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This is a followup of my earlier article entitled:

The Covid-19 Omicron Variant: Towards a Fourth Wave Lockdown? Pretext to Introduce New Repressive Policy Measures

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Omicron Update (December 16, 2021)

In many countries, Omicron has now become the pretext for implementing partial lockdowns, restrictions on travel as well as confinement and stay at home mandates.

These restrictions are imposed despite the fact that the WHO officially repealed the statement of its (corrupt) technical advisory group. (See below)

These measures are political in nature. They have no scientific basis. They sustain the fear campaign prior to the Christmas holiday period. They trigger a new wave of economic and social chaos.

They are sustained by a 24/7  media disinformation  campaign

The rapidly spreading Omicron coronavirus variant means Canadians should be “ready to pivot” their travel plans within the country during this holiday season, said medical experts studying COVID-19.

“If [you] can avoid travel, avoid it,” said Dr. Peter Juni, the head of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. “We just need to really seriously cut down on our contact.”

What media reports indicate is that omicron has been detected using the standard PCR test.

What they fail to mention is that the PCR test cannot under any circumstances identify or detect the original virus (SARS-CoV-2) or its numerous variants. What it identifies are genetic sequences. This is corroborated both by the WHO as well as numerous scientific studies.  

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.

These omicron tests have no scientific basis. 

Michel C. December 16, 2021

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There is ample evidence of outright political fraud. A new variant detected in South Africa is used to justify a new wave of restrictions and violations of fundamental human rights. 

.

…In recent weeks, infections have increased steeply, coinciding with the detection of B.1.1.529 variant. The first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection was from a specimen collected on 9 November 2021.

This variant [omicron] has a large number of mutations, some of which are concerning. Preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection with this variant, as compared to other VOCs. The number of cases of this variant appears to be increasing in almost all provinces in South Africa. 

emphasis added

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The Omicron Fear Campaign

The November TAG-VE advisory was then used by governments and the media to justify partial lockdowns and restrictions on air travel. The omicron fear campaign went into high gear. The stated intent was to “save lives”.

In the words of Dr. Anthony Fauci,  in a contradictory statement  Omicron “is already in the United States but has yet to be detected”. “when you have a virus that is showing this degree of transmissibility and you’re having travel-related cases they’ve noted in other places already, when you have a virus like this, it almost invariably is going to go all over,”  (NBC, November 26, 2021)

Meanwhile stock markets collapsed coupled with an increase in the shares of the Big Pharma vaccine conglomerates.

Omicron Chronology 

Friday November 26.

The TAG-VE advisory was released by the WHO

Sunday November 28

A Mysterious WHO Update on Omicron Two Days Later

On Sunday (28 November) in Geneva, the WHO issued a statement entitled Update on Omicron   

It was drafted in a rush following the Friday TAG-VE advisory. It was published on Sunday.

While the Official WHO Update on Omicron passed virtually unnoticed, it invalidates the technical advisory group’s (TAG-VE) November 26 advisory as well as the “Warnings” of the WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom.

It also refutes the decision of the (TAG-VE) group to categorize the Omicron Variant as  a Virus of Concern (VOC).

Below are excerpts of the Update. To read the complete text click here

Severity of disease:

It is not yet clear whether infection with Omicron causes more severe disease compared to infections with other variants, including Delta.  

Reports by medical practitioners in South Africa confirm unequivocally that the TAG-VE advisory is fake.

According to Dr. Angelique Coetzee, a Private Practitioner and Chair of the South African Medical Association,

“What we are seeing clinically in South Africa — and remember I’m at the epicenter of this where I’m practicing — is extremely mild, for us [these are] mild cases. We haven’t admitted anyone, I’ve spoken to other colleagues of mine and they give the same picture.” (See Video Interview on CNBC)

Video: Interview with Dr. Angelique Coetzee

Despite the TAG-VE advisory, WHO staff has opposed the disruption of air travel.

“The WHO’s regional director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, called on countries “to follow science” and international health regulations in order to avoid using travel restrictions”.

In an article entitled “Sigh of Relief in South Africa as Omicron Variant Appears to be ‘Super Mild‘ the author states the following:

The WHO and Coronavirus experts are increasingly convinced the new Omicron variant is ‘super mild’ and has, so far, not led to a jump in Covid death rates anywhere in Southern Africa.

The WHO is calling this morning for countries to drop travel restrictions and end the mass hysteria, and instead be cautiously optimistic as more and more reports out of South Africa suggest the new Omicron variant is not more lethal than the previous Delta variant.

In fact, there have been no reports of hospitalisations or deaths as a result of anyone being diagnosed with Omicron.

Most patients merely experience a severe headache, nausea, dizziness and a high pulse rate, according to hospitals and medics across Southern Africa. (Michiel Williams, December 6, 2021, emphasis added)

According to Dr Catherine Smallwood, Senior Emergency Officer at WHO’s Regional Office for Europe regarding travel restrictions:

“Those types of extreme measures are not our recommendations …  “These types of interventions are not sustainable”. 

November 29, 2021

Tuesday December 1st, 2021

The WHO sponsored Technical Advisory Group’s (TAG-VE) statement has no scientific basis.

It serves political interests. It creates economic and social chaos. It does not reflect the position of the WHO as a representative inter-governmental body of the United Nations.

It has contributed to feeding the fear campaign, largely with a view to justifying a new wave of repressive Covid-19 policy measures including the brutal enforcement of the vaccine mandate.

Ironically, the TAG-VE advisory was immediately refuted 2 days later by the WHO staff in an official “Update”.

Corruption in the upper echelons of the WHO.

Divisions within the WHO?

The WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom should resign.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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Yesterday, in a statement to Parliament on the UK’s planned “vaccine passport”, Health Secretary Sajid Javid admitted the NHS Pass would require three shots for you to be considered “fully vaccinated”.

“Once all adults have had a reasonable chance to get their booster jab, we intend to change this exemption to require a booster dose,”

While many of us predicted this would be the case, it is the first time any British politician has actually said it out loud, and in front of parliament too.

This incredibly cynical “evolving definition” of “fully vaccinated” is not a new phenomenon, and is not isolated to the UK either.

Israel changed their definition of “fully vaccinated” to include the booster months ago. New Zealand’s ministry of health is “considering” doing the same, as is Australia.

The EU isn’t far behind either, with proposals in place to make travel dependent on having a third dose.

The US hasn’t formally adopted a new definition yet, but you’d have to be blind not to see the signs. Just yesterday the LA Times headlined:

Should the definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ be changed to include a booster shot?

An article on Kaiser Health News asks the same thing.

Tony Fauci is quoted in the Independent as saying it’s only a matter of time before the definition is updated:

“It’s going to be a matter of when, not if” getting a booster shot will be considered being “fully vaccinated,” Dr Fauci said.

Opinion pieces are already appearing asking “is it safe to hangout with the unboosted”?

(This headline was so unpopular, the Atlantic changed it only a couple of hours after it was published, and even the archived version appears to have been scrubbed).

All in all it seems pretty clear that, by the time 2022 rolls around, most of the Western world will require three shots in order to qualify as “fully vaccinated”.

It’s also clear that this won’t stop at three. Already, just last week, Pfizer were claiming they may need to “move up the timeline” for a fourthvaccine dose.

This change is being blamed on Omicron, with articles warning the “new variant” can “hit” the vaccinated. Fortune reports:

Omicron is making scientists redefine what it means to be ‘fully vaccinated’ against COVID

So, the third (and maybe fourth) doses are (allegedly) for Omicron…but that model can extend to perpetuity. In order to go to five, six or seven they’ll only need to “discover” more “new variants”.

It will just keep going and going.

But there is good news in all this, every time the powers-that-shouldn’t-be change the rules in the middle of the game, it’s a chance to knock people out of their media-induced hypnosis.

There are promising signs that millions of already-vaccinated will reject the booster. We can build on that.

So tell your single and double jabbed friends, try to open their eyes to the path they are starting down.

They may consider themselves “fully vaccinated”, but the government doesn’t, and never will.

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***

Major hospital systems have had to reevaluate their coercive COVID-19 jab policies after crucial employees, especially nurses, have opted to quit rather than get the experimental injections.

Facing serious staffing shortages, some of the largest and most prominent hospital systems in the United States, including HCA Healthcare Inc., Tenet Healthcare Corp., AdventHealth, and Cleveland Clinic have been forced to backpedal on their COVID-19 jab mandates in hopes of retaining crucial employees, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday

Townhall reported that University Hospitals in the Cleveland, Ohio area also recently announced the reversal of its jab mandate for hospital workers.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the major hospital systems have been forced to reevaluate their coercive COVID-19 jab policies after needed healthcare industry employees, especially nurses, chose to quit rather than get the experimental injections.

Some big hospital systems have dropped vaccine mandates after a judge blocked a Biden administration requirement for healthcare workers to get shots https://t.co/uKOMcw3P58

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 13, 2021

“Vaccine mandates have been a factor constraining the supply of healthcare workers, according to hospital executives, public-health authorities and nursing groups,” the report noted, adding that “thousands of nurses have left the industry or lost their jobs rather than get vaccinated” for COVID-19.

The Journal cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in reporting that as of September, unvaccinated employees accounted for a massive 30% of workers employed by over 2,000 U.S. hospitals.

Many people, including healthcare professionals, have been skeptical of the push toward mass immunization. The CDC reports an infection survival rate of greater than 99.95% for those under age 50. Meanwhile, the list of FDA-recognized adverse events has grown from severe anaphylactic reactions to include fatal thrombotic events, the inflammatory heart condition myocarditis, and neurologically disabling disease like Guillain Barré Syndrome, as well as thousands of recorded deaths and permanent disabilities.

The staggering percentage of healthcare workers who have refused to comply with the jab requirements imposed by their hospital systems — many of whom are vitally necessary nursing personnel — could have a crippling effect on America’s hospitals if the establishments move to fire all noncompliant workers.

Recognizing this dilemma, an employee-benefits lawyer has suggested that hospitals that don’t mandate the jabs could see an influx of interested applicants fleeing hospitals with more coercive policies.

“It’s been a mass exodus, and a lot of people in the healthcare industry are willing to go and shop around,” Wade Symons, head of the consulting firm Mercer’s U.S. regulatory practice, told the Journal.

“If you get certain healthcare facilities that don’t require it, those could be a magnet for those people who don’t want the vaccine. They’ll probably have an easier time attracting labor,” Symons said.

News of the major hospital systems dropping their injection mandates comes after a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the Biden administration’s top-down federal COVID-19 jab mandate for healthcare workers that would have impacted at least 10 million Americans.

The judge’s late-November decision was in response to President Joe Biden’s September 9 announcement of a series of vaccine mandates for public and private sectors, including one with no testing option for millions of healthcare workers employed by medical facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.

FLASHBACK: Biden admin on vaccine mandates

Biden: "I don't think it should be mandatory"

Psaki: "That's not the role of the federal government." pic.twitter.com/xlvA6VONA8

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 9, 2021

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has subsequently announced it will temporarily halt enforcement of its healthcare worker mandate pending appeal of a federal injunction blocking the measure.

“I don’t think the mandates were helpful and I think the court in Louisiana did everyone a service,” Alan Levine, chief executive officer of Ballad Health, told The Journal. 

Levine, who told the newspaper his company employs about 14,000 people, of whom roughly 2,000 have opted not to get the shot, said firing “[t]hat many people … would have been devastating to our system.”

Before the Louisiana judge blocked the mandate, at least 22 states had joined a duo of joint lawsuits against the Biden administration over the rule.

States, companies, and private individuals have filed a raft of lawsuits taking issue not only with the mandate for healthcare workers but also the mandate for federal contractors and another for businesses with 100 or more employees.

In early November, a federal court blocked the mandate for large businesses, just two days after it was published. The mandate would have used the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to impose massive fines on noncompliant companies and individuals for failing to get the experimental shots.

By early December, all three of the Biden administration’s private sector jab mandates were stalled by federal judges.

BREAKING: Federal court blocks the Biden vax mandate for federal contractors. Biden is 0 for 3 on unconstitutional mandates! Freedom is winning! pic.twitter.com/yRZj8g2Wy8

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 (@ChristinaPushaw) December 7, 2021

The latest mandate to be blocked was halted December 7 by a federal judge who sided with South Carolina’s attorney general and Republican governor and stopped the Biden administration’s COVID-19 jab mandate for federal contractors, freezing the requirement nationwide and marking the third federal injection mandate to be blocked across all 50 states.

A shift in public policy toward the reversal of coercive jab mandates comes as many Americans remain concerned that the experimental drugs on the market have not been sufficiently studied for negative effects given their accelerated clinical trials. Many also harbor serious moral reservations about the use of cells from aborted babies in the development of the shots.

Still others simply consider the injections unnecessary given COVID-19’s high survivability among most groups, low risk of asymptomatic spread, and research indicating that post-infection natural immunity is either just as protective against reinfection or provides even greater protection.

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***

This video was originally published in June 2020.

You may have heard of it: Event201 – a pandemic exercise staged by Bill Gates, John Hopkins University and the World Bank in autumn 2019, which rehearsed exactly for the pandemic we are alleged to be COVID-19.

But who were the people involved?

Why were banks, PR experts, hotel and logistics companies present but no doctors?

Why do these people have the power to make global plans and make international decisions?

Because not a single one of them was democratically elected .

In this video, we take a close look at Event201 like no one has done before, depicting the entanglements of those involved and, above all, the many hair-raising, “prophetic” statements that they made in autumn 2019, and which have since followed each other.

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Vielleicht haben Sie schon davon gehört: Event201 – eine von Bill Gates, John Hopkins Universität und Weltbank inszenierten Pandemieübung aus dem Herbst 2019. Dabei wurde genau für den Pandemiefall geprobt, den wir mit COVID-19 angeblich haben.

Doch wer waren die beteiligten Personen? Warum waren Banken, PR-Experten, Hotel- und Logistikunternehmen anwesend, aber keine Ärzte? Warum haben diese Leute die Macht, globale Pläne zu schmieden und internationale Entscheidungen zu treffen? Denn demokratisch gewählt wurde kein Einziger von ihnen..

Wir sehen uns das Event201 ganz genau an, wie es keiner zuvor tat, stellen die Verwicklungen der Beteiligten dar und vor allem die vielen haarsträubenden, «prophetischen» Aussagen, die sie im Herbst 2019 trafen, und die mittlerweile nacheinander zur düsteren Realität werden.

Important video: English subtitles

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***

On 26 November, the British government officially banned Hamas “in its entirety” as an “Islamist terror group,” with both its members and “those who invite support” for the movement facing jail terms of up to 14 years.

The military wing of Hamas, the Al-Qassam Brigades, has been proscribed by London since 2001. As such, it’s only reasonable to ask why this move – vehemently opposed by Palestinian factions within the illegally occupied Gaza Strip and clearly concerned with erasing the very real distinction between separate wings of the wider movement, in the process delegitimizing it as a whole – has been taken at this particular point in time, or even at all.

Emails obtained by The Cradle reveal that an intensive pressure campaign waged by Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and the Zionist Federation, two highly significant Israeli lobby groups, had forced Whitehall’s hand. Missives dispatched to their respective members – the latter group totaling over 50,000 – ecstatically hailed the Hamas prohibition with accompanying subject lines respectively proclaiming the words ‘VICTORY!’ and ‘Activism counts!’

In its accompanying message, the Federation noted that earlier in 2021, it had, in conjunction with “other pro-Israel organizations,” undertaken a “letter writing campaign calling on [London] to proscribe the political wing of Hamas … in its entirety. YOUR [emphasis in original] participation in that campaign has paid off.”

The email by CUFI, which branded anti-Zionism a “hateful ideology,” thanked the “thousands” of supporters who contacted their local parliamentarians, thereby “joining calls for Hamas to be banned in its entirety,” confirming the existence of a concerted effort across ostensibly separate Zionist initiatives, and adding that, “once again [emphasis added], it has been proven that speaking out is so important and effective.”

It’s unknown to what precisely this refers, although journalist Asa Winstanley has previously caught the organization inviting its backers to demand the British government prohibit Israel Apartheid Week, an annual series of actions and events intended to draw attention to the plight of the Palestinians, from university campuses across the country.

Higher education institutions that refused to adopt the definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance were to be particularly targeted, despite the definition’s own architect acknowledging it to be inadequate and ripe for abuse.

The email by CUFI concluded with the words: “One way we bless Israel is by standing up against the evil forces that are intent on its destruction … Britain has made a small step in demonstrating its support for Israel in its fight against terror. But we know that there is still much more the UK can do. With your help and support, CUFI can make an impact in the UK through even more targeted and bigger campaigns [emphasis added], ensuring that this nation remains faithful to Israel and the Jewish people.”

CUFI, Israel’s ‘crisis’ manager

CUFI was founded in 2006 by Texan pastor John Hagee, a Christian fundamentalist who preaches that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler – who he brands a “half-breed Jew” – purged Europe of its Jewish population in order to shepherd them to Palestine, and that the Holocaust was actively willed by God for this divine purpose.

Having grown rapidly, today CUFI is the largest pro-Israel organization in the US, a highly competitive category indeed, with its membership reportedly exceeding over eight million. CUFI’s website boasts that this vast network of foot soldiers “enables us to make a difference during crucial moments.”

Whenever Israel “faces a crisis,” its US-wide network of “dedicated activists” are enlisted to “immediately take action and rally support on Capitol Hill, in the pulpits across America, in every available media outlet, and on college campuses.”

Examples of its lobbying efforts include vast email campaigns targeting lawmakers in support of the relocation of Washington’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a move slammed by rights groups when it came to pass in 2018, and goading Congress to pass the Taylor Force Act, which deprived the Palestinian Authority – an illegitimate and brutal Zionist entity in any event – of US financial aid. In the latter instance, over one million emails were purportedly fired off by CUFI activists.

The organization professes to be “carefully committed to putting every dollar of our funding towards the most effective and innovative initiatives,” and it’s clear that some of its budget flows directly from the Israeli government.

Records show that the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, primarily charged with battling the BDS movement overseas until its closure in June, provided CUFI with nearly $1.3 million in February 2019 alone, bankrolling 10 week-long pilgrimages to Israel for 30 “influential Christian clerics from the US” per visit.

There, the clerics met with high-ranking Israeli officials. As the sums were spent abroad, rather than stateside, CUFI was able to circumvent laws designed to thwart foreign interference in US politics, despite it being likely – and indeed desired – that these trips affected participant actions, activities, and statements once home.

It’s uncertain if Israeli financing was in any way involved in the organization’s expansion into the UK in 2015, although its official launch event in June that year had clear connections with the Israeli embassy in London.

A founding history of campaigns

The Zionist Federation, an umbrella for the wider movement in the UK, was founded in 1899, to campaign for a permanent Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Chaim Weizmann, who later became Israel’s first President, was appointed its chief in October 1917. A mere month later, British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour issued his infamous, eponymous declaration, widely considered to be the Zionist state’s foundational document. Weizmann was heavily involved in its drafting.

Following the creation of Israel in 1948, Zionist Federation activities evolved to aggressive advocacy and practical support for ‘Aliyah’ – the immigration and absorption of Jewish diaspora to Tel Aviv – lobbying, and cultural diplomacy.

Then, as now, its funding sources were markedly opaque. Today, it also manages dedicated operations attempting to counteract the BDS movement, identify and groom future Zionist leaders on British campuses, and “runs regular campaigns on a number of issues affecting Israel … mobilizing thousands to get behind the State, and support Israel’s right to freedom.”

Tantalizingly, the Zionist Federation cites “proscribing Hezbollah” as an example of one such campaign. The largest political force in Lebanon, in February 2019 its political wing was banned without warning by then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid. Parts of the movement were criminalized by London in 2001 – the same year the Al-Qassam Brigades were outlawed – and its military arm prohibited since 2008.

Friends in high places

The diaries of former British foreign office minister Alan Duncan, encapsulated in his book, In the Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister, and published in April, suggest that the Zionist initiative was not the only one involved in swaying Whitehall policy towards Hezbollah.

Contemporaneous entries assert that the Home Office was “just sucking up” to Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a highly influential parliamentary cluster affiliated with the ruling Conservative party, and which has been dubbed “by far Britain’s most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group.”

Duncan wrote that its members were “gloating … about having deployed their [House of Commons] troops in Israel’s cause,” lamenting that “we are too willing to let others pull our strings.”

On the CFI website, a prominent banner lists a quote from former prime minister Theresa May, stating: “Britain would not be Britain without its Jews. Likewise, the Conservative party would not be the Conservative party without CFI. You play a vital role, for which we are hugely grateful.”

However, Duncan reveals CFI has all too often played a ‘vital role’ in undermining and besmirching those few Conservative parliamentarians possessed of pro-Palestinian sympathies, such as himself, despite the CFI having around 80 percent of the Conservative party’s elected representatives as its members.

Indeed, Duncan alleges, “they just want to belittle and subjugate the Palestinians … whereas they pretend to believe in two parallel states, it’s quite clear they don’t, so [they] set out to destroy all genuine advocates for Palestine.”

Two years earlier, the minister had been informed by Al Jazeera that it had secretly recorded an Israeli embassy representative in meetings with CFI members speaking of the need to “destroy” him, so that he never became foreign secretary.

In response, Duncan telephoned Mark Regev, then-Israeli ambassador to Britain, who alleged that the embassy official in question, Shai Masot, was a junior “local hire” with no formal diplomatic status.

“It’s all total bollocks,” Duncan was recorded as saying, “what on earth is the point of Regev stating something that is so blatantly untrue, and about which we both hold the facts?”

In reality, Masot was an Israeli Defense Forces veteran who had served as the embassy’s senior political officer since November 2014, acting as chief point of contact between the Israeli embassy and the Foreign Office.

Over the course of the covertly taped conversations, it was revealed that MP Crispin Blunt – a longtime critic of Israel who consistently condemned its illegal settlement expansion, and as recently as 24 November this year referred in parliament to the Palestinians as “an occupied people” who “have a right to resist” – was on Masot’s “hit list.”

‘Pro-Israel infiltration into very centre of our public life’

The disclosures of Al Jazeera went some way to explaining why six months earlier, Duncan had been primed to become ‘Minister for the Middle East’ within the Foreign Office, only for it to be denied to him after prolonged back-and-forth discussions.

On the evening of the very day Duncan accepted that post, he met with then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who told him that “a massive problem has arisen,” as CFI was “going ballistic” over the proposal, eventually leading Downing Street to rule that Duncan simply couldn’t assume the role.

Duncan remarked in his diary that the conduct of CFI representatives responsible would “in any other country … be seen as entrenched espionage that should prompt an inquiry into their conduct.”

“Our own national interest is being taken for a sucker … This is improper. It’s wrong … but the whole system buys into it without realizing how wrong it is,” Duncan said.

“It reeks, it stinks, it festers, it molders – all rotten to the core,” Duncan wrote.

“The rules of propriety, and all the morality and principle that goes with it, are discarded and rewritten to accommodate this exceptional pro-Israel infiltration into the very centre of our public life,” Duncan went on to write. “…The CFI and the Israelis think they control the Foreign Office. And they do!”

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***

Monsanto has pleaded guilty to multiple environmental crimes in Hawaiʻi for the second time in less than four years, and the island communities are left asking “when is enough enough?”

In the most recent case, Monsanto will plead guilty to 30 environmental crimes in Hawaiʻi, related to pesticide use violations and putting field workers at risk.  In both cases they admit that they knowingly violated pesticide law and put field workers in harmʻs way.  They will pay a $12 million fine this time, bringing their criminal fines and “community service payments” to a total of $22 million since 2019.

At the center of these cases is that the Monsanto field workers had to transport, apply and be exposed to these toxic and banned pesticides as part of their job.  In small island communities of Hawaiʻi, Monsanto workers are our friends and family. Folks live just downwind and next door to these fields.  We are concerned about their health, and those concerns are glaringly missing from news reports and in the distribution agreements for the community service payments.

There are two separate incidents that have become related because of a deferred prosecution agreement between Monsanto and the courts.

From March 2013 through August 2014, Monsanto stored 160 pounds of Penncap-M hazardous waste at a facility on Molokai.  In 2014, they transported Penncap-M to its valley farm on a neighboring island, and “failed to use a proper shipping manifest to identify the hazardous material and failed to obtain a permit to accept hazardous waste at its Valley Farm site.”

Monsanto admitted using Penncap-M on corn seed and research crops at its facility on Maui, knowing that its use was prohibited after 2013 because of a “cancellation order” issued by the EPA, a news release said. Monsanto also admitted that, after the 2014 spraying, it told employees to reenter the sprayed fields seven days later — even though Monsanto knew that workers should have been prohibited from entering the area for 31 days.

Source: Beyond Pesticides

If we center the story around Monsantoʻs workers, and other people who were put in danger, this is what happened: A hazardous pesticide was being stored at a site on Molokaʻi, a small island community, for over a year. It was transported by truck, and airplane or boat without proper documentation, which means that any crash, accident, or spillage could not have been handled properly, putting transportation crews and the environment at risk. On Maui, workers were told to spray a banned pesticide, and then to enter the sprayed fields during the do-not-enter period, exposing and re-exposing themselves to a toxic, banned pesticide.

In the 2019 Penncap-M case, Monsanto pleaded guilty to these offenses, and paid $10 million – a $6 million criminal fine and $4 million in community service payments to Hawaiian government entities. No mention was made of compensation for workers, or funds to assist them with long-term health monitoring and care.  The government also agreed to dismiss the felony charges in two years if Monsanto abides by the agreement, which in addition to the fines, included successfully completing a two-year period of compliance with the agreement’s terms, and maintaining a comprehensive environmental compliance program at all of its facilities in Hawaii to ensure compliance with all federal environmental laws.

Monsanto did not maintain compliance.

In 2020, Monsanto instructed workers to use Forfeit 280 on Oahu corn fields.  Then, they instructed workers to enter the fields to check for weeds, insects and disease 30 times during a six-day “restricted-entry interval.”  A restricted-entry interval is established by EPA based on the acute toxicity of the active ingredients in the pesticide and is meant to limit the exposure of pesticide residues to workers or other persons. In these cases, workers were knowingly sent into treated fields during the periods of time that have been deemed unsafe to humans.

The 2020 Forfeit 280 incidents mean that the company violated the terms of the 2019 deferred prosecution agreement, along with racking up another 30 misdemeanor charges.

Monsanto is now pleading guilty to the second serious charge of knowingly violating pesticide law by using banned pesticides and exposing multiple individuals to pesticide residues at work.

Advocates and leaders in Hawaiʻi are angry.

“Maui will not continue to be predated by this company. People of Kihei are living just downwind of Monsanto, now Bayerʻs, clandestine and apparently often illegal operations.  Their open windows are exposed to everything they spray. Itʻs time for the chemical company/seed industry to leave Hawaiʻi.  Their mono-crop toxic tech doesnʻt fit with the Hawaiian values of mālama ʻāina (to care for the land).  They contribute little to our economy. Big Ag practices are killing our reefs, the real driver of our economy,” says State Representative Tina Wildberger, whose South Maui district contains two large outdoor Monsanto facilities.

In the news releases, court findings and fine distribution details, Monsantoʻs actions are at the center, but the workers are overlooked. Again, if we center the most vulnerable people in the story, it reads differently.

Monsanto didnʻt spray a banned pesticide, putting them in danger of exposure.  Workers did.

Monsantoʻs health wasnʻt put in danger by having to enter sprayed fields and be further exposed to a toxic pesticide. Workers did.

Monsanto doesnʻt have to worry for the rest of their life if small symptoms that develop may be a sign of long term health effects due to pesticide exposure.  Workers DO.

A plea agreement, filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu, calls for the company to serve three years of probation and pay $12 million, including a $6 million criminal fine and $6 million in community service payments to four state agencies.

The agencies that each will receive $1.5 million from the additional $6 million in community service payments are the Department of Agriculture, Pesticide Use Revolving Fund — Pesticide Disposal Program/Pesticide Safety Training; the Department of the Attorney General, Criminal Justice/Investigations Division; the Department of Health, Environmental Management Division, to support environmental-health programs; and the Department of Land and Natural Resources, Division of Aquatic Resources.

None of these agencies have been tasked with assisting Monsanto workers with health care costs, exams, or regular checkups as follow up care to pesticide exposure. Residents of Maui are fed up, and looking for recourse. In 2014, Maui voters passed a ballot initiative calling for a moratorium on the production of genetically engineered (GE) crops, until their production and associated pesticide use could be proven safe with studies. Monsanto sued the County of Maui and the ballot initiative was overturned in court. Seven years and $22 million in fines later, we are still forced to share neighborhoods with this company, residents say.

Two Maui residents who live directly downwind from their fields are currently suing Monsanto over birth defects. “Monsanto’s reckless use of pesticides and harmful chemicals near a residential neighborhood have put numerous Maui families at risk,” said Ilana Waxman, partner at Galiher DeRobertis & Waxman, in a news release last week. “Monsanto knew these dangerous substances would drift into nearby communities.”

The movement to evict Monsanto from Maui has birthed a new generation of activists, organic farmers, and elected officials that do put mālama ʻāina at the center of their work, and statewide GE seed production has decreased.  According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the value of Hawaii’s seed industry was estimated at $106 million for the 2018-19 season. That’s a 13% drop from the previous year – and a 56% decline from 2011, when the industry’s value peaked at $241.6 million. There is still much work to do though, while community members continue to be affected by Monsantoʻs egregious pesticide use.

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Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Press Release

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Verizon and AT&T are hoping new swaths of C-band cellular radio spectrum will help make the 5G hype closer to reality, but the big mid-band 5G rollout may have a side effect. Airplanes rely on radio altimeters to tell how high they are above the ground to safely land when pilots can’t see, and the FAA is now instructing 6,834 of them to not do that at certain airports because of 5G interference.

The FAA ruled on Tuesday that those thousands of US planes (and some helicopters) won’t be able to use many of the guided and automatic landing systems that are designed to work in poor visibility conditions, if they’re landing at an airport where there’s deemed to be enough interference that their altimeters aren’t reliable. “Landings during periods of low visibility could be limited due to concerns that the 5G signal could interfere with the accuracy of an airplane’s radio altimeter, without other mitigations in place,” FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford tells The Verge.

