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And if no measures are taken to rectify this situation, the Walloon region will soon have to pay a penalty of 5000 euros per day until they withdraw the measure, local media reported Wednesday.
An alliance of health workers, scientists, lawyers and citizens – gathered together as the non-profit organization Notre bon Droit – has been fighting the health pass for some time. The pass indicates whether someone has been vaccinated against the Coronavirus, has recently tested negative or has been declared cured and it is used throughout Belgium to, among other things, regulate access to the catering industry.
The court of first instance in Namur has now ruled in favor of the non-profit association in summary proceedings. “Several cases have been established in the Walloon decree that legally contradict European law and the right to the protection of personal data. The verdict also states that it has not been demonstrated that the Corona pass is the only alternative to a new lockdown.
According to the judge, the measure restricts freedom in such a way that it is not proportionate to the objectives pursued.
The lawyers of the association noted that “the court also criticized the discrimination established between the citizens without objective and scientific justification”.
Officials from the Walloon Region must now take measures to rectify the situation until a verdict is reached on the merits of the case. From a period of seven days after the court’s decision has been served, there will be a penalty of 5000 euros per day. The region must also bear the legal costs.
‘Protecting the data’ of the fully vaccinated sick with Covid
Another non-profit association has also instituted summary proceedings before the Brussels court of first instance. There will be a plea hearing on December 8. The association for the defense of freedoms and privacy Charta21 recently brought an urgent action before the Brussels court of first instance to suspend the CovidScan application in order to protect data on sick vaccinated individuals.
“This is a first step which allows our action to be continued,” explained Jacques Folon, an expert in General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and administrator of the association.
Charta21’s action “aims to put an end to multiple breaches of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and in particular to prevent a leak of personal health data from vaccinated people”. Folon pointed out that a flaw in the software indeed disclosed the names of tens of thousands of people both vaccinated and sick with Covid.
When this flaw was exposed, eHealth – the health data exchange platform that is the subject of the complaint – did not report it to the Data Protection Authority (DPA). It also did not warn the people concerned. “eHealth should have immediately warned that there had been a data breach within the realm of the GDPR and warned all those involved, which it did not do,” said Folon.
Walloon officials to scared to show up?
The Walloon government has meanwhile announced in a short response that the Corona pass will remain in force in Wallonia. “The government has taken note of the decision of the court of first instance in Namur. That decision cancels neither the Walloon decree nor the ‘Covid Safe Ticket’ (CST) which continues to apply in Wallonia.”
The Wallonia region announced that they would not only repeal the regulation but immediately appealed against the judgment. Regional governments are responsible for imposing the restrictive measures under the Belgian federal-state system.
According to the ruling however, all citizens are required to show their CST before entering cafés, restaurants, gyms and cultural venues, which are curbing individual freedoms in a disproportionate way that does not serve their alleged objective.
The Belgian daily Le Soir, reported that representatives of the Wallonia government failed to appear at a court hearing on November 16. Officials in the public administration office neglected the file for five days “due to a combination of a weekend and public holidays”.
The summons had been received on November 10, but the day after was Armistice Day commemorating the end of World War I, a public holiday in Belgium. The holiday fell on a Thursday and officials simply extended it to a long weekend.
The following Monday, on November 15 was King’s Day, which grants the public administration a holiday. As a consequence, they claim, nobody dealt with the file and the hearing took place without the Wallonia officials.
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Featured image: The Parliament of Wallonia and la Citadelle de Namur. Wikipedia
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Israel stepped up its opposition to the Iran nuclear deal talks on Thursday and demanded that the US and other world powers put an immediate end to the negotiations.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett delivered the message in a call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Iran is carrying out nuclear blackmail as a negotiating tactic, and this should be answered by the immediate halt to negotiations and the implementation of tough steps by the world powers,” Bennett said, according to a statement released by his office.
Israel claims that Iran has no intention of reducing its nuclear activity back to JCPOA levels and is only trying to buy time to develop a nuclear bomb. But there’s no evidence to support the claim, and Iran has only taken steps to advance its nuclear program in the face of pressure from the US and Israel, and a JCPOA revival would reverse those steps.
Iran has said Israel is spreading lies about Iran to “poison” the negotiations. When the talks first resumed Monday, Israeli media reported that Israel warned the US Tehran is about to enrich uranium to the 90 percent level needed for weapons-grade. But again, there was no evidence to back up the claim.
With the demands from Israeli officials to halt negotiations come threats. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Thursday that attacking Iran must always be an option for Israel, even if the country has to act alone.
Israel has taken extreme measures to sabotage diplomacy between the US and Iran in the past. In April, when the first rounds of negotiations began, Israel carried out an attack on Iran’s Natanz Nuclear Facility. Tehran responded to the incident by starting to enrich some uranium at 60 percent, which Israel now claims is evidence the Iranians are racing towards a bomb.
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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
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The coercive practices of restricting movement of people and compulsory Covid vaccination are spreading throughout formerly free countries.Germany has now joined Austria, Italy, and Australia in resurrecting the Third Reich: see this.
The rush to totalitarianism is inexplicable according to the official narrative.All health authorities now acknowledge that the mRNA “vaccines” do not prevent infection and do not prevent the vaccinated from spreading the infection.This is the reason that the vaccinated are told they need booster shots every 6 months and need to continue wearing the ineffective masks.Why booster shots protect when the previous shots don’t is not explained.
Neither is it explained why the emphasis is on protecting against a virus that has a very low mortality, killing primarily those with existing morbidities who are not effectively treated.In contrast, the adverse vaccine reporting systems in the US, UK, and EU reveal a larger number of deaths and injuries from the “vaccine” than from Covid.We also have evidence that the young who are not endangered by Covid are seriously endangered by the vaccine with vaccinated children and young, healthy sports stars dropping dead from heart attacks.We also have evidence that the “vaccine” attacks the innate human immune system, making the vaccinated less able to ward off all viruses and diseases such as cancer.
In other words, all evidence is against vaccination.There is no evidence in favor of it.
So why the coercion to force dangerous vaccination that only does harm?
