during a meeting of the parliamentary commission for relations with Poles abroad, he said:

“It would not be an exaggeration to say that Poles in Ukraine are discriminated against regarding freedom of religion, access to education in their native language and freedom of speech.”

It is reminded that in 2017, a law on education was adopted and forced schools to use the Ukrainian language. Currently, about 400,000 schoolchildren in Ukraine receive education in their non-Ukrainian native language. About 16,000 children were studying in 75 Romanian schools by the time the new law was adopted. In addition, there are 71 Hungarian schools; about 3,000 Moldovan children studying in three schools in their native language; and, about 2,000 Polish children study in five schools.

The foreign ministers of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece immediately signed a letter addressed to Ukrainian authorities, in which they called for restrictions on education in native languages to be scrapped. Hungary and Romania initiated the issue in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Although Kiev enacted this racist law in the hope of forcing the Ukrainization of Russian-speaking populations, it has invertedly affected all ethnic minorities in the country. For this reason, Kiev’s relations with neighboring states have been souring. It is for this reason that since 2017, Budapest has exercised the right of veto in relation to some Ukraine-NATO initiatives. In addition, Hungarian authorities called for the denunciation of the Agreement on Associate Membership signed between the EU and Ukraine.

Ukrainian nationalists are constantly exaggerating the hypothetical claims Hungary has on Transcarpathia, where the Hungarian national minority live. They also claim that Romania is preparing to annex the Chernivtsi and part of the Odessa regions. Since January 1, 2022, Ukrainian nationalist militant units, armed with armored vehicles, have been created in every region of Ukraine, including where minorities live.

It is also worth noting that Budapest issues citizenship on the principle of “blood” (people with Hungarian roots), but Bucharest on the principle of “land” (any descendant of a subject of the Kingdom of Romania, regardless of ethnicity, can apply for a Romanian passport today). Therefore, according to various estimates, up to 200,000 to 300,000 Romanian citizens live in the Odessa and Chernivtsi regions.

Due to fears of having vibrant minority communities, Kiev explained their plans of forced Ukrainization by the fact that graduates of national schools often do not speak Ukrainian at a level that allows them to successfully pass the mandatory exam, without which it is impossible to enter Ukrainian universities.

However, the truth is that Ukraine today is modeled on ultra-nationalism that has no tolerance for minority identity or anything not aligned with their chauvinistic and racist ideology.

For this reason, Hungarian authorities called for the denunciation of the Association Agreement signed between the EU and Ukraine. It is noteworthy that the Polish Foreign Ministry issued a statement which did not support Hungary’s initiative: “Poland does not see the possibility of revising the Association Agreement or the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area with Ukraine.”

Last summer, Zelensky said that his country is developing a bill on national communities, and not on national minorities. Although the bill has been talked about since the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, it has not yet been made public.

Ukraine beyond reasonable doubt violates the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon and other initiatives that protect minorities. Yet, even with the Polish minority suffering in Ukraine, Warsaw is unwilling to challenge Ukraine in a serious way as it does not want to weaken the country since it resolutely continues to challenge and provoke Russia. For this reason, Buzhansky’s fears that Poland, Hungary and Romania are seeking to territorially expand at the expense of Ukraine may sound unfounded but definitely serves as an excuse to escalate persecution against minorities.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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A three-year-old Cypriot toddler with a serious heart disease was refused necessary surgery in three separate countries because his parents are not vaccinated against the Chinese Coronavirus.

The child is now finally awaiting surgery in Greece.

According to a report by Politico, hospitals in Cyprus were unable to conduct the surgery, and so the young child was scheduled for the procedure in a hospital in Frankfurt.

However, a day before the boy was to be taken by air ambulance to Germany, the hospital cancelled the procedure over the fact that the parents were not jabbed against COVID-19.

A suggestion from the Cypriot authorities that the child instead travel for the surgery with a legal guardian instead of his parents was also refused.

Politico reports that the child was then refused surgeries in both the UK and Israel over his parents’ unjabbed status, both of whom subsequently received jabs on Thursday.

Alexey Matveev, the father of the boy, expressed his confusion regarding the decision after the Frankfurt hospital refused surgery.

“I know that unvaccinated patients are admitted to hospitals in Germany,” Matveev said.

“I didn’t know that I had to be vaccinated for my child being to be operated on in that hospital,” the Russian national continued. “If I knew it of course I would have done it … I am healthy and did not want to be vaccinated.”

‘Huge Moment for Freedom’ UK Mandatory Vax for Health Workers Set to be Scrapped – Reporthttps://t.co/fSqo4iEnVa

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 31, 2022

According to Politico, a German health ministry official has confirmed that there were no rules in place preventing hospitals from treating unjabbed patients, let alone from treating patients whose parents have not been vaccinated.

However, the health official also made clear regarding the refusal that hospitals often set their own rules regarding vaccine restrictions.

In this, this event mirrors a case that occurred in Boston last week, where a man was refused a heart transplant over his own unjabbed status.

The man was refused the procedure in Brigham and Women’s Hospital due to the institution claiming that being jabbed was “required” for surgery there.

“Like many other transplant programs in the United States — the COVID-19 vaccine is one of several vaccines and lifestyle behaviors required for transplant candidates in the Mass General Brigham system in order to create both the best chance for a successful operation and also the patient’s survival after transplantation,” a statement from the hospital said.

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A new meta-analysis regarding the effectiveness of lockdowns examined evidence to determine if there is actually any empirical evidence to support the belief that lockdowns reduce COVID-19 mortality.

It was published by Jonas Herby, a special advisor at the Center for Political Studies in Copenhagen, Denmark. Lars Jonung, a professor emeritus in economics at Lund University in Sweden, and Steve H. Hanke, a professor of Applied Economics and Founder & Co-Director of The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.

The meta-analysis looked at 18,590 studies that address the belief that lockdowns were effective. The authors explain,

“After three levels of screening, 34 studies ultimately qualified. Of those 34 eligible studies, 24 qualified for inclusion in the meta-analysis. They were separated into three groups; lockdown stringency index studies, shelter-in-place order (SIPO) studies, and specific NPI studies. An analysis of each of these three groups support the conclusion that lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.

More specifically, stringency index studies find that lockdowns in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average. SIPOs were also ineffective, only reducing COVID-19 mortality by 2.9% on average. Specific NPI studies also find no broad-based evidence of noticeable effects on COVID-19 mortality.”

The paper goes into detail about the screening methods applied. 1,048 studies remained after a title-based screening. After this 931 were excluded because they did not measure the effect of lockdowns on mortality or did not use an empirical approach. 117 were left, read and inspected for a more thorough assessment by the authors, which left only 34 studies that were eligible for this meta-analysis.

The paper points out that researchers at the Imperial College London early on in the pandemic (Ferguson et al. (2020)) predicted that lockdown strategies would reduce COVID-19 mortality by up to 98%. This is what motivated the researchers to look into this deeper. Another big motivation was the fact that “there was no clear negative correlation between the degree of lockdown and fatalities in the spring of 2020.”

“Given the large effects predicted by simulation studies such as Ferguson et al. (2020), we would have expected to at least observe a simple negative correlation between COVID-19 mortality and the degree to which lockdowns were imposed.”

Overall, despite that the topic still seems to remain an open debate with no clear answers, this meta analysis found that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had and no effect on COVID-19 mortality. They did however find that business closures may have reduced COVID-19 mortality, “but the variation in estimates is large and the effect seems related to closing bars.”

All kinds of studies were used, ones with controls and ones without, peer reviewed literature, working papers, long term data, short term data etc.

The report dives deep into the data, methods and limitations. All studies can be criticized, so it’s important to go through the report for yourself and take away whatever conclusions you may.

Keep in mind that currently, there are more than 400 studies on the failure of compulsory COVID interventions.

One thing that is certain across the board, however, regardless if one thinks lockdowns did or did not have any effect on COVID-19 mortality, they did indeed have catastrophic consequences. This has been evident throughout the pandemic.

For example, renowned Swedish Clinical professor in infectious disease and professor of epidemiology from the Karolinska Institute, Anna-Mia Elkström, along with professor Stefan Swartling Peterson, a Public Health Physician and Professor of Global Health also from the Karolinska Institute, found that nearly one year into the pandemic, lockdowns may have killed more people than COVID. They did so by going through data collected by UNICEF and UNAIDS. They were interviewed about these findings multiple times in Sweden.

Just seven months into the pandemic, Germany’s Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Muller, cautioned that global lockdown measures will result in the killing of more people than COVID itself.

Just five months into the pandemic a Lancet study reported that government strategies to deal with COVID such as lockdowns, physical distancing, and school closures are worsening child malnutrition globally, whereby “strained health systems and interruptions in humanitarian response are eroding access to essential and often life-saving nutrition services.”

Just nine months into the pandemic, on an international scale the lockdowns placed 130 million people on the brink of starvation. Even The World Economic Forum estimated  that the lockdowns will cause an additional 150 million people to fall into extreme poverty, 125 times as many people as have died from COVID.

In November 2020, Professor David Paton, Professor of Economics at the University of Nottingham and Professor Ellen Townsend, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Nottingham School of Medicine wrote the following,

Taken together, the data are clear both that national lockdowns are not a necessary condition for Covid-19 infections to decrease and that the Prime Minister was incorrect to suggest to MPs that infections were increasing rapidly in England prior to lockdown and that without national measures, the NHS would be overwhelmed…Lockdowns have never previously been used in response to a pandemic. They have significant and serious consequences for health (including mental health), livelihoods and the economy. Around 21,000 excess deaths during the first UK lockdown were not Covid-19 deaths. These are people who would have lived had there not been a lockdown.

A paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in June 2021 found that excess deaths increased shortly after the implementation of these measures.

A paper published by SSRN, a well known global E-Library that provides 1,063,815 research papers from 693,848 researchers in more than 65 disciplines explains,

The extent of human life loss due to lockdowns themselves has never been taken into consideration in the decision-making process…The forecasts which were chosen for political decision making systematically overestimated the threat, supporting excessive measures. The pro-lockdown evidence is shockingly thin, and based largely on comparing real-world outcomes against dire computer-generated forecasts derived from empirically untested models.

I digress, I think you get the point.

All if this is mixed in with the fact that for most healthy people, COVID has a high survival rate, and ones chances of ending up in the hospital are quite slim. This is even more pronounced for children. Most people who suffer from COVID are already quite ill. In the United States for example, 95 percent of people who died with COVID also had an average of four other causes listed on their death certificate. In the UK, there have only been 6,183 deaths caused solely by COVID in England and Wales between Feb 2020 and Dec 2021.

It seems like a more focused protection approach like The Great Barrington Declaration advocated for would have been a more adequate approach. This brings me to my next point, mass censorship.

Whether or not lockdowns were effective at reducing COVID-19 mortality is besides the point. Why was there such an active campaign to censor and ridicule scientists and experts who opposed these measures? A proper discussion and debate was not had within the mainstream, instead the masses were led to believe that these sentiments were coming from “conspiracy theorists” and not actual data. This censorship in itself is suspicious, the truth does not take much to defend itself, so if lockdowns were so effective why put such a large effort into censoring opinion and evidence stating otherwise?

This new meta-analysis will be added to the long list of data sets that have gone completely ignored by government health agencies, who have a long history of not being able to admit when they’ve been wrong while completely ignoring information that opposes what they deem to be fact, when in fact, it could be fiction.

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The 2014 U.S. sponsored coup against the elected government of Ukraine must be the starting point for any discussion of the current crisis. That crisis has been manufactured by Joe Biden, who was the Obama administration point person in using Ukraine as a means of destabilizing Russia.

The corporate media always carry water for the state, and they are never more dangerous than when the nation is on a war footing. Right now the United States government is sending weapons to Ukraine. One wouldn’t know that because of constant references to “lethal aid.” The euphemisms and subterfuge are necessary for a very simple reason. Everyone except the Washington war party knows that provoking war with Russia is extremely dangerous.

Joe Biden is picking up where he left off, as Barack Obama’s Ukraine viceroy. He and his incompetent foreign policy team have spun a tale about a pending Russian attack on Ukraine. In reality, it is the U.S. that is ginning up war by provoking the Ukrainians to start a fight that they can’t win. In 2014 a U.S. backed coup put a far-right clique in power. The people of the Donbass region in the east, largely ethnic Russians, wanted no part of the new anti-Russian government and sought autonomy. The resulting war has killed some 30,000 people.

Source: Black Agenda Report

Now the Biden team who publicly insulted the Chinese government and withdrew from Afghanistan without even being able to secure a major airport, have moved on to opening the proverbial can of whoopass with the world’s other major nuclear power. They are using Ukraine in an ill-advised effort to instigate what could lead to disaster.

The 2014 coup against an elected Ukrainian president took place in part because the Russians underestimated the extent of U.S. and NATO determination. They roused themselves quickly however and Crimeans, who are mostly of Russian origin, voted to rejoin the nation they had been a part of until 1954. The U.S./NATO regime change effort came at a steep price for Ukraine. Thanks to Atlanticist meddling it is now the poorest country in Europe that won’t get the NATO and EU membership it was promised. It remains a pawn between two powerful countries.

The U.S. is pulling all the hybrid warfare schemes out of the tool box. For months they claimed that Russian troops were massed on the border, ready to invade. They have engaged in diplomacy but only to try and get their way. Russia has held firm on a guarantee of no further NATO encroachment and the removal of missiles from their border. The French and Germans are feckless and do what Washington wants. They should be pressuring Ukraine to live up to the Minsk II Agreement which requires talks with the breakaway Donbass region.

None of this information is conveyed to the American people who live in ignorance orchestrated by republicans, democrats, and their friends in corporate media. Republican senators who want to run for president outdo one another with nonsense about stopping the Nord Stream II gas pipeline that Germany, a U.S. ally, asked the Russians to build. Winter is coming, quite literally, and Europe needs Russia’s gas. But unless they stop following Uncle Sam’s bullying they will end up with nothing.

Now Washington is pulling the same ploy they attempted in Ethiopia. They have declared that the Russians are coming and have even announced an evacuation of embassy personnel families from the capital city of Kyiv. Vassal states Australia and the United Kingdom have followed suit, but a European Union official demurred, “We are not going to do the same thing because we don’t know any specific reasons.” The Ukrainian government, a de facto U.S. colony, wasn’t happy and called the evacuations “premature.”

If the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing, then one can only conclude that big lies are being told. The U.S. has been hoisted on its own petard and now has little more than dangerous bluster to get its own allies in line.

Biden himself is a part of this problem of his own making. In a recent press conference he  declared that Russia was on the verge of invading but then said a little invasion wouldn’t be so bad after all. It isn’t clear if he was speaking from his usual state of confusion or if he really meant what he said.

The Russians certainly mean what they say. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken rushes from Moscow to Berlin to London to Moscow, seemingly making things up as he goes along, the Russians dig in their heels and make clear that their days of being pushovers are in the past. The most committed puppet states like the U.K. go along with whatever Washington wants. They can be counted on to repeat an unsourced story of a Russian plan to overthrow the Ukrainian government or something else equally nonsensical. The people most likely to use a false flag event to justify going to war, instead claim that the other side will do so. The result is a situation that could go badly over the slightest provocation or even a perceived provocation.

The American people should just say no. The Biden administration is sorely mistaken if they think the public are in a mood for war with another nuclear power. They can call ammunition “lethal aid” if they want, but when the match is lit they can expect no support. Then again, the ginned-up conflict may be taking place for that very reason. Biden has failed in almost every respect and is facing electoral defeat for his party in November. Perhaps he thinks that he would be supported by people who have no faith in his ability or willingness to do anything on their behalf.

If hostilities are averted it will be because of forces outside of the U.S. Biden’s team of blood thirsty incompetents spent most of last year predicting a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It isn’t clear if they grew bored or saw an easier opening in Ukraine.

No one should be fooled by these people. Russia and China are very close, “better than allies,” as Xi Jinping said. Why shouldn’t they be? Both countries want to protect themselves from American aggression. People in this country had better hope for Russian and Chinese wisdom and experience. If the U.S. is allowed to do what it wants then the whole world is at risk. That statement is not hyperbole. The U.S. has withdrawn from decades old nuclear weapons agreements and now pushes the world toward the precipice.

The New York Times and Washington Post will play the role they did in 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. They will repeat what spokespeople tell them to say and be a party to warfare. If ever there was a moment to break free from media disinformation this is it. They have nothing to offer except war propaganda and possibly war itself.

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Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. Her work can also be found at patreon.com/margaretkimberley and on Twitter @freedomrideblog. Ms. Kimberley can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

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The propaganda mills are grinding on both sides of the East-West divide on this report; the output will soon become available. Assuming the documents reproduced by El País are the genuine article, the following excerpts and characterizations are the essence of the Western reply to Russian security concerns on its borders.

Update: State Department validates leaked documents responding to Russian demands, US holds firm on blanket NATO ban

Be prepared, however, to read of concessions made by the U.S. and NATO and Russia carefully examining them, etc. Then re-read what follows.

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An excerpt from El País: NATO will deploy more troops in the east if Moscow continues its military escalation

NATO also combines [an] outstretched hand with a warning. On the one hand, it offers Moscow a full reestablishment of its relations, reopening its respective embassies, which have been closed since last October, and assures that NATO “is not seeking confrontation.” But it adds that it cannot compromise the principles upon which Euro-Atlantic security is based, including Article 5 of the founding Washington Treaty, according to which “an attack against one Ally shall be considered an attack against all. We will take all necessary measures to defend and protect our Allies, and will not compromise on our ability to do so,” it warns.

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Excerpt from 112 Ukraine. Contains reproduction of actual documents. Click on arrows on lower left and right of facsimile to scroll.

Withdrawing troops from Crimea, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia

The United States and NATO have offered Russia arms control dialogue and measures to prevent incidents in exchange for de-escalation in Ukraine and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Crimea, Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia.

“Russia withdrawing forces from Ukraine, Georgia, and the Republic of Moldova where they are deployed without host-nation consent.”

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Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website.

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

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A few months back, workers transporting vials of a Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) “vaccine” drug called CoronaVac suffered serious injuries after a shipment was damaged and spilled.

A study on the incident, which took place in Thailand, found that health personnel exposed to the evaporated vial contents suffered ocular surface erosion and skin rashes.

“Proximity and timing suggest CoronaVac correlation with the ocular and skin reactions,” the paper’s authors wrote, adding that “we recommend caution during vaccine handling and fastidious clean-up of any spills.”

“Cautions should be taken to avoid broken vials, spills, and aerosolization of CoronaVac during the vaccination.”

Reading this, one would think that a highly corrosive industrial chemical of some kind was leaked, resulting in serious injuries. But these were supposedly “medicines” that were spilled – medicines that are being injected into people’s bodies.

If these drugs cause such health problems on the outside of the body upon exposure, what might they be doing to people’s insides, we wonder?

CoronaVac shots contain aluminum hydroxide

It turns out that CoronaVac injections are made in China and contain beta-propiolactone inactivated SARS-CoV-2 viral particles (or so they say, since SARS-CoV-2 has never actually been isolated).

The jabs have a claimed efficacy rate of just 50.4 percent, and that is the “official” number. In reality, it is likely closer to zero percent efficacy just like for the other injections from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Concerning CoronaVac specifically, the study looked at a three-day jab campaign that took place at Rajavithi Hospital in Thailand. A total of 20 health personnel worked in the vaccination room of an indoor facility and all received the jab within the first two days.

On the third day, a single dose of the vaccine was accidentally dropped on the floor by a nurse, resulting in breakage. She promptly wiped it up with a piece of tissue paper and disposed of it in a trash can where it remained for the rest of the day.

That one broken vial caused 15 different personnel to experience skin rashes and ocular surface erosion anywhere from 3-17 hours after the accident. These same 15 people worked in the affected rooms for between 3-6 either during or after the incident occurred while another five who were also there showed no adverse reactions.

“All 15 personnel with ocular symptoms had some degree of conjunctivitis including: eye irritation (9); red eyes (7); tearing (7); and swollen eyelids (4),” reported the Daily Exposé.

“The nurse who accidentally dropped the vaccine vial and the assistant who wore contact lenses manifested the most severe and longest clinical manifestations, for 2 weeks.”

Interestingly, none of the 2,296 recipients of the injections reported any symptoms, at least not immediately.

“We hypothesise, after finding no other likely association, such as contamination of cleaning agents or malfunction of ventilation system, that the evaporated solution of the vaccine was associated with ocular surface erosions of the affected personnel,” the study authors wrote.

“… the excipients or aluminum hydroxide adjuvant may be the likely chemicals that associated with the adverse reactions.”

In the comments, someone wrote that a doctor who previously researched the contents of the vials, focusing primarily on the nanotech aspects, said before his death that the secret to finding out what is actually in them is to wait three days while it dries.

“And people are happy to be injected with this toxic fluid?” asked another. “Astounding.”

Over at Natural News, a commenter reiterated the fact that SARS-CoV-2 has never been isolated and that the media is just fabricating fear and terror over what amounts to a bad seasonal flu.

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Three weeks ago, this column reported on warnings issued by the Biden administration about the dangers of spyware. Spyware is software that permits the user to hack a computer unseen, unheard and undetected. The manufacturer of the warned-about spyware is an Israeli company called NSO, and its product is called Pegasus.

Pegasus permits its users to type in anyone’s cell number and, without requiring a response from the operator of the mobile device, gain complete access to the full contents of that device. Even though doing this in America or to an American is a federal crime — commonly called computer hacking — the Israelis have used it as part of their intelligence services for about six years.

They have also sold it to about a dozen foreign government entities who have used it for law enforcement, spying and harassing political opposition and journalists.

One of the government entities that purchased Pegasus is the FBI.

When the Biden administration warned against being victimized by Pegasus, it did not tell the American public that the government owns this spyware. We now know — thanks to dogged reporting by Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times — that the FBI experimented with Pegasus from a warehouse in New Jersey for about two years before abandoning it.

For two years, Phantom — the American version of Pegasus — was used on two tracks. It was employed experimentally by the FBI and debated theoretically by lawyers at the Department of Justice and the White House during the presidencies of Donald Trump and Joseph R. Biden. The Biden administration must have known of the coming Times expose, hence its recent odd warning.

Pegasus and Phantom have a sordid history, nearly all of which involves former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Suffice it to say that the Israeli government acquired new international friends by permitting NSO to sell Pegasus to foreign governments that had never been aligned diplomatically with Israel.

Suffice it also to say that Netanyahu and his government looked the other way when the purchasers of this software — including the Israeli government itself — used it to spy on political opponents and journalists.

While foreign governments were having a field day with this, lawyers in the Trump and the Biden administrations were debating privately whether the use of Phantom violated federal computer hacking laws and violated the Fourth Amendment.

The government defends its $5 million purchase by arguing that its use lets it avoid needing the permission of Big Tech in order to spy on Americans. The government told the Times reporters that it needs to know about spy tools so it can “combat crime and … protect both the American people and our civil liberties.”

This is an absurd defense for the acquisition of tools that on their face present no lawful purpose. It is also absurd to think that the government even remotely cares about civil liberties. The history of human freedom is the history of government assaulting civil liberties.

There is no lawful purpose to this spyware because the Fourth Amendment requires a search warrant for all surveillance, and it requires that the warrant specifically describe the place to be searched and the person or thing to be seized. Because Phantom does not focus on narrow data, but gives its users full access to the contents of one’s mobile device, it is a per se violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Notwithstanding the facial unconstitutionality of this software, government lawyers took two years to advise the FBI to stop using it. We know from the Times’ reporters that the FBI conducted experiments and tests before the DOJ told it to cease doing so, but we do not know on whom the tests and experiments were conducted.

The reason the feds gave for telling the FBI to cease using Phantom is the need to balance civil liberties with public safety. It was apparently the consensus of DOJ and White House lawyers that balance favored civil liberties.

Whenever a government official or politician suggests the need to balance civil liberties against public safety, get ready for a red herring, and note that he is either a deceiver or a fool. There is no such thing as a balance between liberty and safety. The relationship between the two is not balance; it is bias — a bias for liberty.

Because our rights come from our humanity, and our humanity is a gift from God, our rights are natural to us. For those who do not recognize the existence of a Supreme Being, you know that humans are the most intelligent beings on earth, and we can reason and act freely upon our reasoning. Those human characteristics — reason and freedom — come from within us.

Hence, whether divinely given or humanly crafted, freedom comes from within us, and not from the government. Because it is natural to us — like our hair and feet and faces — it is not subject to the whims of our neighbors or the caprice of government.

Thus, since freedom is the default position, we can see the natural bias in favor of it. Government is the opposite. It is, as Ludwig von Mises famously said, the negation of freedom.

This is not theoretical hairsplitting. It goes to the core of the relationship of all persons to the state, whether the issue is masks on the face, chemicals in the veins, travel in times of fear, or work in times of tumult, the government must recognize that our freedoms are natural and its incursions upon them are no more than the arbitrary use of force to gain political favor or power.

All government domestic spying is a violation of personal freedom; and that conclusion should not have taken lawyers two years and $5 million to reach. Then again, those lawyers work for the government.

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Since the 22^nd of January, despite receiving no mainstream media coverage whatsoever, thousands of Canadian truck drivers and their supporters embarked on a Freedom Convoy throughout the world’s second-largest country, a mass-protest in response to the Canadian government’s decision to widen their already authoritarian Covid measures by mandating that truck drivers re-entering Canada from the United States, the world’s largest land-border and a vital component of the Canadian economy, have to be fully vaccinated – vaccine passports being a key step towards the Digital ID system as envisaged by Klaus Schwab’s concept of the fourth industrial revolution, with the World Economic Forum chairman previously highlighting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as one of the group’s ‘young global leaders’ during a 2017 conference.

With the Freedom Convoy converging on the Canadian capital Ottawa on Saturday January 29th, however, the week-long media silence on the protest disappeared only to be quickly replaced by widespread mainstream media condemnation, with the use of likely agent provocateurs leading to the protest being widely lambasted, in lockstep, as ‘far-right’ and ‘fascist’ by corporate-owned outlets – the irony of the Convoy being against the very fascist concept of the fusion of state and corporate power via the use of vaccine mandates being lost it would seem.

This condemnation by the mainstream media of a genuine working-class protest against public officials working on behalf of corporate interests however, lies in stark contrast to their recent response to CIA-engineered regime change operations, masquerading as ‘human rights protests’ and  which involved the use of genuine extremists, receiving the full support of the corporate media whilst doing so.

Less than three weeks prior to the Freedom Convoy setting off on its initial journey, protests against rising fuel prices in Kazakhstan rapidly escalated into extreme violence, resulting in the deaths of 18 Kazakh security services members in the space of four days, including two who were decapitated, and leading to the Moscow-led CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organisation) being deployed into the central Asian nation at the request of Nur-Sultan in order to quell what was a clear attempt at a colour revolution in line with a May 2020 policy document published by Neoconservative think tank , the RAND Corporation – which outlined regime-change in Kazakhstan as a means to destabilise neighbouring Russia in turn.

This attempt at regime change in Kazakhstan, countered by the CSTO in less than two weeks and who subsequently withdrew from Kazakhstan afterwards, came amidst a time of increased tensions between Russia and the West, with Moscow being accused of planning an ‘imminent’ invasion of neighbouring Ukraine since the end of November – with Kiev itself subjected to the 2014 Euromaidan colour revolution, launched by the CIA and MI6 in response to then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s November 2013 decision to suspend an EU trade deal in favour of pursuing closer ties with the Kremlin, and like the colour revolution attempt in Kazakhstan, also involved the use of extremist elements such as the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, who would go on to wage war on the pro-Russian breakaway Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in the East of the Country.

Six years later, in August 2020, this regime-change script would again play out again in Russia’s sole European ally, Belarus – when following the re-election of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, an attempt to topple his government, later confirmed as such in a recorded Zoom meeting by US NGO, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), was launched by the West – with Minsk being a long-time target for the regime-change lobby owing to its close proximity to Russia, its nationalised state industries, and possibly the most pertinent factor, Lukashenko’s refusal to impose the same Covid measures on his country that have been put in place worldwide to help implement the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset initiative.

Despite the ensuing violence caused by these three regime-change operations however, they all received widespread coverage and support by the Western mainstream media, each being portrayed as human rights protests standing up to repressive regimes – a stark contrast to their coverage of the Canadian Freedom Convoy’s protest against the corporate class holding even greater sway over public life worldwide.