That likely means flight delays:

“These limitations could prevent dispatch of flights to certain locations with low visibility, and could also result in flight diversions,” reads a portion of the FAA’s written explanation.

“We are engaged with the wireless operators, as well as our interagency partners, to do everything possible to make sure the mitigations are tailored to prevent disruptions,” Lunsford tells us.

The FAA ruling does give airlines and pilots an out — if they can prove their airplanes have altimeters that are protected or are otherwise not going to be affected by interference. No airline would comment to The Verge on expected delays, nor would the Airlines for America industry group that the airlines pointed us to.

It’s not yet clear which specific airports might restrict low visibility flight, but you can imagine that they’d likely be in the same places where the carriers are deploying mid-band 5G — with a few exceptions, they’re the United States’ most-populated cities. As of December, the planned rollouts (PDF) are in 46 markets designated as Partial Economic Areas (PEAs), including 1-4, 6-10, 12- 19, 21-41, and 43-50. (You can see a full list of PEAs here (PDF).) The FAA plans to issue notices for specific airports later.

Verizon and AT&T did agree to push back the launch of C-band by one month (to January 2022), and also offered to dial back the power of 5G towers for six months past that to address concerns. Carriers and their lobbying group, the CTIA, have suggested that there isn’t a valid reason to fear interference, but the FAA has so far not been convinced. Nor was an aviation lobbying group, the Aerospace Industries Association, which sent a letter to the FCC on Monday suggesting that AT&T and Verizon’s proposed power limits don’t go far enough for safety. The FCC, not the FAA, is the entity that regulates wireless interference.

While C-band 5G and these radio altimeters don’t actually operate in the same band, the bands are close enough that the fear exists. One possible solution is a band filter for those altimeters, but organizations like the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) have warned (PDF) that it might take years to certify them and retrofit all the planes.

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Julian Assange’s father, John Shipton, has told a French interviewer that his son has been given a Covid-19 vaccine in Belmarsh Prison.

“He has been vaccinated, of course,” Shipton told the show Thinkerview, live-streamed on Monday. “So he has no choice in this. No choice about anything. He has no control over his body.”

Shipton said every medicine Assange accepted in prison would go on his record and wind up in court. Likewise any medicine he refused would also be reported.

There is “not a mandated Vax” in the prison, Shipton told Consortium News in an email. “I was attempting to illustrate that Julian’s body is not under his control. All actions, as I understand it, are noted and available to [the] prosecution. The psychiatric staff and medical staff write reports which are available.”

Shipton told CN that “if [the] Vax [is] not taken, I presume prison administration, no less than other institutions …” would report it. “Thus a freedom which in practice does not exist,” he said.

Shipton told the French interviewer: “He only has choice about what he might think about from this minute to the next minute. What his thoughts are, are his. The rest is in the complete control of the jail administration because it is a maximum security prison. Everything … is supervised. ”

According to testimony at his September 2020 extradition hearing, Assange had been reluctant to discuss his health with prison doctors, fearing he would be put in isolation.

The imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher has a chronic lung condition. His block at Belmarsh had an outbreak of the virus last year and was locked down.

Assange has said nothing on the record either way about vaccines or public health measures like lockdowns or wearing masks. He has been incommunicado directly with the public since Ecuador shut off his internet connection in March 2018 inside its embassy in London where Assange had been granted political asylum in 2012.

In August, the U.K. Ministry of Justice told Consortium News in an email that a vaccine was made available to all inmates at Belmarsh Prison, where Assange has been held since April 2019. He remains there on remand pending the U.S. appeal of a judgement not to extradite him.

“All prisoners have been offered a vaccine,” wrote MoJ senior press officer Sarah Fairely. “As it is a personal health matter we don’t hold the figures on those who have taken the vaccine.”

In July, Insidetime, a British newspaper for prisoners, reported that more than 50 percent of prisoners in U.K. jails had refused a Covid-19 vaccine.

“At four London prisons – Wandsworth, Belmarsh, Thameside and Isis – a total of 2,722 men had been offered the vaccine by early June, of whom 1,254 (46 per cent) turned it down,” the newspaper reported.

Without saying a word about vaccines, Assange has been swept up in the contentious issue, which has divided parts of his supporters. Some Assange backers have made their support for him visible at anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protests.

Courting France

Shipton spent the majority of the interview making his case to France to help his son. He praised the French who “since the Bastille fell” have been among the most politically aware and active people in the world.

Thirty-nine deputies in the French parliament recently called for France to offer diplomatic asylum to Assange.

In the interview Shipton shifted the focus away from his son and onto the immense crimes that Assange’s work at WikiLeaks had uncovered. “Everyone focuses on Julian Assange, not the seven million people [in the war on terror] who are slaughtered, not the pall of grief that hangs like a dark cloud over the entire Middle East,” Shipton said.

He spoke of one release in the Diplomatic Cables, in which a U.S. military unit entered a house in Iraq and massacred the entire family inside. A cable describes how the soldiers, realizing they had committed a crime, called in an airstrike to entirely destroy the house and all the evidence inside.

That incident led the Iraqi Parliament to not support the renewal of the government’s status of forces agreement with the U.S.

“A revelation stopped a war,” Shipton said.

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Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times.  He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe  

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Who knew that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the biggest importer of sophisticated weaponry in the developing world going back a generation and more, is SO fragile?

Apparently, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board thinks so. Last week, it published an alarmed editorial that relayed the Saudis’ urgent pleas “for America for help as it runs out of ammunition to defend against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.”

As if the Houthis, also known as Ansarallah, are raining down drones and missiles throughout Saudi territory, it asserted that the “more than 70,000 Americans in the Kingdom … could become victims” and, in a curious choice of words suggested that the threat posed by the Houthis to the most hyper-armed state in the Middle East could be “existential.”

If that weren’t enough, the Journal published a longer, arguably more alarming op-ed by its former publisher and managing editor, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Karen Elliott House. “The threat to Saudi Arabia is real,” she declares. “The Journal reports that the Houthis have conducted 375 cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia this year. This Monday Saudi air defenses intercepted a ballistic missile over the capital. In March the Houthis unsuccessfully attacked a major Saudi oil port. A sophisticated attack on Saudi Aramco’s oil facilities in September 2019 forced a brief suspension of Saudi oil production.”

House failed to note that most experts believe that the last attack was carried out from Iraqi or Iranian territory despite Houthi claims that they had carried it out. But then her op-ed fails to mention a remarkable number of relevant facts and context.

It omits any mention of cross-border bombing raids by Saudi Arabia that have been going on since Riyadh intervened in Yemen nearly seven years ago — a total of 23,000 between March 2015 and September of this year, or an average of ten a day — according to a report by UN experts that concluded that those strikes have killed or wounded at least 18,000 Yemeni civilians.

House also didn’t mention the war’s total death toll of well over 350,000. An estimated 70 percent of those have been children under the age of five who died primarily as a result of hunger and preventable diseases due in major part to the destruction of health facilities and other basic civilian infrastructure by the Saudi bombing campaign and a Saudi-led blockade of Houthi-controlled territory amounting to what the UN’s humanitarian agency has called the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis.”

There was also no mention of the kingdom’s use of “incentives and threats” — including the threat of denying citizens of predominantly Muslim members of the UN Human Rights Council permission to making the haj pilgrimage to Mecca — as part of a successful lobbying campaign to shut down a UN investigation of war crimes committed by all parties to the Yemen conflict earlier this fall.

The reader clearly doesn’t need to know any of that context, according to House who wonders why, oh why, Biden is ignoring Saudi “begging” for Patriots. “One Saudi theory is that he and his progressive allies are intent on punishing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for his alleged role in the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi.” Maybe, she opines, he’s worried that progressive Democrats would oppose his Build Back Better bill if he transfers the Patriots. That makes perfect sense.

But MBS and the Saudis are doing wonderful things that presumably deserves Patriots, she insists. “A country that banned movie theaters until 2018 now hosts Justin Bieber concerns, Formula One races, international golf tournaments and female sports teams.”

“…To continue this modernizing path, the kingdom needs stability. Efforts to build a tourism industry along the Red Sea, for instance, won’t succeed if Saudi territory is constantly threatened with attack.” Worse, by not providing the kingdom with the help it says it needs, she concludes, it is “encouraging Iran to step up its decades-long effort to,” among other things, “lay claim to Islam’s holiest sites and Arabia’s oil.”

Credit where credit is due. Unlike House, the Journal’s editorial does recognize, albeit summarily, that the Saudis has not behaved well in Yemen. “The Saudis aren’t always attractive friends, and they have fought the Yemen war in often brutal fashion, though less so with the help of U.S. trainers during the Trump years,” the latter being a somewhat questionable assertion. “But,” the Journal adds somewhat mysteriously, “in the Saudis’ neighborhood, the military choices can be existential,” apparently implying that, had the Saudis not acted with brutality, the Houthis could have somehow destroyed the Saudi state, another questionable assertion to say the least.

It’s not that the Houthis are angels, and, as the UN experts and international human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have documented, they should be held to account, including for their missile and drone attacks on civilian sites in Saudi Arabia. Nor is it untrue that Iran hasn’t lent them material support and guidance, although many experts agree that the amount of that assistance, as well as the influence Tehran may enjoy with the Houthis, have been greatly exaggerated by both the Saudis, their coalition partners (mainly the United Arab Emirates), and their highly paid shills in Washington.

But the fact remains it was the Saudis who intervened in what had become a civil war in Yemen and who bear primary responsibility for a substantial majority of both the direct and indirect physical and human devastation that the Arab world’s poorest country has since incurred over the past seven years, Justin Bieber concerts notwithstanding. (Civilian Saudi losses, as regrettable as they are, have been tiny, virtually infinitesimal by comparison, international golf tournaments notwithstanding.)

If the Journal and House want to protect the poor Saudis, whose military budget this year came to a measly $50 billion — or roughly twice Yemen’s entire 2021 gross domestic product — from the Houthis, the most obvious and speediest course to do so might be for Riyadh to lift the blockade and stop the bombing, the two conditions which the Houthis have laid down for halting their operations against targets in Saudi Arabia. That would also be the most cost-effective way: bombing runs are very expensive, and Patriot missiles cost more than $3 million a pop. Cost-effectiveness should appeal to the Journal’s readers.

And finally, what would a compelling Wall Street Journal editorial on the Arab world be without citing Bernard Lewis, “the late, great scholar of the Middle East [who] once quipped to us that while it is dangerous to be America’s enemy, it can be fatal to be its friend” — the point being that the Biden administration has been a faithless friend to Saudi Arabia by not providing the Patriots? That’s the same Bernard Lewis who introduced Ahmad Chalabi, the greatest con man of the 21st century, to both the Journal’s editorial board and Dick Cheney and who convinced them both that U.S. troops would be welcomed in Iraq as liberators. It’s also the same Bernard Lewis who warned on the Journal’s op-ed page that Iran would try to bring about “the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world” on August 22, 2006.

Yet people still ask why the Journal doesn’t have a comics section.

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The initiative by Beijing to propose a virtual meeting between President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday radically transforms the geopolitics of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s relentless eastward expansion and the Western military deployments on Russia’s borders. 

The announcement of the meeting in Beijing came within a day of a G7 meeting of foreign ministers in Liverpool, Britain, on Sunday, which echoed Washington’s rhetoric over an alleged Russian military build-up on Ukrainian border and threatened Moscow with “massive consequences and severe cost in response.” 

The G7 meet itself was intended as a new show of western unity against Russia and China to get the west on the front foot. For the first time, ASEAN countries were also included in the G7 ministerial as a part of US President Joe Biden administration’s plans to begin a new “Indo-Pacific economic framework” in a renewed attempt to roll back China’s influence in the region. 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ambassador Wang Wenbin, said on Monday that the virtual meeting between Xi and Putin is expected to “take stock of the bilateral relations and cooperation outcomes over this year, make top-level design for the relations next year, and exchange views on major international and regional issues of common concern.” 

Ambassador Wang anticipated that the Xi-Putin videoconference “will further enhance our high-level mutual trust, vigorously promote China-Russia “back-to-back” strategic coordination and the robust development of all-round practical cooperation.” And he concluded, “This will provide more stability and positive energy for the complex and fluid international landscape.” 

The Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has since disclosed that Putin and Xi will address during the talks the NATO’s belligerent rhetoric and the tense situation in Europe. To quote Peskov,

“[The two leaders] will exchange their views on international affairs. The recent developments in international affairs, especially on the European continent, are now very tense and this definitely requires discussion between the allies, between Moscow and Beijing.”

Peskov added that Russia is facing “a very aggressive rhetoric both from NATO and the US,” which also needs to be discussed. In effect, Peskov has highlighted that the emergent tense situation on the European continent warrants Russia holding consultation with its close ally China. 

No doubt, this signifies an extraordinary dimension to the Russian-Chinese alliance. What role, if any, China is going to play in the evolving scenario will be keenly watched, in particular, as winds for a perfect storm are howling in both Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific. 

Most important, would the discussion today fall within the ambit of the plan for Russia-China military cooperation for 2021-2025, which the two countries signed on November 23? While signing the document, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was quoted as saying, “China and Russia have been strategic partners for many years. Today, in conditions of increasing geopolitical turbulence and growing conflict potential in various parts of the world, the development of our interaction is especially relevant.” 

Specifically, Shoigu drew the attention of his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe to increasingly intensive flights by the US strategic bombers near Russian borders. He said, “This month, 10 (US) strategic bombers practiced the scenario of using nuclear weapons against Russia practically simultaneously from the western and eastern directions” and came as close as 20 kilometres to the Russian border. 

Shoigu also noted a rise in the number of US bomber flights over the Sea of Okhotsk where they practiced the launch of cruise missiles, saying that it posed a threat to both Russia and China. “In such an environment, the Russian-Chinese coordination becomes a stabilising factor in global affairs,” Shoigu had said. 

In a brief statement, China’s defence ministry said at that point that the two sides would “continue to deepen strategic cooperation between the two militaries, continue to strengthen cooperation in strategic exercises, joint patrols and other areas, and continue to make new contributions to safeguarding the core interests of China and Russia and maintaining international and regional security and stability.” 

Yet, Shoigu was speaking only a fortnight ago. Reporting on the pact, the South China Morning Post commented that China and Russia “are edging closer to a de facto military alliance to counter growing pressure from the United States.”

At the very least, the signing of the road map on military cooperation signalled Russia and China’s willingness to resist US pressure by relying on combined military efforts, if necessary. 

The US is unable to simultaneously confront both China and Russia militarily and if the latter were to significantly pool their military power and foreign policy objectives, that would alter the Eurasian balance of power and disadvantage the US. 

The US still has the most capable military in the world and there is no question that the US is more powerful than China or Russia alone, but a newfound unity among the latter two can be strategically draining for Washington. 

Lyle Goldstein, an expert on China and Russia who served for two decades as a research professor at the Naval War College up until October, told Newsweek on Monday, “I think Moscow and Beijing calculate that they can really keep us (Washington) in a kind of maximum confusion, because the theatres are so distant from each other, and the forces involved are quite different. I do think they see a gain here in kind of pulling us in two directions at once.” 

Curiously, in Goldstein’s estimation, “I don’t think the United States is prepared to go to war in Ukraine. I don’t think the United States is prepared to go to war over Taiwan. I stand by both those points. So to do both, no, absolutely not.” 

He explained that the Ukraine and Taiwan scenarios in particular “are maximally stressing as they involve high-intensity warfare in theatres that are extremely difficult against opponents that have that single measure of focus. Either one of them on their own would be highly stressing and I would argue, if we were to get involved, there’s a good possibility that we might lose.”

Be that as it may, the video call today sets the stage for Putin’s visit to Beijing at Xi Jinping’s personal invitation as the chief guest at the upcoming Winter Olympics (4-20 February.) 

From the look of it, the two leaders’ face-to-face meeting in Beijing in early February will be an event of great significance for global stability and the further consolidation of the strategic partnership between the two countries. 

Conceivably, the virtual meeting today amidst the rising tensions in Russia’s relations with the US is a display of the realisation in Beijing that “only by joining hands can China and Russia counter the attack from the US-led clique and avoid falling into passivity,” as Cui Heng, the well-known Chinese scholar at the Center for Russian Studies of East China Normal University, told the Global Times. 

Lest it gets overlooked, the Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation signed by China and Russia in 2001 enshrines that “Russia recognises the government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government representing whole China. Taiwan is a constituent part of China.” The pact is a foundational document on which the Sino-Russian alliance is anchored.  

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“If the Pentagon wants to come clean about this horrific event, it will release documents and videotapes that show who was responsible for key decisions and what technological failings were responsible.”

In a continuation of a long history of impunity for U.S. troops who harm noncombatants during wartime, the Pentagon said Monday that none of the military personnel involved in an unmanned aerial drone strike that killed 10 civilians – seven of them children – during the final days of the war in Afghanistan would be punished.

When asked if anyone would be held accountable for the August 29 strike that killed aid worker Zamairi Ahmadi and nine of his relatives, including children as young as two years old, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said during a Monday press conference that he does “not anticipate there being issues of personal accountability to be had” regarding the attack.

Kathy Kelly of the advocacy group Ban Killer Drones said in a statement that “US attacks slaughtering civilians have been routine.”

“The unusual aspect of the August 29th attack was that international media exposed the murder of civilians and the pernicious initial claim that this was a ‘righteous attack,’” she added.

Following a long-established pattern of initially denying that US airstrikes harm civilians, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Mark Milley first described the botched bombardment as a “righteous strike” that targeted a vehicle believed to be transporting explosives. US Central Command claimed the strike triggered “significant secondary explosions from the vehicle,” which “indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material.”

In the category of least surprising event of 2021: No punishment for the US drone strike in Kabul that killed civilians/children @hrw@LarryLewis_https://t.co/lyoroPAbQe

— Sarah (Holewinski) Yager (@HolewinskiSarah) December 13, 2021

“We are confident we successfully hit the target,” a Pentagon spokesperson asserted, claiming the attack thwarted “an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamad Karzai International Airport” – a reference to the so-called Islamic States’ Khorasan branch.

However, investigations by The New York Times and The Washington Post revealed that there were no explosives in Ahmadi’s car and that the “suspicious”-looking man and the people with him were loading containers of water into the vehicle.

Ahmadi, who worked for the California-based nonprofit Nutrition and Education International (NEI), had applied to resettle in the United States as the Taliban re-conquered Afghanistan after 20 years of U.S.-led war and occupation.

In an interview with the Times, NEI founder and president Steven Kwon called the Pentagon’s decision to not punish anyone for the strike “shocking.”

He asked, “How can our military wrongly take the lives of 10 precious Afghan people and hold no one accountable in any way?”

The Kabul drone strike that killed 10 civilians, including the aid worker and seven children, was only a "mistake" to the Pentagon after investigative journalism on the strike brought bad publicity and sparked a backlash. But without that, it would be war as usual.

— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) December 13, 2021

Accountability and punishment for civilian casualties are the rare exception to the rule in the US military, which has killed an estimated 900,000 men, women, and children during the 20-year so-called War on Terror and millions of noncombatants since waging nuclear war against Japan in 1945.

“The broader context the Pentagon should acknowledge was clarified by Daniel Hale, the drone whistleblower who disclosed that innocent Afghan civilians were killed in 90% of the US drone attacks during a five-month period,” said Kelly.

No one will be punished for a US drone strike that killed Afghan civilians, including 7 children. But Daniel Hale is in jail for *telling us* that US drones kill civilians & revealing US actions that amount to war crimes.

This is what we call justice. pic.twitter.com/UzVF2KE2Ie

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) December 13, 2021

Hale was sentenced in July to nearly four years behind bars for sharing classified information about the US drone assassination program with a journalist. He was the latest in a long line of whistleblowers from Daniel Ellsberg to Julian Assange, John Kiriakou, Chelsea Manning, and numerous others who have been imprisoned for exposing war crimes whose perpetrators almost always go unpunished – and are sometimes even rewarded.

Nick Mottern, also of Ban Killer Drones, said that “if the Pentagon wants to come clean about this horrific event, it will release documents and videotapes that show who was responsible for key decisions and what technological failings were responsible.”

Mottern added that if President Joe Biden “was involved in the decision, we must know that.”

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Brett Wilkins is staff writer for Common Dreams. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace. This originally appeared at CommonDreams and is reprinted with the author’s permission.

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In the USA and Germany, high-level officials have used the term pandemic of the unvaccinated, suggesting that people who have been vaccinated are not relevant in the epidemiology of COVID-19. Officials’ use of this phrase might have encouraged one scientist to claim that “the unvaccinated threaten the vaccinated for COVID-19”.¹ But this view is far too simple.

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Notes

1. Goldman E, How the unvaccinated threaten the vaccinated for COVID-19: a Darwinian perspective. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2021; 118e2114279118

2. Brown CM, Vostok J, Johnson H, et al. Outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 infections, including COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections, associated with large public gatherings—Barnstable County, Massachusetts, July 2021. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2021; 70: 1059-1062

3. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Case Investigations Team. COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections reported to CDC—United States, January 1–April 30, 2021. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2021; 70: 792-793

4. Robert Koch Institut. Wöchentlicher Lagebericht des RKI zur Coronavirus-Krankheit-2019 (COVID-19)—14·10·2021—aktualisierter Stand für Deutschland. https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Wochenbericht/Wochenbericht_2021-10-14.pdf?__blob=publicationFile Date: Oct 14, 2021 Date accessed: October 18, 2021

5. Von Dolle F. Münster: Inzwischen 85 Infizierte nach 2G-Party im Club. https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/westfalen-lippe/corona-infektionen-clubbesuch-muenster-100.html Date: Sept 20, 2021 Date accessed: September 23, 2021

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Turkish military engineers have tested a new bomb disposal drone capable of penetrating a carbon steel plate using a high-powered laser beam.

According to the state-run Anadolu Agency, the cutting-edge “Eren” drone fired a laser from 100 to 500 meters (328 to 1,640 feet) away, burning a hole in three millimeters of steel in 90 seconds.

Developed by Asisguard and Tubitak, the world’s first laser-equipped drone is designed to destroy explosive devices and has a maximum flight altitude of 3,000 meters (9,842 feet).

The drone was presented at the 8th Konya Science Festival in October, attracting the attention of defense officials, according to the outlet.

Once all trial phases are complete, the drone will be transferred to the Turkish armed forces.

Turkish Drone Development

In addition to the Eren, Turkey has developed the Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicle to bolster the country’s defenses amid evolving aerial threats.

With a payload capacity of 150 kilograms (330 pounds), the medium-altitude long-endurance drone is equipped with a triple-redundant avionics system and a 100hp internal combustion engine, allowing it to travel up to 150 kilometers (93 miles).

Last month, Turkish aerospace firm Baykar Defence announced that it would supply more Bayraktar TB2 combat drones to the Ukrainian armed forces to strengthen its defense capabilities. Morocco has also reportedly received its first delivery of Bayraktars.

Turkey also manufactures the Anka drone, which can carry up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of payload.

The Anka features a next-generation electro-optic camera for capturing high-resolution imagery and video day and night. It also includes an identification friend or foe (IFF) system, laser designator, and laser range finder.

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Featured image: Laser-mounted Turkish drone developed by Asisguard and Tubitak. Photo: Anadolu Agency

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In October 2020, Pesticide Action Network India and PAN Asia Pacific released the report ‘State of Glyphosate Use in India’. It concluded that the use of the world’s most widely used herbicide is rampant. Despite this, it noted that its disturbing effects on the environment and the health of farmworkers and the public are not being addressed (see: State of Glyphosate Use in India | Pesticide Action Network (PAN) India (pan-india.org)).

Although Punjab, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and several other states have moved towards banning glyphosate due to their concerns for consumers, farmers and environment, the report – based on a field survey in seven states (300 respondents – 30 retailers, 270 farmers/farmworkers) – noted at least 20 non-approved uses of glyphosate, with 16 of them in food crops.

It concluded:

“In the light of mounting evidences on the unacceptable health and environmental outcomes of glyphosate, the ground reality of its use in India is seen as an ‘anarchic’ scenario. This would have undesirable impacts on soil health, farm productivity, food safety, agriculture trade, public health as well as environmental wellbeing in the country. The scenario of glyphosate use thus necessitates the urgent need of eliminating it from India.”

The report documented many disturbing features of glyphosate use, not least in terms of its impacts on farmers and farmworkers.

Now in December 2021, the influential Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM) has demanded a complete ban on the use of glyphosate in India, arguing it is carcinogenic and damages ecology and that it adversely impacts cultivators and their livelihoods.

The SJM has close ties to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and has consistently adopted a critical stance on the government’s pro-foreign direct investment policies and the ‘globalisation’ (dependency) agenda.

National Co-convenor of the SJM Ashwani Mahajan recently submitted a petition with 201,609 signatures of people favouring a complete ban on glyphosate to Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Narendra Singh Tomar.

The organisation argues that the government’s stated intent to restrict (not ban) the use of glyphosate (see Government moves to restrict use of glyphosate – The Hindu BusinessLine) is meaningless.

The SJM informed the agriculture minister that, though there is a restriction on the use of glyphosate (aside from on tea plantations and non-crop areas), the weedicide is blatantly being used for illegally grown genetically engineered herbicide tolerant (HT) cotton. It added that this has been going on for years with the full knowledge of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee and the state governments.

The minister was informed that, at present, some “miscreant seed companies” are trying to illegally spread HT Bt cotton, on hundreds of thousands of acres of land, to promote the use of glyphosate.

The SJM says glyphosate is being used both for weed control and to desiccate crops prior to harvesting and there is a strong opposition to this as the weedicide and its adjuvants are absorbed by the plant and consumed by humans.

Glyphosate is a known carcinogen and endocrine disruptor and is linked with several serious illnesses. The SJM informed the minister that there are more than 100,000 cases pending against Monsanto/Bayer company for damages by the users of its glyphosate based herbicide after they (the litigants) developed 10 different types of cancer, including non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. The herbicide has been declared carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

Despite this, the push to get illegal HT genetically engineered crops into Indian fields persists. In 2017, for instance, the illegal cultivation of HT soybean was reported in Gujarat. There are also reports of HT cotton illegally being cultivated in the country.

In a 2017 paper in the Journal of Peasant studies, Glenn Stone and Andrew Flachs show how cotton farmers have been encouraged to change their ploughing practices, which has led to more weeds being left in their fields. The authors suggest the outcome in terms of yields (or farmer profit) is arguably no better than before. However, it (conveniently) coincides with the appearance of an increasing supply of HT cotton seeds.

Stone and Flachs observe:

“The challenge for agrocapital is how to break the dependence on double-lining and ox-weeding to open the door to herbicide-based management…. how could farmers be pushed onto an herbicide-intensive path?”

They show how farmers are indeed being nudged onto such a path via the change in practices and also note the potential market for herbicide growth alone in India is huge. Writing in 2017, the authors note that sales could soon reach USD 800 million with scope for even greater expansion. Little wonder we therefore see the appearance of HT seeds in the country. These seeds are designed to be used with glyphosate or other similar toxic argrochemicals such as glufinosate.

A report in the Indian press (June 2021) (Sale of illegal HT Bt cotton seeds doubles – The Hindu) states that the illegal cultivation of HT Bt cotton has seen a huge jump over a 12-month period, with seed manufacturers claiming that the sale of illegal seed packets had more than doubled. Industry lobbyists had been openly encouraging farmers to plant the seeds in violation of government regulations.

Industry lobbyists and industry-funded scientists often refer to regulatory agencies across the globe which have approved the use of glyphosate in their attempts to invalidate calls for imposing a ban. But if we turn to Europe, long-time campaigner against glyphosate Dr Rosemary Mason says:

“The only reason it has to date remained on the market in Europe is because of the companies behind the European Glyphosate Renewal Group (GRG).”

The GRG is a collection of companies seeking the renewal of the EU authorisation of glyphosate in 2022. Its current members are Albaugh Europe SARL, Barclay Chemicals Manufacturing Ltd., Bayer Agriculture bvba, Ciech Sarzyna S.A., Industrias Afrasa S.A., Nufarm GMBH & Co.KG, Sinon Corporation and Syngenta Crop Protection AG.

In the run up to the decision on whether to relicense glyphosate in 2022, Mason adds:

“These member companies joined forces to prepare a dossier with scientific studies and information on the safety of glyphosate. This dossier was submitted to the evaluating member states and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as part of the EU regulatory procedure to continue the authorisation of glyphosate and glyphosate-containing products on the EU market.”

It is telling that researcher Claire Robinson (see: Glyphosate: EU assessment report excludes most of the scientific literature from its analysis (gmwatch.org)) now notes that the preliminary EU report on glyphosate prepared by the Dutch, Hungarian, French and Swedish (the states tasked with evaluating glyphosate) regulators, failed to take into account the overwhelming majority of studies published in the scientific literature.

Robinson notes that of the 1,550 studies on the toxicity of glyphosate that the organisation Générations Futures found had been published in the literature over the last ten years, only 11 were deemed reliable by the evaluating states. Of the 1,614 ecotoxicity studies identified, once again only 11 were considered reliable. The rate is even lower for endocrine disruption effects: out of 4,024 published studies, only eight are considered reliable by the evaluating states.

Générations Futures notes that the studies presented by the manufacturers were treated with greater leniency and ended up forming the basis of their (the evaluating member states) assessment – in spite of there being “significant methodological flaws”.

Key studies indicating the toxicity of glyphosate from Asia or South America were not accounted for in the evaluation.

Robinson asks:

“Are the studies provided by pesticide manufacturers in support of the glyphosate re-authorisation application subject to the same scrutiny?”

She goes on to explain that this has not been the case. The system is designed to favour the manufacturers.

Rosemary Mason has been compiling data and citing official and peer reviewed reports on glyphosate for more than a decade. In her dozens of reports (on the academia.edu website), she has been documenting the devastating health and environmental impacts of glyphosate.

In an era defined by the notion of ‘protecting public health’ and ‘flattening the curve’ to reduce the strain on health services, it must be asked why the agrochemical companies are granted free rein to continue to roll out their health damaging products that – as Mason and many others show – are fuelling a decades-long spiralling public health crisis and result in burdening health services.

