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Again in 2021, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly passed 14 resolutions aimed at criticizing Israel (and supporting the Palestinians). On every resolution, only a handful of countries (among them the USA, Canada and a sprinkle of small Pacific island nations) stood with Israel. Some others abstained.
The assembly debates the SAME (or nearly the same) motions every year, and all of them denounce Israel’s repeated violations of UN General Assembly resolutions.
Example:
Condemning the settlements
Affirming Palestinian right to self determination
Rejecting Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem
Support for Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA)
Since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the UN General Assembly has passed more resolutions criticizing Israel than ALL OTHER STATES COMBINED!!
WHY??
Palestinians: “Israeli human rights abuses are well documented”
For Palestinian activists and human rights supporters around the world, the answer is obvious.
Israeli human rights abuses of Palestinians are flagrant and well documented.
Reports from a wide range of organizations including the UN, the International Court of Justice, B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, leave no doubt that Israel’s actions deserve condemnation. Repeated reports from the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories have highlighted abuses in the West Bank, in Jerusalem and in Gaza. Even Israeli organizations like the Association for Human Rights in Israel (ACRI) and Breaking the Silence are critical of Israeli actions. So it’s not surprising that the UN is vocal in its condemnation.
Israelis: “This is Israel bashing. Why only Israel?”
Israel’s defenders are indignant. “Why so much focus on Israel when there are many other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere whose human rights abuses are at least as bad as those in the West Bank?”, they ask. ”Surely Saudi Arabia’s public floggings and beheadings, Egypt’s feared prisons and Jordan’s secret police deserve as much criticism as Israel.”
Furthermore, point out Israel’s supporters, many of the countries voting against Israel are themselves serial human rights offenders. So why the double standard?
The underlying suspicion of course, sometimes stated, sometimes only hinted at, is that the UN applies a double standard, perhaps revealing an underlying antisemitism.
UN Resolution in December 2021, on “UNRWA”. All of Israel’s New “Abraham Accord” Partners Voted to Support UNRWA over Israeli Objections. Only 4 Countries Supported Israel. Source: UN Watch
Yet there are reasons for the special focus. Let’s explore them.
The global south: “It’s European colonialism”
There are 193 member states in the United Nations. Three quarters of them were still colonies in 1947 when the decision was made to give part of Palestine to European Jewish refugees to form a state of their own. The global south does not feel any responsibility for the Holocaust, nor does it share the European guilt. The UN General Assembly is the biggest forum where the global south gets to present its anti-colonial case to the world. It sees Israel as a prime case of European colonialism and feels justified in opposing it.
The UN perspective is clear: “Israel has obligations to the UN and the UN has obligations to the inhabitants of former Palestine”.
As the UN General Assembly stated a year ago:
“The United Nations has a permanent responsibility towards the question of Palestine until the question is resolved in all its aspects in a satisfactory manner in accordance with international legitimacy.”
Israel has a unique relationship to the UN. UN General Assembly resolution 181 of 1947 proposed carving a new Jewish state out of historic Palestine. It was passed by 33-13, with 10 abstentions. Israel quickly embraced UN resolution 181. Its own Declaration of Independence cites UN 181 as recognition of its right to exist.
While “awarding” 55% historic Palestine to the new Jewish State, resolution 181 also included provisions for the protection of minorities inside each of the two new states. These included:
“No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants on the ground of race, religion, language or sex.”
“All persons within the jurisdiction of the State shall be entitled to equal protection of the laws.”
“No expropriation of land owned by an Arab in the Jewish State (or by a Jew in the Arab State) shall be allowed except for public purposes.”
But it rapidly became clear to the international community that Zionist forces had no intention of respecting many of UN’s provisions. In fact, by its Independence Day on May 14, 1948, Zionist militias had already seized more land than had been allotted under the UN plan and had driven out over 350,000 Palestinians.
The UN General Assembly responded by voting through another resolution (194) in December 1948 affirming that those refugees have the right to return and to compensation. (The vote was 35-15 with 8 abstentions.)
When Israel sought membership in the UN a few months later, it promised to respect all relevant UN resolutions. The UN was divided on whether Israel should in fact be admitted, but US and European domination of the UN awarded Israel UN membership.
But while Israel adopted the part of the UN proposal giving it a Jewish state, Israel defied the UN proposal in that it:
Seized much more land than proposed in the partition plan (78% vs. 55% of historic Palestine)
Took over Jaffa and seized West Jerusalem
Expelled over 750,000 Palestinians
Confiscated their property
Destroyed over 400 villages
Prevented refugees from returning
Restricted the civil rights of the Palestinians who remained in Israel
As former General Secretary Kofi Annan said in remarks after leaving the UN in 2006, Israel’s defiance of UN provisions is a painful and festering sore for the UN.
“The failure to achieve an Arab-Israeli peace remains for the UN a deep internal wound as old as the organization itself, (…) a painful and festering sore consequently felt in almost every intergovernmental organ and Secretariat body.”
“No other issue carries such a powerful symbolic and emotional charge affecting people far from the zone of conflict.”
(Kofi Annan, Interventions (2011), p. 254)
Conclusion: both principle and posturing
The repeated UNGA votes condemning Israel and supporting the Palestinians are not based on the claim that Israel is the worst abuser of human rights in the world. There are others that are just as bad or perhaps worse.
Nor is it because the whole world is antisemitic. Many of the countries which vote to support Palestinian rights have never had any significant Jewish communities.
The fundamental reason is that Israel, a UN member, continues to ignore the commitments it made to the UN when it was admitted in 1949 and repeated UN warnings about the occupation of 1967.
But there is also a significant element of political posturing. The annual spate of UN resolutions on “The Question of Palestine” gives the global south a forum for brandishing their opposition to the effects of European colonialism. Even some rather reactionary regimes, like Saudi Arabia and the other Abrahamic Accord states, voted to support the Palestinians in the UNGA resolutions.
Politics is often a mixture of principle and posturing. But if Israel continues to ignore UN resolutions, it can expect mounting frustration in the international community and a continuation of world criticism every year at the UNGA.
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Peter Larson is Chair of the Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine. He blogs regularly at www.CanadatalksIsraelPalestine.ca
Featured image: The U.N. General Assembly Votes on the Partition Resolution in 1947. Public Domain. (Posted by The Center For The Humanities.)
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In a recent interview, a former CIA agent reported that his country is opening a military base in Albania in order to contain China. A unit of American special forces in the Balkan country has as its main objective to stop any form of rapprochement between Tirana and Beijing, turning Albania into a mere regional satellite of Washington’s interests.
Last Friday, the US European Command (better known by the acronym, EUCOM) announced that it was establishing a new headquarters in the Balkans – a special operations unit based in Albania, which would form part of an overall US government effort to increase the capacity of Western forces to guarantee stability in that region, commonly strained by various conflicts with historical roots. The unit would be responsible for ensuring the interoperability between US and Albanian forces, as well as the strategic access to key Balkan military centers.
Commenting on the case during an interview with Sputnik, former CIA agent Ray McGovern stated that the US government decided to open a military base in the region “because they [the US] just learned that Albania is a tight ally of the Chinese Communists”. In this sense, the purpose of this new unity would be to undermine Chinese influence in the region and prevent the rapprochement between Tirana and Beijing, with little or no real interest on the part of Washington in guaranteeing stability and peace for the Balkans.
Analyzing the recent history of cooperation between China and Albania, it is really possible to see a significant increase in bilateral partnership. In a recent report by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (a pro-Western Balkan NGO), were identified at least 135 cooperation projects between China and Albania whose value exceeds US$36 million. The projects work in the most diverse areas, including high technology, computing, metallurgy, mining, energy, transport, infrastructure, security, among others. One of the projects that most dislikes the West is cooperation in technology with Huawei, a Chinese company that has been the target of conspiracy theories and fake news promoted by Washington, which accuses it of spying and stealing data in favor of Beijing.
In addition to economic cooperation, Beijing and Tirana have also expanded cultural cooperation ties, with an increase in mutual educational and scientific projects. Indeed, cultural and scientific cooperation is a key element of Chinese diplomacy, with Beijing trying to communicate with other states through the exchange of knowledge and academic professionals – and this is no different in the current Albanian case. In the same sense, it should be mentioned that the Chinese government also invests heavily in health diplomacy with the Balkan country, sending vaccines and medical equipment at low cost, which has been fundamental for Albania to deal with the new coronavirus pandemic.
All these measures are no surprise considering the Chinese project to create a global development platform for emerging nations. The search for acquiring new partners among emerging states has already become a central aspect of Chinese foreign policy, boosting cooperation projects within the scope of the Belt and Road Initiative. China is not doing any “kindness” or “charity” with this type of attitude, but a real investment: for Beijing, it is profitable that as many emerging countries as possible develop, integrating the BRI, so that in the future China can reduce part of its industrial production (fulfilling its ecological goals) and take advantage of foreign goods that will arrive in the country through the platform.
In October, Albanian President Ilir Meta and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met at an important summit in which they emphasized the great potential of bilateral cooperation and agreed to boost international trade, with the aim of integrating Albania more and more to the BRI. It is clear that these ties have increased even more in the last three months due to this summit’s results – and this is precisely what worries Washington: the arrival of the BRI in the Balkans.
Faced with this scenario, the American attitude seems simple: to inaugurate a special forces unit in Albania in order to intimidate the Albanian government to abdicate its ties with the Asian country. The US appears to act hurriedly and is unwilling to deal with any signs of growing Chinese influence, responding at the military level to a peaceful partnership. Washington seems determined to make Tirana to conform to a role of regional satellite of American interests.
On the one hand, the American attitude seems even irrational, as it is not common for a country to open a military base abroad just to undermine economic cooperation between two other states. On the other hand, this is consistent with recent US incursions against China. Washington seems desperate to stop Chinese growth in any way possible. And for that, it is willing even to extreme attitudes like this.
In this scenario, for China, nothing changes. The Chinese international attitude usually ignores political and military factors, focusing on economic cooperation. Beijing will continue to try to integrate Tirana into the BRI and it will be up to the Albanian government to decide whether to accept foreign impositions or limit American attitudes and ensure the fulfillment of its own national strategic interests.
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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Science sat the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
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First published on Global Research on January 1st, 2022
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Collette Martin, a practicing nurse of seventeen years, spoke at a Louisiana Health & Welfare hearing earlier this month about what she has seen in the hospital system during the COVID pandemic.
Collette says she and her colleagues have witnessed “terrifying” reactions to the COVID shots, but their concerns about the vaccines are being ignored and dismissed.
Collete went on to say that vaccine-injury report databases like VAERS are so little used that most doctors and nurses don’t even know that it exists, let alone how to file a report.
“The Majority of our nurses, nurse managers, and some doctors do not even know what VAERS is. I’ve spoken to our chief medicine managers and other nurses on why we’re not reporting to VAERS, and the most common response is: ‘What is VAERS?‘.”
As if this were not bad enough already, she then said that none of the hospitals are reporting any data, meaning that even if someone was investigating, there would be no data to investigate.
“This is not just where I work. I know many nurses, friends and other local hospitals in Southeast Louisiana that say the same thing.”
However, what she says about the potential long-term effects of the jabs is shocking.
“We are not just seeing severe acute [short term] reactions with this vaccine, but we have zero idea what any long term reactions are. Cancers, autoimmune [disorders], infertility. We just don’t know.
We are potentially sacrificing our children for fear of maybe dying, getting sick of a virus, a virus with a 99% survival rate.”
Collete concludes by saying that these vaccine side-effects are being covered up as being caused by the new variant.
“As of now, we have more children that died from the COVID vaccine than COVID itself. And then for the Health Department to come out and say the new variant has all the side effects of the vaccine reactions we’re currently seeing now.
It’s maddening, and I don’t understand why more people don’t see it. I think they do, but they fear speaking out and, even worse, being fired.”
Watch her full testimony here:
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The US went into overdrive in propagating against the short Russian-led peacekeeping operation in Kazakhstan under the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) mechanism. The Wall Street Journal speculated whether “the Crisis in Kazakhstan [was] the Rebirth of the Soviet Union” and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that “one lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave.”
Blinken’s statement ended up being humiliated in yesterday’s announcement by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev that the CSTO troop pull-out would begin on Thursday. As a whole, the withdrawal will take less than two weeks since the peacekeepers already restored order in the Central Asian country in a swift manner.
In a tit-for-tat, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on its Telegram social media channel that
“If Antony Blinken loves history lessons so much, then he should take the following into account: when Americans are in your house, it can be difficult to stay alive and not be robbed or raped.”
It is recalled that the new year began in Kazakhstan with protests over rising LPG prices, leading to a dissolved government, destruction of infrastructure and 164 people reportedly killed, including one police officer that was beheaded. Stability and peace were only restored in Kazakhstan when CSTO finally intervened. The mission was so successful that it achieved its aims in only a few days and is already being decommissioned.
Despite the success of the intervention and Blinken still obviously angered by the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Saturday statement, he said on Sunday that the US has “real questions [to Kazakhstan] about why they felt compelled to call this organization that Russia dominates.” He added that “[Kazakhstan] should be able to deal with the protests peacefully. We’re asking for clarification on that.”
This is of course hypocritical considering that Kazakhstan called upon a bloc for assistance in which it is a member of and does not need to respond to the condescending demands made by the US’ top diplomat. Blinken’s statement reeks of contradictions when we consider how the US is conducting missions and occupying areas of Syria without permission from Damascus, invaded Iraq and Afghanistan without a UN mandate, and has troops deployed in Taiwan – an island that Beijing considers a “rebel province” and is recognized as a part of “One China.”
Rather, Washington attempted to piggyback off the unrest in Kazakhstan as the North American country wields very little influence in the region, especially after last year’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. In this way, the US could only resort to cheap propaganda tricks as there is not much they can do on the ground to force a Color Revolution in Central Asia like they did in Eastern Europe and the southern Caucasus.
Despite the misinformation emanating from the US to demonize Russia and CSTO, Kazakh authorities announced on Wednesday that 1,678 people were detained in the past 24 hours over their alleged participation in the violence that rocked the country, the worst since Kazakhstan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The additional 1,678 people being detained now brings the total number to about 12,000. More than 300 criminal investigations into mass unrest and assaults on law enforcement officers, including a brutal beheading, have been opened.
There is little doubt that the US would have preferred to see widespread chaos in Kazakhstan continue, especially as it would open a new pressure point on a large swathe of Russia’s border. Kazakhstan is also Russia’s main access point to the Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. By removing a Russia-friendly government, the US would block Russia from reaching the resources and markets of Central Asia.
The US believed that the crisis in Kazakhstan would be an opportunity to overthrow a Russia-friendly government and install a liberal government that would be friendly to the West, or an Islamist Emirate like Afghanistan that would be a constant source of terrorism and instability for Russia. As said though, the US wields no real influence in Central Asia, and for this reason, it is left red-faced after audaciously predicting “a return of the Soviet Union” and that “Russian troops will never leave”.
This ultimately turned out to be false.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
It’s looking increasingly likely that the US Federal Reserve and the globalist powers that be will use the dramatic rising of inflation as their excuse to bring down the US financial markets and with it, crash the greatest financial bubble in history.
The enormous inflation rise since the malicious political lockdowns and the trillions of dollars in emergency spending by both Trump and Biden, coupled with the continuation of the Fed’s unprecedented near-zero interest rate policies and asset purchases of billions in bonds to keep the bubble inflated a bit longer– have set the stage for an imminent market collapse. Unlike what we are told, it is deliberate and managed.
Supply chain disruptions from Asia to normal truck transport across North America are feeding the worst inflation in four decades in the USA. The stage is set for the central banks to bring down the debt-bloated system and prepare their Great Reset of the world financial system. However this is not an issue of inflation as some mysterious or “temporary” process.
The context is key. The decision to crash the financial system is being prepared amid the far-reaching global pandemic measures that have devastated the world economy since early 2020.It is coming as the NATO powers, led by the Biden Administration, are tipping the world into a potential World War by miscalculation. They are pouring arms and advisers into Ukraine provoking a response by Russia.
They are escalating pressures on China over Taiwan, and waging proxy wars against China in Ethiopia and Horn of Africa and countless other locations.
The looming collapse of the dollar system, which will bring down most of the world with it owing to debt ties, will come as the major industrial nations go fully into economic self-destruction via their so-called Green New Deal in the EU, and USA and beyond.
The ludicrous Zero Carbon policies to phase out coal, oil, gas and even nuclear have already brought the EU electric grid to the brink of major power blackouts this winter as dependency on unreliable wind and solar make up a major part of the grid. On December 31, the “green” new German government oversees the forced closing of three nuclear power plants that generate the electricity equivalent of the entire country of Denmark. Wind and solar can in no way fill the gaps. In the USA Biden’s misnamed Build Back Better policies have driven fuel coats to record highs. To raise interest rates in this conjuncture will devastate the entire world, which seems to be precisely the plan.
The Fake US Inflation Data
Ever since the early 1970s when President Nixon asked his pal, Arthur Burns, then head of the Federal Reserve, to find a way to get rid of politically damaging consumer inflation monthly data that reflected soaring oil prices along with grain, the Fed has used what they called “core inflation” which means consumer price rises MINUS energy and food. At the time energy made up a significant 11% of inflation data. Food had a weight of 25%. Presto by 1975 a 400% OPEC rise in oil prices and a 300% global grain price rise owing to harvest failures in the Soviet region, “core inflation” fell significantly. This, despite the fact that American consumers had to pay far more for gasoline and bread. Very few real people can live without energy or food. Core inflation is a scam.
By 1975 the Burns Fed had eliminated major costs of housing and other factors leaving a Consumer Price Index that was a mere 35% of the original basket of commodities measured. By then real everyday inflation was out of control. In the real world, USA gasoline today is 58 percent more expensive than in 2020 and over the last 12 months, food prices have gone up by more than 6 percent on average. Today the US Consumer Price Index does not include the cost buying and financing houses, and also not of property taxes or home maintenance and improvement. These factors have been soaring across America in the past year. Now all that is lacking is a statement by the Fed that inflation is more alarming than they thought and required aggressive rate hikes to “squeeze inflation out of the system,” a common central bank myth made dogma under Paul Volcker in the 1970s.
The Bloated US Stock Market
Wall Street markets, today with stocks at historic bloated highs, aided by near zero Fed rates and $120 billion of monthly purchases by the Fed of bonds as well, are at a point where a policy reverse by the Fed, expected now in early 2022, could begin a panic exit from stocks to “get out while the getting is good.” That in turn will likely trigger panic selling and a snowballing market collapse that will make the recent China Evergrande real estate and stock collapse look like nothing at all.
Since the global financial crisis of September 2008, the Federal Reserve and other major central banks such as the ECB in the EU and Bank of Japan have pursued unprecedented zero interest rates and often “quantitative easing” purchases of bonds to bail out the major financial institutions and Wall Street and EU banks. It had little to do with the health of the real economy. It was about the largest bailout in history of brain dead banks and financial funds. The predictable result of the Fed and other central banks’ unprecedented policies has been the artificial inflation of the greatest speculative bubble in stocks in history.
As President, Donald Trump constantly pointed to new record rises in the S&P 500 stocks as proof of the booming economy, even though as a savvy businessman he knew it was a lie. It was rising because of the Fed zero interest rate policy. Companies were borrowing at low rates not to expand plant and equipment investment so much as to buy back their own stocks from the market. That had the effect of boosting stocks in companies from Microsoft to Dell to Amazon, Pfizer, Tesla and hundreds of others. It was a manipulation that corporate executives, owning millions of their own company shares as options, loved. They made billions in some cases, while creating no real value in the economy or the economy.
How big is today’s US stock market bubble? In October 2008 just after the Lehman crisis, US stocks were listed at a total of $13 trillion capitalization. Today it is over $50 trillion, an increase of almost 400% and more than double the total US GDP. Apple Corp. alone is $3 trillion.
Yet with massive labor shortages, lockdowns across America and huge disruptions to trade supply chains especially from China, the economy is sinking and Biden’s phony “infrastructure” bill will do little to rebuild the vital economic infrastructure of highways, rains, water treatment plants and electric grids. For millions of Americans after the 2008 housing collapse, buying stocks has been their best hope for retirement income. A stock crash in 2022 is being prepared by the Fed, only this time it will be used to usher in a real Great Depression worse than the 1930’s as tens of millions or ordinary Americans see their life savings wiped out.
Stock Buyback Game
Over the past four quarters, S&P 500 companies bought back $742 billion of their own shares. Q4 of 2021 will likely see a record increase in that number as companies rush to pump their shares ahead of a reported Biden tax on corporate stock buybacks. Since the beginning of 2012, the S&P 500 companies have bought back nearly $5.68 trillion of their own shares. This is no small beer. The dynamic is so insane that amid a Microsoft decision last month to buy back ever more shares, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella dumped over 50% of his Microsoft stock in one day. But the stock barely budged because Microsoft itself was busy buying back shares. That indicates the level of unreality in today’s US market. The insiders know it’s about to crash. Tesla’s Elon Musk just sold $10 billion of his stock, allegedly to pay taxes.
Making the stock market even more vulnerable to a panic selloff once it is clear the Fed will raise interest rates, there is nearly $1 trillion in margin debt as of data from October, debt for those buying stocks on borrowed money from their brokers. Once a major market selloff begins, likely early in 2022, brokers will demand repayment of their margin debt, so-called margin calls. That in turn will accelerate the forced selling to raise the cash calls.
Taper?
There is much discussion about when the Fed will reduce its buying of US Treasury securities as well as government-linked home mortgage bonds. That buying has been huge. Since the start of the covid pandemic hysteria in February 2020, total Federal Reserve holdings of such securities have more than doubled from $3.8 trillion to $8 trillion as of end of October 2021. That has kept home mortgage rates artificially low and fueled panic home buying as citizens realize the low rates are about to end. That the Fed calls “taper”, reducing the monthly buying of bonds to zero at the same time it raises key interest rates, a double whammy. This is huge, and blood will flow from Wall Street beginning 2022 when the Fed taper picks up momentum early in 2022 combined with raising rates.
Already in November the Fed began reducing its monthly market supporting buying. “In light of the substantial further progress the economy has made toward the Committee’s goals of maximum employment and price stability,” the FOMC declared in its recent minutes. It announced that it is decreasing the amount of Treasury and Mortgage backed securities purchases in November and December.
Since the Vietnam War era under President Lyndon Johnson, the US Government has manipulated employment data as well as inflation numbers to give a far better picture than exists. Private economist John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics, estimates that actual USA unemployment far from the reported 4.2% for November, is actually over 24.8%. As Williams further notes, “The Inflation Surge Reflects Extreme Money Supply Creation, Extreme Federal Deficit Spending and Federal Debt Expansion, Pandemic Disruptions and Supply Shortages; It Does Not Reflect an Overheating Economy.” Federal Budget Deficits are running a record $3 trillion a year with no end in sight.
Raising rates at this precarious juncture will bring down the fragile US and global financial system, paving the way for a crisis where citizens might beg for emergency relief in the form of digital money and a Great Reset. It is worth noting that every major US stock market crash since October 1929 including 2007-8, has been a result of deliberate Fed actions, disguised under the claims of “containing inflation.”
This time the damage could be epochal. In September the Washington-based Institute of International Finance estimated that global debt levels, which include government, household and corporate and bank debt, rose $4.8 trillion to $296 trillion at the end of June, $36 trillion above pre-pandemic levels. Fully $92 trillion of that is owed by emerging markets such as Turkey, China, India and Pakistan.
Rising interest rates will trigger default crises across the globe as borrowers are unable to repay. This has been deliberately created by central banks, led by the Fed, since their 2008 crisis by pushing interest rates to zero or even negative.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
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“The truth of the matter is that the end of the American era had come much earlier.” – Francis Fukuyama, Тhe Economist, Nov.8, 2021
History: Truman 1947. Pax Britannica is Dead! Long Live Pax Americana!
On March 12th 1947, the 33rd President of the United States, Harry Truman, delivered a live speech to the United States Congress announcing $400 million in financial assistance to the governments of Turkey and Greece.
How did this prosaic speech, in of itself, turn out to be the most important defining geopolitical trajectory of the 20th century? Truman states three fundamental sentences:
Quote – “Great Britain finds itself under the necessity of reducing or liquidating its commitments in several parts of the world, including Greece.”
At this moment, the USA is the only country capable of providing financial aid: Quote – “There is no other country to which democratic Greece can turn”.
From this moment on, US foreign policy has been radically transformed: Quote – “The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world — and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation”.
What was Truman trying to convey using this diplomatic, yet unambiguously firm tone and language?
In French royal court lexicon, his words may sound akin to: Le Roi est mort! Vive le Roi!
Truman’s 1947 speech has one essential message: Pax Britannica is dead!Long Live Pax Americana!
It is unnecessary to analyze the extent to which the tectonic rupture between the empire in which the sun never sets, Pax Britannica, and the arrival of Pax Americana has influenced the global geopolitical processes of the 20th century. An American global hegemony is an indisputable fact.
December 17, 2021
But let’s go back to December 17th, 2021. Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs published two documents that, I would say, have the same geopolitical significance for the current 21st century.
In a very direct tone, to put it bluntly, Russia has issued an ‘ultimatum’ (despite Putin rejecting such formulation) to the United States and NATO: if you do not accept our terms, we will be forced to use military and military-technical means.
Obviously, it is not customary to speak of a hegemon, even more so of the global hegemon, who after the collapse of the USSR triumphantly declared not only the planet ‘American’, the so-called unipolar world, but also the 21st century the “American Century”, based on the famous doctrine of the “New American Century Project”.
What, actually happened on December 17th 2021?
In the same way that the end of the British Empire was announced to the world, on that date the end of American hegemony was publicly announced.
Russia’s proposals in these two documents are numerous, but in summary, the main pitches are as follows:
Retraction of the 2008 NATO Invitation to Ukraine and Georgia.
Legally binding guarantee that no strike systems which could target Moscow will be deployed in countries next to Russia.
No NATO or equivalent (UK, U.S., Pl.) ‘exercises’ near Russian borders.
NATO ships, planes to keep certain distances from Russian borders.
Regular military-to-military
Please note:
Withdrawal of US and NATO military contingents and bases from Central and Eastern Europe, maintaining military parity since 1997, before Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria are accepted as members of NATO.
Despite the inevitable shock in Washington and NATO to the tone of Russia’s peace proposals, this time Russia has decided to cross the Rubicon and dictate its terms to the collective West – and has done so from a position of strength.
Translated into lay terms, the meaning of this ultimatum is: meet “the new sheriff in town” either in a peaceful way, by meeting with Foreign Minister Mr. Lavrov, or in the painful way, as has already been expressed figuratively and unequivocally by an influential foreign policy analyst, by “meeting with Mr. Iskander, Mr. Caliber, Mr. Kinjal and Mr. Zircon”.
Is such a threat exaggerated?
The answer is probably not!
According to the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and First Deputy Minister of Defense General Valery Gerasimov, warned that the confrontation will not be verbal which sentiment was echoed by the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko who bluntly said on Solovyov Live YouTube channel. “The moment of truth has come“
Such a tone would be completely unthinkable for Washington if we exclude the time of the 1962 Caribbean crisis, much less coming from a “gas station”, as the late Senator John McCain, described Russia. But this time, it seems, Washington is willing to negotiate.
Why?
Let us recall the categorical statement of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Grushko:
“We only make it clear that we are ready to talk about the transition from a military or military-technical scenario to a political process that will strengthen security in all countries. The OSCE area, the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian regions.If that doesn’t work, we’ve signaled to them [NATO] that we’ll move on to creating counter-threats as well, but then it will be too late to ask us why we made these decisions and why we deployed these systems.“
The possibility of a new deployment of weapons systems, including hypersonic weapons, threatening the United States not only from Russia but also from Belarus, the Arctic, the Atlantic (including the Gulf of Mexico) and the Pacific would force the United States to seriously rethink these proposals. Why? One possible explanation… is the insufficiency of 5 minutes required to destroy strategic sites on US territory, including Washington, given the speed of the new Russian hypersonic attack systems: Zircon – Mach 9 (9,800-11,025 km / h or 3 km per second) and the Avangard 20-27 Mach (30,000 km / h or 8.5 km per second).
It should be noted that the new generation of hypersonic systems does not address the sole challenge of the new geopolitical reality that Washington should address at this time.
The China-Russia Alliance: “Rock Solid”
In addition, there is one particularly significant, unavoidable factor, which should not be ignored – China. Days before the publication of Russia’s ultimatums, Chinese President Xi Zing Ping described relations with Russia using a particularly enigmatic diplomatic lexicon: “We (understand) (Russia and China) are much more than allies“.
Whatever truly lies behind this statement, the Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijiang of China described relations between the two countries as “rock solid”.
In this sense, the United States will have to respond to the Russian ultimatum given the Moscow-Beijing axis – i.e. the absolute nightmare of the parent of modern geopolitics Halford Mackinder, according to whom the only obstacle to global hegemony of the “collective West” is the creation of a union of two major Eurasian colossus – Russia and China.
It remains to be seen how the United States will accept this new geopolitical reality.
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Prof. Ivalyo Grouev is a prominent author and geopolitical analyst, teaches political science at the University of Ottawa.
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Here are the latest COVID trends, following on from the COVID trends summarized in August,September, October, November and December last year in 2021. The news is a mix of good and bad, with COVID tyranny continuing but with more and more truth coming to light. Although some US courts are ruling in pro-freedom ways, the current mentality of some US Supreme Court judges leaves a lot to be desired. This month’s report features some of the deeper aspects of the NWO (New World Order) COVID operation: depopulation and microchipping. Here are the 13 current COVID trends as of January 2022.
COVID Trend #1: Depopulation Becomes Apparent? Life Insurance CEO says Mortality Rates for Working Age People Increased by 40%
In yet another moment when conspiracy theory became conspiracy fact (as been happening all the time since the COVID scamdemic began), people were shocked to learn that the mathematics is showing the reality of the depopulation agenda. After all, insurance companies are in the business of accurate mortality data. The CEO of OneAmerica, Scott Davison, announced that death rates for people aged 18-64 had increased by 40%:
“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica … The data is consistent across every player in that business … Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic. So 40% is just unheard of.”
OneAmerica is not a small player in the life insurance industry. It brings in about 2 billion dollars in revenue annually and it has been around for more than 140 years:
“OneAmerica is a major insurance company located in Indianapolis with annual revenue of around $2 billion and total assets of around $74 billion. This is not a fly-by-night internet “insurance” company. OneAmerica is the real deal, selling both individual and group life insurance, and it has data and actuarial tables that go back 145 years.”
The first-linked article actually states that “most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths” which lets the cat out of the bag.
This echoes the predictions of doctors like Dr. Michael Yeadon and Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi who stated that the COVID vax would result in genocide or mass murder. Of course, the NWO (New World Order) controllers and architects of the scamdemic would have wargamed and simulated this scenario out.
They would have known very well this would happen.
They would have known that this scenario of mass death would eventuate, and they would have also known that many of these deaths would be attributed to different causes, thereby sparing the COVID fake-vaccine from blame. If someone gets a stroke from the COVID vax while driving and then crashes the car, it would be a traffic fatality. If someone loses their balance and falls off a ladder or down the stairs to die of head injuries, the vax would escape liability. If an athlete dies unexpectedly on the pitch or court, it could be chalked up to something else.
This entire sad and shocking scenario, unfolding right before our eyes, had been baked into the cake. Just how far it will go is still anyone’s guess. However, depopulation is only one of the agendas here, and I would suggest that the transhumanist agenda, i.e. the agenda to make a slave class of machine-like and controllable citizens, is a more prominent motivator for the NWO criminals than the desire to kill everyone. I would suggest that, to the NWO, those who don’t survive the clot shot and the transforming of their genes are more like collateral damage, eugenic weaklings, useless eaters and/or cannon fodder for the ultimate agenda.
COVID Trend #2: Company is Already Selling a COVID Passport Microchip
“This technology exists and is used whether we like it or not.
I am happy that it is brought into the public conversation.
New technologies must be broadly debated and understood.
Smart implants are a powerful health technology.
That is what we are building at Dsruptive and our goal is to transform healthcare on a global scale.”
Sjobald said the technology makes the vaccine passports more “accessible.”
“This means it is always accessible for me or for anyone else, really, who wants to read me.
For example, if I go to the movies or go to a shopping center, then people will be able to check my status even if I don’t have my phone.”
Sweden seems to have been chosen as the place to first roll out human microchipping agenda. The fact that the COVID agenda has helped advance this more sinister, longstanding agenda is highly disturbing. This underscores the gravity of the situation humanity is in as 2022 begins and people worldwide fight for their rights and freedom.
COVID Trend #3: Some Nations Roll Out Digital Tech Combining State ID, Driver’s License and COVID Vaccine Status
The microchip or nanochip is the end goal, but there are stepping stones along the way. The COVID plandemic has always just been the vehicle for the NWO technocrats to push forward their deeper agendas. Chief among these is the all-encompassing social credit system with one system or form of ID that tells officials everything about you, including your so-called health status (not that these sociopaths have any idea what true health is). This article reveals that Greece is poised to introduce a full mobile version of its digital ID/driver’s license. This COVID trend is occurring worldwide.
COVID Trend #4: Numerous US Federal Officials Make Stunning Admissions that Contradict the Official Narrative
As the new year starts, some federal officials have made some surprising and embarrassing admissions which contradict the official narrative. Teleprompter-in-chief Joe Biden admitted that there was no federal solution to COVID, thus confirming the limitation of the US Federal Government to try to force things like vaccine mandates onto Americans.
Vaccine pusher-in-chief Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that the mandates were just a mechanism to get more people vaccinated. Another vaccine pusher, CDC director Rochelle Walensky, admitted that the reason the CDC recently changed the quarantine period from 10 days to 5 days was that they thought people would tolerate it more. Hmmm … weren’t all these measures supposed to be based on science, not how much tyranny people would endure? Walensky also admitted that 75% of COVID deaths occurred in people with at least 4 comorbidities. Did you catch that? Talk about letting the cat out of the bag.
The CDC also just admitted that PCR positive results could last up to 12 weeks, way after supposed infection. The PCR technique was the standard used by governments worldwide to declare an emergency and a pandemic. It also led of course to the phenomenon of the casedemic. With the CDC now in 2022 withdrawing its request (to the FDA) for an EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) for the COVID PCR “test,”this essentially means the CDC is no longer endorsing the validity of the PCR technique as a legitimate COVID diagnostic tool. Based on this, it may be possible for more lawsuits pushing back against the tyranny to be successful. Patrick Wood writes:
“So, the CDC is pulling the experimental RT-PCR test while telling clinicians to find “authorized COVID-19 diagnostic methods” instead.You don’t need to be a PhD, MD or epidemiologist with a peer-reviewed study to figure this out. In fact, you don’t need any medical expertise whatsoever.
An unapproved experimental testing diagnostic was used to trick people into taking unapproved experimental mRNA injections.”
COVID Trend #5: Authorities Intensify their Vitriol against the Unvaxxed
Another noticeable COVID trend of late has been the increasing tendency of those in power to dehumanize the unvaccinated – a trend I warned about in my February 2021 article The COVID Cult and the 10 Stages of Genocide. In that article, I discussed how a group of people could gradually be made the enemy of the state through isolation, discrimination, dehumanization and (eventual) murder. The rhetoric of 2 politicals leaders – French President Macron and Canadian PM Trudeau – is extremely disturbing, as is that of a German police officer.
Macron recently said that he really wants to piss the unvaccinated off and make life difficult for them. He actually said that “when my freedom threatens that of others, I become irresponsible. An irresponsible person is no longer a citizen,” which could imply that he thinks governments should regard the unvaccinated as non-citizens, or that he proposes stripping people of citizenship if they refuse to comply with vaccine mandates. Trudeau asked whether the unvaccinated should be tolerated. In Germany, a police officer called unvaccinated people indirect killers and said they were not human! This kind of rhetoric is not simply judgemental and aggressive; it is indicative of a mass hypnosis and psychosis I discussed in previous articles.
COVID Trend #6: Freudian Slips – Authorities Get a Little Too Honest
Those paying close attention to the words of our misleaders can sometimes find some startling admissions. The most recent egregious example was WHO head Tedros who admitted that “it’s better to focus on those groups who have risk of severe diseases and death, rather than as we see some countries are using to give boosters to kill children, which is not right.” His English is a little wobbly, but his meaning is clear enough. Why would he say that the COVID boosters kill children?
COVID Trend #7: Bills Introduced that, If Passed, Would Authorize Health Officers to Arrest and Detain the Unvaxxed
There are several proposed New York State (although A416 has now been stricken probably due to public outcry) and Washington State Bills which, if passed, would allow the State (via techniques like giving the Health Officer sheriff-like powers) to “involuntarily detain” unvaccinated people. In the case of Washington State, it would authorize a “strike force” to enter people’s homes. To say these kind of bills are unconstitutional and outrageous is a gross understatement. They absolutely gut the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments, among many others, and proceed on the assumption of guilty until proven innocent per the new bioterrorism model.