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Gavin O’Reilly is an activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism. Secretary of the Dublin Anti-Internment Committee, a campaign group set up to raise awareness of Irish Republican political prisoners in British and 26 County jails. His work has previously appeared on American Herald Tribune, The Duran, Al-Masdar and MintPress News.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Despite its pedigree as a fundamental element in civilization’s greatest stories, nostalgia has come to be associated with treacly sentimentality, defeatism, and spurious spiritual inclinations.  Homer, Vergil, Dante, the Biblical writers, and their ilk would demur, of course, but they have been dead for a few years, so progress’s mantra urges us to get on with it.  This is now.

But now is always, and like its twin – exile – nostalgia is perpetual.  The aching for “home” – from Greek algos, pain + nostos, homecoming – is not simply a desire for the past, whether in reality or imagination, time or place, but a passionate yearning for the best from the past to be brought into the future.

Nostalgia may be more a long ache of old people, but it is also a feeling that follows everyone along life’s way.  Its presence may be shorter in youth, and it may be brief, intermittent, and unrecognized, but it is there.  Surely it grows with experience.  As everyone knows, a taste, a smell, a sight, a sound, a song – can conjure up a moment’s happiness, a reverie of possibility.  Paradise regained, but differently.  A yearning recognized, as with seeing for the first time how Van Gogh’s blue paint opens a door to ecstasy or a line of poetry cracks open a space in one’s heart for prospective love.  Hope reborn as an  aperture to the beyond reimagined and made possible.

There is no need to ever leave where we are to find that we are already no longer there, for living is a perpetual leaving-taking, and the ache of loss is its price.

But like all pains, it is one we wish to relieve in the future; and in order to make a future, we must be able to imagine or remember it first.  We are all exiled in our own ways. Home was yesterday, and our lost homes lie in our futures, if we hold to the dream of homecoming, whatever that may mean to each person.  But it also has a universal meaning, since we dwell on this earth together, our one home for our entire human family.

You may think I am engaging in fluff and puff and flimsy imaginings.  But no.

All across the world there are hundreds of millions of exiles, forced by wars, power politics, poverty, starvation, destructive capitalism, and modernization’s calamitous consequences to leave their homes and suffer the disorientation of wandering.  Emigration, immigration, salvaging bits of the old in the new strange lands – thus is their plight.  So much lost and small hopes found in nostalgic remembering. Piecing together the fragments.

But in a far less physical sense, the homeless mind is the rule today.  There are very few people these days who don’t wish to somehow return to a time when the madness that engulfs us didn’t exist; to escape the whirligig of fragmented consciousness in which the world appears – i.e. is presented by the media – as a pointillistic painting whose dots move so rapidly that a coherent picture is near impossible.  This feeling is widespread.  It is not a question of politics.  It crisscrosses the world following the hyper-real unreality of the technologies that join us in a state of transcendental homelessness and anxiety.  All the propaganda about a “new normal” and a digital disembodied future ring hollow. The Great Reset is the Great Nightmare.  Nothing seems normal anymore and the future seems even less so.

The world has become Weirdsville. This is something that most people – young and old – feel, even if they can’t articulate it.  The feeling that all the news is false and that some massive con game is underway is pandemic.

Here is an insignificant bit of nostalgia.  I mention it because it points beyond itself, then and now.  It has always been nostalgia for the future.  I think it is a commonplace experience.

When I was in high school, there was a tiny cheese shop on Lexington Avenue and 85^th St. in New York City near the subway that I took to and home from school.  It was the size of a walk-in closet.  Thousands of cheeses surrounded you when you entered. The smells were overwhelming.  I would often stop in there with empty pockets on my way home from school.  The proprietor, knowing I was in awe of the thousands of cheeses, would often give me little samples with pieces of crusty French bread.  He would regale me with tales of Paris and the histories of the various European cheeses. He would emphasize their livingness, how they breathed.  By the door was a large basket filled with long loaves of fragrant French bread flown in every morning from Paris by Air France.  These were the days before every supermarket sold knockoff versions of the genuine thing.  Each long loaf was in a colorful French tricolored paper bag.

Those loaves of bread in the French colors always transported me to Paris, a place I had never been, but whose language I was studying.  Then, and for years afterwards, I was nostalgic for a Paris that was not yet part of my physical experience.  How could this be? I asked myself.  One day I realized that I was not nostalgic for Paris or the cheese shop, nor for the cheese or the bread, which I had tasted many times, but for the paper bags the bread came in.  Why?

This question perplexed me until I realized my notion of nostalgia was wrong.  For those bags had always represented the future for me, the birds of flight a sign of freedom beckoning as my youthful world expanded.  My nostalgia for the Air France bags was a way to go back to go forward, not to wallow in sentimentality and the “good old days,” but to read the entrails for their prophetic message: the small-life world is limiting – expand your horizons.

It was not a question of jumping on a plane and going somewhere different, although that in time would also be good.  It was not an invitation to revisit that cheese shop, as if that were possible, for the store was long gone and in any case it would not mean the same thing.  It was not a desire to become a teenager again. You cannot repeat an experience, despite F. Scott Fitzgerald writing:  “You can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can.”

The past in that sense is quicksand, a death wish.  For many people (and this is the prevalent understanding of nostalgia as an exclusively negative way of thinking), embittered nostalgia is their way of denying the present and the future, often by the fictitious creation of “the good old days” when everything was supposedly so much better.

But nostalgia can also be an impetus to create a better future, a reminder that good aspects of what has been lost need to be regained to change the course of the present’s future trajectory.

Today most people are bamboozled by world events, as an idiot wind blows through the putrescent words of the media sycophants who churn out their endlessly deceptive and confusing propaganda on behalf of their elite masters.  Given a few minutes peace of mind to analyze this drivel – a tranquility destroyed by the electronic frenzy – it becomes apparent that their fear, anxiety, and contradictory reports are intentional, part of a strategy to pound down the public into drooling, quaking morons.

But many people in their better moments do recall times when they experienced glimpses of a better life, transitory as those experiences might have been.  Moments when they felt more at home in their skin in a world where they belonged and they could make better sense of  the news they received.  Not lost and wandering and constantly fearfully agitated by a future seemingly chaotic, leading to dusty death in a story told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

I suggest that those nostalgic moments revolve around the changing nature of our experience of space and time.  There was a time when time was time and space and speed had some human meaning, for people lived within the limits of the natural world of which they were a part.  As I wrote once before:

In former days you could cross over to other people’s lives and come back with a different perspective, knowing what was obvious was true and that to exist meant to be composed of flesh and blood like all the others in different places and to be bound by the natural cycles of life and death, spring and fall, summer and winter. There were limits then, on the land, water, and even in the sky, where space too had dimensions and the stars and planets weren’t imaginary landing strips for mad scientists and their partners in celluloid fantasies.

In that rapidly disappearing world where people felt situated in space and time, life was not yet a holographic spectacle of repetitive images and words, a pseudo-world of shadowy figures engaging in pseudo-debates on electronic screens with people traveling from one place to another only to find that they never left home. When the mind is homeless and the grey magic of digital propaganda is its element, life becomes a vast circinate wandering to nowhere. The experience of traveling thousands of miles only to see the same chain of stores lining the same roads in the same towns across a country where the same people live with their same machines and same thoughts in their same lives in their same clothes. A mass society of mass minds in the hive created by cell phones and measured in nanoseconds where the choices are the freedom to choose what is always the same within a cage of categories meant to render all reality a ‘mediated reality.’

Nostalgia is always about time and space. In that sense, it is equivalent to all human experience that also takes place within these dimensions.  And when technology has radically disrupted our human sense of limits in their regard, it becomes harder and harder to feel at home, to dwell enough to grasp what is happening in the world.

I believe that many people feel nostalgic for slower and more silent days when they could hear themselves think a bit.  When the sense of always being on the go and lacking time predominates as it does today, thinking becomes very difficult.  To think, one must dethrone King Rush and silence Queen Noise, the two conditions that the speed and noise of digital technology render impossible.  Tranquilized by the beeping trivia pouring out of the omnipresent electronic gadgets, the very devices being used by the elites to control the masses, a profound grasp of the source of one’s disquietude is impossible. The world becomes impossible to read. The sense of always being away, ungrounded, and mentally homeless in a cacophonous madhouse becomes the norm.  One feels sick in heart and mind.

Most people sense this, and whether they think of it as nostalgia or not, I believe they feel that something important is missing and that they are wandering like rolling stones, as Dylan voiced it so poetically, with no direction home.

How does it feel?  It feels lousy.

So it’s not a question of returning to “the good old days.”  The future beckons.  But if we don’t find a way to rediscover those essential human needs of slowness and silence, to name but two, I am afraid we will find ourselves speeding along into an inferno of our own making, where it’s noisy as hell and not fit for human habitation.

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

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

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On 19 January 1942, the British prime minister Winston Churchill was shocked and disturbed to learn, for the first time, and after more than two years of Britain being at war, that absolutely no field defences had been constructed on the landward side of Singapore, in case of enemy attack. The news that reached Churchill seemed incredible, but it was true, nor should it have been news. 

The Churchill cabinet’s failure to sufficiently safeguard Singapore, a vitally important island and British colony in south-east Asia, was the latest calamity to afflict Britain’s underwhelming war effort. The British had been outperformed by German troops in Norway, in France, in Greece, and now they were facing further setbacks against Nazi Germany’s Axis partner, Imperial Japan.

The English hierarchy, and Churchill especially, had believed the Japanese would dare not engage in military operations against the Western powers. Such a scenario meant war with the United States, the world’s strongest country. Churchill, in fact, thought Japan would be mad to initiate a conflict against America, and one can understand his reasoning on this point.

Yet the Japanese, hemmed in by US expansionism in the Eastern hemisphere, and with their access to petroleum almost entirely severed by the Roosevelt administration’s provocative policies, was left with scant breathing space in the end. Japanese military personnel with a good knowledge of the world, primarily those in its navy leadership, knew perfectly well they had little chance of winning an outright war with America; but a sense of fatalism and of being trapped drove them on.

By 1939 the city of Singapore had a population of nearly 1.4 million people, a surprisingly high number (1). Singapore was nicknamed “the Gibraltar of the East” and “the key to the Pacific”, and was situated at the southern tip of British Malaya (today consisting mostly of Malaysia), a peninsula over 400 miles long reaching from southern Thailand to Singapore; the latter of which is separated from the Malayan mainland only by the extremely narrow Strait of Johore.

Singapore in 1945 (Licensed under public domain)

Before the First World War, Singapore was nothing more than a commercial harbour, but during the interwar years it came to be recognised as a crucial area of operations. From the early 1920s, Singapore was regarded by London as the most visible symbol of its power in the Far East. (2)

Singapore was ideally placed at the strategic chokepoint, from the South China Sea into the Indian Ocean. Prior to 1940, the island was far enough away from the closest Japanese bases to offer it protection from land and air attack. Furthermore, Singapore had become a key Royal Navy dockyard, barracks and communications centre (3). Since the 1920s, London had poured more than £60 million into fortifying Singapore, a considerable sum at the time.

Britain’s wealth across the generations was accumulated by pursuing certain abhorrent actions. The American historian Noam Chomsky said “when nations are out for themselves, that’s what you find. That’s why Britain became very rich. It started in the Elizabethan era with piracy. But then it turned to the most vicious forms of slavery in human history. First in the British Caribbean islands, then the American South. That’s why Britain pretty much supported the Confederacy. When they lost that, Egypt, then India. Then England turned to the largest narco-trafficking operation in human history, conquered more of India to try to monopolise the opium trade. So take a look at British wealth – robbery on the high seas; a hideous system of slavery, narco-trafficking. A very wealthy country”. (4)

After World War I, Britain’s elites had highlighted Japan as a potential threat to their empire. This feeling had strengthened with passing years, as Japan enlarged its dominion through military conquests, primarily in Manchuria and eastern China through the 1930s; which the Western powers viewed as encroachment into their own imperial designs in east Asia. The Japanese military command was well aware this rivalry was occurring quite close to Japan’s frontiers, and that they had no presence at all in the Western hemisphere.

The Nazi routing of France, from May to June 1940, ensured the French possessions in southeast Asia would officially come under the control of the pro-German and pro-Axis Vichy regime. This was of major significance to Japan, as their forces swiftly occupied northern French Indochina in September 1940, and then in July 1941, the southern portion of French Indochina. (5)

From Britain’s viewpoint, Tokyo’s acquisition of all of Indochina massively increased the threat to regions like Malaya and Singapore. The new Japanese air and naval bases, in Indochina, were now within a few hundred miles striking distance of the British colonies to the south. In November 1940 a secret British report, intercepted by the Germans, was forwarded to Tokyo from Berlin, which revealed that Britain would not be able to dispatch strong reinforcements to Singapore in the event of war. (6)

During the weeks after Churchill had assumed power on 10 May 1940, he decided the top priority was the defence of Britain, which was under the spectre of a German invasion. With the Fall of France and rapidly deteriorating situation of the war, Churchill was not in a position to send a large fleet to east Asia, should a crisis strike there (7). Ever since that fateful date of 26 July 1941, when Washington had imposed a punishing oil and trade embargo on Japan – which amounted to a virtual declaration of war in itself – a full blown conflict between the Japanese and Anglo-American states was inevitable.

Britain’s colonialists generally viewed the Japanese with contempt. Military historian Antony Beevor wrote, “A state of emergency was declared in Singapore on 1 December [1941], but the British were still woefully ill prepared. The colonial authorities feared that an overreaction might unsettle the native population. The appalling complacency of colonial society had produced a self-deception largely based on arrogance. A fatal underestimation of their attackers included the idea that all Japanese soldiers were very short-sighted, and inherently inferior to western troops”. (8)

In reality the typical Japanese infantryman was tough, resourceful, brave and sometimes capable of terrible brutality, as the Chinese among others could attest to. In the main, this was because the Japanese Army had been artificially indoctrinated with the extreme samurai traditions of the ancient warrior tribe. (9)

Conventional British thinking held that central Malaya, with its hundreds of miles of thick jungle and rubber plantations, would protect Singapore from attack by land. Unlike the British, Japan’s soldiers proved to be masters of jungle warfare, adapting to the environment by camouflaging themselves, making excellent use of bicycles, and living off what the undergrowth had to offer.

That the Japanese had taken to the jungle like grouse to heather was a remarkable occurrence; their conquest of much of eastern China had not involved jungle fighting, and neither was Japan’s mainland covered extensively with trees. (10)

Since late November 1941, the British in Hong Kong and Malaya had been expecting a Japanese invasion at any moment. The British presence in Hong Kong further north was, at this point, a century in existence, and of the territory’s modern history Chomsky stated, “Hong Kong, of course, had a fair degree of independence, but we should bear in mind that that’s recent. Hong Kong was stolen from China by British savagery, as part of their effort to destroy China in their huge narco-trafficking operations. The West may like to forget that, but I’m sure the Chinese don’t”. (11)

British Malaya was a mineral rich area, with its tin mines and sprawling rubber estates. These natural deposits were essential to a war economy, and coveted by a resource poor nation such as Japan. The British colonial administrator, Shenton Thomas, described Malaya as “the dollar arsenal of the Empire” (12). From their bases in French Indochina, during the early hours of 8 December 1941 Japan’s units audaciously landed on the northern tip of Malaya, at the coastal city of Kota Bharu, and also at the Kra Isthmus in southern Thailand.

Having overall command of Japanese operations in Malaya was Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the new commander of the Japanese 25th Army. He was personally known to the Axis dictators; in December 1940, the 55-year-old Yamashita had undertaken a clandestine military mission to Europe, where he visited Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini (13). Yamashita was one of the greatest commanders in the history of the Japanese Army. In Malaya, the British and their allies easily outnumbered Yamashita’s troops; but the latter’s fearless generalship would prove pivotal in the weeks ahead.

Military author Mark E. Stille, a retired US Navy commander, acknowledged that, “Both at an operational and tactical level, the Japanese were continually able to gain surprise. Their ‘driving strategy’ kept the British off balance and kept the initiative in Japanese hands. It worked primarily because the British thought it impossible even to attempt. Under the bold leadership of Yamashita, it was a formula for victory”. (14)

The Japanese militarists estimated Malaya to hold almost as much importance as the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) (15). The Dutch East Indies was the world’s 7th largest oil producing country in 1930, and by 1940 it had risen to become the planet’s 5th biggest oil producer, behind America, the USSR, Venezuela and Persia (Iran).

Both the British and Japanese believed Malaya and Singapore as strategically inseparable. British troops would not be able to hold Singapore, should Malaya be overrun by Yamashita’s divisions. As news reached Britain’s commanders, of the amphibious Japanese landings at Kota Bharu in northern Malaya, Japan’s bomber aircraft conducted their first raids over Singapore at 4:30 am on 8 December 1941. Singapore was lit up like a Christmas tree with its city lights on, an easy target for the Japanese pilots who enjoyed air superiority over Malaya.

On 10 December 1941, Tokyo’s bombers dealt a grievous blow to the British Navy, when they destroyed two of its landmark battleships off the east coast of Malaya, the ‘HMS Prince of Wales’ and ‘HMS Repulse’. The loss of these two vessels signalled the end of British sea power in the Far East (16). News of their sinking, which also resulted in 840 sailor deaths, was met with dismay in England.

The British position in Malaya became critical from the beginning of the enemy’s arrival. With the Japanese having secured their bridgehead at Kota Bharu, 125 miles to the west in the northern Malayan town of Jitra occurred “one of the British Army’s most unlikely and complete defeats during the entire war”, Stille wrote (17). A single Japanese battalion, supported by a company of tanks, defeated an entire division of British-led Indian troops in prepared positions in just over a day, by 13 December 1941.

The next serious engagement took place on 30 December 1941 around the town of Kampar, in western Malaya, just over 140 miles south of Jitra. Though the British artillery repulsed several Japanese assaults and inflicted numerous fatalities, Japan’s reinforcements compelled the British to begin withdrawing from Kampar on the night of 2 January 1942. (18)

Among the worst disasters of the Malayan campaign for Britain’s forces (and their allies) occurred along the Slim River, around 40 miles south of Kampar. At 3:30 am on 7 January 1942, 30 Japanese tanks rolled forward with reckless abandon, and went on a 6 hour turkey shoot against the British-trained 11th Indian Division. The British and Indian troops were well armed with anti-tank weapons, artillery and mines, but they were poorly deployed and caught by surprise. By 9:30 am on 7 January, some 3,000 British and Indian soldiers were taken prisoner and hundreds killed. (19)

The Malayan capital city, Kuala Lumpur, situated about 50 miles south of the Slim River in central Malaya, lay ripe for the taking. Four days later, Kuala Lumpur fell unopposed to the advancing Japanese on the evening of 11 January 1942. It was still over a week before Churchill would discover that Singapore, located 200 miles to the south-east of Kuala Lumpur, had no field defences facing landward.

While the British colonialists thought little of the Japanese, this was not often the case with frontline troops. Major Walter Boller, a British officer in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC), said of the Japanese soldier almost 30 years after the war, “He hadn’t the mentality I suppose to think for himself. He just obeyed orders, and he came at you with everything he had, even if it meant losing his life. He didn’t care about life”. (20)

Gilbert Collins, a gunner in the British 14th Army, insisted that “The Japanese was a good soldier. He was a good soldier. When he was told to do a job, he would stop there until he died”. (21)

*

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

1 C. Peter Chen, “Singapore in World War II”, January 2018, World War II Database

2 Mark E. Stille, Malaya and Singapore 1941–42: The Fall of Britain’s empire in the East (Osprey Publishing; Illustrated edition, 20 Oct. 2016) p. 5

3 Andrew Roberts, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (Harper, 17 May 2011) Chapter 6, Tokyo Typhoon: December 1941–May 1942

4 Hugh Linehan, “Noam Chomsky: ‘Ireland has robbed poor working people of tens of trillions of dollars’”, 16 October 2021, Irish Times

5 Stille, Malaya and Singapore 1941–42, p. 7

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., p. 6

8 Antony Beevor, The Second World War (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012) Chapter 16, Pearl Harbor

9 Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 2nd edition, 3 April 1985) p. 409

10 Roberts, The Storm of War, Chapter 6, Tokyo Typhoon: December 1941–May 1942

11 Jenny Li, “Who Rules Asia? An Interview with Noam Chomsky”, 16 September 2021, New Bloom Magazine

12 Beevor, The Second World War, Chapter 16, Pearl Harbor

13 Clive N. Trueman, “General Tomoyuki Yamashita”, 20 April 2015, History Learning Site

14 Stille, Malaya and Singapore 1941–42, p. 36

15 Beevor, The Second World War, Chapter 16, Pearl Harbor

16 Stille, Malaya and Singapore 1941–42, p. 51

17 Ibid., p. 58

18 Ibid., p. 59

19 Ibid., p. 62

20 The World At War: Complete TV Series (Episode 14, Fremantle, 25 April 2005, Original Network: ITV, Original Release: 31 October 1973 – 8 May 1974)

21 Ibid.

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It goes without saying that the current crisis, the manifestation (perhaps the culmination) of decades-old geopolitical plans, may in part be attributable to the causes identified below; but the strategy has been the same, with perhaps to some extent a brief four-year hiatus (in degree if not in essence), since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Notwithstanding which, Joe Biden is the most fervently Atlanticist, pro-NATO expansion president in U.S. history, with an unbroken fifty-year history of being in the forefront of advocating for the NATO agenda.

*

World Insights: Why U.S. keeps stoking Russia-Ukraine tensions

By Xinhua writers Deng Xianlai, Zhang Yisheng and Feng Yasong

Edited for relevance

U.S. and Russian diplomats on Monday had a heated debate at the United Nations Security Council over the Ukraine crisis, with the U.S. side blaming Russia for intending to invade Ukraine and Russian diplomats accusing Washington of “whipping up tensions” over the current crisis.

Analysts said that the current U.S. administration has reasons to keep fueling the already-strained Russia-Ukraine tensions: one is to use the crisis to divert domestic attention and build momentum for the upcoming mid-term elections; the other is to revive its influence over Europe by uniting its European allies against Russia.

U.S. Toolkit

Experts said the U.S. administration has taken three major moves over the crisis on the Ukrainian border.

The first is to exaggerate an imminent Russian “attack” on Ukraine by disclosing relevant “intelligence” obtained by the U.S. and its allies, revealing so-called “evidence” of Russia’s continued destabilization of Ukraine, and ordering the departure of U.S. staff at its embassy in Ukraine.

The second is to beef up the threat of economic sanctions against Russia….

The third is to strengthen military deployment within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), while assisting Ukraine without directly sending troops to the country. Several shipments of weapons have been sent to Ukraine and more military and economic aid has been promised by the United States.

U.S. Motivation

Analysts said that Washington’s overblown description of a looming war relates to its own domestic and diplomatic concerns.

On the domestic front, the current administration’s move on the Ukraine crisis could show its toughness in foreign policy, over which Republicans have been keen to accuse U.S. President Joe Biden of being weak.

As Biden’s approval ratings are at a low point, local media said that his hawkish attitude toward Russia is likely to gain more votes in the November mid-term elections.

Diplomatically, the Biden administration could use the Russia-Ukraine tensions to further pressure Moscow, and consequently to woo and unite European allies to take a tougher stance against Russia.

Given that the U.S. international image has been tarnished by its hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, the Ukraine crisis would be a chance for the Biden administration to show off its leadership in the West.

However, foreign policy is not a top priority in the U.S. election campaign at this stage. Americans, instead, are more concerned about the economy, the pandemic and other issues closer to their personal lives. In addition, many European countries, which rely on Russia for energy, do not want to escalate the tensions and do not want to be bound by the U.S. policy towards Russia, experts have said.

*

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Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website.

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

Featured image is from Donbass Insider

With foresight, this article by Peter Koenig was first written on March 12, 2020, the day following the March 11, lockdown. It was among the most popular GR articles in 2020.

It reveals the hidden agenda behind the Covid-19 vaccination initiative, which is now being applied.

Author’s Note and Update

***

It seems, the more there is written about the causes of the Coronavirus – the more the written analyses are overshadowed by a propaganda and fear-mongering hype. Questions for the truth and arguments for where to look for the origins and how the virus may have spread and how to combat it, are lost in the noise of wanton chaos. But isn’t that what the “Powerful financial elites” behind this intended pandemic want – chaos, panic, hopelessness, leading to human vulnerability – a people becoming easy prey for manipulation?

Today [March 11, 2020] the WHO declared the coronavirus COVID-19 a “pandemic” – when there is not the slightest trace of a pandemic. A pandemic might be the condition, when the death to infection rate reaches more than 12%. In Europe, the death rate is about 0.4%, or less. Except for Italy which is a special case, where the peak of the death rate was 6% (see below for further analysis).

🚨 BREAKING 🚨

"We have therefore made the assessment that #COVID19 can be characterized as a pandemic"-@DrTedros #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/JqdsM2051A

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 11, 2020

China, where the death rate peaked only a few weeks ago at about 3%, is back to 0.7% – and rapidly declining, while China is taking full control of the disease – and that with the help of a not-spoken-about medication developed 39 years ago by Cuba, called “Interferon Alpha 2B (IFNrec)”, very effective for fighting viruses and other diseases, but is not known and used in the world, because the US under the illegal embargo of Cuba does not allow the medication to be marketed internationally.

WHO has most likely received orders from “above”, from those people who also manage Trump and the “leaders” (sic) of the European Union and her member countries, those who aim to control the world with force – the One World Order.

This has been on the drawing board for years. The final decision to go ahead NOW, was taken in January 2020 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos – behind very much closed doors, of course. The Gates, GAVI (an association of vaccination-promoting pharmaceuticals), Rockefellers, Rothschilds et al, they are all behind this decision – the implementation of Agenda ID2020 – see below.

After the pandemic has been officially declared, the next step may be – also at the recommendation either by WHO, or individual countries, “force vaccination”, under police and/or military surveillance. Those who refuse may be penalized (fines and / or jail – and force-vaccinated all the same).

If indeed force-vaccination will happen, another bonanza for Big Pharma, people really don’t know what type of cocktail will be put into the vaccine, maybe a slow killer, that acts-up only in a few years – or a disease that hits only the next generation – or a brain debilitating agent, or a gene that renders women infertile …. all is possible – always with the aim of full population control and population reduction. In a few years’ time, one doesn’t know, of course, where the disease comes from. That’s the level of technology our bio-war labs have reached (US, UK, Israel, Canada, Australia…).

Another hypothesis, at this point only a hypothesis, but a realistic one, is that along with the vaccination – if not with this one, then possibly with a later one, a nano-chip may be injected, unknown to the person being vaccinated. The chip may be remotely charged with all your personal data, including bank accounts – digital money. Yes, digital money that’s what “they” are aiming at, so you really have no control any more over your health and other intimate data, but also over your earnings and spending. Your money could be blocked, or taken away – as a ‘sanction’ for misbehavior, for swimming against the stream. You may become a mere slave of the masters. Comparatively, feudalism may appear like a walk in the park.

It’s not for nothing that Dr. Tedros, DG of WHO, said a few days ago, we must move towards digital money, because physical paper and coin money can spread diseases, especially endemic diseases, like the coronavirus. A precursor for things to come? – Or for things already here? – In many Scandinavian countries cash is largely banned and even a bar of chocalate can be paid only electronically.

We are moving towards a totalitarian state of the world. This is part of Agenda ID2020 – and these steps to be implemented now – prepared since long, including by the coronavirus computer simulation at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore on 18 October 2019, sponsored by the WEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates, one of the chief advocates of vaccinations for everybody, especially in Africa – is also a huge advocate of population reduction. Population reduction is among the goals of the elite within the WEF, the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Morgens – and a few more. The objective: fewer people (a small elite) can live longer and better with the reduced and limited resources Mother Earth is generously offering.

This had openly been propagated already in the 1960s and 70s by Henry Kissinger, Foreign Secretary in de Nixon Administration, a co-engineer of the Vietnam war, and main responsible for the semi-clandestine bombing of Cambodia, a genocide of millions of unarmed Cambodian civilians. Along with the CIA-Kissinger engineered coup on 9/11, 1973, in Chile, killing the democratically elected Salvador Allende and putting the military dictator Pinochet in power, Kissinger has committed war crimes. Today, he is a spokesman (so to speak) for Rockefeller and their  “Bilderberger Society”.

Two weeks after the computer simulation at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland, that “produced” (aka simulated) 65 million deaths (!), the COVID-19 virus first appeared in Wuhan. By now it is almost certain that the virus was brought to Wuhan from outside, most likely from a bio-war lab in the US. See also this and this.