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Over the past month, in a break from its usual focus on COVID-19, the Western mainstream media has dedicated a sizeable amount of coverage to unverified claims by unnamed US intelligence officials that the Russian Federation is planning an imminent military invasion of its western neighbour Ukraine – under the rule of the successive US-EU friendly governments of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky since 2014, when the CIA-orchestrated Euromaidan colour revolution toppled the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych, following his November 2013 decision to suspend an EU trade deal in favour of pursuing closer ties with Moscow.

The coverage, which comes at a time of increased tensions in Eastern Europe amidst a build-up of refugees on the Belarus-Poland border being labelled as an attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko to destabilise the European Union, has resulted in widespread condemnation of Moscow by the Western media and political establishment, culminating in the G7 issuing a statement on Saturday threatening massive sanctions should Russia make any incursion into Ukraine – Russia having been a former member of the then-G8 until the successful reunification of the historically Russian peninsula of Crimea with the rest of the country in 2014, the pretext for which being the dangerously high anti-Russian sentiment of the newly-formed Western-backed Poroshenko government, resulted in Moscow’s suspension from the forum, with a later decision being made by the Kremlin in 2017 to formally leave the group altogether.

This widespread condemnation of Russia by the Western establishment however, for claims that Moscow itself has denied, is in stark contrast to the silence of mainstream media pundits and politicians in response to Israel’s open threats to carry out a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities amidst the current Vienna talks regarding the Iran nuclear deal, with Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz announcing less than 24 hours prior to the G7’s Russia statement that he had consulted with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding such a move – one that in a similar vein to any possible Russian incursion into Ukraine, would immediately result in a devastating regional conflict, a conflict that could easily spiral into a full-blown war between East and West.

To understand this wildly-differing approach to both Moscow and Tel Aviv by the Western political and media establishment, one must look at the wider geopolitical relationship between the US-NATO hegemony and both Russia and Israel.

Formed in 1948, in line with the 1917 UK-authored Balfour Declaration, which called for the establishment of a Zionist State in the Middle East, Israel has always received military, financial and political support from the United States and its allies – culminating in a US-led coalition invading Iraq on behalf of Israel in 2003, which in turn would lead to Washington and its allies launching a regime-change operation against neighbouring Syria in 2011, with Damascus, like Baghdad, also being a long-time opponent of the Zionist State.

Russia on the other hand, and in particular since the election of Vladimir Putin as President in 2000, has been diametrically opposed to this US-NATO foreign policy carried out in line with Israeli interests – with a Russian military intervention on behalf of the Syrian government in 2015 perhaps playing the most decisive role in ensuring the Presidency of Bashar al-Assad has remained in place despite the decade-long attempt to remove his leadership via a US and Israeli-backed colour revolution.

The aforementioned 2014 reunification of Russia and Crimea also put a halt to the Neocon aim of establishing a US Naval base in the key strategic Crimean port of Sevastopol – a plan that would have surely come to fruition had Crimea remained under the pro-Western rule of the current Kiev administration.

Hence, it is in this successful countering of US-NATO imperialism that Russia finds itself demonised by the West and the target of a current smear campaign accusing Moscow of planning to start a global conflict via a military intervention in Ukraine – in stark contrast to the media silence and tacit political support offered to US-ally Israel in response to its open intentions of carrying out the very same action in Iran.

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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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Many westerners trying to make sense of the events in the “dark continent” of Africa have many barriers standing in the way of their minds and reality. This must be the case, for without such filters of spin proclaiming Africa’s problems to be self-induced (or the consequence of Chinese debt slavery), we in the west, might actually feel horrified enough to demand systemic change. We might come to recognize that the plight of Africa has less to do with Africa and more to do with an intentional program of depopulation, and exploitation of vital resources.

Despite a rich history and over a billion people living on the continent, Africa suffers from the lowest per capita rates of electricity and potable water in the world. Of the 30,000 children who die needlessly each day from preventable causes (disease, water availability, hunger, etc), the majority are from Africa. Living standards are in turn abysmally low for the 340 million Africans who live in extreme poverty while insufficient healthcare infrastructure, and sanitation has resulted in a massive rate of infant mortality that reaches as high as 80-100 deaths per 1000 for many African nations.

To the degree that certain uncomfortable facts are kept obscured, this façade has been maintained.

Recently, a stone has been thrown at the glass artifice of false narratives that has attempted to maintain the belief that Africa’s problems arise from authoritarian governments or “not enough democracy”.

On November 23, a zoom conference call involving American, British and Finish and French diplomats went public, having been filmed and leaked by an unnamed participant. What made this zoom call relevant is that the topic of the call dealt with the need for regime change in Ethiopia, and the main speaker of the call was Berhane Gebre-Christos, former Ethiopian Foreign Minister (2010-2012) and now spokesman of the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Movement. The call itself was hosted by the Peace and Development Center International which is a cardboard cut-out operation partnered with the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID (both proven CIA fronts) and set up days before the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front attacked Ethiopian government’s northern command on November 3, 2020 which launched a year of armed atrocities.

Featured among the participants of the conference call were none other than Vicki Huddleson (former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs), Donald Yamamoto (former U.S. Ambassador to Somalia), Tim Clark (former EU ambassador to Ethiopia), Robert Dewar (former British Ambassador to Ethiopia) and a plethora of other rules-based orderistas. The point driven home is the need to force international pressure on the current Ethiopian government of Ahmed Abiy to treat the foreign supported insurgency of the TPLF as a legitimate group in arranging a restructured Ethiopian government OR simply depose of Abiy directly by all means necessary.

Despite the fact that the TPLF have been found complicit in trying to stage a civil war in Ethiopia and also having been caught using child soldiers, and using terrorism, the same Obama-era team running the Biden administration that carved up Sudan and brought about the humanitarian destruction of Libya and Syria have continued to give support to the rebels. Over the past months this has taken the form of sanctions, the cancelling of civilian loan programs affecting millions of lives, and consistently demanding Addis Ababa treats the rebels as a legitimate power broker.

Why the Regime Change Effort in Ethiopia?

The situation in Ethiopia is rather simple to understand as long as you don’t believe western media spin doctors.

For one, Ethiopia is the only nation of all sub-Saharan Africa to have successfully resisted colonization. Ethiopia is thus also among the economically most sovereign nations of Africa, capable of emitting sovereign bonds for large scale infrastructure projects (which it has done since 2011 to build the Grand Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile) and also one of the nations most interested in working closely with China and the emerging Belt and Road Initiative.

In recent years, Ethiopia has also resisted pressure to bend to the depopulation lobby which exerts vast influence across Washington, Brussels and London.

It hasn’t merely said no to depopulation regimes, but has driven forward with the construction of the largest infrastructure project seen on this continent for generations: the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Once completed this dam will generate over 6200 megawatts (mW) of electricity for not only its own 118 million people, but for all of the Horn of Africa which currently represents 255 million souls. Most importantly, this dam, the largest in Africa’s history, will become a driver for industrial development for the entire continent, providing electricity for all residents and establishing a successful model for other nations across Africa to follow. With the growth of the multipolar order led by China’s successful win-win model of cooperation, idea of “managing poverty” in Africa is quickly becoming superseded by the higher drive to end poverty through industrial progress. This sentiment was loudly conveyed by leaders of the global south amidst the fanatical drive to impose de-carbonization regimes onto the entire globe during COP26.

Ethiopia has been one of the closest friends to China, which has provided expert training, funding and diplomatic assistance to Addis Ababa in recent years (which is an active member of the Belt and Road Initiative). Among the top Chinese-sponsored projects is the 756 km Addis Ababa- Djibouti standard gauge railway which has connected the landlocked Ethiopia with its Red Sea neighbor and driven home new industrial corridors that the World Bank had never permitted in the nation.

Although the construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam had been envisioned by the great Pan African leader Haile Selassie (and assisted with engineering surveys conducted by the United States of JFK), the project was killed with Selassie’s ouster in 1974, and only revived in 2011 through the tireless efforts of Sigmenew Bekele. Bekele was an engineer and nation builder who organized the construction of several major hydroelectric dams in Ethiopia and became known as “the public face of the GERD” until he was suicided in his car in 2018. When western powers refused to finance the dam, Ethiopia decided to do it themselves by rallying the population to purchase $5 billion in bonds which is ironically exactly how Abraham Lincoln financed the trans-continental railway during the Civil War and how the USA paid for much of WWII.

China’s presence in Ethiopia frightens many western game masters who are afraid of losing Africa to the prospect of win-win cooperation as they have already begun to lose the Middle East. In March 2021, the two nations signed a Memorandum of Understanding to “protect major projects under the BRI framework”, with Ethiopia’s Commissioner General stating:

“Ethiopia and China are countries with long history, ancient civilization, and splendid culture. To achieve our goal, the support from China and its esteemed embassy plays a significant role… We like to see a continuation of our joint efforts for building a long-term and strategic partnership and today’s event comes at an important moment.”

More recently, on December 2, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited PM Abiy and recommitted China to defend Ethiopia’s sovereignty. Standing next to Abiy, Wang Yi stated: “China will not interfere in internal affairs of any countries. We don’t interfere in the internal affairs of Ethiopia as well”. Speaking to those seeking to sever the two nations, Wang Yi also said the “Ethio-China friendship is very solid and unbreakable.”

Having failed to break the Belt and Road Initiative’s growth within the center of Mackinder’s World Island with Russia stopping the regime change operation in Syria during the dark years of Obama, and now China extending a powerful vision of east-west development corridors through the Middle East, the same bag of tricks has been deployed to Ethiopia using rebel fighters from the Horn of Africa.

The TPLF: More Terror and Less Rebel

The Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (now renamed the Tigray Defense Forces) are not a “democratic peoples’ movement” as western propaganda portrays.

In fact, this group has been caught conducting mass atrocities across occupied cities like Mai Kadra and Lalibela, broken cease fire treaties, using child soldiers and working closely with foreign Anglo-American interests in pushing regime change in Ethiopia as the leaked Zoom conference call demonstrates. Anyone doubting these claims need only read the rigorously compiled essays produced by one of the most competent investigative journalists Jeff Pearce living in Ethiopia whose articles can be found here.

In fact, only one month ago, on November 5, the TPLF announced a new “United Front of Ethiopian Federalist and Confederalist Forces” at the National Press Club in… Washington D.C.! This new insurgency group has attempted to link as many ethnic minority interests of Ethiopia together under one umbrella organization in order to project a semblance of legitimacy to this obviously undemocratic operation. The group’s press release stated: “This united front is being formed in response to the scores of crises facing the country; to reverse the harmful effects of the Abiy Ahmed rule on the peoples of Ethiopia and beyond; and in recognition of the great need to collaborate and join forces towards a safe transition in the country.”

At the press conference Berhane Gebre-Christos threatened the government of Adiy saying: “We’re trying to bring an end to this terrible situation in Ethiopia, which is created single-handedly by the Abiy government. Time is running out for him.”

It’s all Perception

The fact is, that none of these groups has the means to actualize their objectives under current conditions, with the Ethiopian population both in Africa and among the diaspora rejecting the western-directed propaganda. Protests across the world in defense of Ethiopian sovereignty, and the government’s success in combatting these scattered rebel forces indicates that reality is far different from the projection which perception managers wish be believed.

Just as we were told repeatedly that Venezuela would fall to the democratic movement of Juan Juan Guaidó, or that Navalny’s democracy forces would depose of Putin’s authoritarian system, or that Syrian rebel forces would topple the “Butcher Assad”, or that Hong Kong and Taiwan would certainly win their freedom from evil Beijing… the rulers of the unipolar system have shown themselves to be little more than modern day illusionists caught one too many times trying to scam credulous townsfolk.

As Geopolitics.Press outlined in extraordinary detail, the replication of perception management operations used in Syria have taken the form of the Command and Control Fusion Center (C2FC) based in Kenya which gives the U.S. Government the ability to “conduct cohesive multi-pronged operations against the Government of Ethiopia across the domains of economic, information, diplomatic and kinetic warfare”… [the C2FC] has delegated some of its tasks to disparate subsidiary fusion cells that enjoy some degree of operational autonomy but organizational dependence on the fusion center.”

The Danger of Libya 2.0

If this fails, as it will, the greater danger waiting in the wings, is that the trans Atlantic population will be so confused and misinformed about the nature of the Ethiopian crisis that they will give their consent to a U.S.-led attack onto the nation, as was done in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11. In a November 9, 2021 Bloomberg op ed former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, James Stavridis called for American-led forces to intervene into the civil war both “to counter Chinese influence” and avoid a new Rwandan-style massacre from occurring.

African analyst Lawrence Freeman, recently echoed this danger eloquently in an interview with the Addis Media Network on November 18 saying:

“The enemies of Ethiopia will use humanitarian concerns as an excuse to potentially deploy military forces under the pretext of protecting the Ethiopian people from their own government. This doctrine, known as R2P-the responsibility to protect- was created by George Soros and Tony Blair. Samantha Power and others in the Obama administration used R2P to justify the overthrow of President Kaddafi and the destruction of Libya.”

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Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation . He is an author for the Strategic Culture Foundation where this article was originally published.

The Medical Profession Implodes

By Dr. Steve Karp, December 14, 2021

In “normal” times, the practice of medicine has many challenges, some from within and some from outside the profession.  If you let it, much of your daily practice follows specialty guidelines, insurance company criteria, hospital formularies, and other annoyances.  None of those entities have any liability when it comes to our patients.

Towards Another Devastating Worldwide Crisis? The WEF’s “Cyber Attack With Covid-like Characteristics”. Paralysis of the Power Supply, Communications, Transportation?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 14, 2021

The World Economic Forum (WEF) which co-sponsored Event 201, the table top simulation of the corona pandemic together with John Hopkins and the Gates Foundation in October 2019, has been involved in another strategic exercise entitled Concept 2021.

Julian Assange – If He Had Written About Russia or China, He Would Have Been Hero and Nobel Prize Candidate

By Peter Koenig and Ramon Freire, December 14, 2021

In a miserable travesty of justice which is actually no surprise in our decayed western civilization – or rather non-civilization, Julian Assange is about to be extradited to the United States from the UK’s most notorious Maximum-Security Prison, Belmarsh.

There Comes a Time When There Is No Alternative to Fighting for Your Life and Liberty

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, December 14, 2021

Fauci’s one man control through NIH, the Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust gives him control over 57 percent of worldwide medical research, thus solidifying his personal control over the Covid narrative.

High-vaxxed Vermont Releases Numbers… and We Have Questions

By Rational Ground, December 14, 2021

The bottom line from this data: the CFR of fully vaccinated individuals in Vermont is significantly higher than national numbers and the CFR for unvaxxed. This probably should be a warning to reset expectations for vaccination performance but also problems with stats across the country.

A Desperate Cry for Help: Austria’s Plans for Criminalisation of the Unvaccinated

By Kathy Gyngell, December 14, 2021

I have been sent this video, which is one young Austrian man’s horrifying account of exactly what is planned for the unvaccinated in his country. It is a desperate plea for our help to bring international pressure to bear on his government.

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi: A Speech to Move Mountains Aimed at Physicians, Lawyers and Anyone with a Soul

By Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, December 14, 2021

Physicians who participate in the vaccination program: search for the truth in your souls. Are you acting out of conviction? Have you attempted to weigh out the evidence for and against the administration of the gene-based agents?

Video: The US Is Getting the Public Accustomed to the “Idea” of War with China

By The New Atlas, December 14, 2021

It is becoming increasingly obvious that US propaganda aimed at demonizing China and poisoning the world against serves to set up a long-discussed limited, conventional conflict waged along China’s shores to cripple its economy and prevent it from surpassing the West irreversibly.

Vaccines Pose 7 Times Higher Death Risk than COVID for Young People, Japanese Experts Warn

By Raymond Wolfe, December 14, 2021

A review in the most recent issue of Med Check, a bimonthly bulletin published by the Japan Institute of Pharmacovigilance (NOPJIP) as a member of the International Society of Drug Bulletins (ISDB), found that the death risk of the jabs may even be as high as 40 times greater for young people.

Unvaxxed in Austria Could be Imprisoned for a Year

By Paul Joseph Watson, December 14, 2021

People in Austria who remain unvaccinated could find themselves imprisoned for a year, according to critics of an amendment to an administrative law. Susanne Fürst of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), which voted against the amendment, warned that it could be used to punish the unjabbed with much harsher sentences.

The Christmas Baby Born in a Police State: Then and Now

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, December 14, 2021

The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus.

“Every Option Is on the Table”: US Prepping for Libya-Style Intervention in Ethiopia

By Alan MacLeod, December 14, 2021

Amid a bloody civil conflict and increasing great-power competition between the United States and China, there are a number of alarming signs that Ethiopia will become the next Libya – an African nation where the U.S. intervenes militarily under the pretext of stopping an impending genocide.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

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It’s not the sort of thing you encounter regularly.  A member of a government cabinet, responsible for arguably one of the country’s most important portfolios, found both wanting and culpable for their actions after leaving their post.  But this is what former Danish immigration minister Inger Støjberg found when she was convicted for illegally separating asylum seeking couples arriving in the country.

A Danish court of impeachment, in finding the former minister guilty for intentionally neglecting her duties under the Ministerial Responsibility Act, sentenced her to 60 days in prison.  Of the 26 members of the court, only one found for the ex-minister.

It was only the third time since 1910 that a politician has been referred to the impeachment court. The last was in 1993, when former Conservative justice minister Erik Ninn-Hansen faced proceedings for illegally halting the family reunification of Tamil refugees in 1987 and 1988.

Interest in the proceedings centred on an order the ex-minister issued in 2016, which directed that if a member of a married couple were underage, they should be separated and housed in separate centres.  This was irrespective of whether they had children.  At the time, Støjberg argued that the measure was necessary to protect “child brides”.  “They have to be separated,” the then minister told the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, “because I will not accept that in my system there could be examples of coercion.”

Some 23 couples were mandatorily separated by the Danish Immigration Service without an individual examination of their circumstances.  One couple, a 17-year-old pregnant woman and her 26-year-old husband, filed a complaint with the Danish Parliament’s ombudsman, who found the separation to be illegal.

The impeachment court also found the policy to be unlawful and a breach of European human rights law as the arrangement did not include exceptions and individual assessments by the immigration service.

Ministers tend to find such intrusions of the law into their discretion disconcerting.  Were executive power to be curtailed by such legal actions, firm, tearless decisions would be hard to make.  When the trial commenced, Støjberg was confident that the Court members would see good sense.  “I know exactly what I said and did.  That is why we are seeking an acquittal.”  So confident was she of the outcome that the conviction came as something of a shock.  “It’s the only scenario I had not prepared for because I thought it was completely unrealistic.”

Støjberg was quick on the draw regarding the principles which she followed in making her decision.  “I think it wasn’t just me that lost today, it was Danish values that lost today.”  (Every political figure found fouling the law is bound to hide behind a set of values.)  If, she said, she “had had to live with the fact that I had not protected these girls – that would actually have been worse than this.”

The values game is always precarious and immigration ministers claiming to protect the vulnerable are rarely trustworthy sorts.  Scratch the surface, and you are bound to find a sadistic reactionary.  For Støjberg, it meant adopting a line against the swarthy hordes seeking sanctuary in Europa’s bosom populist, anti-immigration figures found attractive.  Between 2015 and 2019, she served in a centre-right government bolstered by the support of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party and presided over 110 amendments restricting the rights of foreigners.  Memorably crass, she celebrated the passage of the fiftieth restriction on immigration with a cake.

Amongst those measures was the “Jewellery law”, a stipulation that asylum seekers surrender their jewellery and cash above 10,000 kroner to help fund their stay in Denmark.  The Ministry of Immigration guidelines made modest concessions: wedding rings or engagement rings were to be left untouched, though individual officers could determine what sentimental value was attached to others.

Like her counterparts in other countries, Støjberg sought to place unwanted and undesirable arrivals on a remote island – Lindholm – a plan that raised eyebrows in the United Nations.  While the facility was intended to detain foreign nationals convicted of crimes and set for deportation, UN Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet warned about “the negative impact of such policies in isolation, and (they) should not replicate these policies.  Because depriving them of their liberty, isolating them, and stigmatising them will only increase their vulnerability.”

Støjberg, self-proclaimed protector of child brides, was merely contemptuous of such concerns.  “I’m quite impressed that you can sit in New York and comment on a deportation centre when not a single shovel has yet touched the ground, and when we have clearly said that we will stay within the conventions we are signed up to.”

The modern immigration minister has become a plain clothes member of the country’s police force.  Suspicion is preferable over charity.  Judgment comes before understanding.  Separating families, tormenting parents and children, are not infrequent things.  But in all fairness to Støjberg, her measures did not lack parliamentary approval and degrees of public support.  Not only was she encouraging cruelty, she also being encouraged to be cruel.

Indeed, Denmark’s harsh refugee policy is being further developed under the guidance of the centre-left Social Democrats, who have adopted some of the world’s harshest refugee policies.  Recently, an agreement barring foreigners with suspended sentences from ever becoming Danish citizens was struck by the government with right-wing parties.

In June, Parliament gave the government a mandate to establish an internment camp system outside European borders to process asylum-seeker claims.  “If you apply for asylum in Denmark, you know that you will be sent back to a country outside Europe, and therefore we hope that people stop seeking asylum in Denmark,” warned government spokesman Rasmus Stoklund.

The smug view expressed by such papers as Politiken, that no minister is above the law, ignores the point that Støjberg became a post girl for reaction, a model emulated rather than dismissed.  Had she tinkered more with her “child brides” order, conditioning it with less severity, she may never have faced the impeachment court.

Immigration ministers in other countries should take note but the lessons of this case are unlikely to be learned in Australia.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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Roger Wicker, member of the Armed Services Committee of the US Senate, stated in an interview with Fox News (8 December) that he did not rule out a direct US military intervention against Russia to “defend Ukraine” and, without being asked by the interviewer, added: “You know that we do not rule out first-use nuclear action”, that is, using nuclear weapons first. This is a cross-cutting message to Moscow about U.S. determination to support a possible Kiev attack on the Russians in the Donbass. It would certainly be presented as a response to an attack carried out by the Donbass Russians. In the minds of those who have been implementing the strategy of tension against Russia since 2014, this would still be a winning move.

Moscow would have two alternatives: not to intervene militarily in defense of the Russians in the Donbass, leaving them to be overwhelmed by the Ukrainian attack supported de facto by NATO and forced to leave the region by taking refuge in Russia, a decision that would be traumatic for Moscow especially internally; or to intervene militarily to stop the Ukrainian attack, exposing itself to international condemnation for “aggression and invasion of a sovereign state”.

Ukrainian generals have warned that they would not be able to “repel Russian troops without a massive infusion of military aid from the West.” The infusion has already begun: the U.S., which has already given Kiev a military aid of 2.5 billion dollars, provided in November another 88 tons of ammunition as part of a “package” of 60 million dollars, including Javelin missiles already deployed against the Russians in the Donbass. At the same time, the U.S. has sent more than 150 military advisers to Ukraine who, flanked by those of a dozen NATO allies, actually direct operations.

The situation is even more explosive because Ukraine – today a partner but in fact already a NATO member – could be officially admitted as the 31st member of the Alliance, with the consequence that, according to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the other 30 NATO members would have to intervene militarily on the Donbass front in support of Ukraine against Russia. The Russian Foreign Ministry asked NATO not to admit Ukraine, so as not to further increase military and political tension in Europe, recalling that since the end of the Cold War Russia has received repeated assurances that NATO jurisdiction and military forces would not advance one inch to the East, but that such promises have not been kept. As a result, the Russian Foreign Ministry proposed that NATO open negotiations for long-term agreements that would prevent further NATO expansion eastward and the deployment of weapons systems in close proximity to Russian territory. The proposal was sharply rejected on December 10 by NATO, through the mouth of Secretary General Stoltenberg: “The relationship of NATO with Ukraine will be decided by the 30 members of the Alliance and Ukraine, and no one else”.

Immediately after, yesterday December 13, the Foreign Ministers of the G7 (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) and the High Representative of the European Union, meeting in Liverpool, have declared to be “united in condemning the military build-up of Russia and its aggressive rhetoric towards Ukraine” and that “Russia should have no doubt that further military aggression against Ukraine would have as a response massive consequences and serious costs”.

Meanwhile Finland, EU member and active NATO partner against Russia, announces the purchase of 64 F-35A fighter jets from Lockheed Martin at a price of 8.4 billion euros that, including infrastructure, rises to 10 billion, to which the government will add another 10 billion euros for their maintenance and modernization. The 64 F-35A nuclear attack aircraft will be deployed on the border with. Russia, just 200 km from St. Petersburg, in fact under the command of the U.S. which, as Senator Wicker recalls, does not rule out using nuclear weapons first.

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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).

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

First published on October 26, 2018

***

With Allied armies pushing ever northwards through the “tough old gut” of Italy, and German forces pulling out, Benito Mussolini took a long look at the situation before departing Milan on 25 April 1945. It was, fittingly, Italy’s Liberation Day as the despot fled Milan in his red Alfa Romeo, with long-time mistress Clara Petacci in the passenger seat.

A few days before, Petacci, aged 33, had spurned the chance in escaping to safety with her family – as arranged by Mussolini – choosing instead to stay with him while his fascist rule crumbled. Petacci would pay dearly for her attachment to the dictator.

Next day, 26 April 1945, the Alfa Romeo was discarded as Mussolini and Petacci joined an SS-led motorcade, which sought to cross the northern Italian border and reach Switzerland. From neutral Swiss territory, the deposed Duce would travel the 1,000 kilometers or so by aircraft to fascist Spain.

On Spanish soil, Mussolini could be assured of safe haven under the wing of that country’s autocrat, General Francisco Franco. However, by 27 April 1945, the SS convoy concealing Mussolini was travelling through territory controlled entirely by Italian communist partisans. They had erected a number of checkpoints along the route to Switzerland’s border.

The Italian guerrilla forces were allowing German units to advance unharmed, providing they handed over any hidden compatriots of theirs. Petacci had easily been spotted and captured at an earlier halting point, though for now she was unrecognized.

The SS lieutenant, Fritz Birzer, acting as Mussolini’s personal guard from 18 April 1945, implored him to put on a German overcoat and helmet. Mussolini was aware the region was commanded by partisans so reluctantly he heeded Birzer’s advice, while also putting on sunglasses.

Now 30 miles from the Swiss frontier, Mussolini’s SS convoy was stopped at a final checkpoint near the village of Dongo, on Lake Como’s north-western shore.

During this last inspection Urbano Lazzaro, a commissar of the 52nd Garibaldi Partisan Brigade, walked up to the German truck that Mussolini was hiding in. Lazzaro, in his early 20s, had not long before escaped from German captivity before joining the anti-fascist partisans in northern Italy. His eyes zoned in on the 61-year-old Mussolini, hunched over in the truck’s rear, pretending to be asleep. Unfortunately for Mussolini his unusual features, the distinctive square jaw and broad mouth, betrayed itself to Lazzaro who quickly identified him.

Mussolini’s booking file following his arrest by the police on 19 June 1903, Bern, Switzerland (Source: Public Domain)

Lazzaro later recalled that the Duce “seemed completely lacking in will, spiritually dead” and that his face revealed “utter exhaustion but not fear”. Mussolini was carrying a machine gun and pistol but made no attempt to fire them.

Three months before, in January 1945, Mussolini said,

“Seven years ago, I was an interesting person. Now, I am little more than a corpse… I am finished. My star has fallen. I have no fight left in me. I work and I try, yet know that all is but a farce”.

In his over two decades in power, one of Mussolini’s fatal errors was an inability to recognize the Italian psychological makeup lacked the soldierly virtues required to fight large conflicts – unlike the Germans who had undertaken numerous, significant battles over past generations.

Waging wars can require blind, bloody-minded devotion and the common Italian soldier betrayed a more insubordinate, ill-disciplined nature than his German equivalent. When the fighting turned sour, Mussolini’s men often melted away into the landscape, requiring crucial Nazi support in Greece and Africa during the early 1940s.

Mussolini’s driving ambition had been to emblazon himself upon the world as a new Julius Caesar – the Roman dictator and general who, almost 2,000 years before, became the first leader of Rome to cross both the English channel and the Rhine.

In 1932 Mussolini had said,

“War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energies, and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it”.

By the middle of 1933, and now more than a decade in control, Mussolini planned to launch attacks against first Yugoslavia, and then France no less. Any such ventures would likely have been doomed to failure. Italy was further hampered by being a resource-poor country, lacking the raw materials essential in conducting lasting wars. Mussolini only cancelled the invasions after learning that French intelligence had cracked some of his military codes.

Following the Italian troops’ insipid performance during their 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, Mussolini would thereafter have been wise to acknowledge the reality of his situation. Within the under-resourced Ethiopian army some soldiers were equipped merely with swords and spears, others with 19th century military equipment. Yet still the Ethiopians scored successes against their Italian enemy, such as during the Christmas Offensive of December 1935.

Mussolini should have firmly opposed joining the war on Hitler’s side in June 1940, instead offering mere tacit support. Four months later in October 1940 Mussolini’s fascist counterpart, General Franco, withstood Hitler’s overtures to ally Spain behind the Nazi war effort. It was a decision that largely ensured Franco would remain in power for three decades after the war. Mussolini did not quite possess Franco’s cunning, however.

The Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who for over 50 years survived the assaults of an American empire to the north, said that Italy’s dictator,

“declared war, but Mussolini thought he could count on the Roman legions. He’d forgotten that, in the end, the Roman legions were made up of barbarians – and that the Rome of olden days, of the age of Julius Caesar, no longer existed. The Italians were a peaceable people, with another culture, another mindset; they no longer had those militaristic traditions that the Romans always had – whereas the Germans had maintained them – so Italy entered the war and you know what happened: defeat after defeat”.

Now, with the fighting in Europe reaching its end, it was in many ways fitting that Mussolini was captured wearing a German uniform. Over the preceding four years, Hitler and his men had come to the Italians’ rescue repeatedly; during the war’s final 18 months, Mussolini was propped up entirely by German military strength in northern Italy, and was little more than a Nazi instrument as he was too aware. Mussolini’s arrest by Italian guerrillas stood as a further humiliation, but worse was to come.