COVID Trend #8: Shocking Number of Athlete Heart Attacks
According to this article, as of January 2022, there have been 405 athlete cardiac arrests and 237 athletes who have died after COVID shot – an unprecedented pattern in the history of sport. How many more athletes need to die (which is very conspicuous after all) before more people put 2 and 2 together?
COVID Trend #9: More Research Shows Vaccines Ruin the Immune System Permanently
Another important COVID trend is the ever-increasing number of studies showing just how dangerous the new COVID DNA/mRNA devices are (falsely called vaccines). The Daily Expose ran this article explaining how studies prove that the non-vaccines damage the immune system, probably permanently, while official German Government data suggests that the fully vaccinated will develop AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) by the end of this month – January 2022.
COVID Trend #10: Unhealthy Bureaucrats Restrict the Rights of Healthy Citizens – Based on the Idea They Know More About Health
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, double masked and reportedly triple vaxxed, still got COVID. Australian PM Scott Morrison tried to deny world tennis #1 men’s player, Novak Djokovic, from entry into Australia (but at this stage Novak won the legal fight). Both soldiers and athletes in general train long hours and are indisputably in great shape. The chance of them getting sick of anything is very low compared to the average person, and yet they are being dictated to, and having their rights stripped away, by unhealthy, often obese bureaucrats and politicians who claim they know more about health than their citizens. What a clownworld we inhabit.
COVID Trend #11: The Meaning of Fully Vaccinated Continues to Be Altered
This COVID trend has been a long time coming, because being fully vaccinated is an endless destination. The ruling class is always fine-tuning their buzzwords and propaganda phrases for maximum effect in molding perception. Nothing is left to chance. Also, they want a permanent control system where fully vaccinated means you have done anything and everything they want, and if you have disobeyed any decree, then they’ll change your designation (the essence of the social credit system). Dr. Fraud-ci recently announced that they will be changing the term “fully vaccinated” to “up to date”:
“A few weeks ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci hinted that the federal government would soon change its definition of “fully vaccinated” to include not just the two original shots but at least one booster dose as well.
But in the latest indication that Dr. Fauci has succeeded in pushing this scheme, the good doctor said Tuesday during a lecture at the National Institutes of Health that new terminology would be used in place of the “fully vaccinated” language. Instead of referring to somebody as “fully vaccinated”, they will be referred to as having their vaccinations “up to date” to reflect the notion that they have gotten their booster shots.
“We’re using the terminology now ‘keeping your vaccinations up to date,’ rather than what ‘fully vaccinated’ means,” Fauci said during a National Institutes of Health lecture Tuesday.”
COVID Trend #12: Several US Supreme Court Judges Show Their Supreme Lack of Knowledge about the Scamdemic
The US Supreme Court may be weighing in on some of the COVID restrictions that have been foist upon the American people, but their decisions will only be as good as how well informed they are. In a recent discussion, Judge Sotomayor showed herself to be woefully misinformed about the number of child COVID cases. We can only hope that truth will prevail in the 9-person panel when it comes to them actually making a decision. Soveriegn Man Simon Black writes:
“You probably heard that the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Friday regarding the federal government’s vaccine mandate. Specifically, Hunter Biden’s dad told the Occupational Safety Health Administration, which regulates workplace safety, to require businesses across America with more than 100 employees to mandate vaccines in the workplace, or masking/testing. This order was almost immediately challenged, and the case was heard in two separate federal courts. One court ruled in favor of an injunction, the other ruled against it. And so the case landed rather quickly in front of the US Supreme Court …I listened to the entire 4+ hours of audio over the weekend, and frankly some of the Justices’ remarks were simply ridiculous. First, it’s worth pointing out that everyone in the room had to produce a negative COVID test before being allowed to enter. Everyone present was double vaccinated, and most were boosted. And almost everyone was wearing a mask. Yet Justice Sotomayor still refused to be in the room. She phoned it in from her private office down the hall. Clearly it doesn’t matter what protocols are in place; this person has chosen to be terrified no matter what. And unsurprisingly her remarks smacked of fear, paranoia, and ignorance. Sotomayor stated that, for example, that “over 100,000” children are in serious condition, i.e. hospitalized, “many on ventilators”. This is 100% patently false. Even the CDC had to refute her comments. Nevertheless, Sotomayor thinks that the OSHA mandate is a great idea and will save lives. Therefore she seems to have no problem with it, regardless of the legality. She even concluded that since Congress isn’t willing to pass a law requiring a nationwide vaccine mandate, that OSHA should do it.
Similarly, Justice Breyer was practically exasperated in citing all the death statistics and case numbers, and wondered how in the world could anyone possibly be against the OSHA order? Justice Kagan chimed in stating that “we all know” that OSHA has put forth “the best policy”. Apparently she speaks for all of us. These are all extraordinary comments. And their general nature was that these Justices like the OSHA mandate, therefore they’re in favor of it. This is a gross, despicable violation of their most sacred responsibility. Their personal opinion about the OSHA order is not relevant. The only thing that matters is whether or not it’s legal.”
Meanwhile, lower federal court judges have delivered some good results recently, including a judge who rejects the FDA’s proposed 75 year delay on vax data by ordering them to release all of it in 8 months.
COVID Trend #13: US Federal Court Decisions Uphold Religious Exemption
Another important COVID trend is the upholding of the religious exemption to the vaccine. Religious exemptions, like medical and philosophical exemptions, have been repeatedly under attack even before the scamdemic. Recently, a US Federal Judge ruled in favor of unvaccinated Navy SEALs and blocked the Pentagon from punishing them.
Final Thoughts: Remain Sane in an Insane World
I have often heard people over the years talk about the importance of being or remaining free in an unfree world, and giving advice on how to do that. I agree, but in today’s world, I would take it one step further: we need to remain sane in an insane world. The idea of mass formation psychosis (as discussed in previous articles months ago), that has developed since the scamdemic began, has began to spread. People are getting used to the idea that the world at large has been hypnotized. The key here is to remain sane by being aware of all the insanity that could penetrate your consciousness. This is no mean feat. However, unlike a supposed killer virus, sanity is contagious. The more people that can do this, the more it will spread to others.
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Bribery is one of the serious factors hindering effective development of a state and is a huge social threat. How do those who deal with public finances on an everyday basis fight it?
Developing anti-bribery mechanisms becomes a significant and urgent problem in the development of modern society and the State. At that, the international community sees readiness to effectively combat it as a key indicator of civility and commitment to democratic values.
With this in mind, and given the growing popularity of anti-bribery programmes focusing on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, many countries are opting for greater protection in this area. The effective implementation of an anti-bribery course depends on many factors and touches on all areas, including the selection of reliable quality standards and trustworthy suppliers. This case concerns public authorities and their suppliers as well. Often, they deal with public money on a regular basis, which increases their risk of bribery. How exactly do they put anti-bribery measures into practice?
Complexity that pays off
One of the recognized benchmarks here is ISO 37001, the international standard for anti-bribery management systems. It prevents, detects and combats bribery and covers the issue in the public, private and non-profit sectors, including bribery by an organization or its suppliers. One of the distinguishing aspects of ISO 37001 is the difficulty of passing it: to be certified, an organization must show an implemented set of anti-bribery measures.
Thus, the Peruvian government had to introduce a range of measures to adopt the standard and make it work: a number of training programmes for both public- and private-sector stakeholders was carried, and a working group was established. “We have engaged government authorities and private institutions interested in implementing an anti-bribery system and their response has been most positive,” says Rosario Uría Toro, Director of the National Peruvian Directorate of Standardization. It turned out that the efforts paid off: the standard was introduced in late 2017, and the country’s Corruption Index by Transparency International has been climbing up ever since.
The difference that will be noticed
The complexity of passing the test looks scary for many: “These [arguments against the certification] include the cost, the burdensome internal processes, and of course the burning question at the end of it all: What difference will an ISO certification make in the eyes of law enforcement?” asks the Basel Institute of Governance, offering an intra-industrial collective action initiative for the fiduciary industry instead.
Bank Al-Maghrib, the Central Bank of Morocco, disagrees. The institution has been ISO 37001 certified back in 2019, and, while the certification process should have been quite a challenge for the weighty and large organization, they carried it well. What is most important, the effort was highly regarded by the country’s law enforcement and overseeing agencies, such as the national anti-corruption agency, the authority regulating capital markets and the authority regulating the insurance sector. A praise like this definitely eliminates the question of difference posed above.
Public sector suppliers, and namely, suppliers in the financial sector, also recognise the importance of independent certification. For instance, French security printer Oberthur Fiduciaire opted for ISO standards even though it had already had other intra-industry certifications, such as the ECB certificate: “The ISO standards we have put in place, whether in terms of quality, respect of the environment, safety or the fight against corruption, with ISO 37001 for example, are, in my opinion, much more relevant arguments than any statements that we could make,” saidThomas Savare, CEO of the company. The fact that Oberthur is trusted by more than 70 central banks worldwide only confirms the high level of ISO certificates and their holders.
Reinforcing integrity
Speaking of trust, this is the last but not the least issue to be touched upon. ISO 37001 contains mandatory requirements and implies firm commitment of top chiefs. In this way, certification provides assurance to all concerned that the organisation is making every reasonable effort to avoid bribery. The voluntary nature of the certification only underlines the commitment and intention to cooperate in good faith, says the Government of Québec, which has also adopted the standard to be double sure : “In recent years, the government has put several measures in place to reinforce the integrity of public contracts… This pilot project [ISO 37001 certification – ed.] is another action aiming to keep Québec at the forefront of best practices.”
Bribery is still a burning issue. Its risks vary across sectors and are particularly high in the financial industry, where organisations deal daily with money, one of the most powerful instruments of influence in human history.
Under these circumstances, anti-bribery measures become an essential factor in assessing the integrity and reliability of a public authority and its suppliers, and actions taken in this regard become a measure of trustworthiness. At the same time, the careful selection of a yardstick is important, which is why those public sectors and suppliers who want to show that their money is well-managed opt for the most reliable standards, such as ISO 37001.
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Pfizer is making headlines again after the CEO of the controversial company Albert Bourlamade a recent statement about the efficiency of the COVID shot.
He recently said in a video that’s all over Twitter that two shots of the covid vaccine offer limited protection against covid 19, “if any.”
Check out the relevant tweet below:
Pfizer CEO: “Two doses of the vaccine offers very limited protection, if any. 3 doses with a booster offer reasonable protection against hospitalization and deaths. Less protection against infection.”@US_FDA -Come get your boy!
The controversial video triggered massive backlash considering the fact that back in 2021, the CEO of Pfizer was claiming that the vaccine his company created in 100% effective in preventing covid 19 cases. The has been taken off Twitter, but you can still see it on this website.
Check out his tweet from April 2021:
Excited to share that updated analysis from our Phase 3 study with BioNTech also showed that our COVID-19 vaccine was 100% effective in preventing #COVID19 cases in South Africa. 100%! https://t.co/E2ksTJSopU
More than that, it’s been also revealed that the original shots have also lost some of their efficacy at preventing hospitalization.
He also stated the following:
“The third dose of the current vaccine is providing quite good protection against deaths, and decent protection against hospitalizations.”
He also made sure to explain the fact that this variant of the virus is a more difficult target than previous variants.
“Omicron, which has dozens of mutations, can evade some of the protection provided by Pfizer’s original two shots.”
FDA and Pfizer controversy
There has been a massive scandal involving the fact that the FDA asked for 75 years to produce Pfizer vaccine safety data. Now, it seems that things are changing, and you should check out the latest reports on the issue below.
It’s been just reported that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will have eight months — not the 75 years it requested — to release all documents related to the licensing of Pfizer’s Comirnaty covid vaccine. This is what a federal judge ruled a few days ago.
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Passionate about subjects from the science and health-related areas, Rada has been blogging for about ten years and at Health Thoroughfare, she’s covering the latest news on these niches.
Comments Off on Pfizer Scandal: CEO Albert Bourla Reveals Two COVID Vaccine Shots Offer ‘Very Limited Protection, If Any’ after Claiming Shot Was ‘100% Effective’
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Kazakhstan reminds me of Armenia (September 2015), also energy price increases, Georgia (April 2009), opposition attempting to force pro-Russian President Mikheil Saakashvili from power; and even to some extent of Ukraine (2014) – Maidan riots supposedly because then President Viktor Yanukovych lured into negotiations with Europe for an association agreement with the European Union, behind which was – who else – NATO. The majority of Ukrainians had no idea about these ongoing negotiations and their background. So, the riots were planned by long hand and had nothing to do with the short-cut EU negotiations. Talks were eventually interrupted when Yanukovych received assurance from Russia for a “better deal”.
That’s when hell broke out on 21 February 2014 and the Maidan massacre took place. Its violent destruction was disproportionate to the cause. Western hired mercenaries were behind the merciless killing. The Maidan massacre murdered some 130 people, including some 18 policemen. That’s when it became clear – another Color Revolution was being instigated by the west and always, but always with NATO in the back. NATO’s goal, was setting up one or several bases in Ukraine, the closer to Moscow, the better.
Just for the record, the 1991 agreement between Europe and the new Russia, stipulated that there would be no new NATO bases further to the east (of Berlin), was never respected by the west. That’s why President Putin is drawing red lines, and rightly so.
Perhaps, one of the first such Color Revolutions in recent history was Serbia, when in early 2000 Serbian youth chanted “Slobo, Save Serbia! Slobo Save Serbia!” Later that year, a “reform-minded” foreign-funded and trained group of young people infiltrated the Serbian pro-Milosevic youth and brought Milosevic, the president loved by most Serbs, to fall in October 2000. He was arrested immediately shipped to the ICC prison in The Hague where he awaited trial for highest treason and crimes against humanity, which he did not commit.
His lawyers accumulated enough proof for Milosevic to demonstrate that the west was behind this Color Revolution – and, indeed, the total dismantling of former Yugoslavia. If these documents would become known to the Court, the ICC, one of the most important interferences and destruction of a country in recent history would shed an irrevocable light on the crimes of the west, at that time by President Clinton et al. So, Milosevic had to be “neutralized’. On March 11, 2006, he was found dead in his prison cell, a so-called suicide. This, despite the fact that since June 2001, he was on constant suicide watch.
Well, these are the stories of Armenia, Georgia and Serbia – but back to Kazakhstan, which resembles in many details these preceding so-called Color Revolution stories. NATO having been unsuccessful under Russia’s strict red line – to advance further toward Moscow in Ukraine, or before in Belarus, is trying now on the southern front, with Kazakhstan.
This is clearly an attempted coup, no longer just protests about a gas price hike. It was engineered by the west – see this interview on Kazakhstan crisis of Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos with Kevork Almassian (video 46 min. 6 January 2022).
No chance of success with this new coup attempt – just more propaganda for the west.
President Putin will never allow these former Soviet republics to slide into the power base of the west, of NATO, especially now, since it is well known that over 90% of the population of all these former Soviet Republics want to stay firmly in Russia’s orbit.
The repeated protest pattern in Serbia, Armenia, Georgia, Belarus, and now in Kazakhstan are clearly indicative of western / NATO pressure to destabilize Russia and, ideally, so they keep dreaming since WWII – bring Russia into the “western influence base” – call it slavehood. In several of these cases the base reason for riots were massive energy price hikes, were just a pretext to heavy violent interference by western mercenaries under the guidance of NATO.
Never forget NATO is always the powerbase behind these moves, because the end game is one or several NATO bases in the countries they are trying to putsch. Yet, it doesn’t seem to be very smart, as the west ought to know that none of these former Soviet Republics will betray Russia – almost all the people, including all the higher-level politicians, want to remain firmly in Russia’s zone of influence. Kiev was an exception. Kiev since WWII has been a Nazi stronghold, something that doesn’t apply to the rest of Ukraine.
In Kazakhstan, after what appears as local rather peaceful riots, violent elements were introduced from “outside”, in the form of well-trained almost para-military protesters, out to kill. It is what has become known as an attempted “Color Revolution”.
In Kazakhstan the death toll far exceeds 30, including 18 policemen, at least two of whom were decapitated. Hundreds have been injured. While according to Kazakh President Tokayev, constitutional order was largely restored last Friday, 7 January, unrest continues and nearly 4000 people were arrested. The extreme violence took over government buildings and burnt them down; the airport was occupied. The level of violence was way disproportionate for a gas price hike. Clearly other motives are at stake.
The vast majority of the 19 million Kazakhs have not taken to the streets, because of the gas price increase, which was not as dramatic as the western mainstream media has you believe. The majority lives in rural areas and avoids violence.
These latest Kazakh upheavals could also be called a below-the-belt NATO approach to destabilize Russia, since NATO seems to have failed in Ukraine. In other words, undermining Russia’s position on Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on Friday. Peacekeepers from Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan were deployed to Kazakhstan earlier last week. President Tokayev was saying they would stay “for a limited period of time” to support the local security forces.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense later clarified that the CSTO forces have also been tasked with the protection of important facilities and key infrastructure and were not supposed to participate in “operational and combat” activities. The EU, a typical undecided hypocritical agent, also offered the bloc’s assistance to help resolve the crisis with several countries calling on both the protesters and government forces to refrain from violence.
Yeah, right: calling on both parties to refrain from violence, when in fact the violent element was introduced clearly by NATO members, most of whom are Europeans. Once again, the trustworthiness of Europe is down the pits. All it will do is appease some ignorant western, mostly European citizen with a massive flood of pro-western propaganda.
The question in the room is – why Russian and Kazakh governments’ special services did not foresee this type of “Color Revolution” coming, especially after Russia’s drawing a red line on Ukraine? And after the west had lost her coup attempt in Belarus? Is it possible that the Ukraine distraction – hyped up by the western media with constant threats of a nuclear WWIII scenario – diverted President Putin’s attention from other vulnerable attack areas, such as Kazakhstan? And possibly Belarus? The latter is currently quiet. But to an outside eye, it looks like a temporary calm. And Ukraine is far from over.
As long as Russia is running after the problem, rather than taking an offensive surprise lead, Putin may remain in a defensive bind. Reacting, rather than being pro-active. That’s always a disadvantage and may deserve strategic rethinking.
Just imagine what a pro-active surprise move might be. For example, Russia setting up a military base in Mexico. And why not? Russia would certainly have the stature and standing in terms of a friendly relation with Mexico to do so. It would be a game changer. It would put a different spin on world geopolitics. Why not give it a try by starting talks with AMLO, Mr. Lopez Obrador, Mexico’s President.
The west’s / NATO’s intent has been since the 1990s to separate Kazakhstan from the orbit of the former Soviet Union and today’s Russia. So far unsuccessfully, for the reasons pointed out before. Kazakhstan exports 30% to and imports 60% from Russia and China. Today more than ever Kazakhstan is part of the Eurasian alliance. It is a de facto integrated nation and one in close partnership.
The Russians and Kazakhs have learned from Ukraine. It didn’t take President Kassym-Jomart Kemelevich Tokayev long to request assistance from Russia; and it didn’t take long for President Putin to respond, through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO – Eurasian security organization; members: Russia (de facto leader), Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan).
The first Russian troops are already arriving in Almaty go help bring the situation under control. In addition to the CSTO troops, Russia is also sending air force troops to counter the militants. Chances are that his will not become a new Kiev, where Assistant Foreign Minister Victoria Nuland, so eloquently said “f*ck Europe!” since the US had already spent 10 million dollars over the past years to prepare this coup.….
What we see in Kazakhstan are very well trained and armed militants – not peaceful protesters, as would have been the case when protests started over gas price increases – it is clear that peaceful protesters do not take over government buildings and airports, they do not shoot police officers to kill – this is clearly foreign intervention.
Time will tell whether the CSTO troops will be able to stop the violence, or whether Russian troops need to be dispatched – and a new “red line” needs to be drawn by Moscow.
It is amazing – and sad – to watch how Europe plays along, letting NATO troops eventually ravaging the European territory – when Russia interferes. Only brainless European leaders (sic) will allow NATO playing war games that could turn anytime “hot” – hot again on the territories of Europe.
That’s what the European Union has become. She is led by an unelected lady, Madame Ursula von der Leyen, formerly Germany’s Defense Minister, but more importantly and much less visibly, she is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum. We know who calls the shots over the European Union – and most of the viciously dictatorial leaders (sic) of the EU member countries, stripped of their sovereignty are scholars from Klaus Schwab’s special courses for “Young Global Leaders”. This also applied for the most covid-tyrannical heads of states around the world.
They shall not prevail.
Back to Kazakhstan. The same people who scare (mostly) the western people to death for a virus that has never been isolated and identified, are also behind destroying Russia and China.
If they were to succeed in Kazakhstan – they would have managed to weaken Russia considerably and the next step would most likely be, NATO’s ignoring Moscow’s red line on Ukraine and with the aim of arming Ukraine and making it eventually a NATO country.
This is however still unlikely because Putin then would not hesitate invading Ukraine through the Donbass area, not hesitating in defending Russia’s interests. NATO and the US know that they have no chance against Russia’s newest defense systems. Would they let it happen and letting Europe being obliterated for the third time in a bit more than 100 years?
The fight for Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus, is a pivotal strategic chess game. Undoubtedly, Russia will win it. But at what cost for Europe – for Eurasia? The more severe the covid restrictions the west will impose, the higher the price for maintaining or regaining sovereign European and Eurasian countries.
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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He is also is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
January 12th, 2022 by Cornell University Community
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Dear President Pollack and Cornell Board of Trustees,
We are students, parents, alumni, faculty, and staff of Cornell University. We are grateful for Cornell’s efforts at keeping students and the Ithaca community safe during this pandemic. As concerned members of the global Big Red family, we write this open letter to express our strong opposition to Cornell’s Covid-19 booster mandate. In light of new data available about both the vaccine and the virus, we urge you to change the “mandate” to a “recommendation” based on the factors outlined below.
We appreciate that the booster mandate and new procedures for the spring term stem from the good intention to prevent severe illness. But as with any public health policy, many factors — scientific, ethical, and legal — must be considered and weighed. We are concerned that Cornell, in issuing this booster mandate, has overlooked recent and evolving scientific data regarding the vaccine and the virus that makes a booster mandate inappropriate and unnecessary, raising serious ethical and legal questions.
In December 2021, Cornell identified over 1,600 Covid-19 positive cases with “every case of the Omicron variant to date [being] found in fully vaccinated students, a portion of whom had also received a booster shot.” Cornell’s own data highlights that vaccination, even with the booster, has very limited capability in stopping virus transmission. A similar conclusion has been reached by CDC’s research: vaccinated people seem to transmit Covid-19 similarly to unvaccinated people. The virus will continue to be transmitted among our highly vaccinated campuses. In a recent campus-wide email, Cornell explicitly acknowledged the impossibility of containing or eliminating Omicron, the flu, or other respiratory illnesses, which is why it will “shift from counting positive cases.” Cornell is fully aware that vaccines and booster injections cannot stop the spread of Covid-19.
As so many students test positive, they are, in essence, receiving a natural booster based on the very latest variants of the virus. And yet, Cornell is ignoring the natural immunity in these students and mandating a booster injection based on older variants, which Cornell knows is ineffective at stopping the spread of Covid-19 in the Cornell community. This decision is counter to science and seems like it was made less to promote students’ health and more to achieve some other unstated goal of the administration. Otherwise, why require a booster injection that is ineffective, and potentially dangerous, for students who are naturally contracting and fighting off a virus that many scientists believe is becoming more endemic than pandemic?
Mounting evidence points to serious risks from exposure to the Covid-19 vaccines. The latest scientific research shows that Covid-19 vaccine side effects such as myocarditis, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, and pericarditis are more common in young people than we think (see references 1-5 listed below). Recently, an Oxford-conducted study of men under the age of 40 demonstrated that the risk of myocarditis after one dose mRNA exceeds the risk of myocarditis from an actual Covid-19 infection. Even more alarmingly, the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) indicates that there were over 15,000 Covid-19 vaccine related death cases in 2021, compared with the previous average of 158 vaccine related deaths per year (Pre-Covid-19), in the context of a yearly total of 280 million injections and 70 different vaccines. This data shows that, compared to other vaccines, Covid-19 injections carry around 100 times the risk of death.
Why force such risks on our students when the rate of severe Covid-19 illness in the 16 to 40 year age group is exceedingly low? Newer variants appear to pose a near-zero risk of death for college students. Data now shows that the vaccine itself can pose more risk to young people than the virus itself, and repeated injections only increase those risks without any discernible reduction in the spread of the virus.
All students are individuals, each someone’s child with unique medical, psychological, and emotional needs. Indeed, as the CDC has recognized, “people aged 18-64 years who are at increased risk for COVID-19 exposure and transmission because of occupational or institutional setting may receive a booster shot of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine at least 6 months after their Pfizer-BioNTech primary series, based on their individual benefits and risks” (emphasis added). With its blanket mandate, Cornell seems to be interpreting eligibility as a directive, ignoring both the science and CDC’s own guidance regarding individual benefits and risks.
The power differential between the university and students, which Cornell briefly acknowledged last year, raises serious ethical issues. In addition to the risk of side effects and death, Cornell’s injection mandate can trigger generational trauma in some students from intrusive, experimental, and other medically questionable procedures. For many students, the coercive nature of a third injection, after being told that they needed only two injections to attend Cornell, is contributing to psychological distress and emotional disorientation about future academic, social, and professional potential. We are seeing staggering mental health problems on campus and beyond. At this point in the pandemic, after nearly two years of following constantly changing rules, we would do right by our students to give them control over whether they receive additional doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.
That is why we believe that the question of whether a student should receive a third (or fourth or fifth) booster must be answered individually by each student, in consultation with a medical professional or doctor, rather than by school administrators.
Considering new data on the virus and the vaccine, the university may very well cause disability or death by imposing further vaccine requirements, and it will have to bear the responsibility. Please do the right thing, and end this unnecessary and unethical mandate.
Members of the Cornell community, please sign HERE or click this link.
Add your name here, and wewill update the list with your name and affiliation.
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High-level international banking officials and organizations gathered last month for a global “war game” exercise simulating the collapse of the global financial system. The tabletop exercise was reminiscent of “Event 201,” the pandemic simulation exercise that took place just before COVID-19 entered the global scene.
High-level international banking officials and organizations last month gathered in Israel for a global “war game” exercise simulating the collapse of the global financial system.
The tabletop exercise was reminiscent of “Event 201” — the pandemic simulation exercise that took place in October 2019, shortly before COVID-19 entered the global scene.
The “Collective Strength” initiative was held for 10 days, beginning Dec. 9, 2021, at the Israeli Finance Ministry in Jerusalem. It was relocated to Jerusalem from the Dubai World Expo over concerns about the Omicron variant.
Israel led a 10-country contingent that also included treasury officials from the U.S., Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.
Representatives from supranational organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and Bank of International Settlements (BIS), also participated.
Described as a simulated “war game,” the exercise sought to model the response to various hypothetical large-scale cyberattacks on the global financial system, including the leaking of sensitive financial data on the “Dark Web,” hacks targeting the global foreign exchange system, and subsequent bank runs and market chaos fueled by “fake news.”
However, the main theme of “Collective Strength” appears not so much the simulation of such cyberattacks but, as the name of the initiative implies, the strengthening of global cooperation in cybersecurity and the financial sector.
As reported by Reuters, participants in the simulation discussed multilateral responses to a hypothetical global financial crisis.
Proposed policy solutions included debt repayment grace periods, SWAP/REPO agreements, coordinated bank holidays and coordinated delinking from major currencies.
The idea of simulated delinking from major currencies raised some eyebrows because of its timing — on the same day participants gathered to launch “Collective Strength,” reports circulated that the Biden administration was considering removing Russia from the global electronic-payment-messaging system known as SWIFT, short for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.
This measure would be part of a package of economic sanctions the U.S. would levy against Russia should it attack Ukraine.
However, what may raise even more eyebrows is the list of participants in the “Collective Strength” simulation, which includes: the IMF and World Bank, and indirectly, the World Economic Forum (WEF).
It was the WEF, along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which ran the simulated “Event 201” in October 2019.
As previously reported by The Defender, the WEF also supported the development of financial instruments, such as credit and debit cards, that would track “personal carbon allowances” on an individualized basis.
An executive summary issued in November 2020 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in collaboration with the WEF, provided a rundown of just the type of scenario that was simulated as part of “Collective Strength.”
The report’s authors, Tim Maurer and Arthur Nelson, described a world whose financial system is undergoing “an unprecedented digital transformation … accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic.”
In such a world, the authors argued, “cybersecurity is more important than ever.”
Describing protection of the global financial system as an “organizational challenge,” the report pointed out there is no clear global actor in charge of protecting the global financial system or its digital infrastructure.
The executive summary went so far as to describe a “disconnect between the finance, the national security and the diplomatic communities.”
The solutions identified by Maurer and Nelson included:
The need for “greater clarity” regarding roles and responsibilities
Bolstering international cooperation
Reducing fragmentation and increasing “internationalization” among “siloed” financial institutions
Developing a model that can then be used in unspecified “other” sectors.
But which “other” sectors?
This set of recommendations was classified by the authors in their report under “Digital Transformation: Safeguard Financial Inclusion.”
One such recommendation reads as follows:
“The G20 should highlight that cybersecurity must be designed into technologies used to advance financial inclusion from the start rather than included as an afterthought.”
Technology that is “used to advance financial inclusion from the start” would appear to include digital “health passports” and accompanying “digital wallets.”
It also seems to be aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals — in particular, Goal 16.9, which calls for the provision of a digital legal identity for all, including newborns, by 2030.
Goal 16.9 also brings to mind the European Union’s insistence that its vaccine passport, the so-called “Green Pass,” which is used in numerous European countries to bar the unvaccinated and those with natural immunity from all sorts of public and private spaces, protects individuals’ privacy.
In a further connection between two distinct issues — security of the global financial system and public health — the GAVI Vaccine Alliance called for “innovations that leverage new technologies to modernize the process of identifying and registering the children who are most in need of life-saving vaccines.”
However, the use of these technologies would not stop with registering childhood vaccinations. GAVI described potential uses of these “new technologies” as encompassing “access to other services,” including the broadly defined “financial services.”
The authors of the Carnegie Endowment executive summary mirrored their proposals in a spring 2021 article that appears on the IMF’s website, although issues of “financial inclusion” are left out.
While the two authors of the Carnegie report, and the participants in the “Collective Strength” initiative, emphasize the need for the financial system and its digital data to be better protected, it remains unclear how a continued transformation toward a fully digital, cloud-based environment can indeed be considered “secure.”
Consider, for instance, the following remark by Micha Weis, financial cyber manager at the Israeli finance ministry, in reference to “Collective Strength”: “[a]ttackers are 10 steps ahead of the defender.”
Such words don’t offer much comfort to those who are already wary of “FinTech,” or the increasing proximity between “Big Tech” and “Big Finance.”
Similarly, yet another “simulation” of a large-scale and destructive global catastrophe will, for some, bring back recollections of “Event 201” and what followed thereafter — infamously described on March 20, 2020, by then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as a “live exercise.”
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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
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Currently on view at the Currier Museum, Philip Guston’s mural Pulpwood Logging (1941) is right beside its original partner, Musa McKim’s Wildlife in the White Mountains (1941). Both fourteen-foot murals were commissioned by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) — a federal program created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to combat the unemployment of the Great Depression — and were originally installed in the Forestry Building in Laconia, New Hampshire.
Guston’s mural is a vision of sustainable logging — and given the global pace of deforestation, it is as timely as ever. As a representational painter, the piece is the culmination of Guston’s work for he would soon go on to become one of the foremost Abstract Expressionists.
Wildlife in the White Mountains, 1941 oil on canvas 79 x 165 in. Originally located in the Forestry Building, Laconia N.H. Fine arts collection U. S. General services
The mural is a depiction of four men working together – all but one of whom face the viewer. The one with his back to us is overseeing the day’s work. Interestingly, we see what he sees: as if he is showing us the logging process. To his left, a man uses a peavey to roll the logs into place, while another cuts a log with a crosscut handsaw. The leftmost figure is hunched over as he lays a link chain in place. Guston has made each worker distinct and in so doing, imbued each individual with a quiet dignity.
In 1937, Musa McKim and Philip Guston were married. Her mural, depicting the rich biodiversity of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, rewards one who pays close attention. She has rendered the grouse, deer, moose, bear, beaver, raccoon, chipmunk, wood duck, great egret, and belted kingfisher with a simple and loving fidelity. In the lower right corner, a family of three visitors to the National Forest — presumably a mother, and her two children – resonates with the mother bear and her two cubs in the lower right corner.
Pulpwood Logging, 1941 oil on canvas 79 x 165 in. Originally located in the Forestry Building, Laconia N.H. Fine arts collection U. S. General services Administration
Through January 16, these two murals will be happily reunited at the Currier Museum in Manchester, NH — and the timing is significant. These great works were the fruit of The New Deal and the efforts of the WPA which hired over ten thousand artists from across the country to create works of art.
Today, many Americans desperately need to see a similar initiative from the Federal Government — and yet, even relatively modest efforts in that direction have been stalled indefinitely. These murals are a reminder of what can be done when America invests in its workers and its artists — that is, when it truly embraces and harnesses its powers of collective rebirth and reinvention.
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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Comments Off on History of Art: Philip Guston and Musa McKim at the Currier Museum: “What can be done when America Invests in its Workers and its Artists”
The person with whom we are all most intimate is oneself. It’s just the way it is. I don’t mean that in some oracular Delphic “know thyself” way, or in any deep psychoanalytical sense, but very simply. We have our own thoughts and feelings that come and go like breaths, most of which never get expressed in words.
Bastille 2022 pertains not only to the restoration of these fundamental rights. It seeks to reverse and disable the criminal Covid-19 agenda which in the course of the last two years has triggered economic, social and political chaos Worldwide in 193 member states of the United Nations, coupled with bankruptcies, unemployment, mass poverty and despair.
Gibraltar (34,000 inhabitants) started vaccination in December 2020 when the health agency counted only 1040 confirmed cases and 5 deaths attributed to covid19 in this country. After a very comprehensive vaccination blitz, achieving 115% coverage (vaccination was extended to many Spanish visitors), the number of new infections increased five-fold (to 5314) and the number of deaths increased nineteen-fold.
Wendy Sherman thinks her aim in talks with Russian officials starting Monday is to lecture them on the cost of hubris. Instead she’s set to lead the U.S., NATO, and Europe down a path of ruin, warns Scott Ritter. If ever a critical diplomatic negotiation was doomed to fail from the start, the discussions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine and Russian security guarantees is it.
Shankara Chetty could be called a second Zelenko. He is a medical doctor, a general practitioner in South Africa who has treated more than 7000 Covid patients successfully, without the need for extra oxygen or hospitalization. Through meticulous observation he was able to discern the nature of Covid-19 as a two-phase illness with a respiratory and an allergic phase, and to develop a treatment protocol which he describes in the first part of the interview.
As we’ve seen over the past two years, data and statistics can be manipulated and skewed in a wide variety of ways. COVID cases, for example, have clearly been overinflated by including people with no symptoms (likely false positives) and diagnosing anyone entering the hospital for an unrelated issue as a COVID patient if they test positive (again, falsely) for SARS-CoV-2.
Despite the dialogue, NATO continues to maintain an aggressive rhetoric towards Russia, promising a new armed conflict if current negotiations fail to reach a consensus. In a interview, the Secretary General of NATO stated that the Western military alliance is prepared for a situation of war in Europe if Russia does not collaborate towards a resolution of the Ukrainian issue.
Putin and President Biden discussed the Russian proposals and other issues in a phone conversation on December 30th, in which Biden called for diplomacy, and both he and Putin reportedly took steps to defuse the possible confrontation.
As U.S. policy grows more reckless, the corporate media perceives threats everywhere. After Putin and Biden spoke by zoom, Putin and President Xi Jinping of China had a New Year’s exchange Dec. 15. This conversation was headlined by The Hill as “‘Allies’ China and Russia Are Ganging Up on America.”
His accusation of Russia invading Crimea in 2014 is the standard Western characterization of Russia reclaiming the peninsula without firing a shot. His accusation of aggressive Russian actions against Moldova – a charge no one in the West has leveled until recent weeks – appears to be an allusion to the presence of 1,500 Russian troops in Transnistria, the continuation of a Russian peacekeeping deployment that began in 1992.
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Canadian Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos told the nation on Friday that he believes mandatory vaccinations will be announced soon.
Asked if the government would consider instituting mandatory Covid vaccination laws, Duclos said, “I personally think we will get there at some point. I see it coming personally. Not now. I don’t think we are there yet. But I think discussions need to be had about mandatory vaccinations because we have to get rid of Covid 19.”
Canadian Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Friday he believes a mandatory vaccination policy for all citizens is necessary, and will likely be coming to Canada in the months ahead.