*

What is the infamous ID2020? It is an alliance of public-private partners, including UN agencies and civil society. It’s an electronic ID program that uses generalized vaccination as a platform for digital identity. The program harnesses existing birth registration and vaccination operations to provide newborns with a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity. GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, identifies itself on its website as a global health partnership of public and private sector organizations dedicated to “immunization for all”. GAVI is supported by WHO, and needless to say, its main partners and sponsors are the pharma-industry.

The ID2020 Alliance at their 2019 Summit, entitled “Rising to the Good ID Challenge”, in September 2019 in New York, decided to roll out their program in 2020, a decision confirmed by the WEF in January 2020 in Davos. Their digital identity program will be tested with the government of Bangladesh. GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and “partners from academia and humanitarian relief” (as they call it), are part of the pioneer party.

Is it just a coincidence that ID2020 is being rolled out at the onset of what WHO calls a Pandemic? – Or is a pandemic needed to ‘roll out’ the multiple devastating programs of ID2020?

Here is what Anir Chowdhury, policy advisor of the Bangladesh government program, has to say:

“We are implementing a forward-looking approach to digital identity that gives individuals control over their own personal information, while still building off existing systems and programs. The Government of Bangladesh recognizes that the design of digital identity systems carries far-reaching implications for individuals’ access to services and livelihoods, and we are eager to pioneer this approach.”

Wow! Does Mr. Anir Chowdhury know what he is getting into?

Back to the Pandemic and the panic. Geneva, the European seat of the United Nations, including the headquarters of WHO, is basically shot down. Not unlike the lock-down that started in Venice and later expanded to northern Italy until a few days ago – and now the lock-down covers all of Italy. Similar lock-down may soon also be adopted by France – and other European vassal states to the Anglo-Zionist empire.

Numerous memoranda with similar panic-mongering contents from different UN agencies in Geneva are circulating. Their key message is – cancel all mission travel, all events in Geneva, visits to the Palais des Nations, the Geneva Cathedral, other monuments and museums. The latest directives, many agencies instruct their staff to work from home, not to risk contamination from public transportation.

This ambiance of panic and fear – outstrips any sense of reality, when the truth doesn’t matter. People can’t even think any more about the causes and what may be behind it. Nobody believes you (anymore), when you refer to Event 201, the coronavirus simulation, the Wuhan Military Games, the closing last August 7, of the high-security biological war lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland…. what could have at one point been an eye opener for many, today is sheer conspiracy theory. The power of propaganda. A destabilizing power – destabilizing countries and people, destroying economies, creating hardship for people who may lose their jobs, usually the ones who can least afford it.

Also, at this time it becomes increasingly important to remind people that the outbreak in China was targeting the Chinese genome. Did it later mutate to transgress the ‘borders’ of Chinese DNA? When did that happen, if it happened? Because at the beginning it was clear that even the infected victims in other parts of the world, were to 99.9% of Chinese descent.

What happened later, when the virus spread to Italy and Iran, is another issue, and opens the way to a number of speculations.

(i) There were various strains of the virus circulated in sequence – so as to destabilize countries around the world and to confound the populace and media, so that especially nobody of the mainstream may come to the conclusion that the first strain was targeting China in a bio-war.

(ii) In Iran, I have a strong suspicion that the virus was an enhanced form of MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, man-made, broke out first in Saudi Arabia in 2012 , directed to the Arabic genome) – which was somehow introduced into government circles (by aerosol spray?) – with the goal of “Regime Change” by COVID19-caused death. Its Washington’s wishful thinking for at least the last 30 years.

(iii) In Italy – why Italy? – Maybe because Washington / Brussels wanted to hit Italy hard for having been officially the first country to sign a Belt and Road (BRI) accord with China (actually the first was Greece, but nobody is supposed to know that China came to the rescue of Greece, destroyed by Greece’s brothers, the EU members, mainly Germany and France).

(iv) The hype about the high death to infection rate in Italy, as of the time of this writing: 10,149 infections vs. 631 deaths = death rate of 6.2 (comparatively Iran: 8042 infections vs. 291 deaths = 3.6 death rate). The death rate of Italy is almost double that of Iran and almost ten-fold that of average Europe. (Are these discrepancies the result of failures in the establishing reliable data pertaining to “infections”, see our observations pertaining to Italy below).

Why? – Was is Italy being affected with virus panic? Was there a much stronger strain introduced to Italy?

The common flu in Europe in the 2019 / 2020 season, has apparently so far killed about 16,000 (in the US the death toll is, according to CDC between 14,000 and 32,000, depending on which CDC website you look at).

Could it be that among the Italian coronavirus deaths there were also common flu victims, as the affected victims are mostly elderly with respiratory preconditions? Also, symptoms are very similar between coronavirus and the common flu, and nobody questions and checks the official authorities’ narrative?

Maybe not all the coronavirus strains come from the same laboratory. A journalist from Berlin of Ukrainian origin, told me this morning that Ukraine is host to some 5 high security US bio-war labs. They test regularly new viruses on the population – yet, when strange diseases break out in the surroundings of the labs, nobody is allowed to talk about it. Something similar, she says, is happening in Georgia, where there are even more Pentagon / CIA bio-war labs – and where also new and strange diseases break out.

All of this makes the composite picture even more complicated. Overarching all is this super hype is profit driven, the quest for instant profit, instant benefits from the suffering of the people. This panic making is a hundred-fold of what it’s worth. What these kingpins of the underworld, who pretend to run the upper world, perhaps miscalculated, is that in today’s globalized and vastly outsourced world the west depends massively on China’s supply chain, for consumer goods, and for intermediary merchandise – and, foremost for medication and medical equipment. At least 80% of medication or ingredients for medication, as well as for medical equipment comes from China. The western China dependence for antibiotics is even higher, some 90%.  The potential impacts on health are devastating.

During the height of the COVID-19 epidemic China’s production apparatus for everything was almost shut-down. For deliveries that were still made, merchandise vessels were regularly and categorically turned back from many harbors all around the world. So, the west has tricked itself into a shortage-of-everything mode by waging a  de facto “economic war” on China. How long will it last? – Nobody knows, but China’s economy which was down by about half, has rapidly recovered to above 80% of what it was before the coronavirus hit. How long will it last to catch up with the backlog?

What is behind it all? – A total crackdown with artificially induced panic to the point where people are screaming “help, give us vaccinations, display police and military for our security” – or even if the public despair doesn’t go that far, it would be easy for the EU and US authorities to impose a military stage of siege for “health protection of the people”. In fact, CDC (Center for Disease Control in Atlanta), has already designed harshly dictatorial directives for a “health emergency”.

Along with forced vaccination, who knows what would be contained in the cocktail of ‘’mini-diseases” injected, and what their long-term effects might be. Similar to those of GMOs, where all sorts of germs could be inserted without us, the commons, knowing?

We may indeed be just at the beginning of the implementation of ID2020 – which includes, forced vaccination, population reduction and total digital control of everybody – on the way to One World Order – and global financial hegemony – Full Spectrum Dominance, as the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century) likes to call it.

A windfall for China. China has been purposely targeted for “economic destruction”, because of her rapidly advancing economy, an economy soon to overtake that of the now hegemon, the US of A, and because of China’s strong currency, the Yuan, also potentially overtaking the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency.

Both occurrences would mean the end of US dominance over the world. The coronavirus disease, now in more than 80 countries, has crashed the stock markets, a decline of at least 20% over the last few weeks – and rising; the feared consequences from the virus of an economic slow-down, if not recession, has slashed petrol prices within about two weeks almost in half. However, without China’s central bank interference, the Yuan’s value vis-à-vis the dollar has been rather stable, at around 7 Yuan to the dollar. That means, the Chinese economy, despite COVID-19, is receiving still much trust around the globe.

Advice to China – buy all the US and European corporate shares you can at current rock-bottom prices from the stock markets that collapsed by a fifth or more, plus buy lots of oil futures. When the prices recover, you have not only made billions, probably trillions from the west, but you also may own or hold significant and influence-yielding amounts of shares in most of the largest US and European corporations – and will be able to help call the shots of their future endeavors.

There is however, one little silver lining oscillating at the horizon full of dark clouds. It could miraculously be an awakening of consciousness of a critical mass that could put an end to it all. Although, we seem to be far from such a miracle, somewhere in a hidden corner of our brain, we all have a spark of consciousness left. We have the spiritual capacity to abandon the disaster path of western neoliberal capitalism, and instead espouse solidarity, compassion and love for each other and for our society. That may be the only way to break the gridlock and doom of western egocentric greed.

*

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world, including in Palestine, in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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As everyone faces difficult times, the company which deals with the fulfillment of book sales on behalf of Global Research is no longer able to provide its services. We are unfortunately suspending the sale of print books until further notice.

We will be contacting and refunding readers who have purchased our books in print format. Meanwhile, PDF versions are still available for purchase. We hope to be able to resolve this matter as soon as possible. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

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Canadian Officials Who Met with Ukrainian Unit Linked to Neo-Nazis Feared Exposure by News Media: Documents

By David Pugliese, February 02, 2022

Canadian officials who met with members of a Ukrainian battalion linked to neo-Nazis didn’t denounce the unit, but were instead concerned the media would expose details of the get-together, according to newly released documents.

Will Ukraine Collapse If It Implements the UN Security Council Supported “Minsk Accords”?

By Andrew Korybko, February 03, 2022

These five points prove that Ukraine definitely wouldn’t “collapse” if the Minsk Accords were fully implemented but it might end up with a very different administrative structure in the most extreme scenario.

COVID Vaccines Cause ‘Irreparable’ Damage to Kids’ Brains, Heart, Other Organs

By Children’s Health Defense, February 02, 2022

Through interviews with doctors and scientists and references to multiple studies, a new video concludes COVID vaccines provide no benefit to young children — but they do pose many, and sometimes serious, risks.

‘Freedom Convoy’ Vows to Stay in Ottawa Until COVID Vaccine Mandates Lifted

By Megan Redshaw, February 02, 2022

Ottawa’s police chief, Peter Sloly, said Monday, “all options are on the table, from negotiation through enforcement” to bring the protest, now entering its fifth day in the nation’s capital, to an end.

‘America Is Next’: US Truckers Mobilizing Convoy to Washington DC, White House ‘In Full Panic’

By Jamie White, February 02, 2022

Inspired by the massive 50,000-strong convoy of Canadian truckers surrounding Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the U.S. Freedom Convoy group, which has over 131,000 members as of writing, will reportedly start in California and traverse all the way to the nation’s capital.

Heartbreaking: A Miracle Man Born with Major Heart Defects and Craniofacial Abnormalities Denied Heart Transplant by Hospital for Refusing to Get COVID Vaccine

By Jessica Padgett, February 02, 2022

While we are slowly winning the war against Covid tyranny, there are some battles we are still losing. If people like Kyndall perish because they stood up for their beliefs and refused an experimental injection, their blood is on the hands of every single person who did not stand up and shout from the rooftops that the tyranny must stop.

Video: ISIS Threat Still Alive in Syria

By South Front, February 02, 2022

After a round of escalation marked by ISIS attack on Geweran prison in the northeastern Syrian city of al-Hasakah, the situation in Syria appears to be slightly improving. As of January 31, the level of violence in the country continues to decline.

The Government’s Kill Switch for Your Car, Your Freedoms and Your Life

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, February 02, 2022

These “vehicle kill switches” may be sold to the public as a safety measure aimed at keeping drunk drivers off the roads, but they will quickly become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to put the government in the driver’s seat while rendering null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The Biden Presidency and the Specter of a Third World War

By Nauman Sadiq, February 02, 2022

During his over forty-year political career, first as a longtime senator from Delaware, then as Obama’s vice president and finally as the president of the world’s most powerful nation, Joe Biden has consistently proved that he is an unapologetic stooge of the deep state and an incorrigible Russophobic hawk.

US National Debt Surpasses $30 Trillion for the First Time

By Telesur, February 02, 2022

On Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that the national debt surpassed US$30 trillion, which included US$23.5 trillion in debt held by the public and US$6.5 trillion in intergovernmental holdings. This raises concerns about future fiscal sustainability, as the Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates to tame inflation.

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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 growing activities of ISIS militants have become a key subject of the events in Syria this week. Terrorists have been carrying out a full-fledged special operation attempting to release their supporters from the al-Sina’a prison in Hasakah city. It should be reminded that Kurdish forces control this area under the close supervision and support of their American patrons.

The analysis of militants’ actions at the attack on the prison reveals that it was carefully planned. Two suicide bombers detonated truck bombs next to walls of the jail, after which the assault came from four directions. A separate group of the terrorists burned fuel tanks to create a smokescreen. The rest jihadists blocked arrival routes for the SDF.

The Kurdish forces were forced to deploy additional units from Raqqa and Deir Ezzor provinces to stop the militants. Later, the US military joined the suppression of the ISIS. In particular, Hasakah’s Guweiran district was hit by airstrikes, American helicopters and heavy armored vehicles were involved in the operation.

بعض الدّمار الذي خلّفه قصف طيران الاحتلال الأمريكي على بيوت المدنيين في حي #غويران بمحافظة #الحسكة خلال اشتباكات ميليشيات Qsd/PKK مع عناصر تابعة لتنظيم داعس الإرهابي…. pic.twitter.com/8iBWbyxNY9

— #الرائد (@SunRose111970) January 28, 2022

Dozens of civilians were killed in hostilities that have been provoked by the attack on the prison and culminated in clashes in the streets on Hasakah city. Many houses were damaged beyond repair. Hundreds of people were forced to leave districts located near the jail. Moreover, the Chief of the Military Academy, Mohammad Hajr, and al-Sina’a prison Chief, Jamal Kobani, were killed. The SDF lost more than 60 fighters.

According to a number of military experts, such a large-scale operation couldn’t be prepared and carried out unbeknownst to the US intelligence. More brave analysts claim the US was aware of the preparing attack and even a participating of the American advisors in the preparation of this assault. The US tries to justify its military presence in Syria one more time like that amid the growing discontent of Syrians and the Syrian authorities.

It should be noted that even if estimates of the experts were exaggerated in relation to the US involvement in this incident, have look at the aftermath, just how it happened in reality.

*

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Armen Tigranakert is a freelance journalist based in the city of Aleppo.

Featured image is from Hawar Agency

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Voices from Syria (Second Edition) (PDF)

Author: Mark Taliano

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

Year: 2017

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List Price: $6.50

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Canadian officials who met with members of a Ukrainian battalion linked to neo-Nazis didn’t denounce the unit, but were instead concerned the media would expose details of the get-together, according to newly released documents.

The Canadians met with and were briefed by leaders from the Azov Battalion in June 2018. The officers and diplomats did not object to the meeting and instead allowed themselves to be photographed with battalion officials despite previous warnings that the unit saw itself as pro-Nazi. The Azov Battalion then used those photos for its online propaganda, pointing out the Canadian delegation expressed “hopes for further fruitful co-operation.”

After a journalist asked the Canadian Forces about the Azov social media postings, officers scrambled to come up with a response, according to documents obtained by this newspaper through Access to Information law.

Lt. Col. Fraser Auld, commander of Canada’s Joint Task Force Ukraine, warned that a news article might be soon published and could result in questions being asked inside the Canadian government about why such a meeting took place.

A year before the meeting, Canada’s Joint Task Force Ukraine produced a briefing on the Azov Battalion, acknowledging its links to Nazi ideology. “Multiple members of Azov have described themselves as Nazis,” the Canadian officers warned in their 2017 briefing.

Bernie Farber, head of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said the Canadians should have immediately walked out of the Azov Battalion briefing. “Canadian armed forces personnel do not meet with Nazis; period, full stop,” Farber said. “This a horrendous mistake that shouldn’t have been made.”

Farber said it was also disturbing the Azov unit was able to use the Canadians in propaganda attempts to legitimize its far-right ideology. Besides its support of Nazi ideology, Azov members have been accused of war crimes and torture.

To read complete Ottawa Citizen article click here

 

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Featured image: A news broadcast by German ZDF station showed soldiers of the Ukraine Azov Battalion with nazi symbols on their helmets. PHOTO BY FILES /ZDF station

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Through interviews with doctors and scientists and references to multiple studies, a new video concludes COVID vaccines provide no benefit to young children — but they do pose many, and sometimes serious, risks.

Through interviews with doctors and scientists. and references to multiple studies, a new video explains why COVID vaccines provide no benefit to young children — but they do pose many, and sometimes serious, risks.

Dr. Michael Yeadon, a former Pfizer vice president and chief scientist, pointed out that when questioned about the safety of mRNA vaccines for children, drug companies claim there’s no evidence to show the vaccines aren’t safe.

“A lack of data regarding harm does not equal confirmation of safety,” Yeadon said.

Yeadon also addressed the November 2021 article in Nature showing COVID is “rarely fatal” in children and, for young people under 18 with no comorbidities, the survival rate is 99.995%.

He also cited an April 2021 article showing children’s immune systems are “far superior at clearing novel viruses,” and a December 2021 article, also in Nature, reporting children have adaptive “immune systems that naturally generate robust, cross-reactive and sustained immune responses to SARS-Cov-2 …”

Included in the video is a clip of Dr. Robert Malone, who warned parents the decision to vaccinate children is “irreversible.”

Malone, a scientist who assisted in the creation of mRNA vaccine technology, explained by injecting a child with the COVID vaccine, “a viral gene will be injected into your children’s cells.”

He said:

“This gene forces your child’s body to make toxic spike proteins. These proteins often cause permanent damage in children’s critical organs, including their brain, nervous system, heart and blood vessels, and their reproductive system. And this vaccine can trigger fundamental changes to the immune system.”

Once this damage occurs, it’s irreparable, Malone said.

Malone questioned why “health bureaucrats” are recommending the mass uptake of a novel, experimental mRNA covid vaccine for children “when serious concerns are being raised” about the efficacy and safety of the product.

He said the vaccines can’t be declared safe because there are no long-term safety data.

Still, governments, including Australia, continue to push the vaccine for children, according to the video, noting that decisions are often based on “studies” conducted by pharmaceutical companies themselves.

For example, an article published in November 2021 in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded:

“A Covid-19 vaccination regimen consisting of two 10-μg doses of BNT162b2 administered 21 days apart was found to be safe, immunogenic, and efficacious in children 5 to 11 years of age.”

However, that statement was followed by the disclosure that the study was funded by BioNTech and Pfizer.

According to the video, of the 33 authors of the study, 94% have a financial interest in the vaccine makers, 60% were employees of BioNTech or Pfizer and 57% had received payments from the companies or owned stock in them.

Watch the video here:

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Thousands of truckers and others protesting Canada’s COVID vaccine mandates remained in Ottawa today, vowing to stay put until the mandates for truckers are lifted.

Ottawa’s police chief, Peter Sloly, said Monday, “all options are on the table, from negotiation through enforcement” to bring the protest, now entering its fifth day in the nation’s capital, to an end.

The “Convoy for Freedom” set out from British Columbia on Jan. 23 and arrived in Ottawa on Jan. 29.

Go truckers! The 11,000-truck, 93-mile long convoy is traveling from British Columbia to Ottawa, where they will hold a demonstration tomorrow. The truckers said they will not leave until the mandates are lifted. #freedomconvoyhttps://t.co/1UkcodB3SZ

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) January 28, 2022

According to RT News, the organizers of the protest initially estimated 1,600 trucks, a number that grew to 36,000 trucks, and later closer to 50,000. However, national media outlets and law enforcement reported anywhere from “hundreds” of trucks to figures in the low thousands over the past week.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday said he would not meet with the protesters because he does not believe in their goals.

He said:

“I have also chosen not to go anywhere near protests that have expressed hateful rhetoric, violence toward fellow citizens, and a disrespect not just for science but the frontline health workers and 90% of truckers who have been doing the right thing to keep Canadians safe and put food on our table.”

Trudeau on Monday also announced he tested positive for COVID, despite being fully vaccinated and boosted, and remains in an undisclosed location due to security concerns.

Trudeau tweeted:

This morning, I tested positive for COVID-19. I’m feeling fine – and I’ll continue to work remotely this week while following public health guidelines. Everyone, please get vaccinated and get boosted.

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 31, 2022

According to the prime minister’s Twitter account, he was fully vaccinated and received a booster shot on Jan. 4.

Got my booster shot this morning. To everyone out there who’s gotten their shots, and to the health care workers who are getting these shots into arms, thank you for doing your part. And to anyone who’s eligible but hasn’t yet been vaccinated or boosted, please, do that now. pic.twitter.com/X5Qjm5h7NZ

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 4, 2022

Protests ‘largely peaceful,’ with some reports of vandalism

Early reports portrayed the demonstrations as mostly peaceful, with Reuters reporting “police said most demonstrators have been peaceful,” and The New York Times describing the protest as loud, but largely peaceful.

Canada’s CTV News late Monday reported police indicated there had been “no riots, no injuries, no deaths,” but said they had 12 investigations underway into various allegations, including bribery, threats, assault and dangerous driving.

Ottawa Police reported zero arrests as of Monday.

Representatives of the Freedom Convoy said the protest is peaceful, but Canada’s mainstream media, which is 70% funded by the government, told a different story.

Gord Magill, a trucker for more than 25 years and participant in the convoy, slammed mainstream media coverage of the protest. Magill said the media zeroed in on a couple of protestors who don’t represent the views of the truckers.

In an op-ed published in Newsweek, Magill wrote:

“ … tarring a demonstration that drew in excess of 100,000 people as racist and full of fringe extremists based on the actions of two people is quite a reach, proof of nothing so much as the fact that the media is clutching at straws to smear us—which are in short supply.”

Travis Smith, an associate professor of political science at Concordia University in Montreal attended the protest and later wrote:

“Despite temperatures around -20C, I saw and met many women and men, from across the political spectrum, from disparate socioeconomic backgrounds, French- and English-speaking alike, young and old, vaccinated and unvaccinated, gathered to donate their time and the fruits of their culinary talents, such as hot bowls of chili and fresh baked goods, plus sandwiches, snacks, and beverages for the road.

“They delivered additional items donated by people who couldn’t make it in person, helped to shuttle people around, and offered what other assistance they could — including offers of accommodations or a place to take a hot shower.”

The protest organizers held a press conference Sunday and posted numerous videos calling for peace and showing protestors cleaning streets and washing statutes.

A post on Monday stated:

“After a night of protests, Canadians band together to ensure the streets are cleaned up. The world is watching. Keep it peaceful, keep it powerful, keep it Canadian.”

In another video, a trucker explained how he went to bed at midnight and woke up in the morning with a truckful of food. There were more than 50 boxes of food with multiple packages inside with notes thanking the truckers for standing up for the freedom of Canadians.

“It’s just awesome to be part of the fringe minority,” the man said, referring to a comment Trudeau made last week where he called the protestors a fringe minority with unacceptable views.

The truckers won support from Elon Musk who spoke out publicly in support of their cause.

Canadian truckers rule

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 27, 2022

On Sunday, Musk replied to a tweet showing a video of protesters in Ottawa.

“It would appear that the so-called ‘fringe minority’ is actually the government,” he wrote.

Musk also tweeted a photo showing dozens of trucks lining a highway with the caption, “Taking a break from politics for a while. Here’s a nice photo of trucks.”

pic.twitter.com/QEwmhecTmE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 30, 2022

Convoy has enough funds for 4 years

As of today, the Freedom Convoy had raised more than $7.6 million ($9.7 million CAD) in donations and said they have enough funds to keep trucks there for up to four years, Newsweek reported.

Slawek Pietraszek, 43, said he plans to stay in Ottawa as long as he needs until a resolution is reached. Petraszek, a trucker who did not disclose his vaccination status, wants the government to agree to repeal all vaccine mandates.

“My fourth child was born this past Saturday, I’ve decided I need to do this for my family,” he said.

Dave Ridell, 59, has been transporting his grains by truck for the last 30 to 40 years. Ridell is concerned “government overreach has gotten out of hand, and politicians need to be held more accountable for what they are doing and the impact vaccine mandates are having on people.”

Ridell said truckers were once considered heroes along with other frontline workers, but the mandate on truckers cast aside many who “worked through the harder moments.”

Ridell, who didn’t disclose his vaccination status, hopes the Freedom Convoy will lead to all vaccine mandates being lifted.

“The amount of people who are unemployed because it’s their personal choice whether they want to be vaccinated or not, it’s not fair, just totally unfair,” he added.

“Freedom is here. We’re here with our voices. We’re here with our feet, and we’re not going to leave until we get our freedom all the time,” said another protester.

Saskatchewan premier says province will end proof-of-vaccine policy in ‘not-too-distant future’

Saskatchewan’s premier, Scott Moe, on Saturday said the province will end the current proof-of-negative-test and proof-of-vaccination policy “in the not-too-distant future” CBC News reported.

This is the second time Moe made a public comment about the potential removal of the provincial proof of vaccination policy. Earlier in the week, he said in an interview with John Gormley from CJME/CKOM radio that he thought requiring proof of vaccination had “for the most part run its course.”

“It increased our vaccination rates tremendously, but I think we’re getting to a point now where those that are not vaccinated likely aren’t going to get vaccinated,” Moe said.

According to the premier, the province needs to “have a discussion” about proof-of-vaccination requirements “sometime this month.”

As of Jan. 15, the Canadian government required all truck drivers entering Canada from the U.S., regardless of citizenship, to be fully vaccinated against COVID. Any driver who cannot show proof of vaccination will be denied entry and placed in quarantine for two weeks.

The U.S. government implemented the same policy last week on the American side of the border, which could potentially sideline 26,000 to 160,000 drivers who make regular trips across the Canada-U.S. border.

Inspired by the convoy, Australian truckers are driving to Canberra to protest vaccine mandates, as Victoria’s premier has warned COVID booster doses soon will be mandatory.

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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

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Musician Neil Young finds himself in the 2022 limelight. It may well generate more on-air play and music sales for the Canadian. Young wrote a letter on his website (since removed) that garnered much attention.  It read:

Please immediately inform Spotify that I am actively canceling all my music availability on Spotify as soon as possible. I am doing this because Spotify is spreading false information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.

Young had a specific target in mind: “I want you to let Spotify know immediately today that I want all of my music off their platform. They can have [podcaster Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.”

Sounds a lot like a Neil Young’s nemesis, George W Bush: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

It comes on the heels of a 31 December episode from The Joe Rogan Experience in which one of Rogan’s guests was Dr. Robert Malone, whose self-bio boasts:

“I am an internationally recognized scientist/physician and the original inventor of mRNA vaccination as a technology, DNA vaccination, and multiple non-viral DNA and RNA/mRNA platform delivery technologies. I hold numerous fundamental domestic and foreign patents in the fields of gene delivery, delivery formulations, and vaccines: including for fundamental DNA and RNA/mRNA vaccine technologies.”

Malone is, notwithstanding, alleged to have spread COVID-19 misinformation.

Of course Joe Rogan doesn’t get everything right. He admits “absolutely I get things wrong.” Don’t we all. Rogan’s interviews are often quite interesting, but he really blew it when he interviewed Yeonmi Park and let her off easily for transparent nonsense about North Korea. But Rogan doesn’t pretend to know all the topics deeply; he is learning, as are, hopefully, all of us.

Does Neil Young get everything right?

When one accuses someone else of misinformation or disinformation, he might not be claiming to know the truth, but he does claim to know what is untruthful. That may be, but this claim carries an onus. If you want to accuse someone of misinformation/disinformation, then to maintain integrity, you should specify what that mis/disinformation is, and you must demonstrate why it is mis/disinformation. If you cannot point to any instance of mis/disinformation and why it is so, then, with all due respect, just shut the f**k up. In the present Young-Rogan kerfuffle, since mis/disinformation has been alleged, if Young can’t back up his allegations, then first, an apology is in order, and second this should be followed by a retraction of the allegation.

If one claims to know the truth from untruth, then that person must specify what she claims to be factually inaccurate. It simply does not pass muster to point out that misinformation was communicated by another person. Any lunkhead on the street can shout misinformation. (And it is salient to make clear the distinction here between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is when a person mistakenly communicates information that is factually inaccurate. Simply put, he was wrong. Disinformation is far more insidious because the person knows that what she is communicating is factually inaccurate. In common parlance, she lied.)

Imagine the misinformation paradigm:

Neil: That’s misinformation.
Joe: What exactly is that misinformation?
Neil: You said [and here we have to guess what was the faulty information because Neil was never challenged to specify what was faulty].
Joe: [to which Joe could theoretically respond] Why is that information faulty?