It is simply not possible that public health agencies in Austria, Italy, Germany, and Australia are unaware of the evidence that the Covid “vaccines” are a total failure and a danger.
Are all public health officials bought off by bribes from Big Pharma, or is the suspicion that a reduction in world population is underway a fact instead of a conspiracy theory?
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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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US diplomat Mark Brzezinski, President Joe Biden’s nominee for ambassador to Poland, has pledged to “deepen and broaden the partnership” between the two countries.
Appearing before the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, Brzezinski said he would “commit to continue and strengthen” the United States’ security cooperation “with our stalwart ally Poland, where the enduring rotational presence of some 4,500 US troops defends NATO’s eastern flank.”
He added:
“I will deepen and broaden the partnership between Poland and the United States to spearhead economic growth in the region, including through the Three Seas Initiative,” a Polish-led regional drive by European countries between the Black, Baltic and Adriatic Seas.
Brzezinski also pledged that, if confirmed, he would “work with Poland to support the government and people of a peaceful and whole Ukraine, as well as the aspirations of the Belarusian people for a democratic Belarus.”
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He added he would in particular “continue to underscore to Polish authorities the importance of an impartial judiciary, independent media, and respect for the human rights of all, including LGBTQI+ persons and members of other minorities.”
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Brzezinski previously served in the administration of Barack Obama and was US ambassador to Sweden from 2011 to 2015.
From 1999 to 2001, he served on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council, first as a director for Russia and Eurasia, and then as a director for the Balkans….
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Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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Recounting some of the “atrocities committed shamefully in the name of our nation” during the ongoing so-called War on Terror, Sen. Dick Durbin on Tuesday said he has introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would close the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba “once and for all.”
“Since the first group of detainees was brought to Guantánamo in January of 2002, four different presidents have presided over the facility,” Durbin (D-Ill.)—a longtime proponent of closing the prison—said during a speech on the Senate floor.
“In that time the Iraq War has begun and ended, the war in Afghanistan—our nation’s longest war—has come to a close,” he continued. “A generation of conflict has come and gone yet the Guantánamo detention facility is still open and every day that it remains open is an affront to our system of justice and the rule of law.”
“In the wake of 9/11 the [George W.] Bush administration tossed aside our constitutional principles as well as the Geneva Conventions,” Durbin contended, calling Gitmo a place “where due process goes to die.”
“Military officials, national security experts, and leaders on both sides of the aisle have demanded its closure for years,” he said. “The facility was virtually designed to be a legal black hole where detainees could be held incommunicado beyond the reach of law and subjected to unspeakable torture and abuse.”
Durbin brought up the testimony last month of Majid Khan, a Pakistani man and former al-Qaeda operative imprisoned at Guantánamo since 2006. Prior to that, he was held at a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) black site in Afghanistan called the “Salt Pit,” where prisoner Gul Rahman was tortured to death in 2002.
Khan told the jury of U.S. officers during his Gitmo military commission trial that he was raped by CIA medics, subjected to the interrupted drowning torture commonly called waterboarding, hung naked from a ceiling beam, and chained to the floors for days on end.
“These high-ranking military leaders did something unheard of,” said Durbin. “Seven of the eight jurors signed a handwritten letter demanding clemency for Majid Khan,” who was subsequently sentenced to 26 years in prison in a formality due to to a superseding plea deal with the U.S. government that grants his release next February.
“Stories about the torture of prisoners have only galvanized American enemies” and have “diminished our international standing,” Durbin argued. “How can we claim credibility as a nation, how can we hold authoritarian dictators accountable, if they can point to our own legacy of cruelty?”
“This subversion of justice has harmed detainees, it has undermined our moral standing, and it has failed to deliver justice which it promised,” the senator continued. “For two decades the families of Americans who died on 9/11 have waited for the alleged co-conspirators who are being detained in Guantánamo to be brought to justice… but the case still hasn’t come to trial.”
Meanwhile, he added, “Guantánamo has become a symbol for human rights abuse [and] lawlessness.”
Durbin also lamented that “we spend more than $500 million a year to keep Guantánamo open” to detain just 39 prisoners, 13 of whom have been approved for transfer.
“That works out to nearly $14 million a year for each prisoner,” he noted. “That’s enough money to expand Medicaid coverage to 1.5 million Americans for 10 years.”
“Guantánmamo does not reflect who we are or who we should be,” Durbin said. “Indefinite detention without charge or trial is antithetical to American values and yet more than two-thirds of the people detained at Guantánamo today have never been charged with a crime. How can that be any form of justice?”
“We must accelerate the timeline to finally close Guantánamo,” he argued. “America’s failures in Guantánamo must not be passed on to another administration or to another Congress. Can this Senate summon the courage to finally close this detention facility? I’d like to test it on the floor of the Senate.”
Thank you @SenatorDurbin for your words: “Close the detention facility in Guantanamo. Let’s put this dark chapter behind us once and for all.” https://t.co/MHwN0rndkV
Durbin called on President Joe Biden—who has signaled his intention to close Gitmo—to appoint a special envoy on detainee transfers and to pursue a “swift resolution to the remaining cases” in civilian courts.
“The use of torture and military commissions that deny due process have hindered our ability to bring terrorists to justice,” he said. “Our federal courts have proven more than capable of handling even the most serious and complex terrorism cases.”
Durbin quoted the late Maj. Ian Fishback, who exposed murder, torture, and other crimes committed by U.S. forces against prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq: “If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression then those ideals were never really in our possession.”
“The families who lost loved ones on [9/11] deserve better. America deserves better,” Durbin insisted. “It’s time at long last to face reality and… close the detention facility at Guantánamo. Let’s put this dark chapter behind us once and for all.”
From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
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In total, 92% of the scientific studies published on the toxicity or ecotoxicity of the world’s most widely used pesticide were judged as irrelevant or unreliable by the RAR.
The most recent death involves a 16-year-old girl from Georgia (VAERS I.D. 1865389) who died reportedly from a heart condition and multi-organ failure two days after receiving Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.