He continued, “Our people are tired and the only way as we know through COVID–19, be it this variant or any future variant, is through vaccination.”
This sentence totally contradicts previous comments made by Fiji Public Health Professor Michael Baker, who told the world in October that “you can’t vaccinate your way out of a epidemic that is this intense.”
Highly vaccinated nations such as Israel have all but proven this to be true as they continue to see record numbers of Covid deaths, cases and hospitalizations despite being the first country on Earth to fully vaccinate a majority of its citizens.
The federal health minister noted that the decision to mandate Covid vaccines will be left up to the provinces, saying, “Provinces and territories will continue to take decisions that are within their jurisdiction. As a government, we will continue to do everything we can within our federal authority to keep Canadians safe.”
Canadians lashed out at the idea on Twitter.
Fascist Liberal minister is preparing the ground for draconian violation of our fundamental rights and bodily autonomy.
Bullshit, Trudeau cant give the order as his Federal Employees only have to say they are vaccinated, he wants Premiers to start the war while he hides at home…
"Provinces are likely to introduce mandatory vaccination policies in the coming months to deal with surging COVID-19 caseloads, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said "
Check out Canadian mainstream media’s coverage of Duclos’ announcement in the video below:
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A 2017 lawsuit alleging five pharmaceutical companies helped finance terror attacks against U.S. service members and other Americans in Iraq during the “War on Terror” was unanimously reinstated and remanded by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals.
The lawsuit against the five companies in question — Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Roche and GE Healthcare — was dismissed in July 2020 by a federal district court in Washington, D.C. before being reinstated last week.
The lawsuit claims the five companies regularly paid bribes, including free drugs and medical devices, to officials in Iraq’s Ministry of Health between 2005 and 2011, in their efforts to secure drug contracts.
In turn, the suit alleges, these companies’ contracts with the Iraqi health ministry helped “fund terrorism” perpetrated by a Shiite militia that killed Americans during that period.
The militia in question, Jaysh al-Mahdi, or the “Mahdi Army,” maintained control of the health ministry at that time.
The amended lawsuit was filed on behalf of 395 Americans who were killed or injured in Iraq during the six-year period.
The plaintiffs seek damages under the federal Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), which states plaintiffs must demonstrate the terror attacks were conducted by an organization formally designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. government.
While the Mahdi Army has not been formally classified as a terrorist group, the lawsuit alleges the army’s attacks carried out in Iraq were “planned and organized” by Hezbollah, which the U.S. in 1997 labeled a terror group.
The initial lawsuit also prompted an investigation of the pharmaceutical companies by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), in 2018.
An alleged web of corruption and kickbacks
The allegations made in the lawsuit are based on information provided by 12 confidential witnesses, public and private reports, contracts, email communications and documents published by WikiLeaks.
Included in the lawsuit are 27 pages of itemized deaths and injuries sustained by U.S. service members in attacks by the Mahdi Army between 2005 and 2009, and claims of pain and suffering submitted by their family members and relatives.
One of the main planks of the lawsuit pertains to bribes and kickbacks the five companies named in the suit are alleged to have provided to the terrorists who controlled the Iraqi health ministry between 2005 and 2011.
The lawsuit alleges the five companies obtained contracts with the ministry through the illicit payments, which were then used to “aid and abet” terror attacks against Americans.
The central argument put forth in the original lawsuit is that the companies must have been aware that Iraq’s health ministry operated as a de facto terrorist organization, and this knowledge should have resulted in an insistence, on the part of the five companies, that any contracts with the ministry be structured to reflect this knowledge and to guard against potential corruption and misuse of funds.
This point is crucial, as it is illegal under U.S. law to knowingly fund terror groups.
In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the procurement budget for the Iraqi health ministry skyrocketed, from $16 million in 2003 to approximately $1 billion in 2004, due to U.S. financial assistance.
It was in 2004, according to the lawsuit, that the Mahdi Army took control of the Iraqi health ministry, at a time when various political factions in the country took over government ministries as the U.S. devolved power back to the Iraqis.
Having taken over the ministry, the Mahdi Army allegedly used it as a vehicle for financing terrorist acts, using local agents to deliver cash kickbacks to terrorists on the ground and selling medical supplies “off the books” on the black market, to further fund terror operations.
Indeed, many of the officials employed in the ministry at the time are said in the lawsuit to have been senior members of the Mahdi Army. This group maintained strongholds in parts of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad and in the south of the country, vying for control of cities such as Basra and Amara.
The Mahdi Army, in turn, was loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, a political figure described by The New York Times as a “firebrand” cleric who operated death squads targeting Iraqi Sunnis and Americans.
The group emerged in 2003, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, operating as a security guarantor in neighborhoods dominated by al-Sadr. In 2004, the Mahdi Army fought U.S. forces in Najaf and Sadr City.
According to the lawsuit, the pharmaceutical companies financially supported the Mahdi Army in two ways. One way was through bribes that were paid in the form of “discounts” — which were offered by the companies not through reduced prices, but through the provision of “free” medical goods, often equalling up to 20% of the total value of the contract.
These bribes, the suit alleges, amounted to millions of dollars annually. It is noted that this form of bribery is commonplace in the Middle East because, unlike direct cash transfers, companies can claim these “free” goods were “charitable” contributions, in the event such transactions are discovered.
Another alleged means of financial support on the part of the five companies was through the hiring of local intermediaries to register their companies, receive government approval for the use of their products domestically, and negotiate contracts.
The lawsuit describes the payments made to these intermediaries as “thinly disguised bribes.”
Between 2004 and 2013, the companies in question also allegedly operated a “slush fund,” under the guise of paying for after-sales support and other services related to the products they sold.
These services were “illusory” and the funds instead went into the pockets of corrupt health ministry officials and local agents, the plaintiffs allege.
Goods said to have been sold to the Iraqi health ministry during this period include GE electrocardiogram machines; Johnson & Johnson catheters and anti-epilepsy drugs; Depo-Provera, a birth control shot produced by Pfizer; Seroquel, an anti-psychotic medication produced by AstraZeneca; and Herceptin, a breast cancer drug produced by Roche.
As a result of the “commissions” and “free” goods provided to members of the Mahdi Army, the militia became known among U.S. officials as the “Pill Army,” as its fighters often received prescription medications as medicines. These drugs could then be resold.
An August 2007 draft report prepared by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad accused the Iraqi health ministry of “operating a pharmaceutical diversion scheme” and operating “openly under the control of the Mahdi Army.”
Pharma money funded violent acts against Americans
The lawsuit alleges bribes facilitated the Mahdi Army’s acquisition of weapons, as well as training and logistical support.
Indeed, the lawsuit claims the Iraqi health ministry and the Mahdi Army were, at the time, essentially interchangeable, and by late 2004, the ministry was too dangerous for Americans to enter and “functioned more as a terrorist apparatus than a health organization,” with headquarters, as well as hospitals, plastered with posters of al-Sadr captioned with slogans declaring “death to America.”
Hospitals and ambulances are said to have been utilized as part of the terrorist acts perpetrated by the Mahdi Army, while the ministry is said to have employed approximately 15,000 armed men who were known as the “Facilities Protection Service,” using ministry supplies, such as vehicles and uniforms, for terrorism and other criminal activities, including kidnapping.
Numerous such incidents are detailed in the lawsuit.
In April 2006, for instance, U.S. forces arrested seven bodyguards of then-health minister Ali al-Shemari after a Sunni health official entered the ministry on the pretext of being interviewed for a ministerial post, never to be seen again.
Mass kidnappings repeatedly carried out in Baghdad in 2006 – 2007 were also blamed on the “Facilities Protection Service,” with victims frequently delivered to the health ministry’s basement for torture and, sometimes, murder.
The deputy health minister at the time, Hakim al-Zamili, was also arrested by U.S. troops at the time, charged in the disappearance of another deputy minister, Ammar al-Saffar, whose body was never located.
A report by global intelligence company Stratfor accused al-Zamili of “selling health services and equipment in return for millions of dollars that he later funneled to Shiite militias.”
In other incidents, mortars were fired at U.S. forces, and at Sunni neighborhoods, directly from the roof of the health ministry.
The violence originating from the health ministry was such that a 2006 State Department cable available on WikiLeaks described it as “The Ministry of Weapons Transportation.”
In reinstating the lawsuit, the D.C. Circuit judges noted:
“The complaint describes how Jaysh al-Mahdi controlled the ministry and used it as a terrorist headquarters.
“Accepting those allegations, defendants’ dealings with the ministry were equivalent to dealing with the terrorist organization directly. The ministry was therefore not an independent intermediary that broke the chain of causation, but a front for Jaysh al-Mahdi.”
Pharma companies will have to respond to reinstated suit
The lawsuit was filed following an investigation by the Washington, D.C. law firms of Sparciano & Andreson and Kellogg, Hasen, Todd, Figel & Frederick.
In the lawsuit, the firms allege the five named companies were aware their business practices were inappropriate and potentially illegal, based on settlements they reached previously for prior accusations where identical tactics and even some of the same intermediaries were used as part of a United Nations-sponsored oil-for-food program prior to the 2003 Iraq invasion.
After the reinstatement of the lawsuit, the companies in question issued a joint statement denying any wrongdoing.
In 2018, the DOJ launched a separate investigation against the companies, which came to light when AstraZeneca mentioned the lawsuit in a 2018 securities filing.
Pfizer, Roche, and Johnson & Johnson also acknowledged the investigation in SEC filings that year.
It is unclear what the current status of the DOJ investigation is, or why the lawsuit was reinstated, a year-and-a-half after its initial dismissal.
Settlements in cases of alleged overseas corruption are not new for at least some of the companies named in the lawsuit.
For instance, in 2011, Johnson & Johnson agreed to a $70 million settlement stemming from civil and criminal charges that its subsidiaries had paid bribes to officials in countries such as Greece, Poland and Romania, and as part of the Iraqi oil-for-food program.
And in 2010, GE paid a settlement exceeding $23 million to settle charges levied by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleging the company paid kickbacks in the oil-for-food program.
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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
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“Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.”—George Carlin
Cancel culture—political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance—has shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs.
Everything is now fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint.
In this way, the most controversial issues of our day—race, religion, sex, sexuality, politics, science, health, government corruption, police brutality, etc.—have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support.
This tendency to censor, silence, delete, label as “hateful,” and demonize viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite is being embraced with a near-fanatical zealotry by a cult-like establishment that values conformity and group-think over individuality.
For instance, are you skeptical about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines? Do you have concerns about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election? Do you subscribe to religious beliefs that shape your views on sexuality, marriage and gender? Do you, deliberately or inadvertently, engage in misgendering (identifying a person’s gender incorrectly) or deadnaming (using the wrong pronouns or birth name for a transgender person)?
Say yes to any of those questions and then dare to voice those views in anything louder than a whisper and you might find yourself suspended on Twitter, shut out of Facebook, and banned across various social media platforms.
This authoritarian intolerance masquerading as tolerance, civility and love (what comedian George Carlin referred to as “fascism pretending to be manners”) is the end result of a politically correct culture that has become radicalized, institutionalized and tyrannical.
In the past few years, for example, prominent social media voices have been censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that were deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.
Most recently, Twitter suspended conservative podcaster Matt Walsh for violating its hate speech policy by sharing his views about transgendered individuals. “The greatest female Jeopardy champion of all time is a man. The top female college swimmer is a man. The first female four star admiral in the Public Health Service is a man. Men have dominated female high school track and the female MMA circuit. The patriarchy wins in the end,” Walsh tweeted on Dec. 30, 2021.
J.K. Rowling, author of the popular Harry Potter series, has found herself denounced as transphobic and widely shunned for daring to criticize efforts by transgender activists to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender. Rowling’s essay explaining her views is a powerful, articulate, well-researched piece that not only stresses the importance of free speech and women’s rights while denouncing efforts by trans activists to demonize those who subscribe to “wrongthink,” but also recognizes that while the struggle over gender dysmorphia is real, concerns about safeguarding natal women and girls from abuse are also legitimate.
Ironically enough, Rowling’s shunning included literal book burning. Yet as Ray Bradbury once warned, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
Indeed, the First Amendment is going up in flames before our eyes, but those first sparks were lit long ago and have been fed by intolerance all along the political spectrum.
Consider some of the kinds of speech being targeted for censorship or outright elimination.
Offensive, politically incorrect and “unsafe” speech: Political correctness has resulted in the chilling of free speech and a growing hostility to those who exercise their rights to speak freely. Where this has become painfully evident is on college campuses, which have become hotbeds of student-led censorship, trigger warnings, microaggressions, and “red light” speech policies targeting anything that might cause someone to feel uncomfortable, unsafe or offended.
Bullying, intimidating speech: Warning that “school bullies become tomorrow’s hate crimes defendants,” the Justice Department has led the way in urging schools to curtail bullying, going so far as to classify “teasing” as a form of “bullying,” and “rude” or “hurtful” “text messages” as “cyberbullying.”
Dangerous, anti-government speech: As part of its ongoing war on “extremism,” the government has partnered with the tech industry to counter online “propaganda” by terrorists hoping to recruit support or plan attacks. In this way, anyone who criticizes the government online can be considered an extremist and will have their content reported to government agencies for further investigation or deleted. In fact, the Justice Department is planning to form a new domestic terrorism unit to ferret out individuals “who seek to commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of domestic social or political goals.” What this will mean is more surveillance, more pre-crime programs, and more targeting of individuals whose speech may qualify as “dangerous.”
The upshot of all of this editing, parsing, banning and silencing is the emergence of a new language, what George Orwell referred to as Newspeak, which places the power to control language in the hands of the totalitarian state.
Under such a system, language becomes a weapon to change the way people think by changing the words they use.
The end result is mind control and a sleepwalking populace.
In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a. police states—where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used.
In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind lest they find themselves ostracized or placed under surveillance.
Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism.
The social shunning favored by activists and corporations borrows heavily from the mind control tactics used by authoritarian cults as a means of controlling its members. As Dr. Steven Hassan writes in Psychology Today: “By ordering members to be cut off, they can no longer participate. Information and sharing of thoughts, feelings, and experiences are stifled. Thought-stopping and use of loaded terms keep a person constrained into a black-and-white, all-or-nothing world. This controls members through fear and guilt.”
This mind control can take many forms, but the end result is an enslaved, compliant populace incapable of challenging tyranny.
As Rod Serling, creator of TheTwilight Zone, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry, one that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”
The problem as I see it is that we’ve allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us. And we’ve bought into the idea that we need the government and its corporate partners to shield us from that which is ugly or upsetting or mean. The result is a society in which we’ve stopped debating among ourselves, stopped thinking for ourselves, and stopped believing that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own differences.
In short, we have reduced ourselves to a largely silent, passive, polarized populace incapable of working through our own problems and reliant on the government to protect us from our fears.
As Nat Hentoff, that inveterate champion of the First Amendment, once observed, “The quintessential difference between a free nation, as we profess to be, and a totalitarian state, is that here everyone, including a foe of democracy, has the right to speak his mind.”
What this means is opening the door to more speech not less, even if that speech is offensive to some.
Understanding that freedom for those in the unpopular minority constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society, James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, fought for a First Amendment that protected the “minority” against the majority, ensuring that even in the face of overwhelming pressure, a minority of one—even one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still have the right to speak freely, pray freely, assemble freely, challenge the government freely, and broadcast his views in the press freely.
We haven’t done ourselves—or the nation—any favors by becoming so fearfully polite, careful to avoid offense, and largely unwilling to be labeled intolerant, hateful or closed-minded that we’ve eliminated words, phrases and symbols from public discourse.
We have allowed our fears—fear for our safety, fear of each other, fear of being labeled racist or hateful or prejudiced, etc.—to trump our freedom of speech and muzzle us far more effectively than any government edict could.
Ultimately the war on free speech—and that’s exactly what it is: a war being waged by Americans against other Americans—is a war that is driven by fear.
By bottling up dissent, we have created a pressure cooker of stifled misery and discontent that is now bubbling over and fomenting even more hate, distrust and paranoia among portions of the populace.
By muzzling free speech, we are contributing to a growing underclass of Americans who are being told that they can’t take part in American public life unless they “fit in.”
The First Amendment is a steam valve. It allows people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world. When there is no steam valve to release the pressure, frustration builds, anger grows, and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation.
Be warned: whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.
Eventually, “we the people” will be the ones in the crosshairs.
At some point or another, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “hate” or “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.
When that time comes, there may be no one left to speak out or speak up in our defense.
After all, it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.
We are on a fast-moving trajectory.
In other words, whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now, for the sake of the greater good or because you like or trust those in charge, will eventually be abused and used against you by tyrants of your own making.
This is the tyranny of the majority against the minority marching in lockstep with technofascism.
If Americans don’t vociferously defend the right of a minority of one to subscribe to, let alone voice, ideas and opinions that may be offensive, hateful, intolerant or merely different, then we’re going to soon find that we have no rights whatsoever (to speak, assemble, agree, disagree, protest, opt in, opt out, or forge our own paths as individuals).
No matter what our numbers might be, no matter what our views might be, no matter what party we might belong to, it will not be long before “we the people” constitute a powerless minority in the eyes of a power-fueled fascist state driven to maintain its power at all costs.
We are almost at that point now.
Free speech is no longer free.
On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak.
In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.
The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.
Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.
The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own censorship, spying and policing.
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In May, within four months, the new nuclear bomb B61-12 large-scale production will begin in the United States: this announcement was made by the National Nuclear Security Administration of the United States Department of Energy (NNSA is part of the US Department of Energy). As they leave the factory, the new nuclear bombs will be delivered to the US Air Force, which will install them in US bases in Italy and other European countries replacing the B61s.
The B61-12 is a new nuclear weapon replacing three of the current B61 variants (3, 4, and 7). It has a nuclear warhead with four selectable power options according to the target to destroy. It does not drop vertically like the B61, but at distance from the target to which it is directed, and guided by a satellite system. It can penetrate underground, exploding deep to destroy command center bunkers to “behead” the enemy nation in a nuclear first strike. For this attack the US Air Force also has the fourth variant of the B61 bomb, the penetrating B61-11 was modernized in 2001. The B61-12, NNSA confirmed, can be launched from both B-2A stealth bomber and future B-21 aircraft, both conventional and nuclear dual-capable fighters. These aircrafts include the US F-16C / Ds deployed in Aviano and the Italian PA-200 Tornadoes deployed in Ghedi. The F-35A fighters, already operational in the Italian Air Force, are even more suitable for a nuclear attack with the B61-12.
NNSA announced that “all the needed production of B61-12s” will be completed in the fiscal year 2026. The program foresees the construction of 500 bombs at a cost of about 10 billion dollars (each bomb costing twice as much if it were built entirely of gold). Their actual number, however, remains secret as their geographical location is largely secret. It is the determining factor in the offensive capacity of the B61-12 nuclear bombs. If they were all located in US territory, ready to be transported with strategic bombers, this would not constitute a substantial modification of the current strategic assets. The B61-12 will instead be located in other countries, especially close to Russia, ready to be transported and launched with F-35s and other fighters.
Aviano and Ghedi bases have been restructured to accommodate the F-35A fighters armed with the new nuclear bombs. Thirty Italian F-35A fighters can be deployed in Ghedi, ready to attack under US command with 60 B61-12 nuclear bombs. It is not excluded that they will also be located in other bases on the Italian territory. In addition to being located in Germany, Belgium, and Holland, they could be also deployed in Poland, whose air forces have been participating for years in NATO nuclear warfare exercises. It is not excluded that they could be located in other Eastern countries. The NATO fighters located in the Baltic republics, close to Russia, can also be armed with the B61-12s. It is not excluded that the new nuclear bombs can also be deployed in Asia and the Middle East against China and Iran. Despite being classified as “non-strategic nuclear weapons”, close to target the B61-12 bombs have offensive capabilities similar to those of strategic weapons (such as the nuclear warheads of intercontinental ballistic missiles). They are therefore destabilizing weapons, which will cause a chain reaction and accelerate the nuclear arms ra.
The 5 nuclear powers permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom – affirmed in a joint declaration (January 3, 2022), that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought ”and that “we remain committed to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of to nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament”.
The US should therefore commit not to deploy the new B61-12 nuclear bombs in other countries, even better not to produce them at all.
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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.
Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102 Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling) PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
Fra quattro mesi, in maggio, inizia negli Usa la produzione su larga scala della nuova bomba nucleare B61-12: lo annuncia la U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (L’Amministrazione per la sicurezza nucleare nazionale, NNSA, facente parte del Dipartimento Usa dell’Energia). Man mano che usciranno di fabbrica, le nuove bombe nucleari saranno consegnate alla US Air Force, che le installerà nelle basi in Italia e altri paesi europei al posto delle B61.
La B61-12 è una nuova arma nucleare polivalente che sostituisce tre delle varianti dell’attuale B61 (3, 4 e 7). Ha una testata nucleare con quattro opzioni di potenza, selezionabili a seconda dell’obiettivo da distruggere. Non viene sganciata in verticale come la B61, ma a distanza dall’obiettivo su cui si dirige guidata da un sistema satellitare. Può penetrare nel sottosuolo, esplodendo in profondità per distruggere i bunker dei centri di comando così da «decapitare» il paese nemico in un first strike nucleare. Per tale attacco la US Air Force dispone anche della quarta variante della B61, la B61-11 penetrante, ammodernata nel 2001. La B61-12, conferma la NNSA, può essere lanciata sia dal bombardiere stealth B-2A e dal futuro B-21, sia da caccia a duplice capacità convenzionale e nucleare.
Tra questi vi sono gli F-16C/D statunitensi schierati ad Aviano e i Tornado italiani PA-200 schierati a Ghedi. Ancora più idonei all’attacco nucleare con le B61-12 sono gli F-35A, già operativi anche nell’Aeronautica italiana. La NNSA comunica che «tutta la produzione necessaria di B61-12» sarà completata nell’anno fiscale 2026. Il programma prevede la costruzione di 500 bombe, con un costo di circa 10 miliardi di dollari (per cui ciascuna viene a costare il doppio di quanto costerebbe se fosse costruita interamente in oro). Il loro numero effettivo resta però segreto, come resta in gran parte segreta la loro dislocazione geografica.
Essa costituisce il fattore determinante della capacità offensiva delle bombe nucleari B61-12. Se fossero dislocate tutte in territorio statunitense, pronte ad essere trasportate con i bombardieri strategici, ciò non costituirebbe una sostanziale modifica degli attuali assetti strategici. Le B61-12 saranno invece dislocate in altri paesi a ridosso soprattutto della Russia, pronte ad essere trasportate e lanciate con gli F-35 e altri caccia.
Le basi di Aviano e Ghedi sono state ristrutturate per accogliere i caccia F-35A armati delle nuove bombe nucleari. A Ghedi possono essere schierati 30 caccia italiani F-35A, pronti all’attacco sotto comando Usa con 60 bombe nucleari B61-12. Non è escluso che esse vengano dislocate anche in altre basi sul territorio italiano. Non è escluso che, oltre ad essere dislocate in Germania, Belgio e Olanda, siano schierate anche in Polonia, le cui forze aeree partecipano da anni alle esercitazioni Nato di guerra nucleare, e in altri paesi dell’Est. I caccia Nato dislocati nelle repubbliche baltiche, a ridosso della Russia, possono essere anch’essi armati delle B61-12. Non escluso che le nuove bombe nucleari possano essere schierate anche in Asia e Medioriente contro Cina e Iran.
Nonostante siano classificate come «armi nucleari non-strategiche», le B61-12, avvicinate agli obiettivi, hanno capacità offensive analoghe a quelle delle armi strategiche (come le testate nucleari dei missili balistici intercontinentali). Sono quindi armi destabilizzanti, che provocheranno una reazione a catena accelerando la corsa agli armamenti nucleari.
Le 5 potenze nucleari membri permanenti del Consiglio di Sicurezza delle Nazioni Unite – Stati Uniti, Russia, Cina, Francia e Regno Unito – affermano, in una dichiarazione congiunta (3 gennaio), che «una guerra nucleare non può essere vinta e non deve mai essere combattuta» e che «rimaniamo impegnati a portare avanti negoziati in buona fede su misure efficaci relative alla cessazione della corsa agli armamenti nucleari e al disarmo nucleare». Si impegnino allora gli Usa a non schierare in altri paesi, ancora meglio a non produrre, le nuove bombe nucleari B61-12.
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Sometimes it seems that when it comes to international relations Russian president Vladimir Putin might be the only head of state who is capable of any rational proposals. His recent negotiating positions conveyed initially by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov to step back from the brink of war between his country and the United States over Ukraine are largely eminently sensible and would defuse the possibility that Eastern Europe might become a future Sarajevo incident that would ignite a nuclear war. Per Putin,
“We need long-term legally binding guarantees even if we know they cannot be trusted, as the US frequently withdraws from treaties that become uninteresting to them. But…something [more is needed], not just verbal assurances.”
Putin and President Biden discussed the Russian proposals and other issues in a phone conversation on December 30th, in which Biden called for diplomacy, and both he and Putin reportedly took steps to defuse the possible confrontation. In the phone call the two presidents agreed to initiate bilateral negotiations described as “strategic stability dialogue” relating to “mutual security guarantees” which have now begun on Sunday, January 9th, in Geneva. That will be followed by an exploratory meeting of the NATO-Russia Council on Wednesday and another meeting with the Organization for Security and Cooperation on Thursday.
Pat Buchanan, who is somewhat skeptical about Russian overreach, has summed up the Putin position, which he refers to as an ultimatum, as “Get off our front porch. Get out of our front yard. And stay out of our backyard.” Putin has demanded that NATO cease expansion into Eastern Europe, which threatens only Russia, while also scaling back planned missile emplacements in those former Warsaw Pact states that are already members of the alliance. He also has called on the US to reduce harassing incursions by warships and strategic bombers along the Russian border and to cease efforts to insert military bases in the five ‘Stans along the Russian federation’s southern border. In other words, Russia believes that it should not have hostile military forces gathering along its borders, that it should have some kind of legally guaranteed and internationally endorsed strategic security zone such as the United States enjoys behind two oceans with friendly governments to north and south.
Buchanan concludes that there is much room for negotiating a serious agreement that will satisfy both sides, observing that the US now has through NATO untenable security arrangements with 28 European countries. He notes how “The day cannot be far off when the US is going to have to review and discard Cold War commitments that date to the 1940s and 1950s, and require us to fight a nuclear power such as Russia for countries that have nothing to do with our vital interests or our national security.”
Secretary of State Tony Blinkenhas been openly skeptical about the Russian proposals, arguing that Moscow is a threat to Europe, though the extent that the Biden administration will play hard ball over the details is difficult to assess. Blinken and NATO have already declared that they will continue their expansion into Eastern Europe and the White House is reportedly preparing harsh new sanctions against Russia if the talks are not successful. To be sure, Administration pushback may be a debating technique to moderate or even eliminate some of the demands, or there may actually be hard liners from the Center for New American Security who have the administration’s ear who want to confront Russia. Either way, both Blinken and Biden have warned the Russians “not to make a serious mistake over Ukraine,” also stating that there would be “massive” economic consequences if there were any attack by Russian troops. After a meeting with Germany’s new Foreign Minister, Blinken asserted last week that there would be no progress with in diplomatic approaches to the problem as long as there is a Russian “gun pointed at Ukraine’s head.” In reality, of course, Moscow is 5,000 miles away from Washington and the truly dangerous pointed gun has been in the hands of NATO and the US right on Russia’s doorstep.
To be sure, fighting Russia is popular in some circles, largely a result of incessant negative media coverage about Putin and his government. Opinion polls suggest that half of all Americans favor sending troops to defend the Ukrainians. The Republicans, notably Senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio, appear to be particularly enthusiastic regarding going to war over Ukraine as well as with China over Taiwan and openly advocate both admitting Ukraine into NATO as well as sending troops and weapons as well as providing intelligence to assist Kiev. They argue that it is necessary to defend American democracy and also to maintain the US’s “credibility,” the last refuge of a scoundrel nation, as Daniel Larison observes, since Washington frequently “goes back on its word.” And then there are the crazies like Ohio Congressman Mike Turnerwho says that US troops must be sent to Ukraine to defend American democracy. Or Republican Senator from Mississippi Roger Wickerwho favors a possible unilateral nuclear first-strike to “rain destruction on Russian military capability,” leading to a global conflict that wouldn’t be so bad as it would only kill 10 to 20 million Americans.
Russia has a right to be worried as something is brewing in Kazakhstan right now that just might be a replay of the US-supported NGO-instigated successful overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014. The Collective Security Treaty Organization members Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Armenia, have sent soldiers responding to the Kazakh government’s request for help. Unfortunately, US foreign policy is not only about Russia. The Taiwan issue continues to fester with a similar resonance to the Ukraine crisis. China, a rising power, increasingly wants to assert itself in its neighborhood while the US is trying to alternatively confront and contain it while also propping up relationships that evolved after the Korean War and during the Cold War. The status quo is unsustainable, but US moves to “protect” Taiwan are themselves destabilizing as they make the Chinese suspicious of American intentions and will likely lead to unnecessary armed conflict.
And let’s not ignore America’s continued devastation by sanctions and bombs of civilian populations in Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and Yemen to punish the governments of those countries. And, of course there, is always Israel, good old loyal ally and greatly loved by all politicians and the media, Israel, the Jewish state. Biden continues to waffle on reentry into the Iran nuclear non-proliferation agreement, which is good for the US, under pressure from Israel and its domestic “Amen chorus.” Just last month, speaking at a Zionist Organization of America Gala, former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeointoned that “There is no more important task of the Secretary of State than standing for Israel and there is no more important ally to the United States than Israel.” Add to that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s unforgettable bleat about her love for Israel, “I have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”
You might ask how any American leader could so blatantly state that US interests are subordinate to those of a foreign country, but there we are. And it is tragic that our president is willing to sacrifice American military lives in support of interests that are completely fraudulent. The truth is that we have a government that in bipartisan fashion does everything ass backwards while the American people struggle to pay the bills and watch their quality of life and even their security go downhill. Again citing Vladimir Putin’s wisdom on the subject, one might observe that as early as 2007 at the Munich Security Conference, the Russian president said that the “lawless behavior” of the United States in insisting on global dominance and leadership did not respect the vital interests of other nations and undermined both the desire for and the mechanisms established to encourage peaceful relations. He got that right. That is the crux of the matter. There is neither credibility nor humanity to American foreign policy, and everyone knows that the United States and allies like Israel are basically rogue nations that obey no rules and respect no one else’s rights. This has been somewhat true since the Second World War but it has become routine practice in nearly all of America’s international relations since 9/11 and the real losers are the American people, who have to shoulder the burden of an increasingly feckless and hopelessly corrupt political class.
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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 is from Andrey_Popov / Shutterstock
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Despite the dialogue, NATO continues to maintain an aggressive rhetoric towards Russia, promising a new armed conflict if current negotiations fail to reach a consensus. In a interview, the Secretary General of NATO stated that the Western military alliance is prepared for a situation of war in Europe if Russia does not collaborate towards a resolution of the Ukrainian issue. More than a warning, Stoltenberg’s attitude appears to be a true boycott against the negotiations and tends to make the pacification of Eastern Europe even more difficult.
Jens Stoltenberg, during a recent interview with the Financial Times, stated that his bloc is prepared for a new armed conflict on European soil in case bilateral negotiations fail. Stoltenberg’s words created an atmosphere of tensions and mistrust on the eve of one of the most important events in recent history between Moscow and NATO – in which terms for the peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian question will be discussed.
These were some of the Secretary’s words:
“I am aware of Russia’s history. For centuries they have experienced conflict with neighbors (…) [But] Russia has an alternative: to co-operate, to work with Nato (…) It is possible to find together a path, a political way forward, and also to address Russia’s concerns… But there continues to be a risk of conflict (…) Nato’s deterrence is credible and strong… We have to hope and work hard for the best, but be prepared for the worst.”
Stoltenberg and the pro-Western analysts justify this type of speech based on the movement of troops operated by the Russians in recent months, mainly in regions close to the border with Ukraine. It is estimated that around 100,000 troops were deployed on the western borders, in addition to military vehicles and other equipment. For months, Washington has been promoting the thesis that this troop movement would be an indication of an alleged Russian invasion plan against Ukraine, which is why tensions increased in 2021, leading to the need to schedule a summit. However, this kind of justification sounds fallacious and weak.
First of all, it must be remembered that at no time did the Russian government try to allocate troops outside its own territorial limits. The moves took place strictly within the Russian State’s sovereign space, which in no way can be interpreted as any kind of international threat. Every state has the right to distribute its military forces throughout its territory in the most convenient and strategic way possible, and it is absolutely normal that a tense zone such as the western border is receiving special attention from Moscow.
Also, the very reason why Russia is acting this way is due to NATO’s previous attitudes in the region. Western maneuvers in Ukraine have been a real threat to the integrity of western Russian territory and the entire Moscow’s strategic environment. And so, it has been the same process for years: NATO allocates troops on the Russian western border and makes threats, which are responded to with mere troop movement (which is an elementary security measure) by Moscow, within Russian territory itself – and then the West promotes the speech that the Russian government is preparing its troops for an invasion of Ukraine.
Considering these facts, Stoltenberg’s words can be interpreted in only one way: the condition for NATO to reach an agreement with Russia on the Ukrainian case is linked to the imposition of limits on Russian troops’ movements within Russian territory. Moscow must give “clear signals” that it does not plan to invade Ukraine – and these signals cannot be the repeated declarations of the Russian government that such a plan does not exist, but something more: a true self-limitation of its own military power. NATO wants Russia to keep its western border insecure, allowing eastern European space to become an arena of western occupation.
This is just another attempt by NATO to subvert the negotiations in order to impose abusive conditions on Russia, trying to make its interests prevail unilaterally, using the threat of war. The problem with this speech is that Stoltenberg’s threat will be interpreted as a bluff. It is very clear to both NATO and Russia that Ukraine is not such an important scenario for the West to the point of justifying the beginning of a war on European soil, with the confrontation of antagonistic nuclear powers.
Stoltenberg just tried, in a very unsophisticated way, to impose the interests of his bloc to intimidate Russia before and during the forthcoming talks. Even if his words are not a bluff and he personally defends the idea of war against Russia, his plans would be frustrated by the governments that are part of the alliance, which would never consider Ukraine a sufficient reason for a new war in Europe.
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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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OneAmerica, a national life insurance company based in Indianapolis, reports working age people (18 to 64) are dying at a rate that is 40% higher than prepandemic rates
There’s also been an uptick in disability claims. Initially, there was a rise in short-term disability claims, but now most claims are for long-term disabilities
Hospitalizations in Indiana are also higher than before the COVID shots were rolled out in in 2021, and the highest they’ve been in five years
The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India also reports a 41% rise in death claims in 2021
COVID-19 deaths were significantly lower in 2021 than 2020, so COVID-19 can be ruled out as the cause for this historical rise in excess deaths and disabilities. Right now, the most probable cause is the experimental COVID jabs
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As we’ve seen over the past two years, data and statistics can be manipulated and skewed in a wide variety of ways. COVID cases, for example, have clearly been overinflated by including people with no symptoms (likely false positives) and diagnosing anyone entering the hospital for an unrelated issue as a COVID patient if they test positive (again, falsely) for SARS-CoV-2.
One of the most reliable data points we have is all-cause mortality. It’s very hard to massage that statistic, as people are either dead or they’re not. Their inclusion in the national death index database is based on one primary criteria — they’ve died — regardless of the cause.
From there, their cause of death, as identified on their death certificate, is added in to more granular statistics, such as the number of people who died from cancer and heart disease in any given year, for example. But while the cause of any given death can be manipulated and altered, the fact that there was a death is more certain. What’s more, death rates tend to be very stable.
As noted in a (not peer-reviewed) study led by scientist Denis Rancourt, who looked at U.S. mortality between March 2020 and October 2021,1 “All-cause mortality by time is the most reliable data for detecting true catastrophic events causing death, and for gauging the population-level impact of any surge in deaths from any cause.”
40% Rise in Deaths Among Working Americans
With that in mind, OneAmerica’s announcement that the death rate of working-age Americans (18 to 64), in the third quarter of 2021, was 40% higher than prepandemic levels is rather stunning. OneAmerica is a national mutual life insurance company based in Indianapolis. During an early January 2022 press conference, CEO Scott Davidson said:2
“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business — not just at OneAmerica. The data is consistent across every player in that business.
And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic. Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic. So, 40% is just unheard of.”
According to Davidson, a majority of the death claims filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths, so something else is driving up the death rate. As reported by The Center Square:3
“The CDC weekly death counts, which reflect the information on death certificates and so have a lag of up to eight weeks or longer, show that for the week ending Nov. 6, there were far fewer deaths from COVID-19 in Indiana compared to a year ago — 195 verses 336 — but more deaths from other causes — 1,350 versus 1,319.”