The onus is on the accuser to state clearly what information was wrong and prove it to be wrong.

Imagine the disinformation paradigm:

Neil: You lied.
Joe: What lie did I tell?
Neil: You lied about Covid.
Joe: What did I say about Covid that was a lie?
Neil: You said [and here we have to guess what was the lie because Neil was never challenged to specify what was a lie].
Joe: [to which Joe could theoretically respond] How is that a lie?

The onus is on the accuser to state clearly what was a lie and prove it to be a lie, and the accuser has to also prove that the accused knew that he was telling a lie.

Young is probably well meaning, but that does not mean his motivations weren’t ill advised or even morally questionable. In 2014, Dissident Voice editor Angie Tibbs criticized Young for his:

blatant show of support for the apartheid state, a nasty slap in the face for the occupied people of Palestine, and most specifically Gaza where the residents are now counting the bodies and burying their dead as a result of Israel’s latest bombardment.

Who could believe that Neil Young, the long time activist, would ignore the BDS campaign, including a cultural boycott demanding that Israel recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully comply with the precepts of international law?

Young has also been called out for his misinformation concerning the “Tiananmen Square massacre.” Decades after the violence that transpired outside Tiananmen Square, Young was still dedicating his hit song “Rockin’ in the Free World” “to the Chinese students who were killed during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989,” even though the CIA-orchestrated upheaval targeted the killing of soldiers.

As for COVID-19 and how best to treat it, for any non-expert (and, granted, maybe Neil Young has carried out much study and has become quite expert about COVID), to claim epistemological certitude should be greeted with more than a modicum of skepticism.

Who can state with absolute or near absolute certainty on all the vectors involved with COVID-19?

Likeliest, the virus is spread by aerosols. But who is most at risk? Probably the elderly and the infirm. What are the dangers of infection? What is the best way to combat an infection? What is the best way to gain immunity? What are the best ways to avoid an infection? What reasonable, science-backed precautions should one take: mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing, disinfection of surfaces, etc? Should one be vaccinated? What are the side-effects from the vaccines: dangerous? life threatening? short-term? long-term? Does recovery from COVID-19 provide greater protection from re-infection? If vaccination is found to provide safe and reasonable protection (obviously it does not confer immunity), then which vaccine should be prescribed?

How much is known about the safety and possible side-effects given that vaccine trials are still ongoing? Can the pharmaceutical manufacturers be trusted? Why have the pharmaceutical companies’ COVID vaccines been indemnified? How should people regard the report that Thailand’s National Health Security Office paid out about 927 million baht (about 28 million USD) to 8,470 people who suffered side effects after being vaccinated against COVID-19? Is the clinical data transparent? VAERS reports reflect what percentage of the adverse events? Is the virus petering out? There is so much to be considered and knowledge is still coming to light.

Some of the I-know-better-than-others crowd have called for censorship. Is censorship how humans arrive at the truth? Have the people who argue for censorship learned anything from when the church proscribed the teaching of heliocentrism? Wasn’t it a heresy at one time (and even still in some backwaters) to theorize human life as having evolved from simpler lifeforms?

We are exhorted by government officials and government spokespersons to follow the science. But when do they ever bother to present the scientific evidence? Do they point to the independent peer-review science literature? Can we trust that doctors and scientists always get it right? Didn’t doctors use to be big boosters of cigarette smoking?

Spotify has reacted to Young’s complaints and removed his music from the platform. Spotify has also promised to be vigilant against misinformation, as we all should be. But is one not promoting misinformation when one falsely accuses another of misinformation?

Rogan supports Spotify’s plan to put a disclaimer at the start of controversial episodes.

For his part, Young denied pushing censorship. “I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information.”

Neil, you say you support free speech, but did you not just threaten Spotify because that platform allowed Joe Rogan to exercise his free speech?

The podcaster has taken the high road. “My pledge to you [the listener] is that I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people’s perspectives, so we can maybe find a better point of view.” Whether balance is the best way to arrive at what best approximates the truth is a question to be pondered in another article.

Rogan added, “I’m not mad at Neil Young, I’m a huge Neil Young fan.”

Still, it would have been preferable if Rogan had respectfully put the onus on Young to point out the inaccuracies that the musician had alleged.

Maybe Young is an expert on COVID-19, and maybe he can discern what is factually accurate and inaccurate. However, there are thousands and thousands of physicians and scientists (and plenty of Canadian truck drivers and their supporters) out there that disagree with Young.

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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Twitter: @kimpetersen. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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A fast-growing Facebook group called “Convoy to DC 2022” is calling upon American truckers to amass a convoy to head to Washington, DC to protest Joe Biden’s restrictive COVID measures.

Inspired by the massive 50,000-strong convoy of Canadian truckers surrounding Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the U.S. Freedom Convoy group, which has over 131,000 members as of writing, will reportedly start in California and traverse all the way to the nation’s capital.

“We are part of many large groups who believe in our founding fathers. We believe everyone has a voice. We support our freedom. Help us spread the word about this group and together we all can make it a better place. God Bless America,” the group states.

Brian Von D., the organizer of the Convoy to DC 2022 group, declared on Facebook last Thursday that “America is next” to experience a trucker-led revolution against COVID tyranny.

“We’re done with the mandates, we’re done with the government telling us what to do, we will continue, and we will follow just like the rest of the world on these trucker protests, and they will be 100 percent legal, they will abide by the law,” Von D. said.

“America, it’s your turn. It’s your turn to step up and show what you’re made of,” Von D. continued, adding that “America has a lot more trucks” than Canada.

“The government overreach is coming to an end, and this is how we do it,” he added.

Another organizer of the U.S. convoy claimed that the trucker movement is not about any one country, but about “a movement across the globe to stand up to” the COVID tyranny imposed by world governments.

American truckers are following Canada’s lead. Brian Brase is one of the organizers of the “Convoy to DC 2022.” The Facebook group has flown past 110k people: https://t.co/pB4zjFMWPv #convoytodc #convoytodc2022 pic.twitter.com/C7qSLUECDh

— Ivory Hecker (@IvoryHecker) February 1, 2022

Rumors among the group are circulating that the White House is in “full panic” over emerging reports American truckers are preparing to descend upon DC.

American patriots! Taking back our damn country! pic.twitter.com/yrAukWFQdb

— Jim puryear (@PuryearJim) February 1, 2022

The date for when the U.S. convoy will set off to DC has not yet been announced.

Given Facebook’s past efforts to censor truly grassroots movements that defy the official narrative, it’s likely the social media giant will try to suppress the spread of the group on its platform.

This comes amid reports Freedom Convoys are mobilizing in Australia and European countries following the example of the Canadian truckers.

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Featured image: Slawek Pietraszek is a 43-year-old trucker on his way to Ottawa in the convoy. Credit: Rachel Parent/National Post

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Is it really so awesome to have nothing?  There is probably no longer a concept bizarre enough not to arouse our anxiety that someone will try to implement it.  In the case of ownership, this is not a new concept, only until recently has not apply to cars and utility items, but above all to flats and homes.

The need for a nomadic precariat

Generally speaking the message is that without owning a flat, we are not only more flexible on the labour market, but also more free, happy and, of course, modern.  And in fact, the initial assumptions of such visions were probably related to the desire to intensify the globalization of the labour market, to facilitate labour migrations, etc.  However, as it often happens today – the practical (?) idea was quickly associated with the ideological concept, in this case with the expropriation trend.  At this point a Marxist would mention accumulation by dispossession, a liberal would criticise the deprivation of a holy right of property – and they would both shudder in disgust, albeit probably in opposite directions.  The joke, however, is that when properly given – the same idea immediately begins to be liked by some representatives of the same trends.

In fact, this expropriation is associated with the accumulation of property and is carried out in the hands of corporates and neo-elites, not state.  Of course, modern states would not mind treating housing and other goods as rewards for obedience, restricting access to them for everyone outside the system.  Contrary to appearances, in this respect neoliberal and neo-progressive positions are not so distant from each other.  However, the effect in both cases is very similar – expropriation is often accompanied by uprooting, and a man without property transform into the Man Without Qualities.

Subscription for the future

However, in the case of housing, the speculative bubble that periodically increases is a fairly obvious threat to the stability of financial markets and council or state-owned extensive construction and housing system still remains a natural protective and regulatory measure in many countries.  Meanwhile, the same system for all other ownership, replaced by subscription systems and short-term borrowing – must already raise more than a concern.  For now, it works in the virtual world – software, especially games, music sharing.  The not so unimaginable futurism brings visions of worlds in which, on the same principle, also material goods, and even … food will be made available from the codes of 3-D printers, etc.  After all, even the Star Trek showed us the World of some neo-communism or omni-corporation, without money and with all goods granted so “miraculously” to the humanity.  Considering that in the globalist and neoliberal realities states and international organisations remain only the far-reaching executive organs of capital – previous dispute whether it is better to accumulate the ownership and means of production in the hands of state or private monopolies loses its importance altogether.

Interestingly, a world without widespread private property would also actually be a world without tradition, or maybe rather with a tradition that is invented and generated over and over again, adjusted to the needs of the current stage of modernity.  The lack of material culture, inextricably linked to ownership, also questions the very meaning and possibility of the existence of culture in general, and this would result in the end of the civilization as we know it.  And this will be postmodernity of all the dreams and fears of both Neo-Communists and Neoliberals.  Postmodernity in which property actually seems to have disappeared – ultimately remaining in the hands of so few.

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Konrad Rękas is a renowned geopolitical analyst and a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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There has been no greater evil done during the time of the Covid reign, though, than that of the unsafe and ineffective vaccine mandates, especially in hospitals.

Recently, Kyndall West, a miracle of a man born in 1986, was denied a heart transplant by Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Kyndall was born with major heart defects and craniofacial abnormalities. In fact, he was the 31st person in the world born with a genetic mutation–Carpenter’s syndrome–so severe that doctors thought he would not even live beyond a few minutes, then a few days, then a few years.

Nearly forty years later, he has survived seizures and the implantation of a pacemaker and defibrillator. He has survived Covid19. He is a college student and has worked in the ministry. He is an avid golfer, a skilled bowler, a doting uncle, and a devoted church member. He also needs a heart transplant in order to live, but doctors have refused his transplant simply because he refused the poisonous Fauci juice that the mainstream media calls a “vaccine.”

“My body, my choice,” the mantra of abortion industry supporters everywhere, is evidently not applicable for a man who has undergone over sixty surgeries in his lifetime: arguably more medical procedures than Joe Biden has flavors of ice cream in his basement freezer. In fact, Kyndall’s mother, a public school teacher who also would act as his caretaker after the transplant, refused the vaccine and was told by doctors that even in the event of an approved transplant she could not be the caretaker without first accepting the jab. Suddenly, doctors are allowed to tread heavily on the 14th amendment rights of their patients! They forget not only the Hippocratic Oath they almost certainly swore as medical students but their patient’s right to life and liberty as well.

While we are slowly winning the war against Covid tyranny, there are some battles we are still losing. If people like Kyndall perish because they stood up for their beliefs and refused an experimental injection, their blood is on the hands of every single person who did not stand up and shout from the rooftops that the tyranny must stop.

Patrick Henry once passionately noted in his famous speech, “Give me liberty, or give me death.” Will this fateful line come true for every single person on the organ transplant list who will not take the jab? Are their lives less important than those lives big pharma fallaciously promises to save? May Fauci and the Biden administration, with all the guilt-ridden psychosis of Lady Macbeth, forever try to wash their filthy hands of the blood from the millions they have murdered in the name of fear and control, and may those like Kyndall receive the blessing of the medical help they must get, before it’s too late.

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***

In his farewell address, George Washington said, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

What an offensive notion to Pentagon generals, weapon industry execs, DC think tankers and State Department bureaucrats, who, rather than avoiding permanent alliances, have been relentless in their quest to pile on new ones.

That impulse is vividly exemplified by the dangerously provocative post-Cold War expansion of NATO, and its consequences are apparent in today’s Ukraine-centered tensions with Russia.

NATO was created to oppose a Soviet empire that no longer exists. Had American presidents followed Washington’s sage counsel, they’d have spearheaded the dismantling of NATO upon the end of the Cold War. Instead, with America’s encouragement, NATO has nearly doubled its membership—from 16 countries when the Berlin Wall fell to 30 today.

With each new member, the U.S. government and American service members are tied to another far-off tripwire: Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, an attack on any member country compels other treaty members to come to its aid. It’s the epitome of what Thomas Jefferson called an “entangling alliance.”

While the growth in the number of NATO countries and U.S. war commitments is unsettling, it’s the direction that’s been most troublesome: NATO expansion has marched the alliance relentlessly eastward, right up to Russia’s border.

To get a sense of how that’s perceived in Russia, imagine if, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia set out to reinvigorate the Warsaw Pact by inviting Mexico to join a military alliance created in 1955 to oppose NATO during the Cold War. Americans would find such a move equally perplexing and unsettling.

The way NATO expansion proceeded, however, was even worse than that.

An International Promise Broken, Over Emphatic Domestic Objections

During the diplomatic maneuvers leading up to the reunification of Germany and the withdrawal of Soviet forces, Western leaders gave repeated assurances to Moscow that NATO wouldn’t grow eastward.

The most prominent and emphatic assurance came from U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, in a 1990 meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Baker said,

“If the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”

Several years later, however, NATO and President Clinton began considering just such an expansion—but not without controversy. American diplomat George Kennan, a towering figure in Cold War strategy who authored the policy of Soviet “containment,” was unequivocal in his opposition.

In a 1997 essay published by The New York Times, Kennan said,

“Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era…Such a decision may be expected…to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”

Kennan wasn’t alone. A bipartisan group of 50 foreign policy luminaries—including Cold War hawks like Paul Nitze and Robert McNamara—signed an open letter to President Clinton opposing NATO expansion.

“Russia does not now pose a threat to its western neighbors and the nations of Central and Eastern Europe are not in danger…we believe that NATO expansion is neither necessary nor desirable and that this ill-conceived policy can and should be put on hold,” the group declared.

In 1999, Clinton and NATO plunged forward anyway—reneging on the assurances given to Moscow by their predecessors—and the first round of NATO’s post-Cold War expansion brought Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into the military treaty.

Subsequent expansion waves added another 11 countries, and the mutually beneficial buffer of states between NATO and Russia grew ever slimmer, vanishing in part with the addition of Estonia and Latvia.

Though Russia may have grudgingly accepted NATO’s membership nearly doubling since the end of the Cold War, it views the prospect of Ukraine membership far more gravely.

That central factor in today’s tensions first came to prominence in 2008, when, at a summit in Bucharest, NATO officials considered bringing Ukraine and Georgia into the pact.

“The George W. Bush administration supported doing so, but France and Germany opposed the move for fear that it would unduly antagonize Russia,” wrote University of Chicago professor and foreign policy expert John Mearsheimer.

No invitations were extended, but in a compromise that tilted toward America’s position, NATO issued a full-throated endorsement of Ukraine and Georgia membership as an eventuality: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agree today that these countries will become members of NATO.”

William Burns—who was then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and is now Biden’s CIA director—warned Washington about Russia’s deep unease over the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. In a 2008 cable titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines,” Burns wrote:

“Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.

Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”

2014: A U.S.-Encouraged Coup in Ukraine

As NATO flirted with Ukraine as a military partner, the European Union courted the former Soviet country as an economic one. These are divisive ideas within Ukraine, with a majority of ethnic Ukrainians supporting EU and NATO memberships and most ethnic Russians opposing them.

In 2013 and 2014, the EU’s courtship would lead to bloodshed and the West-encouraged overthrow of democratically-elected, Russia-friendly Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych.

Yanukovych had been negotiating an economic deal with the EU, but scrapped it in favor of a counteroffer from Russia that included Moscow buying $15 billion of Ukrainian government bonds and slashing the price of Russian natural gas.

Protests ensued and about a hundred protesters were killed. Western governments sensed an opportunity for a regime change that would install a government aligned with the West against Russia.

Senator John McCain flew to Kiev and joined protestors in the streets, as did Obama Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and ambassador to Ukraine Geoffey Pyatt.

As Yanukovych’s hold on power neared its end, Nuland and Pyatt were heard on a leaked phone call working to maneuver their favored politician, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, into power.

“Yats is the guy,” said Nuland, who’d weeks earlier boasted that the United States had spent $5 billion after Ukraine’s 1991 independence to shape the country’s politics. When Yanukovych fled to Russia, Nuland’s goal was realized: Yatsenyuk became prime minister.

Just two days after the coup, Ukraine’s parliament alarmed the country’s ethnic Russians by pushing through a bill—without debate—withdrawing permission for the use of Russian as an additional official language in regions where Russian minorities comprise at least 10% of the population.

The anxiety of Russian and other ethnic minorities was compounded by the substantial presence of neo-Nazi elements in the Ukrainian nationalist movement. Given the devastating toll of Russia’s fight with Nazism in World War II, one can see how that’s a cause for unease in Moscow too.

Ukraine’s abrupt transfer of power gave Russia something else to worry about: the Crimea peninsula, which is not only home to a majority-Russian population, but also Russia’s strategically vital warm-water navy base at Sevastopol.

In 1954, Crimea was casually transferred from Russia to Ukraine by Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev, as a gift of sorts on the 300th anniversary of Ukraine’s unification with Russia. At the time, moving governance of Crimea from one part of the USSR to another seemed relatively inconsequential.

The transfer became extremely consequential in February 2014, with the prospect that the new, Ukrainian nationalist government might move to terminate Russia’s lease of the navy base.

Preempting that possibility, Putin ordered his forces to incorporate Crimea into Russia. With thousands of Russian troops already there on the navy base—and with the majority-Russian local population preferring Russian rule—the actual seizure was less dramatic than the media may have led you to believe.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, however, the post-coup experience has been marked by violence and thousands of deaths, as Russian separatists in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions seek to establish independent republics.

The Russian concerns about the destabilizing effects of Western overtures to Ukraine, which were laid out by then-ambassador William Burns in his 2008 cable, have been substantiated. Meanwhile, though hapless U.S. interventionists may have hoped Ukrainian regime change would pry the Sevastopol navy base out of Russian hands, it’s only had the effect of giving Russia a firmer hold on it than before.

NATO expansion illustrates an intrinsic drive of any governmental body—to continuously enlarge its power and budget.

And in the Ukraine crisis, we vividly see what Richard Sakwa calls “a fateful geographical paradox: that NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.”

Make no mistake, NATO also exists to enrich the weapons industry, at the expense of citizens whose lives are put in greater jeopardy by NATO’s empire-building, which fosters antagonism with a country armed with 4,500 nuclear weapons.

To fully appreciate how intertwined NATO and weapons manufacturers are, consider this split-screen vignette from a 1997 New York Times story:

“At night, Bruce L. Jackson is president of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, giving intimate dinners for senators and foreign officials. By day, he is director of strategic planning for Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world’s biggest weapons maker.”

Poland joined NATO about two years after that story was published, and would go on to sign a deal to replace its Soviet-built fighter jets with 32 F-35A’s built by Lockheed Martin—at a price of $4.6 billion.

That’s just one representative example. As NATO’s expansion and needless antagonism toward Russia continues fostering tensions, the arms money keeps flowing.

Just last week, House Democrats—eager to demonstrate their firm resolve against an allegedly imminent Russian invasion that not even Ukraine anticipates—pushed for rapid passage of a military aid package, authorizing the spending of half a billion dollars the U.S. Treasury doesn’t have.

The counterproductive NATO-EU flirtation with Ukraine has been winding on for 14 years. With Ukraine ranking 122nd-worst in the world in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, NATO and the EU may wring their hands for years to come before ever tying the knot.

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky seems exasperated with it all. Speaking on Friday about the lingering uncertainty of Ukraine membership in NATO, he said, “We want specifics, we need to have something that we can count on… Well, give us the reasons. Okay, we are not in NATO—okay, tell us that we are not in NATO. Tell it openly: we will never be there.”

Let’s tell Ukraine exactly that, and once again pursue Jefferson’s ideal of “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

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***

After a round of escalation marked by ISIS attack on Geweran prison in the northeastern Syrian city of al-Hasakah, the situation in Syria appears to be slightly improving. As of January 31, the level of violence in the country continues to decline.

On January 30, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced that an ISIS attack on Geweran prison, which began ten days ago, had ended with their fighters in complete control of the facility.

A day earlier, a group of around 20 terrorists led by a commander known as “Abu Ubayda” surrounded to the SDF.

While the battle inside the prison may be over, some of the terrorists who managed to escape the prison may still be hiding in nearby areas waiting for a chance to attack or flee.

The fate of some 2,000 terrorists who were detained in Geweran prison before the ISIS attack remains unclear. A report by al-Quds al-Arabi revealed that around 200 terrorists left the prison under a secret deal with the SDF.

According to a report released by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on January 30, the battle of Geweran prison claimed the lives of 268 ISIS terrorists, seven civilians and 98 personnel of the SDF and its security forces.

The ISIS attack on the prison was a blow to both the SDF and the US-led coalition who don’t appear to be in control of the situation in northeastern Syria.

In an example of the confusion of US-led coalition forces, on January 28, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) soldiers confronted a unite from the British Army’s Special Air Service (SAS) that attempted to enter the government-held “security zone” in the center of al-Hasakah city twice. The elite unit, which was deployed near Geweran prison, was allegedly lost.

Meanwhile, the situation in central Syria, where ISIS cells have been waging an insurgency, remains tense.

On January 28, ISIS terrorists attacked several positions of the SAA and its allies near the town of Se’alow on the western bank of the Euphrates River in the southern countryside of Deir Ezzor. Four Iranian-backed fighters were wounded.

The attack may have been just a distraction to facilitate the crossing of terrorists who had recently escaped from Geweran prison to the central region.

On January 29, the terrorists attacked again, this time targeting a bus transporting a group of Iranian-backed fighters near the town of al-Sawanah in the eastern countryside of Homs. Several fighters were wounded.

In Syria’s northwestern region, known as Greater Idlib, the situation remains calm, but only thanks to bad weather conditions.

On January 30, Jaysh al-Izza released five Syrian soldiers and handed over the remains of an Iranian Bridger General, who was killed in the northern countryside of Hama in 2016, under a deal with Syrian authorities.

In exchange, the authorities released three militants of Jaysh al-Izza who were captured by the SAA less than two years ago. The swap took place on the Tronba crossing in the southeastern Idlib countryside.

Meanwhile in southern Syria, only two minor attacks were reported in the governorate of Daraa, as of January 31.

On January 29, former rebel Talib Moahamad was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen in the town of Nahij in the western Daraa countryside.

On January 29, unidentified gunmen set the headquarters of Saida’s Local Council in the eastern countryside of Daraa on fire.

Syria may experience a new round of escalation soon. The security situation in the country remains vulnerable, epically in the northeastern and central regions where ISIS influence remains strong.

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***

“A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power.”—Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

If we haven’t learned by now, we should beware of anything the government insists is for our own good.

Take the Biden Administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Given the deteriorating state of the nation’s infrastructure (aging highways and bridges, outdated railways and airports, etc.), which have been neglected for years in order to fund America’s endless wars abroad, it would seem like an obvious and long overdue fix.

Yet there’s a catch.

There’s always a catch.

Tucked into the whopping $1 trillion bipartisan spending bill is a provision requiring automakers to prescribe a “federal motor vehicle safety standard for advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology, and for other purposes.”

As Jason Torchinksky writes for Jalopnik:

It’s pretty clear that the goals of this section of the law are to reduce drunk driving fatalities and crashes via still-undetermined technological tools that somehow are able to “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired,” and/or “passively and accurately detect whether the blood alcohol concentration of a driver of a motor vehicle is equal to or greater than the blood alcohol concentration described in section 163(a) of title 23, United States Code,” and if either or both of these conditions are proven to be positive — if the car thinks you’re drunk, then it may “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation.”

As expected, the details are disconcertingly vague, which leaves the government with a wide berth to sow the seeds of mischief and mayhem. For instance, nowhere does the legislation indicate how such a so-called “kill switch” would work, what constitutes a driver who is “impaired,” and what “other purposes” might warrant the government using such a backdoor kill switch.

As former Rep. Bob Barr explains:

Everything about this mandatory measure should set off red flares. First, use of the word “passively” suggests the system will always be on and constantly monitoring the vehicle. Secondly, the system must connect to the vehicle’s operational controls, so as to disable the vehicle either before driving or during, when impairment is detected. Thirdly, it will be an “open” system, or at least one with a backdoor, meaning authorized (or unauthorized) third-parties can remotely access the system’s data at any time.

This is a privacy disaster in the making, and the fact that the provision made it through the Congress reveals — yet again — how little its members care about the privacy of their constituents… The lack of ultimate control over one’s vehicle presents numerous and extremely serious safety issues… If that is not reason enough for concern, there are serious legal issues with this mandate. Other vehicle-related enforcement methods used by the Nanny State, such as traffic cameras and license plate readers, have long presented constitutional problems; notably with the 5th Amendment’s right to not self-incriminate, and the 6th Amendment’s right to face one’s accuser.

Once again, the burden of proof is reversed, and “we the people” find ourselves no longer presumed innocent until proven guilty but suspects in a suspect society.

These “vehicle kill switches” may be sold to the public as a safety measure aimed at keeping drunk drivers off the roads, but they will quickly become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to put the government in the driver’s seat while rendering null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Indeed, when you think about it, these vehicle kill switches are a perfect metaphor for the government’s efforts to not only take control of our cars but also our freedoms and our lives.

For too long, we have been captive passengers in a driverless car controlled by the government, losing more and more of our privacy and autonomy the further down the road we go.

Just think of all the ways in which the government has been empowered to dictate what we say, do and think; where we go; with whom we associate; how we raise our families; how we live our lives; what we consume; how we spend our money; how we protect ourselves and our loved ones; and to what extent our rights as individuals can be displaced for the sake of the so-called greater good.

In this way, we have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by such science fiction writers as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick.

In keeping with Dick’s darkly prophetic vision of a dystopian police state—which became the basis for Steven Spielberg’s futuristic thriller Minority Report, which was released 20 years ago—we have been imprisoned in a world in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams and pre-crime units will crack a few skulls to bring the populace under control.

Minority Report is set in the year 2054, but it could just as well have taken place in 2022.

Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, Spielberg’s unnerving vision of the future is fast becoming our reality.

Both worlds—our present-day reality and Minority Report’s celluloid vision of the future—are characterized by widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, fusion centers, driverless cars, voice-controlled homes, facial recognition systems, cybugs and drones, and predictive policing (pre-crime) aimed at capturing would-be criminals before they can do any damage.

Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Government agents listen in on our telephone calls and read our emails. Political correctness—a philosophy that discourages diversity—has become a guiding principle of modern society.

The courts have shredded the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. In fact, SWAT teams battering down doors without search warrants and FBI agents acting as a secret police that investigate dissenting citizens are common occurrences in contemporary America.

We are increasingly ruled by multi-corporations wedded to the police state. Much of the population is either hooked on illegal drugs or ones prescribed by doctors. And bodily privacy and integrity has been utterly eviscerated by a prevailing view that Americans have no rights over what happens to their bodies during an encounter with government officials, who are allowed to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

We’re on the losing end of a technological revolution that has already taken hostage our computers, our phones, our finances, our entertainment, our shopping, our appliances, and now, our cars. As if the government wasn’t already able to track our movements on the nation’s highways and byways by way of satellites, GPS devices, and real-time traffic cameras, performance data recorders, black box recorders and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications will monitor our vehicle’s speed, direction, location, gear selection, brake force, the number of miles traveled and seatbelts use, and transmit this data to other drivers, including the police.

In this Brave New World, there is no communication not spied upon, no movement untracked, no thought unheard. In other words, there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Herded along by drones, smart phones, GPS devices, smart TVs, social media, smart meters, surveillance cameras, facial recognition software, online banking, license plate readers and driverless cars, we are quickly approaching a point of singularity with the interconnected technological metaverse that is life in the American police state.

Every new piece of technologically-enabled gadget we acquire and technologically-boobytrapped legislation that Congress enacts pulls us that much deeper into the sticky snare.

These vehicle kill switches are yet another Trojan Horse: sold to us as safety measures for the sake of the greater good, all the while poised to wreak havoc on what little shreds of autonomy we have left.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re hurtling down a one-way road at mind-boggling speeds to a destination not of our choosing, the terrain is getting more treacherous by the minute, and we’ve passed all the exit ramps.