The following day, 28 April 1945, Mussolini and Petacci were executed by firing squad at 4.10 in the afternoon. Early next morning, their bodies were unloaded from a vehicle in Milan at the town square of Piazzale Loreto – where they were severely despoiled by a growing crowd, then strung up by their heels outside a half-built service station. In August 1944, Mussolini had overseen at this precise spot the death of 15 partisans, yet it was still an ignominious end.

In the early afternoon of 29 April 1945, as Soviet troops were now but one mile from Hitler’s underground headquarters, he heard of Mussolini’s fate by radio. Hitler is claimed to have said, “This will never happen to me!” While news of Mussolini’s ignoble end may have bolstered Hitler’s determination not to be caught, he had already decided to do away with himself, leaving little trace. Hitler felt this would deny any foes the satisfaction of defiling his body, and prevent his remains from being made a spectacle of.

Six days before, on 23 April 1945, Hitler informed the war minister Albert Speer that,

“I shall not fight personally. There is always the danger that I would only be wounded and fall into the hands of the Russians alive. I don’t want my enemies to disgrace my body either. I’ve given orders that I be cremated… Believe me, Speer, it is easy for me to end my life. A brief moment and I’m freed of everything, liberated from this painful existence”.

Hitler had wanted to take his life on 22 April 1945, hours before Speer went to see him in the Führerbunker for the last time. On 22 April, the Soviets appeared set to take Berlin within a couple of days. The SS General Gottlob Berger informed Speer of Hitler’s intention to kill himself that day, as likewise did Eva Braun. Hitler’s mistress, a close confidante of Speer’s, confided to the armaments minister in the bunker that,

“Yesterday [22 April 1945] the situation was so terrible it seemed the Russians would quickly occupy all of Berlin. The Führer was on the point of giving up”.

As Hitler’s subordinates deserted him in growing numbers, he feared the Red Army would simply waltz into the heart of Berlin. Yet it would not be until 30 April 1945, the day Hitler ended his life, that Stalin’s troops finally came within striking distance of the bunker. The Nazis fought bitterly to the death, killing at least 70,000 Soviet soldiers during the Battle of Berlin alone, which finally finished on 2 May 1945.

By early May, Hitler was now little more than a charred corpse – in the early hours of 29 April 1945, he had dictated in his final political testament that,

“I do not want to fall into the hands of enemies”.

A suicidal tendency comprised part of Hitler’s nature, and it is likely he had previously contemplated turning a gun on himself. Following the disastrous Munich Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, Hitler fled south to the country home of Ernst Hanfstaengl, a businessman and then intimate friend of the Nazi leader. Hitler reached the Hanfstaengl house in a disreputable state, face and clothes covered in mud, while straining with a dislocated shoulder.

The following day the police were closing in on Hanfstaengl’s residence, when Hitler is reported to have said “Now all is lost – no use going on”, before picking up his revolver from a nearby cabinet. Hanfstaengl’s other half, Helen, claims that upon seeing Hitler take the gun she “grasped his arm and took the weapon away from him”, shouting, “What do you think you’re doing?” Hitler is said not to have resisted, as he was fond of Hanfstaengl’s wife, allowing himself to be arrested instead.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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China’s BRI investments in many of these member states have resolved their prior transportation challenges and thus given them the chance to finally fulfill their full potential if they have the will to do so.

The 15th Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) leader’s summit was held in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat late last month. This group brings together Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. It’s one of the most promising integration formats in Eurasia but hasn’t yet come anywhere close to reaching its full potential. That’s because of the two-decade long US occupation of Afghanistan and lack of connectivity infrastructure.

The American withdrawal from Afghanistan revolutionized the regional geo-economic and geostrategic situation. It also came as three regional connectivity projects continued to mature into viable East-West transport corridors. These are the Belt & Road Initiative’s (BRI) flagship project of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor (CECWAEC), and the Middle Corridor between China and Turkey via Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

The first two are formally part of BRI while the last can be regarded as unofficially part of this global connectivity network. There’s also the potential for a China-Tajikistan-Afghanistan-Iran corridor too, which is being advanced by Beijing’s investments in Tajikistan’s eastern roads. Furthermore, CPEC could be expanded westward through the W-CPEC+ vision to connect with the Islamic Republic. That country is so important to China since the two reached a 25-year strategic partnership deal earlier this year.

With these observations in mind, two developments can be described as breathing fresh life into this organization: the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and Chinese-led Eurasian integration investments through BRI and those projects that are related to it like the Middle Corridor and the prospective Trans-Afghan Corridor. These provide a solid basis upon which the ECO can finally begin to fulfill its promising potential considering the new regional geo-economic and geostrategic reality.

Nevertheless, even with the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the ECO would still struggle to surmount its greatest challenge had it not been for BRI’s regional investments over the past few years. The lack of transport infrastructure handicapped this organization and served as the top obstacle to comprehensively expanding relations between its many diverse majority-Muslim members. China literally changed the game through BRI, which thus inspires hope for the ECO’s future.

This bloc should concentrate on several interconnected objectives. First, it must ensure that the situation doesn’t spiral out of control in Afghanistan. To this end, its members can not only promise to deliver much-needed humanitarian aid, but also propose various investment projects that could sustainably unlock its economic potential upon its ultimate stabilization. The Lapis Lazuli Corridor, for instance, could connect with CPEC and be invested in by Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.

Second, the ECO countries need to work towards harmonizing their customs regimes, which is easier said than done since Turkey is an aspiring EU member while Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are part of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAU). Nevertheless, they must find practical ways to facilitate trade and investment between them otherwise they’ll never reach the full potential that they’re destined to achieve.

Third, there are concerns among some ECO members that expanding trade ties with Iran could prompt the imposition of the US’ threatened unilateral secondary sanctions in response. This has enormously held back the bloc’s comprehensive integration but hopefully its members can agree on a blueprint for what to do in the event that Washington and Tehran successfully renegotiate the nuclear deal and these economic-financial deterrents are no longer a factor like predict might eventually happen.

Fourth, efforts should be undertaken to optimize relevant transregional connectivity projects, both existing ones like CPEC and potential projects like the Trans-Afghan Corridor between China and Iran. This can be done by brainstorming ways in which they can be expanded, paired with one another, and the larger role that they’re expected to play in the ECO’s workings, both as an organization and also with respect to each member state’s economies.

And fifth, the ECO members should seriously consider the wisdom of inviting China to become either a dialogue partner or observer. The modalities for granting such are already met by the People’s Republic in accordance with what’s written on the organization’s website. The ECO would immensely benefit by establishing some formal relations with China considering the fact that their goals are complementary with BRI’s and Chinese investments in these countries have breathed new life into this bloc.

All told, there are high hopes that this year’s leadership summit will tangibly advance the ECO’s integration goals considering the new geo-economic and geostrategic reality in which these countries are meeting following the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. More importantly, though, China’s BRI investments in many of these member states have resolved their prior transportation challenges and thus given them the chance to finally fulfill their full potential if they have the will to do so.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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It is becoming increasingly obvious that US propaganda aimed at demonizing China and poisoning the world against serves to set up a long-discussed limited, conventional conflict waged along China’s shores to cripple its economy and prevent it from surpassing the West irreversibly.

Western propaganda is even openly discussing this as if to introduce and accustom the public to talk about starving 1.4 billion people into submission to the West.

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Sources

Asia Times – Defending Taiwan: Think globally and ‘look up’:
https://asiatimes.com/2021/12/defending-taiwan-think-globally-and-look-up/

RAND Corporation – War With China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable (page 14):
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1100/RR1140/RAND_RR1140.pdf

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If you have a friend or relative who needs to be awakened to the rise of evil, give them a Christmas present of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci. There is no better eye opener for insouciant Americans than this book.

The book begins with a quote from Dr John Abramson, Harvard Medical School, to remind us that the primary function of NIH- and Big Pharma- funded medical research is not public health but return on pharmaceutical investment.

Fauci’s one man control through NIH, the Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust gives him control over 57 percent of worldwide medical research, thus solidifying his personal control over the Covid narrative. Fauci and his acolytes at NIH receive six figure annual royalty payments on products they helped develop and ushered through the FDA approval process, including the Covid vaccine, and this is on top of Fauci’s taxpayer-funded salary, the highest in the US federal government. The CDC itself, allegedly a taxpayer-funded regulatory agency, owns and profits from 57 vaccine patents and spends 41% of its annual $12 billion budget buying and distributing vaccines. NIH owns hundreds of vaccine patents and profits from the sale of products it regulates. Try to comprehend the conflict of interest in this fact: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) receives 45% of its budget from Big Pharma.

Little wonder that Fauci engineered the creation of Covid with research grants, and the virus somehow was released in the interest of Big Pharma vaccine profits. The conservatives protect Fauci by blaming China, the country where Fauci shifted the research funding from the University of North Carolina.

Kennedy, one of the last true Americans, shows that the “Covid Pandemic” is an orchestrated coup against public health and Western democracy and accountable government. Kennedy also exposes the coverup roles played by the presstitute media — CNN, MSNBC, NPR, NY Times and other presstitute organizations, along with Big Tech robber barons and the military and intelligence organizations, in controlling the Covid narrative:

“The disturbing story that unfolds here has never been told, and many in power have worked hard to prevent the public from knowing it.”

It is our task to help our insouciant friends and relatives to wake up. If Robert Kennedy’s book doesn’t wake them up, they are a total lost cause. As Americans succumb to propaganda and brainwashing, the life of liberty grows dimmer. My own fear is that even with my advanced age I will outlive the “free world.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Julian Assange are the two greatest persons of our time. The totally corrupt and utterly evil American establishment intends to destroy both of them. Support them or you will go down with them. Now is the time to fight or to kiss freedom and liberty good-bye.

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

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Under the aegis of its new Chancellor and former Minister of the Interior (overseeing the police) Karl Nehammer, Austria’s plans for criminalisation of the unvaccinated come into force next month.

I have been sent this video, which is one young Austrian man’s horrifying account of exactly what is planned for the unvaccinated in his country. It is a desperate plea for our help to bring international pressure to bear on his government. It needs to be shared as widely as possible. He asks us to make representation to our own MPs. He explains in detail what should be setting alarm bells ringing across Europe but that mainstream media are failing to properly report – in effect they are turning a blind eye. Unbelievably, history is repeating itself.

He details not just the plans for repeated fining of the unvaccinated, but also the planned imprisonment for those who refuse to or cannot pay the fines in a special prison for up to a year. This is the direct criminalisation of the unvaccinated who he says constitute one third of the Austrian population. It is unprecedented and in direct conflict with democracy. It cannot be allowed to happen.

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Kathy is Editor of The Conservative Woman. She is @KathyConWom on Twitter.

Featured image is from The Conservative Woman

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If the Senate follows the House of Representatives lead and passes the Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act (HR 550), Americans who do not get the recommended number of covid vaccines can look forward to receiving a text like this: “This is Dr. Anthony Fauci. According to government records you have not yet received your monthly covid booster shot. Until you prove you are following vaccine protocols, your vaccine passport will be revoked, resulting in loss of your privilege to work, worship, and visit your family.”

According to the bill’s chief sponsor, New Hampshire Representative Ann Kuster, HR 550 will “bolster and quicken our nationwide vaccine rollout” by “improv[ing] and expand[ing] information-sharing between state and federal governments, as well as public and private health care providers.” According to a statement issued by Rep. Kuster, HR 550 will allow the government to “…remind patients when they are due for a recommended vaccine.” It goes without saying that this power will likely also enable the government to punish those who refuse to comply with vaccine mandates.

HR 550 accomplishes its goal by empowering federal bureaucrats to create national standards for databases containing vaccine records. State and local governments and private health care businesses will be bribed (with money taken from current and future taxpayers) to adopt the national standards.

Government “reminders” of when we are due for our shots will almost certainly be expanded to other medical procedures. If the government can remind us of when we need covid vaccines, why wouldn’t it then start reminding us to get regular physicals and teeth cleanings, refill our prescriptions, and follow our doctors’ advice regarding diet and exercise?

The government could also use these records to deny care to people not following federal health care “recommendations.” Those tempted to dismiss these concerns should consider that there are calls to deny medical treatment to the “unvaccinated.” There have also been efforts to deny medical treatment to people who smoke or are obese. Rationing is common in countries struggling with the burdens of socialized medicine. There is even an effort in the UK to deny health care to those who use racist or sexist language.

According to the most recent Medicare Trustees Report, the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be able to pay only 91 percent of its bills by 2026. When these shortfalls occur, Congress will likely raise taxes, cut benefits, or do both.

Congress will try to rely on the Federal Reserve’s monetization of debt to raise taxes by stealth. But that can only go so far. Eventually, the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and other programs will result in denial of medical care to those Dr. Fauci and his federally-funded cohorts deem unworthy.

The push for a centralized system to monitor every American’s vaccine status is being used to justify repealing the ban on using taxpayer dollars to develop a “unique patient identifier.” Giving every American a unique patient identifier would be the final step toward creating a system of government surveillance, and control, over our personal health care choices.

If the government can monitor and control something as fundamental as our health care choices, then no part of our lives is off limits to the nanny state. All who value liberty should join the fight for health freedom.

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Once again, the West seems to be investing in aggressive maneuvers in Ukraine, promoting an unnecessary escalation of tensions and heightening instability in Eastern Europe. In an alleged reaction to the non-existent Russian “invasion plan”, NATO appears to be sending armed militants into Ukrainian territory, disguising them as military instructors. The militarization of Ukraine is an extremely dangerous attitude, considering the current anti-Russian racist ideology that drives the attitudes of the Kiev’s pro-Western government, which results in more and more violence day after day.

In a recent statement, Maria Zakharova, official spokeswoman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, said that NATO countries are signing several multi-billion-dollar contracts with Ukraine with the supposed aim of improving the country’s defense potential in the face of possible “threats” coming from Moscow – considering that both NATO and Kiev endorse the conspiracy theory of a “Russian invasion plan”. These were some of her words during a recent interview:

“The region, in particular Ukraine, is being pumped up with weapons. I am speaking about direct supplies, contracts for future, multimillion, multibillion contracts. Moreover, militants are being sent there under the guise of military instructors”.

It is still unclear what role will be played by such suspected NATO militants or advisers on Ukrainian soil, but much speculation can be made considering the current political and social reality of Ukraine. They can work with the various neo-Nazi gangs and paramilitary militias serving the Ukrainian government. It is very possible that there is some move in the sense of trying to create a Ukrainian unified force, bringing together government soldiers, militiamen and private agents, and that NATO is, in its provocative plans, encouraging this type of organization by sending advisory missions.

Historically, the country that most sponsors anti-Russian paranoia in Ukraine is the US, but now new NATO actors are willing to get into the game. For example, Turkey has expanded its actions in Kiev with the aim of creating tensions with Russia. Ankara and Moscow have increased their frictions recently, mainly due to Turkish support for the deployment of NATO bases in the post-Soviet central Asian space and Turkey’s destabilizing action in the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis. As a result, the Turkish government has boosted its activities with other NATO powers to foment tensions and instability on the Russian western border.

Washington and Ankara are currently committed to militarizing Ukraine and conveying a message of security and cooperation to Zelensky’s pro-Western government. Various military equipment of American and Turkish origin has been deployed on Ukrainian soil, including air vehicles (such as the famous Turkish drones Bayraktar) and anti-missiles systems (such as the American Javelines), as well as an enormous communication and intelligence apparatus. Last week, the US government approved a 300 million dollars military aid package for Ukraine. In addition, another 20 million dollars is being invested by the US in a specific project to strengthen the border security service in Ukraine. Similar aid has also come from the UK and the European Union. Turkey still helps in a more veiled way, without announcing large packages of economic aid, but it has been ready to send more and more weapons and agents.

This kind of “help” coming from the West creates a false sense of stability and security for Ukraine. NATO acts very simply: it invents the threat (in this case, the so-called “Russian invasion plan”) and proposes its own solution. The Ukrainians believe that they are really being threatened by Russia and that is why they are increasingly asking for help from the West, which fills Ukraine with militants and military equipment and encourages Kiev to act more and more aggressively on the border. Indeed, the Ukrainian government appears to have full confidence that, if the situation ever really gets worse and a conflict does arise, NATO will immediately come to help and neutralize any threat. But this is a very dangerous illusion.

Ukraine’s role in the NATO security scheme is to serve as an agent provocateur and destabilize the Russian strategic environment. Kiev has no value to the West beyond what it can do to harm Moscow. NATO allocates weapons and militants on Ukrainian soil and encourages conflict, but this goes up to a certain limit. No NATO country would risk going to war with Russia to save Ukraine – which is not even part of the alliance. Luckily for the Ukrainians, Russia has another strategic plan, which does not include any act of violence against Kiev. But if such a conflict were really about to happen, surely all Western “help” would cease immediately, with NATO troops retreating and the Ukrainians having to deal alone with a combat situation in which they have no chance of winning.

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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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In “normal” times, the practice of medicine has many challenges, some from within and some from outside the profession.  If you let it, much of your daily practice follows specialty guidelines, insurance company criteria, hospital formularies, and other annoyances.  None of those entities have any liability when it comes to our patients.  For the most part, liability lies with the treating physician.

Each specialty plays a particular role in a patient’s care and specialists often view issues from different angles while wearing their tunnel-vision glasses.  For instance, some physicians view elevated cholesterol as an indicator to assess other potential underlying medical issues, while a cardiologist will just write a prescription for a statin drug, just as a cat reflexively chases a mouse.

What changed overnight and across the board, was an anti-science attitude across all specialties to everything related to COVID.  A viral infection is not something requiring government management, rather, its encounter is part of a physician’s daily medical practice.  The government has seemingly accomplished what medical insurers, medical boards, and hospitals tried, but had not yet succeeded at: complete mind control of physicians.  And with that, the last vestige of respect I had for my profession died.

I’m often in attendance at medical meetings where the fine points of immunotherapy and monoclonal antibodies are discussed as part of the treatment for cancer patients.  For physicians, it is their version of science in regard to a drug’s indications, mechanisms of action, dosing, management of side effects, and the studies justifying one drug or combination over another, the latter often supported by questionable statistical analysis.

After the science-lite discussion ends, the personal chitchat begins regarding COVID and vaccines, and the point is reached where any remaining rationality becomes akin to that heard among nursery school attendees.

The tone becomes one of acceptance of the government line, all medical knowledge and cognitive abilities having vaporized.  There is no talk about the fine points of the various PCR tests, the science of personal isolation or masking, the appropriate use of indoor ventilation systems and their management, the changing of standard and long-extant medical definitions, the introduction of gene therapy used as vaccines.

Expecting any discussion regarding electron microscopy’s effect on clinical medicine, techniques of viral isolation and culturing, or the number of Nobel Prize-winning ideas now scientifically abused is not within anyone’s ken. Instead, the conversation becomes who got their booster, when they are next due, how they interact, or not, with those around them so as to stay safe, how they worry about their child being exposed, and much other utterly time and life-sucking conversational trivia.

Apparently, most physicians have not bothered to review yearly influenza data, the time frame for vaccine development, refresh their memory on definitions such as vaccine, vaccination, and immunization, or their cell biology regarding DNA, RNA, mRNA and reverse transcriptase.  Nor had they read up on symptoms commonly associated with influenza-like illness, vaccination effectiveness for influenza, or potential issues while ‘vaccinating” during active mutation of infectious diseases.

These concepts should be easily grasped by those managing cancer patients. But when it comes to COVID and vaccination, they are inverted, viewed backward or inside out, bearing no resemblance to any known medical principles or care.  All things COVID have become the medical exception, and have remained so for nearly two years.

Regarding the lapse of critical thinking skills, here are some examples that should have given physicians pause in digesting the propaganda diet they were fed.  If I can easily spread COVID to someone by breathing on them, why is there the need to swab the deep recesses of the nose?  Why is the PCR test’s methodology omitted from reports sent to physicians?  When were masks ever recommended except for those with a known contagious disease such as active tuberculosis, or those with transient low white blood cell counts?  When has gene therapy ever been used other than in incurable diseases?

Viral illness prevention is another topic that instigates a deer-in-the-headlights look.  Vitamin D is essential for many body functions including the immune system, while obesity sets one up for many medical problems and old age signals that your remaining days are limited.  Nearly all those supposedly severely ill or dead from COVID were afflicted with most if not all of these factors.  Though you cannot change your age, you can change your vitamin D intake, lose weight, stop smoking, etc.  Going off-script regarding prevention other than vaccination or monoclonal antibodies for treatment is considered unscientific.

From the time that our government issued a pandemic alert to the rollout of the vaccines, where was the inquisitiveness of physicians?  If I, certainly not first in my medical school class, could figure out that these directly applied to the issues at hand, certainly those ahead of me in my class should have.

Wisdom is a combination of knowledge, experience, and judgment.  Knowledge can be imparted, experience gained, but judgment is an inherent quality, not acquired through instruction.  You either possess good judgment or you don’t.  For some reason, many physicians are not well equipped when it comes to that leg of the stool.

Or is the seeming lack of judgment purposeful?  Certainly, the increasing number of physicians who are employed by others, most notably hospitals, plays a role. Remember: “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”  Do you think physicians are immune to that adage?  Physicians are just like everyone else, except they spent their relative youth in an expensive trade school.

It is not an uncommon occurrence for patients, family, and friends to tell me that no matter what the issue they present with to a physician, the first question asked is “Have you had the COVID vaccine?” or “Have you had your booster?”  Any answer in the negative is often followed by a harangue about its necessity.

The dilemma for physicians’ seeming lack of judgment does not lie in the future since the future is now, represented by VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System).  Significant adverse events and deaths due to the vaccine are getting harder to hide, or hide from.

Although stated in regard to the Vietnam War, this entire situation reminds me of a quote by John Kerry that I will modify for the circumstances we find ourselves in today; “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die from the COVID vaccine? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

All things COVID will eventually pass.  Few things last forever. But at some point, physicians may pay a price for their poor judgment in suspending critical thinking.  The question is, who will judge them?

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The bottom line from this data: the CFR of fully vaccinated individuals in Vermont is significantly higher than national numbers and the CFR for unvaxxed. This probably should be a warning to reset expectations for vaccination performance but also problems with stats across the country.

From our esteemed colleague, Don Wolt:

Vermont, the most highly vaxxed state (87% with ≥1 dose), reports 95 deaths among 9277 vaxx breakthrough infections for a BTI CFR of 1.02%. Compare this to an overall pandemic CFR of 0.81%, an Overall CFR for 2021 (the vaccine period) of 0.57% or an Unvaxxed 2021 CFR of 0.45%.

While, VT vaxx rates are high across all but the very youngest (<12) age cohorts, the vaxxed population probably still has a significantly higher avg age than the unvaxxed. So, perhaps we’d expect the BTI (Vaxxed) CFR to be higher than the CFR of the Overall or Unvaxxed groups.

Note, however, that Vermont’s BTI CFR (1.02%) is 2.3X that of the Unvaxxed CFR (0.45%) for 2021 – the period in which vaxxes became available. Did we expect the difference to be quite so big? Those who raised age-based CoV2 risk differences pre-vaccines were scolded for doing so.

If the reason for the big variance in CFRs is that the Unvaxxed are mostly young who suffer very few severe outcomes, why are we then pushing vaccines on younger & younger age groups, especially when we know that their protection against infection is only fleeting?

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Ortel talks about how, after leaving Wall Street to become a complex financial fraud investigator and exposing accounting and valuation irregularities at General Electric, he has been investigating financial fraud within the Clinton, Bush and Obama non-profits and says the Clinton Foundation is a massive charity fraud protected by the Justice Department and the IRS.

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Roger Wicker, membro della Commissione per i servizi armati del Senato degli Stati uniti, ha dichiarato in una intervista a Fox News (8 dicembre) di non escludere un intervento militare diretto Usa contro la Russia per «difendere l’Ucraina» e, senza che l’intervistatore glielo avesse chiesto, ha aggiunto: «Sapete che non escludiamo l’azione nucleare di primo uso», ossia di usare per primi le armi nucleari. È un messaggio trasversale a Mosca sulla determinazione degli Stati uniti a sostenere un eventuale attacco di Kiev contro i russi del Donbass. Esso sarebbe certamente presentato come risposta a un attacco effettuato dai russi del Donbass. Nella mente di chi dal 2014 ha attuato la strategia della tensione contro la Russia, questa sarebbe comunque una mossa vincente.

Mosca avrebbe due alternative: non intervenire militarmente a difesa dei russi del Donbass, lasciando che vengano travolti dall’attacco ucraino sostenuto di fatto dalla Nato e costretti ad abbandonare la regione rifugiandosi in Russia, decisione questa che sarebbe traumatica per Mosca soprattutto sul piano interno; oppure intervenire militarmente per arrestare l’attacco ucraino, esponendosi alla condanna internazionale per aggressione e invasione di uno Stato sovrano.

I generali ucraini hanno avvertito che non sarebbero in grado di «respingere le truppe russe senza una massiccia infusione di aiuto militare da Occidente».

L’infusione è già iniziata: gli Stati uniti, che hanno già dato a Kiev un aiuto militare di 2,5 miliardi di dollari, gli hanno fornito in novembre altre 88 tonnellate di munizioni nel quadro di un «pacchetto» da 60 milioni di dollari, comprendente anche missili Javelin già schierati contro i russi del Donbass.

Allo stesso tempo gli Usa hanno inviato in Ucraina oltre 150 consiglieri militari che, affiancati da quelli di una dozzina di alleati Nato, dirigono di fatto le operazioni. La situazione è ancora più esplosiva perché l’Ucraina – oggi partner ma, di fatto, già membro della Nato – potrebbe essere ufficialmente ammessa quale 31° membro della Alleanza, con la conseguenza che, in base all’Articolo 5 del Trattato Nord Atlantico, gli altri 30 membri della Nato dovrebbero intervenire militarmente sul fronte del Donbass a sostegno dell’Ucraina contro la Russia.

Il Ministero degli Esteri russo ha chiesto alla Nato di non ammettere l’Ucraina, per non accrescere ulteriormente la tensione militare e politica in Europa, ricordando che dalla fine della guerra fredda la Russia ha ricevuto ripetute assicurazioni che la giurisdizione e le forze militari della Nato non sarebbero avanzate di un pollice verso Est, ma che tali promesse non sono state mantenute.

Il Ministero degli Esteri russo ha quindi proposto alla Nato di aprire trattative per accordi di lungo termine che impediscano l’ulteriore espansione della Nato ad Est e lo spiegamento di sistemi d’arma nelle immediate vicinanze del territorio russo. La proposta è stata seccamente respinta il 10 dicembre dalla Nato, per bocca del segretario generale Stoltenberg: «Il rapporto della Nato con l’Ucraina sarà deciso dai 30 membri della Alleanza e dall’Ucraina, e da nessun altro».

Subito dopo, ieri 13 dicembre, i ministri degli Esteri del G7 (Stati Uniti, Canada, Regno Unito, Francia, Germania, Italia, Giappone) e l’Alto Rappresentante dell’Unione Europea, incontratisi a Liverpool, hanno dichiarato di essere «uniti nella condanna del rafforzamento militare della Russia e della sua retorica aggressiva verso l’Ucraina» e che «la Russia non dovrebbe avere dubbi sul fatto che un’ulteriore aggressione militare contro l’Ucraina avrebbe come risposta massicce conseguenze e gravi costi».

Intanto la Finlandia, membro della Ue e attivo partner Nato contro la Russia, annuncia l’acquisto di 64 caccia F-35A della Lockheed Martin al prezzo di 8,4 miliardi di euro che, comprese le infrastrutture, salgono a 10 miliardi, a cui il governo aggiungerà altri 10 miliardi di euro per il loro mantenimento e ammodernamento. I 64 F-35A da attacco nucleare saranno schierati ai confini con la Russia, ad appena 200 km da San Pietroburgo, di fatto sotto comando degli Usa che, come ricorda il senatore Wicker, non escludono di usare per primi le armi nucleari.

Manlio Dinucci

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The focus of the second pathology conference held by the Reutlingen team of specialists in Berlin on December 4, 2021 was 15 people who had died between seven days and six months after their Covid vaccination.

The press conference of German pathology professors Arne Burkhardt and Walter Lang, which included concerns of a doctor from Sweden, maintaining that vaccinations could lead to the turbo growth of breast cancer, was another blow to vaccine salespeople.

The 15 deaths are seven men and eight women who died between seven days and six months after their Covid vaccination. However, death did not occur in all of them – as one might suspect from media reports – in the intensive care unit or in the hospital.

Five people died at home, some on the street, one in the car, and one at work. One person came from assisted living and died there under palliative treatment. In the case of two people, the place of death is still being determined. Of the eight people who died outside of the hospital, pathologists assume that they appeared to be “in good health” at the time of vaccination and immediately before death and that death occurred suddenly.

In 12 of the 15 people, it can be assumed that vaccination contributed to death. The diagnosis of myocarditis was the most common finding with the youngest victim only 27 years old.

The reports of serious damage to health as well as death connected the current vaccinations against Covid-19 have not stopped. Strong evidence points to turbo-cancer tumours developing after vaccination and a significant, possibly long-term suppression of the natural immune system.

The first part of the pathology conference on September 20 already painted a bleak picture regarding a causal connection between serious injuries and vaccination against Covid-19.

In 7 of the cases, the pathologists determined a “very likely” connection with the vaccinations, as Prof. Burkhardt explained. Lymphocyte myocarditis was a major contributor in almost all cases. It is often claimed that heart inflammation and myocarditis are not so dangerous, but Burkhardt explained that this was not the case as many patients die within 10 years.

There are already up to 60 times more side effects as with previous vaccinations.

Some 5 percent of those vaccinated suffer terrible consequences and even death. Burkhardt said he suspected that there may be a connection between injecting the mRNA vaccines directly into the blood vessels.

The micro embolisms found by prof. Bergholz and his team are a serious indication that this was indeed the case despite claims to the contrary by the WHO. He therefore made a pathological incision of the corresponding part of the body and placed a syringe needle over it. In doing so, he clearly showed that the needle was certainly able to enter the vessel.

Mass spectrometry can be used to read which proteins were involved in mortality. This procedure is the gold standard in the delimitation of virus proteins and it is absurd that people are still relying on the useless PCR test. With mass spectroscopy, one can also differentiate between different Corona variants, explained prof. Walter Lang.