Considering the agency claims there are 329,000 pages of data, the fact that they were able to read, analyze and draw conclusions about its safety and effectiveness in just 108 days — about 80,000 pages a month — is no small miracle. They must employ some very efficient speed readers.
A new study touts the power of natural immunity to fight off the worst effects of the coronavirus. The research excluded about 87,500 people who were vaccinated over the time span of the study. Out of the rest of the group studied, only 1,304 contracted COVID-19 again, with none requiring intensive care treatment for the disease, formally known as SARS-CoV-2.
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on Tuesday voted narrowly to recommend Emergency Use Authorization of Merck’s five-day pill to treat COVID, despite the panel expressing a host of concerns about the drug’s safety and efficacy.
Since April 2020, our “specialists” have been following in the footsteps of those in power, when they have not preceded them, to warn us, to tell us that it is far from over, to keep the fire under the pan and to keep us in fear of these viruses, which are decidedly tenacious.
Many of the measures the author recommends the U.S. and NATO employ against Moscow have already been enacted and others are in the process of being implemented; indeed, they resemble the template he’s using as a current model to a remarkable degree.
On 13 November 1941 a significant conference was convened in Nazi-occupied Belarus, at the city of Orsha, in order to decide whether the Wehrmacht should resume its advance on Moscow, or go over to the defence for the winter.
Now one year into the war to destroy the Tigray, the TPLF has managed to dramatically regain much of Tigray state occupied by Eritrean troops as well as unite with the anti-Abiy Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) to move on the capitol, Addis Ababa. Reportedly Abiy’s army has been devastated by military losses and mass desertions.
Today big tech is just as important for policing operations as the companies that manufacture their weapons, with artificial intelligence (AI) being used by police around the world to streamline criminal investigations, engage in mass surveillance, and, supposedly, predict and stop crimes before they occur.
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The preliminary EU report on glyphosate prepared by the Dutch, Hungarian, French and Swedish regulatory agencies fails to take account of the vast majority of recent studies published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, according to a report by the association Générations Futures.
The preliminary EU report (RAR, for “Renewal Assessment Report”) would allow the reauthorisation of the controversial herbicide in Europe at the end of 2022. In an analysis published on 16 November, Générations Futures quantified the failure of the report, prepared by the Dutch, Hungarian, French and Swedish regulatory agencies, to reflect the state of the science on glyphosate.
According to Générations Futures, out of 7,188 studies published in scientific journals, only 30 studies, equivalent to 0.4% of the studies they found, were judged by the RAR to be relevant and reliable without qualification.
None of these 30 studies carried weight in the RAR’s evaluation of the exclusion criteria for glyphosate (properties that could lead to a ban on the pesticide) and none was considered as a key study that could lead to the definition of a safe dose.
In total, 92% of the scientific studies published on the toxicity or ecotoxicity of the world’s most widely used pesticide were judged as irrelevant or unreliable by the RAR.
On the other hand, notes Générations Futures, the studies conducted by the manufacturers were treated with greater leniency and end up forming the basis of the EU report – in spite of the association’s observations that there are “significant methodological flaws” in most of these regulatory tests, which were nevertheless considered reliable by the European evaluators.
The Générations Futures report sheds light on a controversy that has been going on for over five years. In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the leading authority on the classification of carcinogens, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. This position is diametrically opposed to that of the EU and US regulatory agencies, which consider the herbicide not to be carcinogenic. Glyphosate was reauthorised in 2017 for five years in the European Union, reduced from the usual 15 years in deference to the huge controversy over the substance.
Differences of opinion
Four years later, the results of the new EU report are identical. According to the conclusions of the RAR, communicated in June, glyphosate is neither carcinogenic, mutagenic, reprotoxic nor an endocrine disruptor. At the same time, the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm) expressed a different opinion, concluding that there was a “moderate presumption” of a link between occupational exposure to glyphosate and the occurrence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer of the lymphatic system.
Why such divergent views? The report by Générations Futures explains that the EU experts failed to take into account the overwhelming majority of studies published in the scientific literature. Of the 1,550 studies on the toxicity of glyphosate that Générations Futures found had been published in the literature over the last ten years, only 11 were deemed reliable by the RAR. 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 8 are considered reliable by the RAR.
On what objective criteria is the bulk of the published science on glyphosate considered irrelevant or unreliable? “Selecting only studies carried out ‘on a species relevant to the toxicology of mammals’ amounts to excluding all studies carried out on other organisms, such as fish for example,” Générations Futures explains in its report. However, an increasing number of studies show that tests on fish could be relevant and exploitable for a risk assessment for humans. The French food safety agency ANSES recommends that data from fish should be considered in assessments of the ability of a substance to damage DNA.
Similarly, Générations Futures criticises the fact that “mechanistic studies examining the effects of glyphosate at the cellular and molecular level were excluded because they ‘cannot be linked to the risk assessment'”.
Several studies were rejected on the grounds that they were conducted on a mixture of substances, not glyphosate alone. However, closer examination of the studies revealed that in some cases, the study was indeed conducted on glyphosate alone – three studies identified in the RAR fell into this category.
Other academic work is also rejected because it was conducted in a non-European context. Studies from Asia or South America were rejected because the “[experimental] conditions would not be comparable to those in Europe,” the report says. This is contrary to all principles of hazard and risk assessment.
Consultation process on glyphosate “not fair” to civil society
Are the studies provided by pesticide manufacturers in support of the glyphosate re-authorisation application subject to the same scrutiny? According to an article by Stéphane Foucart in Le Monde, the toxicologist Pauline Cervan, the main author of the Générations Futures report, was specifically interested in a specific category of tests (known as “micronucleus tests”) designed to identify the genotoxic properties of a substance. Fourteen such studies were submitted by industry to the regulatory authorities, which excluded four of them as unacceptable.
What about the remaining ten, which were considered valid in the RAR? “All these studies have major flaws that should have led the authorities to consider them with reservations,” Ms Cervan told Le Monde. According to the toxicologist, who formerly prepared regulatory dossiers for the chemical industry, none of these studies complies with the current recommendations of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which they are supposed to respect. Reasons included an insufficient number of cells analysed, no evidence that the substance being evaluated reached the target tissue (bone marrow), and absence of historical data from the laboratory that conducted the tests.