From this point forward, there is no turning back, and the signpost ahead reads “Danger.”

Time to buckle up your seatbelts, folks. We’re in for a bumpy ride.

*

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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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***

Unlike Trump who was an outsider in American politics and derisively sneered at as “toddler-in-chief” by the US national security establishment, Biden is a typical establishment Democrat unabashedly playing into the hands of the deep state throughout his maiden year as president and escalating the conflict with Russia in Ukraine and with China in the South China Sea that risks plunging the United States into a catastrophic war with either of the two global powers.

After being elected president in a bitterly contested election alleged to be rigged by the political rival, he has given a carte blanche to his patrons in the national security establishment to substantially ramp up US military footprint in the Eastern Europe, deploy strategic armaments aimed at Russia and provocatively exercise so-called “freedom of navigation” right in the Black Sea and the South China Sea, veritable “territorial waters” of Russia and China, respectively.

During his over forty-year political career, first as a longtime senator from Delaware, then as Obama’s vice president and finally as the president of the world’s most powerful nation, Joe Biden has consistently proved that he is an unapologetic stooge of the deep state and an incorrigible Russophobic hawk.

Before being elected as Obama’s vice president in 2008, as a senator and subsequently as the member and then the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden, alongside another inveterate neo-McCarthyite hawk Senator Joe Lieberman, was one of the principal architects of the Bosnia War in the Clinton administration in the nineties. Thus, he is no stranger to the Machiavellian policy of the US national security establishment to destabilize Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the dissolution of the former Soviet Union.

Reflecting on first black American president Barack Obama’s memorable 2008 presidential campaign, with little-known senator from Delaware, Joe Biden, as his running-mate, Glenn Kessler wrote for the Washington Post [1] in October 2008:

“The moment when Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. looked Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in the eye and called him a ‘damned war criminal’ has become the stuff of campaign legend.

“The Democratic vice presidential nominee brings up the 1993 confrontation on the campaign trial to whoops of delight from supporters. Senator Barack Obama mentioned it when he announced he had chosen Biden as his running mate.

“During vice presidential debate with his counterpart on the Republican ticket, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Biden twice gave himself credit for shifting US policy on Bosnia. The senator from Delaware declared that he ‘was the catalyst to change the circumstance in Bosnia led by President Clinton.’ At another point he noted: ‘My recommendations on Bosnia — I admit I was the first one to recommend it. They saved tens of thousands of lives.’”

Instead of “saving tens of thousands of lives,” the devastating Yugoslav Wars in the nineties in the aftermath of the break-up of the former Soviet Union and then the former Yugoslavia claimed countless fatalities, created a humanitarian crisis and unleashed a flood of refugees for which nobody is to blame but the Clinton administration’s militarist policy of subjugating and forcibly integrating East European states into the Western capitalist bloc.

Regarding Washington’s modus operandi of waging proxy wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, since the times of the Soviet-Afghan jihad during the eighties, it has been the fail-safe game plan of master strategists at NATO to raise money from the oil-rich Gulf States; then buy billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from the arms markets in the Eastern Europe; and then provide those weapons and guerilla warfare training to the disaffected population of the victim country by using the intelligence agencies of the latter’s regional adversaries. Whether it’s Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Libya or Syria, the same playbook was executed to the letter.

Raising funds for proxy wars from the Gulf’s petro-monarchies allows the deep state the freedom to evade congressional scrutiny; the benefit of buying weapons from unregulated arms markets of the Eastern Europe is that such weapons cannot be traced back to the Western capitals; and using jihadist proxies to achieve strategic objectives has the advantage of taking the plea of “plausible deniability” if the strategy backfires, which it often does. Remember that al-Qaeda and Taliban were the by-products of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, and the Islamic State and its global network of terrorists were the blowback of the proxy war in Syria.

Naively giving credit to former Senator and Vice President Joe Biden for his purported “humanitarian interventionism” and for creating a catastrophe in the Balkans in the nineties, Paul Richter and Noam N. Levey, writing for the LA Times [2] in August 2008, observed:

“Biden has frequently favored humanitarian interventions abroad and was an early and influential advocate for the US military action in the Balkans in the 1990s.

“Biden considers his most important foreign policy accomplishment to be his leadership on the Balkans in the mid-1990s. He pushed a reluctant Clinton administration, first to arm Serbian Muslims and then to use US air power to suppress conflict in Serbia and Kosovo.

“In his book, ‘Promises to Keep,’ Biden calls this one of his two ‘proudest moments in public life,’ along with the Violence Against Women Act that he championed.

“In 1998, he worked with Senator John McCain on a bipartisan resolution to push the Clinton administration to use all available force to confront Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, a move designed to force the president to use ground troops if necessary against Serb forces in the former Yugoslavia, which was beset by fighting and ethnic cleansing.”

Biden’s belligerent militarism, however, didn’t stop in the Balkans, as the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden said in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the US national security and there was no option but to eliminate that threat. In October 2002, he voted in favor of the “Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq,” approving the US invasion of Iraq.

More significantly, as chair of the committee, he assembled a series of witnesses to testify in favor of the authorization. They gave testimony grossly misrepresenting the intent, history of and status of Saddam and his Baathist government, which was an openly avowed enemy of al-Qaeda, and touting Iraq’s fictional possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Writing for The Guardian in February 2020, Mark Weisbrot observed [3] that Joe Biden was at the forefront of mustering bipartisan support for the illegal Iraq War and it would come back to haunt him in the presidential elections like the criminal complicity of Hillary Clinton in lending legitimacy to the Bush administration’s unilateral invasion of Iraq thwarted her presidential ambitions, too, in the 2016 presidential elections.

Weisbrot added:

“When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

“‘I do not believe this is a rush to war,’ Biden said a few days before the vote. ‘I believe it is a march to peace and security. I believe that failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is likely to enhance the prospects that war will occur …’

“But he had a power much greater than his own words. He was able to choose all 18 witnesses in the main Senate hearings on Iraq. And he mainly chose people who supported a pro-war position. They argued in favor of ‘regime change as the stated US policy’ and warned of ‘a nuclear-armed Saddam sometime in this decade.’ That Iraqis would ‘welcome the United States as liberators’ and that Iraq ‘permits known al-Qaida members to live and move freely about in Iraq’ and that ‘they are being supported.’”

When the ill-conceived invasion and occupation of Iraq didn’t go as planned and the country slipped into myriad ethnic and sectarian conflicts, in November 2006, Biden and Leslie H. Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, released a “comprehensive strategy” to end sectarian violence in Iraq. Rather than continuing the previous approach or withdrawing the US forces, the plan called for “a third way”: federalizing Iraq and giving Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis “breathing room” in their own regions.

In September 2007, a non-binding resolution endorsing such a scheme passed the Senate, but the idea was unfamiliar, had no political legitimacy, and failed to gain traction. Iraq’s political leadership denounced the resolution as a de facto “Balkanization of Iraq,” and the US Embassy in Baghdad issued a statement distancing itself from it. Foreign policy “maven” Biden laughed it off as nothing more than one of his facetious gaffes.

Regarding the decade-long proxy war in Syria orchestrated by Washington to ensure Israel’s regional security, addressing a seminar at Harvard [4] in 2014, “not-so-Sleepy Joe” cunningly sought refuge in plausible deniability and contended: “Saudi Arabia and the UAE had transferred hundreds of millions of dollars and large amounts of weaponry to a variety of Islamist militias inside Syria, including at least one with ties to al Qaeda.”

“The Turks were great friends, and I’ve a great relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, … the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war. What did they do?” Biden asked, according to a recording of the speech posted on the White House’s website.

“They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra, and al Qaeda, and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”

To his credit, despite being a warmonger masquerading as “a peacenik,” former President Obama was at least smart. Having graduated as one of the poorest students from law school, then-Vice President Biden didn’t realize the irony of his remarks.

The Gulf States, Turkey and Jordan didn’t funnel money and weapons into Syria’s proxy war without a nod from Washington. The CIA’s Operation Timber Sycamore to train and arm Syrian militants battling the Bashar al-Assad government from 2012 to 2017 in the border regions of Jordan and Turkey was approved and supervised by the Obama administration of which Biden was the vice president and second-in-command.

In fact, Washington exercised such an absolute control over Syria’s theater of proxy war that although the US openly provided the American-made antitank (TOW) weapons to Syrian militant groups, it strictly forbade its clients from providing anti-aircraft weapons (MANPADS) to the militants, because Israel frequently flies surveillance aircrafts and drones and occasionally conducts airstrikes in Lebanon and Syria, and had such weapons fallen into the hands of jihadists, they could have become a long-term security threat to the Israeli air force.

Although ostensibly fighting a “war on terror” for the last couple of decades, the US deep state has clandestinely nurtured Islamic jihadists and used them as proxies in myriad conflict zones of the Middle East, North Caucasus and the Balkans to achieve “strategic objectives” of destabilizing regional and global adversaries.

If we take a cursory look at the history of the recent US administrations, the Carter and Reagan administrations trained and armed Afghan jihadists against the former Soviet Union during the Cold War in the eighties, those same “freedom fighters” later mutated into al-Qaeda and Taliban;

the Clinton administration used Islamic jihadists to break up former Yugoslavia in the nineties;

the Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003 that gave birth to al-Qaeda in Iraq;

and the Obama-Biden administration initiated proxy wars in Libya and Syria in 2011 to topple Arab nationalist governments of Libyan leader Gaddafi and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that gave birth to extremist groups such as Ansar al-Sharia in Libya and Islamic State and al-Nusra Front in Syria.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Af-Pak and the Middle East regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military industrial complex and petro-imperialism.

He is a regular contributor of meticulously researched and credibly sourced investigative reports to Global Research.

Notes

[1] Biden Played Second Fiddle to Joe Lieberman in Bosnia Legislation

[2] On foreign policy, he’s willing to go his own way

[3] Joe Biden championed the Iraq war. Will that come back to haunt him now

[4] Joe Biden is the only honest man in Washington

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Ukraine, Britain, and Poland are creating a new format of political cooperation in Europe.

That’s according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, who addressed the Verkhovna Rada at an opening of the seventh parliamentary session on Tuesday, February 1….

“We are creating a new format of political cooperation in Europe involving Ukraine, Britain, and Poland,” Zelensky said.

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss earlier said a tripartite alliance was being considered between Britain, Poland, and Ukraine.

The head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kuleba, also told reporters about the active work on creating such an alliance.

On February 1, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland and British PM Boris Johnson will be paying a visit to Ukraine.

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An article by 112 Ukraine entitled PM announces signing of declaration between Ukraine, United Kingdom and Poland reports:

A new regional format of Ukraine-Poland-United Kingdom cooperation will be created in the near future. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal announced this during a briefing.

“I hope that in the near future we will be able to officially create a new regional format of Ukraine-Poland-UK cooperation. In the face of ongoing Russian aggression, we should sign a trilateral document on cooperation in strengthening regional security,” Shmygal said.

The day before, it was reported that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson and the Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki plan to announce the creation of a new format of cooperation with Ukraine during his visit to Kyiv.

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Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website.

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

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Fannie Mae announced last week that it provided nearly $70 billion in multifamily financing last year. The government lender crowed about $9.6 billion of the total being for affordable housing projects and $13.5 billion financing projects deemed “green and sustainable” units. This helped Fannie “grow its Multifamily Green MBS (mortgage backed securities) issuance to more than $100 billion last year,” according to the press release.

Fannie Mae apartment loan pricing and terms are attractive: the five-year fixed rate starts at 2.74 percent to the thirty-year fixed starting at 3.81 percent. Thirty-year amortizations are available and in some cases interest-only loans can be negotiated, as well as nonrecourse loans. The larger point is that with the Consumer Price Index at 7 percent in December, the real interest rate on these Fannie Mae loans is negative.

According to Multi-Housing News, “On an annual basis through December, rents increased by double-digit percentages in 26 of the top 30 metros, six of which posted gains of 20 percent or more: Phoenix (25.3 percent), Tampa (24.6 percent), Miami (23.5 percent), Orlando (22.7 percent), Las Vegas (22.2 percent) and Austin (20.9 percent).”

So with rents rising and cheap money flowing, the prices of apartment projects are soaring. The latest Las Vegas multifamily announced sale is Ideal Capital Group’s purchase of the 287-unit Jade project near the Rio hotel and casino for $124.5 million. That is a whopping $433,798 per unit.

The COVID shutdown in 2020 slowed project sales as many renters lost their jobs. But “Las Vegas’ rental market has since heated up with fast-rising rents and shrunken availability, in part as people sought more space amid widespread work-from-home arrangements, and investor sales have rebounded,” reports Eli Segall for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Jade went for double 2021’s average sales price per unit, $215,151. Average apartment sales per unit have risen over 460 percent, from $38,219 in 2011 to last year’s price.

Wolf Richter writes on his site, wolfstreet.com, that working people are harmed by inflation because their wages never catch up, while people with assets, inflated in value by low interest rates, reap the benefit. He writes, “[T]he wealth of the wealthiest 1% of households spiked, creating the biggest and worst wealth disparity ever to the bottom 50% and even to the bottom 99%, based on the Fed’s own wealth distribution data.”

Over lunch recently I expressed my astonishment over the $400,000-per-unit sales to a developer (and apartment project owner) I used to bank. He told me units would be selling for $500,000 by the end of this year.

I said rents would have to jump even more or capitalization rates would have to go to virtually nil for that to happen. He said emphatically, “Rents are going up.” People moving in from California believe rents in Vegas are cheap.

Not for long.

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Douglas French is President Emeritus of the Mises Institute, author of Early Speculative Bubbles & Increases in the Money Supply, and author of Walk Away: The Rise and Fall of the Home-Ownership Myth. He received his master’s degree in economics from UNLV, studying under both Professor Murray Rothbard and Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

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Tensions in Ukraine have collateral effects on all sectors of society – and the financial market is no different. The American and European stock exchanges have been tumbling in recent days, with decreases in percentage points having been reported in almost all financial centers. Investors and analysts explain that the negative result in the stock exchanges is due to the Ukrainian crisis, which has hurt the stability of the world market. Considering that the West itself is fomenting this crisis, it will be up to Western governments to decide between favoring financial stability or NATO’s plans.

January has been a difficult month for the US and European stock markets. Last Monday, many percentage drops were seen across the entire West. The S&P 500, for example, dropped from 4,397.94 points to 4,262.4, which is a 3-percentage point drop (something that has not happened in over a year). The main victims of the crisis have been US technology companies according to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which reported a 2.29% drop in this sector in the US.

In European stock markets, the signs of crisis are also clear. In the same aforementioned day, the German DAX fell from 15,604 points to 15,130, closing at a 3.02% drop. Something similar happened in France, with the CAC-40 index showing a drop of 3.03%. In the same vein, the pan-European Euronext 100 index fell by 3.28%. In Switzerland, there was also a gradual decline, with a drop of 2.94% in just six hours of operation of the stock market. London’s FTSE100 showed better data, but still tumbling, closing the day with a 2.27% decline.

Similar rates were reported in Russia. The RTS index pointed to a drop of more than 8% in the dollar stock market. In ruble, the GMT indicator reported a decline of 5.93%. Declining data was also registered in Asia, although with better numbers. Nikkei (Japan) showed a 0.90% drop and Kospi (South Korea) 0.99%, for example.

Despite the worldwide peak of drops last Monday, throughout the week, the market fluctuated significantly, with increase and decrease in percentage points of stock exchanges around the world being reported at different times. However, analyzing the data in total, the existence of a significant global drop in the stock and investment market is clear.

To understand this type of situation, it is necessary to consider the fact that the financial market depends, above all, on stability and security. A world marked by tensions, possibilities of war and constant threats of armed conflicts can never serve the interests of the financial market. Without security and expectations of stable situation in the medium and long term, investments are not made and with that the financial cycle begins to fall.

Considering this, it is possible to conclude that, if the market is tumbling, there is certainly something obstructing political, social and economic stability, generating fear among investors. Since the drop is seen globally, we can conclude that there is a global threat, which leads us to believe that Ukraine is currently a focus of fear and tension for the financial market.

The Ukrainian issue is undoubtedly the most worrying global problem today. The nuclear potential of both sides, the US and Russia, involved in the issue leads the world to experience the worst security crisis since the Cold War. This is something extremely uncomfortable for investors, who do not want to bet their capital on any company with the possibility of a conflict on an international scale. This explains why the decline of the stock market has been reported worldwide in recent days – and also explains why the US, Europe and Russia have experienced the biggest drops, while Asian stocks have shown more attenuated declines.

With that, there is no escape: while there is a possibility of war, there will be a financial crisis. The big problem is that such a possibility only exists on the part of the West. NATO insists on the “Russian invasion” narrative and plans military actions to “respond” to such a “threat”, while Moscow repeatedly claims that it will not make any incursions against Ukraine. If the West stopped insisting on such a narrative, there would be no “threat of war” and the market would be stabilized. On the other hand, NATO’s aggressive and illegal actions in Eastern Europe heavily depend on the existence of the narrative about an “invasion” in order for them to be “justified”.

So, the financial situation of the whole world is complicated now, but especially that of the West itself, which is where financial capitalism is stronger. There will be conflict of interests and polarization in western society and it is likely that the market will push for the situation in Ukraine to be resolved as soon as possible in order to regain international stability. It will be up to the US and other NATO governments to decide whether to prioritize their war plans or financial security.

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

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Pegasus, CAATSA, Nagaland — prime facie, they’ve nothing in common. At least, reading the Indian press, one gets that impression. But it is always important to connect the dots to understand where the trail is leading to. 

The Biden-Harris Administration is sensing that Modi Govt, a perceived ally, is not to be seen as its war machine revs up in anticipation of a horrific war. Typically, if a country is not with the US, then, it must be against it. But India falls in a category by itself. 

The Modi government is going to come under immense pressure in the coming weeks and months from Washington to move into the Western camp on the burning issues of Ukraine and NATO’s further expansion, which would “change the world,” as President Biden framed the paradigm in stark historical terms last week. 

To recap, since 2014, the Modi government has gone far beyond any previous Congress-led regimes in taking India to the American stable. It has been a dangerous poker game, in which the ruling elite, weaned on Chanakya, was sure it would ultimately outwit Washington. 

It is always a seductive thought that you could cherrypick. But, in a superpower’s orchard? And, more so, from Joe Biden’s kitchen garden? It was sheer naïveté. The contradiction becomes acute, as the present ruling elite also staunchly proclaim their nationalist credo.

Biden has already announced that by April, once he’s finished with Eurasia, he is heading for Asia-Pacific for the next summit of the QUAD, which Japan is hosting! The QUAD is transforming as a vehicle to push the “dual containment” strategy against both China and Russia. 

The White House claimed on January 21 that Japanese Prime Minister Kishida pledged to Biden  to “continue close coordination with the United States, other Allies and partners, and the international community on taking strong action in response to any attack” by Russia on Ukraine. Japan is not even an Eurasian power, yet it knows what to do as the US’ vassal state.

Against such a complex backdrop, the US state department spokesman Ted Price posted a reminder when asked at the press briefing Thursday by one Michel, “Given the unprecedented tension you have with Russia, what impact does India’s decision to buy S-400 from Russia – the supply already began – has on your bilateral ties with India?” 

Of course, such questions are never accidental. Price replied: 

“Well, in many ways this doesn’t change the concerns that we have with the S-400 system. I think it shines a spotlight on the destabilising role that Russia is playing not only in the region, but potentially beyond as well. When it comes to CAATSA sanctions, you’ve heard me say before we haven’t made a determination with regard to this transaction, but it’s something we continue to discuss with the Government of India, given the risk of sanctions for this particular transaction under CAATSA. Whether it is India, whether it is any other country, we continue to urge all countries to avoid major new transactions for Russian weapon systems… I don’t have a timeline to offer, but these are issues that we continue to discuss with our partners in India. Michel.” 

Coincidence or not, on the same day as Price spoke, the New York Times’ stunning story on Pegasus appeared. Admittedly, it is not an exclusive story about on India but Prime Minister Modi was singled out as a case study. 

Indeed, it pins on PM Modi personally the decision-making on the sale of a package of sophisticated weapons and intelligence gear worth roughly $2 billion — with Pegasus and a missile system as the centrepieces.

Evidently, there has been some media leak with high level political clearance in Washington. The Pegasus story is still playing out in the Supreme Court, so let us leave it at that.

Perhaps, even more damning, from a long-term perspective, would be the Times’ feature on Nagaland titled In India’s Militarized Regions, Calls for Ending Impunity, which, strangely enough, appeared on Saturday. 

The Times holds a piercing searchlight held on a dark corner of our country — Indian Army’s alleged atrocities on the Christian population of Nagaland. Of course, within India itself, there is a significant body of responsible opinion — including one former Home Secretary — who would share the estimations in the Times story. 

However, the point is something else: On successive days, the Times, a hugely influential opinion maker in the world community, has portrayed Modi’s India as a country without rule of law with a state apparatus that is insensitive, brutal, oppressive. 

Taken together with Ned Price’s remarks, Modi Govt has been put on notice. Will it buckle under such pressure? These are times when the moral fibre of the leadership makes all the difference.

The core issue is that an elected government’s primary duty is to safeguard the national interests. In this case, any bandwagoning with the US-led apple cart lurching toward Russia or China is almost certain to meet with a disastrous ending.

Nothing brings this out more vividly than the decision by Polish President Andrzej Duda, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on Feb 4. (Interestingly, they too figure in Times’ Pegasus story!)

All four of them are supposedly Washington’s allies. Yet, they have chosen to mark their distance ostentatiously from the Biden Administration’s ill-fated strategy in Eurasia and Asia-Pacific, which in their reckoning is doomed to unravel with disastrous consequences.

Cracks have appeared within the Western alliance. Major EU allies remain sceptical about the war hysteria against Russia. Only (post-Brexit) Britain, which is raring to go “global”, shows enthusiasm. Simply put, the European allies will now be doubly sceptical about Biden’s incoherent approach toward China.

The Chinese ambassador to Washington Qin Gang has publicly warned, “If the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the United States, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in the military conflict.”

India’s interest lies in navigating its own pathway toward China and Russia, two consequential relationships in its foreign policy. Arguably, the reimposition of the US’ global hegemony will not be in India’s long term interests, which would lie firmly in the emergence of a multipolar world order based on the UN Charter where it is well-placed to fulfill its responsibilities as an independent player with its strategic autonomy intact.

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As everyone faces difficult times, the company which deals with the fulfillment of book sales on behalf of Global Research is no longer able to provide its services. We are unfortunately suspending the sale of print books until further notice.

We will be contacting and refunding readers who have purchased our books in print format. Meanwhile, PDF versions are still available for purchase. We hope to be able to resolve this matter as soon as possible. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

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JCCF Lawsuit against Canadian Government’s Vaccine Mandate: Main Applicant is A. Brian Peckford, former Premier of Newfoundland and Signatory of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms

By Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, February 01, 2022

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms today filed a lawsuit in Federal Court seeking to strike down the federal government’s mandatory Covid-19 vaccine requirements for air travellers. The court action is on behalf of several Canadians from across Canada whose Charter rights and freedoms have been infringed.

Japanese Clinical Trial Concludes Ivermectin Is “Safe and Effective” Treatment of COVID

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, February 01, 2022

What we have experienced is not a mistake. We have, and are, experiencing an intentional mass murder event. No one needed to die. The vaccine is not only pointless as a preventative, it itself is a cause of health problems and death. The entire establishment knows this; yet they continue to push vaccination.

Medical Marvel or the Second Coming of Al Capone? Pfizer’s Sins and Crimes. “We have a Vaccine which is Killing People”

By Michael Welch, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, and Johnny Vedmore, February 01, 2022

In a recent report, Albert Bourla, the chairman and chief executive of the global pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc accepted the prestigious Genesis award for his work leading to the very first vaccine for COVID-19 to be authorized for distribution in the U.S. and Europe.

The Global Elite’s ‘Kill and Control’ Agenda: Destroying Our Food Security

By Robert J. Burrowes, February 01, 2022

Governments around the world continue to impose an expanding sequence of measures to curtail rights and freedoms ostensibly to tackle a ‘virus’. In response, public demonstrations against these government measures are also ongoing and expanding with truck convoys the latest manifestation of this form of protest.

Amnesty Report on Israeli Apartheid Is a Call to Action

By CJPME, February 01, 2022

Amnesty determined that Israel operates a single, institutional regime of oppression and domination, amounting to Apartheid, whose victims include Palestinians under military occupation, Palestinian citizens within Israel, and even Palestinian refugees in exile.

Vaccine-Induced Myocarditis Injuring Record Number of Young People. Will Shots Also Bankrupt Families?

By Children’s Health Defense, February 01, 2022

Medical debt is the predominant cause for about 25% of consumer bankruptcies, with medical debt often triggered by “sudden adverse events — such as vaccine-induced myocarditis. For decades, families have been learning bitter lessons about the financial impact of vaccine injuries. In an estimated 18% to 26% of consumer bankruptcies or more, medical debt is the “predominant causal factor” — with medical debt often triggered by “sudden adverse events.”

BMJ Demands Immediate Vaccine Data

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, February 01, 2022

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) editor Peter Doshi, an associate professor of pharmaceutical health services research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, has called for the release of the clinical trial raw data on which the emergency use authorizations were based.

Tawny Buettner, RN Observed a >10X Increase in the Rate of Myocarditis after the Vaccines Rolled Out

By Steve Kirsch, February 01, 2022

Tawny Buettner, RN, worked in the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit (CTICU) of a major children’s hospital in San Diego, California for more than 12 years. Before the vaccine rollout, they’d see 4 or 5 myocarditis cases a year in the CTICU at the hospital where Tawny Buettner works that she was aware of (see 2:15 in the video).

As of Tomorrow, Denmark Admits the Failure of All COVID Control Measures (Including Vaccines)

By Alex Berenson, February 01, 2022

Sars-Cov-2 could not care less about all that trust and all those jabs. Denmark is now right up there with Israel in seeing the highest rates of infections of any country – ever. In the last two weeks, more than 10 percent of ALL Danes – the equivalent of 35 million Americans – have been infected with Covid (the number is probably considerably higher, because at some point testing becomes impossible).

Cuba: 60 Years of a Brutal, Vindictive, and Pointless Embargo

By Peter Kornbluh, February 01, 2022

In mid-December, some 114 members of Congress sent a forceful letter to President Joe Biden calling for “immediate humanitarian actions” to lift the economic sanctions “that prevent food, medicine, and other humanitarian assistance from reaching the Cuban people.”

Justin Trudeau Ducks the Great Trucker Revolt

By Jeffrey A. Tucker, February 01, 2022

This is why the truckers are striking this way. It is an act of bravery but also of desperation. Once the tyranny of health passports arrives, there will be no escape. The window of opportunity to do something about this will have closed. So this is the moment.

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“Ivermectin has the same antiviral effect” on all mutant strains, including Alpha, Delta, and Omicron. Kowa added that ivermectin suppresses invasion of the virus and inhibits its replication.”

As you can see, I have told you the truth about Ivermectin, while Fauci, Biden, CDC, WHO, FDA, NIH, the medical establishment, and the whore Western media and social media tyrants have lied to you through their teeth while censoring those who knew for a fact that Ivermectin was an effective treatment that was being blocked and denied to dying people simply for the sake of Big Pharma profits and the control over people and destruction of civil liberty desired by Western governments and the ruling elites to whom Governments answer.

What we have experienced is not a mistake. We have, and are, experiencing an intentional mass murder event. No one needed to die. The vaccine is not only pointless as a preventative, it itself is a cause of health problems and death. The entire establishment knows this; yet they continue to push vaccination.

Are we going to let these despicable criminals get away with a crime that far exceeds Nazi crimes tried at Nuremberg?

See this (Epoch Times):

A Japanese conglomerate that is studying the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin has found that the medication had an antiviral effect on Omicron, according to joint non-clinical research.

Kowa Co. Ltd., a conglomerate with interests in trading, hospitality, and electronics, along with health and medical applications, issued a press release (pdf) on Jan. 31 stating that ivermectin has been found to be effective against Omicron in in vitro studies. The firm is also in the process of carrying out a Phase 3 clinical trial on the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients, though the company’s remarks on effectiveness pertain to the findings of lab-based research.

Kowa representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

The company, working with Kitasato University based in Tokyo, said that ivermectin has the “same antiviral effect” on all “mutant strains,” including Alpha, Delta, and Omicron. Kowa added that ivermectin suppresses invasion of the virus and inhibits its replication.