Disability Claims Have Also Risen
At the same time, OneAmerica has also noticed an uptick in disability claims. Initially, there was a rise in short-term disability claims, but now most claims are for long-term disabilities. The company expects the rise in claims will cost them “well over $100 million,” an unexpected expense that will be passed on to employers buying group life insurance policies.
During that press conference, Brian Tabor, president of the Indiana Hospital Association, confirmed Indiana hospitals are seeing a dramatic increase in both deaths and hospitalizations for a wide variety of conditions.4
Not only are the number of hospitalizations in Indiana higher than it was before the COVID shots were rolled out in in 2021, it’s the highest it’s been in five years.5 Meanwhile, the daily deaths from COVID-19 are less than half that of 2020.
What’s Killing Younger Healthy Americans?
Since COVID-19 isn’t killing younger, healthy Americans, what is? What changed in 2021 that might have such a devastating effect on people’s health? Well, the most obvious change is that more than 100 million Americans got the experimental COVID shots, and doctors and scientists have elucidated several mechanisms by which these gene transfer technologies might injure or kill. As reported by vaccine safety blogger Steve Kirsch:6
“Normally death rates don’t change at all. They are very stable. It would take something REALLY BIG to have an effect this big. The effect size is 12-sigma.7 That is an event that would happen by pure chance every 2.832 years. That’s very rare. It’s basically never.
The universe is only 14 billion years old which is 1.413. In other words, the event that happened is not a statistical ‘fluke.’ Something caused a very big change … Whatever it is that is causing this, it is bigger and deadlier than COVID and it’s affecting nearly everyone.”
Kirsch lists 14 clues as to what this deadly “something” might be, including the following:8
Adverse Events May Be More Underreported Than Calculated
Kirsch continues:9
“We know that about 3M people die a year in the U.S.10 75% are over 65 years old, so that leaves us with 750K deaths per year for under 65. If that jumped by 40% from pre-pandemic levels in Q3 and Q4, we should assume that Q2 was the ramp up period (we’ll assume a linear ramp up in Q2).
So that is 75K deaths per quarter for Q3 and Q4 and half of that, 37K deaths in Q2. So that means roughly 187K excess deaths are probably happening for ages 18-64 due to some new cause.”
He then goes on to compare that rough estimate of 187,000 excess deaths to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) which, as of the December 24, 2021, data release, included 2,156 deaths between the ages of 17 and 65.
Subtracting the background death rate of 40 from 2,156, multiplied by Kirsch’s calculated underreporting factor (URF) of 4111 gives us 87,000 deaths. In other words, assuming vaccine injuries are underreported by a factor of 41, the real death toll from the COVID jab would be 87,000. However, that’s 100,000 short of the 187,000 excess death rate calculated above.
This means “either there is another effect at play which is actually killing more people 18 to 64 than the vaccine is, (unlikely but possible),” Kirsch writes, or “my URF of 41 is underestimating deaths by a factor of 2.15.” Kirsch is not alone in suspecting the novel COVID shots are the causative factor for this dramatic rise in excess deaths.
A Government Imposed Health Disaster Looms Large
Dr. Robert Malone addressed OneAmerica’s finding in a Substack article, stating:12
“AT A MINIMUM, based on my reading, one has to conclude that if this report holds and is confirmed by others in the dry world of life insurance actuaries, we have both a huge human tragedy and a profound public policy failure of the U.S. Government and U.S. HHS system to serve and protect the citizens that pay for this ‘service.’
IF this holds true, then the genetic vaccines so aggressively promoted have failed, and the clear federal campaign to prevent early treatment with lifesaving drugs has contributed to a massive, avoidable loss of life.
AT WORST, this report implies that the federal workplace vaccine mandates have driven what appears to be a true crime against humanity. Massive loss of life in (presumably) workers that have been forced to accept a toxic vaccine at higher frequency relative to the general population of Indiana.”
Jessica Rose, Ph.D., a research fellow at the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge in Israel, also weighed in on the new data:13
“So what does this tell us? It tells us that we are potentially in a huge steaming pile of shit. To be frank. These indications from our friend at the insurance company are simply that — indications.
If what we are seeing in VAERS, and the other adverse event reporting systems, is the mere reflection of what is actually going on with regards to injuries, which I presume it is, then we ain’t seen nothing yet.
And if what is being reported with regards to immune deficiencies associated with these injections is not simply anecdotal or representative of a small sub-cohort of individuals, we could be looking at a government-imposed complete health disaster.”
The Defender also reported other studies and data suggesting the COVID shots are causing massive harm:14
“In a September study15 described as ‘narrative-shattering,’ Harvard, Tufts and Veterans Affairs researchers reported that approximately half of hospitalized patients ‘showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021’ had likely been admitted ‘for another reason entirely.’
In Ventura County, California, which is witnessing a startling spike in non-COVID-related hospitalizations,16 nurse whistleblowers argue the vaccines should be one of the first explanations considered. Why else, they ask, would otherwise healthy adults be showing up in droves with brain bleeds, heart attacks, autoimmune issues and lung abnormalities?
Autopsies17 of individuals who died following COVID vaccination reveal shocking pathological alterations most frequently affecting the heart and lungs but also the brain and other organs …
Far from being willing to contemplate the elephant in the room, the Indiana insurance executive indicated he plans to require all OneAmerica employees to get vaccinated. Somewhat counterintuitively, the industry’s ability to pass along costs for elevated claims activity by raising premiums now has analysts rosily predicting the insurance industry is ‘buckled up to accelerate growth in 2022’ …
On the consumer side of the fence, the picture is far less rosy — for both the unvaccinated and vaccinated. For example, New York State Assemblyman Patrick Burke (D-Buffalo) proposed punitive legislation that would permit insurers to deny COVID-related treatment coverage for individuals who choose not to get vaccinated.
Adding insult to injury, there are also reports of insurance companies imposing premium increases on employers in counties with low vaccination rates. Meanwhile, many of those injured by COVID vaccines report18 denials of health and disability insurance coverage.”
Same Trend Seen in Many Other States and Countries
As noted by Davidson, OneAmerica is not alone in seeing an unprecedented spike in excess deaths. It’s also not limited to the United States. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, for example, also reports a 41% rise in death claims in 2021.19 That’s near-identical to the 40% increase reported by OneAmerica.
According to Kirsch, Phoenix, Arizona, is reporting a 100% rise in the death rate among city employees. In 2021, it was double that of the 10-year average.20 “There is clearly something going on that is not unique to Indiana,” he writes, adding:
“Excess mortality figures in Europe21 and the UK seem to show younger people are dying faster than the elderly, and that people 0-14 are dying faster in the second half of 2021 as compared to the first. More evidence showing that the vaccines are killing kids.”
You may recall that at the end of October 2021, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a ridiculous “study”22 that would have even failed a seventh-grade science experiment that claimed to show the COVID shot reduced the risk of death from all causes, including accidents, by 34%.
The CDC can lie up and down all day long and attempt to confuse people with fraudulent studies, but what they are simply unable to do at this point is to manipulate the death rates. Independent third-party insurance carriers are now validating the depth of the CDC cover-up and fraud. The real-world excess deaths we’re now seeing clearly refute the CDC’s attempt to prop up the COVID jab narrative with manipulated data.
Safety Signal Is Indisputable
As cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough has repeatedly stated, we had a clear safety signal all the way back in February 2021, and it’s only gotten more pronounced over time. Despite that, not a single safety review has been conducted, and our health authorities refuse to address the astronomical death toll.
At this point, anyone who says the COVID shots are “safe and effective,” full stop, immediately loses all credibility. There’s not a shred of data to suggest either is true. Everything we have points to these injections being the most lethal drugs ever used in modern medical history.
Perhaps the saddest part of it all is that they’re completely unnecessary. Doctors have identified several effective treatment options that can slash the COVID death rate by 85% or more. There’s no medical reason to include the global population in a novel drug experiment. We could have avoided all these excess deaths by making sure early treatment was given, rather than exclusively relying on an experimental “vaccine.”
Early Treatment Options
While the overall risk of COVID-19 has been grossly exaggerated, early treatment is key, both for preventing severe infection and preventing “long-haul COVID.” Here are a few suggestions:
• Oral-nasal decontamination — The virus, especially the Delta variant, replicates rapidly in the nasal cavity and mouth for three to five days before spreading to the rest of the body, so you want to strike where it’s most likely to be found right from the start.
Research23 has demonstrated that irrigating your nasal passages with 2.5 milliliters of 10% povidone-iodine (an antimicrobial) and standard saline, twice a day, is an effective remedy.
Another option that was slightly less effective was using a mixture of saline with half a teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate (an alkalizer). You can also gargle with these to kill viruses in your mouth and throat. When done routinely, it can be a very effective preventive strategy. You can find printable treatment guides on TruthForHealth.org.
• Nebulized peroxide — A similar strategy is to use nebulized hydrogen peroxide, diluted with saline to a 0.1% solution. Both hydrogen peroxide and saline24,25 have antiviral effects. You can view my previous videos on this on BitChute.
In a May 10, 2021, Orthomolecular Medicine press release,26 Dr. Thomas E. Levy — board-certified in internal medicine and cardiology — discussed the use of this treatment for COVID-19 specifically. Levy has in fact written an entire book on peroxide nebulization called “Rapid Virus Recovery,” which you can download for free from MedFox Publishing.
• Vitamin D optimization — Research has shown having a vitamin D level above 50 ng/mL brings the risk of COVID mortality down to near-zero.27
• Other key nutraceuticals — Vitamin C, zinc, quercetin and NAC all have scientific backing.
• Key drugs — For acute infection, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine or monoclonal antibodies can be used. While monoclonal antibodies and hydroxychloroquine must be used early on in the disease process, ivermectin has been shown to be effective in all stages of the infection.
Doxycycline or azithromycin are typically added as well, to address any secondary bacterial infection, as well as inhaled budesonide (a steroid). Oral steroids are used on and after the fifth day for pulmonary weakness and aspirin or NAC can be added to reduce the risk of clotting.
Full-strength aspirin is also typically recommended, but I believe lumbrokinase and serrapeptase may be a better, at least safer, alternative, as they help break down and prevent blood clots naturally.
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The U.S. Postal Service has asked the Biden regime for a temporary waiver from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement, and if the agency gets one, then that proves beyond any doubt that no American companies should be required to force their workers to get the jab or face weekly testing.
Because the reason is obvious: The administration does not really believe the virus is a planet-ending strain and is just imposing a mandate as a way of exerting authoritarian control over the population.
For its part, the USPS is claiming that the requirement will worsen staff shortages and exacerbate the still worsening supply chain crisis.
“Given the significant challenges that our nation’s supply chains are already experiencing, we respectfully suggest that the nation cannot afford the additional potential substantial harm that would be engendered if the ability of the Postal Service to deliver mail and packages is significantly negatively impacted,” Deputy Postmaster General Douglas A. Tulino wrote in the request to OSHA in a Jan. 4 letter obtained by The Epoch Times.
Tulino went on to argue that the vaccine-or-test mandate that is part of OSHA’s mandate, which was issued under a very little-used provision known as an “emergency temporary standard,” could lead to a “critical disruption to our vital operations” during the ongoing pandemic, which seems like some want it to be never-ending.
The deputy postmaster went on to claim that the Postal Service, which operates around 30,000 locations around the country, would have to train “tens of thousands of local supervisors and managers” in order to monitor workers’ compliance with the mandate.
The Epoch Times continued:
The letter stated that requiring the USPS “to absorb what could inevitably be a dramatic loss of employees at a time when the labor market is extremely tight and in the middle of the Postal Service’s Peak Season would have a potentially catastrophic impact on our ability to provide service.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 7 [heard] oral arguments on the rule, which affects private businesses with 100 or more workers. It stipulates that workers either submit to weekly COVID-19 testing and mask-wearing or get vaccinated.
A spokesperson with the Labor Department, which OSHA falls under, said the agency is reviewing the USPS request, but added that OSHA determined that compliance was “feasible for employers with 100 or more employees, including the postal service.”
“The Postal Service is seeking temporary relief because it wants to ensure that its ability to deliver mail and packages is not hindered amid the current disruptions in the nation’s supply chain,” said Darlene Casey, a USPS spokeswoman. “In addition, the Postal Service wants to adopt policies and procedures that comply with the [OSHA rule] while also fulfilling the organization’s other legal obligations.”
If the Postal Service is granted an extension or a reprieve, then it will prove beyond any doubt that the regime doesn’t consider the virus to be nearly as serious as they claim it is.
Meanwhile, 183 lawmakers sent a “friend of the court” brief to the U.S. Supreme Court asking justices to strike down the rule as unconstitutional and unnecessary.
“[OSHA] was never meant to be the health police,” they wrote. “Moreover, mandatory vaccinations do not stop individuals from contracting and transmitting COVID-19. Vaccinated workers can still contract and transmit COVID-19, including the new Omicron variant. Given that fact, imposing masking and testing restrictions only on unvaccinated workers makes no sense because all workers regardless of vaccination status remain potential carriers and transmitters of the virus.”
“Congressional members have an interest in the powers they delegate to agencies not being abused,” the lawmakers added. “The legislative authority vested in the federal government belongs to Congress, not the Executive branch. In this case, the promulgation by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) of a sweeping, nationwide vaccine mandate on businesses intrudes into an area of legislative concern far beyond the authority of the agency.”
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The person with whom we are all most intimate is oneself. It’s just the way it is. I don’t mean that in some oracular Delphic “know thyself” way, or in any deep psychoanalytical sense, but very simply. We have our own thoughts and feelings that come and go like breaths, most of which never get expressed in words. Together with our actions, including speech, they make up our lives. We try to anchor them with photos and memorabilia and lots of things, but time has no mercy; it sweeps us all away. Then our things remain for a while until they become a burden to those who remain, and then the things go. As the song reminds us, “We come and go like a ripple on a stream.”
For most people, their congeries of living experiences evaporate as quickly as soap bubbles in a pan of dish water. This is also true for the social and personal facts of our lives that leave but vague traces. Yet some strange people record them. They are a small minority, writers being chief among them. They keep words. Words unspoken and spoken words.
I have kept notebooks since my mid-twenties. They sit in cartons in a closet. They were at first my imaginary friends who never responded. Maybe I didn’t want them to. They are still silent, although every once in a while I seem to hear inarticulate sounds coming from the boxes.
I usually give them my ear at the end of each year when I read my notebook for the previous year. I then extract any entries that I have not yet used in my writing and put them in a small writing project notebook. But this year it was very strange. There was only one entry for 2021: “It’s all lies.” Those words keep echoing in my mind.
Most years I encounter many things that I have forgotten: a scene I saw and recorded; a snatch of conversation overheard; thoughts and musings; little paragraphs that I write that I might use later; feelings and emotions; questions; notes for future writing projects; things I did, people I met, books I read; events both personal and social that seem significant – almost anything that comes to mind. I have a love/hate relationship with these jottings, for I know that when I am dead, few, if any, people will care to read them. Why should they? I don’t, except once at the end of each year. For some strange reason I feel that if I burn the lot of them, the real me might disappear. But I also don’t really believe that, for I know I am not in those boxes. But I keep writing to myself nevertheless and then shut those words up.
“It’s all lies” concisely summed up my private disgust throughout 2020-21. I had tried in my public writing to expose those lies while having no energy or inclination left to write to or for myself. The past two years have been so absurd, the Covid propaganda so all-consuming, its madness so disturbing as so many people have gone off the deep end believing such outlandish garbage, that to contemplate this madness any more than I was already doing publicly must have seemed…I don’t know what. All I know is that I didn’t. I could only take so much.
Anyway, to start this year, having read my three words for 2021, I turned to reading the notebooks of my companion since my early twenties, Albert Camus. He too kept notebooks – cahiers – from the age of twenty-two until his strange death in a car crash – accident or assassination? – on January 4, 1960, a few months after his forty-sixth birthday, the age my daughter will reach this month. Camus was born in 1913, the same year as my father. These facts may be significant. I am writing this on January 4, 2022.
Brother Albert had always striven to serve both justice and beauty; to find a way to oppose a world of lies while living fully. I have recently concluded that many people who accept or oppose the vast tapestry of lies within which we now exist, the closing down of freedom and the rise of a new totalitarianism, have in a strange way unknowingly embraced a trick of the propagandists: they have become so one-dimensional in their obsessive need to defend or oppose their positions that they have forgotten to relish life.
One side lives in perpetual fear of disease and death and has turned into obedient and vengeful children wanting to ban the dissidents from society or burn them at the stake. The other side, flabbergasted at the credulous behavior of the compliant ones in the face of so many official lies and contradictions, feels compelled – and rightly so – to resist at every turn the gradual slide into a digital dystopian totalitarianism. But emotions are so raw and twisted that they flip at the drop of a pin. Or are flipped. This is how great propaganda works. For those behind the COVID hoax, Russia-gate, etc. want all the peons to hate life itself and embrace their dark and evil nihilism. To forget that life is both beautiful and tragic. To cut each other to pieces.
The journalist Andre Vltchek used to remind us, as he traveled the world reporting on the empire’s atrocities, that to dispense with poetry and song and passion is to succumb to evil; it is to forget that true revolution demands art as well as politics, the best expressions of the human spirit. For years before his untimely death in 2020, he noted how a grim sense of joylessness and indifference had descended on so many western countries, especially those, led by the United States, which cause so much human misery throughout the world. And he reminded us repeatedly, that throughout the world where people are oppressed, the spirit of resistance is preserved in remembering the great and beautiful poetry and music of their countries’ artists, whose words regular people have memorized and celebrate for their beauty and joie de vivre – despite oppressive conditions.
Speaking for himself, in a moving essay, “Return to Tipasa,”Camus wrote:
To give up beauty and the sensual happiness that comes with it and devote one’s self exclusively to unhappiness requires a nobility I lack…isolate beauty ends in grimaces, solitary justice in oppression. Anyone who seeks to serve the one to the exclusion of the other serves no one, not even himself, and in the end is doubly the servant of injustice.
So I have turned to Camus’ notebooks to see if I might fill in some gaps and learn some lessons for 2022.
On May 5, 1935 Camus made his first entry. Here is the opening sentence:
What I mean is this: that one can, with no romanticism, feel nostalgic for lost poverty.
That can be easily misunderstood, but he clarifies it. For Camus grew up in poverty but under the sun and by the sea in Algeria where he found beauty and joy in nature. He knew there was a grey, depressing form of poverty that did not provide such solace. He was trying at a young age to express what he later said differently: “I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things.”
Yet here we are in 2022 drowning in an excess of things, possessions that keep the world captive to the evil genius of consumer capitalism and the false rhetoric of freedom, things that people don’t need but want because of advertising’s brainwashing and the existential emptiness that convinces people that if you surround yourself with enough things you are somehow protecting yourself, while that delusion feeds an environmental crisis that is destroying the earth. Possessions as a form of demonic possession, a protection racket that doesn’t protect. But they give people an imaginary boost. Call them boosters. See the front page of The New York Times for all the latest consumer goods no one needs. They call it news, and the boosters, booster shots.
April 1937:
In the evening, the gentleness of the world on the bay. There are days when the world lies, days when it tells the truth. It is telling the truth this evening – with what sad and insistent beauty.
Yes, this has always been so, but it is terrifying and exhilarating. Living in constant fear as so many are now doing blocks both the sun and the clouds and reduces life to a caricature of its possibilities. All the official lies have produced passionless people afraid of themselves and others.
April 1941:
“It is always a great crime to deprive people of its liberty on the pretext that it is using it wrongly.” (Tocqueville)
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. When Camus wrote this, Germany was occupying France and the French Resistance was born. These days so many minds are occupied by endless propaganda that penetrates to the primal emotions and reduces carnal truth to digital abstractions. I think we will lose our freedom if we continue to embrace digital technology. Resistance is necessary.
August 1942:
Novel. Don’t put the “plague” in the title. Put something like “The Prisoners.”
He instinctively knew that is was not a plague that imprisons people but the mind-forged manacles of those who are afraid to confront it. Those who lack the courage to see the truth and resist it. To collaborate with the Nazis was for cowards. Free people fight back. As editor of Combat, the banned newspaper, he knew that when voices were censored it was because the censors were afraid the truth would prevail. A good lesson for 2022.
October 1946:
What makes a man feel alone is the cowardice of others. Must one try to understand that cowardice too? But it’s beyond my strength. And, on the other hand, I cannot be a scorner.
Ditto.
September 1949:
One must love life before loving its meaning, Dostoevsky says. Yes, and when the love of life disappears, no meaning consoles us for it.
Even depression is good. Even confronting evil is good. Even arguing. Pleasure is good. It’s all good. Life is an agon, always conflictual and agreeable. We were born to love and fight and try always to make the fight a loving fight. Words are our best weapons. I have always enjoyed writing them, for they always have seemed to be like wild birds in my breast, struggling to leave the nest. They are always taking us somewhere. Where is the question. Or better yet: Where do we want to go?
February 1950:
Later write an essay, without hesitation or reservation, on what I know to be true. (Do what one doesn’t want, want what one doesn’t do.)
What was that? I think he never wrote the essay but left us with his beautiful, unfinished novel, The First Man, wherein he wrote without hesitation or reservation and opened his heart. His was an unfinished life. I wonder if that is true for all of us.
June 1951:
Man of 1950. He fornicated and read the newspapers.
Sort of still right. 2022: They masturbated and checked their cell phones. Call it transhumanism. What’s love got to do with it?
February 1953:
Two common errors: existence precedes essence or essence existence. Both rise and fall with the same step.
So the sagacious intellectuals ripped him for this. Subtleties of thought always escape them. Today’s common errors: Obama differs from Trump or Trump differs from Obama (Biden). I once thought I was an intellectual until I understood their thinking. Small minds looking through the wrong ends of their binoculars.
May 1954:
Play. A happy man. And nobody can put up with him.
So what is happiness? There are those who think that it consists of having “fun.” They cannot understand the joy of struggle, the artist’s efforts to give form to chaos. One can only live if one is drunk with life, Tolstoy said. And he spent a bit of his life writing. Was he happy? Of happiness and despair we have no measure.
November 1, 1954:
I often read that I am atheistic. I hear people speak of my atheism. Yet these words say nothing to me; for me they have no meaning. I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.
I do believe in God and yet one of my sisters years ago said to me that “I thought you were an atheist.” This shocked me. Camus too was shocked by the meaningless of such terms. He knew there was a sharp distinction between the heart and the head and that belief and faith were not the same thing. Only the living-dead cannot distinguish them. Faith guides me. Camus, too, was led by an invisible star; he said it differently: “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” The current age denies the invisible and promotes defeatism.
July 1, 1958 (his last notebook entry):
The lie lulls or dreams, like the illusion. The truth is the only power, cheerful, inexhaustible. If we were able to live only of, and for truth: young and immortal energy in us. The man of truth does not age. A little more effort and he will not die.
How to say it when “It’s all lies”? Keep trying, and try to make it beautiful. Only the artistic imagination can accomplish this. As you said, Albert, “Beauty never enslaved anyone…And for thousands of years, every day, at every second, it has instead assuaged the servitude of millions of men and, occasionally, liberated some of them once and for all.
After all, perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent.
Art advances between two chasms, which are frivolity and propaganda.”
Create dangerously indeed, you advised! For we are in the heat of combat.
Let us rejoice and fight on.
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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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According to the report citing four people familiar with the matter, much of the $200 million package included military equipment such as small arms, ammunition, security radios, and medical equipment.
The media outlet adds that Congress was notified of the White House decision earlier this month, but other U.S. officials learned of the matter through classified channels.
The report says that the new security assistance will take some time to reach Ukraine.
It further says, citing two congressional aides, that the Biden administration wanted to keep this new security package secret ahead of the US-Russia security talks that took place in Geneva on Monday.
Another source told CNN that the additional $200 million in security aid to Ukraine is not substantial enough to deter any Russian aggression.
Kiev has made it clear that it wants more security assistance beyond the defensive weaponry already being provided by the U.S.
Western countries accuse Russia of allegedly deploying thousands of troops near the Ukrainian border in preparation for aggressive action.
Moscow has repeatedly denied the accusations.
Following Monday’s talks between Washington and Moscow, a Council between Russia and NATO will meet in Brussels this Wednesday to discuss this issue, among others.
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Featured image: US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, left, and Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Rybakov attend security talks at the United States Mission in Geneva, Switzerland | Photo: DENIS BALIBOUSE / POOL
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Wendy Sherman thinks her aim in talks with Russian officials starting Monday is to lecture them on the cost of hubris. Instead she’s set to lead the U.S., NATO, and Europe down a path of ruin, warns Scott Ritter.
If ever a critical diplomatic negotiation was doomed to fail from the start, the discussions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine and Russian security guarantees is it.
The two sides can’t even agree on an agenda.
From the Russian perspective, the situation is clear: “The Russian side came here [to Geneva] with a clear position that contains a number of elements that, to my mind, are understandable and have been so clearly formulated—including at a high level—that deviating from our approaches simply is not possible,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the press after a pre-meeting dinner on Sunday hosted by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who is leading the U.S. delegation.
Ryabkov was referring Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands to U.S. President Joe Biden in early December regarding Russian security guarantees, which were then laid out by Moscow in detail in the form of two draft treaties, one a Russian-U.S. security treaty, the other a security agreement between Russia and NATO.
The latter would bar Ukraine from joining NATO and rule out any eastward expansion by the trans-Atlantic military alliance. At the time, Ryabkov tersely noted that the U.S. should immediately begin to address the proposed drafts with an eye to finalizing something when the two sides meet. Now, with the meeting beginning on Monday, it doesn’t appear as if the U.S. has done any such thing.
“[T]he talks are going to be difficult,” Ryabkov told reporters after the dinner meeting. “They cannot be easy. They will be business-like. I think we won’t waste our time tomorrow.” When asked if Russia was ready to compromise, Ryabkov tersely responded, “The Americans should get ready to reach a compromise.”
All the U.S. has been willing to do, it seems, is to remind Russia of so-called “serious consequences” should Russia invade Ukraine, something the U.S. and NATO fear is imminent, given the scope and scale of recent Russian military exercises in the region involving tens of thousands of troops. This threat was made by Biden to Putin on several occasions, including a phone call initiated by Putin last week to help frame the upcoming talks.
Yet on the eve of the Ryabkov-Sherman meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken simply reiterated these threats, declaring that Russia would face “massive consequences” if it invaded Ukraine.
“It’s clear that we’ve offered him two paths forward,” Blinken said, speaking of Putin. “One is through diplomacy and dialogue; the other is through deterrence and massive consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression against Ukraine. And we’re about to test the proposition of which path President Putin wants to take this week.”
Lessons of History
Moscow, June 23, 1941: Soviet soldiers on their way to the front. The sign reads: “Our cause is just. The enemy will be crushed. The victory will be ours! ” (Anatoliy Garanin .License: CC BY SA 3.0.)
It is as if both Biden and Blinken are deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to reading Russia.
Ryabkov has alluded to a fact already made clear by the Russians—there will be no compromise when it comes to Russia’s legitimate national security interests. And if the U.S. cannot understand how the accumulation of military power encompassed in a military alliance which views Russia as a singular, existential threat to its members’ security is seen by Russia as threatening, then there is no comprehension of how the events of June 22, 1941 have shaped the present -day Russian psyche, why Russia will never again allow such a situation to occur, and why the talks are doomed before they even begin.
As for the American threats, Russia has given its response—any effort to sanction Russia would result, as Putin told Biden last month, in a “complete rupture of relations” between Russia and those countries attempting sanctions. One need not be a student of history to comprehend that the next logical step following a “complete rupture of relations” between two parties that are at loggerheads over matters pertaining to existential threats to the national security of one or both is not the peaceful resumption of relations, but war.
There is no mealy-mouthed posturing by Foggy Bottom peacocks taking place in Moscow, but rather a cold, hard, statement of fact—ignore Russia’s demands at you own peril. The U.S., it seems, believes that the worst-case scenario is one where Russia invades Ukraine, only to wilt under the sustained pressure of economic sanctions and military threats.
Russia’s worse-case scenario is one where it engages in armed conflict with NATO.
Generally speaking, the side that is most prepared for the reality of armed conflict will prevail.
Russia has been preparing for this possibility for more than a year. It has repeatedly shown a capability to rapidly mobilize 100,000-plus combat-ready forces in short order. NATO has shown an ability to mobilize 30,000 after six-to-nine-months of extensive preparations.
The Shape of War
What would a conflict between Russia and NATO look like? In short, not like anything NATO has prepared for. Time is the friend of NATO in any such conflict—time to let sanctions weaken the Russian economy, and time to allow NATO to build up sufficient military power to be able to match Russia’s conventional military strength.
Russia knows this, and as such, any Russian move will be designed to be both swift and decisive.
First and foremost, if it comes to it, when Russia decides to move on Ukraine, it will do so with a plan of action that has been well-thought out and which sufficient resources have been allocated for its successful completion. Russia will not get involved in a military misadventure in Ukraine that has the potential of dragging on and on, like the U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia has studied an earlier U.S. military campaign—Operation Desert Storm, of Gulf War I—and has taken to heart the lessons of that conflict.
One does not need to occupy the territory of a foe in order to destroy it. A strategic air campaign designed to nullify specific aspects of a nations’ capability, whether it be economic, political, military, or all the above, coupled with a focused ground campaign designed to destroy an enemy’s army as opposed to occupy its territory, is the likely course of action.
Given the overwhelming supremacy Russia has both in terms of the ability to project air power backed by precision missile attacks, a strategic air campaign against Ukraine would accomplish in days what the U.S. took more than a month to do against Iraq in 1991.
On the ground, the destruction of Ukraine’s Army is all but guaranteed. Simply put, the Ukrainian military is neither equipped nor trained to engage in large-scale ground combat. It would be destroyed piecemeal, and the Russians would more than likely spend more time processing Ukrainian prisoners of war than killing Ukrainian defenders.
For any Russian military campaign against Ukraine to be effective in a larger conflict with NATO, however, two things must occur—Ukraine must cease to exist as a modern nation state, and the defeat of the Ukrainian military must be massively one-sided and quick. If Russia is able to accomplish these two objectives, then it is well positioned to move on to the next phase of its overall strategic posturing vis-à-vis NATO—intimidation.
While the U.S., NATO, the EU, and the G7 have all promised “unprecedented sanctions,” sanctions only matter if the other side cares. Russia, by rupturing relations with the West, no longer would care about sanctions. Moreover, it is a simple acknowledgement of reality that Russia can survive being blocked from SWIFT transactions longer than Europe can survive without Russian energy. Any rupturing of relations between Russia and the West will result in the complete embargoing of Russian gas and oil to European customers.
There is no European Plan B. Europe will suffer, and because Europe is composed of erstwhile democracies, politicians will pay the price. All those politicians who followed the U.S. blindly into a confrontation with Russia will now have to answer to their respective constituents why they committed economic suicide on behalf of a Nazi-worshipping, thoroughly corrupt nation (Ukraine) which has nothing in common with the rest of Europe. It will be a short conversation.
NATO’s Fix
If the U.S. tries to build up NATO forces on Russia’s western frontiers in the aftermath of any Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia will then present Europe with a fait accompli in the form of what would now be known as the “Ukrainian model.” In short, Russia will guarantee that the Ukrainian treatment will be applied to the Baltics, Poland, and even Finland, should it be foolish enough to pursue NATO membership.
Russia won’t wait until the U.S. has had time to accumulate sufficient military power, either. Russia will simply destroy the offending party through the combination of an air campaign designed to degrade the economic function of the targeted nation, and a ground campaign designed to annihilate the ability to wage war. Russia does not need to occupy the territory of NATO for any lengthy period—just enough to destroy whatever military power has been accumulated by NATO near its borders.
And—here’s the kicker—short of employing nuclear weapons, there’s nothing NATO can do to prevent this outcome. Militarily, NATO is but a shadow of its former self. The once great armies of Europe have had to cannibalize their combat formations to assemble battalion-sized “combat groups” in the Baltics and Poland. Russia, on the other hand, has reconstituted two army-size formations—the 1stGuards Tank Army and the 20th Combined Arms Army—from the Cold War-era which specialize in deep offensive military action.
Even Vegas wouldn’t offer odds on this one.
Sherman will face off against Ryabkov in Geneva, with the fate of Europe in her hands. The sad thing is, she doesn’t see it that way. Thanks to Biden, Blinken and the host of Russophobes who populate the U.S. national security state today, Sherman thinks she is there to simply communicate the consequences of diplomatic failure to Russia. To threaten. With mere words.
What Sherman, Biden, Blinken, and the others have yet to comprehend is that Russia has already weighed the consequences and is apparently willing to accept them. And respond. With action.
One wonders if Sherman, Biden, Blinken, and the others have thought this through. Odds are, they have not, and the consequences for Europe will be dire.
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Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.
Featured image: Ahead of the formal talks, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Sunday in Geneva and told him Washington “would welcome genuine progress through diplomacy.” (Russian Mission in Geneva)
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Based on the transcript of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union show on January 9, below, as posted on the State Department website.
Much of what has been excised is standard diplomatic verbiage along the lines of we’d prefer a diplomatic solution but….We’d like to think our aggressive adversary is occasionally capable of exercising reason and restraint but….We’d prefer that Russia peacefully evacuate Crimea, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh and Kazakhstan, but if they don’t…. And so on.
Blinken’s tone remains what it was the preceding day after the NATO foreign ministers conference, harsh and bellicose to an alarming degree, and many of the particulars of his CNN interview appear identical to those used the same day by John Bolton in his article in The Wall Street Journal entitled Is the Crisis in Kazakhstan the Rebirth of the Soviet Union? For example, denouncing Russia for aggression against Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine in the same sentence. And when asked by Tapper if what “drives Putin is a desire to restore the old Soviet Union,” responding: “I think that’s right. I think that’s one of President Putin’s objectives.”
His accusation of Russia invading Crimea in 2014 is the standard Western characterization of Russia reclaiming the peninsula without firing a shot. His accusation of aggressive Russian actions against Moldova – a charge no one in the West has leveled until recent weeks – appears to be an allusion to the presence of 1,500 Russian troops in Transnistria, the continuation of a Russian peacekeeping deployment that began in 1992.
Regarding NATO expansion along Russia’s entire western border – fourteen new members in Eastern Europe since 1999 – Blinken is intractable on refusing to even discuss withdrawal of U.S. and NATO military assets from those nations. As he is on Ukraine’s and Georgia’s right to join the military alliance. In his words Washington remains uncompromisingly committed to “the principle that one country can’t change the borders of another by force, the principle that one country can’t dictate to another its foreign policy and the choices – and its choices including with whom it will associate….”
Yet shortly afterwards when speaking of Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev requesting assistance from fellow members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization Blinken states, “We have real questions about why they felt compelled to call in this organization that Russia dominates.” Adding that, “We’re asking for clarification on that.”
In condemning Russian actions in and relating to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Moldova as he does, he identified half of the former union republics of the Soviet Union not already in NATO. They, and Russia itself if included, are identified by Blinken as political and potentially military conflict zones in the worsening confrontation between the U.S./NATO and Russia. And in addition to those, seven or more of what were formerly called frozen conflicts by the West, but which the U.S. and NATO recently have rebranded temporarily occupied territories.
Thirty-one years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union a unipolar U.S. and a global NATO are poised to finish the war of Soviet succession.
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Tapper: Hello. I’m Jake Tapper in Washington, where the state of our union is having Cold War flashbacks.
…President Putin demanding that the U.S. pull some troops back out of Eastern Europe and rule out expanding NATO to include Ukraine. Are either of those on the negotiating table?
Blinken: Neither of those is on the table, Jake, but here’s where we are. There are two paths before us. There’s a path of dialogue and diplomacy to try to resolve some of these differences and avoid a confrontation. The other path is confrontation and massive consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression on Ukraine. We’re about to test the proposition about which path President Putin’s prepared to take.
Tapper: It seems unlikely Putin will withdraw troops or take at least some of them off the border without some concessions by the U.S. You’ve already said that those two that I mentioned up top are off the table or not on the table. What about moving heavy U.S. weaponry out of Poland, moving it further west? Or what about moving missiles? What about limiting the scope of U.S. military exercise? Are any of those on the table?
Blinken: Look, first, Jake, I don’t think we’re going to see any breakthroughs in the coming week….
[I]t’s hard to see making actual progress as opposed to talking in an atmosphere of escalation with a gun to Ukraine’s head. So if we’re actually going to make progress, we’re going to have to see de-escalation, Russia pulling back from the threat that it currently poses to Ukraine.
Tapper: So you didn’t rule any of those out, which doesn’t mean you’re going to do them, but just they’re not off the table as the earlier items you said were.