Questioned by Le Monde, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which oversees the EU assessment, pointed out that the RAR is only preliminary for the time being, and was open to comments in the context of a public consultation that ended on 22 November. “We encourage [Générations Futures] to submit its report to EFSA and ECHA [European Chemicals Agency] so that the rapporteur member states responsible for the RAR can consider the specific points raised,” EFSA said. “Certainly, a public consultation has been opened and we will submit our comments, but the process is not fair to civil society,” said Pauline Cervan. “The RAR is several thousand pages long and the consultation only lasts two months. For NGOs, the critical work that needs to be done cannot be done in such a short time!”
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said his country is ready to mediate between Russia and Ukraine in peace talks. Although Erdoğan presents Turkey as a potential mediator, his country will certainly favor Kiev when considering the continued accusations made against Russia for the supposed human rights violations that Crimea’s Tartars experience and the Turkish Military Industrial Complex now heavily relying and placing its hopes on Ukraine to achieve its ambitious aims.
With such an offer to mediate, Erdoğan is attempting to project Ankara’s foreign policy ambition of expanding its influence in the post-Soviet space. Most recently was Turkey’s blatant involvement in Azerbaijan’s invasion of historically Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucasus in 2020. Today, Azerbaijan is not just an ally of Turkey, but seen as an extension of the Turkish state, especially in the military and economic sectors where Russia was formerly more dominant in.
Erdoğan had set his eyes on Ukraine a long time ago and always aimed to strengthen his position there, especially because the level of Russophobia in the country works in his favor. He said that Turkey is committed to ensuring peace, with an emphasis on the Crimean Tatars, and expressed hope that the region will not turn into a warzone and for peace to prevail.
The Turkish president’s offer for his country to be a mediator between Russia and Ukraine was positively assessed by Kiev as the two countries are essentially allies. Turkey officially refused to recognize the results of the 2014 Crimean status referendum and the reunification of the peninsula with Russia. It is recalled that Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. Despite this fact, in September Erdoğan reiterated at the UN General Assembly that Ankara attaches importance to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, including Crimea, and again emphasized that Turkey does not recognize the reunification.
In building Turkish-Ukrainian relations, Erdoğan took small but specific steps. He first sent military advisers to Ukraine, then instructors, and then delivered Bayraktar drones and other weapons to the Ukrainian military. Therefore, Kiev believes that Erdoğan is an ally against Russia. Moscow has repeatedly warned that Turkey is encouraging militaristic fever in Ukraine by delivering such weapons to Kiev, and that this could destabilize the situation in Donbass.
Although Erdoğan is now apparently taking the initiative to resolve the conflict in Donbass and ease relations between Kiev and Moscow, when remembering his interests and his attempts to turn Turkey from a regional power into a more global power, he challenges Russia’s interests and traditional sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this way, it is obvious that Erdoğan is not interested in peacebuilding in Eastern Europe, especially when considering Turkey’s recent direct and indirect invasions of Nagorno-Karabakh and large areas of Iraq, Syria and Libya, as well as refusing to adhere to UN Security Council resolutions regarding the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus.
Erdoğan does not need peace between Kiev and Moscow, nor does he has the resources or experience to achieve peaceful settlements. Therefore, Erdoğan’s cunning offer to mediate is just a desperate attempt for Ankara to involve itself in issues that it has no business being in.
Turkey has nothing to do with the Minsk agreements, which are the basis for solving the problems in Donbass and was made between Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), France and Germany. These agreements are an international obligation of Ukraine, which Kiev is not fulfilling.
Ukraine adheres to the Minsk agreements only in words and does not respect them as Kiev’s forces continue to fire against Donbass. Although Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky expresses hope that the Donbass issue can be peacefully resolved, it will be a difficult task as he actually has no real authority in the country and rather serves the oligarchs and military leaders as a figurehead.
For this additional reason, it is ridiculous to think that Erdoğan will go to Kiev, meet with Zelensky, and resolve the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine is effectively being shaped by the US and its Eastern European allies like Poland and the Baltic States to be a resource of pressure and conflict against Russia.
Although it appears that Ankara and Moscow have strengthened their relations, especially as Erdoğan boldly announced that he expects Russia to assist Turkey in building nuclear plants, establishing a space program and acquiring new weapons, the geopolitical convergence of the two countries clashes. So long as Turkey continues challenging Russia’s sphere of influence, suspicion and mistrust will remain, and hence why Moscow will never allow Erdoğan to involve Turkey in Eastern European matters concerning Russia.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
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VAERS data released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention included a total of 913,268 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 19,249 deaths and 143,395 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020, and Nov. 19, 2021.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data late Monday showing a total of 913,268 adverse events following COVID vaccines were reported between Dec. 14, 2020, and Nov. 19, 2021, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.
Foreign reports are reports received by U.S. manufacturers from their foreign subsidiaries. Under U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations, if a manufacturer is notified of a foreign case report that describes an event that is both serious and does not appear on the product’s labeling, the manufacturer is required to submit the report to VAERS.
Of the 8,898 U.S. deaths reported as of Nov. 19, 20% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 26% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 56% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.
In the U.S., 447.7 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of Nov. 19. This includes: 260 million doses of Pfizer, 171 million doses of Moderna and 16 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).
Every Friday, VAERS publishes vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Nov. 19, 2021 for 5- to 11-year-olds show:
2,093 total adverse events, including 22 rated as serious and 1 reported death that occurred in an 11-year-old girl from Georgia vaccinated Sept. 14, prior to the authorization of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine in the 5 to 11 age group.
1,103 adverse events have been reported in the 5 to 11 age group since Nov. 1.
The rest of the reports in VAERS for children in the 5 to 11 age group occurred prior to the authorization of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, and are due to ”product administered to patient of inappropriate age.”