The team is awaiting Lang’s results on mass spectrometry which will be available soon and show what role spike proteins played in mortality.

Prof. Lang worked as a pathologist at the Hannover Medical School from 1968-1985. Afterwards, for 25 years, he directed a private institute for pathology in Hanover, which he founded, specializing in lung pathology, transplant pathology, extragynecological cytology and thyroid tumors. He has performed in-depth consultation diagnostics for 12 major lung clinics in Europe.

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Early on in the pandemic, before the vaccines were available, the Southern Brazilian city of Itajai offered Ivermectin as a prophylaxis against the disease.

Between July and December of 2020, roughly 220,000 people were offered a dose of 0.2mg/kg/day (roughly 18mg for a 200lb person) as an optional treatment for 2 days, once every two weeks.

133,051 people took them up on it, while 87,466 did not.

After analyzing the data, a team of researchers spanning several Brazilian institutes, the University of Toronto, and Columbia’s EAFIT concluded in a December pre-print study that hospitalization and mortality rates were cut in half over the seven month period among the Ivermectin group.

This is even more impressive when you learn the IVM users were older on average, with 30% >50 yo versus 20% for non-IVM users. The mortality reduction is even higher looking at different age groups. 85% for 31-49 yo and 59% for >50 yo. pic.twitter.com/K6D5naybCS

— Simon Vallée (@sival84) December 11, 2021

The authors adjusted for relevant confounding variables, including age, sex, medical history, previous diseases, and other conditions.

The analysis contradicts an October report by Business Insider which claims, based on a Brazilian ICU doctor’s anecdotal evidence, that the experiment was a failure.

Study limitations:

The authors note, “Being a retrospective observational analysis, it is uncertain whether results would be reproducible in a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trial, but likely, since groups of ivermectin users and non-users had  similar demographic characteristics, and rates were adjusted for the relevant confounding variables.”

We’re sure the ‘fact checkers’ are already hard at work trying to debunk the pre-print, however they may also want to take a look at ivmmeta.com – a real-time meta analysis of 70 studies which found that Ivermectin works as a prophylaxis 83% of the time. In peer-reviewed studies, it was found effective 70% of the time as an early treatment, and just 39% of the time as a late treatment.

As we noted during the whole ‘horse paste’ controversy:

Ivermectin

This widely prescribed anti-parasitic which is also used in horses has shown meaningful efficacy worldwide in the treatment of mild and moderate cases of Covid-19, plus as a prophylactic. India’s Uttar Pradesh province, with a population of over 200 million, says that widespread early use of Ivermectin ‘helped keep positivity [and] deaths low.’

Separately, there have been several studies funded by the Indian government, primarily conducted through their largest govt. public medical university (AIIMS).

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“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.” ― Howard Thurman

The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land.

Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later?

What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them?

A singular number of churches across the country have asked those very questions in recent years, and their conclusions were depicted with unnerving accuracy by nativity scenes in which Jesus and his family are separated, segregated and caged in individual chain-link pens, topped by barbed wire fencing.

Those nativity scenes were a pointed attempt to remind the modern world that the narrative about the birth of Jesus is one that speaks on multiple fronts to a world that has allowed the life, teachings and crucifixion of Jesus to be drowned out by partisan politics, secularism, materialism and war, all driven by a manipulative shadow government called the Deep State.

The modern-day church has largely shied away from applying Jesus’ teachings to modern problems such as war, poverty, immigration, etc., but thankfully there have been individuals throughout history who ask themselves and the world: what would Jesus do?

What would Jesus—the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day (namely, the Roman Empire) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire—do about the injustices of our  modern age?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself what Jesus would have done about the horrors perpetrated by Hitler and his assassins. The answer: Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler for attempting to undermine the tyranny at the heart of Nazi Germany.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asked himself what Jesus would have done about the soul-destroying gulags and labor camps of the Soviet Union. The answer: Solzhenitsyn found his voice and used it to speak out about government oppression and brutality.

Martin Luther King Jr. asked himself what Jesus would have done about America’s warmongering. The answer: declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King risked widespread condemnation as well as his life when he publicly opposed the Vietnam War on moral and economic grounds.

Even now, despite the popularity of the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD) in Christian circles, there remains a disconnect in the modern church between the teachings of Christ and the suffering of what Jesus in Matthew 25 refers to as the “least of these.”

Yet this is not a theological gray area: Jesus was unequivocal about his views on many things, not the least of which was charity, compassion, war, tyranny and love.

After all, Jesus—the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet—was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. When he grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say, things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings.

When confronted by those in authority, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. It cost him his life. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.

Can you imagine what Jesus’ life would have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state?

Consider the following if you will.

Had Jesus been born in the era of the America police state, rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc. The penalty for not responding to this invasive survey can go as high as $5,000.

Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.

Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed.

Then again, had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they first would have been separated from each other, the children detained in make-shift cages, and the parents eventually turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from imprisoning immigrants, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.

From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he been daring enough to speak out against injustice while still in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses.

Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence. Parents across the country have been arrested for far less “offenses” such as allowing their children to walk to the park unaccompanied and play in their front yard alone.

Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early teenaged years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft. Incredibly, 95 percent of school districts share their student records with outside companies that are contracted to manage data, which they then use to market products to us.

From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups, from animal rights groups to poverty relief, anti-war groups and other such “extremist” organizations.

Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”

While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs. Many states, including New York, are providing individuals with phone apps that allow them to take photos of suspicious activity and report them to their state Intelligence Center, where they are reviewed and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies.

Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled.

Viewed by the government as a dissident and a potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery.

Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored.

Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach.

Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his will for a mandatory involuntary psychiatric hold with no access to family or friends. One Virginia man was arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.

Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. Currently, 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books.

Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later.

Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year, many on unsuspecting Americans who have no defense against such government invaders, even when such raids are done in error.

Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured and subjected to all manner of abuses. Chicago police have “disappeared” more than 7,000 people into a secret, off-the-books interrogation warehouse at Homan Square.

Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.

Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, given the nature of government then and now, it is painfully evident that whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.

Thus, as we draw near to Christmas with its celebration of miracles and promise of salvation, we would do well to remember that what happened in that manger on that starry night in Bethlehem is only the beginning of the story. That baby born in a police state grew up to be a man who did not turn away from the evils of his age but rather spoke out against it.

We must do no less.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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

They are frequent contributors to Global Research.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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***

Amid a bloody civil conflict and increasing great-power competition between the United States and China, there are a number of alarming signs that Ethiopia will become the next Libya – an African nation where the U.S. intervenes militarily under the pretext of stopping an impending genocide.

A considerable military buildup is now underway. Last week, the U.S. military announced it was sending over 1,000 National Guard members to nearby Djibouti. This is on top of the special operations forces already sent in November. Perhaps most notably, a government official told CNN that the aircraft carrier USS Essex – along with two other large amphibious vehicles – was steaming towards the Horn of Africa and standing by for further orders.

For weeks, the drums of war have been growing louder in our nation’s media. “Ethiopia’s civil war is a problem U.S. troops can help solve,” Admiral James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO. wrote in Bloomberg and The Washington Post. “Sending peacekeepers to the pivotal nation of East Africa wouldn’t be popular domestically, but may be the only way to stop the conflict,” he added. Meanwhile, former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer argued that the West should establish a “no fly zone” across Ethiopia – a country of 115 million people and twice the size of France.

When it comes to Ethiopia, said head of USAID Samantha Power, one of the architects of the U.S. intervention in Libya, “every option is on the table” – using a phrase that has long been understood to be a threat of war. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also refused to rule out sending troops into Ethiopia when directly asked.

Given its bloody record, the talk of a “humanitarian” invasion has many Ethiopians worried. “The U.S. is looking for a pretext for military intervention in Ethiopia. The play books of interventions in Iraq, Syria, Yugoslavia, and Libya are being referred to,” Dr. Berhanu Taye, an Ethiopian physician and member of the Global Ethiopian Advocacy Nexus, told MintPress.

The military buildup comes on the back of economic actions already taken. In September, President Joe Biden labeled Ethiopia a national security threat as he imposed sanctions upon government officials. Last month, the U.S. also placed sanctions on Eritrea, whose troops are also heavily involved in the fight against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

The White House is currently withholding over a quarter-billion dollars of aid from Ethiopia and has ended the country’s special trade status under U.S. law, which had allowed it to export goods freely to the United States. Critics say that this could have the effect of crashing the already shaky economy, threatening over a million jobs.

Earlier this week, a number of Western governments (including the U.S.) signed a statement condemning the Ethiopian government for its human rights violations while fighting the TPLF, which they did not censure. The State Department is reportedly considering labeling the actions in Ethiopia a “genocide,” a word that would have considerable implications, given NATO’s self-declared “right to protect” doctrine, whereby it claims it has the right to intervene anywhere in the world to stop ethnic cleansing.

A year of deadly fighting

Bordering Eritrea and Sudan, Tigray is Ethiopia’s northernmost region, home to 7 million people. Although ethnic Tigrayans constitute only around 6% of Ethiopia’s population, they play an outsized role in public life, as the TPLF controlled the country between 1991 and 2018, when popular protests forced them out of power.

Tigrayans were near ubiquitous in the upper ranks of the country’s military and intelligence services, and were greatly overrepresented among its economic elite. This, for Dr. Taye, amounted to no less than a system of informal “Apartheid” that was ignored by most of the West. MintPress also contacted a spokesperson for the TPLF, but did not receive a response.

Since coming to power in 2018, the new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has moved against the TPLF in a set of changes that supporters see as much needed reforms to reduce corruption and the TPLF’s grip over public life, but opponents see as overstepping his mandate and as the persecution of an ethnic minority.

The spark for war came in November 2020, when Ahmed attempted to remove military officers belonging to the TPLF from their command. The TPLF fought back, attacking Northern Command headquarters in Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region. Later that month, TPLF forces also shelled Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. As the TPLF reportedly have drawn closer to the capital, Addis Ababa, a number of the country’s sports stars, including long-distance running hero Haile Gebrselassie, have volunteered for government military service.

The fighting has continued since then, save for a unilateral government ceasefire in the summer in order that the country’s harvest would not be ruined. Nevertheless, the humanitarian costs have been extremely grave. More than 9 million people live in conflict regions, an estimated 400,000 of those suffering under famine-like conditions, according to the United Nations. Tens of thousands have died in the conflict, which has seen documented atrocities from all sides. The number of displaced people, already high, has now grown to an estimated 4 million.

The TPLF maintains that the Ethiopian government is blocking international aid convoys from reaching Tigray and that Prime Minister Abiy must step down. Yet Abiy won a landslide victory earlier this year, and was only inaugurated in October. While there were clear drawbacks with the process (voting did not take place in war-ravaged regions like Tigray, for instance), it is difficult to interpret his party winning over 90% of the seats contested as anything other than a national mandate.

Media’s demonizing chorus

Thus, the conflict is ultimately a struggle between two political forces for the control of Ethiopia’s economy. Yet this is not at all how corporate media have presented the issue, preferring instead to frame it as the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments exterminating an ethnic minority group. CNN, for example, wrote:

Eritrean troops aren’t just working hand in glove with the Ethiopian government, assisting in a merciless campaign against the Tigrayan people; in some pockets they’re fully in control and waging a reign of terror… [that] bears the hallmarks of genocide and has the potential to destabilize the wider Horn of Africa region.

The New York Times has followed a similar line in much of its reporting. Embedding themselves with the TPLF, they described their companions as “a scrappy force of local Tigrayan recruits” that had, against the odds, “scored a cascade of battlefield victories against the Ethiopian military, one of Africa’s strongest.”

Many Ethiopians have been critical of this coverage. Dr. Kassahun Melesse, an Ethiopian economist from the Oregon State University, noted:

Let alone the framing, the mainstream media got the most fundamental fact about the military conflict wrong: the date the military conflict between the Ethiopian National Defense Forces and the TPLF began. For instance, in virtually all of its reporting on conflict, The New York Times has stated that the federal government launched the war on Nov. 4, 2020. And because the media got this basic fact wrong, all the major theories and framing based on this premise are wrong.”

Taye was even more blunt. “Western mainstream media continue to fabricate lies and disseminate disinformation intended to demonize the Ethiopian government,” he said.

One example of bias pro-Abiy Ethiopians have pointed to is the Times’ apparent whitewashing of the TPLF’s alleged use of child soldiers. Possibly referring to this, the Times describes the TPLF as consisting largely of “highly motivated young recruits.” Even more incriminating, the article’s co-author shared a series of (since deleted) images on his Instagram to promote the story, one of which shows not only children but obviously pre-pubescent boys carrying rifles, complete with a caption seemingly describing them as “highly motivated young recruits.” The TPLF maintains that it does not use child soldiers.

via @besabestin, a New York Times photographer shared this image of the "highly motivated young recruits" he was talking about. pic.twitter.com/RQJfkmRXpn

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) December 7, 2021

Unfortunately, many individuals challenging the established Western media narrative are now being excised from social media, including massive accounts – like @HornofAfricaHub, Simon Tesfamariam (@STesfa) and Abdirahiman Warsame’s @SomalianFacts – some of which had millions of followers. Ethiopian journalist Hermela Aregawi claimed that Twitter Senior Program Manager Martha Wolday, herself a Tigrayan, appeared to be abusing her position to ban anti-TPLF and pro-Abiy voices and suppress the anti-interventionist hashtag #NoMore.

Libya: a warning from history

At the height of the Arab Spring in 2011, demonstrations against Muammar al-Gaddafi broke out across Libya. Gaddafi had historically been a thorn in the side of the West, refusing to follow orders and attempting to unite both the Arab and African worlds against the established order. Seeing their chance, Western nations immediately began warning that the dictator was on the verge of massacring all those protesting his rule. Immediately, media were filled with lurid and false stories about Gaddafi giving his soldiers Viagra before making them rape protestors. We were, if accounts were to be believed, on the edge of genocide.

Obama era officials like Samantha Power and Susan Rice were among the loudest voices demanding a military response, invoking the controversial “Right to Protect” doctrine, which stated that NATO could intervene anywhere in the world to prevent human rights violations.

Media interest in Libyan human rights went through the roof, peaking in mid-March at the time of the intervention, before falling off a cliff and barely being discussed in the decade since, according to data from Google Trends. Despite the PR blitz, Americans remained dead against military intervention. Thus, it was intially sold to the public as merely imposing a “no-fly zone” on the country, to prevent Libyan planes from bombing forces we now know to have been U.S.-supported Jihadists.

Of course, NATO’s intervention quickly escalated far beyond a no-fly zone, turning the tide of the war and helping the beleagured Jihadists take Tripoli and depose Gaddafi. Since then, Libya has descended into chaos, replete with slave markets where one can buy humans for as little as $400. Today, Rice and Power are back in charge and there is already serious talk of imposing a no fly zone on the Horn of Africa. For many Ethiopians, things are starting to feel worryingly similar to 2011.

US legitimizes TPLF insurgence

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front came to power in 1991 after a long and bloody conflict against the military government of Mengistu Haile Mariam. The same conflict ultimately led to the independence of Eritrea from Ethiopia.

During their 27 years in office, the TPLF enmeshed itself into the state, with Tigrayans continuing to occupy senior positions across the country. Throughout this time, Ethiopia was a loyal ally of the United States, in contrast with the Marxist-Leninist Mengistu. Ethiopia helped the U.S. carry out its foreign policy objectives across the region. This support led to the United States turning a blind eye to many of its excesses. In 2015, for instance, President Barack Obama endorsed the country’s elections, where the TPLF coalition won 100% of the seats, as legitimate, while his State Department described Ethiopia as a “democracy.”  This was in contrast to Human Rights Watch, which claimed it was “one of the most inhospitable places in the world for people speaking out against government policies, as well as for any human rights research and advocacy,” noting that the TPLF held thousands of political prisoners in the country’s prison system.

Melesse said that, by refusing to formally take a side between an elected government and a group that it has declared a terrorist organization, the U.S. has effectively legitimized the TPLF struggle. The reasons for this position, he argues, include “the return of several Obama-era officials in the U.S. State Department, USAID, and other U.S. government agencies who are sympathetic to the causes of the rebels in Tigray,” and “the misguided view within the U.S. foreign policy establishment that conflates support to the people of Tigray with support to the TPLF.”

In November, the TPLF met with nine opposition political groups in Washington, where they signed an agreement to work together to depose Abiy and to form a rival government of their own. “As a response to the major crisis facing various nations of the country and to reverse the harmful effects of Abiy Ahmed’s autocratic rule, to our peoples and beyond, we have recognized the urgent need to collaborate, join our forces towards a safe transition in the country,” a spokesperson told gathered reporters. The symbolism of holding the event in Washington could hardly be missed.

The government fired back, claiming that their war was not only against the TPLF, “but also with colonialism of the powerful states of the West.”

US “Help” unwelcome

The background of this conflict also includes the wider geopolitical struggle between the United States and China. As part of its Belt and Road Initiative, a long-term plan to develop much of Afro-Eurasia and bring it economically closer to China, Beijing has been investing massively across Africa, with Ethiopia one of the continent’s top recipients of Chinese investment. Between 2000 and 2018, Ethiopia borrowed $13.7 billion from China, compared to $9.2 billion from the U.S. Most of that money has gone into huge infrastructure projects or to developing Ethiopian manufacturing.

Chinese money has helped build more than 50,000 kilometers of new roads since 2000, including an $86 million ring road for Addis Ababa. It has also funded the construction of a $475 million light railway system for the capital and the 750 kilometer Addis Ababa to Djibouti railroad, which will greatly boost trade and has reduced transport times from three days to ten hours. The Chinese-built port of Djibouti is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most advanced and busiest trading centers.

Walking the streets in Addis Ababa, individuals are as likely to see Chinese brands as American ones. Huawei and Tecno far outrank Apple in smartphone sales, with Infinix and Itel poised to overtake the California giant as well. China has signed dozens of memoranda of understanding with Ethiopia, helping it to become, by most measures, the country’s number one import and export partner. Currently, there are more than 10,000 Chinese firms doing business in the country.

The big loser in this is the U.S., which was long ago overtaken as Ethiopia’s primary economic partner. Americans have warned that this relationship is little more than debt-trap diplomacy, and that China is engaging in neocolonialism across Africa.

In recent years, the United States has become increasingly alarmed by China’s economic rise, and has attempted to stymie it. In addition to sanctions on Beijing, it has also tried to block the growth of Chinese tech companies like Huawei and TikTok, all the while building up its military in the South China Sea, under the guise of protecting Taiwan. Thus, there are fears that, as it is losing economic control over Ethiopia, the U.S. could be preparing to reassert control militarily.

For its part, the Chinese government has unequivocally backed Abiy. “China will steadfastly stand with the Ethiopian people, and keep to the consistent position of opposing external intervention in Ethiopia’s internal affairs with the disguise of human rights or democracy,” Zhao Zhiyuan, Chinese ambassador to Ethiopia, said last week.

However, it would be a mistake to label Abiy as some sort of communist Trojan Horse. As Melesse noted, this rupture with the U.S. was unexpected, as his government, “both in ideology and practice is more aligned with the West’s capitalist, liberal democratic order than was the TPLF-led regime it succeeded.” The new prime minister has passed a number of pro-market reforms and privatized government-owned businesses. He has also been willing to borrow money from both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, two institutions often seen as extensions of American power.

HAPPENING NOW: At least 500 members of Ethiopian & Eritrean diaspora are outside the State Dept demanding the US stop supporting TPLF terror & stop its economic aggression in the region.

“Joe Biden: Hands Off Ethiopia!”

“Hands off Eritrea!”

“USA! Stop supporting TPLF!”#NoMore pic.twitter.com/7hxS6WjgKi

— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) December 10, 2021

The conflict in Tigray and other regions has devastated Ethiopian society. With the TPLF in a strong position and promising to march all the way to Addis Ababa to depose Abiy, it is unlikely that there will be any decisive military victory one way or another any time soon. This means that the humanitarian crisis will continue. Tens of thousands of refugees have fled to neighboring states, while continued violence threatens supplies of food and medicines.

While many clearly need help, judging by the large rallies held across the world, including in Washington, demanding “No More” U.S. intervention in Ethiopia and Eritrea, it seems clear that they are aware that the Biden administration’s idea of “help” might not be exactly what they had in mind.

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

Featured image: Samantha Power meets with ministers from donor countries to drum up financial support for Tigray. Photo | DVIDS

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

At least 15 lawmakers who hold powerful positions on a pair of House and Senate committees that control US military policy have financial ties to prominent defense contractors that together were worth nearly $1 million in 2020, according to an Insider analysis of federal financial records.

And throughout 2021, both Democrats and Republicans serving on the congressional Armed Services committees have continued to invest in or cash out of the most important players in the military and defense industry.

Some of the world-renowned weapons makers and defense-technology developers peppered across the committee members’ financial disclosures were Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., Raytheon Technologies Corp., Honeywell, and General Electric. All are companies that also annually spend millions of dollars lobbying the federal government to prod elected officials, shape policy, and win lucrative government contracts.

Lawmakers with investments riding on defense contractors’ well-being — some worth upward of five figures — include seasoned Capitol Hill veterans and Washington newcomers, Insider found when analyzing documents disclosing their personal financial holdings for 2020.

The tally is part of the exhaustive Conflicted Congress project, in which Insider reviewed nearly 9,000 financial-disclosure reports for every sitting lawmaker and their top-ranking staffers.

House investments

Atop the list is the 16-term Rep. Jim Cooper, a Democrat of Tennessee who chairs the House panel’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee. He reported owning up to $65,000 worth of stock in General Electric at the end of 2020, with up to $50,000 worth of it held in a tax-favored individual retirement account and up to $15,000 worth held in a brokerage account established for one of his children.

A diversified company that produces a variety of products, GE describes itself as a “leading supplier of integrated systems and technologies for combat aircraft, military transport, helicopters, land vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles.”

Democratic Reps. Joe Courtney of Connecticut and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey reported briefly owning defense-related stocks during 2020. Courtney is in his eighth term and chairs the House panel’s Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee. Sherrill is a second-term lawmaker and considered a more junior member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Click here to read the full article.

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Featured image: From left: Rep. Jim Cooper, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, Sen. Jacky Rosen, and Rep. Pat Fallon.US House of Representatives; US Senate; Marianne Ayala/Insider

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

In a miserable travesty of justice which is actually no surprise in our decayed western civilization – or rather non-civilization, Julian Assange is about to be extradited to the United States from the UK’s most notorious Maximum-Security Prison, Belmarsh.

For what? He had originally been arrested for “raping” two women in Sweden. Pressed for the truth, the women admitted it was consensual sex, but “he didn’t wear a condom”. They were clearly coerced to accuse Julian Assange with rape. Because Washington wanted Sweden to extradite him.

But Assange escaped to the UK, where he found political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, under Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, from 2012 to 2019. Correa’s successor, Lenin Moreno, under US pressure, kicked Assange out from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and under pressure from the US, he was immediately imprisoned in Belmarsh prison camp.

Sweden dropped the charges. But the real “criminals” the US of A, wanted him for high treason, because he disclosed in Wikileaks thousands and thousands of pieces of information divulging to the public high war crimes by the US in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. War crimes that pale those judged by the 1947 Nuremberg trials. That’s why Julian Assange has to be punished. If indeed extradited, he faces a 273-year prison term (sic).

We live in a dystopian world. And most of us have no clue.

Julian is a hero.

Had he written about crimes – even invented by the West  – committed by Russia or China, he might be a candidate for the Peace Nobel Prize. That’s the sick sick world we live in.

This 14 min video (in Spanish) by Ramon Freire, a Chilean Political Analyst, describes extraordinarily well what is happening to Julian. It depicts the world we are living in – the West in particular – all civilization is gone. Ethics are gone. How can we still live with ourselves?

We cannot. The human race has seized being human – as humanity is linked to solidarity. May this be the reason, why it appears so easy to transfer “humans” into “transhumans” — as per Klaus Schwab’s “The Great Reset”?

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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 (CRG).

Dear Readers,

We thank you for your support.

Amongst our most important articles.

A review of Pfizer’s “Confidential Report” released as a result of Freedom of Information (FOI), entitled Bombshell Document Dump on Pfizer Vaccine Mandate.

An important statement by Canada’s “Mounties for Freedom” focussing on the mandate of Law Enforcement officers in relation to the vaccine mandate to Preserve the Peace and Uphold the Law and abide by fundamental constitutional rights.

Forward this text far and wide.

We call upon police officers in Canada, the US, and Worldwide to take a stance regarding the vaccine mandate and the responsibilities of law enforcement officers.

Also read the outstanding analysis regarding the pandemic by Dr. Thomas Binder entitled “The Prevailing Corona Nonsense Narrative”.

Also of significance several articles on the deportation of Julian Assange including the incisive articles by Kurt Nimmo, John Pilger and Paul Craig Roberts. Also Shane Quinn‘s incisive analysis of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 80 years ago.

Despite media censorship, our readership today is in excess of 125,000 page views (English, French and Spanish).

Please forward Global Research articles, post them on independent websites, social media and on your blogs.

For Peace and Truth in Media,

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 14, 2021

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Bombshell Document Dump on Pfizer Vaccine Data

By Global Research, December 11, 2021

In a twisted irony, the data revealed in this “insider report” refutes the official vaccine narrative peddled by the governments and the WHO. It also confirms the analysis of numerous medical doctors and scientists who have revealed the devastating consequences of the mRNA “vaccine”.

“The Forced Coercive Medical Intervention of Canadians”: Mounties for Freedom Open Letter to RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki

By Mounties for Freedom, December 13, 2021

We respectfully submit this open letter to express our most sincere concerns and resolute stand against the forced coercive medical intervention of Canadians, and against the undue discrimination experienced by those exercising their lawful right to bodily autonomy.

The Prevailing Corona Nonsense Narrative

By Dr. Thomas Binder, December 13, 2021

Worldwide, the prevailing corona narrative was established in a very short period. At the same time, humanity was divided into its supporters and opponents.

U.S. Charges against Assange. I Don’t Want to Hear Any More About the “Free World.” There Is None: Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, December 13, 2021

The charges against Julian Assange make no sense. Assange is not an American citizen, but the charges against him assume that he is a US citizen in the pay of a foreign government.

Assange Suffers Stroke While Governments Implement Panopticon Surveillance. The Imposition of 1984 Tyranny

By Kurt Nimmo, December 13, 2021

It’s being reported today Julian Assange suffered a stroke while interned and tortured at Belmarsh Prison in the UK. It’s said the stroke occurred after Assange learned he will be extradited to the US to face espionage and computer hacking charges.

“Pandemic Policy Mandates”: Who Will be Held Responsible for this Devastation? “The Unvaccinated are the Scapegoats”

By Jeffrey A. Tucker, December 13, 2021

If the pandemic policy response had taken the form of mere advice, we would not be in the midst of this social, economic, cultural, political disaster. What caused the wreckage was the application of political force that was baked into the pandemic response this time in a way that has no precedent in human history.

Florida Surgeon General Promotes Nutraceuticals for COVID. Vitamin D

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, December 13, 2021

Ladapo has now issued a statewide public service announcement in support of commonsense COVID prevention strategies such as optimizing your vitamin D, staying active, eating nutrient-dense foods and boosting your immune system with supplements such as vitamin C, quercetin and zinc.

Alert: Japan Places Myocarditis Warning on ‘Vaccines’ – Requires Informed Consent

By Abraham Greenhouse, December 13, 2021

Japan is now labeling Covid “vaccines” to warn of dangerous and potentially deadly side effects such as myocarditis. In addition, the country is reaffirming its commitment to adverse event reporting requirements to ensure all possible side effects are documented.

Is the World Adopting the Ways of Nazi Germany?

By Michael J. Talmo, December 13, 2021

Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond governments and churches were authorized to burn people at the stake for heresy and witchcraft usually after severely torturing them. Naturally, these sadistic idiots thought what they were doing was virtuous and necessary. Just because official government authority and experts authorize something doesn’t make it holy, right, or true.

The Bombing of Pearl Harbor and Japan’s Early Conquests 80 Years Ago

By Shane Quinn, December 13, 2021

From the outset of World War II, the Franklin Roosevelt administration envisaged that America would emerge from the conflict in a position of global dominance. The United States had boasted the world’s largest economy since 1871, surpassing Britain that year, and the gap increased through the early 20th century and beyond.

A Day in the Death of British Justice

By John Pilger, December 13, 2021

For those who may have forgotten, WikiLeaks, of which Assange is founder and publisher, exposed the secrets and lies that led to the invasion of Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the murderous role of the Pentagon in dozens of countries, the blueprint for the 20-year catastrophe in Afghanistan, the attempts by Washington to overthrow elected governments, such as Venezuela’s, the collusion between nominal political opponents (Bush and Obama) to stifle a torture investigation and the CIA’s Vault 7 campaign that turned your mobile phone, even your TV set, into a spy in your midst.

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This symposium has been dedicated to the sounding of a triple call: a call for humanity, a call for freedom, a call for justice.
 
The call for Humanity is addressed to physicians around the globe. They have played central roles in conjuring up and driving the COVID-19 narrative along its fatal path. 

Return to your pledged duties to serve humanity. Recall the Oath of Hippocrates and the 1954 Declaration of Geneva. Avoid doing harm.

Physicians who participate in the vaccination program: search for the truth in your souls. Are you acting out of conviction? Have you attempted to weigh out the evidence for and against the administration of the gene-based agents? Early in the vaccination campaign you may have believed that injecting gene-based COVID products served the best interests of your patients. This Symposium has however irrefutably documented that that stance is no longer viable. The potential of the so-called vaccines to trigger self-destruction is now revealed. Continuance of their application will be equatable with intended infliction of bodily harm. You, medicinal professionals of the world, can and must stop this immediately. Can you bear the thought that your next injection could wipe out the hopes and happiness of an innocent child? Blood that you may have on your hands can still be washed off. But new blood will remain on you until the Day of Judgment.

Physicians, we call upon you to decline to participate in the harm of your patients. Resist the hijacking of medicine by politics, and take patient care and patient safety back into your own hands.