“[Ivermectin] is expected to be applied as a therapeutic drug (tablet) for all new coronavirus infectious diseases,” the report said.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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What are we going to do about it?

We are ruled by our enemies who intend to take away our civil liberty, replace truth with their self-serving propaganda, and to kill and injure us with dangerous vaccines.

The entire Western media is a lie machine that covers up for the tiny global elite and furthers their interests.

We cannot trust any government, any public health authority, or the media.

The independent scientists and journalists who tell the truth are slandered, demonized, accused of disinformation, censored, fired, and called domestic terrorists.

It is a proven fact that the mRNA vaccines do not protect against Covid but do cause serious health injuries and death. Nevertheless, the authorities continue to push vaccination while preventing the use of known cures for Covid, such as monoclonal antibodies, Ivermectin, and HCQ.

The “Covid Pandemic” is an orchestration produced by the use of a PCR test that produces a high percentage of false positives, thus greatly exaggerating the number of reported cases, and by reporting almost all deaths for every cause as “Covid deaths.” The fact is that most people who died from Covid were people with co-morbidities, that is, people already suffering from serious illness, who were not treated for Covid or were treated by ineffective methods.

What we are experiencing is intentional medical malpractice worsened by mass vaccination that causes variants that keep the “pandemic” going.

Authorities everywhere have shown that they are totally indifferent to the will of the people as expressed in mass protests. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has absurdly blamed the massive truckers’ protest on “Russian agents.”
The governments and medical establishments are totally unresponsive to the people. This is tyranny. It must be overthrown.

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In all seriousness, the U.S. government may not be far from investigating and charging critics of the world’s mightiest military alliance with treason. Over two years ago the NATO Strategic Communication Centre of Excellence conducted an “experiment” with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, and then denounced the four for permitting “social media manipulation” on their platforms. As President Biden regularly speaks of his “sacred obligation” to NATO’s Article 5 war clause, it isn’t far-fetched to envision him employing the political equivalent of blasphemy laws and canonical courts against those of us warning of the threat posed by the world’s oldest and history’s largest military bloc.

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From this article, US targets Russian disinformation in bid to defend Ukraine:

“We have made a decision – a strategic decision – to call out disinformation when we see it,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a briefing with reporters on [January 26].

….

“We will also be prepared to call out disinformation and diversionary tactics Russia may use, including their claims that Ukraine is provoking the conflict and that NATO is to blame for these tensions. We’re, unfortunately, all too familiar with these tactics.”

….

The decision by President Biden and top officials to lean into naming and shaming Russian disinformation tactics can be traced back to their experiences in 2014 during the Obama administration, where Biden served as vice president.

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Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website.

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

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***

Governments around the world continue to impose an expanding sequence of measures to curtail rights and freedoms ostensibly to tackle a ‘virus’. In response, public demonstrations against these government measures are also ongoing and expanding with truck convoys the latest manifestation of this form of protest.

Unfortunately, while activists mistake these popular mobilizations for effective resistance, the Global Elite’s coup d’état against humanity gathers pace.

Concealed beneath the ‘virus’/‘vaccine’ narrative, and marketed by the World Economic Forum as the ‘Great Reset’, this coup is designed to utterly transform human society and even human life. This is because the detail outlined in the ‘Great Reset’ documentation, which anyone can investigate for themselves, clearly identifies intended changes to some 200 areas of human activity, essentially characterized as part of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’.

Beyond that, however, as a lengthening list of doctors, scientists and scholars have been warning us for some time, although their efforts are invariably heavily censored by corporate media, the injectables program is decimating the human population – see

‘Killing Off Humanity: How the Global Elite is using Eugenics and Transhumanism to Shape Our Future’ – while ensuring that those who submit to it and survive will only do so as transhuman slaves.

See ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.

Even beyond the injectables, however, the Global Elite is using a vast range of other measures to implement its ‘kill and control’ agenda.

One means of doing this has been to exploit the ‘pandemic’ (and its control measures such as lockdowns) to engineer the greatest redistribution of wealth from poor to rich in human history, thus starving to death vast numbers of people in Africa, Asia and Central/South America in the process – as the Director of the World Food Program had no trouble predicting in April 2020: see ‘WFP chief warns of “hunger pandemic” as Global Food Crises Report launched’ – while impoverishing (and often rendering homeless) substantial numbers in industrialized economies as confidently predicted by geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar, also in April 2020.

See ‘Who Profits From the Pandemic?’

Have these predictions been realized? As Oxfam has recently noted: ‘A new billionaire has been created every 26 hours since the pandemic began. The world’s 10 richest men have doubled their fortunes, while over 160 million people are projected to have been pushed into poverty.’ See ‘Inequality Kills: The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-19’.

But notable among the Elite’s other measures, including ongoing deployment of 5G which continues to devastate life generally – see ‘Deadly Rainbow: Will 5G Precipitate the Extinction of All Life on Earth?’ – are its ongoing efforts to destroy global supply chains, including those in relation to food, so that starvation functions to kill off far more than just marginalized populations but also to ensure that those left alive are compliant as the price of being ‘entitled’ to eat.

In essence, this component of their plan (which is now being rapidly implemented) is to disconnect humans from nature, herd us into ‘smart cities’ and destroy our sense of natural food; that is, destroy human culture.

Hence, using a combination of 5G, AI and blockchain technologies, the intention is to take complete control of food supply chains and get rid of natural food by creating lab-grown meat, synthetic foods and even ‘3D printed food’.

Watch ‘Architecting the Beast System’ and

‘DARPA funds Soylent Green as Empty Shelves in USA – #BareShelvesBiden Trends’ and see

‘Don’t Be Fooled: Lab-Grown Meat Is a Disaster in the Making’.

If you have not been following the progressive destruction of small farmers, the consolidation of agricultural land, the relentless promotion of genetically-mutilated organisms (GMOs), the destruction of food supply chains, the hoarding of food and even the destruction of food supplies, as well as the ongoing efforts to feed you a combination of synthesized trash and insect-based food substitutes, let me briefly outline the evidence below and tell you how Mohandas K. Gandhi would respond.

Control of Food Historically

Since the neolithic revolution (the transition from hunting/gathering to farming) began unfolding 60,000 years ago – see The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia and Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture – humans have farmed open-pollinated seeds that simply allow a farmer to keep some seed harvested in one season to plant in the next. But that natural round has been progressively eroded over recent decades.
Among those who have spent considerable time drawing attention to what the Global Elite has been doing and plans for us in relation to food generally, Dr. Vandana Shiva is certainly an outstanding figure.

In a series of articles and interviews over many years, Shiva and the organization she founded, Navdanya International, have pointed out how ownership of the genetic diversity of our food crops as well as agricultural land is being increasingly consolidated in the hands of fewer corporations owned by fewer individuals and how control of the food industry (from production to processing to distribution) is also being increasingly consolidated in the hands of fewer corporations and individuals.

Beyond this, Shiva has highlighted how capital and chemical intensive monoculture-based industrial agriculture is the biggest driver of species extinctions, including systematically wiping out the diversity of crops we grow and eat, and this has been transforming the very nature of the food we consume, not just by progressively eliminating this food diversity but also by aggressively introducing toxins and poisons in various forms as well as genetically-mutilated and, ultimately, synthetic foods.

See ‘Gates to a Global Empire over Seed, Food, Health, Knowledge… and the Earth’  Vandana Shiva Editor

and

‘The Poison Cartel is Poisoning the World, Driving Species to Extinction, and Contributing to Hunger’.

As Shiva has pointed out, just one of the many outcomes of the aggressive marketing of genetically-mutilated seeds has been an epidemic of farmer suicides in India.

See ‘How Monsanto’s GMO Creations Caused 291,000 Suicides in India’.

Source: Natural Society

Another prominent figure who has drawn attention to the many dramatic reverses in the ownership, control and diversity of food and food production is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But to highlight just one of the myriad points made by Kennedy, he draws attention to a report highlighting that Bill Gates ‘has quietly made himself the largest owner of farmland in the United States.’

See ‘Bill Gates and Neo-Feudalism: A Closer Look at Farmer Bill’ and

‘Bill Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner’.

Beyond this, researcher ‘Sam Parker’ has offered a history of the use of food as an instrument of control for the past 4,000 years beginning with the ominous words ‘The control of food for use as a weapon is an ancient practice.’ He nominates the major food conglomerates (Cargill, Continental Grain, Louis Drefuss, Bunge & Born, Andre, Archer Daniels Midland/Topfer, ConAgra, IBP, Nestle, Unilever, Philip Morris) and offers an explanation of how this food cartel, along with another three dozen food corporations, control the world’s food supply noting that, today, ‘food warfare is firmly under the control of London and New York’ and that the cartel is ‘prepared to apply a tourniquet to food production and export supplies, not only to poor nations, but to advanced sector nations as well’.

See ‘The BA Cartel Part 2 (of a 3 Part Series)’.

So for those still unconcerned as humanity rapidly loses the little control it still has left of its food supply, it might be worthwhile to recall that infamous comment of Henry Kissinger:

‘Who controls the food supply controls the people.’

But whatever the threats to the food supply that have been accelerating and accumulating over recent decades, they have been dramatically compounded in the past two years.

Control of Food in the ‘Pandemic’ Era

Since the beginning of the so-called pandemic, global supply chains of goods, including food, have been severely disrupted with the intention of forcing them to collapse. This plan has been executed using a careful combination of restrictions implemented by governments, supposedly to contain spread of the non-existent virus. Primarily, it has included forcing workers out of their role in the production, transport and distribution of food supplies.

Hence, farmers have grappled with restrictions impeding their capacity to plant, tend and harvest crops or care for livestock, workers have been prevented from staffing canning and processing factories as well as abattoirs – see ‘Staff shortages due to COVID-19 taking a toll across all industries in NSW’ – truckers have been unavailable to transport foodstocks – see ‘COVID-19 vaccines still mandatory for Canadian cross-border truckers, feds say’ – wharf labourers have been unavailable to load shipping containers of food onto ships – see ‘The supply chain crisis is a jobs crisis’ – and supermarket shelves are empty as stores struggle with product and staff shortages, which is particularly challenging for those in remote communities with limited food retail outlets. See ‘Grocery store closures loom amid labour, product shortages’.

None of this has happened because a virus will kill us, because the virus does not exist.

For just two of the myriad demonstrations of this point, see

‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’ and

‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’.

And for an account of researcher Christine Massey’s fruitless search over the course of more than a year to find evidence of an isolated virus, via Freedom of Information requests to health/science institutions all over the world, see

‘164 health/science institutions globally all failed to cite even 1 record of “SARS-COV-2” purification, by anyone, anywhere, ever’.

Beyond restrictions supposedly imposed in response to the ‘virus’ threat, some natural disasters have disrupted food production and supply chains, such as when ‘unfavourable weather conditions’ reduced the expected potato harvest in Russia – see ‘Russia – 2021 saw potato production drop’ – drought was a key factor is Syria’s lowest wheat production in 50 years – see ‘Syria’s wheat production “lowest in 50 years” with fears of mass starvation: UN’ – and a flood shut down Vancouver, the largest port in Canada: ‘The floods temporarily shut down much of the movement of wheat and canola from Canada, one of the world’s biggest grain exporters’.

See ‘Floods cut rail access to Canada’s Vancouver port, disrupting goods shipments’.

Moreover, some food supplies, notably including grain among other products, are being hoarded. ‘Less than 20% of the world’s population has managed to stockpile more than half of the globe’s maize and other grains, leading to steep price increases across the planet and dropping more countries into famine. The hoarding is taking place in China…. Over the past five years, China’s soybean, maize and wheat imports soared two- to twelvefold on aggressive purchases from the U.S., Brazil and other supplier nations. Imports of beef, pork, dairy and fruit jumped two- to fivefold.’ The food, including grains to be fed to farm animals, is being stored in massive food-stockpiling bases but also in container ships anchored in the port at Dalian waiting to be unloaded.

See ‘China hoards over half the world’s grain, pushing up global prices’.

Other countries that traditionally supply food products just turned off the export tap early in the ‘pandemic’ to keep food supplies for domestic consumption.

See ‘Countries Are Starting to Hoard Food, Threatening Global Trade’.

And food stocks are being destroyed as, for example, the ongoing worker shortages continue to serve the insidious ‘kill and control’ agenda of the elite – see ‘30,000 pigs culled on farms [in UK] as backlog remains “dire”’ – and the periodic ‘apocalyptic bird flu’ nonsense – see ‘Scientists say an apocalyptic bird flu could wipe out half of humanity’ and ‘UK: “Apocalyptic Bird Flu” Jumps to Humans as Authorities Cull Millions of Birds’ – gets yet another run and, as just one example, was used to ‘justify’ the slaughter of a million egg-laying hens in Israel.

See ‘Massive New Bird Flu Outbreak Could Be 2022’s Deadly Pandemic’.

More simply, perhaps, it is easy to prevent unvaccinated farmers from delivering crops to grain silos, as happened in Australia, for example.

Watch ‘Farmers, Truckers STOPPED as Food Supply Collapses’.

Beyond these problems, however, it is happening because of the interrelated nature of supply chains, including when they collapse. Farmers have been having increasing problems growing food because of the difficulties of obtaining vital inputs, ranging from fertilizers for which ‘supply chain logistics are a mess’ – see ‘Supply chain problems contribute to fertilizer worries’ – and pesticides – see ‘Pesticide industry battling supply chain challenges, working to ensure 2022 availability’ – to machine parts and other inputs – see ‘Supply chain issues hitting all segments of ag’ – as supply chains in other sectors have been shut down too.

Sometimes, there are simply no available empty containers on which to load the produce.

See ‘Why there will be no end to the global container crisis anytime soon’.

And even the deployment of 5G, catastrophic for other reasons as noted above, is now exacerbating supply chain problems as it is introduced.

See ‘Airlines warn of “catastrophic” crisis when new 5G service is deployed’ and ‘Why 5G Is Dangerous for Planes — and People’.

Is all of this a total surprise?

Not if you are aware of the script of the 2015 Center for American Progress simulation ‘Food Chain Reaction: A Global Food Security Game’, or have followed the progressive destruction of the food supply chain in recent years. Watch ‘Farmers Panic, Can’t Get Supplies to Grow Food’.

What Can You Do?

Fortunately, a great deal. But I gently encourage you to get on with it!

As Mohandas K. Gandhi, who was assassinated 74 years ago on 30 January 1948, was teaching more than 100 years ago, self-reliance is still the safest option, particularly when it comes to food. Whether grown in  your own backyard or a community garden, and perhaps participating in a local trading scheme and/or possibly a local farmers market, individual, family and community self-reliance in food-growing is the only viable option for the near-term future if survival is among your desired personal outcomes.

If you want to grow your own food with the intention of becoming self-sufficient and you are starting from scratch, watch this recent webinar by Marjory Wildcraft, coordinator of the Grow Food Network: ‘You Can Grow Food’.

There is high quality information on growing food for vegans and vegetarians in John Jeavons’ book How to Grow More Vegetables.

In this video, the Ice Age Farmer, Christian Westbrook, interviews Marjory Wildcraft about working with the local community to establish and maintain a community food garden:

‘Building Food Security through Community – Marjory Wildcraft’.

And David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture, offers excellent resources explaining how to create a permaculture food garden for your backyard and community at his website Holmgren Design.

But don’t forget, if you are not resisting the elite agenda overall, it won’t matter how self-reliant in food production you have become, you will be killed or enslaved by another component of the multifaceted nature of the elite plan.

Information on strategically resisting the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ is explained on the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ website and the simplest form of this strategic resistance is outlined on the one-page flyers, now available in 15languages (Czech, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish & Slovak) with more in the pipeline.

If strategically resisting the ‘Great Reset’ appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram group as well.

Conclusion

The global food supply chain is being systematically destroyed. This is happening as part of the overall elite agenda to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population and enslave those left alive. Any reading of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ program and its related eugenicist and transhumanist agendas makes this clear even if, occasionally, one needs to read between the lines.

While resisting this entire agenda is an absolute necessity if humanity is to survive in the form we have existed for the past 200,000 years, our sustained resistance is going to depend on people being able to eat.

So getting organized to defend yourself and your family by growing your own food and working with like-minded people in your local community are essential elements of our survival even if, in itself, self-reliance in food production is not enough.

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

While many in the US are trying to address pressing domestic issues, the White House’s political rhetoric is intended to divert voters’ attention to non-existent external threats. If one is to believe Western mass media, it would appear that the US is being encircled by external threats, primarily China and Russia, but also by the likes of Iran and North Korea.

Although China has become the main focus of American media in recent years, especially regarding Taiwan, Xinjiang and Hong Kong, Russia is of course not immune from such propaganda campaigns. The media continues to publish reports on China’s supposed unfair trade practices and imbalances, the threat of stealing advanced American technology, and domestic human rights issues, whilst with Russia it makes similar criticisms on domestic human rights issues, supposed election interference and the country’s policy on Ukraine.

Anti-China rhetoric began under former President Donald Trump, but has certainly not slowed down under his successor Joe Biden. The anti-Russia rhetoric has continued relentlessly since the Cold War.

In the case of China, the FBI said that every 10 hours, it opens a new investigation relating to acts of espionage and theft of intellectual property, as well as other threats to US national security. However, most of the investigations collapse before going to trial, as happened to Professor Gang Chen of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was accused of hiding ties with the Chinese government.

At the same time, the Biden administration has not taken any practical steps regarding China’s alleged non-compliance with the terms of the Phase 1 trade deal, which has expired. In other words, the US in fact has no evidence to denounce China.

None-the-less, Western media still create a tense atmosphere, intensifying rhetoric about the threat from Russia and China. Their goal on the domestic front is to make the American people feel that they are under threat from foreign countries but that authorities are doing their best to counter this.

However, if attempting to shift focus to pressing domestic issues, one could be berated by the president himself, as happened to Fox News journalist Peter Doocy, who only asked Biden if inflation was a political responsibility in the context of the upcoming mid-term election. After hearing the question, Biden said in an outburst, “It’s a great asset—more inflation. What a stupid son of a bitch.” He then called Doocy a “stupid bastard.” On the same day, the American president called the reporter to apologise for his comments.

This situation shows how sensitive the topic of inflation is for the Biden administration. Evidently, frustrations are revealing themselves as the upcoming mid-term election does not bode well for the Democrats. According to the latest polls, the Democrats are expected to lose control of Congress. If this occurs, all the blame will fall on Biden.

Many people forget that despite being the world’s largest economy, the US funds its operations with debt. Last year, American public debt was greater than its GDP for the first time since 1946.

Large-scale programs aimed at stimulating the economy by helping individuals and businesses are funded by issuing new dollars. In 2020, the US printed more money to flood the market. According to the fundamentals of economic theory, pumping large amounts of money into the market leads to a sharp increase in inflation. For a while, American authorities have been trying to curb the rise in consumer good prices, and the stock market has held back the rise in inflation.

Although household incomes have risen fairly rapidly because of unprecedented measures (worth more than $1 trillion) by US authorities to help people and businesses survive the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation is even stronger. As a result, compared to 2020 levels, household income has fallen by 1.2% in the US. Due to this significant economic issue, the Biden administration is trying to divert people’s attention from it by ramping up anti-China and anti-Russia rhetoric.

Mid-term elections are held every four years and, in this cycle, politicians are preoccupied with their own ambitions and interests. For this reason, the president’s proposed measures have been met with serious opposition from the Republican Party. Biden’s power is severely limited and the problems associated with the pandemic have not been solved. Stuck in this quagmire, Biden believes all he can do to politically survive is step up anti-China and-Russia rhetoric to gain some rapid, short-term impact in the run-up to the midterm elections.

Despite Biden’s tough attitude towards China and Russia, it does not solve the fundamental problems of the US economy, but rather only exacerbate them.

Tariffs on Chinese products, as an example, have not yet been lifted, which has only intensified the problem of inflation. The US cannot refuse to import Chinese goods because up to 50% of China’s exports are intermediate goods, which are then used by American manufacturers. With global supply chain disruptions because of the pandemic, demand for Chinese goods has increased.

In this way, one (of many) motivating factors for Biden’s continued hostility and provocations against the two Eurasian powers is because of the domestic economic situation. However, whether the same continued threats will be enough to help the Democrats retain power in Congress remains to be seen.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) welcomes a new report by Amnesty International which concludes that Israeli officials are perpetuating a system of Apartheid against the Palestinian people. Amnesty’s report bolsters the argument made by Palestinians, Israeli human rights groups, South African liberation leaders, and many other credible authorities, who for years have used the term Apartheid to describe forms of Israeli oppression. CJPME urges Canada’s political leaders to meaningfully engage with the report and its conclusions, and to adopt measures to hold Israeli officials accountable for perpetuating the crime of Apartheid.

“By using the term ‘Apartheid’ to describe Israel’s practices towards the Palestinians, Amnesty International joins a growing consensus within the human rights sector which can no longer be ignored,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “Amnesty’s report should be a wake-up call for Canadian officials and prompt a serious reconsideration of Canada’s relationship with Israel, given the severity of its findings,” Bueckert added.

Published today, the 280-page report determined that Israeli officials enforce Apartheid beyond just the occupied Palestinian territory. Instead, Amnesty determined that Israel operates a single, institutional regime of oppression and domination, amounting to Apartheid, whose victims include Palestinians under military occupation, Palestinian citizens within Israel, and even Palestinian refugees in exile. This regime is characterized by the fragmentation of the Palestinian people into domains of control, discrimination in land and property, segregation, the deprivation of rights, and inhumane acts. Amnesty urges governments to adopt a series of measures to pressure Israel into dismantling its system of apartheid; recommendations include a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, a ban on settlement goods, and targeted sanctions against Israeli officials.

Over the past year, several prominent international and Israeli human rights organizations have independently determined that Israel’s actions amount to Apartheid. In April 2021, Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded that Israeli officials were committing the crimes against humanity of Apartheid and persecution. A few months earlier, Israel’s largest human rights group B’Tselem concluded that Israel is best described in terms of Apartheid, or as “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” CJPME maintains a list of notable figures and organizations, including many of Israel’s most important human rights groups, who now describe Israeli oppression in terms of “Apartheid.” Despite the credible and authoritative voices who have made similar claims, Canada’s then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Marc Garneau stated in May 2021 that Canada “categorically” rejects the “apartheid label.”

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Medical debt is the predominant cause for about 25% of consumer bankruptcies, with medical debt often triggered by “sudden adverse events — such as vaccine-induced myocarditis.

For decades, families have been learning bitter lessons about the financial impact of vaccine injuries. In an estimated 18% to 26% of consumer bankruptcies or more, medical debt is the “predominant causal factor” — with medical debt often triggered by “sudden adverse events.”

Consider autism — by now indisputably linked to vaccines as well as other toxic exposures — which can saddle families with lifetime care costs of $1.4 to $2.4 million, setting up a contentious battleground between parents and entities like insurance companies and school systems that don’t want to “pick up that big tab.”

The government’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP), too, has gone to great lengths to avoid compensating autism and other childhood vaccine injuries, helped along by the well-known dysfunctions of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

Although an HHS-commissioned study estimated, in 2010, that 1 in every 38 vaccine doses (2.6%) produced an adverse reaction, the conveniently broken surveillance system facilitates propagation of the fiction that adverse events are “rare,” “one in a million” or, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, “almost nonmeasurable.”

The taxpayer-funded NVICP has paid out over $4.7 billion since 1988 and professes to be an “accessible and efficient forum for individuals found to be injured by certain vaccines.” But its adversarial — and sluggish — process and sky-high burden of proof result in two-thirds of claims being dismissed or remaining in limbo.

When it does pay out, NVICP more often compensates vaccine injuries in adults than children.

Recipients of Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) COVID injections ostensibly have recourse to the special Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), but the CICP, from its inception, has proved to be even more of a hollow promise than the NVICP, with no funds set aside to cover eventual compensation, no allowance for attorneys’ fees and a one-year statute of limitations.

As attorneys wrote in January, “If you have suffered a serious injury from a Covid-19 vaccine, you are basically on your own.”

In short, the financial stakes for those who take liability-free COVID shots — with their unparalleled health risks — are high.

In early 2020, the CEO of a crowdfunding platform noted that over one-third of its fundraisers were for medical expenses. With more than 1 million COVID-vaccine-related adverse events reported to VAERS since December 2020, that state of affairs has picked up even more speed, as households rack up extraordinary debt and turn to crowdfunding for help.

Heart problems: a known vaccine adverse event

Well before COVID, myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart) were understood to be the result of “the interaction of an external environmental trigger with the host’s immune system.”

One of those “environmental triggers,” researchers acknowledged, was vaccination.

For example, analyses of VAERS and clinical data identified the two cardiac conditions as adverse events reported after vaccines for anthrax, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), hepatitis A, hepatitis B, human papillomavirus (HPV), influenza, meningococcal illness, smallpox, typhoid, varicella (chickenpox) and zoster (shingles).

A 2018 case report described myocarditis in a 6-week-old infant following administration of a diphtheria, whole-cell pertussis and tetanus toxoid (DPT) shot.

With the advent of COVID shots, cardiac adverse events — myocarditis, pericarditis and myopericarditis — have skyrocketed to an entirely new level, especially in young males and especially after the second dose.

In young people under the age of 30, VAERS shows “a 15,600% increase in heart disease following COVID EUA vaccines compared to FDA-approved [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] vaccines for the previous 31 years.”

With heart problems being some of the most commonly reported, widely published and life-changing COVID-jab-related injuries, the FDA was forced into requiring warnings about the increased risks in manufacturer fact sheets.

As University of Pennsylvania researchers put it last year (parroting official silliness about such events being “rare”), “the temporal association of the receipt of the vaccine and absence of other plausible causes suggest the vaccine as the likely precipitant of these rare events.”

Expensive conditions

Heart conditions pack a financial wallop, predominating among the 20 most expensive conditions treated in American hospitals and accounting for almost half of aggregate hospital costs.

With the most expensive healthcare in the world, a third of U.S. healthcare spending goes to hospital care.

Analyzing several hundred confirmed myocarditis and pericarditis cases in young COVID vaccine recipients (< 29 years), a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientist reported in June 2021 that 96% of the youth with heart injuries had been hospitalized.

Past studies of myocarditis and pericarditis hospitalization costs have found the following:

• As of 2016, the median inflation-adjusted cost of a single pediatric hospitalization for acute myocarditis (median hospital stay = 6.1 days) was more than $27K — already representing a “significant” increase over 2007 costs and likely much higher today.
• One in five kids hospitalized with myocarditis has an arrhythmia. A pediatric study published in 2020 reported the median cost of hospitalization for children with myocarditis involving arrhythmia to be far higher — almost $122K versus roughly $38K for myocarditis patients without arrhythmia. Heart rhythm problems also dramatically increased the odds of death.
• The median cost of hospitalization for acute pericarditis (all age groups), as of 2016, was estimated at around $10K, but nearly one in five patients (18%) reentered the hospital within 30 days of discharge, at a cost of another nearly $10K.

Both arrhythmias and complications from cardiac treatments are common causes of hospital readmission.

Not ‘mild’ and not short-term

Myocarditis manifestations include increased heart rate (tachycardia), irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia), a heart-attack-like presentation and acute heart failure.

Longer-term sequelae include dilated cardiomyopathy (enlarged ventricles) and chronic heart failure.

Chest pain, malaise and palpitations are common signs of pericarditis. It, too, can lead to heart failure and other longer-term complications.

Children tend to have a more fulminant — sudden and severe — myocarditis presentation than adults, with an estimated 7% to 15% mortality rate. Children hospitalized with myocarditis are more likely to die than children admitted with other diagnoses.

Discussing myocarditis in 2012, Mayo Clinic researchers acknowledged that even with a good short-term prognosis, “patients who initially recover might develop recurrent dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure, sometimes years later.”

One of the Mayo authors added in 2018, “the greatest burden of myocarditis may not be apparent for 6 to 12 years after diagnosis when children die or need to undergo cardiac transplantation.”

Strangely, Mayo nevertheless continues to propagate the myth of “mild” myocarditis, a dishonest characterization that physicians in the COVID era have strenuously protested.

Dr. Steven Pelech of the University of British Columbia explained last August, for example:

“Contrary to what a number of people have said, there is no such thing as ‘mild myocarditis.’ It’s the destruction of the myocytes, the heart cells that contract. When those cells die, they are not replaced in your body and are instead replaced by scar-tissue, which is from fibroblasts — skin cells which don’t have contractile activity …Every time you get an inflammatory response, you lose more of that contractility and have a greater chance of heart attack and other problems later in life.”