Blinken: Yeah, it’s – Jake, it’s exactly the opposite. First of all, why are we here? We’re here because repeatedly over the last decade, Russia has committed acts of aggression against neighbors: Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine in 2014, and now the renewed threat about Ukraine today. Second, there are large principles at stake that go to the fundamentals of international peace and security: the principle that one country can’t change the borders of another by force, the principle that one country can’t dictate to another its foreign policy and the choices – and its choices including with whom it will associate, the principle that one country can’t exert a sphere of influence to subjugate its neighbors.
All of that is on the table. That’s exactly why not only are we standing up, but we have rallied countries not just in Europe, but indeed beyond to make it clear to Russia that this aggression will not be accepted, will not be tolerated, will not stand, so that the choice is Russia. It’s also not about making concessions….
Tapper: Right. So you say the U.S. will respond with massive consequences to any Russian aggression in Ukraine. President Biden has ruled out U.S. unilateral troops on the ground. What sanctions is the U.S. willing to impose, and are U.S. troops as part of a NATO or international force on the table?
Blinken: Well, first, when it comes to consequences, it’s not just us who has been saying this. The G7, the leading democratic economies in the world, made clear there would be massive consequences for renewed Russian aggression. So has the European Union, so has NATO. And we have been working very closely with all of these countries in recent weeks….I’m not going to telegraph the details, but I think Russia has a pretty good idea of the kinds of things it would face if it renews its aggression.
Second, we’ve made clear that we will continue to provide and supply Ukraine with defensive military equipment to be able to defend itself. And it’s also clear that in the event of further Russian aggression, NATO is going to have to further reinforce its eastern flank. And you know Jake, what’s interesting about all of this is that President Putin talks about lots of things he’s concerned about —
Tapper: Right.
Blinken: …and yet the very actions he’s taken have precipitated much of what he says he wants to prevent….So it’s President Putin’s actions that are precipitating what he says he doesn’t want.
Tapper: Yeah.
Blinken: There’s now an opportunity – if he takes it – through dialogue…as well as address many concerns that the United States and Europe have over Russia’s conduct.
Tapper: Right. Beyond this military buildup on the Ukraine border, Russian-led troops are now intervening in violent protests in Kazakhstan. They also stepped in after recent Belarus elections and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said a few years ago that what he believes drives Putin is a desire to restore the old Soviet Union. Do you agree?
Blinken: I think that’s right. I think that’s one of President Putin’s objectives, and it is to re-exert a sphere of influence over countries that previously were part of the Soviet Union. And as we’ve said, that’s unacceptable. We can’t go back to a world of spheres of influence….
Tapper: Yeah. Do you the invasion is likely – do you think an invasion of Ukraine is likely?
Blinken: Look, I can’t tell you whether it’s likely or not. I can tell you this:…we’re prepared to deal very resolutely with Russia if it chooses confrontation, if it chooses aggression. We’ll see. It is now up to President Putin to decide which path he wants to follow. We’re prepared, again –
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Tapper: So Kazakhstan’s president is publicly saying that he gave an order, quote, to “open fire,” to “kill without warning” the protesters in the street. President Biden said in October that your administration, quote, “put human rights back at the center of our foreign policy” and, quote, “No U.S. president should stand by when human rights are under attack.” They’re under attack in Kazakhstan. At least 164 people were killed during protests this week.
Blinken: Yeah, and I condemn that statement, and if that’s the national policy, condemn that policy, the shoot to kill.
…We have real questions about why they felt compelled to call in this organization that Russia dominates. We’re asking for clarification on that….
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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: Then-Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies before a Senate appropriations subcommittee on April 12, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Source: PAUL MORIGI/WIREIMAGE)
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Sucharit Bhakdi, MD and Arne Burkhardt, MD show 14 of 15 autopsied victims (93 %) who died after being inoculated with a Covid “vaccine” were killed by the “vaccine”
The “vaccine” was implicated in 93% of the deaths in the patients they examined. What’s troubling is the government-connected coroner didn’t implicate the vaccine in any of those deaths.
The vaccines are bad news. Fifteen bodies were examined (all died from 7 days to 6 months after vaccination; ages 28 to 95). The coroner or the public prosecutor didn’t associate the vaccine as the cause of death in any of the cases. However, further examination revealed that the vaccine was implicated in the deaths of 14 of the 15 cases. The most attacked organ was the heart (in all of the people who died), but other organs were attacked as well. The implications are potentially enormous resulting in millions of deaths. The vaccines should be immediately halted.
No need to worry. It is doubtful that anything will happen because the work wasn’t published in a peer-reviewed journal so will be ignored by the scientific community. That’s just the way it works.
I got an email recently from Mike Yeadon, former VP of Pfizer, who urged me to check out this video. He wrote me this email on 12/24/21:
“Mass covid19 vaccination is leading to mass murder.
“Mike”
The video references this paper, posted on December 10, 2021, On COVID vaccines: why they cannot work, and irrefutable evidence of their causative role in deaths after vaccination by Sucharit Bhakdi, MD and Arne Burkhardt, MD. It has been getting a lot of attention lately.
Check out the number of likes and retweets… just in the first 3 hours!
The authors did an autopsy in 15 patients who died (from 7 days to 6 months) after receiving the COVID vaccine.
These were all cases where the coroner ruled as NOT being caused by the vaccine.
They discovered that in 14 of the 15 patients there was widespread evidence of the body attacking itself, something that is never seen before. The heart was attacked in all 14 cases.
A number of salient aspects dominated in all affected tissues of all cases:
1. inflammatory events in small blood vessels (endotheliitis), characterized by an abundance of T-lymphocytes and sequestered, dead endothelial cells within the vessel lumen;
2. the extensive perivascular accumulation of T-lymphocytes;
3. a massive lymphocytic infiltration of surrounding non-lymphatic organs or tissue with T-lymphocytes.
Lymphocytic infiltration occasionally occurred in combination with intense lymphocytic activation and follicle formation. Where these were present, they were usually accompanied by tissue destruction.
Here’s the video presentation of the results.
VAERS as well as other independent studies (e.g., see this vaccine injury paper) shows the vaccines are killing people and that cardiac events were highly elevated. This study is consistent with those results.
This work independently validates the analysis of Peter Schimacher who showed a minimum of 30% to 40% of the deaths after vaccine were caused by the vaccine.
Reactions from a level-headed scientist (name withheld to protect him from attack):
If the autopsy findings are confirmed by other pathologists with additional samples, and if they are combined with the findings of Dr. Hoffe (>60% inoculant recipients have elevated D-dimer tests and evidence of clotting) and Dr. Cole (increase in cancers after inoculation, including twenty-fold increase in uterine cancer), we are seeing a disaster of unimaginable proportions. The conclusion (if supported by further data) is that essentially EVERY inoculant recipient suffers damage, with more damage after each shot. Given the seriousness of the types of damage (autoimmune diseases, cancer, re-emergent dormant infections, clotting/strokes, cardiac damage, etc.), these effects will translate into lifespan reduction, which should be counted as deaths from the inoculations. So, in the USA, where ~200M people have been fully inoculated, the number of deaths will not be the 10,000 or so reported in VAERS, or the 150,000+ scaled-up deaths from VAERS, but could be closer to tens of millions when the inoculation effects play out!
What the above three findings (Burkhart, Hoffe, Cole, and I suspect many others who have not yet come forward) show is that the post-inoculation effects are not rare events (as reported by the media-gov’t), but are in actuality frequent events. They may be, in fact, universal, with the severity and damage different for each recipient.
The question in my mind is whether it is possible to reverse these inoculation-based adverse events. Can the innate immune system be fully restored? Can the micro clotting be reversed? Can the autoimmunity be reversed? I have seen a wide spectrum of opinions on whether this is possible, none of which is overly convincing.
Are we headed for the situation where the ~30% un-vaxxed will be devoting their lives to operating whatever is left of the economic infrastructure and serving as caretakers for the vaxxed?
I realize the above sounds extreme, and maybe when more data are gathered from myriad credible sources the results and conclusions may change, but right now the above data seem to synchronize with the demonstrated underlying mechanisms of damage. Additionally, we seem to be doubling down on inoculations, with fourth booster being proposed for Israel, and UK suggesting quarterly boosters.
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Our thanks to Dr. Gary G. Kohls for bringing this to our attention.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin at his End of the Year Press Conference, Dec. 23, 2021, speaking to 500 domestic and international journalists, said the following:
“We have made it clear that any further movement of NATO to the East is unacceptable. Is there anything unclear about this? Are we deploying missiles near the U.S. border? No, we are not. It is the United States that has come to our home with its missiles and is already standing at our doorstep. Is it going too far to demand that no strike systems be placed near our home? What is so unusual about this?”
This statement makes it clear who the aggressor is in the latest and continuing confrontation between Russia and U.S. imperialism. Yet the U.S. corporate media reported it as bellicose, threatening, unreasonable, an ominous warning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. President Joe Biden promised “serious consequences.”
As U.S. policy grows more reckless, the corporate media perceives threats everywhere. After Putin and Biden spoke by zoom, Putin and President Xi Jinping of China had a New Year’s exchange Dec. 15. This conversation was headlined by The Hill as “‘Allies’ China and Russia Are Ganging Up on America.”
Yet NATO expansion is in direct violation of U.S. agreements with the then-USSR, agreements that the U.S.-commanded and dominated military alliance would move “not one inch eastward.” U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in 1990 pledged this to former president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, promising that a reunified German state in the heart of Europe would present no threat to the Soviet Union.
Putin’s statement above summarizes the Russian government’s position leading up to scheduled Jan. 10 talks in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss Russian demands to stop U.S./NATO expansion to its borders. Meanwhile, the U.S. corporate media reports Russia’s troops within Russia as a buildup on the border with Ukraine.
What President Putin is addressing is the further expansion of NATO through Ukraine’s absorption into an aggressive, U.S.-dominated military alliance.
NATO keeps expanding
Since 1990, U.S. and West European — especially German — imperialism have shared a policy toward formerly socialist Eastern Europe: They aimed to consolidate capitalist property relations under Western economic domination. For this to succeed they began organizing the state itself, its police and military, under U.S. military command. To lock in place this transfer of property, they insisted on NATO membership for each country.
Beyond the imperialist reconquest of Eastern Europe was the effort to totally dominate and loot Russia. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the separation of former Soviet republics into small, dysfunctional “independent” countries whetted U.S. imperialist appetites.
During the years Boris Yeltsin was president of Russia, 1991-99, the corrupt bureaucrats and criminals who had seized control of the formerly nationalized industries became oligarchs. These new rulers sold entire industries for scrap metal to curry favor in the West and enrich themselves. They expected to be welcomed as equals into the imperialist bloc.
No way.
Putin blocks looting
What Putin has attempted, especially in the past decade, is to stabilize and consolidate capitalist property relations in Russia, ending the wild looting and economic chaos of the Yeltsin years. He has not sought to reestablish socialist property relations but to defend Russian nationalist interests.
Outside Russia, the Putin government provided air cover and vital military aid to Syria that halted the imperialist attempt to overthrow the Syrian government. Russian missiles shipped to Venezuela have provided that government with some needed air cover. These steps outraged imperialist forces determined to reassert their domination of oil-rich Western Asia and to control all of South America.
What is barely mentioned in all the current reporting of a Russian threat is that the U.S. is supplying $450 million additional funding in weapons to Ukraine. Together with U.S. aid to bring about the reactionary February 2014 coup in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, that adds up to $2.5 billion. There is $60 million more in small arms, ammunition and radar systems.
Britain, NATO member and U.S. junior partner, is constructing two naval ports for the pro-imperialist Ukraine regime on that country’s Black Sea shoreline. One is in the Sea of Azov, that is, between the Russian naval base on the Crimean Peninsula and the rest of Russia. London is also lending the U.S.-installed government in Kiev $1.6 billion to pay for an assortment of British-made naval vessels.
Western military officials are discussing deploying new technology, including nuclear-capable missiles, in Poland and Latvia and along Ukraine’s Russia-facing eastern front.
Background to Jan. 10
Russia’s position for the Jan. 10 meeting:
NATO should cease its efforts to expand eastward into Ukraine and Georgia;
NATO guarantees that it will not deploy missile batteries in nations bordering Russia; and
An end to NATO military and naval exercises in nations and seas bordering Russia.
It is important to review this pledge today in the present crisis.
In 1990 then Soviet President Gorbachev was facing a social upheaval internally, following the opening of the Soviet Union to Western-funded programs and ending the leading role of the Communist Party. Seeking a deal with imperialism, Gorbachev allowed the annexation of the German Democratic Republic — which the Soviet Union had a legal right to veto.
Gorbachev had received assurances that NATO would not expand after he withdrew all Soviet forces from Eastern Europe, and not just from Baker. U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents declassified on Dec. 12, 2017, and posted online at George Washington University, revealed a torrent of assurances which Western leaders gave Gorbachev and other Soviet officials, throughout the process of German unification in 1990-91. They all promised Soviet security.
These documents reveal that U.S. President George H.W. Bush, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, CIA Director Robert Gates, French President Francois Mitterrand, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, British Prime Minister John Major and NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner made promises similar to Baker’s pledge of NATO expanding “not one inch.” (tinyurl.com/mr4atc3m)
The absorption of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) into the imperialist bloc, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact left NATO as a totally unopposed, aggressive military alliance. NATO first asserted its military capacity through bombing campaigns and troop deployments to carry out the breakup of the Yugoslav Socialist Federation through the 1990s.
Since then, the U.S. military has led the NATO military alliance in a series of wars, invasions, bombing campaigns and occupations, including in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria and in subversive regime-change operations throughout Eastern Europe, Western Asia and Africa.
In every former socialist country in Eastern Europe, regime changes reinstated capitalism. It was a brutal and wrenching political and economic transformation. With Washington’s assistance, reactionary monarchists, religious clerics, former Nazi collaborators and Wall Street economists flooded into the entire region.
Hundreds of social organizations, NGOs, schools and publications received billions of dollars in U.S. funding, through USAID programs, to reorganize society on a capitalist basis. They aggressively rewrote constitutions along with banking and new ownership laws, privatized and sold off major industries, dismembered social services and looted pensions.
To consolidate and protect these brutal thefts of socialized property from potential popular resistance, the imperialists turned to the NATO military alliance. The collaborators in each capitalist-reorganized country had to join NATO, in the process borrowing to pay for U.S.-made military equipment and pledging thousands of their soldiers to fight in U.S. wars.
New right-wing governments in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic applied for and were quickly accepted into the NATO alliance in 1999. The former Soviet Republics of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, all bordering Russia, were admitted to NATO in 2004, as were the right-wing governments in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Albania and Croatia were admitted into the military alliance in 2009, Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020.
From 16 members in 1990, NATO grew to 30 members today.
U.S. coup in Ukraine
It was the fierce political struggle over Ukraine joining NATO that led to the aggressive U.S.-orchestrated coup in 2014. The U.S. government pumped $5.1 billion into the country to carry out an enormous social engineering campaign and regime-change operation against the elected government.
A Dec. 13, 2013, speech by Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, a U.S.-funded nongovernmental agency, revealed the price tag for this Ukrainian operation.
The Western media reported the coup as a democratic renewal. But the Euro-Maidan Uprising, in Kiev, was led by Right Sektor and neo-Nazi militias. After months of street protests, these forces literally overran government buildings on Feb. 22, 2014, forcing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and many of his officials to flee for their lives.
Nuland and European officials immediately declared the new regime “legitimate.”
Protesting the illegitimate overthrow of their elected president, mass movements in the more industrialized Donbass in Eastern Ukraine and in Crimea held referendums, seeking separation from this right-wing seizure of power in western Ukraine. Russian forces moved into Crimea to secure Russia’s only warm water port on the Black Sea.
This impasse has continued since 2014.
The U.S. and European Union imposed harsh sanctions on Russia for resisting NATO’s military expansion. The economic sanctions are especially focused on rupturing Russia’s ability to sell oil and gas to Germany by blocking the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. Tying Europe’s energy needs to fracked natural gas from the U.S. increases U.S. imperialist leverage against its EU allies, which are also capitalist competitors.
U.S. always violates agreements
The U.S. government violates treaties at will. This is imperialist diplomacy, confirmed by hundreds of broken treaties with Indigenous nations within the U.S.
Along with violating its promises regarding NATO expansion, Washington violated two publicly signed international agreements of great importance. The U.S. broke the nuclear agreement (JCPOA) signed in 2015 along with Iran and Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia and the U.N. Security Council.
Washington is now flagrantly violating the 1979 agreement recognizing the People’s Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of all China including Taiwan.
Breaking these treaties may have unforeseen consequences, causing U.S. targets to forge alliances. In his 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives,” imperialist strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski warned:
“Potentially, the most dangerous scenario [for U.S. domination] would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘antihegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances.”
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This article was originally published on Workers World.
Sara Flounders is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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New findings on Covid vaccines discussed by lawyer Reiner Fuellmich, Dr Wolfgang Wodarg and Dr Sam White during their #85 Corona Investigation Committee session on 31st Dec 2021.
“As a lawyer, that’s inescapable proof of premeditation. And once you have premeditation, there’s no immunity for anyone, not even in the United States.”
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Since the beginning of the health crisis, the French government has claimed that early treatment was ineffective. It has imposed major restrictions on our freedoms, in particular on doctors’ prescriptions.
Geopolitical commentator Clint Ehrlich has reported while on the ground in Moscow that “the situation in Kazakhstan is a much bigger deal than Western media is letting on.” He further argues that the mayhem unleashed this past week and ongoing violent destabilization significantly increases the risk of NATO-Russia conflict.
The World has been in a state crisis for almost two years and now formal statements by both the WHO and the CDC (with the usual innuendos) confirm that the RT-PCR test (used to justify every single policy mandate including lockdowns, social distancing, the mask, confinement of the labor force, closure of economic activity, etc.) is flawed and invalid.
While many vaccines have a questionable safety profile, especially when combined, data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) suggest there’s never been a vaccine as dangerous as the experimental mRNA gene transfer injections for COVID.
Shankara Chetty could be called a second Zelenko. He is a medical doctor, a general practitioner in South Africa who has treated more than 7000 Covid patients successfully, without the need for extra oxygen or hospitalization.
Davison was one of several business leaders who spoke during the virtual news conference on Dec. 30 that was organized by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. Most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths, Davison said.
The Pentagon has finally published its first Airpower Summary since President Biden took office nearly a year ago. These monthly reports have been published since 2007 to document the number of bombs and missiles dropped by U.S.-led air forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria since 2004.
Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews also stated that all arrivals in Australia had to “provide acceptable proof that they cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons”. Absent that, Djokovic “won’t be treated any different to anyone else and he’ll be on the next plane home.”
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Shankara Chetty could be called a second Zelenko. He is a medical doctor, a general practitioner in South Africa who has treated more than 7000 Covid patients successfully, without the need for extra oxygen or hospitalization. Through meticulous observation he was able to discern the nature of Covid-19 as a two-phase illness with a respiratory and an allergic phase, and to develop a treatment protocol which he describes in the first part of the interview.
In the second part he is talking about how he sees the pandemic, long Covid, the virus and its variants, the whack scenes, and the development of a new medicine, to treat the negative effects from the spike proteins.
I offer here a one-hour essentials edit of Chetty’s 1hr 50min testimony before the German Corona Inquiry Committee (session 82, Dec 10th, 2021). Get the full interview from their official channel.
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Six months after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq: Michel Chossudovsky’s September 2003 presentation at McMaster University, Ontario.
Selected Excerpts from the Lecture
The wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are part of a broader military agenda, which was launched at the end of the Cold War. The ongoing war agenda is a continuation of the 1991 Gulf War and the NATO led wars on Yugoslavia (1991-2001).
There is a roadmap, a sequence of wars.
The war on Iraq has been in the planning stages at least since the mid-1990s.
A 1995 National Security document of the Clinton administration stated quite clearly that the objective of the war is oil. “to protect the United States’ uninterrupted, secure U.S. access to oil.
In September 2000, a few months before the accession of George W. Bush to the White House, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) published its blueprint for global domination under the title: “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.”
The PNAC is a neo-conservative think tank linked to the Defense-Intelligence establishment, the Republican Party and the powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which plays a behind-the-scenes role in the formulation of US foreign policy.
The PNAC’s declared objective is quite simple – to:
“Fight and decisively win in multiple, simultaneous theater wars”.
This statement indicates that the US plans to be involved simultaneously in several war theaters in different regions of the World.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney had commissioned the PNAC blueprint prior to the presidential elections.
The PNAC outlines a roadmap of conquest. It calls for
“the direct imposition of U.S. “forward bases” throughout Central Asia and the Middle East “with a view to ensuring economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential “rival” or any viable alternative to America’s vision of a ‘free market’ economy” (See Chris Floyd, Bush’s Crusade for empire, Global Outlook, No. 6, 2003)
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Like the West, the Philippines is going down the road to discriminating the unvaccinated by disallowing them to go outside due to a marching order from President Rodrigo R. Duterte to all village chiefs, which is to “restrain” the unvaxxed and detain them in their homes.
COVID-19 has taken another unpredictable turn with the surge of cases all over the world because of the appearance of the Omicron variant. Lockdowns have been imposed in many nations around the globe since 2020 hoping that this could hamper the rise of cases with foreseeable consequences of crippling the economy worldwide and worsening the poverty situation everywhere. Vaccines were seen as panacea to the pandemic, which was proven to be wrong later. Governments all over have been implementing vaccine mandates forcing whole populations into vaccination. This is a grave and clear violation of the freedom of choice by citizens.
The Philippines had been following the lead of Western nations in resolving its own healthcare crisis due to COVID-19. Vaccination is thought of as cure-all to the problem when it should not be but pills and other drug therapies. First, its Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) planned to implement vaccination by prioritizing risk groups to achieve its inoculation target of 50 million Filipinos. Later, however, it changed its target to 70 million for the year 2021. But the slow pace of vaccination aggravated by the delays in the arrival of the vaccines made the administration to push the attainment of its target to February this year, 2022. As of 4 January 2022, only 50,627,482 have been fully vaccinated or 46 percent of the total population of 109.6 million, which brings us to the situation now in the Philippines with Duterte depriving the rights of the unvaxxed to move.
On January 4, 2022, in a taped public address, Duterte ordered:
“Barangay captains, you’re put on notice and the order for you is to find out the persons who are not compliant with the laws, or their refusal to have the vaccines. You can actually prevent [them] from leaving the house”.
He was irrationally equating those who haven’t been vaccinated with those who are not compliant with the laws, which they were not. What law did the unvaxxed violate? If they insist on going out, Duterte said that they should be shepherded by authorities adding that
“If you force the issue, I said, because the barangay captain is a person of authority, he can place you [the unvaxxed] under arrest and dalhin ka sa istasyon (bring you to the station)”.
If a police is around, then the barangay captain can ask the policeman to bring the unvaxxed to the police station. If there’s no police, as a person in authority the barangay captain can use in Duterte’s words, “reasonable force” with the unvaxxed.
In the same address, Duterte also said in Tagalog, which revealed that he is a total pro-vax:
“Kung mamamatay ka, bahala ka sa sarili mo (If you die, you’re on your own)…Ngayon kung hihingi kayo ng tulong sa akin, sabihin ko hindi ako tulong sayo. Kasi hindi ka nagpabakuna. Kung nagpabakuna ka wala na akong problema at saka wala ka ng problema (Now, if you ask help from me, I will say I will not help you. Because you didn’t get vaccinated. If you got vaccinated, I do not have a problem and you do not have a problem).”
And he thinks only vaccine can save the life of a COVID-19-stricken patient, saying
“No offense sa inyo, pero, which is the reality ever present in the situation in the environment, malaki ang tsansa na kapag mahawa ka, talagang mamatay ka (No offense to you… but there is a big chance that if you get infected you will die)”.
Next, the Metro Manila Council passed consistently a resolution asking local government units (LGUs) to enact local ordinances restricting the movements of the unvaxxed. On January 5, some LGUs in Metro Manila like Quezon City etc. approved ordinances to this effect limiting the entry to establishments of the unvaxxed and providing penalties for the violation. Inbound travelers to Manila or at border checkpoints must now present vaccination cards.
Why should the unvaxxed bear the brunt of the vaccine hesitancy of the Filipino populace when the vaccines themselves are not safe? As of October 17, 2021, there were 1,122 fatal events that were received by Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) of the Philippines’ Department of Health (DOH). The report was evasive that the deaths was not caused by the vaccine but pointed to “underlying conditions or pre-existing medical conditions”. Majority or 70.14% (787) of the fatal cases came from ages 60 years and above, 21.21 % (238) from ages 40-59 years, 7.40% (83) from ages 18-39 years and 1.25% from unidentified ages. As of the same date, the same FDA received 68,690 suspected adverse reaction reports and 3,004 suspected serious adverse reaction reports out of 52,303,905 doses administered.
Banning the unvaxxed from going out of their homes infringes on the bill of rights enshrined in the Philippine constitution particularly the right to due process and the right to travel. What crime did they commit? Is refusal to get vaccinated a crime? Restraining them to stay at home so that they are pressured to get vaccinated is like coercing them, which violates their right to freedom of choice. The right to travel shall not be impaired “except in the interest of national security, public safety, or public health, as may be provided by law”. The Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights (CHR), through its spokesperson, rightly and timely intervened saying,
“Presently, there is no law that makes being unvaccinated a crime, nor is there any law that would satisfy the Constitutional provision on curtailing freedom of movement. Any arrest made on these grounds may be illegal; thus, violative of the Constitution and our guaranteed human rights”.
Duterte who flaunts of being a good lawyer must know this but must have become rusty through the years. In fact, Duterte’s order should be challenged in the Philippine Supreme Court.
The option to get vaccinated or not rests on the choice of each individual citizen. It should not be legislated. Rejecting to be inoculated should not be criminalized. Nor vaccination should only be made available as the solution to the pandemic. Drug therapies to cure COVID-19 should be accessible to the public because the illness is curable or treatable when it is promptly diagnosed and treated.
Restricting the movement of the unvaxxed is only a kneejerk reaction to the uptick of COVID-19 cases in the early days of this month. Mass testing of COVID-19 should be focused on. Instead of vaccination cards as a requirement for all comings and goings to establishments or places since getting vaccinated does not guarantee that one does not get infected, negative PCR tests and rapid lateral flow tests should be obligatory to all those visiting the malls, markets, shops or any other institutions. Those who tested positive should be encouraged to self-isolate and stay at home.
Better for Duterte to jettison this imprudent policy of dragooning the unvaxxed in their homes, center on mass testing the population and use of drug therapies for the cure of COVID-19 instead of mass vaccination, and opening the economy widely rather than lockdown for normalcy to come back the soonest possible time.
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Geopolitical commentator Clint Ehrlich has reported while on the ground in Moscow that “the situation in Kazakhstan is a much bigger deal than Western media is letting on.” He further argues that the mayhem unleashed this past week and ongoing violent destabilization significantly increases the risk of NATO-Russia conflict.
He asks the key question: what really is happening in Kazakhstan? After all, he writes “In America, the situation in Kazakhstan is a small news item” but it remains that “in Moscow, it is currently receiving 24/7 news coverage, like it’s an apocalyptic threat to Russia’s security. I’ve had the TV on here while writing this thread, and Kazakhstan has been on the entire time.” Below is Ehrlich’s mega-thread from Twitter exploring the crisis and connecting the dots in terms of why this is a bigger deal than many believe…
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Mass protests and anti-government violence have left dozens dead. Russia is deploying 3,000 paratroopers after Kazakh security forces were overrun. The largest city, Almaty, looks like a warzone. To appreciate why Russia is willing to deploy troops to Kazakhstan, it’s critical to understand the depth of Russia’s vital national interests inside the country. This isn’t just any former Soviet republic. It’s almost as important to Russia as Belarus or Ukraine.
First, Russia and Kazakhstan have the largest continuous land border on planet earth. If Kazakhstan destabilizes, a significant fraction of the country’s 19 million residents could become refugees streaming across the border. Russia is not willing to let that happen.
Second, roughly one-quarter of the population of Kazakhstan is ethnic Russians. Kazakh nationalists are overwhelmingly Muslims, who resent the Orthodox-Christian Russian minority. Russia believes that civil war would entail a non-trivial risk of anti-Russian ethnic cleansing.
Third, the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan was the heart of the Soviet space program. Russia still uses it as its primary space-launch facility. The Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East will lessen that dependence, but it still isn’t complete.
Fourth, Russia conducts its Anti-Ballistic Missile testing at the Sary-Shagan test site within Kazakhstan. This is where ongoing development of the S-550 ABM system is occurring, one of the foundations of Russia’s national security.
Fifth, Russia’s nuclear fuel cycle is intimately linked to Kazakhstan. Russian-backed Uranium mining operations are active in the country. Uranium from Kazakhstan is enriched in Novouralsk, Russia and then returned to Kazakhstan for use in Chinese nuclear-fuel assemblies.
Collectively, these security interests make Kazakhstan a region that Russia is willing to stabilize with force. The 3,000 troops it has already committed are not the maximum it is willing to deploy. If necessary, these will only be the first wave of RU forces in the country. The biggest question is how the situation in Kazakhstan will affect the existing standoff between Russia and NATO over Ukraine. Will Russia be deterred from intervention in Ukraine by the need to maintain reserves to deploy to Kazakhstan? Or will it simply be provoked?
Recall that, before things escalated in Kazakhstan, Russia had massed troops along its border with Ukraine. Moscow issued an ultimatum: Provide security guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO “or else.” This was already a very dangerous situation. NATO-Russia talks to resolve the crisis in Ukraine were set to begin next week. Yet, on their eve, the revolution against the government of Kazakhstan began. Russia perceives this to be an act of “hybrid war.” Right or wrong, that perception is fueling a desire for revenge.
What is “hybrid war”? From the Russian perspective, it is a two-pronged approach to regime change. First, Western-backed NGOs encourage large protests against an incumbent government. Second, armed provocateurs use the protests as cover to stage kinetic attacks.
Moscow believes that this playbook was employed successfully in Ukraine to oust the Russian-aligned government in 2014. And it believes that the West unsuccessfully attempted to employ the same strategy to topple Russia’s allies in Syria and Belarus. It’s debatable whether the West has anywhere near the power to spark revolutions that Russia contends. Yet America plays into Russian paranoia by funding “civil society” NGOs overseas.
When revolutions occur in countries where they’re active, Russia connects the dots. Kazakhstan is the latest example. In the year before the attempted revolution, the US National Endowment for democracy spent more than $1M in the country. The money went to PR campaigns against the government and training anti-government protesters. The Russians are convinced that NED is a front for the CIA. I don’t think that’s true. But it’s a distinction without a difference, since NED has taken over part of the CIA’s mission. In 1986, the founder of NED, Carl Gershman, said the group was created because “[i]t would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA.” Today, instead of receiving CIA money, they receive NED money.
In 1991, NED President Allen Weinstein said, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” He claimed that operating overtly via NED, rather than covertly through the CIA, made the risk of blowback “close to zero.” The Russians do not see things that way. When they witness overt US support for ousting pro-Russian governments, they assume there is also covert support being provided. To them, NED is only 1/2 of a “hybrid war” strategy in Kazakhstan that includes kinetic operations. Russia’s Foreign Ministry made that clear yesterday.
It describes the situation in Kazakhstan as “an attempt to undermine the security and integrity of the state by force, using trained and organized armed formations, that is inspired from the outside.” This claim forms the predicate for intervention by the “Collective Security Treaty Organization,” the Russian-led equivalent of NATO. It’s the first ever CSTO intervention, and it’s based on the accusation of a foreign attack on the sovereignty of Kazakhstan. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has questioned the legal legitimacy of the CSTO operation, but there’s not much to complain about.
The undisputed President of Kazakhstan, Tokayev, requested CSTO support, claiming his nation was under attack. To bolster the appearance of multilateralism, RU forces are deploying alongside smaller number of troops from two other CSTO states, Belarus and Armenia. These CSTO forces will secure critical government installations, freeing up the Kazakh military to perform “anti-terrorism.” The most critical function of the CSTO deployment is internal signaling within Kazakhstan.
Now that Kazakh forces know Russia is backing their government, fewer of them will be willing to join the side of the opposition. We saw that happen before. I doubt we’ll see it again. In the short term, while Kazakhstan remains volatile, Russia’s freedom to maneuver in Ukraine may be constrained. But this will not motivate Moscow to deescalate the crisis in the long term.
Instead, it will only strengthen perceptions of the West as an existential threat. Activists from prior color revolutions are already publicly taking credit for what is happening in Kazakhstan. Here is a post from Belorussian activist, Dzmitry Halko, who says that he helped organize the uprising in Kazakhstan along with veterans of the Ukraine revolution…
The situation in Kazakhstan is a much bigger deal than Western media is letting on.
I believe it significantly increases the risk of NATO-Russia conflict.
The Kremlin’s biggest fear is a “Maidan on Red Square” – i.e., a repeat of the Ukrainian revolution inside Moscow. The more that it appears the West is pursuing similar revolutions in former Soviet republics, the more aggressively Russia will push back.
In America, the situation in Kazakhstan is a small news item. In Moscow, it is currently receiving 24/7 news coverage, like it’s an apocalyptic threat to Russia’s security. I’ve had the TV on here while writing this thread, and Kazakhstan has been on the entire time.
It’s important to note that today (Jan.7) is Christmas in Russia. (They celebrate it on January 7th rather than December 25th, due to the Russian Orthodox church still adhering to the Julian Calendar.) When Christmas is overshadowed by a security crisis, it’s a big deal.
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The Washington State Board of Health may soon amend state law to authorize the involuntary detainment of residents as young as 5 years old in Covid-19 “internment camps” for failing to comply with the state’s experimental vaccine mandate.
WAC 246-100-040, a proposed revision to include Covid protocol under the state’s Communicable and Certain Other Diseases act, outlines “Procedures for isolation or quarantine.” The measure would allow local health officers “at his or her sole discretion” to “issue an emergency detention order causing a person or group of persons to be immediately detained for purposes of isolation or quarantine.”
Health officers are required to provide documentation proving unvaccinated residents subject to detention have denied “requests for medical examination, testing, treatment, counseling, vaccination, decontamination of persons or animals, isolation, quarantine and inspection and closure of facilities” prior to involuntarily confinement in quarantine facilities, the resolution states.
The amended law would also allow health officers to deploy law enforcement officials to assist with the arrest of uncompliant Washington residents.
According to W 246-100-040, “a local health officer may invoke the powers of police officers, sheriffs, constables, and all other officers and employees of any political subdivisions within the jurisdiction of the health department to enforce immediately orders given to effectuate the purposes of this section in accordance with the provisions of RCW 43.20.050(4) and 70.05.120.”
The “emergency detention order” legalizes the isolation and detainment of American citizens who fail to voluntarily comply with Covid gene therapy shots “for a period not to exceed ten days.”
However, a judge may extend the forced quarantine “for a period not to exceed thirty days” if the segregated individual or family persists to refuse vaccination.
“People who utilize the state Isolation and Quarantine facility would be those who do not necessarily reside in a specific county” including travelers as well as “people on vessels that have outbreaks on their ships who berth on the Washington Coast” and “international and interstate travelers who test positive at SeaTac airport may also stay at this facility,” Ginny Streeter from the Washington State Department of Health toldThe Post Millennial.
Scott Miller, a Washington-based Physician Assistant who runs a private pediatric clinic, lost his medical license in October for providing over tw0 thousand critically-ill Covid patients with Ivermectin, vitamins and other effective treatments.
Miller will provide testimony during the WSBH 8-hour Zoom meeting on Wednesday to warn against mandating the experimental shot for children and present data showing acute vaccine-related injuries and fatalities.
Still struggling with the ramifications of having his medical license revoked for saving lives, Miller wonders how many innocent families are going to have to flee the state to find basic freedom that was once ubiquitous in the states if this so-called emergency legislation is passed.
“I was up at 5:30 this morning. I got a call from a woman in Ohio whose husband is day eight [Covid-infected] just crying asking me, ‘Can you please help, we are desperate.’ It is devasting knowing that I could have easily treated him as I had hundreds of people outside of Washington prior to the emergency suspension of my license for prescribing life-saving therapeutics,” Miller told The Gateway Pundit in an exclusive interview. “I can no longer actively help those families in need and it breaks my heart.
“I will frequently reach out to providers around the country that I consider heroes, asking if they will help intervene to save these innocent lives. If only the state medical investigators would look into the ‘quality of care’ or lack thereof within our hospital systems around our nation and question why over 700,000 Americans go to the hospital and never come home,” he said. “Supplemental oxygen and six milligrams of Dexamethasone has proven to be a catastrophic failure in mitigating acute respiratory distress syndrome. Yet, that is the primary treatment protocol across the country, even as patients decompensate and are statistically condemned to mechanical ventilation.