Our Call for Freedom is addressed to the governmental bodies and medicinal agencies, whose conflicts of interest abound. We charge them with usurping their powers in order to serve their own interests. They have inflicted untold suffering on the world populace – cynically, mercilessly, remorselessly. The first individuals we address here are the medical doctors: Anthony Fauci, Ursula van der Leyen, the Austrian and German ministers of health, the next President of Switzerland. Do you not fear that your names will go down in history alongside with the names of the greatest evil-doers of all times – and forever mar the standing and prestige of our once-honoured profession?

We challenge you to come forth and debate the matter with us in an open and honest fashion. This challenge extends to all medical institutions that continue to laud the merits of COVID-vaccination. Colleagues: we cannot both be right and it is our implicit duty to come together and seek the truth. Come, colleagues, convince the world of your honourable stance by accepting our challenge. We await you any time, any day, anywhere.

Our Call for Justice is addressed to the law courts of the world. Pleas for help are reaching your courtrooms from around the globe. Return to your judicial responsibility to protect and stand by the populace that is being terrorized by a select few of the world. Recall your professional duties and maintain the ethics of your profession. Open your eyes, your ears and your minds to both of the opposing parties.

Ensure that the guilty are brought to justice.

And, finally, to our fellow members of the human family: we call upon you to stand up for your rights, and the rights of those you love – your freedom, your bodily autonomy, your right to live, speak, move and work freely, without medical coercion, intimidation, or fear of reprisal.

For once you give those rights away, they will not be given back. You will be sentencing your children and the generations to come to an existence in a world of darkness, to a life devoid of empathy, of love, of humanity. A life no longer worth living.

STAND UP NOW!

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‘Even if children and adolescents and people in their 20s are infected, it is naturally mild or asymptomatic,’ Japanese drug bulletin Med Check said. ‘It is a ridiculous to consider vaccination for school children.’

COVID vaccines may pose at least a seven times higher risk of death than the virus itself for people in their 20s, a Japanese medical bulletin warns.

A review in the most recent issue of Med Check, a bimonthly bulletin published by the Japan Institute of Pharmacovigilance (NOPJIP) as a member of the International Society of Drug Bulletins (ISDB), found that the death risk of the jabs may even be as high as 40 times greater for young people.

Med Check cited three reports of individuals between the ages of 20 and 29 who died within days or weeks of vaccination, estimating the death rate for that age group at 3.2 per 1 million. One of the apparent vaccine deaths was that of a 27-year-old professional baseball player, who collapsed eight days after getting jabbed and died after a month-long battle in a hospital.

The bulletin noted that the number of deaths may be higher, in part because the Japanese government only requires reports of suspected vaccine injuries within 28 days of injection. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare received a total of 1,308 reports of deaths after COVID vaccination by October 15.

Even with just three cases, the risk of a fatal reaction to the vaccine significantly outpaced the danger of the virus for young people, who have a 0.6-0.8 per 1 million chance of dying from the disease in Japan, according to Med Check. Just seven of 11.8 million Japanese people in their 20s died of COVID by June 2021, and 10 died by mid-August.

Risk of death from vaccination was more than seven times higher as of June, and nearly five times higher by August 11, compared to the risk presented by coronavirus, Med Check determined. Over several years, death risk for vaccination among those in their 20s could range as high as 40 times greater than for COVID-19.

Med Check also pointed out that there were no COVID deaths in Japan under the age of 20 until September 2021. “If children in this age group are vaccinated, it may cause death,” the bulletin warned.

“Even if children and adolescents and people in their 20s are infected, it is naturally mild or asymptomatic because they have less SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2 than adults especially old people. It is a ridiculous to consider vaccination for school children.”

Between 0.00 and 0.03 percent of COVID cases in the United States under age 18 have resulted in deaths, and zero healthy children between the ages of 5 and 18 died of the virus during the first 15 months of the pandemic in Germany, a recent study found.

The survival rate for COVID-19 has been estimated at no lower than 99.7 percent for all age groups under 60 years old.

Med Check’s analysis echoes similar assessments by other experts, such as Dr. Jessica Rose, a viral immunologist who told an FDA panel in September that the jab’s dangers “outweigh any potential benefit,” citing a “highly anomalous” rise in vaccine injury reports due to the injections.

“We could end up killing thousands of our children with these safety untested vaccines,” health researcher and former Trump official Dr. Paul Elias Alexander likewise warned in an article for LifeSiteNews. “There is no proper safety data, either medium or long term, and parents must stand up now and say NO!”

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Pandemic, epidemic, or a medical emergency. No matter what we call it, people suffering from vascular disease have dramatically increased, and too many are dying from it. Not only is there no vaccine possible for heart disease, but in all probability, the COVID vaccines are driving the pain, suffering, and death through sudden onset heart disease. In the week ending November 12, 2021, the U.K. reported 2,047 more deaths than occurred during the same period between 2015 and 2019; heart disease and strokes appear to be behind many of the excess deaths.

“I watched Roy die, and I could not get to him. We were about to leave for the hospital, and he was in the toilet, and I heard a thud. He had fallen, his body was blocking the door, his full weight was against it, and I couldn’t get it open. I could see him through a crack in the door. I could see that he was gone.”

Rory had received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on November 5 and started feeling ‘heart flutters’ that evening. The symptoms continued, and 12 days later, he began to suffer heart palpitations and an ‘uncomfortable’ feeling in his chest.

Inside the emergency department at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan, staff members are struggling to care for patients showing up much sicker than they’ve ever seen. Patients are showing up to the E.R. sicker than before the pandemic; their diseases are more advanced and need more complicated care. “We are hearing from members in every part of the country,” said Dr. Lisa Moreno, president of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine. “The Midwest, the South, the Northeast, the West … they are seeing this exact same phenomenon.” And already-overwhelmed staffers are burning out.

Things are so bad that Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Dec. 8 activated the state’s National Guard to assist at hospitals. Dr. Andrew Mueller, CEO of MaineHealth, told reporters in a virtual briefing that hospitalizations for COVID-19 in the health care system are at their highest level even though Maine has a high vaccination rate.

Focusing on Heart Disease

A 33-year-old registered nurse in New Zealand recently went public on social media to share her story of being diagnosed with pericarditis after being injected with a second dose of a COVID-19 shot. She states that she was placed in a section of the hospital that was treating vaccine injuries, and that she was the 7th person admitted that day suffering a heart problem following a Pfizer shot.

The COVID-19 shots cause heart disease, mainly myocarditis and pericarditis, which destroys our young people’s health. This is a fact that is no longer in dispute, as even the CDC admits this, as their most recent report states: As of November 24, 2021, VAERS has received 1,949 reports of myocarditis or pericarditis among people ages 30 and younger who received COVID-19 vaccine. Most cases have been reported after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna), particularly in male adolescents and young adults. (Source.)

At the beginning of December, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration added a warning to patient and provider fact sheets for the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines to indicate a risk of heart inflammation. The CDC agrees, saying that a higher-than-usual number of cases of a type of heart inflammation has been reported following the Covid-19 vaccination, especially among young men following their second dose of an mRNA vaccine.

In the last 13 weeks alone, in England, about 107,700 seniors died above the normal rate, despite a 98.7% injection rate.

A new study and warning from the American Heart Association: mRNA vaccines dramatically increase risk of developing heart disease — “The PLUS Cardiac Test score has been measured every 3-6 months in our patient population for eight years. Recently, with the advent of the mRNA COVID 19 vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer, dramatic changes in the PULS score became apparent in most patients.” Twitter, the new heavyweight medical know everything platform, disagrees and put a warning about this information.

Heart inflammation has three main types: myocarditis (inflamed heart muscles), pericarditis (inflamed outer linings of the heart), and endocarditis (inflamed inner linings of the heart). But only myocarditis and pericarditis have been associated with mRNA vaccine.

Common clinical signs of mRNA vaccine-related myocarditis and pericarditis are elevated troponin (a blood biomarker of heart muscle damage) levels, abnormal cardiac imaging, and chest pain. Other rarer symptoms include headache, breathlessness, fatigue, and body ache.

In one study, researchers from Israel found that individuals vaccinated with Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine had a 3.24-times increased risk of myocarditis within 21 days of either the first or second dose compared to unvaccinated individuals. This equated to an excess of 2.7 events per 100,000 persons. About 90% of those myocarditis cases happened to males aged 20–34 years.

Pfizer vaccine has triggered inflammation of the heart!
Do you doubt that and swear allegiance to Twitter?
Or are you one of many ridiculous doctors and health officials
who hides behind the “rare” word that describes vaccine reactions?

For another study, researchers from the U.S. calculated that 12–39-year-olds had a 9.8-times increased risk of myocarditis/pericarditis at days 1–21 of vaccination compared to those at days 22–42 of vaccination. This gives an excess of 6.3 cases per million doses. More specifically, 85% of cases affected males, 85% occurred within seven days of vaccination (more commonly after the second dose), 82% led to hospitalization, and 6% led to the intensive care unit (ICU).

Since the COVID vaccines became available, nearly 300 athletes have experienced cardiac arrest, and over 167 have died.

Dr. Joseph Mercola reports that “many athletes are now losing their careers due to COVID jab injuries. For example, Florian Dagoury is the world record holder in static breath-hold freediving. Before his Pfizer jabs, he was able to hold his breath for 10 minutes and 30 seconds. After his second dose, his diving performance was slashed by about 30%, and he’s been diagnosed with myocarditis, pericarditis, and trivial mitral regurgitation. Others include tennis player Jeremy Chardy and 32-year-old triathlete Antoine Mechin. Both were severely injured by their COVID jabs. Both now regret taking the shot. “Damaging healthy people to preserve the health of the weakest,” Mechin now says, is “a choice of backward logic.”

Former Australian pro-basketball player Ben Madgen, 36, was diagnosed with pericarditis after receiving his second shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in a report from the Covid world. After taking the Pfizer shot, the doctor told him that having pericarditis is now common to teenage boys and young males.

A London Evening Standard report quotes senior vascular surgeon Tahir Hussain, who works at an NHS hospital in London. “I’ve seen a big increase in thrombotic-related vascular conditions in my practice,” said Hussain. “Far younger patients are being admitted and requiring surgical and medical intervention than prior to the pandemic.”

Of course, this has nothing to do with dangerous COVID vaccines. Hussain said that the cases are “a direct result of the increased stress and anxiety levels caused from the effects of PPSD (post-pandemic stress disorder).” He also said that people dying at home “from conditions such as pulmonary embolism and myocardial infarction” were down to self-isolating and not seeking the medical care they needed.

A ‘”HEALTHY” single mom with no pre-existing medical conditions has died four days after receiving the second dose of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine.

Kassidi Kurill, 39, suddenly passed away on February 5 after she complained to her parents that “her heart was racing and she felt like she needed to get to the emergency room.”

Former senior NHS psychological therapist Mark Rayner said as many as 300,000 heart ailments could be due to “post-pandemic stress disorder.” No matter what the cause, these numbers suggest an epidemic, in little England, of heart disorders, all of them calling for intense magnesium administration. Now try to imagine what is going on around the world. Yes, with pandemic health responses and vaccines leading the way, stress levels are going through the roof. People certainly do not like their freedom taken away from them and do not enjoy the world’s changes being forced down their collective throats.

“I had my 1st Pfizer shot on Friday, and I’ve had an elevated heart rate between 90 and 104 since Saturday. It’s now Tuesday. It kind of feels like it skips a beat sometimes. It’s making me apprehensive about getting the 2nd shot.”

Doctors and health officials are not interested in measuring the reactions of the heart post-COVID vaccination. Still, I imagine if a study were quickly done measuring the heart rate variability (HRV), we would see the vaccine disaster unfolding when we calculate the timing of each beat of the heart. The heart is super sensitive and vulnerable to any adverse events, but there is little to no interest in looking carefully at what is going on.

My heart rate is elevated. Like goes up to 125 to do a flight of stairs. I am on day three since the shot. My doctor says I am fine. Should I be worried?

HRV is a scientifically researched phenomenon that measures the variability in the R portion of the QRST wave of a regular heartbeat. Over time, even with a normal heartbeat, there is variability between the beats. The more variability, the healthier the heart. The higher the heart rate variability, the greater are the potential reserves of the body to adapt. HRV and vagus nerve activity are helpful as long-term measures of inflammation in chronic diseases.

Our heart does not lie, not when you look at what it says on a beat-to-beat basis (HRV). It is our most honest digital code, and doctors can read it using the VedaPulse (which happens to be on sale). A five-minute test can be done in the comfort of one’s own home or doctor’s office, and one has a five-minute readout of the code the heart is putting out. When I do my readouts, I use only two minutes to see how stressed my heart is.

Treatments For Heart Problems

It is sad how much Magnesium is ignored by mainstream medicine. In the case of male teenagers and athletes developing heart inflammation after taking the COVID injection, it is tragic. Magnesium is one of the best medications to cool the fires of inflammation because it is

–Magnesium that modulates cellular events involved in inflammation. Inflammatory indicators in the body such as CRP (C-reactive protein), TNF (tumor necrosis factor-alpha), and IL6 (interleukin 6) are reduced when magnesium intake is increased. In addition, inflammation in the arterial walls was also reduced with magnesium intake, and without enough Magnesium, the heart goes into cardiac arrest or many other heart disorders.

The essential medicine for coronavirus hospital patients is magnesium chloride given intravenously or injected. Magnesium administration for COVID would reduce the progression of the disease to severe or fatal stages when caught earlier enough and keep heart patients from dying in the later stages.

Studies show that combinations of Vitamin D, Magnesium and B12 administered to older COVID-19 patients were associated with a significant reduction in the proportion of patients with clinical deterioration requiring oxygen and intensive care support.

Dr. Sarah Myhill has been using I.V. magnesium in her general practice for over 20 years for both acute and chronic problems. She uses it for all patients with acute chest pain (unless the blood pressure is low), acute heart failure, pulmonary embolus, and acute asthma. Myhill says, “It is a potent vasodilator – i.e., it opens up all the blood vessels. Indeed patients can feel their blood vessels dilating as I give them the Magnesium – they warm up all over! This has the immediate effect of reducing the work of the heart and opening up the collateral circulation of the heart. Most patients with acute heart attacks have their pain completely relieved by I.V. magnesium.”

Magnesium oil is magnesium chloride and is terrific for all forms of magnesium administration. It is the most flexible form of magnesium.

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Dr. Mark Sircus is Professor of Natural Oncology, Da Vinci Institute of Holistic Medicine, Doctor of Oriental and Pastoral Medicine, Founder of Natural Allopathic Medicine

Featured image is from Dr Sircus

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On Nov. 8, 2021, an abstract appeared in the Journal Circulation of the American Heart Association (AMA) showing that COVID vaccines “dramatically” increase heart inflammation in the people that were studies. Plus led to a substantial increase in the risk of heart complications, like myocarditis and heart attacks.

Twitter put a note on the post by the AMA, stating that it could be misleading and the study could have errors in it.

Cardiologist and NHS consultant Dr. Aseem Malhotra appeared on GBN explaining the findings, and while he was doing so he mentioned another study conducted by a well known cardiologist, who wished to remain anonymous, that found the same thing.

He stated the following,

“A few days ago after this was published (the abstract), somebody from a very prestigious British institution, cardiologist department, a researcher. A whistleblower if you’d like contacted me to say that the researchers in this department had found something similar within the coronary arteries linked to the vaccine, inflammation from imaging studies around the coronary arteries.

And they had a meeting, and these researchers at the moment have decided that they’re not going to publish their findings. Because they are concerned about losing research money from the drug industry.

Now this person was very upset about it, and um, I obviously wanted to share this on GB news today.”

-Dr. Aseem Malhotra

What does this say about the current moment our world is living in? Important information is concealed due to the fact it may threaten one’s ability to work, leaving the public uninformed. Pharmaceutical companies not only threaten to stop ones funding if findings go against their business interests, but they also refuse acknowledge science that calls their products into question.

Many of these companies have long had a disregard for ethics and morals. They’ve even gone so far as to lie about the efficacy and the safety of their products. Robert G. Evans, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Vancouver School of Economics, UBC wrote a paper in 2010 titled “Tough on Crime? Pfizer and the CIHR,” it is accessible through the National Library of Medicine (PubMed). In it he outlines how Pfizer has been a “habitual offender,” constantly engaging in illegal and criminal activities. This particular paper points out that from 2002 to 2010, Pfizer has been “assessed $3 billion in criminal convictions, civil penalties and jury awards” and has set records for both criminal fines and total penalties. Keep in mind we are now in 2021 and these numbers have likely risen.

This is concerning, especially given the fact that these companies have big control over academic and medical institutions, as well as medical education.

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.”  

– Arnold Seymour Relman (1923-2014), Harvard Professor of Medicine and Former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal

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Across the world, the rise of digital currencies continues at full steam – and it is no different in China. Chinese Central Bank has already run several tests with its Digital Yuan project, which is expected to become soon the main method of transactions for the Chinese state and companies. Unable to surpass the speed of the growth of financial digitalization in China, the West tries to obstruct the development of the Asian country with unsubstantiated accusations, spreading fake news and conspiracy theories about Beijing.

In a recent statement, Sir Jeremy Fleming, head of the British digital spy agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), stated that China may be using its Digital Yuan technology in order to operate surveillance and espionage methods against its users. Fleming also said Beijing can use such technology to gain global control over financial transactions with digital currencies, considering the Yuan’s potential to become the leading payment method globally.

These were some of his words: “If wrongly implemented, it gives a hostile state the ability to surveil transactions. It gives them the ability […] to be able to exercise control over what is conducted on those digital currencies”. Going even further in his conspiracy predictions about the Digital Yuan, Fleming linked the Beijing Olympic Winter Games with a possible Chinese plan to definitively implement the digital currency’s use as an official payment method and warned of a possible “danger” that international visitors would be suffering by making their personal data available for a state that he claims to be “hostile”. He adds: “In the context of the forthcoming Olympic Games […] China is taking every opportunity to project their digital currency, and their hope is that foreign visitors will use it in the same way as domestic visitors”.

The focal point of Fleming’s “concerns” is precisely the issue of the Chinese state’s control of Digital Yuan users’ data. According to him, Beijing’s state agencies act in a profoundly intrusive way when collecting information about users and this can have catastrophic effects on the sovereignty of the countries of origin of foreign users of the currency – which will become even more evident on the occasion of the Olympics.

According to Fleming, China is currently London’s “biggest strategic issue”. He claims that there has been an exponential growth in Chinese espionage operations in recent months and that, in the same vein, there is an interest from Beijing in gaining control over the entire global digital infrastructure – which currently also corresponds to the financial infrastructure, considering the digitization of transactions. In this case, the expansion of Digital Yuan would fulfill all of these Beijing’s goals. The GCHQ head concluded his statement by saying that his country will have to deal with the Chinese issue by developing a plan to respond to Beijing’s current ambitions and aspirations. Fleming asserts that, while both states need to maintain open economic and climate cooperation, responses must be produced at the political level, which is the point at which the two powers’ interests collide.

In fact, the British spy’s words seem to have been carefully manipulated to foster a scenario of distrust, uncertainty, fear, and paranoia in relation to the Chinese digital currency. A part of the information given by Fleming is correct, however his words are articulated in a way that creates a scenario of tensions about something that is really simple to be understood. Unlike private cryptocurrencies, the Digital Yuan does not promise anonymity to its users. There is nothing shocking or scandalous about this type of measure, considering that it is a state-controlled system and that it cannot be vulnerable to the same threats as cryptocurrencies.

The anonymity system obstructs control over the transaction system, preventing accurate information about investments and the destination of digital amounts. China simply wants to create a digital and efficient currency that meets the needs of a fully digitized financial environment, without threats to its security, and for that it obtains a portion of the users’ personal data. It is the same method used by any financial institution or even social media networks – which, curiously, does not receive any specific criticism from Western intelligence agencies.

In the end, the concerns expressed by Fleming serve two interests of the British government: justifying an extension of the boycott of the Beijing Games and promoting a plan to expand intelligence measures against China. Until now, the English-speaking world has boycotted the Beijing Games only at the diplomatic level, but it is very likely that the measures will expand, with a strong state disincentive for tourists to travel to the Asian country, due to the “control” on the part of the Chinese state to which they will be vulnerable if they use Digital Yuan during the event. Likewise, as Fleming has suggested, a plan of “response” measures to China will certainly be created at the intelligence level, which is really worrying considering that Beijing is constantly denouncing the presence of spies from the Five Eyes network (US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) in its territory – and that this tends to increase.

Once again, the West spreads fake news, conspiracy theories and disinformation to foment tensions against its enemies. London is doing to Digital Yuan what Washington is doing to Chinese 5G. The result is always the same: an unnecessary increase in tensions and distrust between the states, with a reduction in the possibilities of international cooperation.

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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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Cambridge MPP Belinda Karahalios was removed from the Ontario legislature on Tuesday morning by Speaker of the House Ted Arnott.

Last month, Karahalios announced that she had tested positive for the coronavirus on Nov. 19.

“I will not be able to enter Queens Park until November 30th,” Karahalios wrote on Twitter at the time.

“I was sick for a couple of days but am feeling much better.”

On Tuesday, Arnott stopped proceedings and asked her to leave the house.

“The member for Cambridge is obviously in the precinct and in the chamber at the present time in contravention of the current COVID-19 screening protocols that have been adopted by the legislature and I must now ask the member to withdraw from the chamber and leave the precinct,” the speaker said.

Karahalios refused the request and responded with, “the rules that you’ve set out is proof of double vaccination or proof of negative rapid antigen test, which I was able to provide this morning.”

Arnott then laid out the rules in this situation by saying, “the member knows full well that the current advice from the medical officer is that she must be out of the chamber for the next 90 days starting from the date in which she tested positive.”

He then asked her to leave several times before having her escorted from the building.

“After taking my seat to ask the Ford PC Gov a question the Speaker had me removed despite being the MPP least likely to spread COVID-19,“ Karahalios wrote on Twitter a short time later.

“This is an affront to democracy.”

Karahalios was elected to office as a Progressive Conservative candidate but was kicked out of the party in July 2020 after voting against a government bill that grants it powers to extend or amend some emergency orders a month at a time, for up to two years.

Today, I entered the legislature with a negative COVID-19 test. After taking my seat to ask the Ford PC Gov a question the Speaker had me removed despite being the MPP least likely to spread COVID-19. This is an affront to democracy. The Ford Gov is a disgrace #onpoli

— Belinda Karahalios (@BKarahalios) December 7, 2021

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Featured image: Cambridge MPP Belinda Karahalios. Facebook

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The COVID vaccines are not the only dangerous vaccines. Would you believe that the entire childhood vaccine schedule is dangerous? You will after you watch my interview with Alix Mayer.

This article is not just another interview. This article is one of the most important articles on my substack. It shows how our government has been lying to us for decades about the safety of all vaccines.

Short story: people who refuse vaccines are uniformly healthier than people who follow the government’s advice. This is the biggest ongoing fraud in US history.

On December 9, I interviewed Alix Mayer, President, Children’s Health Defense, California Chapter.

She’s vaccine injured from a set of vaccines she took prior to a business trip. She’s never fully recovered.

Here’s my interview on Rumble. It’s one of the most popular videos I’ve done (over 34,000 views in less than 24 hours with no promotion; all positive reviews). You can watch the interview below.

IMPORTANT: If you are a parent of young kids, have grandkids, or are thinking about ever getting vaccinated again, you will want to watch this video. You will be shocked about what you are not being told.

Key things I learned from talking with Alix:

1. All the 16 childhood vaccines should be considered unsafe because all the safety data shows that kids are uniformly less healthy after taking the vaccines compared to kids who are not vaccinated at all.
2. All the papers published in medical journals documenting the dangers of the vaccines have been revoked and the people who wrote them have lost their jobs. The papers weren’t censored because they were wrong. They were censored so nobody will find out the truth. The papers all showed that kids who avoided the vaccines were significantly healthier than the kids who got vaccinated. The COVID vaccines? They are 1,000 times worse than any of these vaccines.
3. The CDC is supposed to be assessing the safety of the children’s vaccines every 2 years. They have never done this. They even admit it. They don’t have any plans to comply with the law. Nobody is holding them accountable. Everyone is looking the other way.
4. There has been a huge increase in autism and other disabling conditions after kids take the childhood vaccination schedule. There is no doubt they are linked.
5. RFK, Jr. has been trying to get a debate with the CDC for 20 years about the safety of the childhood vaccines. Nobody from the CDC will debate him. They refuse to be put in a situation where they could be asked questions that they don’t want to answer. Someone is hiding in the shadows and it isn’t RFK, Jr.
6. Judy Mikovits discovered impurities in the vaccines but they forced out of her job to silence her. I know Judy. She is a first class scientist with a heart of gold. There are many other examples, but you get the idea.

For further reading/watching

I highly recommend watching these two videos. The second video by Dr. Tenpenny is particularly stunning (as you’ll learn in just the first 50 seconds): this has been going on for decades without any questioning by physicians.

If you thought you could trust your doctor, these videos are eye opening.

Comments from my subscribers

1. After almost 20 years of investigation, a parliamentary report in Italy (2018) concluded that the vaccines were unsafe. They investigated the over mortality death rate of military.
2. I saw your Alix Mayer interview and wondered if you would be willing/wanting to do something on PANS. PANS is Autoimmune Encephalitis. I will try to make this short. It is clearly caused by vaccines. I know MANY moms whose kids had onset post vaccine. My daughter got PANS post Varicella vaccine. The doctors refuse to acknowledge that PANS is caused by vaccines. Instead they say strep or lyme or a virus triggers it. This is untrue. These are symptoms of the disregulated immune response, not the cause of it. Anyway, there is a growing group of moms out there that know what happened to their middle schoolers and cannot get any attention around it. Doctors keep telling people to keep vaccinating their kids. It’s infuriating.

Here are some notes from Alix:

• No safety studies as required by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act of 1986 – https://www.icandecide.org/cdc-concedes-never-conducted-vaccinated-v-unvaccinated-study/
  • Studies that have been conducted outside the govt and published in journals (and retracted):
    • Thomas/Lyons-Weiler: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/unvaccinated-children-healthier-than-vaccinated-children/
    • Mawson: http://istem.info/ueditor/php/upload/file/20191121/1574335433852972.pdf
    • Hooker: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/right-on-point-podcast-wayne-rohde-brian-hooker-cdc-vaccine-safety-datalink-kids/
    • I think there is a 4th but cannot recall the author
• 1986 Act – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Injury_Act
• CDC studied one vaccine and one ingredient in relation to one condition but manipulated the results
  • Whistleblower William Thompson, CDC Senior Vaccine Scientist, came out in 2015 admitting that they had been ordered to dump all study data into a trash can on a weekend and wipe hard drives since the CDC couldn’t make the signal go away regarding MMR causing autism in boys, especially black boys. This was the infamous DeStefano study.
  • Thomas Verstraaten and Poul Thorsen studied thimerosal & autism in the early 2000s and Verstraaten proclaimed in writing that “he couldn’t make the signal go away.” After massaging the data enough, I recall he published a study showing that thimerosal was associated with verbal and motor tics, not autism. The Simpsonwood transcript and I believe FOIAed emails tell the story. Bobby wrote an article in Rolling Stone and Salon and a book about it. https://www.amazon.com/Thimerosal-Evidence-Supporting-Immediate-Neurotoxin/dp/1634504429
• Other adverse health outcomes due to vaccines.
  • Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld – the guy who literally wrote the textbook, Autoimmunity – published a ton of studies on aluminum in vaccines and autoimmune disease. I haven’t seen much from him lately. Here is a recent review from 2020: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33053910/
  • Dr. Christopher Exley – “Dr. Aluminum” – fired from Keele University for associating vaccine-injected aluminum with CNS disorders – MS, autism, Alzheimer’s.
  • Autoimmunity – to my knowledge, there is NO other cause of autoimmunity aside from vaccines in the medical literature. Vaccines force our B-cells to make antibodies. Antibodies are the hallmark of allergies and autoimmunity.

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People in Austria who remain unvaccinated could find themselves imprisoned for a year, according to critics of an amendment to an administrative law.

Susanne Fürst of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), which voted against the amendment, warned that it could be used to punish the unjabbed with much harsher sentences.

The amendment raises fines from €726 (£617/$818) to €2,000 (£1,701/$2,255) and increases prison time for those who refuse to pay from four weeks to up to a year.

Given that Austrians who don’t get vaccinated by February face fines of up to €7,200 ($8,000) for non-compliance, those who refuse to pay would also face a 12 month jail sentence.

The amendment also orders people who are jailed to pay for their own imprisonment.

“If detention is carried out by the courts, the associated costs shall be recovered by the courts from the obligated party in accordance with the provisions existing for the recovery of the costs of enforcing judicial penalties,” it states.

Despite Fürst protesting that the amendment could be used to further punish the unvaccinated, the measure was approved anyway.

At the time it was announced, then Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg vowed to hit the unvaccinated with “penalties” if they still refused to get the jab, while asserting that they should “suffer.”

Given that some technocrats are asserting that the vaccination program will never end, the initial one year prison sentence for vaccine refusniks could be just the beginning.

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Every now and then, Haaretz boosts the morale of liberal Zionists by exposing facts and new archived revelations about Zionism’s Nazi-like atrocities against the Palestinian people — but without mentioning the word “Zionism!”

Such pieces give the impression that Israel’s atrocities have nothing to do with Zionism but are rather missteps that the state took upon its founding (or continues to take, as the case might be), mistakes that are possible to ameliorate within the regime of the unmentionable ideology. The ultimate aim is to make Israel appear to the unwary reader as a kinder and gentler Jewish state.

Since very few mainstream newspapers in western countries (and now in the Arab world) dare publish or reference such facts for fear of being accused of antisemitism or worse, many readers are “impressed and amazed” at the seeming virtuousness and honesty of Haaretz, which nevertheless remains a liberal Zionist publication.

On my part, I am amazed how it is possible for Adam Raz, an Israeli historian, to write a long piece in Haaretz titled “Docs Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in ’48 — and What Israeli Leaders Knew” without once mentioning Zionism. Not once.

This is worse than a historian writing about the systematic war crimes of Nazi Germany without mentioning the ideology associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, because Israel’s criminal Zionist practices against the Palestinian people are ongoing and Israel’s oppression of Palestinians must not and cannot endure. The end of Palestinian suffering can come only with the demise of Zionism.