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Nov. 19, 2021 for 12- to 17-year-olds show:
The most recent death involves a 16-year-old girl from Georgia (VAERS I.D. 1865389) who died reportedly from a heart condition and multi-organ failure two days after receiving Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.
Other recent deaths include a 16-year-old girl from Missouri (VAERS I.D. 1823671) who died after receiving her second dose of Pfizer, and a 17-year-old female from Washington (VAERS I.D. 1828901) who died Oct. 29 reportedly from a heart condition after receiving her second dose of Pfizer.
59 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death — with 96% of cases
attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
560 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation) with 549 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
139 reports of blood clotting disorders, with all cases attributed to Pfizer.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Nov. 12, 2021, for all age groups combined, show:
19% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
54% of those who died were male, 42% were female and the remaining death reports did not include gender of the deceased.
Man with natural immunity forced to get vaccinated against COVID to remain on lung transplant list, dies after second dose of Moderna
Bobby Bolin, a 49-year-old Texas man who previously had COVID, was told he would have to get vaccinated against COVID in order to be eligible for a double-lung transplant, even though he had already recovered from the virus.
49-year-old Texas man who recovered from COVID—but was required to be fully vaccinated against virus before being approved for a life-saving lung transplant—died when he developed a pulmonary embolism and heart issues after his second Moderna vaccine.https://t.co/YHCwKb2lIp
After his second Moderna shot, received on April 17, Bolin developed a pulmonary embolism and atrial fibrillation — a heart condition characterized by an irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath, chest pain and extreme fatigue. His health rapidly deteriorated and he passed away Aug. 20, before receiving new lungs.
In an exclusive interview with The Defender, his wife, Amy Bolin, said there was no reason her husband should have been forced to get the vaccine in order to receive new lungs, but unfortunately, he was desperate and very sick.
Amy said she didn’t know what timeline her husband had with his organs, but she saw a complete change in him over four months’ time and doesn’t want others to face the same things they experienced.
Pfizer, Moderna vaccines ‘dramatically increase’ heart attack risk
In an analysis presented during a meeting of the American Heart Association, Dr. Steven Gundry, a pioneer in infant heart transplant surgery, said mRNA COVID vaccines put many patients at higher risk of a new acute coronary syndrome, such as a heart attack.
The analysis concluded in part that mRNA vaccines “dramatically increase inflammation on the endothelium and T cell infiltration of cardiac muscle and may account for the observations of increased thrombosis, cardiomyopathy and other vascular events following vaccination.”
Thousands of heart-related injuries have been reported following COVID mRNA vaccines, and scientists have established a myriad of heart- and blood-related effects in some patients, including young people.
Among the adverse events linked to the vaccines are thrombosis blood clots and heart inflammation known as myocarditis and pericarditis.
COVID vaccine stocks surge amid fears of new omicron variant
Shares of major COVID vaccine makers surged amid the latest pandemic fears surrounding the new Omicron variant, CNN Business reported.
Moderna climbed more than 20% during Black Friday’s short trading session on Wall Street and increased by an additional 10% on Monday.
Shares of BioNTech, which partners with Pfizer to produce COVID vaccines, soared 14% on Friday and were up 3% Monday, as Pfizer gained 6% Friday.
Investors are hoping the vaccine makers will be able to quickly update their COVID vaccines to offer protection for the Omicron variant.
Moderna said Friday it “will rapidly advance an Omicron-specific booster candidate” while Pfizer said it hoped to have an update of its vaccine ready in 100 days if Omicron shows resistance to its current vaccine.
Moderna CEO predicts reduction in COVID vaccine effectiveness against Omicron variant
Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, said in an interview Tuesday current COVID vaccines will likely be much less effective against the new Omicron variant, compared with previous variants, The Washington Post reported.
“I just don’t know how much, because we need to wait for the data,” Bancel said. “But all the scientists I’ve talked to … are, like, ‘This is not going to be good.’”
Bancel said scientists did not expect such a highly mutative variant to emerge for another year or two, noting 32 of the 50 mutations in Omicron involve the spike protein — the area targeted by existing COVID vaccines.
In early March, Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, a vaccinologist who worked with GSK Biologicals, Novartis Vaccines, Solvay Biologicals, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Discovery team in Seattle and Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization in Geneva, broke down the dangers of mass vaccination for COVID compared to natural infection and concluded:
“There can be no doubt that continued mass vaccination campaigns will enable new, more infectious viral variants to become increasingly dominant and ultimately result in a dramatic incline in new cases despite enhanced vaccine coverage rates. There can be no doubt either that this situation will soon lead to complete resistance of circulating variants to the current vaccines.”
As The Defender reported March 26, a combination of lockdowns and extreme selection pressureon the virus induced by the intense global mass vaccination program, might diminish the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the short-term, but will ultimately induce the creation of more mutants of concern.
This is the result of what Vanden Bossche called “immune escape,” which will in turn trigger vaccine companies to further refine vaccines that will add to, not reduce, the selection pressure, producing ever more transmissible and potentially deadly variants.
Vanden Bossche argued the selection pressure would cause greater convergence in SARS-CoV-2 mutations affecting the spike protein of the virus responsible for breaking through the mucosal surfaces of our airways — the route used by the virus to enter the human body — effectively outsmarting the highly specific antigen-based vaccines that are being used and tweaked, dependent on the circulating variants.
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In September 2021, a group called Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FDA to obtain the documentation used to approve Comirnaty. When, after a month, the FDA had not replied, the PHMPT sued
It took the U.S. Food and Drug Administration 108 days to “thoroughly and completely” review the 329,000 pages of data Pfizer/BioNTech submitted to gain FDA approval for its Comirnaty COVID shot, which was licensed August 3, 2021
The FDA now claims it needs 55 years to release those same pages to the public (at a rate of 500 pages per month), as each page must be reviewed and sensitive information redacted
The FDA has so far only released 91 pages. These documents show that within the first 2.5 months of the Pfizer shot’s rollout, Pfizer received 42,086 reports of adverse events, including 1,223 fatalities
While Pfizer admits it received such a large number of spontaneous adverse event reports that they had to hire a redacted number of additional full-time personnel to handle the additional data entry, they claim that “The findings of these signal detection analyses are consistent with the known safety profile of the vaccine.” If they expected this volume of injuries, why were they short-staffed — and why does the FDA think the number of new hires is proprietary information?