“If this mandate goes through for the kids, it is horrifying. It’s not just to attend school – if a local health department official deems you to be out of compliance, you can be detained against your will. It’s the most reprehensible overreach of emergency power I have ever seen of out of everything that has been imposed on us – they have taken everybody to herd them like cattle, herd them like prisoners into their homes and tell them that this is for our good and the greater good. While the people that made these rules go out to dinner with their friends without masks and get on planes and fly to vacations. They are saying ‘I know it’s going to be hard to be deprived of breathing or miss Christmas with your family this year.’ But they don’t adhere to these mandates. We see pictures of them celebrating holidays in person with their families. ‘Do as we command, not as we do.’”
The pediatric physician assistant has provided countless mask exemptions for high-risk children with underlying respiratory and neurologic conditions. But exemptions are no longer accepted in the workplace or schools and won’t stop the contact tracers from detaining the non-compliant, Miller warns:
“I had written several medical exemptions and mask exemptions for patients with known history of vaccine injury and respiratory issues. In this new unrecognizable America, medical providers are not only barred from appropriately treating their patients for Covid, but now they are no longer able to provide legitimate medical exemptions, including those that have positive antibody tests. Any provider found writing medical exemptions is at risk for being investigated. State medical investigators will often ignore medical history, charge providers with dissemminating ‘disinformation/misinformation,’ and be deemed unfit to have a medical license.
“The state has prioritized launching investigations into any practitioner that is courageous enough to appropriately care for their patients. If the practitioner’s plan of care diverts from the newly implemented restricted Center for Disease Control guidelines, they are at high risk of losing their license and livelihood.”
The Washington State Board of Health’s decision to conduct the meeting on involuntarily detaining purebloods on a Zoom call rather than a “dangerous” in-person forum makes holding members accountable even more of an uphill battle.
But patriots across Washington are putting pressure on two Republican board members, Gary Medvigy and Karen Dill Bowerman, to do the right thing.
There is a five-person committee. Medvigy and Bowerman are two very good people that may have followed the wrong science. That’s who I am basically going to be addressing at the meeting. If we can persuade this board to do the right thing and put our children first, our state will have hope. We are desperate for them to uphold the principles that our nation was founded on and preserve the freedom we have as parents and Americans to determine what goes into our children’s bodies. They have already set up the internment camps. I’ve seen photographs of them.
Washington’s Democrat Governor Jay Inslee is currently hiring a “strike team” to run the quarantine facilities.
Strike teams will “provide for the needs of travelers” that stay at the facility, which is located in Centralia. The strike teams will also be tasked with “responding to emergencies, training contractors and new staff, and providing guest support as needed,” the job announcement explains.
Most of the population in Washington has been vaccinated, but the number of patients hospitalized for Covid-infection is suddenly and precipitously surging, proving vaccine inefficacy.
Gov. Inslee issued another threat to his unvaccinated constituents on Wednesday, warning new measures will be taken to address a 146 percent increase in cases in the past week and 46 percent increase in daily covid hospitalizations statewide omicron surge.
“Now is the time to re-double our efforts against this virus” he chided.
Yet, at least 76 percent of Washington, 5,793,378 people, has received at least one vaccine dose, while 5,193,988 people or 68% of Washington’s population has been fully vaccinated, according to USA Facts.
The state has also partnered with corporate retail giant Amazon to create a web portal to assure patients regularly test for Covid at home, The Olympian reports.
UPDATE: Washington State Board of Health releases update to this weeks meeting:
“The Board is not voting to change isolation or quarantine policies at its meeting on Jan. 12. The Board is continuing a November 2021 rules hearing on the proposed rule changes to chapter 246-100 WAC, Communicable and Certain Other Diseases, as published in WSR 21-20-127 at the meeting. The Board is proposing updating its rules to reflect current state law to align with Engrossed Substitute House Bill (ESHB) 1551. Agenda item 9, while related to rulemaking on chapter 246-100 WAC, is scoped only to the implementation of ESHB 1551 (Chapter 76, Laws of 2020) and does not include changes to isolation and quarantine policies nor does it suggest law enforcement be used to enforce any vaccination requirements. More information is available on the Communicable and Certain Other Diseases rule web page.”
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Alicia is an investigative journalist and multimedia reporter. Alicia’s work is featured on numerous outlets including the Gateway Pundit, Project Veritas, World Net Daily, Townhall and Media Research Center, where she exposes fraud and abuse in government, media, and Big Tech and public corruption. She has a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She served in the Correspondence Department of the George W. Bush administration and a War Room analyst for the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee. Alicia is originally from New York City and currently resides in Washington D.C.
All images in this article are from Gateway Pundit
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I missed this study. So did the mainstream media for some reason. But this study is yet another independent analysis that is difficult to refute: we have been misled by the CDC, FDA, and NIH.
The study found that the COVID vaccines cause more COVID cases per million (+38% in US) and more deaths per million associated with COVID (+31% in US).
The abstract says:
The statistically significant and overwhelmingly positive causal impact after vaccine deployment on the dependent variables total deaths and total cases per million should be highly worrisome for policy makers. They indicate a marked increase in both COVID-19 related cases and death due directly to a vaccine deployment that was originally sold to the public as the “key to gain back our freedoms.” The effect of vaccines on total cases per million and its low positive association with total vaccinations per hundred signifies a limited impact of vaccines on lowering COVID-19 associated cases.
These results should encourage local policy makers to make policy decisions based on data, not narrative, and based on local conditions, not global or national mandates. These results should also encourage policy makers to begin looking for other avenues out of the pandemic aside from mass vaccination campaigns.
In other words, we were lied to
The vaccines are making this worse, not better. This is why we are not getting ourselves out of the hole. Mandating vaccines are making this
This is hardly the first study to reach those conclusions. These studies, all done independently, found the same thing—the more you vaccinate, the worse things get.
The response to this new study by the health authorities is predictable
I think I’ve figured out the pattern and can now confidently predict how health authorities worldwide will react to this stunning result: they will ignore it. Instead, they will mandate vaccines for everyone of every age ASAP. Am I right?
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On 7 July 2021 the CDC updated their “Instructions for Use” of RT-PCR Covid tests. This was the exact date the CDC notified clinical laboratories and testing sites performing Covid testing of the withdrawal of Emergency Use Authorisation (“EUA”) from 31 December 2021 and to begin a transition to another FDA-authorised Covid test.
“Since no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV were available for CDC use at the time the test was developed and this study conducted, assays designed for detection of the 2019-nCoV RNA were tested with characterized stocks of in vitro transcribed full-length RNA (N gene; GenBank accession: MN908947.2) of known titer (RNA copies/µL) spiked into a diluent consisting of a suspension of human A549 cells and viral transport medium (VTM) to mimic clinical specimen.”
After almost two years of incorrect and fraudulent use of the PCR test, there seems to be a worldwide Government campaign to stop its use. Here are some examples:
“Canadians seeking a COVID-19 PCR test in recent days may have faced long line-ups at testing centres and a shortage of appointment slots as demand has risen amid the spread of the Omicron variant.” – CTV News, 26 December 2021
“Changes made to PCR testing guidance amid record demand [in Northern Ireland]. The Public Health Agency said it had issued new protocols to help ensure ‘the continued and targeted delivery of the service’.” – Belfast Telegraph, 29 December 2021
“A widespread shortage of PCR tests across the devolved nations was due to an administrative error, the First Minister of Scotland has said.” – Belfast Telegraph, 29 December 2021
“Asymptomatic people who test positive in Wales no longer required to have PCR test.” – ITV, 5 January 2022
“From today, people in NI who get a positive lateral flow test should presume that they have Covid-19 and that they are infectious – a PCR test will no longer be required to confirm the result.” – 4NI, 5 January 2022
“Boris scraps extra Covid testing rules in drive to stop Omicron shutting down the economy … And people testing positive after a lateral flow test do not have to have a PCR confirmation.” – Daily Express, 6 January 2022
“The need for PCR tests has now changed [in Scotland] in a bid to relieve pressure in test centres and labs.” – Daily Record, 6 January 2022
“Australians are no longer required to get a PCR test to confirm their COVID-positive result.” – ABC Net, 6 January 2022
A 20-year trail of patent applications concerning the virus responsible for Covid-19 proves it is neither new nor the result of a jump from animals to humans. In July 2021, a dossier of evidence supporting these claims was presented by Dr. David Martin to the international Corona Investigative Committee. The first SARS outbreak in the latter part of 2001 “gave rise to a ‘very problematic’ April 2003 patent filing by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It was for the entire SARS gene sequence, and for a series of derivative patents covering means of detection, including the PCR test [widely used today purportedly to diagnose cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection],” The Conservative Woman wrote.
“People should remember that all the “covid” case data is based on PCR and antigen tests which are meaningless. They give positive results for those with normal flu, which has the exact same symptomology as what they are calling Covid19. This conflation is clear as day and must be pointed out to everyone and we need to take the governments of the world to court for conducting no risk benefit analysis and perpetuating a fraud on the public and restricting basic human rights at par with the Nazi and Soviet era.,” Robin Monotti posted on Telegram on 31 December 2021.
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An estimated 4,000 people showed up Wednesday in Albany, New York, at the state’s capitol building to let state lawmakers know they stand united against vaccine mandates.
The “We Will Not Comply Rally” marked the kickoff of the People’s Coalition of New York, a coalition of more than 40 groups that oppose medical mandates and are working to restore the civil liberties of all New Yorkers.
Wednesday’s crowd represented people of every race, religion, political background and socioeconomic status.
Vaccinated and unvaccinated united in a peaceful demonstration to voice their opposition to vaccine and mask mandates imposed on the people of the state of New York.
“Where there is a risk, there cannot be a mandate,” New York teacher Vicki Savini told the crowd. “Where there is risk, there must be choice.”
“We are at war for our families, at war for our children, at war for our lives,” civil rights attorney Trisha Lindsay told the empowered audience. “When you come for our children, you have declared war!”
New York City transit and labor leader Tramell Thompson stunned the crowd when he announced he was fully vaccinated, but ripped up his vaccine card because he opposes vaccine passports.
New York lawmakers this session are weighing several bills that would dramatically impact the lives of those who choose to remain unvaccinated.
A8378 would mandate that all children receive the COVID injection to attend school. Since religious exemptions were removed in 2019, this bill would force parents to choose between finding alternate means for educating their children or being coerced into giving their child an experimental injection, the long-term impacts of which are unknown.
S75 would implement a statewide registry of all adult vaccination records. This bill is an egregious violation of every citizen’s right to privacy. It would also contribute to the continued removal of our personal freedoms and human rights. Such a registry would be the pathway to a possible state-wide vaccine passport.
“Who here feels like life is gonna be hard without this shot?” professional boxer-turned-activist Cara Castronouva asked. “We are going to win this war … This is still the USA!”
Patriotism, the U.S. Constitution, peaceful non-compliance, civil disobedience, and protecting the future and freedoms of all Americans and future generations were the common threads running through the speakers’ inspiring messages.
Many speakers referenced the Constitution’s “We the people” in their speeches to reflect the unity and strength of the health freedom movement. This unity was also reflected in the diversity of the protestors.
“This movement doesn’t belong to any person, government or organization,” activist Donna Schmidt of New Yorkers Against Medical Mandates reminded demonstrators. “It belongs to we the people!”
The rally in Albany established that the fight for health freedom is gaining momentum.
“We know the truth, and we stand in the truth,” said Mary Holland, president of Children’s Health Defense. “How do we get to the tipping point? Through love. To encourage [others] to seek out more information, not shame them.”
Wednesday’s rally reaffirmed that despite the display of passion and defiance, the core and foundation of the health freedom movement is, has been and must always be love.
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COVID-19 booster shots could do more harm than good, according to scientists interviewed late last month by The New York Times.
The scientists warned “that too many shots might actually harm the body’s ability to fight COVID” and “might cause a sort of immune system fatigue.”
On Monday, Israeli authorities began offering anyone over age 60 a chance to get a fourth shot, or second booster of the COVID vaccine.
But scientists told The Times, before Israel confirmed it would offer the fourth shot, the science is not yet settled on using an additional booster shot to combat the new Omicron variant.
There is one official report of an Israeli dying from Omicron. However, according to The Times of Israel, it is unclear that Omicron caused the death of the individual — a man in his 60s hospitalized weeks earlier from a pre-existing condition.
A new report from the UK Health Security Agency showed booster doses are less effective against Omicron than previous variants, and their effectiveness wears off in only 10 weeks.
Professor Hagai Levine, an epidemiologist and chairman of Israel’s Association of Public Health Physicians, told The New York Times there’s no published scientific evidence a fourth shot is needed to prevent severe illness from Omicron.
“Before giving a fourth shot, it is preferable to wait for the science,” Levine said.
Benny Muchawsky, an architect based in Israel, told The Times the push to administer boosters for the Omicron variant “seemed like hysteria.”
“Israel is the laboratory for the coronavirus vaccine,” Muchawsky said.
“These days the country’s name is actually ‘Pfizreal.’ It’s no longer Israel. Their government has a financial deal with Pfizer and they only have the Pfizer vaccine.”
Malone told Rogan the scientific data points to booster doses doing more harm than good.
Citing data from Denmark, he told Rogan there seems to be “negative efficacy in correlation with increased doses” meaning the more doses or boosters an individual receives, the higher chance they’ll be infected.
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Jeremy Loffredo is a freelance reporter for The Defender. His investigative reporting has been featured in The Grayzone and Unlimited Hangout. Jeremy formerly produced news programs at RT America.
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Dozens of lawmakers have signed onto an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to toss out Joe Biden’s unconstitutional COVID-19 vaccine mandates for federal workers, contractors and many private businesses.
As reported by LifeSite News, 183 lawmakers have signed the “friend of the court” brief urging the justices to toss the mandates, which were issued through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in November.
“[OSHA] was never meant to be the health police,” the lawmakers wrote, according to the outlet. “Moreover, mandatory vaccinations do not stop individuals from contracting and transmitting COVID-19.
“Vaccinated workers can still contract and transmit COVID-19, including the new Omicron variant. Given that fact, imposing masking and testing restrictions only on unvaccinated workers makes no sense because all workers regardless of vaccination status remain potential carriers and transmitters of the virus,” the lawmakers added.
The letter came ahead of oral arguments before the high court this week in a case brought by Ohio and the National Federation of Small Businesses, both of which are suing over OSHA’s mandate for companies with 100 or more employees requiring workers to either be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing.
In addition, the justices heard arguments in a case pushing back on the federal mandate for healthcare workers who work at facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.
“Congressional members have an interest in the powers they delegate to agencies not being abused,” the lawmakers noted in the brief. “The legislative authority vested in the federal government belongs to Congress, not the Executive branch. In this case, the promulgation by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) of a sweeping, nationwide vaccine mandate on businesses intrudes into an area of legislative concern far beyond the authority of the agency.”
The letter also cites the Biden regime for exploiting OSHA’s seldom-used “emergency temporary standard” provision to issue the mandates, saying it falsely creates a guise of legality and adding that OSHA has never had such authority and none has been delegated to the agency, implicitly or explicitly, by the Legislative Branch.
“In short, there is no mouse hole in which Congress could have even tried to hide the elephant of the ETS mandate here,” they wrote.
In addition, the lawmakers said that there are serious, legitimate concerns with the efficacy of the various vaccines, but that even if they were more reliable and effective, mandates and such have historically rested with states, not the federal government, and certainly not the Executive Branch.
“Without clear congressional authority in the regulatory scheme for such an expansion of agency authority into the realm of state police powers, it may not be assumed to exist,” they wrote.
“Moreover, the sudden ‘discovery’ of authority under the OSHA Act confirms that it was never intended to displace state authority in this area,” the lawmakers added.
During oral arguments this week, two of the court’s liberals made some false assumptions regarding the virus and vaccines, as The Federalist reported:
Justice Elena Kagan suggested that getting the vaccine reduces the spread of COVID-19, a dubious claim that’s contested by the rapidly rising number of breakthrough cases worldwide. Kagan’s opinion is that “this is the policy that is most geared to stopping all this.”
“There’s nothing else that will perform that function better than incentivizing people strongly to vaccinate themselves. So, you know, whatever necessary means, whatever grave means, why isn’t this necessary and grave?” she asked.
“We do not contest that COVID is a grave danger,” National Federation of Independent Business attorney Scott Keller responded. “But when the power for it to be necessary… an agency has to consider and explain alternatives.”
Justice Stephen Breyer also appeared to suggest that being vaccinated would stop the spread of the virus, claiming the argument that more people would leave the workforce due to the mandates was invalid because “more may quit when they discover they have to work together with unvaccinated others because that means they may get the disease.”
Sotomayor also falsely claimed that “hospitals are almost all full capacity,” adding that more than 100,000 children are hospitalized with COVID and on ventilators.
“The current national pediatric COVID census per HHS is 3,342. Many/most incidental,” American Commitment chair Phil Kerpen noted in response.
This is just absolutely astonishing. "100,000 children in serious condition," per Sotomayor. Where do these people obtain their misinformation? The current national pediatric COVID census per HHS is 3,342. Many/most incidental.
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As can be gathered from recent materials by Asia Times, CNN, and The National Interest, among others, adversarial media forces are claiming that President Tokayev carried out an anti-Chinese coup with Russian military support.
As can be gathered from recent materials by Asia Times, CNN, and The National Interest, among others, adversarial media forces are claiming that President Tokayev carried out an anti-Chinese coup with Russian military support. This warped interpretation is predicated on a superficial explanation of events that dishonestly leaves out some crucial contexts in order to spin a strategically self-serving narrative that checks off all the West’s most politically convenient boxes so to speak.
In a nutshell, these outlets believe that President Tokayev took advantage of violent protests in order to make a power play against former President Nazarbayev and the faction that’s allegedly loyal to him within that country’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”).
There’s even innuendo that he might have had a role in organizing the latest unrest himself exactly as similarly adversarial media forces speculated about Turkish President Erdogan during the failed summer 2016 coup against him in order to carry out a so-called “self-coup”. These ill-intended observers that are actually more akin to geopolitical provocateurs claim that Russia helped him due to concerns about China’s growing influence in Central Asia. This is a grossly inaccurate assessment of the latest events.
What actually happened is that a long-planned Color Revolution that was timed to coincide with the government’s preplanned removal of fuel subsidies was launched as a cover for disguising an Unconventional War against the state. It remains unclear exactly who orchestrated this terrorist campaign but it’s beginning to look likely that some of the Kazakhstani elite played a role in the latest events after former Prime Minister and chief of the National Security Committee Karim Masimov was detained on suspicion of treason alongside several other unnamed individuals. The US’ subversive anti-Russian “deep state” faction might also have provided some assistance to domestic collaborators in a desperate last-ditch attempt to sabotage the US-Russian security talks in Europe.
This interpretation explains why the Color Revolution was ordered to transform into an Unconventional War despite the first-mentioned’s anti-reform movement achieving their political goal almost right away after the state quickly reimposed price controls on fuel and even extended them to cover other social commodities and utilities following the government’s resignation. That would have ordinarily been the end of it if this was genuinely a mass protest movement in its entirety, but its near-instantaneous transformation into an Unconventional War reveals that the Color Revolution was just a cover for an anti-state coup that most likely involved treasonous elements of the elite who could have even received some unclear degree of foreign support. Their goal was to overthrow President Tokayev but they failed.
That country’s internationally recognized government requested its CSTO mutual defense allies’ support to guard strategic facilities so as to enable its security forces to concentrate more fully on the anti-terrorist dimension of the conflict. Russia and the other members’ decision to carry out this limited mission was meant to help the Kazakhstani authorities restore the constitutional rule of law and thus safeguard the country’s territorial integrity. The government’s fall in the face of this terrorist-driven regime change campaign could have created a black hole of chaos in the heart of Central Asia that certainly would have catalyzed much more serious security challenges for the broader region, including within Russia’s own borders if it led to large-scale refugee influxes and/or terrorist infiltration.
China’s security would also have been threatened since its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) borders HybridWar-victimized Kazakhstan.
The Russian-led CSTO’s limited peacekeeping mission therefore doesn’t contradict Chinese interests but perfectly complements them, which is why it’s patently ridiculous to speculate that President Putin was motivated by any anti-Chinese geostrategic considerations in approving this operation.
It’ll only involve several thousand troops who’ll remain in Kazakhstan for a short period according to official estimates and will leave the moment that the authorities feel comfortable enough with the security situation after fully regaining control of the country. It doesn’t involve any territorial changes or political quid pro quos, let alone anti-Chinese ones.
Nevertheless, it’s politically convenient for adversarial media forces to recklessly speculate otherwise since they very desperately want to drive a wedge between the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership that serves as the most powerful engine of the emerging Multipolar World Order. There’s also a soft power interest in misportraying Russia’s regional security operation as being driven by “imperialist” motivations since this conforms with what the global public has already been preconditioned by the US-led Western Mainstream Media’s years-long information warfare campaign about that country to seemingly expect. It doesn’t matter that this claim is utterly devoid of substance since similar such narratives are purely about perception management and not factually compelling arguments.
Those who propagate the literal conspiracy theory that President Putin plotted some kind of anti-Chinese coup with his Kazakhstani counterpart are either ignorant of two particular contexts or are deliberately omitting them from their materials in order to mislead their audience. The first is that the Hybrid War of Terror on Kazakhstan occurred during the middle of Russia’s 10-day New Year’s holiday season and right before Orthodox Christmas during the time when the entire country is on break for the most part, including the majority of its “deep state” apart from the military of course. It completely caught the Kremlin off guard since its intelligence services once again failed to anticipate yet another regional regime change crisis. This crisis literally happened at the most inconvenient time for its officials.
The second pertinent context is that all of this occurred in the run-up to the highly sensitive US-Russian talks for de-escalating the undeclared US-provoked missile crisis in Europe. Russia is already under tremendous multifaceted American pressure, especially in the soft power realm with particular respect to the continually debunked claims that it’s either plotting to “invade” Ukraine or supposedly already has, so it wouldn’t want to open up a whole new can of worms by “invading” Kazakhstan as part of some far-reaching anti-Chinese power play in Central Asia and thus risk complicating the upcoming talks any more than they already are. The Kremlin has actually done its utmost to signal that it’s on its “best behavior” ahead of these negotiations in order to avoid distracting its American counterparts.
These interconnected observations are crucial to consider when interpreting the latest chain of events. They discredit the self-serving narrative that this was a long-planned anti-Chinese power play that amounted to a Russian-backed coup buffeted by an imperialist invasion of Kazakhstan and predicated on the false flag basis that President Tokayev might have had something to do with the latest violence against his own government. The reality is altogether different since this was actually an attempted coup against that country’s incumbent leader that was advanced through terrorist means by a treasonous elite in potential collusion with foreign forces, but it was narrowly thwarted by the CSTO’s limited peacekeeping mission that also served China’s regional security interests as well.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.
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The reason our children are being targeted by COVID mandates is because vaccine makers want to get the shots onto the childhood vaccination schedule.
Once a vaccine is added to the childhood schedule, the vaccine maker is shielded from financial liability for injuries, unless the manufacturer knows about vaccine safety issues and withholds that information
Products must satisfy four criteria in order to get emergency use authorization:
There must be an emergency;
a vaccine must be at least 30% to 50% effective;
the known and potential benefits of the product must outweigh the known and potential risks of the product;
and there can be no adequate, approved and available alternative treatments (drugs or vaccines). Unless all four criteria are met, EUA cannot be granted or maintained
According to a U.S. federal court decision, the Pfizer shot and BioNTech’s Comirnaty are not interchangeable
Comirnaty is not fully approved and licensed. It’s only “ready for approval.” Comirnaty is licensed to be manufactured, introduced into state commerce and marketed, but it’s not licensed to be given to anyone, and it’s not yet available in the United States. They’re waiting for it to be added to the childhood vaccination schedule, to get the liability shield
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In this interview, Alix Mayer explains why our children are being so aggressively targeted for the COVID-19 injection even though they’re not at risk of serious SARS-CoV-2 infection, and clarifies the status of Comirnaty.
Mayer, board president of Children’s Health Defense — California Chapter, is herself vaccine injured; not from the COVID jab, but from a series of vaccines she received 20 years ago. (Incidentally, Mayer grew up in the Oscar Mayer family in the 5th generation descended from the original Oscar Mayer, a German immigrant who started as a butcher boy. Despite Mayer’s vaccine injury, her family does not share her views on vaccine safety issues.)
Mayer graduated from Duke University with a BA and from Northwestern University with an MBA in finance and management strategy. She worked for Apple in the mid-1990s. When she was 29, Apple promoted her to acting manager of worldwide customer research.
In preparation for a family trip to Bali, her doctor recommended getting six vaccines: hepatitis A vaccine, hepatitis B vaccine, diphtheria, tetanus, polio and oral typhoid, which she did. Eventually, 13 years later, she finally realized it was these shots that triggered her health problems.
“They gave me brain damage and total disability,” she says. “I spent three years in my early 30s being 80% housebound, and I really I didn’t know if I was ever going to get better.
I went through a whole bunch of diagnoses: lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease. Ultimately, none of those made sense and none of the treatments made me any better, until we put the pieces together and figured out that I was actually vaccine injured.
It’s literally just a cause and effect. If you look back at my history and lay out my vaccine schedule, you can see that my health declined two weeks after I got the vaccines.
I had encephalitis and encephalopathy … digestive issues, hypersomnia — sleeping 16 hours a day — flu-like symptoms, a 24/7 migraine, joint pain. I really had no life at all in my early 30s until I went on a gluten-free diet. That started my health recovery.
I then became an award-winning medical journalist with a bunch of different blogs, and then a health consultant. In 2018, I retired from all that and joined Children’s Health Defense.”
The COVID Jab Tragedy
While many vaccines have a questionable safety profile, especially when combined, data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) suggest there’s never been a vaccine as dangerous as the experimental mRNA gene transfer injections for COVID.
What’s more, while lack of transparency and accountability has been a chronic problem within the vaccine industry, the obvious hazards associated with vaccines are really being highlighted by the COVID jabs.
Many now know of someone who has been injured by the COVID jab, and most were injured so shortly after the shot that it’s hard to deny a correlation. The staggering number of injuries reported among adults who have received the COVID shot in turn highlights the insanity of rolling it out to young children.
According to Mayer, the reason they’re trying to mandate the COVID shot for children is to evade liability for injuries, because once a vaccine is on the childhood vaccination schedule, vaccine makers have immunity against lawsuits for injuries.
Vaccine Makers Want Zero Liability
The COVID shots currently have legal immunity against liability because they’re still under emergency use authorization (EUA). If you think BioNTech’s Comirnaty has been fully licensed, you’d be mistaken. Mayer explains:
“I put together a slide deck about Emergency Use Authorization (which you can see in the video interview above) because there is so much confusion over this and what’s really going on. Once you understand the genesis of EUA and the standards they have to meet in order to keep these products on the market, then you understand the behaviors [we’re now seeing].
They’re falling all over themselves to protect the EUAs for these products and also introduce other very confusing kinds of approval to get away with stuff. So, let me just start to clarify it right now.
This presentation is all about these three strangleholds that the vaccine makers and our government are never going to let go of … These are the things they’re guarding with their lives.
First of all, they need to guard the emergency … so they cannot have any early treatments. Those cannot exist. They’re also going for full liability protection, and children will be used as pawns to get them full liability protection.
Vaccine makers love EUA products because they have this huge liability shield. If you’re injured by an EUA vaccine, you can’t sue the manufacturer, you can’t sue the person who gave it to you, you can’t sue the institution where you got the shot.
You have to go through something called the CICP, the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, where they’ll only cover unpaid medical expenses, and probably only for pharmaceuticals and lost wages.
Now, if you’re vaccine injured, let me tell you right now, you are not going to be using pharmaceuticals because they do not work for vaccine injury. They will make you sicker. You’ll be on two dozen pharmaceuticals before you know it and you’re going to be sick from those. They do not work. The only thing that’s going to get you better if you’re vaccine injured is natural treatments …
That’s the kind of treatment you’re going to need, and that’s not even covered, even if you were to get compensation. Everybody I know with chronic illness, whether it’s a child or an adult who has chronic fatigue syndrome, vaccine injury, Lyme disease, they’re paying $50,000 out of pocket per year.
If you can’t work and you have to pay for your treatment out of pocket, I don’t know how you ever get by. People suffer like crazy, they lose homes, they go into bankruptcy.”
Since its inception, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which pays for injuries caused by vaccines on the childhood vaccination schedule, has paid out about one-third of claims. It’s a long, arduous process that oftentimes takes years and in the end rarely provides adequate compensation.
“If you do end up getting compensation … they don’t pay it out in one lump sum, they pay it out year by year, and they pretty much hope that whoever is injured is actually going to die of their injuries before they get compensated.
That’s been said to me a bunch of times by people who’ve been through this horrible process. Now, the CICP has only compensated 3% of claims. And so far, there have been no approvals for [compensation] for COVID shot injuries,” Mayer says. [Editor’s note: The first COVID case was recently determined “eligible” for compensation, but the case has not yet been adjudicated.1]
Stages of Liability: EUA
In her slide show, Mayer reviews each of the stages of product liability, and whether the mRNA shots can be mandated. As mentioned, vaccine makers have no liability as long as their product is under EUA, as the product is investigational.
“Investigational is a synonym for experimental,” Mayer says. “And the word experimental ties it directly into the Nuremberg Code, which says that we cannot be experimented on [without consent]. We always have the right to accept or refuse a medical treatment.
[The Nuremberg Code] is not a law, but it’s a code under which the whole world is supposed to be operating by. And it is actually codified into some local and federal laws as well … So, what everybody needs to know is that coercion and duress are considered de facto mandates and illegal. De facto means that it’s basically the same as an outright mandate.
It’s illegal medical segregation, medical apartheid [because that is a form of coercion or duress.] So, if you go to a restaurant and they demand your vaccine passport, only let you eat outside, and they might not let you use the bathroom, that’s medical segregation.
That is illegal and I do not support businesses that do that and you shouldn’t either. Any access privileges that are different between the vaccinated and unvaccinated are illegal, and any visual indication of vaccine status like a sticker or a bracelet … that’s also illegal because that creates segregation and medical apartheid, [since they are all forms of coercion or duress.]”
Importantly, mass violation of the law does not make something legal.
“If we all drove 100 miles an hour on Interstate 80, would we watch the speed limit signs suddenly changed to 100 miles per hour? No, it’s not going to happen. Mass violation of the law has never made anything legal. And just because schools and businesses and our government are mandating these shots, it doesn’t make it legal. It’s all illegal …
Now, they know full well that it’s illegal to mandate these [COVID shots]. President Biden knows it’s illegal. But what they’re counting on is that the court cases overturning their illegal mandates will take a while, and in that interim, people are going to be scared enough to get the shots. And unfortunately, it’s worked.”
Stages of Liability: Full Licensure and Childhood Scheduling
The next stage is full licensure (FDA approval). Once a product is fully licensed, the company becomes liable for injuries. At that point, the product can be legally mandated. Of course, knowing how dangerous the COVID shots are, no manufacturer wants to be financially liable for injuries. They’d be sued out of business.
To get immunity against liability again, the vaccine manufacturers need to get their product onto the childhood vaccination schedule. This will also allow government to mandate the shots. As noted by Mayer:
“This is the holy grail if you’re a vaccine manufacturer of a COVID vaccine right now. You want it to be fully licensed, but not put it on the market until you get it on the children’s schedule.”
DOJ Redefines Medical ‘Consequence’
In Doe v. Rumsfeld,2 the court held that service members could refuse an EUA product without punitive consequences such as dishonorable discharge or other punishments. Therefore, there were no consequences to refusing an EUA product, other than the natural consequence of possibly getting the disease.
However, in July 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice attempted to redefine the term “consequences” just for the COVID shot, to suggest that punitive consequences, like job loss or being separated from your working or learning location, are legal when a person refuses an EUA vaccine.
“But this type of consequence, a punitive consequence, has never been adjudicated,” Mayer says. “That’s not in any law. This is just an opinion from the DOJ. And it absolutely means nothing, except it came from our DOJ, so people give it a lot of authority.
They also stated twice — and this is so hard to understand because it’s just beyond reason — that the right to accept or refuse an EUA product is ‘purely informational.’
Literally, you can read that you could die by taking it, but it’s purely informational. You cannot act on it. That’s what the DOJ says. Again, it’s not adjudicated, so it doesn’t mean anything. It’s an opinion. It holds no legal weight at all. So, as we said before, these mandates are starting to be overturned.”
Four Standards for EUA
There are four standards that must be fulfilled for an EUA. If any of these criteria are not met, EUA cannot be granted or maintained. First, the secretary of Health and Human Services has to declare and maintain a state of emergency. If the emergency were to go away, all EUA products would have to come off the market. And that doesn’t just mean vaccines. It also includes the PCR tests and even surgical masks.
The second standard is evidence of effectiveness. Historically, vaccines had to show a 70% or greater effectiveness, as measured by a fourfold increase in antibody levels, in order to qualify. For an EUA vaccine, the efficacy threshold is only 30% to 50%. In another departure from prior vaccine approvals, the COVID vaccine clinical trials relied on the RT-PCR test, not antibodies, to demonstrate effectiveness in the small “challenge phase” of the trials.
Now, you probably heard that the Pfizer shot was 95% effective when it first rolled out, but that was relative risk reduction, not absolute risk reduction. Confounding these two parameters is a common strategy used to make a product sound far better than it actually is. The absolute risk reduction for Pfizer’s shot was just 0.84%.3
For example, if a study divided people into two groups of 1,000 and two people in the group who didn’t get a fictional vaccine got infected, while only one in the vaccinated group got infected, the relative risk reduction would be reported as 100%. In terms of absolute risk reduction, the fictional vaccine only prevented 1 in 1,000 from getting the infection — a very poor absolute risk reduction.
The take-home message here is that even though the minimal threshold for effectiveness is ludicrously low, in terms of absolute risk reduction, these shots still don’t measure up. Within six months, even the relative risk reduction bottoms out at zero. What’s more, there’s evidence that the clinical trials were manipulated as well.
“I remember an analysis very early in lockdowns [that showed] if you added back all the probable cases of COVID to the clinical trial [data], the effectiveness went from 90% to between 19% and 29%,”4 Mayer says.
The third standard is that the known and potential benefits of the product must outweigh the known and potential risks of the product. In the case of COVID shots, there’s overwhelming evidence showing they do more harm than good.
The fourth and last standard that must be met is there can be no adequate, approved and available alternative treatments (drugs or vaccines). “This is why hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were quashed,” Mayer says. This is also another reason Comirnaty is not treated as a fully approved product in the U.S., because if it were, then all the other COVID shots that are under EUA would have to be removed from the market.
“This is a four-legged stool,” Mayer says. “If any one of these legs goes away, you have to take your EUA products off the market … by law. I put [state of] emergency and [treatment] alternatives in red, because those are two of the things that they have a stranglehold on; those are things they are guarding like crazy.
This means that every variant that comes out, they have to make it sound super scary to keep the emergency going. So, the variants serve a purpose. You have to think about these variants in the context of this crime, where they have to keep the emergency going to keep their products on the market.
You would think this emergency would stop maybe when we get to herd immunity, maybe if we get 90% vaccination uptake, maybe COVID is just going to go away, like smallpox did in the early 1900s [even though] only 5% of people were vaccinated. [But it won’t] go away [until] the shots get full approval and the manufacturers get a full liability shield.”
Comirnaty’s Quasi Approval
With regard to Comirnaty, is it or is it not fully approved and licensed? The answer is more complex than a simple yes or no. Mayer explains:
“Comirnaty’s quasi approval is just for BioNTech. It doesn’t have to do with Pfizer, and this is why I’m doing this presentation because I’m going to explain what’s going on with that.
This is the race to get liability protection. Remember, that’s the other stranglehold that they want. They really want to get this liability protection. Once the COVID shots are fully approved, the manufacturer has full liability.
There’s all this confusion about Comirnaty. Was it fully approved? Is it on the market? Is it interchangeable with the Pfizer shot? And does it make the COVID shot mandate legal? It’s all the same answer. No, no, no, no.
The FDA issued an intentionally confusing biological license application approval for Comirnaty. It was an unprecedented approval to both license the Comirnaty shot, saying it’s ‘interchangeable’ with the Pfizer shot. But they also said it’s ‘legally distinct.’
In that same approval, they retain the vaccine’s liability shield by designating it EUA as well. They want it to be fully approved, but they want the liability protection, so they did this BS dual approval.
So, [Comirnaty] is licensed to be manufactured, introduced into state commerce and marketed, but it’s not licensed to be given to anyone, and it’s not available in the United States. It’s available in the U.K., New Zealand and other places, but it is not available in the United States because they’re really scared of liability.
Now, are you ready for this one? The BLA actually states that Comirnaty is only ‘ready for approval.’5 It doesn’t say it’s approved anywhere in the document. And they buried this language in a pediatric section to confuse people even more.