If and when Zionism is mentioned, it is from the point of view of “Arab rejectionism” in Palestine or referencing the Zionist “narrative” that Jewish “return” to Palestine was and continues to be justified as a necessary escape for European Jews from antisemitism, a necessity for Jews to “gain control of their destiny.”

Never mind that such a narrative has been debunked by many scholars, most notably Shlomo Sand in “The Invention of the Jewish People.” Never mind that the destiny of Palestinian Arabs is as important as the destiny of any other group of people, Jews included.

From the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, we have known and have been saying (forever it seems) that Zionists did, in fact, know what they were doing from the beginning of their movement in the early 1900’s and intended to create an exclusive state. We know that these Zionists along with much of the western world ignored our very existence as a significant factor when they weighed it against a “Jewish national liberation movement” (i.e., Zionism) that took over our homeland to escape antisemitism in Europe.

I am not impressed by what Haaretz has published, because Palestinian and other historians have long known such facts without benefit of the Israeli archives Raz was able to access and because the piece lacks the imperative denunciation of Zionism.

Consider the following:

On this day in 2011, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the re-establishment of a regular Bible study group at his official residence in Jerusalem. He claimed the Bible “is our mandate for our country”. He was emulating Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, who also set up Bible study classes to find an ideological “justification” for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the establishment of a “Jewish State”. As non-religious Zionists quip, “There is no God but he gave us the land.”

In other words, the piece in Haaretz is not news. The news is that Haaretz published this history for its own ends, as I explain above. One reader with the handle “goy girl” makes a comment on the article that, to me, epitomizes the paper’s Zionist position, as it echoes Netanyahu’s and Ben Gurion’s actions and thoughts above but in the guise of criticism. (Italics mine).

She says,

“… Having been vindicated by God, Zionists fell into this trap [of acting in humanely] and put Palestinians in ghettos, made Gaza a slave camp, and forced Muslims to dig their own graves. They proved to be just as human and fallible as the rest of us….”

Well, Palestinians, too, are just as human and fallible as the rest of humanity. It is human to resist oppression and it is human to use “violence,” aka armed struggle, to resist that oppression. The trap Palestinians fell into is the trap of Zionism.

Image on the right: Poster–“The revolution continues” (Source: Rima Najjar)

On the 34th anniversary of the Great Palestinian Intifada that launched from Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza on 8 December 1987, Samidoun Palestinian Solidarity Network published an article titled, “The struggle continues until liberation and return.” In it, they joined with the Masar Badil (Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement) in calling for a conference of Palestinian students in 2022 and the Week of Palestinian Struggle in May: “The Intifada is not only a historical moment but an ongoing liberation struggle and an example to the world of the full mobilization of the people for justice and freedom.”

Haaretz, Zionist crimes are not only a moment in history; they are ongoing and embedded in a racist colonial ideology that cannot be wished away or camouflaged as “Jewish and democratic.”

You must recognize the elements that have to be addressed for justice and peace to prevail. Although some Arab countries (not to mention the defunct Palestinian Authority) are normalizing their relationship with Israel, the Palestinian people themselves will never accept Zionism; it is the cause for all the bloodshed in Palestine and must come to an end.

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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: From the booklet Ansar III, published by ROOTS and Friends of Palestinian prisoners

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A ministerial summit of the Forum on China and Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) held on November 29-30 in Dakar, Senegal reinforced the continuing bonds between Beijing and the 55-member African Union (AU).

FOCAC was formed in 2000 during an important period which was marked by several years of substantial economic growth on the continent of Africa and in the People’s Republic of China.

Concurrently, over the same last two decades, the United States, Britain, the European Union (EU) countries and their allies globally, have been embroiled in numerous imperialist interventions resulting in destabilization, military interventions, proxy wars and the expansion of the presence of Pentagon and NATO forces throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. These imperialist endeavors aimed at maintaining the political and economic domination of the world’s population has created enormous difficulties for peoples globally including the working class, nationally oppressed and impoverished living within the western capitalist countries.

Successive administrations in the U.S. and Britain have turned away, even rhetorically, from the notions of multilateralism, reliance on the United Nations to resolve tensions and conflicts as well, creating the conditions for widespread displacement internationally. The migration crisis in North Africa, the Mediterranean extending into Southern, Central and Western Europe, is a direct result of a series of wars and their aftermaths in Libya, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Haiti, to name the most well-known and devastating.

The 21st century has witnessed U.S.-instigated regime change in numerous states while the socialist states such as the PRC, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Cuba, Venezuela, etc., have not embarked upon any destabilization efforts let alone invasions into other sovereign states.

Due to socialist economic planning and their advancement of the notions of international cooperation and peace even among states with varying social systems, there has been tremendous progress in the areas of international solidarity.

The Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) grouping is a manifestation of the role of Beijing, Moscow and Pretoria along with the other states which have varied in regard to their political orientation in recent years. These new alliances are perceived as a threat to the role of the U.S., Britain and the EU since they are not participant-members and cannot directly impact the agendas and goals established by FOCAC and BRICS.

With specific reference to the structures and objectives of FOCAC, the website for the grouping says the following:

“The FOCAC follow-up mechanisms are built at three levels: The Ministerial Conference is held every three years; the Senior Officials Follow-up Meeting and the Senior Officials Preparatory Meeting for the Ministerial Conference are held respectively in the year and a few days before the Ministerial Conference is held; and the consultations between the African Diplomatic Corps in China and the Secretariat of the Chinese Follow-up Committee are held at least twice a year. The Ministerial Conference and the Senior Officials Meeting are held alternately in China and an African country, with China and the African host being co-chairs presiding over the meetings and taking lead in implementing the outcomes of the meetings. The Ministerial Conference is attended by foreign ministers and ministers in charge of international economic cooperation, and the Senior Officials Meeting by director-general level officials of the competent departments of China and African countries.”

At the recent 8th Ministerial meeting of FOCAC in Senegal a myriad of issues were discussed including trade, investment, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic along with the distribution and manufacturing of vaccines. The gathering coincided with the publication of a White Paper by the Chinese government on the China-Africa cooperation.

This event was marked by a keynote address from President Xi Jinping who evaluated the work of FOCAC over the previous twenty-one years and emphasized that the involvement of Beijing on the continent was not conducted in competition with the U.S. or any other country. Xi announced new projects aimed at assisting Africa in curtailing the impact of the pandemic by building capacity on the continent to produce and deliver medicines including vaccines.

The Chinese president spoke to the summit via video-link. His presentation was widely covered in the state media in China.

Over the period since 2000, China has built 80 large-scale electricity projects, 130 medical facilities, 45 stadiums, 170 schools, numerous rail lines and transport services, the new AU headquarters, to only name a few. In addition, there have been 160,000 Africans trained by Chinese educators and technicians both on the continent and in Asia.

Within the White Paper entitled “China and Africa in the New Era”, issued for the FOCAC Conference, it says that:

“China has been Africa’s largest trading partner for the 12 years since 2009. The proportion of Africa’s trade with China in the continent’s total external trade has continued to rise. In 2020, the figure exceeded 21 percent. The structure of China-Africa trade is improving. There has been a marked increase in technology in China’s exports to Africa, with the export of mechanical and electrical products and high-tech products now accounting for more than 50 percent of the total. China has increased its imports of non-resource products from Africa and offered zero-tariff treatment to 97 percent of taxable items exported to China by the 33 least-developed countries in Africa, with the goal of helping more African agricultural and manufactured goods gain access to the Chinese market. China’s imports in services from Africa have been growing at an average annual rate of 20 percent since 2017, creating close to 400,000 jobs for the continent every year. In recent years, China’s imports of agricultural products from Africa have also risen, and China has emerged as the second largest destination for Africa’s agricultural exports. China and Africa have seen booming trade in new business models including cross-border e-commerce. Cooperation under the Silk Road E-commerce initiative has advanced. China has built a mechanism for e-commerce cooperation with Rwanda, and Chinese businesses have been active in investing in overseas order fulfillment centers. High-quality and special products from Africa are now directly available to the Chinese market via e-commerce platforms. The China-Mauritius free trade agreement (FTA), which became effective on January 1, 2021, was the first FTA between China and an African country. It has injected new vitality into China-Africa economic and trade cooperation.”

This conference obviously has reinforced the existing trajectory of growth in mutual cooperation between Beijing and the overwhelming majority of independent African states with the exception of the Monarchy in Eswatini (Swaziland). Of course, there is an internal struggle taking place in Swaziland over whether the country will be governed democratically or not. The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) and its allies are playing a leading role in the democratic movement which has gained considerable attention and support from world communist organizations, labor and anti-imperialist groupings around the world.

State Department Deploys Blinken in Failed Attempt to Weaken FOCAC Conference

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited three African states during mid-November in advance of the FOCAC Conference. Blinken traveled to Kenya, Senegal, the location of the FOCAC Conference, and Nigeria, the most populous state on the continent.

Objectively, no serious observer could argue that the foreign policy of the current President Joe Biden differs fundamentally from his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, in reference to the AU member-states. This lack of even a slight shift in policy towards Africa is reflected in the current conflict in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia where Washington is backing a rebel group, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which previously was the leading force in the country’s government prior to 2018. The TPLF has maintained close links with the U.S. since in 1991 under the-then administration of President George W.H. Bush, Sr. It was the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen, who declared the TPLF and the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Revolutionary Front (EPRDF) as the official government in 1991.

Over the next 27 years until 2018, when the EPRDF government collapsed due to an internal uprising which drew mass support, this tendency has collaborated with the U.S. in various military operations across the East Africa region. Since the taking of power by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and his election earlier in the year, the U.S. under Trump and Biden have waged campaigns to undermine the government and install armed opposition groups.

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), founded under the administration of President George W. Bush, Jr. in 2008, has been maintained and strengthened by every successive regime in Washington. Biden withdrew Pentagon troops from Afghanistan in August after a two decades-long disastrous occupation, however, there are many other geo-political regions of the world where the U.S. is escalating its military presence.

China is a central focus of imperialism in the Asia Pacific region where Beijing is promoting its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The plans for an alternative economic and trading system includes the African continent as well. Blinken’s visit to three African countries where he sought to place the U.S. at the center of discussions over the future of the continent and the world, did not generate much interest.

Coinciding with the U.S. chief envoy’s trip to Africa, the talking points claiming “Chinese debt traps” surfaced in the corporate media. Both Chinese and African officials dismissed such characterizations of relations between the two entities.

Nonetheless, the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other financial institutions have entangled post-colonial African states hampering national planning, regional and continental collaboration, and integration. Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and the closing down of economies, the rates of joblessness and poverty have accelerated. A recent travel ban initiated by the U.S. and other western governments directed at several Southern African Development Community (SADC), has been condemned as unjustified and damaging to the gross domestic product of these impacted countries.

Global Times noted in an article:

“Even today, the U.S. has still failed to win much trust from African countries, as one of the major purposes of Blinken’s African trip was to get rid of the traumatic effect former U.S. President Donald Trump made to the continent during his term. A recent report by well-known African pollster Afrobarometer shows that China ranks first in terms of external influence in Africa, with 63 percent of Africans saying the economic and political influence of China in their country is ‘somewhat positive’ or ‘very positive,’ and 66 percent perceiving China’s economic and political influence in Africa as positive.”

Democracy: The U.S. vs. China

There was also a White Paper issued in China explaining the concepts of democratic governance embodied within the program of the Communist Party distinguishing its definition from what prevails in the U.S. The U.S. promotes itself as the citadel of world democracy placing human rights as a cornerstone of its foreign policy. This White Paper is entitled “China: Democracy That Works,” which suggests that the western form of democracy has extreme deficiencies.

The worsening economic conditions in the U.S. has served to inflame already existing social contradictions within the society. The country was founded on the seizure of the lands of the indigenous people, their forced removal and mass extermination. Today the indigenous are largely relegated to reservations where many have been subjected to dangerous intrusions into their territories by multinational energy corporations that poison the soil and water sources.

As far as the descendants of African people are concerned, even though the Civil War ended 156 years ago after nearly two-and-one-half centuries of enslavement under Spain, Britain, France and the Netherlands, there is widespread state-sponsored racism across the country where people are often impeded, harassed, arrested, prosecuted, falsely imprisoned and even killed by law-enforcement personnel.

Today, some 56 years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Supreme Court along with state legislative structures are working feverishly to deny people the right to cast ballots for the candidates of their choice. Impoverishment is highly correlated with color and national origin, meaning that the problem of racism is institutional.

The U.S. Congress has failed to pass legislation which would reestablish the right to universal suffrage. At the same time, the right to housing, reproductive rights, justice in policing and freedom from unwarranted institutional racism remain elusive within the political system led by the politicians in Washington who are underpinned by Wall Street and the Pentagon.

Global Times reports on the China White Paper emphasizing:

“The publication of the document has challenged the U.S. and the West’s monopolistic definition of democracy, marking the further clarification of human beings’ various practices of democracy. China’s economic and social construction continues to make world-renowned achievements, people’s comprehensive rights are also continuously improving. China has also achieved results that have embarrassed the West in the fight against the sudden COVID-19 outbreak, protecting people’s lives in a most effective way. The whole process of people’s democracy proposed by China has a strong realistic foundation and basis. It will not be a short-lived slogan but will continue to unfold with the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and form a demonstration of democratic construction outside of the West.”

Therefore, under existing conditions internationally, the U.S. cannot reasonably say it is the paramount example of democratic governance. As the people of color communities rapidly become a collective majority by the mid-21st century, the undemocratic practices reflected in the neo-fascist movements gaining ground inside the country will continue to pose a challenge to the working class and oppressed.

Internationalism in the 21st Century

China and Africa have similarities in their historical development being post-colonial geo-political countries and regions seeking to reaffirm their places within the international community of nations and peoples. China under socialist construction has moved within a reachable distance to surpass the U.S. in economic status.

The main difference is that the U.S. built its wealth on the expropriation of indigenous land and the enslavement of Africans. During the mid-19th century, Mexico had huge swaths of its territory stolen by Washington under the guise of “manifest destiny.”

In the present period, the people of Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean are being blocked, incarcerated in federal detention facilities and deported from the U.S. on a routine basis. Here again, the anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration are being extended under Biden. The continued enactment of Title 42 under the Biden regime where migrants fleeing economic distress and human rights violations can be expelled due to there being a public health crisis in the U.S. This measure was specifically designed to deny migrants from Haiti the right to stay within the country despite the role of U.S. imperialism in the isolation and exploitation of Haiti since the early 19th century.

People in North America must not be misled into taking a hostile position towards China in the burgeoning conflict between Washington and Beijing. The role of FOCAC and other structures guiding China-Africa cooperation should be studied as a model for greater international solidarity among working and oppressed people across the globe.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: China graphic on economic crisis in US (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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The corrupt UK High Court is nothing but an extension of the corrupt US Department of Justice (sic) and has done its duty to serve as Washington’s agent. See this.

The charges against Julian Assange make no sense. Assange is not an American citizen, but the charges against him assume that he is a US citizen in the pay of a foreign government.

He is charged with spying on the US. Other countries spy on us, as does our own government and commercial firms, just as the US spies on other countries and commercial firms, but no one is arrested for doing so unless it is a citizen of the country spying in the pay of a foreign government. There is no evidence whatsoever that Assange was doing that.

Assange is an independent person practicing legitimate journalism.

He published leaked documents, exactly as did the New York Times when the newspaper published the Pentagon Papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a US citizen with top secret clearances. Unlike Ellsberg, Assange was not the leaker.

Assange was the publisher like the New York Times. The US government’s effort to punish Ellsberg and the NY Times failed in the courts.

Ellsberg was awarded the Olof Palme Prize for “profound humanism and moral courage.”

But times have changed. In Ellsberg’s time, the US government still had enough standing to survive the deception revealed by the Pentagon Papers.

But by the time of Assange, the crimes and misdeeds of the US government had hollowed out Washington’s reputation. The decision was made to make an example of Assange in order to prevent journalists from ever again revealing Washington’s war crimes and deceptions of the American people and US allies.

Rafael Correa, the former president of Ecuador, who was able to remove Assange from Washington’s reach for several years, said that Washington’s aim in its illegal and unconstitutional prosecution of Assange is to “scare others” and shut down real journalism. Correa stated the facts as they are:

“If Assange would have exposed the secrets of China, Russia or left-wing Latin American governments, including my government, he would have been praised by the international press, honored by US Congress and the British parliament. But because his actions were against the interests of the US, the hegemonic country, he was labeled a criminal.” See this.

American journalism is already shut down. All that print, TV, and PBS journalism delivers is official narratives. American journalism serves as a Ministry of Propaganda and as nothing else. It is no longer possible in the “Free West” to practice journalism.

This fact is obvious from journalism’s treatment of Assange.

Real journalism is dependent on the First Amendment.

Without it, there is no journalism. Assange’s persecution signifies the death of the First Amendment. Yet American journalists have served as Washington’s mob squad and have done Washington’s dirty work for a decade beating up Assange with endless lies.

To see the encroaching totalitarianism in the Western World, observe that in the 1970s the case against Ellsberg was thrown out of court, but in the 21st century with a case so weak as to be nonexistent, Washington has managed to corrupt the British High Court to turn over Assange to Washington, not for legal reasons, but for vengeance.

This is persecution, not legitimate prosecution. Add to this Australian concentration camps for citizen suspected of having been exposed to Covid, imprisonment of unvaccinated citizens in Austria and Germany, job- and GDP-destroying lockdowns, restrictions on freedom of association and freedom of movement, silencing of scientific experts who disprove the official false Covid narrative. You can add to this list.

People in the “Free West” are so insouciant that most have accepted the presstitutes’ portrayal of Assange as a Russian spy.

People are too insouciant to recognize that even if the lie were true, it is not grounds for prosecution as Assange is not an American citizen or legal resident.

Rafael Correa is correct. Washington is determined, even at the cost of lawlessness, to make an example of Assange and thereby guarantee that the only permissible “journalism” is propaganda in behalf of Washington’s narratives.

This is the same complete control over explanations as exists in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984.

1984 arrived 37 years later, but it is here now.

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

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***

This week’s nationwide annihilation of Biden’s Federal Contractor vaccine mandate at the hands Georgia Federal Judge R. Stan Baker has resulted in a landslide retreat of cowardly mega-corporations from their so-confident bullying of American workers.

Biden’s illegal gamble, the nationwide Federal contractor vaccine mandate, has like his previous Medicare mandate and OSHA if-you-have-100-workers-mandatory-vax mandate been ripped to shreds early on in the courts.

Biden’s mandates have always been a bullying gamble, an admission that they knew they were engaging in illegal acts but that they would continue to use the not-insignificant weapons of the executive branch to blast as much harm as possible until the courts stepped in and noted the obvious: “You can’t do this!”

Cynics – and I sympathize – will say that the courts could have ruled either way so don’t get too excited.

That’s the lesson of the past two years: There is nothing below us as we look down. It takes our breath away. We now understand that our civilization has been built on a pile of sand and any determined entity could tunnel under us as we are distracted by the human necessities of providing for our families and living our finite lives as best as possible.

This horrible reality cannot be unseen.

Previously we viewed our rulers – from dog catcher to president – as malevolent but for the most part at a distance. We never thought they would reach out with their gradually but steadily-acquired iron fist and squeeze the oxygen from our lungs: “Take a shot or starve!”

The Hungarians in early 1918 similarly were shocked that living somewhat silently among them were aliens who would activate themselves at the exact most fertile moment and literally up-end their somnambulant state, imposing “mandates” on their society that included mobile gallows – a crude earlier form of the forced vax.

With the welcome disintegration of this evil government decree – via Judge Baker’s ruling that the contractor mandate is illegal – one by one the mega-corporations also see their position as shifting to the untenable. They are bailing out as fast as possible.

Some 83,000 Florida healthcare workers no longer face being kicked to the street by US government-sponsored terrorism, until this week dutifully enforced by the “free market” prostitutes in bed with the state.

As hero Alex Berenson has reported Thursday, mega corporations in the US are also suddenly looking under themselves and finding that they are alone. No more government guns aimed at the powerless…at least for the time being.

General Electric, 3M, Verizon, and Oracle have in the past day or so hedged their bets and snuck out of bed with the US government: no more vax requirements! We are talking about a large group of people no longer bound by the brotherhood of the needle.

We are winning this for now and should pause to drink it in.

But at the same time we must also look at what has rotted in our civilization that would allow such a force to upend us, to unleash this iron fist once hidden in a velvet glove. Life will never be the same knowing what these people have done to us. They must never be allowed to forget it.

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Featured image is from TRPIPP

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***

A student at the University of Lethbridge (U of L) is suing the institution for imposing a COVID-19 vaccine passport policy calling it “unconstitutional.”

Hayley Nassichuck-Dean is a fifth-year student at U of L and plays on the university’s women’s soccer team.

Nassichuck-Dean, an undergraduate in the biology program, was intending to complete her studies at the end of the school year in 2022 and move on to veterinary studies.

“Partway through the fall, Alberta post-secondaries removed the (COVID-19) testing option they had initially provided when they came out with their vaccine mandates at the beginning of the school year,” said Carol Crosson, of Crosson Law, the lawyer representing Nassichuck-Dean.

“As a result, students were now required to either vaccinate or vacate campus altogether.”

U of L released its vaccination policy mid-August before the start of the school year requiring all attending the campus to either be fully vaccinated, submit to regular COVID-19 testing or produce an exemption.

On September 13, after students had registered and begun classes, the U of L updated their policy to state anyone not fully vaccinated by November 1 would no longer be permitted on campus and rapid testing would no longer be an option.

In the following days, the province announced new public health orders including the Restriction Exemption Program (REP) allowing eligible businesses and institutions to choose whether to adopt a vaccine passport system or reduce occupancy limits to one-third of fire code limits.

Under the new provincial orders, post-secondary institutions are allowed to establish and implement their own proof of vaccination policy. Around the same time, the government of Alberta also provided a provision for post-secondary institutions to apply for government funding for regular COVID-19 testing expenses.

Although the option for funding testing expenses was offered, many post-secondary institutions, including the U of L, remained firm on the requirement to be fully vaccinated to come on campus.

“As a result, many hundreds of Alberta students are now at home, unable to continue their education, without the future they dreamed of,” said Crosson.

Nassichuck-Dean applied for a religious exemption with both the U of L and her soccer team but was denied. She inquired about taking online classes but was also refused.

“The Policy and decisions of the U of L to refuse to allow the Applicant to continue in her activities unless she engages in the medical treatment of taking the vaccine infringe the right to life insofar as they pose an unnecessary and unknowable increased risk of death to the Applicant who by being compelled to take the vaccine faces a possibility of adverse effects, including the chance of death,” the statement of claim reads.

The statement goes on to claim the U of L’s decisions infringe on Nassichuck-Dean’s right to security because they “undermine the applicant’s right to control her own bodily integrity,” adding they have also caused her psychological stress.

“We say that the post-secondary institution vaccine mandates are a breach of Charter s. 7 which protects the right to autonomy or informed consent in regard to medical treatments,” said Crosson.

The lawsuit also claims the university’s vaccination policy is “too extreme” and goes “beyond what is required to achieve the objective.”

“It’s clear from studies that both the unvaccinated and vaccinated are getting and passing on COVID-19,” said Crosson.

“It’s hard to understand how post-secondary institution mandates are accomplishing the goal of decreasing the spread of COVID-19. Students left on campus now are still passing on COVID-19 and will continue to do so in January while their unvaccinated friends sit at home.”

Crosson also claims the U of L’s policy is discriminatory for denying Nassichuck-Dean’s religious exemption as it interferes with her “sincere held religious beliefs” and violates her right to religious freedom under section 2 of the Charter.

“Students across Alberta just want to continue their education,” said Nassichuck-Dean.

“They don’t want to be punished for their medical choices. Discontinuing a testing option does just that.”

The lawsuit is seeking numerous remedies including a reversal of the U of L’s policy to “cease offering the option of rapid testing” calling it “unreasonable” and to reverse its decision to reject Nassichuck-Dean’s religious exemption calling it “illegal.”

Crosson is also seeking court costs be covered for Nassichuck-Dean’s case.

“Post-secondary students all across Alberta have now been sent home, their studies discontinued, because post-secondary institutions have vaccine mandates which no longer even permit regular testing as an option,” said Crosson.

“‘Vaccinate or vacate.’ We contend that this is not about health and safety or these institutions would consider, for example, testing all students on campuses.”

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Melanie Risdon is a Calgary-based Reporter for the Western Standard. She has over 20 years experience in media at Global News, Rogers and Corus. [email protected]

Featured image is from The Western Standard

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***

On the pretext of a respiratory virus
less dangerous than the seasonal flu[1]
they’re requiring a genetic cocktail
be injected into the arms of me and you.
And if you don’t get it, you lose your job,
you lose your means of earning a living.
You can’t go shopping for groceries.
They lie and say you’re spreading disease.

On the pretext of a respiratory virus
less dangerous than the common cold
you damn well better follow their mandates
and do exactly what you’re told—
wear masks indoors, stay six feet apart
because they’ve abolished your brain and your heart.
They lied and told you their so-called “vaccine”
is perfectly safe and would stay in your arm
but it travels throughout your whole body quickly
and causes incalculable harm.
Hundreds of thousands who got the jab
die within a day or a week.
Millions more will deteriorate.
Poor dupes ignored the truth-tellers’ critique.

On the pretext of a respiratory virus
that hasn’t been proven to exist—
and if it does, it isn’t “novel”,
it’s like many others on Fauci’s list—
they’re imposing totalitarian rules
with the full support of the “liberal” fools.
In Australia they’ve got concentration camps
for those who refuse to get the shot.
They’ve got FEMA camps in America too.
While you were sleeping they built a lot.
In New Zealand—a dictatorship
ruled by an ignorant bitch—
protesters get thrown in jail
or beaten up and tossed in a ditch.
Germany and Italy have fallen.
Canada is almost gone.
Who knows how long this insanity
will last…but we know WHY it’s going on:
Depopulation, pauperization,
Government By Regimentation
and endless rounds of vaccination
to cull the “useless eater” mob.
One World Government under Schwab.
You’ll get a booster every six months.
They’ll monitor your thoughts and your grunts.

This is the New World Order—
a boot stomping endlessly on your face.
And if you continue to let it happen
you are immoral and a disgrace.
Tell every do-nothing politician.
Tell every employer in your workplace:
If you continue to let this happen
you are immoral and a disgrace.

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“There is no SARS-CoV-2 epidemic of national scope, thus no pandemic. This is already evident from the lack of excess mortality when corrected for demographics, and from the rather low occupancy of the intensive care units, whose capacities, in addition, have been massively reduced since April 2020.” —Dr. Thomas Binder, M.D., (The Prevailing Corona Nonsense Narrative, Debunked in 10 or 26 Minutes.) See this.

Dr. Binder has 32 years experience in diagnosis and treatment of Acute Respiratory Illness and did his thesis in immunology and virology.

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Notes

[1] COVID-19 “is not a mass murderer. The most recent realistic estimate of the global IFR [infection fatality rate] is 0.15%, below 0.05% for under 70s. After replacing the number of deceased within 28 days with a positive PCR test on whatever cause by the number of deceased from COVID-19, it is even much lower, well below that of seasonal influenza….SARS-CoV-2…self-evidently occurs seasonally from November to April and mutates, without human intervention, in such a way that it becomes ever more contagious but less dangerous. Because of existing basic and cross-immunity, only a fraction of the population falls ill. The disease is usually self-limiting and leaves immunity, possibly for life, and better than the best vaccination ever could. It kills comparatively few people and, unlike influenza, no children.

Featured image is from Medical Tyranny

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***

That was the motto given to Superman, of all people, in comic books. It started out as just ‘truth and justice’ when the DC Comics’ superhero first appeared in 1938, but then the originators added the last bit about the ‘American way’ as an attempt to bolster public morale during the Second World War.

There it remained in Superman’s speaking balloons during the McCarthy years and beyond when Americans became paranoid about Communism and began to propagate the notion of American exceptionalism.

With the latest iteration of the superhero on film, the motto was updated last October to ‘truth, justice and a better tomorrow.’

But the original is the motto I grew up with, probably helped to form my moral compass, and had something to do with my becoming a journalist: the notion that justice and truth do prevail and that these ideals are somehow encapsulated in America with a constitution that embraced truth, justice and human rights for all.

In other words, I grew up believing that the good guys do, eventually, carry the day in order to preserve all those great fundamental rights.

These days, there isn’t much evidence of any of this in America or many other places, given all the lies and corruption in politics, industry and the media, the great economic divides, the unfairness and prejudice now built into many systems, and more.

But every so often truth and justice and all those lofty values we believe in do prevail, and not just in America.

That’s what just happened in Britain, when a court decision upheld the right of a lone UK doctor to speak up against the official line about Covid.

The plantiff’s name was Dr. Sam White, who practices in the Southeast. After qualifying as a conventional doctor, he ultimately turned to functional medicine to solve his own issues with Lyme disease and then decided to turn to integrative solutions to help his patients, too.

Dr. White’s record was impeccable until he started speaking out about Covid. He produced a YouTube video, questioning mask-wearing, lockdowns. and especially the efficacy and safety of the Covid vaccine.

National Health Service England responded by suspending him from a right to practice medicine on June 21 with the following statement:

‘Through a social media video, Dr White spread misinformation and inaccurate details about the Coronavirus and how it is diagnosed and treated, including saying the vaccine is a form of genetic manipulation which can cause serious illness and death and that he advised against wearing masks.

‘Dr White has potentially put patients at risk and diminished the public’s trust in the medical profession by disseminating misinformation and inaccurate details about the measures taken to tackle the Coronavirus pandemic.’

In the video, according to court documents, Dr. White claimed doctors and nurses were ‘having their hands tied behind their backs’ preventing them from using treatments that had been established as being effective both as prophylaxis from Covid19 infections and as treatments for it.’

During the hearing after which his license was revoked, Dr. White’s statement supporting his position ran to 106 paragraphs that addressed, point by point, the allegations contained in the summary of the YouTube video, eventually producing an ‘extensive volume of literature and other sources’ to support his position.

Nevertheless, the UK’s General Medical Council suspended Dr. White’s license to practice medicine for 18 months, on the grounds that he was undermining public confidence in doctors, which would have a real impact on patient safety.