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It took the U.S. Food and Drug Administration 108 days to review all the data Pfizer/BioNTech submitted in order to gain FDA approval for its Comirnaty COVID shot, which was licensed August 3, 2021.
Considering the agency claims there are 329,000 pages of data, the fact that they were able to read, analyze and draw conclusions about its safety and effectiveness in just 108 days — about 80,000 pages a month — is no small miracle. They must employ some very efficient speed readers.
And that is why the FDA’s claim that it now needs half a century to review the documents before they can release them to the public doesn’t seem very credible. Even Reuters has expressed shock, and its former CEO is on the board of Pfizer.1
Expedited FOIA Request for Comirnaty Data
In September 2021, a group called Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FDA to obtain the documentation used to approve Comirnaty.
This includes safety and effectiveness data, adverse reaction reports and lists of active and inactive ingredients. Approximately 400 additional FOIA requests by other individuals for all or part of this information have also been filed.2
In their FOIA application, the PHMPT asked the agency to expedite release of the documents — a reasonable request, considering we have no raw data and the shots are being pushed on children as young as 5.
FOIA guidelines include two conditions upon which a request may be expedited. One is “if the lack of expedited treatment could reasonably be expected to pose a threat to someone’s life or physical safety,” which one could easily argue is the case here.
The second condition is “if there is an urgency to inform the public about an actual or alleged federal government activity, if made by a person who is primarily engaged in disseminating information.” This too is clearly applicable.
“During a time when COVID-19 vaccine mandates are being implemented over the objection of those that have questions about the data and information supporting the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer Vaccine, and individuals with these questions are being expelled from employment, school, transportation, and the military, the public has an urgent and immediate need to have access to this data,” the PHMPT said in its request.3
FDA Now Wants 55 Years to Release COVID Jab Data
When, after a month, the FDA still had not responded to the FOIA request, the PHMPT sued.4 The FDA is now asking a federal judge to allow them to delay the full release of all documents until 2076 — 55 years from now.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney who represents the FDA in this case, the agency will be able to “provide more pages to more requesters” if allowed to stick to a rolling schedule of 500 pages per month, “thus avoiding a system where a few large requests monopolize finite processing resources.”
They claim they only have 10 employees assigned to FOIA releases, and before material can be released, an FDA official has to go through them and redact any information that might reveal personal information about clinical trial participants and any confidential business or trade secret information.
The 1967 FOIA law requires federal agencies to respond to FOIAs within 20 days unless “unusual circumstances” exist that prevent a timely release. Circumstances that might warrant an extended release schedule include:
Instances where response records must be searched for and collected from an entity other than the office processing the request
Situations involving “voluminous” amounts of records that must be compiled, and
Instances requiring consultation with another federal agency that has a substantial interest in the information
The DOJ attorney points out that the court has allowed for a 500-page maximum per month release schedule in other cases, and should allow the FDA the same leeway here.
Plaintiffs, on the other hand, argue the agency should be able to release everything by early March 2022, noting the FDA employs 18,000 people and has an annual budget of $6 billion. Between 2008 and 2017, the agency processed 114,938 FOIA requests, of which it granted 72.4%, either fully or partially.
Of those, 39.8% were designated as “complex,” and 81.5% of these complex FOIA requests were granted in 61 days or more. Considering these historical statistics, a backlog of 400 FOIA requests doesn’t appear excessively burdensome.
FDA’s Foot-Dragging Is Suspicious
Then there’s the sticky issue that it has already proven its capacity for rapid review. Aaron Siri of the law firm Siri & Glimstad wrote in the PHMPT’s court filing:5,6,7,8
“This 108-day period is the same amount of time it took the FDA to review the responsive documents for the far more intricate task of licensing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine …
It took the FDA precisely 108 days from when Pfizer started producing the records for licensure to when the FDA licensed the Pfizer vaccine. Taking the FDA at its word, it conducted an intense, robust, thorough, and complete review and analysis of those documents in order to assure that the Pfizer vaccine was safe and effective for licensure.
While it can conduct that intense review of Pfizer’s documents in 108 days, it now asks for over 20,000 days to make these documents available to the public …
The entire purpose of the FOIA is to assure government transparency. It is difficult to imagine a greater need for transparency than immediate disclosure of the documents relied upon by the FDA to license a product that is now being mandated to over 100 million Americans under penalty of losing their careers, their income, their military service status, and far worse.”
Shocking Revelations in First Batch of FOIA Docs
Two months after the lawsuit against it was filed, the FDA released a batch of 91 pages,9 and if this batch is any indication, it’s not surprising that the FDA wants to slow-walk the release of the rest. In a November 21, 2021, substack article, Kyle Becker cites directly from the released documents:10
“’It is estimated that approximately [REDACTED] doses of BNT162b2 were shipped worldwide from the receipt of the first temporary authorization for emergency supply on 01 December 2020 through 28 February 2021,’ the document states. ‘Cumulatively, through 28 February 2021, there was a total of 42,086 case reports (25,379 medically confirmed and 16,707 non-medically confirmed) containing 158,893 events …
Most cases (34,762) were received from United States (13,739), United Kingdom (13,404) Italy (2,578), Germany (1913), France (1506), Portugal (866).’ Below is a General Overview of the reported outcomes to the Adverse Events:
The chart lists 1,223 fatal outcomes in the Relevant Cases. Interestingly, the age range with the most relevant cases was 31-50 years old, which is not the age group considered to be at high risk from COVID-19.”
It’s worth noting that by redacting the specified number of doses shipped, it becomes more difficult to assess the potential ratio of injury. Still, even without that, 42,086 reports of injury, including 1,223 fatalities, are a significant signal in and of itself, especially when you consider that the 1976 swine flu vaccine was pulled after 25 deaths.