Here’s what they said; ‘We’re deferring submission of your pediatric studies for ages younger than 16. For this application, because this product is ready for approval for use in individuals 16 years of age and older, as pediatric studies for younger ages have not been completed.’
Why did they do this? Sixteen is a very important number. You would think the age break would be 18. That’s a very typical age break for everything else that we do in this country. Why 16?
The reason they did 16 is because 16- and 17-year-olds are still on the children’s vaccination schedule. And then the manufacturer gets full liability protection. That’s why this is ready to be approved for 16 and up, not 18 and up.”
Comirnaty Is Not Fully Licensed
This confusion is clearly intentional. On the one hand, the FDA claims Comirnaty is interchangeable with the Pfizer shot, yet it’s also legally distinct. Courts have had to weigh in on the matter, and a federal judge recently rejected the DoD claim that the two shots are interchangeable. They’re not interchangeable. That means Comirnaty vaccine is still EUA. It doesn’t have full approval and it’s not on the market.
“Military members involved in lawsuits are challenging the military’s COVID vaccine mandate. They filed an amended complaint seeking a new injunction after the judge last month rejected the assertion that the Pfizer COVID shot and BioNTech’s Comirnaty are interchangeable. So, we’re still hammering on this legally, but a court has ruled that they’re not interchangeable.
[Editor’s note: This information is accurate at the time of the interview, but legal challenges are ongoing and courts may issue new rulings. December 22, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court announced6 it has slated January 7, 2022, to hear arguments challenging Biden’s vaccine and testing mandates.]
So, how do we know that Comirnaty is not being treated as fully approved? First, the approval states you have the right to accept or refuse the product. That means it’s an EUA. Second, it’s not available in the U.S. because Comirnaty doesn’t have liability protection. Third, if it were available, it’s an alternative [treatment] and all other EUA shots would have to come off the market.
No. 4, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) would have to recommend it for ages 16 to 18 and the CDC would have added it to the children’s recommended schedule. That’s how we know it’s not fully approved and on the market.
Here is the label for Comirnaty. It says it’s emergency use authorization. It doesn’t say it’s fully approved, because it’s not. But look at the safety information they are recognizing: Myocarditis and pericarditis have occurred in some people who’ve received the vaccine, more commonly in males under 40 years of age than among females and older males.
So, this is saying that young men are getting heart inflammation. And what we know from all the anecdotal reports is 300 athletes have died or collapsed on the field, and children in schools have died of heart attacks. That’s what’s going on here.
And the reason they have to declare this is because they know it. They know it’s happening. And the only way they can be sued is if they know there’s a problem with their vaccine and they don’t declare it. So, they declare it here, in very mild language as if it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s a very big deal. Young people are dying [from the shots] who have a 99.9973% chance of recovering from COVID …
The holy grail is to get the shot on the CDC recommended schedule for children, because then it gets full liability protection according to the 1986 Act. This is why they’re going after our children when they have a 99.9973% recovery rate …
Every medical intervention is a risk benefit equation, and it doesn’t calculate for kids at all. They should never be getting COVID shots. The shots don’t prevent transmission. They don’t prevent cases. They don’t prevent hospitalization or death.”
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The Pentagon has finally published its first Airpower Summary since President Biden took office nearly a year ago. These monthly reports have been published since 2007 to document the number of bombs and missiles dropped by U.S.-led air forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria since 2004. But President Trump stopped publishing them after February 2020, shrouding continued U.S. bombing in secrecy.
Over the past 20 years, as documented in the table below, U.S. and allied air forces have dropped over 337,000 bombs and missiles on other countries. That is an average of 46 strikes per day for 20 years. This endless bombardment has not only been deadly and devastating for its victims but is broadly recognized as seriously undermining international peace and security and diminishing America’s standing in the world.
The U.S. government and political establishment have been remarkably successful at keeping the American public in the dark about the horrific consequences of these long-term campaigns of mass destruction, allowing them to maintain the illusion of U.S. militarism as a force for good in the world in their domestic political rhetoric.
Now, even in the face of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, they are doubling down on their success at selling this counterfactual narrative to the American public to reignite their old Cold War with Russia and China, dramatically and predictably increasing the risk of nuclear war.
The new Airpower Summary data reveal that the United States has dropped another 3,246 bombs and missiles on Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (2,068 under Trump and 1,178 under Biden) since February 2020.
The good news is that U.S. bombing of those 3 countries has significantly decreased from the over 12,000 bombs and missiles it dropped on them in 2019. In fact, since the withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces from Afghanistan in August, the U.S. military has officially conducted no air strikes there, and only dropped 13 bombs or missiles on Iraq and Syria – although this does not preclude additional unreported strikes by forces under CIA command or control.
Presidents Trump and Biden both deserve credit for recognizing that endless bombing and occupation could not deliver victory in Afghanistan. The speed with which the U.S.-installed government fell to the Taliban once the U.S. withdrawal was under way confirmed how 20 years of hostile military occupation, aerial bombardment and support for corrupt governments ultimately served only to drive the war-weary people of Afghanistan back to Taliban rule.
Biden’s callous decision to follow 20 years of colonial occupation and aerial bombardment in Afghanistan with the same kind of brutal economic siege warfare the United States has inflicted on Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela can only further discredit America in the eyes of the world.
There has been no accountability for these 20 years of senseless destruction. Even with the publication of Airpower Summaries, the ugly reality of U.S. bombing wars and the mass casualties they inflict remain largely hidden from the American people.
How many of the 3,246 attacks documented in the Airpower Summary since February 2020 were you aware of before reading this article? You probably heard about the drone strike that killed 10 Afghan civilians in Kabul in August 2021. But what about the other 3,245 bombs and missiles? Whom did they kill or maim, and whose homes did they destroy?
The December 2021 New York Timesexposé of the consequences of U.S. airstrikes, the result of a five-year investigation, was stunning not only for the high civilian casualties and military lies it exposed, but also because it revealed just how little investigative reporting the U.S. media have done on these two decades of war.
In America’s industrialized, remote-control air wars, even the U.S. military personnel most directly and intimately involved are shielded from human contact with the people whose lives they are destroying, while for most of the American public, it is as if these hundreds of thousands of deadly explosions never even happened.
The lack of public awareness of U.S. airstrikes is not the result of a lack of concern for the mass destruction our government commits in our names. In the rare cases we find out about, like the murderous drone strike in Kabul in August, the public wants to know what happened and strongly supports U.S. accountability for civilian deaths.
So public ignorance of 99% of U.S. air strikes and their consequences is not the result of public apathy, but of deliberate decisions by the U.S. military, politicians of both parties and corporate media to keep the public in the dark. The largely unremarked 21-month-long suppression of monthly Airpower Summaries is only the latest example of this.
Now that the new Airpower Summary has filled in the previously hidden figures for 2020-21, here is the most complete data available on 20 years of deadly and destructive U.S. and allied air strikes.
Numbers of bombs and missiles dropped on other countries by the United States and its allies since 2001:
These figures are based on U.S. Airpower Summaries for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s count of drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen; the Yemen Data Project‘s count of bombs and missiles dropped on Yemen (only through September 2021); the New America Foundation’s database of foreign air strikes in Libya; and other sources.
There are several categories of air strikes that are not included in this table, meaning that the true numbers of weapons unleashed are certainly higher. These include:
Helicopter strikes: Military Times published an article in February 2017 titled, “The U.S. military’s stats on deadly air strikes are wrong. Thousands have gone unreported.” The largest pool of air strikes not included in U.S. Airpower Summaries are strikes by attack helicopters. The U.S. Army told the authors its helicopters had conducted 456 otherwise unreported air strikes in Afghanistan in 2016. The authors explained that the non-reporting of helicopter strikes has been consistent throughout the post-9/11 wars, and they still did not know how many missiles were fired in those 456 attacks in Afghanistan in the one year they investigated.
AC-130 gunships: The U.S. military did not destroy the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, in 2015 with bombs or missiles, but with a Lockheed-Boeing AC-130 gunship. These machines of mass destruction, usually manned by U.S. Air Force special operations forces, are designed to circle a target on the ground, pouring howitzer shells and cannon fire into it until it is completely destroyed. The U.S. has used AC-130s in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Syria.
Strafing runs: U.S. Airpower Summaries for 2004-2007 included a note that their tally of “strikes with munitions dropped… does not include 20mm and 30mm cannon or rockets.” But the 30mm cannons on A-10 Warthogs and other ground attack planes are powerful weapons, originally designed to destroy Soviet tanks. A-10s can fire 65 depleted uranium shells per second to blanket an area with deadly and indiscriminate fire. But that does not appear to count as a “weapons release” in U.S. Airpower Summaries.
“Counter-insurgency” and “counter-terrorism” operations in other parts of the world: The United States formed a military coalition with 11 West African countries in 2005, and has built a drone base in Niger, but we have not found any systematic accounting of U.S. and allied air strikes in that region, or in the Philippines, Latin America or elsewhere.
The failure of the U.S. government, politicians and corporate media to honestly inform and educate the American public about the systematic mass destruction wreaked by our country’s armed forces has allowed this carnage to continue largely unremarked and unchecked for 20 years.
It has also left us precariously vulnerable to the revival of an anachronistic, Manichean Cold War narrative that risks even greater catastrophe. In this topsy-turvy, “through the looking glass” narrative, the country actually bombing cities to rubble and waging wars that kill millions of people, presents itself as a well-intentioned force for good in the world. Then it paints countries like China, Russia and Iran, which have understandably strengthened their defenses to deter the United States from attacking them, as threats to the American people and to world peace.
The high-level talks beginning on January 10th in Geneva between the United States and Russia are a critical opportunity, maybe even a last chance, to rein in the escalation of the current Cold War before this breakdown in East-West relations becomes irreversible or devolves into a military conflict.
If we are to emerge from this morass of militarism and avoid the risk of an apocalyptic war with Russia or China, the U.S. public must challenge the counterfactual Cold War narrative that U.S. military and civilian leaders are peddling to justify their ever-increasing investments in nuclear weapons and the U.S. war machine.
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The first week of 2022 began with protests in Kazakhstan over rising LPG prices. The protests quickly devolved into destruction, killings and a dissolved government. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev described the violence as “an act of aggression” from the outside and requested assistance from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The CSTO peacekeepers arrived in Kazakhstan to protect the country’s infrastructure and conduct counter-terrorism operations, such as arresting or exterminating armed militants. However, despite serving as peacekeepers, the US and Turkey are desperate to undermine the CSTO from performing its duties.
At first, the protests that broke out across Kazakhstan appeared not to be well organized and rather spontaneous. However, just three days later, armed men opened fire on Kazakh police and security forces. At least 164 Kazakhs have been killed, media outlets burned, police departments destroyed, and even airports and hospitals attacked. Western media blamed Kazakh security forces for opening fire on the protesters and started releasing unverified figures from unreliable sources to justify criticism of Kazakh authorities, akin to how the so-called Maidan Revolution occurred in Ukraine in early 2014.
The Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan Party and the Oyan Qazaqstan Party led the protests, and unsurprisingly are the two most pronounced pro-Western and anti-Russian political organizations in the country. As the ruling government has failed to find a policy of compromise between different political groups, outside forces have taken advantage of this situation to incite riots.
It is also worth noting that even within the ruling Kazakh government, anti-Russian ideology has begun to appear at the highest level. Over the past two years, Prime Minister Askar Mamin has become closer to ultranationalist forces and pro-Western opposition groups with anti-Russian sentiments. This factor is also a reason why Tokayev demanded the resignation of Mamin and the election of First Deputy Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov instead.
On the basis of the country’s constitution and laws, as well as its commitments to rights and responsibilities within CSTO, Kazakhstan had the right to call for intervention from the Russian-led bloc, especially when remembering that violence became so brutal that a police officer was beheaded. The CSTO mission prevents Kazakhstan from the tragic situation that befell Ukraine in 2014.
The Central Asian country’s security and defense apparatus needs to be rearranged to be more readily prepared for future color revolution attempts and external interference. Moscow too would be concerned about the arrival of color revolutions in Central Asia, a region where Turkey is also making inroads to impose its own influence.
“We hope that Kazakhstan will reach stability, peace and tranquility as soon as possible. For this, as Turkey and the Organization of Turkic States, we will give all kinds of support,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said at a meeting held by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on January 9. “The problems of the member countries of the Turkic world are our problems. The whole world has seen it during the Karabakh victory [of Azerbaijan against Armenia].”
The 2020 Karabakh War was an emboldened attempt by Turkey to expand its influence in the South Caucasus, ultimately at Moscow’s expense, but something that was averted with much frustration in Ankara due to the presence of Russian peacekeepers. In this way, Çavuşoğlu is effectively announcing that Turkey is willing to once again act brazenly within Russia’s traditional sphere of influence without consulting Moscow. Ankara hopes that the Organization of Turkic States will become the main mechanism for Central Asian and South Caucasian issues to be discussed and resolved, thus supplanting not only CSTO, but also the Russia-led Commonwealth of Independent States, in which again Kazakhstan is a founding member.
Meanwhile, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki curiously said at press conference on January 6, despite no journalist asking the question, that the US had nothing to do with the events in Kazakhstan, without failing to mention Russia of course.
“There are some crazy Russian claims about the US being behind this. Let me just use this opportunity to convey that as absolutely false, and clearly a part of the standard Russian disinformation playbook,” she said.
The next day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “I think one lesson in recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave.” He also questioned Kazakhstan’s request for CSTO peacekeepers.
As the US opposes the deployment of CSTO peacekeepers and Ankara continues its attempts to increase its influence in Central Asia by pushing for the utilization of the Organization of Turkic States to resolve the Kazakhstan issue, Russia is once again being challenged by NATO states in its own neighbhorhood. This comes as the West and Turkey are also supporting Ukraine to varying degrees against Russia in a similar manner, demonstrating the broad pressure Moscow is facing.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
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The European situation at NATO looks increasingly complicated. The gradual distancing of interests between the European Union and the US is evident, now materialized in the exclusion of European governments from the Summit between Washington and Moscow, scheduled for this month of January. Apparently, Washington is taking a rigid stance on the EU’s role in NATO and excluding Europeans from a prominent position in current international negotiations – probably due to the absence of a solid and unified foreign policy among European states.
Talks between Russians and Americans about the Ukrainian situation are generating great expectations around the world. Significant changes can come from this event, which promises to be an initial step for Washington and Moscow to start on a path of peace and cooperation in Eastern Europe. However, a curious fact that has generated great controversy is the absence of the EU in this summit. Considering the European importance in the composition of NATO’s military personnel and the fact that most of the member states of the alliance are on the European continent, it would be minimally reasonable to include European leaders in this type of event. But, in the complete opposite direction, Washington banned the European presence and decided to negotiate alone with Russia, which leaves many questions unanswered.
Around the world, several analysts have been struggling to explain the reasons for not including Europeans in these talks. The most widely accepted thesis so far is that the US made such a decision because the EU is supposed to have little influence on international policy. According to a recent Financial Times article, where anonymous sources are cited, the European bloc tends to be marginalized by the US with regard to the NATO-Russia topic because it does not have a strong and unified internal policy, being weak in its international projection, vulnerable to various internal polarizations and divisions.
In that article, it is argued that the EU has so far failed to establish a set of efficient measures to deal with the Ukrainian situation, failing to find joint responses with the US and NATO to the supposed “Russian threat”. Washington has warned of such a “threat” for months, but European efforts in order to confront it have been minimal, creating great friction within the Western world.
Indeed, this kind of stance on the part of the EU is understandable. There is no reason for the bloc to join the anti-Russian paranoia spread by the US about the Ukrainian case. The narrative about the “Russian invasion plan” is so weak and unsubstantiated that it is hard to believe that any government – other than Ukraine itself – is really taking it seriously. Europeans, when dealing with this type of discourse, act rationally: the narrative is endorsed, but there is no desperation or urgency to create a countermeasure plan, as it is evident that such an invasion will not happen. Anti-Russian paranoia and the rush to create defense plans are of interest only to the US and Ukraine. Europe’s role in this scenario is only to deliberate about peace to be maintained on the European continent, but there are no rational justifications for the EU to join any paranoia.
However, the exclusion was received disappointingly among Europeans. The bloc would like to participate in negotiations and to deliberate with Russians and Americans on the future of security in the eastern portion of the continent, which will not be possible due to Washington’s intransigent position. The EU repeatedly asked the US for permission to participate in the negotiations, but it was rejected without any possibility of dialogue, generating great discomfort. For the EU, the worst case scenario would be to become a mere spectator of the changes taking place within the European continent itself – and this is precisely what is about to happen.
What Washington still does not seem to understand is that this kind of attitude just tends to drive more and more Europeans away from NATO, creating internal dissension, friction, and polarization in the Western military alliance. Reacting to the American boycott, some EU members chose to contact Moscow directly in order to form a bilateral dialogue. Jens Plötner, German foreign policy adviser, and Emmanuel Bonne, Macron’s diplomatic adviser, will arrive in Moscow later this week to meet with some Russian officials. Then both will travel to Ukraine. Clearly, an internal parallel diplomacy is being developed within NATO, with the two main European powers negotiating with Russia directly, without US permission.
The consequences of this scenario remain to be known. It is possible that the terms negotiated with the Russians diverge between Europeans and Americans, considering that the EU and the US have notoriously different international projects. On the other hand, it is also possible that there is a general consensus among Western countries on the Ukrainian case. However, one effect is evident and cannot be denied: NATO is increasingly polarized, and it is no longer possible to speak about a true US-EU alliance.
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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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“The PCR is a Process. It does not tell you that you are sick”.
Dr. Kary Mullis, Nobel Laureate and Inventor of the RT-PCR, passed away in August 2019.
“…All or a substantial part of these positives could be due to what’s called false positives tests.”
Dr. Michael Yeadon: former Vice President and Chief Science Officer for Pfizer
This misuse of the RT-PCR technique is applied as a relentless and intentional strategy by some governmentsto justify excessive measures such as the violation of a large number of constitutional rights, … under the pretext of a pandemic based on a number of positive RT-PCR tests, and not on a real number of patients.
.Dr. Pascal Sacré, Belgian physician specialized in critical care and renowned public health analyst.
Media lies coupled with a systemic and carefully engineered fear campaign have sustained the image of a killer virus which is relentlessly spreading to all major regions of the World.
Several billion people in more than 190 countries have been tested (as well as retested) for Covid-19.
At the time of writing, approximately 260 million people Worldwide have been categorized as “confirmed Covid-19 cases”. The alleged pandemic is said to have resulted in more than 5 million Covid-19 related deaths.
Both sets of figures: morbidity and mortality are invalid. A highly organized Covid testing apparatus (part of which is funded by the billionaire foundations) has been established with a view to driving up the numbers of “Confirmed Covid-19 Cases”, which are then used as a justification to impose the “vaccine” passport coupled with the repeal of fundamental human rights.
A so-called “Global Tracker System” has been established with an interactive map pointing to global as well as country level trends and weekly tendencies.
A Fourth Wave has been announced. Invalid figures pertaining to Covid-19 are routinely plastered on the news tabloids.
Meanwhile, both the media and the governments have turned a blind eye to the rising trend of Covid-19 vaccine deaths and adverse events, which are confirmed by “official” government agencies. (See below)
TOTAL for EU/UK/USA
45,250 Covid-19 injection related deaths, 7,418,980 injuries
The Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction Test (RT-PCR)
The slanted methodology applied under WHO guidance for detecting the alleged spread of the virus is the Polymerase Chain Reaction Test (RT-PCR), which is routinely applied all over the World.
The RT-PCR Test has been used Worldwide to generate millions of erroneous “Confirmed Covid-19 cases”, which are thenused to sustain the illusion that the alleged pandemic is Real.
This assessment based on erroneous numbers has been used in the course of the last 20 months to spearhead and sustain the fear campaign.
And people are now led to believe that the Covid-19 “vaccine” is the “solution”. And that “normality” will be restored once the entire population of Planet Earth has been vaccinated.
“Confirmed” is a misnomer: A “Confirmed RT-PCR Positive Case” does not Imply a “Confirmed Covid-19 Case”.
Positive RT-PCR is not synonymous with COVID-19 disease! PCR specialists make it clear that a test must always be compared with the clinical record of the patient being tested, with the patient’s state of health to confirm its value [reliability] (Dr. Pascal Sacré)
The procedure used by the national health authorities is to categorize all RT-PCR positive cases, as “Confirmed Covid-19 Cases” (with or without a medical diagnosis).Ironically, this routine process of identifying “confirmed cases” . is in derogation of the CDC’s own guidelines:
“Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms. The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019-nCoV infection. This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.” (emphasis added)
In this article we will present detailed evidence that the methodology used to detect and estimate the spread of the virus is flawed and invalid.
1. False Positives
The earlier debate at the outset of the crisis focused on the issue of “False Positives”.
Acknowledged by the WHO and the CDC, the RT-PCR Test was known to produce a high percentage of false positives. According to Dr. Pascal Sacré:
“Today, as authorities test more people, there are bound to be more positive RT-PCR tests. This does not mean that COVID-19 is coming back, or that the epidemic is moving in waves. There are more people being tested, that’s all.”
The debate on false positives (acknowledged by the health authorities) points to so-called errors without necessarily questioning the overall validity of the RT-PCR test as a means to detecting the alleged spread of the CoV-SARS-2 virus.
2. The PCR-Test Does Not Detect the Identity of the Virus
The RT-PCR test does not identify/ detect the virus. What the PCR test identifies are genetic fragments of numerous viruses (including influenza viruses types A and B, and coronaviruses which trigger common colds).
The results of the TR-PCR test cannot “confirm” whether an individual who undertakes the test is infected with Covid-19.
According to Dr. Kary Mullis, inventor of the PCR technique: “The PCR detects a very small segment of the nucleic acid which is part of a virus itself.”According to renowned Swiss immunologist Dr B. Stadler
So if we do a PCR corona test on an immune person, it is not a virus that is detected, but a small shattered part of the viral genome. The test comes back positive for as long as there are tiny shattered parts of the virus left. Even if the infectious viri are long dead, a corona test can come back positive, because the PCR method multiplies even a tiny fraction of the viral genetic material enough [to be detected].
Dr. Pascal Sacré concurs: “These tests detect viral particles, genetic sequences, not the whole virus.”
In an attempt to quantify the viral load, these sequences are then amplified several times through numerous complex steps that are subject to errors, sterility errors and contamination.
3. The WHO’s “Customized” RT-PCR Covid-19 “Test”
Two important and related issues.
The PCR Test does not identify the virus as outlined above. Moreover, the WHO in January 2020, did not possess an isolate and purified sample of the novel 2019-nCov virus.
What was contemplated in January 2020 was a “customization”of the PCR test by the WHO, under the scientific guidance of the Berlin Virology Institute at Charité Hospital.
The title of the Berlin Virology Institute Study is an obvious misnomer. The PCR test cannot “detect” the 2019 novel coronavirus. (See Dr. Kary Mullis, Dr. B. Stadler, Dr. Pascal Sacré quoted in Section 2).
Moreover, the study, published by Eurosurveillance acknowledges that the WHO did not possess an isolate and purified sample of the novel 2019-nCov virus:
[While]… several viral genome sequences had been released,… virus isolates or samples [of 2019-nCoV] from infected patients were not available …”
The Drosten et al team then recommended to the WHO, that in the absence of an isolate of the 2019-nCoV virus, a similar 2003-SARS-CoV should be used as a “proxy” of the novel virus:
“The genome sequences suggest presence of a virus closely related to the members of a viral species termed severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-related CoV, a species defined by the agent of the 2002/03 outbreak of SARS in humans [3,4].
We report on the the establishment and validation of a diagnostic workflow for 2019-nCoV screening and specific confirmation [using the RT-PCR test], designed in absence of available virus isolates or original patient specimens. Design and validation were enabled by the close genetic relatedness to the 2003 SARS-CoV, and aided by the use of synthetic nucleic acid technology.” (Eurosurveillance, January 23, 2020, emphasis added).
What this ambiguous statement suggests is that the identity of 2019-nCoV was not required and that “Confirmed Covid-19 Cases” (aka infection resulting from the novel 2019 coronavirus) would be validated by “the close genetic relatedness to the 2003-SARS-CoV.”
What this means is that a coronavirus detected 19 years ago (2003-SARS-CoV) is being used to “validate” the identity of a so-called “novel coronavirus” first detected in China’s Hubei Province in late December 2019.
The recommendations of the Drosten study (generously supported and financed by the Gates Foundation) were then transmitted to the WHO. They were subsequently endorsed by the Director General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom.
The WHO did not have in its possession the “virus isolate” required to identify the virus. It was decided that an isolate of the new coronavirus was not required.
The Drosten et al article pertaining to the use of the RT-PCR test Worldwide (under WHO guidance) was challenged in a November 27, 2020 study by a group of 23 international virologists, microbiologists et al.
It stands to reason that if the PCR test uses the 2003 SARS- CoV virus as “a point of reference”, there can be no “confirmed” Covid-19 cases resulting from the novel virus 2019-nCoV, subsequently renamed SARS-CoV-2.
4. Has the Identity of the 2019-nCoV Been Confirmed? Does the Virus Exist?
The Chinese authorities announced on January 7, 2020 that “a new type of virus” had been “identified” “similar to the one associated with SARS and MERS” (related report, not original Chinese government source). The underlying method adopted by the Chinese research team is described below:
We prospectively collected and analysed data on patients with laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection by real-time RT-PCR and next-generation sequencing.
Data were obtained with standardised data collection forms shared by WHO and the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium from electronic medical records. (emphasis added)
The above study (quotation above as well as other documents consulted ) suggest that China’s health authorities did not undertake an isolation / purification of a patient’s specimen.
Using“laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection by real-time RT-PCR” is an obvious misnomer, i.e. the RT-PCR test cannot under any circumstances be used to identify the virus. (see section 2 above). The isolate of the virus by the Chinese authorities is unconfirmed.
Freedom of Information Pertaining to the Isolate of SARS-CoV-2
Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were addressed to ninety Health /Science institutions in a large number of countries.
The responses to these requests confirm that there is no record of isolation / purification of SARS-CoV-2 “having been performed by anyone, anywhere, ever.”
“The 90 Health /Science institutions that have responded thus far have provided and/or cited, in total, zero such records:
Our requests [under “freedom of information”] have not been limited to records of isolation performed by the respective institution, or limited to records authored by the respective institution, rather they were open to any records describing “COVID-19 virus” (aka “SARS-COV-2”) isolation/purification performed by anyone, ever, anywhere on the planet.”
5. The Threshold Amplification Cycles. The WHO Admits that the The Results of the RT-PCR “Test” are Totally Invalid
The rRT-PCR test was adopted by the WHO on January 23, 2020 as a means to detecting the SARS-COV-2 virus, following the recommendations of the Berlin Virology research group (quoted above).
Exactly one year later on January 20th, 2021, the WHO retracts. They don’t say “We Made a Mistake”. The retraction is carefully formulated. (See original WHO document here)
The contentious issue pertains to the number of amplification threshold cycles (Ct). According to Pieter Borger, et al
The number of amplification cycles [should be] less than 35; preferably 25-30 cycles. In case of virus detection, >35 cycles only detects signals which do not correlate with infectious virus as determined by isolation in cell culture…(Critique of Drosten Study)
The World Health Organization (WHO) tacitly admits one year later that ALL PCR tests conducted at a 35 cycle amplification threshold (Ct) or higher are INVALID. But that is what they recommended in January 2020, in consultation with the virology team at Charité Hospital in Berlin.
If the test is conducted at a 35 Ct threshold or above (which was recommended by the WHO), genetic segments of the SARS-CoV-2 virus cannot be detected, which means that ALL the so-called “Confirmed Covid-19 Cases” tabulated Worldwide in the course of the last 22 months are invalid.
Below is the WHO’s carefully formulated “Retraction”.
“WHO guidance Diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2 states that careful interpretation of weak positive results is needed (1). The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load. Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology. (emphasis added)
WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases (2). This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.”
“Invalid Positives” is the Underlying Concept
This is not an issue of “Weak Positives” and “Risk of False Positive Increases”. What is at stake is a “Flawed Methodology” which leads to invalid estimates of “Confirmed Covid-19 Cases”.
What this admission of the WHO confirms is that the estimate of covid positive from a PCR test (with an amplification threshold of 35 cycles or higher) is invalid. In which case, the WHO recommends retesting: “a new specimen should be taken and retested…”.
The WHO calls for “Retesting”, which is tantamount to saying “We Screwed Up”.
That recommendation is pro-forma. It won’t happen. Several billion people Worldwide have already been tested, starting in early February 2020. Nonetheless,we must conclude that unless retested, those estimates (according to the WHO) are invalid.
From the outset, the PCR test has routinely been applied at a Ct amplification threshold of 35 or higher, following the January 2020 recommendations of the WHO. What this means is that the PCR methodology as applied Worldwide has in the course of the last 20 months led to the compilation of faulty and misleading Covid statistics.
And these are the statistics which are used to measure the progression of the so-called “pandemic”. Above an amplification cycle of 35 or higher, the test will not detect fragments of the virus. Therefore, the official “covid numbers” (Confirmed Covid-19 Cases) are meaningless.
It follows that there is no scientific basis for confirming the existence of a pandemic.
Which in turn means that the lockdown / economic measures which have resulted in social panic, mass poverty and unemployment (allegedly to curtail the spread of the virus) have no justification whatsoever.
As outlined above, “the probability that said result is a false positive is 97%”: It follows that using the >35 cycles detection will indelibly contribute to “hiking up” the number of “fake positives”.
The WHO’ Mea Culpa confirms that the Covid-19 PCR test procedure as applied is invalid.
Was the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic a “Dress Rehearsal”?
In 2009 a H1N1 pandemic allegedly affecting 2 billion people was carried out by the WHO.
Corruption at the highest levels of the WHO: Several critics including Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg confirmed that the H1N1 Pandemic was “Fake”
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a human rights watchdog, is publicly investigating the WHO’s motives in declaring a pandemic. Indeed, the chairman of its influential health committee, epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, has declared thatthe “false pandemic” is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.” (Michael Fomento, Forbes, February 10, 2010)
In retrospect, the COVID-19 “pandemic” is far more serious and diabolical than the 2009 H1N1.
See Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg incisive and carefully documented analysis of the RT-PCR test as applied by the WHO in relation to Covid-19.
Concluding Remarks
The RT-PCR Test is the Smoking Gun. It invalidates Everything.
There is no such thing as a “Confirmed Covid-19 Case”. The entire data bank is invalid.
At the time of writing, the number of tabulated so-called “Confirmed Covid-19 Cases” is of the order of 260 million Worldwide. These numbers are totally meaningless.
None of this data can be categorized as “Confirmed”.
The PCR Test does not identify the novel virus, and the genetic fragments of a so-called “similar” 2003 coronavirus (SARS-1) cannot be used as a means to identify the virus which causes Covid-19, nor can it be used to identify the deadly variants of the 2019 novel coronavirus.
Moreover, according to the Freedom of Information (FOI) study quoted above, the isolate of the novel coronavirus is unconfirmed.
Sustained by a complexity of lies, the covid-19 narrative is extremely fragile. This consensus relies on fake science and a totally invalid data bank of alleged “confirmed Covid-19 cases”.
How did Big Pharma manage to develop a vaccine (sponsored by the WHO, GAVI, the Gates Foundation, et al) with a mandate “to protect people” against a virus which has not been isolated/ purified from an “unadulterated sample taken from a diseased patient”?
Vaccine in relation to What? The virus has not been identified.
Moreover, 2019SARS-CoV-2 has been categorized as similar to the 2003 SARS-CoV which means that the 2019 SARS-CoV-2 is not a novel virus.
The legitimacy of the Covid vaccine project hinges upon the validity of hundreds of thousands of RT-PCR fake positive cases Worldwide combined with fake Covid related mortality data. ( See Michel Chossudovsky, Does the Virus Exist)
What lies ahead?
National governments have announced a Fifth Wave, focussing on the alleged “deadly variants” of SARS-CoV-2, including the Delta variant.
The variant is a scam. How do they identify the “variants”. The PCR test neither detects the virus nor the variants of the virus.
There is no isolate of the novel coronavirus on record. Moreover, the WHO’s “customized” PCR test uses as a proxy a similar 2003 SARS-CoV virus (which no doubt has mutated extensively over the last 19 years).
“Restrictions would have to be reintroduced”. … the Delta variant poses a “higher risk of hospitalisations”
These announcements are intended to justify a continuation of repressive policy measures, the speeding up of the vaccination program, as well as the repression of the protest movement.
There is no Pandemic. The Endgame is Tyranny.
The Pandemic is being used to Impose a New World Order.
When the Lie Becomes the Truth, There is No Moving Backwards.
The first Step is to Dismantle the Propaganda Apparatus.
The Elite’s Covid Consensus is Extremely Fragile.
There is no Pandemic. They Do not have a Leg to Stand on.
That Consensus must be broken.
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See Michel Chossudovsky’s E-Book (13 Chapters) entitled
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.
He has undertaken field research in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific and has written extensively on the economies of developing countries with a focus on poverty and social inequality. He has also undertaken research in Health Economics (UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), UNFPA, CIDA, WHO, Government of Venezuela, John Hopkins International Journal of Health Services (1979, 1983)
He is the author of twelve books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015).
He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at [email protected]
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The head of Indianapolis-based insurance company OneAmerica said the death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among working-age people.
“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”
OneAmerica is a $100 billion insurance company that has had its headquarters in Indianapolis since 1877. The company has approximately 2,400 employees and sells life insurance, including group life insurance to employers nationwide.
Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica.
“And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said.
“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”
Davison was one of several business leaders who spoke during the virtual news conference on Dec. 30 that was organized by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.
Most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths, Davison said.
“What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.”
He said at the same time, the company is seeing an “uptick” in disability claims, saying at first it was short-term disability claims, and now the increase is in long-term disability claims.
“For OneAmerica, we expect the costs of this are going to be well over $100 million, and this is our smallest business. So it’s having a huge impact on that,” he said.
That $100 million is what OneAmerica will have paid out to policyholders in group life insurance and disability claims, the company said.
Davison said the costs will be passed on to employers purchasing group life insurance policies, who will have to pay higher premiums.
The CDC weekly death counts, which reflect the information on death certificates and so have a lag of up to eight weeks or longer, show that for the week ending Nov. 6, there were far fewer deaths from COVID-19 in Indiana compared to a year ago – 195 verses 336 – but more deaths from other causes – 1,350 versus 1,319.
These deaths were for people of all ages, however, while the information referenced by Davison was for working-age people who are employees of businesses with group life insurance policies.
At the same news conference where Davison spoke, Brian Tabor, the president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said that hospitals across the state are being flooded with patients “with many different conditions,” saying “unfortunately, the average Hoosiers’ health has declined during the pandemic.”
In a follow-up call, he said he did not have a breakdown showing why so many people in the state are being hospitalized – for what conditions or ailments. But he said the extraordinarily high death rate quoted by Davison matched what hospitals in the state are seeing.
“What it confirmed for me is it bore out what we’re seeing on the front end,…” he said.
The number of hospitalizations in the state is now higher than before the COVID-19 vaccine was introduced a year ago, and in fact is higher than it’s been in the past five years, Dr. Lindsay Weaver, Indiana’s chief medical officer, said at a news conference with Gov. Eric Holcomb on Wednesday.
Just 8.9% of ICU beds are available at hospitals in the state, a low for the year, and lower than at any time during the pandemic. But the majority of ICU beds are not taken up by COVID-19 patients – just 37% are, while 54% of the ICU beds are being occupied by people with other illnesses or conditions.
The state’s online dashboard shows that the moving average of daily deaths from COVID-19 is less than half of what it was a year ago. At the pandemic’s peak a year ago, 125 people died on one day – on Dec. 29, 2020. In the last three months, the highest number of deaths in one day was 58, on Dec. 13.
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Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul correctly identified President Putin’s fears of NATO’s ongoing encroachment in a December 21 tweet, but was McFaul correct to dismiss these concerns as the crazy ravings of a paranoid Russian dictator with no bearing in reality? Or is there something to Putin’s fears?
Trump was intent upon “normalizing” relations with Russia. That initiative was shunted by RussiaGate, the objective of which from the very outset of the 2016 election campaign was to discredit Donald Trump: “….presenting him as a Manchurian candidate serving the interests of the Kremlin. The end game was Regime Change in America”.
Dr. Fuellmich expressed so much hope, and with his explanations on how far the work of his Corona Investigative Committee has come, he expects that about 30% of the population are already awake, can no longer be fooled, and another 40% are in the process of waking up – demonstrating throughout Europe, what has so far been mostly hidden by the mainstream media, but cannot much longer be silenced.
Pills with digital sensors are now the latest controversial technology that has seen itself gain approval from the FDA. The alarming new devices would employ a set of sensors within the chips to track data regarding each patients.