The Tribunal also imposed ongoing monitoring on Dr. White and restricted him from posting or sharing his views about Covid on any social media platforms, even forcing him to remove previous posts.

The GMC quickly revoked that decision about his license a month later, but that wasn’t good enough for Dr. White.

He decided to sue them in the high court, arguing that the GMC had infringed upon his right to freedom of speech.

In hearing the case, the court did not examine the merits of Dr. White’s views – only his right to make them. Referring to Article 10 of the European Court of Human Rights, Justice Dove, who presided over the case, noted:

‘Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.’

However, as Judge Dove pointed out, freedom of expression is a qualified right and as a ‘medical practitioner expressing opinions about medical matters his entitlement to freedom of expression is not absolute.’

Nevertheless, said the court, the GMC both ‘failed to afford sufficient respect to the claimant’s right . . . to freedom of expression or to ‘take account of the support for the claimant’s views to be found in the bodies of medical and scientific opinion which he had furnished to support the witness statement he lodged in the proceedings.’

Bottom line: Dr. Sam White won. He can put up his videos, he can speak out against the standard medical response to Covid, he can criticize the vaccine, he can put forward the other side of the story. And he is more than ready to do so.

As Judge Dove said, there are always qualifications about free speech. In the US, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in making his decision on the Schenck case in 1919 said, that the test for limiting free speech is, essentially, context. Does it present ‘clear and present danger’ or cause national panic?

His famous analogy was that an individual is free to shout ‘fire’ when in front of a handful of people, but only in a crowded cinema as long as there is one – or the person mistakenly believes there is one.

That decision was later overturned in 1969 with Brandenberg v Ohio, which enlarged our First Amendment rights by concluding that free speech can only be curtailed if it is likely to incite imminent lawless action (like a riot).

So in these fevered Covid times, when anything criticizing government and medical policy is being removed on Facebook and elsewhere, Sam White finally fought over truth and justice about free speech – and prevailed.

His case, which demonstrated that there is sufficient scientific evidence countering every aspect of the official handling of Covid, may well provide precedent to others who are being deplatformed or silenced for criticizing the official line.

He showed us all that even during times of crisis, it is absolutely crucial for a democracy to allow dissenting views to be voiced and aired if we are going to arrive at truth or justice.

That, to my mind, is the very definition of a modern superhero.

*

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***

Only Stoltenberg’s opening statement, neither Scholz’s brief comments nor answers by both to reporters’ questions, is currently posted in transcript form on the NATO website. But all can be heard in the video below. The new NATO satrap confirms there will be no change in NATO nuclear sharing in his nation; the NATO chieftain reiterates that NATO is a nuclear alliance.

[Stoltenberg] You are part of our mission in the Baltic region, with German jets regularly patrolling the skies as part of NATO’s Baltic air policing.

German ships contribute to NATO deployments in the Mediterranean.

German troops help to…in our mission in Kosovo.

And the NATO multinational battlegroup you lead in Lithuania helps to deter any aggression.

So today we discussed Russia’s substantial military build-up in and around Ukraine.

This raises tensions, and undermines security in Europe.

In our meeting today we also discussed the importance of strengthening our transatlantic bond in an age of global competition.

Where countries like Russia and China are undermining the rules-based international order.

Threatening their neighbours.

And expanding their nuclear capabilities.

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

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

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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***

Nicolas Derome, PhD is a deeply qualified, passionate scientist who lays out a compelling case against injecting children with the mRNA vaccine. In a video exclusively translated from French for RAIR Foundation USA, the Biology professor explains that he makes his case as a scientist and as a father.

It is difficult to find a compelling reason to subject children to the mRNA vaccine, which continues to be experimental and seeks to tackle a disease that barely impacts healthy people in general, but children in particular.

Dr. Derome’s presentation “Gene therapy in 5 to 11 year olds: what are the risks?” has been viewed on YouTube almost 72,000 times since it was published on November 25, 2021. In it, Dr. Derome uses visual slides as he lays out the evidence against injecting children with the “experimental” vaccine.

Dr. Derome works with “Reinfo Covid”, which is the Quebec branch of the French group of the same name. The mission as explained in part on their website “is to bring together health professionals, in order to support them and jointly find solutions to the health crisis.”

Coronavirus Risk in Children

As for the coronavirus itself, Derome explains that the Quebec public health organization INSPQ has not reported any “serious cases related to Covid in children under 17 years old, even up to 19 years old.” Further, the “mortality rate [for Covid] on a worldwide scale is extremely low”.

Children have “innate immunity,” the doctor explained, that is “far more effective than the one in adults,” which explains their “very low mortality rate” of “.0002% which represents one death out of five hundred thousand children”.

One argument for vaccinating children is that it would prevent them from infecting adults, but it is not easy to find data on how often this happens. The Centers for Disease Control is very vague on the matter, stating that “[T]he evidence that children and adolescents can be infected with, get sick from, and transmit SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve.”

In this vein, the doctor explained that it is “very well documented that the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID 19 is mainly transmitted from adults to children.” In fact, “[C]hild to adult virus transmission is extremely rare,” he says.

Experimental Gene Therapy

Dr. Nicolas Derome explains that citizens must have appropriate information “in order to make a free and informed choice about this vaccination campaign, which is now intended for children from 5 to 11 years old.”

The professor at the Institute of integrative biology and systems at Université Laval in Québec is particularly interested in the area of molecular biology referred to as functional genomics, or put simply, how to “figure out what roles genes have in an organism.”

It is in this field of study that the professor is exceedingly qualified to discuss the mRNA vaccine being used globally. It is in this context that Derome refers to the injection as “experimental” and as a type of “gene therapy.”

The scientist uses the word “experimental” because the mRNA vaccine is “in phase three of clinical trials”:

Currently, the third phase of these studies for the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, as you see, will be completed in October 2022 (for Moderna) and May 2023, respectively.

Derome states that “[B]ecause this experimental vaccination makes use of messenger RNA,” it is “in fact a kind of gene therapy [also see here].”

Derome points out that the data from vaccine studies is unsatisfactory, and what data is available only shows how the mRNA vaccine simply is “not effective in reducing transmission and infection in adolescents or adults”. Further:

They [the studies] show us that children have a different form of immune defense, different from those of the adolescents and the adults, and, well, it is unlikely that these vaccines will be effective in children.”

Predictable Backlash

As can be expected, Laval University distanced themselves from Dr. Nicolas Derome’s viral presentation. “These words do not in any way reflect the positions of Laval University and its Faculty of Science and Engineering regarding the health crisis,” the spokesperson for the educational institution, Andrée, was quotedas saying in La Presse.

The article is disingenuous, as it mentions the Pfizer clinical trial as evidence that children have been a part of vaccine research.

However, Derome specifically highlighted the Pfizer study, outlining his concern:

Another very important point is that children weren’t included in the initial trials of the vaccines against Covid-19. That means, the famous phase three study that I mentioned earlier, which ends in 2022 for Moderna and in 2023 for Pfizer. From an ethical point of view, there is little or no data on the safety or efficacy of these vaccines for children under 16 years.

All opinions must now reflect that of the state.

The smear piece points out that Mathieu Nadeau-Vallée, who goes by the name Wal_Trudeau on Twitter, “first highlighted the false information disseminated by the professor”. Evidently, Nadeau-Vallée spends his days rooting out what he considers to be “disinformation” online and makes a snarky TikTok video. Sounds very scientific.

Watch the presentation and read the full translated transcript below:

*

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Renee Nal is an investigative journalist and documentary film producer.

Featured image is from RAIR

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***

If the pandemic policy response had taken the form of mere advice, we would not be in the midst of this social, economic, cultural, political disaster. What caused the wreckage was the application of political force that was baked into the pandemic response this time in a way that has no precedent in human history. 

The response relied on compulsion imposed by all levels of government. The policies in turn energized a populist movement, Covid Red Guard that became a civilian enforcement arm. They policed the grocery aisles to upbraid the maskless. Drones swarmed the skies looking for parties to rat out and shut down. A blood lust against non compliers came to be unleashed at all levels of society.

Lockdowns granted some people meaning and purpose, the way war does for some people. The compulsion to bludgeon others trickled down from government to the people. Madness overtook rationality. Once this took place, there was no longer a question of “Two weeks to flatten the curve.” The mania to suppress the virus by ending person-to-person contact extended to two years.

This happened in the US and all over the world. The madness achieved nothing positive because the virus paid no attention to the edicts and enforcers. Ending social and economic functioning, however, shattered lives in countless ways, and continues to do so.

It is precisely because so much about life (and science) is uncertain that civilized societies operate on the presumption of the freedom to choose. That’s a policy of humility: no one possesses enough expertise to presume the right to restrict other people’s peaceful actions.

But with lockdowns and the successor policy of vaccine mandates, we’ve seen not humility but astounding arrogance. The people who did this to us and to billions of people around the world were so darn sure of themselves that they would take recourse to police-state tactics to realize their goals, none of which came to be realized at all, despite every promise that this would be good for us.

It’s the compulsion that’s the source of all the issues. Someone wrote the edicts at someone’s behest. Someone imposed the orders. Those somebodies should be the people who should own the results, compensate the victims, and otherwise accept the consequences for what they have done.

Who are they? Where are they? Why haven’t they stepped up?

If you are going to force people to behave a certain way – to close their businesses, kick people out of their homes, stay away from meetings, cancel vacations, physically separate everywhere – you have to be damn certain that it is the right thing to do. If the people who did this were so sure of themselves, why are they so shy to take responsibility?

The question is pressing: who precisely bears the blame? Not just in general, but more precisely: who was willing to step up from the beginning to say “If this does not work, I accept full responsibility?” Or: “I did this and stand by it.” Or: “I did this and I’m very sorry.”

So far as I know, no one has said anything like this.

Instead, what we have is a big jumble of messy bureaucracies, committees, reports, and unsigned orders. There are certain systems in place that seem structured in a way that makes it impossible to find out who precisely is responsible for their design and implementation.

For example, a friend of mine was being harassed by his school for not being vaccinated. He wanted to speak to the person who imposed the rule. In his investigation, everyone passed the buck. This person put together a committee which then agreed on best practices left over from some other printed guidance approved by another committee, which had been implemented by a similar institution on another matter. This was then adopted by a different division and passed on to another committee for implementation as a recommendation and then it was issued by another division entirely.

Incredibly, throughout the whole investigation, he failed to find a single person who was willing to step up and say: I did this and it was my decision. Everyone had an alibi. It became one big mush of bureaucracy with no accountability. It’s a tub of dough in which every bad actor pre-built a hiding place.

It’s the same with many people who have been disemployed for refusing to divulge their vaccine status. Their bosses typically say that they are very sorry for what happened; if it had been up to them, the person would continue to work. Their bosses in turn demur and blame some other policy or committee. No one is willing to speak to victims and say: “I did this and stand by it.”

Like millions of others, I’ve been harmed materially by pandemic response. My story lacks drama and is nothing remotely close to what others have experienced but it is salient because it is personal. I was invited to join in a live studio appearance on TV but then was refused because I refused to divulge my vaccine status. I was sent to a separate studio reserved for the unclean where I sat by myself.

The person who informed me said the policy was stupid and he objected. But it is the company policy. Maybe I can speak to his boss? Oh, he is against this stuff too. Everyone thinks it is dumb. Who then is responsible? The buck is always passed on and up in the chain of command but no one will accept the blame and bear the consequences.

Even though the courts have repeatedly shot down the vaccine mandates, there is universal consensus that the vaccines, while perhaps offering some private benefits, are not contributing to stopping infections or spread. Which is to say: the only person who might suffer from being unvaccinated is the unvaccinated himself. And yet still, people are losing their jobs, missing out on public life, being segregated and blocked, and otherwise paying a heavy price for not complying.

And yet there are still people who are intensifying the blame game that blames not government nor public health authorities nor anyone in particular but rather a whole class of people: the evil unvaccinated.

“I am furious at the unvaccinated,” writes Charles Blow of the New York Times, a paper that kicked off the pro-lockdown propaganda as early as February 27, 2020. “I am not ashamed of disclosing that. I am no longer trying to understand them or educate them. The unvaccinated are choosing to be part of the problem.”

How precisely are the unvaccinated the problem? Because, he writes,“it is possible to control the virus and mitigate its spread, if more people are vaccinated.”

This is plainly untrue, as we’ve seen from many countries’ experiences around the world. Look up Singapore or Gibraltar or Israel or any high vaxx country and see their case trends. They look the same or worse than low vaxx countries. We know from at least 33 studies that the vaccines cannot and do not stop infection or transmission, which is precisely why Pfizer and people like Anthony Fauci are demanding 3rd and now 4th shots. Shots without end, always with the promise that the next one will achieve the goal.

Mr. Blow is propagating falsehoods. Why? Because there is an appetite out there to tag someone or something with the fault for the wreckage. The unvaccinated are the scapegoats to distract from the real problem of discovering and holding to account those people who undertook this experiment without precedent.

The trouble now is finding out who they are. The governor of New York did terrible things but now he has resigned. His brother at CNN propagated lockdown ideology but he was fired. The mayor of New York has perpetrated evil but he is sneaking out of office in a few weeks. Some governors who locked down their populations have declined to run again and will try their best to disappear.

Dr. Deborah Birx, whom we know for certain was the person who talked Trump into approving lockdowns, quietly resigned and has done her best to avoid the spotlight. The journalist at the New York Times who whipped up total hysteria while calling for brutal lockdown has since been fired from his job. So too for hundreds of public health officials who have resigned or been fired.

Who is left to blame? The most likely candidate here is Fauci himself. But I can already tell you his excuse. He never signed a single order. His fingerprints are on no legislation.

He never issued any edicts. He never had anyone arrested. He never blocked the entrance to any church nor personally padlocked any school or business. He is merely a scientist making recommendations supposedly for people’s health.

He has an alibi too.

Much of this reminds me of World War I, the “Great War.” Look up the causes. They are all amorphous. Nationalism. An assassination. Treaties. Diplomatic confusions. The Serbs. Meanwhile none of these reasons can actually account for 20 million dead, 21 million wounded, and wrecked economies and lives all over the world, to say nothing of the Great Depression and rise of Hitler that came as a result of this appalling disaster.

Despite investigations, countless books, public hearings, and public fury that lasted a decade or more after the Great War, there never was anyone who accepted responsibility. We saw a repeat of the same following the Iraq War. Is there any record of anyone who said “I made the decision and I was wrong”?

So it might be for the lockdowns and mandates of 2020 and 2021. The carnage is unspeakable and will last a generation or two or more. Meanwhile, the people responsible are slowly slipping out of public life, finding new jobs and sanitizing their hands of any responsibility. They are scrubbing resumes and, when asked, blaming anyone and everyone else but themselves.

This is the moment in which we find ourselves: a ruling class terrified of being found out, called out, and held accountable, and therefore incentivized to generate an endless series of excuses, scapegoats, and distractions (“You need another shot!”).

This is the least satisfying conclusion to this awful story. But there it is: it is very likely that the people who did this to us will never be held accountable, not in any court and not in any legislative hearing. They will never be forced to compensate their victims. They will never even admit they were wrong. And herein lies what might be the most egregious feature of evil public policy: this is not and will not be justice or anything that even vaguely resembles justice.

That is what history would suggest, in any case. If it is different this time and the perpetrators actually do face some consequences, it would still not make things right, but at least it would set a fabulous precedent for the future.

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Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. [email protected]

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Dr. Joseph Ladapo was appointed Florida surgeon general and secretary of the Florida Department of Health by Gov. Ron DeSantis September 21, 2021

Ladapo has now issued a statewide public service announcement in support of commonsense COVID prevention strategies such as optimizing your vitamin D, staying active, eating nutrient-dense foods and boosting your immune system with supplements such as vitamin C, quercetin and zinc

Florida Health even highlights emerging treatments such as fluvoxamine and inhaled budesonide. Importantly, Florida Health now states that

“Physicians should use their clinical judgment when recommending treatment options for patients’ individualized health care needs. This may include emerging treatment options with appropriate patient informed consent, including off-label use or as part of a clinical trial”

Despite publishing a scientific review on vitamin D for COVID in the peer-reviewed journal Nutrients, and the paper being the second most downloaded article this year, I’ve been vilified and targeted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission for reporting its benefits

The evidence for vitamin D against COVID-19 satisfies Hill’s criteria for causality in a biological system, and dozens of studies have demonstrated vitamin D helps reduce all risks associated with COVID

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As a ray of hope in what appears to be an utterly broken medical system, Florida’s new surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, has issued a statewide public service announcement in support of commonsense COVID prevention strategies such as optimizing your vitamin D, staying active, eating nutrient-dense foods and boosting your immune system with supplements.

The HealthierYouFL.org website¹ now urges Floridians to “Talk to your health care provider about how certain supplements or foods containing vitamins and minerals might help boost your immune system, such as zinc, vitamin D, vitamin C and quercetin.” These are all well-known supplements that have been shown to have a positive impact on your COVID-19 risk.

The surgeon general also supports the use of monoclonal antibodies in acute cases, and as prevention in high-risk patients who have been exposed to COVID-19. Available treatment locations can be found on FloridaHealthCOVID19.gov.

Florida Health even highlights emerging treatments such as fluvoxamine and inhaled budesonide. Importantly, Florida Health now states that:²

“Physicians should use their clinical judgment when recommending treatment options for patients’ individualized health care needs. This may include emerging treatment options with appropriate patient informed consent, including off-label use or as part of a clinical trial.”

Well, no one could be happier about this than I. I’ve been calling for vitamin D recommendations since the earliest days of the pandemic — ideally nationwide, but statewide is at least a start, especially considering Florida is the sunshine state. Instead, I’ve been vilified and targeted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and mainstream media for reporting its benefits.^3,4

The FDA specifically mentioned Vitamin C, Vitamin D and Quercetin in their warning letter.   Now that the Florida surgeon general agrees, will they also be warned by the federal authorities?

Ladapo was appointed Florida surgeon general and secretary of the Florida Department of Health by Gov. Ron DeSantis September 21, 2021,⁵ and it’s refreshing to finally see COVID guidance that makes sense. In his acceptance speech, Ladapo said:⁶

“I am honored to have been chosen by Governor DeSantis to serve as Florida’s next Surgeon General. We must make health policy decisions rooted in data and not in fear …

I have observed the different approaches taken by governors across the country and I have been impressed by Governor DeSantis’ leadership and determination to ensure that Floridians are afforded all opportunities to maintain their health and wellness, while preserving their freedoms as Americans.”

Vitamin D Papers Top List of Most Popular Studies of the Year

October 31, 2020, I published a scientific review⁷ in the journal Nutrients, co-written with William Grant, Ph.D., and Dr. Carol Wagner, both of whom are part of the GrassrootsHealth expert vitamin D panel.

As of October 31, 2021, our paper, “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and Its Severity” — which you can download and read for free — was the second most downloaded study from this journal in the past 12 months. It was also No. 2 in citations and No. 4 for views.

The study with the most downloads in the past year and the all-time highest number of views was another vitamin D paper⁸ by Bhattoa et.al., which found vitamin D supplementation reduced the risk of influenza and COVID-19 infections and deaths. The coauthors of my paper, Grant and Baggerly, were coauthors on this paper as well.

A third vitamin D paper, by Annweiler et.al., also nabbed the No. 1 spot for most-cited study in the past 12 months. This study found vitamin D supplementation improved survival in frail elderly hospitalized with COVID-19.

Clearly, vitamin D has been on the forefront of many minds, and I’m glad the Florida surgeon general recognizes its importance as well. While mainstream media and many so-called health authorities still hold on to the ridiculous claim that there’s “no scientific basis” for the recommendation of vitamin D for COVID, that is just false.

As early as the end of September 2020, data from 14 observational studies — summarized in Table 1 of our paper⁹ — showed that vitamin D blood levels are inversely correlated with the incidence and/or severity of COVID-19. Many critics of vitamin D will claim that these associations are not causal. However, there are statistical tools such as Bradford Hill that can actually prove causation through these associations are strong enough.

The Bradford Hill criteria are a group of nine principles (i.e., strength of association, consistency of evidence, temporality, biological gradient, plausibility or mechanism of action, and coherence, although coherence still needs to be verified experimentally) that can be useful in establishing epidemiologic evidence of a causal relationship between a presumed cause and an observed effect.

It has been widely used in public health research and has determined that the vitamin D insufficiency for COVID is indeed causal.¹⁰

It’s important to realize that your body is well-equipped to handle just about any infection, provided your immune system is working properly, as that is your body’s first line of defense. Vitamin D receptors are found in a large number of different tissues and cells, including your immune cells. This means vitamin D plays an important role in your immune function specifically.

If vitamin D is lacking, your immune system will be impaired, which in turn makes you more susceptible to infections of all kinds, including COVID-19. As explained in our paper, having sufficient vitamin D in your system can reduce your risk of COVID-19 and other respiratory infections through several different mechanisms, including but not limited to the following:¹¹

• Reducing the survival of viruses
• Inhibiting the replication of viruses¹²
• Reducing inflammatory cytokine production
• Maintaining endothelial integrity (endothelial dysfunction contributes to vascular inflammation and impaired blood clotting, two hallmarks of severe COVID-19)
• Increasing angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) concentrations — Angiotensin II is a natural peptide hormone that increases blood pressure by stimulating aldosterone. ACE2 normally consumes angiotensin I, thereby lowering the concentration of angiotensin II. However, SARS-CoV-2 infection downregulates ACE2, resulting in excessive accumulation of angiotensin II, which worsens the infection
• Boosting your overall immune function by modulating your innate and adaptive immune responses
• Reducing respiratory distress¹³
• Improving overall lung function
• Helping produce surfactants in your lungs that aid in fluid clearance¹⁴
• Boosting T cell immunity, which plays an important role in your body’s defense against viral and bacterial infections. When vitamin D signaling is impaired, it significantly impacts the quantity, quality, breadth and location of CD8 T cell immunity, resulting in more severe viral and bacterial infections.¹⁵
  According to a December 11, 2020, paper,¹⁶ high-quality T cell response actually appears to be far more important than antibodies when it comes to providing protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2 specifically
• Increasing expression of antimicrobial peptides in your monocytes and neutrophils — both of which play important roles in COVID-19
• Enhancing expression of an antimicrobial peptide called human cathelicidin, which helps defend respiratory tract pathogens

From my perspective, vitamin D optimization is one of the easiest, least expensive and most impactful strategies to reduce your risk of serious SARS-CoV-2 infection and other respiratory infections.

Vitamin D optimization is particularly important for dark-skinned individuals (who tend to have lower levels than Caucasians unless they spend extended time in the sun), the elderly, and those with preexisting chronic health conditions. All of these are also risk factors for COVID-19, so population-wide optimization of vitamin D levels could significantly improve COVID outcomes among the most vulnerable.

How Vitamin D Influences Your COVID Risks

At this point, there’s no shortage of studies showing higher vitamin D levels beneficially impact all stages of COVID-19. It:

Lowers your risk of testing positive for COVID — The largest observational study¹⁷ to date, which looked at data for 191,779 American patients, found that of those with a vitamin D level below 20 ng/ml (deficiency), 12.5% tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, compared to just 5.9% of those who had an optimal vitamin D level of 55 ng/ml or higher. This inverse relationship persisted across latitudes, races/ethnicities, sexes and age ranges.

Reduces your risk of symptomatic illness — SARS-CoV-2-specific investigations have found that COVID-19 is far more common in vitamin D deficient individuals.

In one such study,^18,19,20 82.2% of COVID-19 patients tested were deficient in vitamin D, compared to 47.2% of population-based controls. (Mean vitamin D levels were 13.8 ± 7.2 ng/ml, compared to 20.9 ± 7.4 ng/ml in controls.)

They also found that blood levels of vitamin D were inversely correlated to D-dimer levels (a measure of blood coagulation). Many COVID-19 patients have elevated D-dimer levels, which are associated with blood clots. This was particularly true with the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, but while less common with subsequent variants, some blood clotting, just less intense, can still occur.

Reduces infection severity — Our vitamin D paper²¹ also lists data from 14 observational studies that show vitamin D blood levels are inversely correlated with the incidence and/or severity of COVID-19. This is quite logical, considering vitamin D regulates inflammatory cytokine production — a lethal hallmark of COVID-19 — and is an important regulator of your immune system.

Reduces your risk of hospitalization — Reduced severity would translate into a lower risk for hospitalization, and that’s precisely what researchers have found.

A Spanish study^22,23 found baseline vitamin D levels inversely correlated with the risk of ICU admission, and that giving supplemental vitamin D3 (calcifediol at 532 micrograms on the first day of admission followed by 266 mcg on days 3, 7, 15 and 30) to hospitalized patients with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 reduced ICU admissions by 82%.

Reduces your risk of death — COVID-19 patients with a vitamin D level between 21 ng/mL (50 nmol/L) and 29 ng/mL (75 nmol/L) had a 12.55 times higher risk of death than those with a level above 30 ng/mL in one study.²⁴ Having a level below 20 ng/mL was associated with a 19.12 times higher risk of death.

Another study^25,26 found the risk of severe COVID-19 and related deaths virtually disappeared when vitamin D levels were above 30 ng/mL (75 nmol/L).

A third paper²⁷ found a marked variation in mortality depending on whether the patients lived above or below 35 degrees North latitude. As noted by the authors, having adequate vitamin D “could be very important in preventing the cytokine storm and subsequent acute respiratory distress syndrome that is commonly the cause of mortality.”²⁸

Speeds viral clearance — While having enough vitamin D in your system will reduce your odds of infection and serious illness, taking oral vitamin D once infected can still help you recover faster.

Research²⁹ published in November 2020 found oral vitamin D supplementation in SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals with mild symptoms who also had low vitamin D, helped speed up viral clearance.

Participants were randomly assigned to receive either 60,000 IUs of oral cholecalciferol (nano-liquid droplets) or a placebo for seven days. The target blood level was 50 ng/mL. Anyone who had not achieved a blood level of 50 ng/mL after the first seven days continued to receive the supplement until they reached the target level.

Periodically, all participants were tested for SARS-CoV-2 as well as fibrinogen, D-dimer, procalcitonin and CRP, all of which are inflammatory markers. The primary outcome measure of the study was the proportion of patients testing negative for COVID-19 before Day 21 of the study, as well as changes in inflammatory markers.

Of the 16 patients in the intervention group, 10 (62.5%) tested negative by Day 21, compared to just five of the 24 controls (20.8%). Fibrinogen levels were also significantly decreased in the treatment group, indicating lower levels of clotting.

How to Optimize Your Vitamin D Level

For optimal health, immune function and disease prevention, you want a vitamin D blood level between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL year-round. In Europe, the measurements you’re looking for are 150 nmol/L and 200 nmol/L.

If you live in a sunny locale like Florida and practice sensible sun exposure year-round, you might not need any supplements. The DMinder app³⁰ is a helpful tool to see how much vitamin D your body can make depending on your location and other individual factors.

Many, unfortunately, don’t get enough sun exposure for one reason or another, and in these cases, an oral vitamin D supplement may be required. Just remember that the most important factor here is your blood level, not the dose, so before you start, get tested so you know your baseline.

Here’s a summary of how to determine whether you might need an oral supplement, and your ideal dosage:

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Japan is now labeling Covid “vaccines” to warn of dangerous and potentially deadly side effects such as myocarditis. In addition, the country is reaffirming its commitment to adverse event reporting requirements to ensure all possible side effects are documented.

These efforts from Japan’s health authority are in stark contrast to the deceptive measures taken by other countries to coerce citizens into taking the injection, downplaying side effects, and discouraging proper adverse event reporting.

Additionally, Japan is emphasizing informed consent and bodily autonomy. Until the coronavirus pandemic, the concept of “informed consent” was considered sacred to healthcare professionals in the West.

Japan is particularly raising concerns about the risks of myocarditis in young men injected with Pfizer or Moderna’s gene–therapy treatment. The country is enforcing a strict legal reporting requirement of side effects that must take place within 28 days of the injections.

Novel Additives: Descriptions Clarify

Three Covid-19 gene-therapy treatments are currently offered in Japan. They include the Pfizer/BioNTech (Comirnaty) and Takeda’s Moderna formulation. The product descriptions (here and here) state that “this product contains an additive that has never been used in a vaccine before.”

Furthermore, the pharmaceutical companies urge you to consult your doctor about the additive if you plan to be injected with it. In addition to the Pfizer and Moderna gene-therapies, Vaxzevria (formerly AstraZeneca) is also administered in Japan. However, Japan only recommends it to people 40-year-old and over. Reference is also made to the new type of additive in the Vaxzevria injections.

No Compulsory Vaccination Or Discrimination

Japan’s Ministry of Health of health website encourages citizens to receive the “vaccine”; however, they stress it is not mandatory,

Although we encourage all citizens to receive the COVID-19 vaccination, it is not compulsory or mandatory. Vaccination will be given only with the consent of the person to be vaccinated after the information provided.

In addition, the government recommends those who are considering taking the shot carefully consider both its effectiveness and side effects.

Please get vaccinated of your own decision, understanding both the effectiveness in preventing infectious diseases and the risk of side effects. No vaccination will be given without consent.

Furthermore, they stress that businesses do not force employees to receive the experimental gene therapy. Nor should employees discriminate against those who refuse the injections,

Please do not force anyone in your workplace or those who around you to be vaccinated, and do not discriminate against those who have not been vaccinated.

The government even links to a “Human Rights Advice,” including instructions for handling any complaints if individuals face “vaccine” discrimination at work.

Japan Breaks Ranks

Doctors worldwide have echoed Japan’s health authority warnings about the gene-therapies side effects. However, this kind of proper informed consent has cost many doctors in western nations their licenses to practice medicine. The government has accused these doctors of spreading ‘vaccine hesitancy.’

Furthermore, while Japan allows its citizens to choose whether to be injected with the experimental gene-therapies, other countries are forcing citizens to receive the jab. For example, in February 2022, Austria will mandate the injections. Citizens who refuse will face heavy fines and up to one year in prison.

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Amy Mek is an investigative journalist: Banned in parts of Europe, Wanted by Islamic countries, Threatened by terror groups, Hunted by left-wing media, Smeared by Hollywood elites & Fake religious leaders.

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