A New Zealand writer pointedly observed that “mild” clinical manifestations in the present are meaningless for interpreting longer-term risks.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans with gadolinium contrast — capable of showing “damaged heart areas undetectable by any other means” — studies of children and adolescents who developed myocarditis following COVID vaccination revealed, in the vast majority, a “potentially poor prognosis despite the heart seeming to have returned to normal.”

Describing their study just published in Neurology, University of California, San Francisco researchers Laure Rouch and Kristine Yaffe told Medscape “heart health is key to brain health.”

The study disclosed the alarming finding that abnormalities in cardiac structure and function acquired in young adulthood are a risk factor for cognitive decline in midlife.

Myocarditis and pericarditis interventions — costly bandaids

Myocarditis treatments are expensive but almost purely supportive, primarily aimed at managing complications.

For severe cases, interventions can be costly, aggressive and often futile.

For complications of severe myocarditis, the last resort is a heart transplant. Ironically, individuals who need a transplant but refuse to get a COVID shot are being taken off transplant waiting lists.

Situations involving acute cardiac failure and heart transplantation may lead to short-term mechanical circulatory support, including the use of ventricular assist devices (VAD) or lung-mimicking extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines.

These gizmos come with a high price tag, with total hospitalization costs for pediatric patients receiving such support estimated around $755K (VAD) and $809K (ECMO), versus $457K for patients not getting mechanical support.

Unfortunately, research involving pediatric heart patients suggests these mechanical supports do little good. In one myocarditis study in kids, the development of ventricular arrhythmia strongly predicted both ECMO utilization AND mortality.

Good for business, bad for families

Cardiac injuries triggered by dangerous COVID injections appear to be good for business. As the Mayo Clinic frankly admits, some myocarditis patients will require lifelong medication — creating customers for life.

Moreover, the corticosteroids — “or other medications to suppress [the] immune system” —  and anti-clotting or blood-pressure drugs prescribed for supposedly “mild” cases of myocarditis come with their own set of side effects, setting the stage for further profit-generating medical and pharmaceutical interventions down the road.

A July 2021 BusinessWire report forecast a booming market for cardiac-assist devices such as VAD through 2027, noting “increasing incidence of heart failure is driving growth.”

BusinessWire cited the vast pipeline of such products as a market driver and “opportunity.”

Market researchers also predict:

• An “upward trend” for the overall “myocarditis treatment market,” with the market “expected to rise over the projected horizon” (2021–2027).
• Steady growth in the global market addressing dilated cardiomyopathy (one of the downstream consequences of myocarditis) — from $163 million in 2019 to $258.2 million by 2026.
• An equally rosy “global pericarditis market” featuring market players such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca as well as other Pharma giants such as Bayer and Merck.

In addition, Big Pharma is champing at the bit to roll out expensive new pericarditis therapies — which researchers eagerly (coincidentally?) announced in late summer and fall of 2021.

Meanwhile, COVID shots are leaving many young people either dead or facing a broken heart and uncertain future.

Even with definitive autopsy confirmation of a direct vaccine-myocarditis link staring them in the face, the engineers of “this ungodly and criminal medical experiment on humankind” — a key fixture of the push for a global control grid — are content to uphold the ruinous status quo.

Where does that leave families?

Holding the bag not just emotionally, but financially, blindsided by financial impacts they surely never anticipated.

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BMJ editor Peter Doshi has publicly called for release of raw data from the clinical trials that led to the emergency use authorization of the COVID-19 shots. The FDA has a statutory obligation to publish the Pfizer data after drug approval, leaving Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca to provide the raw data

The delay in releasing raw data is reminiscent of Roche’s handling of Tamiflu and Gilead’s determination to get authorization for remdesivir to treat COVID-19, despite clinical data demonstrating the drug showed little or no positive effect

At least one Pfizer testing facility had poor practices, including data that were falsified, patients who were unblinded and poorly trained people hired to administer the injections

In an opinion piece published coincidentally on the day the FDA announced full approval of the Pfizer injection, Doshi noted Pfizer’s August 2021 preprint paper held no new information since April 2021, and the shot demonstrated waning immunity in Israel, where it was used exclusively

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While other Big Pharma manufacturers have developed and released a COVID-19 genetic therapy injection, only shots from Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have been approved in the U.S.¹

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) editor Peter Doshi, an associate professor of pharmaceutical health services research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, has called for the release of the clinical trial raw data on which the emergency use authorizations were based.²

As of December 2021, there were 12 countries with the capacity to produce the shots being distributed throughout the world, with approximately 200 vaccine candidates that are in preclinical development.³ According to OpenVAERS,⁴ there have been 1,053,828 adverse events reported as of January 14, 2022, and of those 593,078 (56.2%) are attributed to the Pfizer/BioNTech shot.

Of the three emergency use authorization approved shots in the U.S., Pfizer’s Comirnaty was the only one approved for full use by the FDA in August 2021.⁵ The thing is, Comirnaty is not available in the U.S., and won’t be made available as long as doses of the Emergency Use Authorized Pfizer shot, BNT162b2, remain.⁶

In other words, the shot that has triggered more than half of all adverse events is the one that is being touted as approved by the FDA — when in reality the shot that was actually approved isn’t even available yet. Dr. Peter Marks, FDA’s director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research wrote this as justification for the approval to do this in the FDA press release:⁷

“Our scientific and medical experts conducted an incredibly thorough and thoughtful evaluation of this vaccine. We evaluated scientific data and information included in hundreds of thousands of pages, conducted our own analyses of Comirnaty’s safety and effectiveness, and performed a detailed assessment of the manufacturing processes, including inspections of the manufacturing facilities.”

It is the FDA’s statutory obligation⁸ to publish this “incredibly thorough” evaluation of the data and their own analysis within 30 days of a drug approval. Yet, after a Freedom of Information Act request and subsequent lawsuit by a nonprofit group to release the data,⁹ the FDA proposed to release documentation over many decades.

Ultimately, they asked a federal judge to give them 75 years to complete the process,¹⁰ but in January 2022 a federal judge ordered the FDA to accelerate this schedule to eight months.¹¹

Pfizer Won’t Accept Requests for Trial Data Until 2025

According to Doshi,¹² it will take Pfizer at least 24 months after the study completion date listed on ClinicalTrials.gov¹³ to even consider a request to release the primary data. Doshi calls this an “unacceptable delay,” and yet the lack of access to data is not unique to Pfizer.

Moderna and AstraZeneca¹⁴ have both indicated they will have similar delays in releasing their data.¹⁵ Since only the data from Pfizer can be released by the FDA, it falls to Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca to provide the raw data. Doshi points out that raw data for other therapeutics tied to COVID-19 are also difficult to uncover.

For example, the published reports of the monoclonal antibody therapy produced by Regeneron state that any raw data will not be released to others.¹⁶ Only the methods and findings will be released, and the raw data will only be considered once the drug has been approved and if there’s legal authority to share it.

Likewise, Doshi notes the raw data from the National Institutes of Health for the drug promoted to treat COVID-19 — remdesivir — is limited, with the accompanying explanation: “The longitudinal data set only contains a small subset of the protocol and statistical analysis plan objectives.”¹⁷Doshi argues the point, writing:

“We are left with publications but no access to the underlying data on reasonable request. This is worrying for trial participants, researchers, clinicians, journal editors, policy makers, and the public. The journals that have published these primary studies may argue that they faced an awkward dilemma, caught between making the summary findings available quickly and upholding the best ethical values that support timely access to underlying data.

In our view, there is no dilemma; the anonymized individual participant data from clinical trials must be made available for independent scrutiny.”

Access to the underlying data is necessary for transparent decision-making. Each of these are essential steps for public health safety. Doshi notes¹⁸ that had information been revealed as to why the vaccine trials were not used to test efficacy against the infection, countries would have learned earlier about how the vaccine allowed transmission in the pandemic and would have been able to plan public health strategies accordingly.

Pfizer has been a habitual offender in shady dealings, having been sued in multiple venues over unethical drug testing, illegal marketing practices,¹⁹ bribery in multiple countries,²⁰ environmental violations,²¹ labor and worker safety violations and more.^22,23

Doshi cites documentation²⁴ that three of the companies have had past criminal and civil settlements costing them billions of dollars, one pleaded guilty to fraud and other drug companies have jumped into developing a genetic injection with no track record before the pandemic. These actions create doubt that the raw data will adequately support the manufacturers claims.

Doshi recalls that 12 years ago the scientific community called for the release of raw data from clinical trials from another drug that was stockpiled by governments around the world in the middle of a different pandemic.²⁵

In this case, most of the trials that formed the foundation of the government approval and stockpiling of Tamiflu were sponsored by the manufacturer and ghost written by writers paid by the manufacturer. Ironically, those who were listed as principal authors did not have access to the raw data.

The history of Tamiflu also parallels remdesivir, a drug that has little or no positive effect on treatment of COVID.²⁶ Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist who works for the Cochrane Collaboration, an organization that collects and reviews medical research findings.

In his presentation at the Symposium about Scientific Freedom in Copenhagen,²⁷ Jefferson described the intricate and complex journey he and his team took to publish the only Cochrane review that was based solely on raw unpublished regulatory data for Tamiflu.

Ultimately, his review demonstrated that the drug shortened the duration of symptoms from flu by less than one day. However, the struggle to obtain the data was nearly as eye-opening as the results.

It took four years for Roche to deliver 150,000 pages of clinical data to Jefferson’s team.²⁸ After getting the data, Jefferson found that although the drug was used worldwide, the WHO had never vetted the raw data, nor had the European Medicines Agency, nor had the CDC.

The FDA had seen the data, however, which prompted them to request a published statement on the label “saying serious bacterial infections may begin with influenza-like symptoms or may coexist with or without complications … but Tamiflu has not been shown to prevent such complications.”²⁹Jefferson commented: “The FDA was saying, this business about complications, no evidence of that.”

Jefferson also notes that even a decade after the Tamiflu Phase 3 trials were completed, they remained unpublished. From an analysis the team determined “there was no convincing trial evidence that Tamiflu affected influenza complications and treatment or influenza infections in prophylaxis.”³⁰

At Least One Pfizer Shot Testing Facility Had Poor Practices

Paul Thacker, investigative journalist from the BMJ, reported on evidence presented by researchers in a Texas privately-owned clinical research lab that the data integrity in Pfizer’s vaccine trial was suspect.³¹ While this should have been front-page news in 2021, the mainstream media completely ignored it.

According to Brook Jackson, a veteran clinical research coordinator with 20 years of experience, the Pfizer Phase 3 COVID jab trial included data that were falsified, patients who were unblinded and poorly trained people hired to administer the injections. Additionally, follow up on any adverse side effects reported by the participants lagged significantly.

Thacker led the article with the statement: “Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal COVID-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight.”³²

Jackson attempted to inform her superiors multiple times. When her concerns were ignored, she called the FDA and filed an email complaint. Hours later she was fired after working just two weeks. According to her separation letter the management had decided she was “not a good fit” for the company. According to Jackson, this was the first time she’d ever been fired in her 20-year career as a clinical research coordinator.

While the briefing document that Pfizer submitted to the FDA in the application for an emergency use authorization contained no indication of any problems at the lab, Jackson has since provided The BMJ with “dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings and emails”³³proving her concerns were valid.

The BMJ also learned that Jackson’s allegations were supported by others. Months later, Jackson reconnected with employees who were either fired from the lab or who left. One official sent a text message to Jackson saying, “everything that you complained about was spot on.”³⁴

Two other former employees spoke to The BMJ anonymously confirming the broad allegations made in Jackson’s complaint, with one person saying she had worked on more than four dozen trials during her career, but had never experienced the type of work environment at Ventavia on the Pfizer trial.

For example, in several cases there weren’t enough employees to swab the trial participants who were reporting symptom, even though the trial required lab confirmation of symptomatic COVID-19 as a primary endpoint. The employee called the data produced by the Ventavia lab for the Pfizer trial “a crazy mess.”³⁵

Preprint Data Demonstrate Waning Immunity by March 2021

Doshi also addressed the need for adequate and controlled studies with long-term follow-up before granting approval for vaccinations, most notably the COVID-19 genetic therapy injection.³⁶ In an opinion piece published August 23, 2021, he discussed the updated results that Pfizer had posted for their ongoing Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial.³⁷

Months before, the company had announced the vaccine efficacy was estimated to be “up to six months” after injection.³⁸ While updated results were published one year after the trial began,³⁹there were not 10 months of data in the follow-up. The paper appeared to be based on the same data included in the April 1, 2021, news release from Pfizer.⁴⁰

The efficacy results were identical, claiming 91.3% efficacy against symptomatic disease “up to six months of follow-up.” Doshi points out that this matters because it is thus far the most information Pfizer had offered to the public as they were pursuing full approval from the FDA. Both Pfizer⁴¹ and the CDC⁴² have claimed the shot is 95% effective.

Without addressing whether that 95% is absolute or relative risk reduction, or how Pfizer arrived at those claims, it’s also important to note that little can be said about how long vaccine-induced immunity could last when researchers had only measured two months of data.

“Waning immunity” is a known issue for some vaccines, such as the influenza shot.⁴³ Doshi notes⁴⁴there have been some studies that found near zero effectiveness only three months after the flu vaccine was administered. The crucial question is the level of effectiveness of the vaccine after an individual is exposed to the virus.

In early July 2021, Israel’s Ministry of Health reported that efficacy against asymptomatic disease fell dramatically in the months following vaccinations. Israel exclusively uses the Pfizer vaccine, which Pfizer’s chief scientific officer, Philip Dormitzer, told a Zoom meeting:⁴⁵

“Early in the pandemic we established a relationship with the Israeli Ministry of Health where they used exclusively the Pfizer vaccine and then monitored it very closely, so we had a sort of laboratory where we could see the effect.”

Only 7% of Trial Participants Reached 6 Months of Data

Data released from Israel show the efficacy fell to 64% over one month from June 6, 2021, to July 5, 2021.⁴⁶ By late July, the efficacy had dropped dramatically again to 39%.⁴⁷ While these numbers are low, the FDA’s expectation is that any approved vaccine should be at least 50% effective.⁴⁸

Starting in December 2020, Pfizer unblinded the majority of the participants in the trial and allowed the placebo group to get vaccinated. By March 13, 2021, 93% of those participating in the Pfizer trial had been unblinded. This means the reference to six months of safety and efficacy in the preprint paper reports on only the 7% of trial participants that reached six months of the blinded follow up.

While the paper was published one year after the trial began, the data reported do not go past the first six months, which is the time period in which Israel reports efficacy dropped to 39%. Doshi goes on to say:⁴⁹

“It is hard to imagine that the <10% of trial participants who remained blinded at six months (which presumably further dwindled after 13 March 2021) could constitute a reliable or valid sample to produce further findings. And the preprint does not report any demographic comparisons to justify future analyses.”

Although claims have been made that the vaccine prevents severe disease, the trials were not designed to study severe disease, which Doshi details in another paper published in The BMJ.⁵⁰ In the opinion piece published in The BMJ, Doshi writes:⁵¹

“But here we are, with FDA reportedly on the verge of granting a marketing license 13 months into the still ongoing, two-year pivotal trial, with no reported data past 13 March 2021, unclear efficacy after six months due to unblinding, evidence of waning protection irrespective of the Delta variant, and limited reporting of safety data.”

Coincidentally, the very day Doshi’s paper was published in The BMJ, the FDA announced approval for the Pfizer COVID-19 shot being marketed as Comirnaty.⁵²

Yet, without adequate data analysis, and with mounting numbers of adverse events reported to VAERS,⁵³ the FDA still expanded eligibility for the jab to include children 12 years and older to receive a single booster dose and approved emergency use authorization for children 5 years old and older.⁵⁴ Doshi ends with a reasoned and logical call to action to the FDA:⁵⁵

“FDA should be demanding that the companies complete the two-year follow-up, as originally planned (even without a placebo group, much can still be learned about safety). They should demand adequate, controlled studies using patient outcomes in the now substantial population of people who have recovered from covid. And regulators should bolster public trust by helping ensure that everyone can access the underlying data.”

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Notes

¹ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, January 21, 2022

^2, 12, 15 The BMJ; 2022;376:o102

³ Council on Foreign Relations, December 27, 2021, What are the leading COVID vaccines?

⁴ Open VAERS, January 14, 2022

^5, 7, 52 FDA, August 23, 2021

⁶ Anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com January 10, 2022

⁸ SOPP 8401.7: Action Package for Posting December 11, 2020, page 1, III. Background, 30 calendar days

⁹ United States District Court Northern District Of Texas, September 16, 2021, Introduction #9

¹⁰ Maryanne Demasi, December 20, 2021

¹¹ Reuters, January 7, 2022

¹³ Clinical Trials, NCT04368728

¹⁴ FDA, August 6, 2021

¹⁶ New England Journal of Medicine, 2021; NEJMoa2108163

¹⁷ The BMJ; 2022;376:o102 Section 2

¹⁸ The BMJ; 2022;376:o102 Section 3 para 1

¹⁹ SGT Report January 7, 2021

²⁰ CorpWatch August 8, 2012

^21, 22 Corporate Research Project February 3, 2017

²³ Matthews & Associates November 18, 2020

²⁴ The BMJ; 2022;376:o102 Section 3 para 2

²⁵ The BMJ; 2022;376:o102 top para and 2nd from the bottom

²⁶ medRxiv, 2020; doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.15.20209817

²⁷ YouTube, April 29th, 2019

²⁸ YouTube, April 29th, 2019 Min 13:50 & 14:11

²⁹ YouTube, April 29th, 2019 Min 13:10

³⁰ YouTube, April 29th, 2019 Min 14:50

^{31, 32, 33, 34, 35} The BMJ, 2021;375:n2635

^{36, 44, 51, 55} The BMJ Opinion, August 23, 2021

³⁷ medRxiv, 2021; doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159

^38, 40 Pfizer, April 1, 2021

³⁹ Clinical Trials, NCT04368728 Record

⁴¹ Pfizer, November 18, 2020

⁴² Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, January 6, 2022; How well the vaccine works

⁴³ Clinical Infectious Disease, 2021;73(4)

⁴⁵ Times of Israel, September 12, 2021, para 3

⁴⁶ Reuters, July 5, 2021

⁴⁷ CNBC, July 23, 2021

⁴⁸ Food and Drug Administration Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research June 2020 page 17, E

⁴⁹ The BMJ Opinion, August 23, 2021; 40% down the page

⁵⁰ The BMJ, 2020;371:m4037

⁵³ OpenVAERS, COVID data

⁵⁴ FDA, January 19, 2022

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She worked in the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit (CTICU) of a major children’s hospital in San Diego, California for more than 12 years. Here’s her story about what happened after the vax rollout.

Tawny Buettner, RN, worked in the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit (CTICU) of a major children’s hospital in San Diego, California for more than 12 years.

Before the vaccine rollout, they’d see 4 or 5 myocarditis cases a year in the CTICU at the hospital where Tawny Buettner works that she was aware of (see 2:15 in the video).

In the last half of 2021, she is aware of 33 cases (at 4:15 in the video).

That’s an increase of over 10X in the rate of cases of myocarditis cases since the vaccines rolled out.

Not only that, the troponin levels of the kids were extremely high (start watching at 3:15), from the teens to up to the 30’s. Note that after a heart attack your troponin levels might hit 5 and then return to normal after a few days. So these troponin levels were elevated by something more extreme than a heart attack. Those levels can stay elevated for months. Troponin is released when the heart is damaged.

One person who commented on the video wrote:

I saw boys with troponin levels more than 400x than normal, 2-3 months after the injections. Girls don’t have high troponin, but they do have D-dimers up. God knows what’s coming next

Why aren’t we hearing this from other nurses?

Tawny is not the only CTICU RN witnessing this nightmare. Where are the others? Not willing to be fired.

It takes a dedicated intensivist RN fired for doing her job to tell us what she witnessed at her hospital.

Summary

The increased rate of myocarditis cases and excessive troponin levels didn’t happen by chance. It only started after the COVID vaccines rolled out.

The CDC says there is only a slightly elevated risk of myocarditis after the vaccine and they claim it is lower than the rate due to the virus.

Someone is lying to you.

Postscript

On Jan 28, 2022 I sent the following email to Nikki Daniels, Head of School of Monte Vista Christian School and bcc’ed a bunch of parents at the school. I’ll let you know if she responds. For background on MVCS, see Estimated 1 in 95 boys with myocarditis and There are now four myocarditis cases at Monte Vista.

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In less than 12 hours, Denmark turns into Florida.

No masks (except possibly in hospitals and nursing homes).

No vaccine passports.

Any person jabbed with ANY Covid shot can enter the country without a test; unvaccinated people can enter with a negative PCR test.

“We say goodbye to the restrictions and welcome the life we knew before,” the prime minister said last week.

Right on schedule, the bluecheck muppets popped up to explain that the Danes had won because they weren’t a bunch of unmasked Trump-loving mouth-breathers.

The muppets are half right. Denmark is 90 percent-plus adult vaccinated, almost 70 percent boosted. Plus the Danes have that legendary “high trust in government,” so they do exactly what the public health authorities say, double-quick! Denmark is Dr. Anthony Fauci’s dream.

But here’s the thing.

Sars-Cov-2 could not care less about all that trust and all those jabs. Denmark is now right up there with Israel in seeing the highest rates of infections of any country – ever.

In the last two weeks, more than 10 percent of ALL Danes – the equivalent of 35 million Americans – have been infected with Covid (the number is probably considerably higher, because at some point testing becomes impossible).

As someone once said, virus gonna virus.

And though Omicron is milder than Delta, Covid deaths in Denmark are now higher than at any point except a couple weeks last January, and the rise shows no sign of slowing.

In fact, even if the Omicron wave suddenly turns around with the end of all restrictions (and wouldn’t that be ironic), deaths will almost certainly keep rising through most if not all of February. Deaths lag.

In reality Covid is far from done with Denmark.

But the Danes are done with Covid. I thought they had figured this out back in September, when they went through their first round of loosening restrictions. (I wrote about them then.)

But the fall wave spooked them – and convinced them to give boosters a try.

Now they have learned. Fool me twice, mRNA vaccines, shame on you. Even those legendarily trusting Danes were hardly going to line up for a fourth shot in a hurry.

Let’s just hope that they haven’t mucked up their chance at long-term immunity too much already. Time will tell. (It would be nice if the virologists and immunologists weren’t too scared to attack this question head-on, but Saint Fauci and the Bright Boys (free band name!) are going to do everything possible to keep anyone with a laboratory from asking.)

In any case, the vaccine fanatics – so wrong about so much so often – are right on one point. Small, rich, mostly homogenous countries like Denmark, with relatively stable political cultures, have a big edge right now. Their public health advocates and governments will have a far easier time admitting they were wrong than those in the United States.

The reason should be obvious.

Nobody risks getting fired – much less indicted – in Denmark for telling the truth.

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US-Qatar relations seem to be getting better and better. During a conversation at the White House with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, US President Joe Biden promised to elevate Qatar’s military status, considering it a major non-NATO ally. The measure favors the Qatari state as it allows the country access to a select sphere of the American arms market, with special prices and favorable tax conditions. In fact, this case looks like a real trade-off to encourage Qatar to play a major role in US energy strategy: Biden simply wants Doha to produce and export more and more gas to Europe in order to prevent international cooperation projects with Russia.

In recognition of the historic cooperation between both countries and the role played by Qatar as a rescuer of US troops fleeing Afghanistan during Taliban’s seizure of Kabul, Joe Biden decided to designate Doha as Major non-NATO Ally, a status that grants Qatar privileged access to special conditions in the trade of weapons and military equipment between the two countries, which makes the American proposal very profitable for the Qataris.

Also, more than economic, legal and fiscal privileges, the promotion to this status in NATO strengthens US-Qatar relations because it “guarantees” Doha the existence of solid ties of respect and mutual trust between the countries, encouraging the Qatari government to believe in a possible US cooperation and military assistance during an eventual conflict scenario in the future.

These were some of Biden’s words:

“I’m notifying Congress that I will designate Qatar as a major non-NATO ally to reflect the importance of our relationship; I think it’s long overdue (…) I am making this designation in recognition of Qatar’s many years of contributions to US-led efforts in the US Central Command area of responsibility and in recognition of our own national interest in deepening bilateral defense and security cooperation with the State of Qatar”.

There is clearly an interest on the part of Washington to make Doha a central agent in the current US anti-Russian strategy, especially with regard to the energy issue. One of the biggest difficulties seen by the US in its attempt to promote a global boycott against Russia is to replace the role played by Moscow in the energy supply of several countries – among them, many American allies. As one of the major global producers and exporters of natural gas, Qatar shows great strategic value to the US as it can be a key to encouraging more and more countries to stop buying gas from Russia.

Last week, the White House had already informed that the issue of energy supply would be the main topic of discussion during the visit of the Emir of Qatar. Washington has planned to diversify the energy sources of its partner countries, mainly on the European continent, which consumes most of Russian gas. Qatar is playing a key role in this game: Doha increases production and lowers prices for European countries to consume its gas. In return, Washington gives Doha the “guarantee” of military cooperation within NATO to ensure that the country remains safe and protected by the West from any possible reprisals for adhering to such a plan.

However, the Qatari government needs to analyze the proposal carefully, as there are several points that make this cooperation questionable in its purposes. Doha’s designation as a NATO ally is very profitable from a technological and economic point of view, as it gives access to the aforementioned military market. But such a measure means little from a realistic and pragmatic perspective, since, despite being considered an “ally”, the country that is outside NATO does not share the guarantees of protection enjoyed by the members of the alliance.

On the other hand, regardless of the military aid issue, designation as a non-NATO ally will make Doha adhere to all the alliance’s projects. In fact, accepting the new status of partner of the Western bloc, in this sense, will certainly involve a decrease in the important strategic ties that Doha has with Beijing, for example, considering that China is one of Washington’s biggest enemies. In other words, it is a position that demands more than it provides. By assuming closer ties with NATO, in short, Doha will be giving up a large part of its strategic autonomy and its ability to maintain ties with different powers.

Qatar will accept a prestigious position in the gas market and a high military status but will become dependent on the West to maintain its economic stability, ceasing to occupy the role of regional power with its own sovereign interests, which has been its main characteristic in recent years.

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Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

Featured image is from https://www.qatar-tribune.com/

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According to reports from Israel, the population there is 90% vaccinated and boostered with some on 4 jabs, and hospitals are full of Omicron patients and so many doctors and nurses are themselves sick that there is no one to care for the patients.

What is going on?

First of all, here is total proof that the Covid vaccines do not protect, so why are they still being pushed using tyrannical methods as protection? It makes no sense other than the profits of pharmaceutical companies and the power it gives governments to dispense with civil liberty.

Second, according to numerous reports from countries, what is called the Omicron variant is not deadly and seldom hospitalizes those infected. So why is it that in Israel hospitals cannot cope with Omicron patients?

Can it be that so many hospitalized vaccinated people are suffering from adverse reactions to the vaccine? Medical scientists have established that the mRNA vaccines cause our immune system to attack our vital organs. The extent of this is difficult to nail down for two reasons. One is that in the US, for example, hospitals are discouraged from reporting vaccine-associated injuries and deaths to the adverse reaction reporting system. The other is that the Fauci-Big Pharma controlled medical establishment refuses to acknowledge that adverse reactions are not “rare” but widespread. Enormous increases in heart, lung, neurological an other problems have been reported in vaccinated populations, and the rollout of vaccination has been followed by the unprecedented event of children and healthy athletes dropping dead from heart attacks. There is no other explanation but the vaccines.

If the evidence that independent medical scientists have found is correct that the vaccine turns our immune system into a weapon against our vital organs, countries, such as Israel, with most of their populations vaccinated will lose a significant percentage of their populations to injuries and death.

It is clearly medical malpractice to continue to vaccinate before examining the evidence provided by independent scientists. All vaccination should cease until open and uncensored examination of the evidence either refutes or confirms the independent scientists. The scientists on Fauci’s and Big Pharma’s payrolls obviously have conflicts of interest. As all of the public health authorities, such as WHO, NIH, CDC, and regulatory authorities such as FDA are themselves compromised by their financial relationships with Big Pharma, and as the presstitutes censor and deplatform the evidence of independent scientists, there seem to be no way to stop the insane and irresponsible malpractice that is the heart and soul of the Covid protocol.