Glaring Disregard for Life
It’s even more disturbing when you consider that those 42,086 reports were received by Pfizer in just the first 2.5 months of the shot being rolled out. Pfizer even acknowledges the abnormal rate of injuries, but then sweeps it aside as being of no consequence. As noted by Siri, in a November 19, 2021 substack article, in which he discusses this first batch of documents:11
“Pfizer explains, on page 6, that ‘Due to the large numbers of spontaneous adverse event reports received for the product, [Pfizer] has prioritized the processing of serious cases…’
Pfizer ‘has also taken a [sic] multiple actions to help alleviate the large increase of adverse event reports’ including ‘increasing the number of data entry and case processing colleagues’ and ‘has onboarded approximately [REDACTED] additional fulltime employees (FTEs).’
Query why it is proprietary to share how many people Pfizer had to hire to track all of the adverse events being reported shortly after launching its product …
But no cause for alarm since Pfizer explains to the FDA: ‘The findings of these signal detection analyses are consistent with the known safety profile of the vaccine.’ So, if they knew these issues were going to arise, then why didn’t they appear to have enough staff to process this expected volume of reports?
The grand conclusion by Pfizer to the FDA: ‘The data do not reveal any novel safety concerns or risks requiring label changes and support a favorable benefit risk profile of to the BNT162b2 vaccine.’ Nothing to see here.”
Clearly, there’s plenty to be seen in the hundreds of thousands of documents Pfizer/BioNTech submitted to the FDA. The fact that the FDA is stonewalling and wants 55 years to redact them before they’re fit for public view is telling in and of itself.
You don’t need a fanciful imagination to comprehend what they might be hiding. It almost seems they want to make sure the responsible parties are all dead by the time the full data set is out in the open and people can be held to account for their decisions. Let’s hope the judge is more interested in public health than protecting the FDA’s dirty secrets.
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First published June 9, 2021
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“One day fear knocked at the door. Courage got up and opened it, but there was no one outside.”
This originally English proverb was attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe at the beginning of 2020. Endowed with the authority of the German poet prince, it quickly became a popular motivational saying against the fear of the Corona virus. The quotation reflects a wisdom of life, which is psychologically reinforced and deepened in the following. If we humans muster the courage to overcome the fear of fellow human beings acquired in our upbringing, if we associate with them in freedom and elevate public spirit to the guiding idea, then the human species has a chance to survive.
Step outside your own front door and see what is available!
Every human being is called upon to make a contribution to solving the urgent problems of our time. And of course we are able to do so if we are aware that it depends on each and every one of us. Why not muster the courage to use our own intellect, not to suppress the current problems of humanity, but to stand up against injustice – intellectually, emotionally, politically. Overcome the inertia of the heart and act! Against all odds, muster the determination to seek the truth and thereby preserve our dignity as human beings and create a future worth living for ourselves and our children.
The Swiss poet and novelist Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) believed:
“No government and no battalions (…) are able to protect law and freedom where the citizen is unable to step outside the front door himself and see what is available.” (Zurich Novellas)
Romain Rolland (1866 to 1944), French writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, even believed that, if necessary, every man must stand alone within all and think and act for all. In the introduction to his 1920 anti-war novel “Clerambault. History of a Free Conscience in War” he wrote.
“Every man, if he is a true man, must learn to stand alone within all, to think alone for all – if necessary, even against all! To think sincerely is to think for all, even if one thinks against all. Humanity needs those who offer it chess out of love and rebel against it when it is necessary!” (1)
“The Internationale”, the world-famous struggle song of the socialist workers’ movement, also recommends people not to hope for salvation from higher beings, but to take action themselves:
“Wake up, damned of this earth, who are still forced to starve! (…) Army of slaves, wake up! (…) Peoples, hear the signals! To the final battle! (…) No higher being, no god, no emperor, no tribune can save us! To deliver us from misery, that we can only do ourselves!” (2)
Free citizens who stand up against injustice and tyranny have nothing against those in power. They do nothing to them. But neither do they want to live in a system of rule in which they have to remain silent. They fight for a more just order, for their right to life, to freedom, peace and security. Moreover, they have common sense and are autonomous. Autonomy is the state and feeling of life of self-determination, independence and self-government. Philosophically, it is the ability to see oneself as a being of freedom and to act out of this freedom.
Equipped with these abilities, no human being freely hands over to another the power to decide on his or her life and future. Not to another human being or politician, but also not to a supernatural being who is supposed to guide and protect him as a “deity” from earliest childhood to the end of days. After all, we humans are embedded in the community of our fellow species, of whom we do not have to be afraid, but on whose support and solidarity we can build.
Have the courage to associate with our fellow human beings
We just have to muster the courage to face this task and associate ourselves with fellow human beings. This means taking upon ourselves a path that is often arduous, long and not easy to walk, to believe in the goodness in the other person, to empathise with them, to associate with them and to appeal to them without coercion. There is no short, easy and simple path to the goal – no so-called royal road.
The other person, our counterpart, our fellow citizen and conspecific is gladly prepared to accept our offer if he is given the opportunity to decide for it freely and without any coercion. He too wants to live well with his children. He, too, is happy to help the other.
More than 100 years ago, the Russian anarchist, geographer and writer Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842 to 1921) wrote in his book “Mutual Aid in the Animal and Human World” that in nature and society there is by no means only a struggle of all against all (social Darwinism), but that the principle of “mutual aid” also prevails. Those living beings who implement this principle would survive more successfully. Kropotkin observed both nature and natural beings and applied his findings to human beings.
Elevate the sense of community to the guiding idea
This principle of mutual help must be anchored in every possible way in the thoughts and moral principles of action of human beings and in solidarity, in the feeling of belonging together, in brotherhood and in the sense of community of human beings. The teachings of the moral leaders of humanity, the wisdom of Lao Tzu, the commandment to love one’s neighbour and the innumerable forms of social life and behaviour in which public spirit is expressed, grew out of the insight that all those who bear a human face belong together.
For Alfred Adler, the founder of individual psychology, the “deepest idea of all culture (…) consists in the final rejection of the striving for power and in the final elevation of public spirit to the leading idea.” He said this 100 years ago. All our endeavours in the world and in science should have the guiding principle of producing a type of human being in the future for whom – as Alfred Adler put it – a sense of community and interpersonal solidarity are as natural as breathing (3).