Recently on this show Dr. Jane Ruby came on and gave us the remarkable information that a huge percentage of side effects tracked in the CDC’s VAERS database are linked to just a small percentage of the vaccine batches produced by Pfizer and Moderna. This data came from a group calling itself Team Enigma.
On the 2nd of January, the same day as the current disturbances in Kazakhstan began, Dutch police used baton charges and attack dogs against participants of a prohibited anti-lockdown march in Amsterdam, less than seven weeks after police opened fire on anti-lockdown protesters in Rotterdam.
The upshot of both Blinken’s and Stoltenberg’s statements are that Russia has the choice of capitulating to NATO’s terms and demands regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine (and implicitly the return of Crimea) and NATO’s absorption of any former Soviet republics not already in the bloc or NATO will revert to its role as the military alliance it has been for 73 years: it will employ the military expedient against Russia.
This is the first broadcast of the Global Research News Hour. And therefore the topic to discuss will obviously be the BIG stories of the previous year. It seems that by and large it was a turbulent year for stories. Donald Trump’s non-acceptance of defeat in the U.S. election resulting in the ULTIMATE “hell no” event on January 6.
In this brilliant interview, lawyer Anna de Buisseret explains clearly and eloquently how those responsible for causing harm will be held liable under the law in relation to the experimental injections currently being rolled out, especially to young children.
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“COVID Chronicles” gives a concise look at the pandemic, answering some of the questions that have left many people scratching their heads, because the reality and science don’t seem to match up with what the media is reporting
Every positive COVID-19 test is considered a case, but these are two completely different things, since you can test positive without being ill
When COVID-19 was left to behave in a manner that would allow it to spread amongst the healthy, about two-thirds of the population displayed antibody levels naturally
Mask mandates did not noticeably change the number of cases or deaths the way they should if they actually reduce transmissibility; countries that used minimal masks were not worse off than neighboring countries with mask mandates
It’s important to stay grounded and think critically to avoid falling victim to unnecessary panic and stress
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The filmmakers of Covid Chronicles are allowing for a FREE special stream until 1/10. CLICK HERE to support this important mission and own the film for life!
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The “COVID Chronicles” movie1 gives a concise look at the pandemic, answering some of the questions that have left many people scratching their heads, because the reality and science don’t seem to match up with what the media is reporting.
Ivor Cummins is a biochemical engineer with a background in medical device engineering and leading teams in complex problem-solving. On his website, TheFatEmperor.com,2 he offers guidance on how to decode science to transform your health. He produced “COVID Chronicles” along with Donal O’Neill, a documentary filmmaker in the field of health and human performance.
There were red flags in the pandemic from the start. Because the symptoms of COVID-19 overlap with so many other diseases, the only way to know you have it is to test for it.
The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests used for COVID-19 use a powerful amplification process that makes them so sensitive they can even detect the remains of a dead virus long after infection, Cummins explains. But even beyond that, every positive COVID-19 test is considered a “case” — and therein lies a major problem.
A Positive Test Isn’t the Same as a Case
Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, an internal medicine doctor and former head of health at the Council of Europe, is among those who referred to the COVID-19 pandemic as a “test pandemic” due to the PCR test.3
“It was accepted by WHO, and they said when the test is positive, we have a case of COVID-19. And this is how they started counting the cases,” Wodarg says. “What they counted was the activity of testing. And the more they tested, the more cases they found.”4 When labs use excessive cycle thresholds, you end up with a grossly overestimated number of positive tests, leading to a “casedemic”5,6 — an epidemic of false positives.
Wodarg says COVID-19 “was a ‘test’ pandemic. It was not a virus pandemic,”7 because PCR tests may give a positive result when it detects coronaviruses that have been around for 20 years.8 In “COVID Chronicles,” Cummins speaks with John Lee, a former clinical professor of pathology at Hull York Medical School and consultant histopathologist at Rotherham General Hospital, who later became the Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust’s director of cancer services.
He echoes Wodarg, stating that during the pandemic, every positive test is considered a case, but “these are two completely different things.”9 Normally, if you have a typical cold, for instance, you only become a “case” if you’re hospitalized, but this all changed with the pandemic. Lee says:10
“In coronavirus, we’ve been counting every single positive test as a positive case. Now this is scientifically and medically wrong. You can have a positive coronavirus test and be completely well. You can have a positive coronavirus test and be excreting minimal amounts of the virus.
To conflate positive tests with cases is simply wrong, and yet the positive cases have been driving government policy and the entire panoply of restrictive actions that have been taken.”
January 13, 2021, “WHO finally questioned the accuracy of PCR testing,” the film notes, and released an information notice that clarified instructions for interpreting results of PCR tests, including the fact that “careful interpretation of weak positive results is needed.”11 “Reported case rates collapsed in the U.S. the following day,” “COVID Chronicles” points out.12
Lockdowns Didn’t Work
Lockdowns can be effective if they’re implemented when no one has the disease, but once it’s already spreading in your population, they don’t work. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown was implemented far too late and caused much more harm than benefit.
The film highlights COVID-19 outcomes around the globe, including in vastly different regions, like densely-populated Khayelitsha in South Africa. It was originally assumed that COVID-19 would devastate the area. They were strictly locked down along with the rest of South Africa, but due to the dense population, the lockdown in Khayelitsha only served to force people further right on top of one another.
Because the area has a long history of battling diseases like HIV and tuberculosis, it was easy for officials to use data from the area, which quickly showed that those most at risk from COVID-19 were elderly, frail or suffering from other conditions like Type 2 diabetes. What surprised many, however, is that Khayelitsha fared much the same during the pandemic as everywhere else in South Africa.
Further, as the second and third waves struck, those in Khayelitsha were much better protected, even as new variants emerged. It was later found that as many as 68% of local residents had COVID-19 antibodies.13 As noted in “COVID Chronicles”:14
“[A]s Delta cut a swathe across the world and indeed South Africa, it was bigger here than any of the prior waves or the variants that we had seen. But in Khayelitsha, that 68% level of antibodies across the community proved to be extremely powerful and very, very protective, even against the new Delta variant.
So while the U.K. was in complete disarray, here we had an informal settlement in an economically deprived region with a population of half a million outperforming the U.K. and many First World nations … they had not intended … for COVID to spread throughout the community. But in doing so, they arrived at a point where herd immunity, if you like, had been reached.”
Other communities also enjoyed high levels of COVID-19 antibodies in the community, including in India, the Orthodox Jewish community in London and Amish communities in the U.S. So, when this virus was left to behave in a manner that would allow it to spread amongst the healthy, they were typically getting to about two-thirds of the population displaying antibody levels.15
Mask Mandates Didn’t Work
Like lockdowns, mask mandates are another pandemic control measure that’s been pushed as gospel despite lack of effectiveness and evidence of harm. The “Danmask-19 Trial,” published November 18, 2020, in the Annals of Internal Medicine,16 found that among mask wearers 1.8% (42 participants) ended up testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, compared to 2.1% (53) among controls.
When they removed the people who reported not adhering to the recommendations for use, the results remained the same — 1.8% (40 people), which suggests adherence makes no significant difference. Initially, numerous research journals refused to publish the results, which called widespread mask mandates into question.17
If masks work, the film points out, you should immediately see a dramatic change in the curve, within 14 days. “If you look at around 10 or 12 countries where they brought in mask mandates, there was no impact on the curve … whatsoever so the empirical science of our own eyes is screaming at us: masks and lockdowns don’t really move the needle much, maybe a little, but no one wants to know. It’s an ideology now. It’s a religion,” Cummins says.18
Dr. Reid Sheftall also studied mask usage extensively and found mask mandates did not noticeably change the number of cases or deaths the way they should if they actually reduce transmissibility. Countries that used minimal masks were not worse off than neighboring countries with mask mandates.19
“That makes sense,” Cummins says, “because 40 years of science have been unanimous, pretty much, that for influenza viruses, surgical masks and coverings are highly ineffective. So it agrees with the science.” Yet, the media claim masks are effective, based on a “flurry of papers” that came in around June 2020 saying masks could be good. “So a few weeks of papers have overturned a few decades of scientific sense,” he adds.20
Injections Aren’t Working
It’s now been uncovered that the viral loads of COVID-19 are similar among people who’ve been injected and those who have not.21 “What kind of a vaccine needs three vaccinations, and a maybe a fourth, and more, within months?” Cummins asks. “The answer is a vaccine that’s not really working very well at all.”22
The media message that the pandemic is now a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” is also misleading, since data from Israel showed that similar numbers of people were being hospitalized for COVID-19, whether they were injected or not.23 Cummins notes:24
“There’s a lot of trickery with the data. The hospitalizations are difficult because you can’t get the raw data, and they’re very confounded data. In one case … the U.S. came out with shock stories that 99% are unvaccinated. However, they were accounting for way back … before the vaccines were available.
So the lion’s share back then were unvaccinated because the vaccines weren’t here yet. So there’s a lot of trickery — I would say fraud — in the way the data’s being presented.”
People who’ve received only one injection of an mRNA series are also referred to as unvaccinated, which further biases the data to again make it look like more uninjected people are being hospitalized. What’s more, the film notes, “In 2021, professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, stated that, ‘… herd immunity by vaccination is not a possibility because it [Delta] still infects vaccinated individuals.’”25
Is This a Pandemic of Lifestyle?
Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a consultant cardiologist and chairman of public health collaboration in the U.K., is also featured in “COVID Chronicles,” speaking about the underlying factors that make certain people more vulnerable to COVID-19 — namely lifestyle-related diseases driven by poor diet.
This aspect of prevention via a long-term healthy lifestyle, which could save lives in future pandemics, is another tenet that’s ignored by the dominant narrative. Malhotra explains:26
“I think what we’ve had is a fast pandemic, in terms of COVID, that has exacerbated and taken advantage of a slow pandemic, which is the pandemic of chronic, lifestyle-related diseases that have been putting stress on our health care system for many, many years, and our NHS, certainly even before COVID, was already at a breaking point.
But actually, COVID has broken the back of the NHS, and the main reason behind this is because we failed, for many, many years, to tackle prevention head on, specifically the biggest driver of these chronic diseases: poor diet.
Ultraprocessed food, which is the heart of the problem, is now half of the calorie consumption in the British diet. It’s about 60% of the calorie consumption in the United States, and there’s a very clear correlation between, already, countries that had 50% or more of the population overweight or obese had 90% of the deaths from COVID-19. So, poor metabolic health means poor immune health.
But beyond this, we know that the real drivers of this problem are structural. These are to do with the environment and with misinformation that is being subjected on the public for the purposes of profit. And the two real culprits behind this, in my point of view, are the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry.
And the collusion of academics, medical journals, doctors and politicians for financial gain with these industries is the heart of the problem. This needs to be exposed, and the public needs to understand and realize that the biggest enemies of democracy are the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry.”
If Not for Media, Would You Know There’s a Pandemic?
The film implies that COVID-19 presented an opportunity that multiple entities have used to further their own agendas, while media have served as a tool for overriding science and common sense. It’s important to stay grounded and think critically to avoid falling victim to unnecessary panic and stress. Cummins notes:27
“A key thing to remember, I think, is if you turned off the media, no one would know there’s an epidemic. Even during the surges in Ireland, in both seasons, if you did not have access to the media, you would never know.
No one really knew anyone who died — outside of someone in a nursing home, someone of elevated age or with stage 4 cancer — most people did not know anyone who died. Right? Isn’t that incredible, in a massive pandemic, as we’ve been told?”
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An American Russia expert recently observed that diplomacy is not a reward for good behavior. Rather diplomacy is a necessary activity required for averting war. Skilled diplomacy requires one to understand the perceived interests of the other side and what shapes those perceptions. This helps both sides to arrive at a mutually agreeable resolution that takes into account the most serious concerns of each. The Biden administration would be wise to give a fair hearing to the security concerns of the world’s other nuclear superpower at the upcoming meeting with Russia on January 10th in order to avert unnecessary escalation in Eastern Europe.
As Putin gets further into what could be his final term as president, he has decided to try to get a meaningful resolution to one of his top priorities: ensuring Russia’s national security. If he can successfully resolve this issue, he may feel freer to open up the purse strings and invest more in his other top priority: raising Russia’s living standards, which have fallen behind as a result of the austerity that has been imposed as the Russian government has focused on macroeconomic stability to make the economy “sanction-proof.”
He has started by offering a proposed draft agreement between Russia and the US and one between Russia and NATO that guarantee no further eastward expansion of NATO and no stationing of US/NATO troops in Ukraine or intermediate- and short-range missiles in Europe.
While it may seem like Russia is making extreme demands and offering no concessions of its own in return, one must keep a few points in mind. First, at the beginning of negotiations, parties will typically start with maximalist positions with the idea that they will be whittled down during talks to something they can live with. Second, Russia has genuine security concerns that many Americans are not aware of because most media has made little attempt to explain Russia’s perspective with regard to its disagreements with the US-led west.
Lacking some of the natural barriers that Americans take for granted, Russia has a history of invasions from the West, including Germany twice in the 20thcentury – having come through the Polish/Ukrainian corridor. Hitler’s invasion in WWII resulted in around 27 million dead Soviets and destruction of a third of the country. These perceived security interests are driven by historical experience and therefore represent a Russian view, not simply a Putin view.
With this heavy history, Mikhail Gorbachev was hesitant to allow a reunified Germany during 1990 negotiations with western leaders. Declassified government documents reveal that in order to secure Gorbachev’s agreement, he was promised verbally more than once by US Secretary of State James Baker and other western officials that NATO would not move “one inch eastward.”
After the mutually negotiated end of the Cold War and subsequent dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, NATO had lost its reason for existence and had to resort to finding other justifications for remaining in business. This project was assisted by political ideologues , such as Zbig Brzezinski and Neoconservatives, as well as intense defense contractor lobbying which helped spur NATO expansion rather than a re-negotiation of a European security architecture that would ensure the security of all parties. From Russia’s perspective, it made sense to ask: if the Cold War had ended, Russia had voluntarily given up its empire and was no longer an enemy, then why was NATO being expanded with Russia excluded from these new security arrangements?
Not only has the US overseen several rounds of NATO expansion since 1999, it has unilaterally withdrawn from several important treaties governing arms control. The first is the ABM Treaty, the abrogation of which Russia viewed as a threat to its nuclear retaliatory capability. There is also the INF Treaty, the dissolution of which will now allow the US to potentially station intermediate range missiles in Europe, representing another perceived danger to Russia’s security interests.
Then there was the US-supported coup that removed the corrupt but democratically elected leader of Ukraine in 2014, which sparked deeper dissension in a country that has political and cultural divisions that go back centuries. The cold hard reality is that Ukraine has more strategic and historical significance to Russia than it could ever have to the US thousands of miles away. Russia also has the advantage of proximity in the event of a military conflict. The US should seriously reconsider the wisdom of paying lip service to Ukraine’s military defense for any such scenario. Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe and also one of the most corrupt. Ukraine would provide no benefit to NATO as a member and it’s safe to say that neither Americans nor most Europeans would be willing to die for it. Ukraine would be best served if it were militarily neutral and allowed to negotiate economically beneficial relations with both Russia and the West, with the most extreme political elements in the country discouraged from their most reckless inclinations.
It’s time for the US to get beyond its post-Cold War triumphalist mentality and pursue practical diplomacy with Russia. Insisting that all countries have the right to decide what military alliances they join without regard to the larger real world context is a nonstarter. Everyone knows the US would never take this attitude if Russia and China decided to lure Canada or Mexico into joining a military alliance with them.
The Russia of 2022 is not the Russia of the 1990’s. In order to get something, the US-led west will now have to give something. That means a willingness to seriously address Russia’s security concerns. It remains to be seen if the US is capable of the shift in mindset needed to rise to the occasion.
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Natylie Baldwin is the author of The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia and U.S.-Russia Relations, available from Amazon and other major booksellers. She blogs at natyliesbaldwin.com.
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The Biden administration is continuing the farce that is our government’s regime change policy in Venezuela:
The United States continues to recognize the authority of the democratically elected 2015 National Assembly as the last remaining democratic institution and Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president. We welcome the agreement reached to extend the authority of the National Assembly elected in 2015 and of interim President Guaidó as its president.
It was a mistake to recognize Guaidó when he had some fig leaf of legitimacy three years ago, but to continue the charade now several years later when he and his allies have even less influence and standing than they did before is truly absurd.
The chief problem with recognizing him as “interim” president then was that he had no effective control over the state he was supposedly leading. There was initially a belief among regime changers that defectors from the military would lend their support to the cause, but this never amounted to more than a trickle, and the few that threw in their lot with Guaidó were then left high and dry by the amateurish would-be coup attempt. Since then, the opposition has only lost ground. Fewer governments recognize Guaidó today than recognized him in 2019, and his approval rating in Venezuela is abysmally low. As Francisco Rodriguezpoints out, the “interim” president has no real democratic or constitutional legitimacy:
Guaidó’s claim is tenuous both legally and politically. He has never won a national election, his term as legislator expired more than a year ago, and his poll numbers are as low as Maduro’s.
In addition to lacking legitimacy, he also lacks power inside the country. The military remains firmly on the side of Maduro and his allies. U.S. regime change policy has utterly failed to reach its goal, but it has still managed to inflict horrifying damage on the population. Rodriguez continues:
The central idea of this “maximum pressure” approach – implemented by Trump and Biden both through economic sanctions and by the transfer of control of Venezuelan government funds to Guaidó’s interim government – is that depriving the country of the funds needed to sustain its economy will bring about regime change. It hasn’t, and it won’t. It will simply contribute to worsening the country’s humanitarian crisis, fuel animosity toward the United States, deepen opposition divisions, and weaken civil society.
Rodriguez has authored a new study of the effects of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s economy, and his findings make for alarming reading:
I argue that U.S. economic sanctions toward Venezuela – which, in contrast to those of other nations, block the country’s access to export and financial markets – have played a crucial role in limiting the country’s access to foreign exchange, contributing to a collapse of 72 percent in the country’s per capita income – the equivalent of four Great Depressions and the largest contraction ever documented in Latin America [bold mine-DL]. Aggregate data show that oil production contracted after every U.S. decision to tighten sanctions, while detailed analysis of the evolution over time of output of oil-producing firms shows that companies with access to credit prior to sanctions suffered disproportionately from U.S. executive orders barring access to capital markets. According to econometric estimates presented in the study, U.S. sanctions are responsible for at least half of the decline in Venezuela’s oil production since 2017, depriving the country of the foreign currency revenue needed to import essential goods and sustain its economy.
He rightly condemns this sanctions policy, which he likens to siege warfare and the use of starvation as a weapon. As I have argued many times before, subjecting an entire country to economic warfare amounts to collective punishment of the people for the actions of their leaders. It is immoral and unjust, and it is all the more so because it is completely useless in delivering the political change that it is supposed to cause. According to the crude thinking of regime changers, impoverishing people and destroying their economy should make them rise up against their government, but we know from past and current examples that authoritarian leaders exploit the deprivation created by sanctions to tighten their control. Rodriguez notes later in his article, “An extensive literature demonstrates that sanctions are rarely effective in achieving regime change, and often end up making the target regimes stronger.” Meanwhile, the people are ground down deeper into want and misery so that they are preoccupied with meeting basic needs and surviving. No one has ever been liberated by mass starvation.
As Rodriguez says, “The deliberate targeting of civilian populations should have no place in the foreign policy of a civilized nation.” We should abhor using sanctions to attack innocent people just as we ought to abhor indiscriminate bombing and torture. Like those other crimes, collective punishment through sanctions strikes at the weak and defenseless through the reckless use of power. The use of broad sanctions against entire populations is inherently malign and must be brought to an end.
Rodriguez anticipates the objections of “maximum pressure” supporters and swats them aside:
Sanctions apologists have tried to muddy the discussion by arguing that it is Maduro and not sanctions that are to blame for Venezuela’s plight. This argument is fallacious and disingenuous. No serious scholarly work has ever tried to deny that Maduro’s policies contributed to the country’s economic crisis. The United States should be seeking to design policies that do not increase Venezuelans’ suffering, instead of just arguing that it is not causing as much damage as Maduro.
I would add that it is because Maduro had already done so much damage to Venezuela’s economy that the imposition of “maximum pressure” sanctions on the country was truly inexcusable. It is bad enough to impose broad sanctions on a country when it has been enjoying relatively good economic conditions. When it is already suffering from a massive economic and humanitarian crisis, as Venezuela was, it is imperative that our policy should do nothing to worsen the existing problems. Putting broad sanctions on Venezuela amounted to kicking the Venezuelan people when they were already down. Like other twisted sanctions policies, this one has been sold as “standing with” the people that it abuses. The people suffering from the sanctions are under no illusions about who is responsible for their added hardship, and they naturally oppose the policy that is strangling them. According to Rodriguez, “76 percent of Venezuelans oppose U.S. oil sanctions, while 53 percent have a negative view of Biden.”
Biden’s willingness to let this bankrupt and evil policy continue is a black mark on his record. This was a Trump-era policy that he inherited, so it would not have been that difficult for him to repudiate Trump’s policy at the beginning of his term. Whether because of inertia, political timidity, lack of imagination, or some combination of all three, Biden chose to keep the policy essentially unchanged. Cruel sanctions seem to be some of the only things that survive from one administration to the next. There is still time for Biden to change course, but judging from the administration’s latest endorsement of Guaidó he has no intention of doing that. It falls to members of Congress, activists, and the public to insist that the U.S. stop crushing the Venezuelan people with economic warfare.
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Featured image: The US government continues to view Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido (left) as the rightful leader of Venezuela, not Nicolas Maduro (right). (Alexandros Michailidis/StringerAl/Shutterstock)
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In the wake of the December 31 phone call between Presidents Biden and Putin, two very different perceptions of reality were brought into conflict which we can only pray will be resolved in the coming days and weeks of meetings between both sides.
Where one side sees itself committed to supporting Ukraine’s independent right to join NATO in order to help empower the trans Atlantic rules based order, the other side sees an encroaching military encirclement of its vast territory under a military doctrine dubbed “full spectrum dominance”. This latter doctrine, born in the bowels of Brzezinski’s “Flexible Response” doctrine of 1980, assumes that it is possible to deliver a nuclear first strike on Russia (and China) with only minor “acceptable” rates of collateral damage suffered as a consequence.
Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul correctly identified President Putin’s fears of NATO’s ongoing encroachment in a December 21 tweet, but was McFaul correct to dismiss these concerns as the crazy ravings of a paranoid Russian dictator with no bearing in reality? Or is there something to Putin’s fears?
Considering the rapid growth of NATO from 16 to 29 nations in 24 years, and the obsessive drive which post-Maidan Kiev governments have made to enter into the military pact, Putin’s fears shouldn’t be dismissed too quickly.
When you also consider:
1) the vast array of military games that have taken place on the Black Sea in recent years,
2) the expansion of the anti-ballistic missile shield which weapons experts have proven can be turned into offensive systems with relative ease,
3) America’s abrogation of several trust building treaties since 2002,
4) the vast increase of arms sales to Ukraine over the past year, and
5) the promotion of first-use nuclear bombs by leading western officials in the last few weeks of 2021, it is clear that Russia’s fears are not unfounded as McFaul or other hawks encircling Biden would have it seem.
Considering McFaul is a renowned “color revolution expert” who was caught trying to arrange a failed “white revolution” in Russia in 2011, it must be assumed that his perspective is more than a little polluted.
Even China has felt the burn of full spectrum dominance and western regime change operations in recent years, with a massive armada of military bases, troop buildup, war games and anti-ballistic missiles like THAAD deployed in South Korea where 20 thousand American troops are stationed and ready for battle. These troops are joined by 50 thousand soldiers in Japan, while talks of creating a Pacific NATO (aka: QUAD) has occupied the conversations of military officials in Washington, Japan, India and Australia since 2020.
Ukraine and Taiwan: Spark Plugs for WW3?
As much as Biden, McFaul, Carter or Nuland might scream and shout that “Crimea will always belong to Ukraine”, the fact is that a democratic plebiscite did occur in 2014 which resulted in a majority vote to return the peninsula to Russia. Whether you like it or not, that happened.
As much as war hawks might also scream that the island of Taiwan is an independent nation deserving of US military support, according to the United Nations, and Taiwan’s own constitution, the island is still legally a part of China. That’s just a basic fact of life that no amount of media spin can change.
Should we treat the words of leading NATOcrats like Jens Stoltenberg seriously when he threatens to move US nukes in Germany closer to Russia’s border? Should we dismiss the claims made by former Defense Secretary Ash Carter that the USA should support a color revolution in Russia? Should we ignore the words of Senator Roger Wicker when he called for a nuclear first strike on Russia on December 8?
Whether or not American citizens take such words seriously, the fact is that Vladimir Putin and his military advisors certainly do.
USA Should Agree to Putin’s Demands
Taking the above facts into consideration, Putin’s demands for written agreements on freezing the growth of NATO’s eastward expansion should strike any American patriot as eminently reasonable.
After all, who does NATO’s growth actually benefit? Does it benefit the Ukrainian people if US missiles are installed in Kiev, which would only see the nation suffer the risk of a Russian retaliatory attack? And who on earth will gain if the world is pushed to nuclear war?
If Putin requests that war games halt on Russia’s border (which he will reciprocate in turn) and requests that no short or medium range missiles be placed on Ukrainian soil (which he will reciprocate in turn) while re-empowering the Russia-NATO council, then what harm does this do to the USA’s interests? Moscow is, after all, only 300 miles away from Ukraine’s border, so this sort of security guarantee is perfectly rational.
Just to put it into perspective, I doubt a single American would feel secure if either Russia or China carried out military war games in the Gulf of Mexico while placing Russian-controlled missiles in Ottawa. And how secure would Americans feel if Moscow’s intelligence agencies were openly supporting rabidly anti-American Mexicans who wished to become a part of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization of the Americas?
So rather than risk lighting the world on nuclear fire in a bid for global hegemony, why not simply agree to Putin’s red lines, while also toning down the sabre-rattling in the Pacific while we’re at it?
Doing these simple things will involve returning to the tried-and-true methods of diplomatic engagement and acting like the UN Charter actually matters in international affairs. It will also involve treating other nations like partners with common interests, instead of assuming that everyone not under our hegemony are enemies vying for dominance in a world of diminishing returns.
It may be a lot to ask the NATOcrats running rampant in Washington, but I guarantee you that the majority of Americans from all sides of the political aisle will be overjoyed to avoid a nuclear holocaust.
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There are perhaps five million Arabs who identify as Americans, our earliest ancestors having arrived here almost two centuries ago. Many more Arab immigrants reside in Canada, throughout South America and across the Caribbean Islands.
Etel Adnan (1925-2021), whose work is being celebrated in an exhibition at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, was Arab American. Although she lived in Paris for the past three decades, before that Adnan resided in Sausalito, California. I am an Arab American; so are Ralph Nader, Leila Ahmed, Rashida Tlaib and Naomi Shihab Nye. You’ll find us engaged in all fields—education, industry, medicine, journalism, community service, sports, politics and the arts– and practicing many faiths.
I offer this as context for the splendid exhibition featuring Etel Adnan at New York City’s prestigious showplace, The Guggenheim Museum. Although contrary to some claims, recognition of her talents did not arrive late in Adnan’s life. For years, her work has been widely exhibited and celebrated in Europe. Moreover, while she surpassed any specific religious identity, Adnan was an unequivocally proud Arab woman.
The Guggenheim show, now in its final days, respectfully presents Adnan’s paintings and drawings. What I find reproachful is its program concerning her poetry. Given the reach of this important forum, the museum’s plan for a public reading of Adnan’s poems is flawed.
Etel’s first poetry collection appeared in 1966 (Moonshot, Beirut). Starting with her novelSitt Marie-Rose she published in collaboration with Simone Fattal, founder and director of Post-Apollo Press. Best known for poetry, Adnan also penned plays and essays, some in French and Arabic as well as in English.
Initially, I was delighted to learn that readings of Adnan’s poetry were planned for January 10th, the final day of the NYC exhibition. This would introduce Americans to her important written work. (Although referenced in the captions accompanying Adnan’s paintings, I could find none of her books available at the Guggenheim bookstore.)
Etel’s writing is for the most part not culturally specific. This is understandable for someone with her breadth of experience and talent. Remember, she was a professor of philosophy for some years.
Her universalism is apparent in both her art and her writing. However, as anyone who knows her is aware, her Arab roots lie not far from the surface of her work. Those who worked with Adnan know how firmly she identified as an Arab America. She presided over the founding of the Radius of Arab American Writers (during my tenure as director) from 1992 to 2005, drawing in established figures while also attracting emerging writers.
This brings me back to the Guggenheim’s deficient plan for the forthcoming literary program in honor of Adnan.
If Arabs in America have any public literary profile, it’s as poets. Our best known, from Khalil Gibran to Naomi Shihab Nye to Mohja Kahf and Khaled Mattawa, have established a tradition that today includes hundreds of fine authors actively publishing in the U.S. Yet, the Guggenheim’s program– probably the most far-reaching presentation of Adnan’s work seen and heard in this country– includes not a single Arab American in the list of five participating readers. How is this possible?
Arab institutions in the U.S. include at least two literary organizations (RAWI and MIZNA) and the Arab American Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. In 2000 Lisa Majaj and Amal Amireh edited a collection of essays on Adnan’s work and life. In her honor the University of Arkansas Press publishes a series on Arab American poetry (edited by two of our leading poets). English departments across the U.S. include courses on our literature.
Can you imagine that any celebration of African American literature would exclude African American readers today? This challenge applies to Asian American literature, Latinx literature, Native American, Canadian, French, or Australian literature, etc.
Who decided on the presenters at the forthcoming Guggenheim reading? Did some indolent staff member simply called a local university or google Poet’s House to hastily assemble a few names.
Colonial mentality still rules, even with exhaustive search tools, even with Arab American literature now well established. Perhaps our Arab community outreach is still weak. Nevertheless, along with America’s enduring colonialist value system, academic nepotism is likely an additional factor in the program’s omissions. The Guggenheim Museum must be called out for its laxity. It has missed the opportunity to design a truly respectful literary program for one of our most esteemed and loved heroes.
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A century ago Yogmaya and Durga Devi, two women champions of justice, emerged from a remote corner of rural Nepal to offer solutions to their nation’s social and political ills. Then they were forgotten.
Years after their demise, in 1980 veteran anthropologist Barbara Nimri Aziz first uncovered their suppressed histories in her comprehensive and accessible biographies. Revelations from her decade of research led to the resurrection of these women and their entry into contemporary Nepali consciousness.
This book captures the daring political campaigns of these rebel women; at the same time it asks us to acknowledge their impact on contemporary feminist thinking. Like many revolutionaries who were vilified in their lifetimes, we learn about the true nature of these leaders’ intelligence, sacrifices, and vision during an era of social and economic oppression in this part of Asia.
After Nepal moved from absolute monarchy to a fledgling democracy and history re-evaluated these pioneers, Dr. Aziz explores their legacies in this book.
Psychologically provocative and astonishingly moving, “Yogmaya and Durga Devi” is a seminal contribution to women’s history.
Comments Off on Esteemed Poet and Artist Etel Adnan Might Well Inquire About Her Missing Arab Companions, as Her Outstanding New York Exhibition Draws to a Close
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Over the past week, the Western corporate media, in lockstep, has focused on fuel protests in Kazakhstan – protests which, in the space of several days, have rapidly escalated into nationwide violence which has so far seen the deaths of 18 Kazakh security services members, including two who were decapitated, and the deployment of the Russian-led CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organisation) military alliance into the former Soviet state, at the request of Nur-Sultan, in a bid to quell the ongoing violence.
Leaving aside the sudden coordinated focus by the Western media on the Republic in central Asia, a region rarely covered by the BBC, CNN, Sky et al, being perhaps the most obvious clue so far to indicate a CIA-orchestrated colour revolution, as well as the sudden use of extreme violence by ‘protesters’, a tactic used by agent provocateurs in previous colour revolutions in Syria and Ukraine, the motivation for Western-backed regime change in Kazakhstan should be clear.
With a 7,000km border being shared between Kazakhstan and Russia, the largest land border between Russia and any other country, and the second-largest land border in the world after the United States and Canada, should Kazakhstan fall into political instability amidst the current violence, it would only be a matter of time before the after effects of such destabilisation began to spill over from the central Asian Republic into its larger northern neighbour – indeed, the use of regime change in Kazakhstan as a means to destabilise Moscow is outlined as such in a May 2020 document published by influential neoconservative think tank, the RAND corporation.
The current regime-change attempt in Kazakhstan also comes at the convenient time of increased tensions in Eastern Europe, with Russia being accused of planning an imminent invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, and Belarusian President and key-Russian ally Alexander Lukashenko, himself the target of a Western-backed regime change attempt in August 2020, being accused of attempting to destabilise the European Union via a build-up of African and Middle Eastern migrants, many of whom are fleeing US-NATO led wars and regime change operations in the first place, on the Belarus-Poland border – timing which suggests the goal of the current attempt at a Kazakh colour revolution is to stretch Russia’s resources along its Western and Southern borders.
A noticeable feature of the Western mainstream media’s reaction to the current violence in Kazakhstan however, and one which again strongly suggests external influences at play, is the contrast in their response to genuine human rights protests currently taking place closer to home – protests currently taking place in numerous European countries against mandatory vaccination and the current attempt at establishing a global corporate dictatorship, in line with the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset initiative, and which have so far drawn a brutal, repressive response from the governments of said countries.
On the 2nd of January, the same day as the current disturbances in Kazakhstan began, Dutch police used baton charges and attack dogs against participants of a prohibited anti-lockdown march in Amsterdam, less than seven weeks after police opened fire on anti-lockdown protesters in Rotterdam.
Two days later, similar scenes of violence erupted at anti-lockdown marches in Germany, protests which, in a similar vein to the Netherlands, were also prohibited under German law, and which saw the detainment and arrest of protesters by German police. These demonstrations also came in the same week in which French President Emmanuel Macron made a clear attempt to divide French society amongst those who have chosen to take the COVID-19 vaccine and those who haven’t, with his vow to ‘piss off’ the latter group.
Despite this attempt to dehumanise an entire segment of the French population, and the violence employed by Dutch and German authorities against human rights protesters in their respective countries, there has been virtually no criticism of Macron, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte or German Chancellor Olaf Scholz by the corporate media in relation to the current protests against lockdown measures and mandatory vaccination taking place in Europe – in stark contrast to their coverage of Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s vow to crack down on the agent provocateurs currently vying to impose a Maidan-style colour revolution on his country via the use of extreme violence, a media stance which amidst the current wider geopolitical context, will only serve to further increase tensions between Russia and the West.
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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.
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Pills with digital sensors are now the latest controversial technology that has seen itself gain approval from the FDA. The alarming new devices would employ a set of sensors within the chips to track data regarding each patients.
It has been revealed that the FDA has authorized an Orwellian medical device that utilizes sensors implanted into tablets to digitally monitor medicine intake in patients’ bodies.
The US Food and Treatment Administration bragged in a recently released press statement from December 2017 regarding certifying an unique medication with a “digital ingestion tracking system” that employs “sensors” within pills to interact with a mobile device to document if and when the patient ingested the medicines.
“The system works by sending a message from the pill’s sensor to a wearable patch,” according to a press release.
“The patch transmits the information to a mobile application so that patients can track the ingestion of the medication on their smart phone. Patients can also permit their caregivers and physician to access the information through a web-based portal.”
Abilify, an antipsychotic medicine utilized to treat major psychiatric diseases such schizophrenia and bipolar driven mania, has been authorized to use this technology. Nonetheless, the FDA cleared the application of the “ingestible sensor” in 2012, indicating that the innovation could be utilized more broadly in the future.
“Being able to track ingestion of medications prescribed for mental illness may be useful for some patients,” said Mitchell Mathis, M.D., director of the Division of Psychiatry Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
“The FDA supports the development and use of new technology in prescription drugs and is committed to working with companies to understand how technology might benefit patients and prescribers.”
It is hardly contentious to use medicine to ensure that individuals who may be a hazard to oneself or others are cared for properly. Those opposed to the existing COVID-19 vaccine regulations, on the other hand, will be concerned about whatever technology that could aid in the continuation of medical dictatorship.
According to Dr. Harvey Risch, an epidemiologist at Yale University, the COVID-19 pandemic was one of fear, manufactured by people in nominal positions of power as the virus spread around the world last year.
“The deaths that are meant to follow the vaccinations will never be able to be pinned on the poison. They will be too diverse, there will be too many, and they will be in too broad a timeframe for us to understand that we have been poisoned,” claims Dr. Shankara Chetty.
Not many are aware that the Big Tech, Big Government, Big Pharma censorship of the truth about COVID-19 is actively coordinated by NATO’s war propaganda arm, the Atlantic Council. This is how the Atlantic Council pulled over the COVID-19 Matrix on the world.
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