Humanity is being driven over the cliff by malpractice that is called “science.”

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from America’s Frontline Doctors

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What would a completely unscrupulous chief executive whose sole purpose in life is to seize power and never relinquish it do to conceal his evil intentions? He or she would use deception to change the narrative. Many are beginning to recognize that that is precisely what the Democrats are doing and their game plan includes demonizing both Russia and China to create plausible external enemies while also generating fear and uncertainty around alleged domestic threats as well as the COVID menace, to include initiating mandates designed to make the people submissive and fearful of legal and personal consequences for defying the government. Well, be that as it may, the penny has finally dropped and it is now clear that Biden-Pelosi-Schumer are intent on changing the rules and using lawfare and other tools to create a permanent governing majority.

The key to power in this case has been exploiting the legal system to criminalize many forms of dissent. For the past year President Joe Biden and his Department of Justice sidekick Attorney General Merrick Garland have been making noises about all the terrorists running around loose in the country. And they have not been shy about suggesting that the alleged terrorists are nothing less that “white supremacists” who are allegedly promoting violence to address their grievances against the new administration in Washington. Well, it has now become official. The Biden government has mobilized and has finally declared “war on the American people,” most particularly the third or so of the population that has concerns about the conduct and results of the 2020 election as well as over the “woke” racial preference policies that the government has been aggressively promoting.

On January 11^th, Matthew Olsen, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, revealed to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI has now created a special unit that will deal exclusively with “domestic terrorism,” which it further describes as constituting an “elevated threat” to American democracy. Olsen claimed that there has been a large increase in “domestic extremism” reports having doubled in 2021 compared with the previous year. The new unit will “augment the existing approach” by way of additional resources that have been made available to identify the dissidents, track them down, arrest them and try them under the authority of various laws that were originally conceived as a legal tool to combat the perceived international terrorist threat after 9/11.

Olsen, citing what he referred to as the January 6^th 2021 “riot” at the Capitol in Washington, elaborated how the Department of Justice believes that the nation now faces a serious threat from “domestic violent extremists — that is, individuals in the United States who seek to commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of domestic social or political goals.” He also suggested a racist motive behind some of the violence, adding that “We’ve seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus…,” and observed that the “terrorists” often are “anti-Authority,” whatever that is supposed to mean.

Olsen did not mention that the war on dissent has even included monitoring the social media of America’s military personnel lest they harbor dangerous thoughts. To be sure, the driving force behind the government’s campaign to criminalize the actions of the many citizens who object to the Biden Administration policies appears to be Olsen’s boss Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is very well placed to engage in mischief that will potentially affect all Americans. In fact, he has proven to be a more than willing accomplice in the social engineering that the Biden Administration is engaged in, to include his declaration last year that white supremacists are the single greatest terrorist threat the United States faces today.

Garland and others in the Biden Administration unashamedly propose that America’s governmental bodies and infrastructures are racist and supportive of “white supremacy” and must be deconstructed. “Building Back Better” requires everything to be examined through a value system determined by identity politics and race and it views both whites and their institutions as hopelessly corrupted, if not evil.

If there were any doubts about Biden’s intentions, they were dispelled in a speech made in Georgia on the same day that Olsen was addressing the Senate. Biden issued a call to arms that was full of race-baiting, claiming that those who are resisting the voting “reforms” that he is promoting are little better than notorious civil-rights era racists like George Wallace and Bull Connors. In reality, however, the voting changes that the Administration is promoting by fiat are, in fact, licenses to steal votes and commit large scale electoral fraud as they will strip states of the right to demand that voters prove both that they are citizens and legal residents.

On January 26^th the Department of Homeland Security got into the game, releasing a memo suggesting that the “domestic extremists” are seeking to make the lives of all Americans more difficult. The dissidents “have been developing plans to attack the US electric sector… since at least 2020.’” The report stated that extremists “adhering to a range of ideologies will likely continue to plot and encourage physical attacks against electrical infrastructure” but it did not provide even a single piece of evidence that the “threat” had ever proceeded beyond the talking stage, suggesting that the report was generated to create fear on the part of the public regarding the “domestic terrorism” issue.

In yet another instance demonstrating how the White House is interpreting its national security mandate in a highly partisan fashion, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated last week that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) works closely with the Bureau to identify and investigate instances of anti-Semitism in the United States. That should raise questions about a private group with an agenda working as a source for the police and intelligence services and it suggests in particular that critics of Israel and its policies will find themselves increasingly targeted by law enforcement under “hate crime” legislation. Such statements citing rising anti-Semitism and “holocaust denialism” also generate more fear among the public to justify “protection” by a dominating and intrusive national security apparatus.

Witness how this has already played out in Europe where “holocaust denial” has been widely criminalized by way of so-called “memory laws [which] prohibit the denial, justification, or trivialization of the crimes committed by the Nazis during World War II… France has had a ban on Holocaust denial in place since 1990. Austria’s ban was adopted in 1992, and Belgium’s is from 1995. Germany itself did not adopt an explicit ban until 1994, though it countered Holocaust denial before then through laws against defamation, incitement, and disparaging the memory of the dead… Holocaust denial laws were also approved in the 1990s by the European Court of Human Rights (under the Council of Europe), which stated that the negation or revision of ‘clearly established historical facts — such as the Holocaust — … would be removed from the protection’ of free speech under the European Convention on Human Rights.”

Eliminating free speech, the most fundamental right, would allow government and a compromised media to gain control of the narrative of government that prevails in the United States and would be a significant step towards totalitarian control. Going beyond that, the Administration is even reported to be considering devastating proposals to make all illegal immigrants citizens to allow them to vote. New York City has already declared that all residents will be able to vote on local issues, whether they are in the country legally or not. More to the point, the discussion comes at a time when the nation’s southern border has become an out-of-control entry point for anyone who can reach Mexico.

Even though the Biden Administration’s enemies list admittedly features white supremacists regarded ipso facto as extremists, it now notoriously also including those parents who do not support the various formulae being employed to install programs seeking to establish what is referred to as “equity” in the nation’s public schools. That the agenda is both reverse racism and detrimental to good educational practice is why parents are protesting. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has observed how “The Department of Justice’s fight against angry parents is a real testament to the authoritarian nature of the Biden administration and indeed, the entirety of the left. It takes a lot of hubris to declare that you know how to raise someone’s child better than them and send authorities to shut you down when you protest that.”

Senator Paul’s father former Congressman Ron Paul has also responded to the threat coming from a government that he perceives as trending towards totalitarianism by way of a single state model for education, commenting how “If government can override the wishes of parents in the name of ‘education’ or ‘protecting children’s health’ then what area of our lives is safe from government intrusion?”

If it is indeed true that Joe Biden is not completely in control of what his administration appears to be doing, one then has to wonder who is directing his appointed officials to pursue policies that are destructive of all the freedoms and other positive things that this nation once represented. One thing for sure, the mask is now off and the Democratic Party plan to create something like a totalitarian state with one party rule in perpetuum is right there for everyone to see.

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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.

Featured image: US Capitol during the January 6, 2021 attack on the building. Licensed under Creative Commons

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***

All charts and tables below reflect the data release on 01/28/2022 from the VAERS website, which includes U.S. and foreign data, and is updated through: 1/21/2022

*Note that the total number of deaths associated with the COVID-19 vaccines is more than double the number of deaths associated with all other vaccines combined since the year 1990.

Deaths

[Unknowns separated from All Other Vaccines for greater clarity; in a majority of cases the Unknowns are actually Covid-19]

Adverse Events

[Unknowns separated from All Other Vaccines for greater clarity; in many cases the Unknowns are actually Covid-19] 

Symptoms

The slide below was taken from an FDA document from October 22, 2020 and provides a list of possible adverse event outcomes related to the Covid-19 vaccines.

• Source: ‘Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee October 22,2020 Meeting Presentation”.

The following table lists the number of adverse events found in the VAERS data which match the outcomes listed above:

Average Annual Adverse Events by Symptom for COVID-19 Vaccines as a Multiple of All Other Vaccines Combined since 1990

(Data from VAERS through 1/21/22)

Vaccination Related Risks of COVID19 Vs. Flu

These set of figures compare the COVID19 vaccine to the traditional Flu vaccines.  ‘Risk of Death’ percentages depend on the ‘# of Vaccinations’ data, which is only approximate, and was pulled from the CDC’s report on Flu vaccination coverage for the 2019-2020 season, and from Our World in Data for the COVID19 vaccinations.

Covid19 vaccinations through 5/31/2021 vs. Flu vaccinations 7/1/2019 – 5/31/2020 (last complete flu season)

Risk of dying from COVID vaccine is 171 times greater than Flu Vaccine

Risk of adverse reaction from COVID vaccine is 56 times greater than Flu Vaccine

Notes

^[1] number of flu vaccinations based on estimated flu vaccine coverage data from CDC and estimated population data from US Census. Yearly flu vaccination data covers a period of time from 7/1 to 5/31 of the following year.

^[2] number of covid19 vaccinations based on estimates from Our World in Data ^[2] number of covid19 vaccinations based on estimates from Our World in Data

^[3] Persons vaccinated with at least one dose.

Vaccine Data by Manufacturer

Vaccine Data by Gender

Vaccine Data by Location

Recall History

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Our thanks to Mark Taliano (CRG Associate) for bringing this to our attention.

Sources

Vaccine data (Covid-19 and other vaccines) taken from CDC’s VAERS website, located here: https://vaers.hhs.gov/data/datasets.html.  VAERS data sets in the form of csv files are pulled down weekly and put into a database for reporting/analysis. Data files are available all the way back to 1990.

Number of doses distributed for other vaccines found in NVICP Data and Statistics report here: https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/hrsa/vaccine-compensation/data/data-statistics-report.pdf

Numbers for Covid-19 vaccines administered by manufacturer found here: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total

Numbers for total Covid-19 vaccine doses administered found here: https://data.cdc.gov/Vaccinations/COVID-19-Vaccination-Trends-in-the-United-States-N/rh2h-3yt2

Numbers for Flu vaccine doses administered for 2019-2020 season found here: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/fluvaxview/coverage-1920estimates.htm

Numbers for FDA regulated drugs taken from FDA’s FAERS website, located here: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/questions-and-answers-fdas-adverse-event-reporting-system-faers/fda-adverse-event-reporting-system-faers-public-dashboard

Featured image is from VAERS Analysis

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The D.C. District Court today invalidated the Department of the Interior’s decision to offer 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas leasing, marking a pivotal victory in the fight to defend Gulf communities and the planet from the worsening climate crisis.

The court held that Interior failed to accurately disclose and consider the greenhouse gas emissions that would result from the lease sale, violating a bedrock environmental law.

Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of Healthy Gulf, Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth on Aug. 31 against Interior Secretary Debra Haaland and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management following the notice of lease sale 257. The lawsuit noted that the 2017 environmental analysis that the Biden administration relied on to hold the sale is fatally flawed. The sale also contradicted the administration’s pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 50% to 52% by 2030.

The court decision holds Interior accountable for grossly underestimating the climate impacts and risks to Gulf communities before deciding to hold the largest oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history. This ruling ensures that waters and coasts will be protected from additional harmful drilling and eventual spills in the Gulf, where the fossil fuel industry is already sitting on 8 million acres of leases on public waters.

By vacating Interior’s decision to hold this illegal lease sale, the court has ensured that no harm will result from it. Whatever Interior decides to do, it must start with a blank slate and consider the full environmental costs.

“We are pleased that the court invalidated Interior’s illegal lease sale,” said Earthjustice’s senior attorney, Brettny Hardy. “We simply cannot continue to make investments in the fossil fuel industry to the peril of our communities and increasingly warming planet. This administration must meet this critical moment and honor the campaign promises President Biden made by stopping offshore leasing once and for all.  Interior should use its next 5-year leasing plan to protect our coastal communities and public waters and offer no new offshore leases. We can no longer afford to do anything less.”

“This is a victory for all Gulf communities impacted by the onshore pollution from offshore drilling in the Gulf,” said Cynthia Sarthou, executive director of Healthy Gulf. “Today, we can look forward to the day when we stop selling off our public waters for pennies on the dollar when a just transition to a clean energy future is critical to our very survival. Now, the Gulf can be seen as a viable field for offshore wind energy that will power our future.”

“This is a huge victory for our climate, Rice’s whales and Gulf communities,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “I’m thrilled the court saw through the Biden administration’s horribly reckless decision to hold the largest oil lease sale in U.S. history without carefully studying the risks. New oil leases are fundamentally incompatible with addressing the climate emergency, and they’ll cause more oil spills and harm to wildlife and people in the Gulf. For the sake of our climate and frontline communities, the Biden administration must end new leasing and phase out existing drilling. Anything less would be a gross failure of climate leadership.”

“Today’s decision is a victorious outcome not only for the Gulf’s communities, wildlife, and ecosystem, but also for the warming planet,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director at Friends of the Earth. “But the fight is not over. We will continue to hold the Biden administration accountable for making unlawful decisions that contradict its pledge to take swift, urgent action on ‘code red’ climate and environmental justice priorities.”

“The Biden administration’s failure to adequately evaluate the climate impacts of this massive lease sale wasn’t just out of step with their stated commitment to climate action, it was also illegal,” said Sierra Club Senior Attorney Devorah Ancel. “We are glad that the court has held them accountable for this reckless action, and we will continue to fight to protect Gulf Coast communities from the dangers of offshore drilling and climate chaos.”

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In mid-December, some 114 members of Congress sent a forceful letter to President Joe Biden calling for “immediate humanitarian actions” to lift the economic sanctions “that prevent food, medicine, and other humanitarian assistance from reaching the Cuban people.” With Cuba struggling to emerge from a dire, Covid-generated economic crisis, the congressional representatives are pushing the White House to end the restrictions imposed by the Trump administration on remittances and travel and restore the Obama-era policy of engagement with the island nation. “Engagement,” the members concluded, “is more likely to enable the political, economic, and social openings that Cubans may desire, and to ease the hardships that Cubans face today.”

Full engagement with Cuba, of course, would require lifting the US embargo—a demand the congressional letter conspicuously fails to make. As the embargo approaches its 60th anniversary, terminating it would require not only White House action but a vote in Congress that the Democratic leadership has neither the political capacity nor the moral courage to prioritize. Indeed, the humanitarian measures that these members of Congress are asking of President Biden are intended to soften an economic crisis that, for decades, the embargo has explicitly attempted to create.

Imposed by the proclamation of John F. Kennedy on February 3, 1962, and codified into law during the Clinton administration, the “embargo on all trade with Cuba” has evolved through many manifestations of punitive economic sanctions and commercial restrictions over the past 60 years. “The embargo is outdated and should be lifted,” Barack Obama declared during his dramatic but short-lived effort to normalize US-Cuba relations. Instead, this “mold-encrusted relic” of the Cold War, as The Nation once described it, remains in place—the framework of a protracted, and failed, US endeavor to promote regime change, as well as an enduring symbol of the perpetual hostility of US policy toward the Cuban revolution.

During the past six decades, The Nation has consistently opposed the US embargo against Cuba. The magazine has published editorial after editorial, story after story, with titles like “Endless Embargo,” “Tightening the Chokehold on Cuba,” “An Embargo That Serves No Purpose,” and “The Stupid Embargo.” The arguments for ending el bloqueo, as the Cubans refer to it, and adopting a sane, humanitarian, and normal US posture toward Cuba remain as relevant today as when they were published.

Cuba’s economy…depended on the United States for such essential itemsas trucks, buses, bulldozers, telephone and electrical equipment, industrial chemicals, medicine, raw cotton, detergents, lard, potatoes, poultry, butter, a large assortment of canned goods, and half of such staple items in the Cuban diet as rice and black beans…. A nation which had been an economic appendage of the United States was suddenly cut adrift; it was as if Florida had been isolated from the rest of the country, unable to sell oranges and cattle or to bring in tourists, gasoline, automobile parts, or Cape Canaveral rockets. —“Cuba Today: An Eyewitness Report,” by Samuel Shapiro, Sept. 22, 1962

We are antagonizing allies and enemies alike, and giving to others a market which geographically has been and should be ours. All this in the name of isolating Castro, but all we are doing is isolating ourselves. — Editorial, “The Inertia of Folly,” March 2, 1964

At the heart of the United States policy toward Cuba is the economic embargo. It was laid on to make things hard for the Cuban people in the expectation that they would recognize Fidel Castro as the man responsible for their hardship and throw the rascal out. The scheme has not worked; such schemes rarely do. Instead, the Cubans identified the cause of their troubles as the government of the United States. They rallied to Castro and he, for more than a decade, has used us as a whipping boy. —“Cuba: Policy of Malign Neglect,” by Richard O’Mara, Nov. 22, 1971

For fifteen years we have tried to bring down the Cuban Government, by an airtight trade embargo, by diplomatic boycott, and even sordid efforts apparently organized by the CIA to assassinate Prime Minister Castro and other Cuban leaders. With both Mr. Nixon and Mr. Ford making highly publicized missions to Peking and Moscow…one wonders why we maintain our unyielding stand toward Cuba….

From the vantage point of common sense, economics and diplomacy, we should be moving to normalize our relations with Cuba—not because we are looking for a love affair but because it is the only reasonable course for two neighboring nations….

—“Common Sense and Cuba,” by Senator George McGovern, Feb. 6, 1976

Among its other efforts to dismantle the Cuban revolution, the United States has imposed one of the longest, most strictly enforced and extensive trade embargoes on record. That embargo, twenty years old this year, has produced endless bitterness but has failed to accomplish its original purpose: the economic isolation of Cuba…. Obviously the United States has everything to gain by lifting the trade ban and nothing perceptible to lose. The market is there, the currency is there, the desire is there. Ultimately, Washington will gain more influence not only in Cuba but throughout the hemisphere by re-establishing trade and diplomatic relations with the island than by perpetuating a retaliatory embargo that long ago lost its punch. —“An Embargo That Serves No Purpose: Twenty Years of ‘El Bloqueo,’” by Maisie McAdoo, Dec. 4, 1982

Under the fashionable label of “promoting democracy,” Representative Robert Torricelli is propelling a new “punish Cuba” bill through Congress…. Torricelli’s missionary passion is directed toward tightening the already strict U.S. embargo on Cuba, so as to, in his words, “shorten the suffering of the Cuban people by isolating Castro and forcing him out.” Despite recent polls showing that a significant sector of Cuban-Americans oppose tightening the embargo, Torricelli claims to speak for that community. This presumption has led to some dramatic exchanges with those Cuban-Americans who call his bill a “new Platt Amendment,” referring to the 1901 act that said the United States had the right to intervene at will in Cuban affairs. —“Tightening the Chokehold on Cuba,” by Saul Landau, June 15, 1992

Source: The Nation

In a 1992 letter to the Bush Administration, protesting the tightening of the Cuba embargo, the U.S. Catholic Conference noted that embargoes “are acts of force…morally unacceptable, generally in violation of the principles of international law, and always contrary to the values of the Gospel.”

The Cuba embargo is all of the above and worse. Put in place by President Kennedy’s executive order in 1962, it is a fossilized relic of an era that refuses to recede into cold war history. Since its inception, the trade embargo has become, as the Bay of Pigs invasion was once called, “a perfect failure” in all ethical, political and economic respects. It hurts the Cuban people but has failed to shake the government.

Still, the “wreak havoc” crowd [in Congress], financed by Miami’s hard-line exile community, has managed to keep opposition to the embargo at bay. The logic of their position—to squeeze Cuba until it implodes into civil war—runs directly counter to U.S. national interests in the Caribbean. More than one major Pentagon study has pointed out that destabilization of Cuba will generate hundreds of thousands of refugees and extreme political pressure for U.S. military intervention—a prospect the Southern Command, and presumably the U.S. public, would rather avoid.

—Editorial, “Freeing Cuba,” Jan. 26, 1998

The Administration frequently says that it wishes to see a “peaceful transitional process” in Cuba. And yet, if the objective is to get rid of Castro, then one cannot expect the process to be peaceful, for the hard fact is that Castro will not simply resign or fade away because the United States wants him to; rather if need be, he would fight, and many Cubans would fight with him. Thus, if one aims to remove the Castro government, then one must be ready for a bloody civil war—a war which would result in tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Cuban refugees on our shores. Is that what the Administration wants? —“Washington’s Costly Cuba Policy,” by Wayne S. Smith, July 3, 2000

Since the end of the Cold War, the embargo has proved a serious embarrassment for Washington. Instituted as part of a broad set of punitive measures designed to isolate the Castro regime, the trade sanctions have succeeded only in isolating the United States. Every year for the past decade the United Nations has voted overwhelmingly to condemn the US blockade; the last vote, on November 27, was a 167-to-3 defeat for the United States, with only the Marshall Islands and Israel supporting Washington…. —“Cuban Embargo-Busters?” by Peter Kornbluh, Dec. 13, 2001

What do you call a US policy that…detains and fines a class of New York high school students for taking a study trip over spring break? A policy that has been repudiated at the United Nations by virtually every other country in the world? A policy that, after forty-eight years of abject failure, is still based on the false assumption that success—in the form of “regime change”—is just around the corner? Imperial? Illogical? Irrational? Insane? As Wayne Smith, former chief of the US Interest Section in Havana, has observed, Cuba seems to have “the same effect on American administrations that the full moon has on werewolves.” —Editorial, “Changing Course on Cuba,” May 14, 2007

Imagine a country developing and producing its own Covid-19 vaccines,enough to cover its entire population, but being unable to inoculate everyone because of a syringe shortage…. Because of the 60-year US embargo, which punishes civilians during a pandemic, the country is facing a shortage of millions of syringes.

This reality is a consequence of what amounts to US economic warfare, which makes it extremely difficult for Cuba to acquire medicine, equipment, and supplies from vendors or transportation companies that do business in or with the United States. Syringes are in short supply internationally, so no company wants to be bogged down navigating the complicated banking and licensing demands the US government places on transactions with Cuba….

If human rights are to be a core pillar of US policy, as a White House spokesperson recently declared, then the embargo must end. It is a policy that indiscriminately targets and harms civilians. It is a systematic violation of human rights on a massive scale.

—“Biden’s Failure to End Trump’s War on Cuba Is Threatening Lives,” by Danny Glover, June 29, 2021

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Peter Kornbluh, a longtime contributor to The Nation on Cuba, is co-author, with William M. LeoGrande, of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana. Kornbluh is also the author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.

Featured image is from The Nation

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Despite the Anglo Alliance of the US-UK claiming that a Russian invasion is “imminent,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the situation is not “more intense” than it was in April. In fact, despite leading the imminent Russian invasion propaganda since March 2021, he now complains that Western media creates a false image of the situation and hurts the country’s already struggling economy. 

“They’re saying ‘the war is tomorrow’ – this causes panic on the market and elsewhere,” he said.

Shortly after Zelensky’s complaints about Western media hysteria, Foreign Policy magazine in an article published titled “Russia Can Win in Ukraine Without Firing a Shot,” tried to shift the blame onto Russia and claimed that Ukraine is becoming more difficult to insure. Because of this, “without sending a single soldier across the border, Russia could make Ukraine’s economy tank.”

It was omitted in Foreign Policy that the Kremlin continually stresses that it has no intentions of war with Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed this again on Friday and said “if it depends on Russia, then there will be no war. We don’t want wars.”

Rather, the current crisis in Ukraine is entirely manufactured and exaggerated by the Anglo Alliance. It appeared unexpectedly over the winter when the Anglo Alliance was more strongly prioritising its resources towards China, especially in the lead up to the Winter Olympics that begins on February 4.

None-the-less, Zelensky said on Friday that $446 million in investments flowed out of the country due to the manufactured crisis. It comes as the Ukrainian economy already struggles and is about to be dealt an even bigger blow when it loses billions of dollars in transit fees as a result of the opening of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. With investors fleeing the country, believing that a Russian invasion is imminent, Kiev has been forced to use reserves to stabilise the hryvnia, Ukraine’s currency. Zelensky has said he will need about $5 billion to stabilise the economy, a disastrous position to be in considering the hryvnia fell to its lowest level against the US dollar in seven years on January 27.

The Ukrainian president also criticised the decision by the Anglo Alliance to withdraw non-essential diplomats, saying: “Yes, I think it was a mistake, I say this openly.” According to Kyiv Independence, Zelensky acknowledged that it was more of Ukraine’s mistake than that of the foreign governments. “Under these circumstances, everyone is essential. Everyone should stay.”

It now appears that Ukraine desperately regrets propagating the idea of an imminent Russian invasion and allowing the Anglo Alliance and its media apparatus to grab hold of this idea. Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov also does not expect an attack, saying “At the moment, the Russian armed forces have not created a single strike unit to indicate that they will launch an attack tomorrow.” In addition, the Supreme Rada abruptly withdrew the “On transitional state policy” bill that was first lodged in August 2021. There, Russia is referred to as the “aggressor” and any documents issued by the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics are recognized as invalid.

With the Ukrainian economy tanking and Anglo diplomats withdrawing from the country, it is now too late for Kiev to rollback what it created itself. By exaggerating a Russian invasion threat, Ukraine expected to have its military bolstered by the West on the cheap and increase its opportunities for NATO and EU membership.

Even worse, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Sunday that it is “very unlikely” British soldiers would be deployed to fight in any conflict. In addition, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said that because Ukraine was not a member of the military alliance, there were “no plans to deploy NATO combat troops.”

In effect, Kiev acted as a willing agent of provocation and tension against Russia on behalf of the Anglo Alliance and NATO, but in turn will not receive troop support if a war is to breakout. Zelensky could have an even bigger crisis to face now – preserving his own position as president if the Ukrainian economy is to completely collapse due to the prioritisation of military provocations instead of economic development.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Last week, we celebrated Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday dedicated to the life and legacy of this champion for equality and justice. The effort to gain national recognition for MLK Day took 14 years, from 1970 when it was first proposed until 1983 when it was passed by Congress and signed into law. It was controversial because King himself was controversial,a true revolutionary historical figure who fought racial discrimination, militarism and economic injustice.

Instead of remembering King as he really was, the meaning of the day and the memory of Dr. King have been hollowed out. He has been transformed into a fuzzy, feel-good figure and the struggles for which he gave his life have been ignored.

During his lifetime, even many of those who supported his struggle to end racial segregation in the South and secure voting rights for Blacks could not accept the broader vision he projected. When he moved the focus of his protest movement to segregation in the North, when he spoke out against the war in Vietnam, when he embraced the cause of economic justice for the poor who were denied opportunity in the wealthiest nation on Earth, he was rebuked by some who said, “You should stay in your lane” and “Why are you getting involved in issues that detract from your central message?”

By the time he was assassinated in 1968, Dr. King had become a figure of controversy for many Americans. That was to be expected precisely because the moral challenges he presented were so deeply upsetting to those who embraced and benefitted from the status quo.

With the passage of time we forget, glossing over and romanticising the past. Our hope in securing the recognition of King Day was that not only would the man be remembered, but also the realities he confronted and the injustices he opposed.

It is important to note that almost 70 per cent of the current US population were either not alive or not yet living here during King’s lifetime. They have no recollection of segregated lunch counters, water fountains and bathrooms, of the dogs and fire hoses that were unleashed on children simply because they were protesting for equality. They don’t remember the disgusting racist rhetoric used by senators, governors and others seeking to maintain the old, segregated order that King and his colleagues sought to tear down. Nor do they recall the horrors of the lives wasted in an unwinnable war in Vietnam and the trauma of a nation torn asunder by that conflict. And they do not remember the crisis of wretched poverty that plagued inner cities and rural regions, problems that then President Johnson sought to address with his New Society programmes, all of which were stymied by the costs of the war. All this needs to be remembered to understand King in the context of his time.

When we fought to commemorate his birthday we had hoped that King’s Day would be one on which we would recall this history and the sacrifices Dr. King and so many others made in their efforts to bring needed change, and would then recommit ourselves to using, if necessary, the tools he used to fight injustice, poverty and war.

Given this background, it is distressing that four decades later, with the concerns embraced by Dr. King still present, that the challenges he posed have been diluted or erased from historical memory. America is still torn apart by deep and abiding racial inequities, extreme income disparity, challenges to voting rights and misguided government budgets that prioritise militarism and waging unwinnable wars at the expense of the social well-being of citizens. In the face of these problems, it is an insult for us to celebrate MLK Day without the message of King being uppermost on our minds. We need him today as much as we needed him during his lifetime.

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The writer is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.