It is possible to suppress the exhortations of the human sense of community; they can never be completely eradicated, for the gift of evolution consists in the moral consciousness of the individual, in the insight into the responsibility of all towards all. Our task for the future, therefore, seems to be above all the cultivation and strengthening of communal feelings. No means must be too small for us, no effort too arduous, in order to better integrate man into the social fabric.
Overcoming the fear of fellow human beings acquired in education
For most people, however, this noble goal is opposed by an emotional reaction acquired in childhood that is difficult to overcome: fear of fellow human beings. This fear is not innate. People are born without fear and acquire it only in the course of their development as a result of traditional authoritarian and religious upbringing. That is why almost all adult humans have fear – consciously or even more often unconsciously. It is an expression of irritation and has little to do with the real situation.
Fear permeates the whole of a person’s life, his actions, how he presents himself and moves in life and in the community. It prevents him from thinking and makes him incapable of assessing any situation in a real and reasonable way. He is no longer the doer of his life, but fear drives him.
The image of man of the Christian occidental culture says that man – even the small child – carries bad qualities within himself. With this information – be it conscious or unconscious – the educator of today approaches the child. He always suspects ill will in the child. He does not know that the child is completely oriented towards the relationship persons, that his whole longing and aspiration is to be loved and appreciated by the parents, that he still likes to cooperate so much. The child is good by nature.
In reality, parents and educators instil great fear in the child with every use of force, be it in the form of strictness or also spoiling. The child learns to be afraid; it learns to feel threatened by fellow human beings; it experiences that it is not good to eat with human beings. The emotional reaction of fear becomes part of its character. The image of man that the child acquired from its parents in the earliest years of childhood is unconsciously carried into every relationship.
Even today, the child is brought up with violence and disregard for its personality. As a result, the child begins to turn away from the human being. This results in a negating tendency that influences his later life. It no longer expects much from the human being. The violent treatment deeply shakes his personality and awakens in him aversion to his fellow man. Trust in human beings, which is actually the foundation of the personality and the natural conception of life, cannot develop.
The child also experiences that parental authority is above everything. It experiences that there is only one correct opinion, and that is that of the father, the authority. It learns that certain opinions should not be held. They learn to fear the violence and sanctions that come from their parents to such an extent that they no longer dare to contradict them, neither in thought nor in action. As an adult, man is no longer able to form his own thought because his fear of the consequences – earthly or supernatural – paralyses him. He becomes nervous and indignant when he even hears a different opinion.
On this ground it is not possible for the human being to deal with other opinions. He can only accept something from the other person with difficulty. His fear becomes the dominating problem in relationships. He does not know free discussion, he only knows command and obedience. He is used to accepting the opinion of authority unchecked. He also experienced as a child that he was burdened with many opinions that he could not check in any way. So he comes to terms with the fact that many things cannot be understood and that the incomprehensible must not be doubted.
This intimidation of understanding and reason goes hand in hand in our culture with religious education, with unreal information about spirits, devils and angels.
Man is born neither religious nor believing in God, but the mentally healthy and uncrippled child enters a society in which delusional ideas and illusions prevail. No sooner does the little child show its first mental impulses and learn to speak than it is “taken into care” by society, i.e. by the parents and the church. It is made clear to him that his nature is not allowed to develop freely with regard to his feeling for nature and his world view. If it wants to avoid being punished with general contempt and hellish chastisements, it must press its being into a certain ecclesiastical form.
Outlook
Thanks to the findings of scientific psychology, we now know how fear of fellow human beings arises. We know exactly what causes it. We also know how people can put fear behind them. Today’s people should therefore no longer be plagued by fears. These fears can be changed or overcome in a trusting therapeutic relationship with a professional. By experiencing compassion and understanding, the person can lose these fears (4).
And pedagogy in the parental home and school has to renounce the authoritarian principle – which for centuries was regarded as the unquestionably valid basis of educational behaviour – and the use of violence. Educators must adapt themselves with true understanding to the child’s soul life, respect the child’s personality and turn to him or her with friendship. Such education will produce a type of human being who does not have a “subject mentality” and will therefore no longer be a docile tool for the rulers in our world.
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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is an educationalist and graduate psychologist.
Notes
(1) Rolland, Romain (1988). Clerambault. History of a free conscience in war. Reinbek near Hamburg, p. 12
(3) Ansbacher. Heinz L. / Ansbacher, Rowena R. (eds.). (1982). Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology. A systematic presentation of his teachings in excerpts from his writings. Munich, Basel
(4) Op. cit.
Featured image: Human rights activists, including Canadian Michaela Lavis, before being arrested by Israeli authorities in Khan Al-Ahmar
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The Australian army has begun forcibly removing residents in the Northern Territories to the Howard Springs quarantine camp located in Darwin, after nine new Covid-19 cases were identified in the community of Binjari. The move comes after hard lockdowns were instituted in the communities of both Binjari and nearby Rockhole on Saturday night.
“Residents of Binjari and Rockhole no longer have the five reasons to leave their homes,” said Northern Territory chief minister, Michael Gunner, referring to the country’s five allowable reasons to avoid lockdown (buying food and supplies, exercising for up to two hours, care or caregiving, work or education if it can’t be done from home, and to get vaccinated at the nearest possible location).
“They can only leave for medical treatment, in an emergency, or as required by law.”
“It’s highly likely that more residents will be transferred to Howard Springs today, either as positive cases or close contacts,” he continued, adding “We have already identified 38 close contacts from Binjari but that number will go up. Those 38 are being transferred now.”
“I contacted the Prime Minister last night. We are grateful for the support of about 20 ADF personnel, as well as army trucks to assist with the transfer of positive cases and close contacts – and to support the communities.
We are doing an assessment today of what extra resources we might need from the Feds, and the Prime Minister is ready to help further – I thank him for that.”
Watch:
AUSTRALIA – The army is now transferring positive Covid cases and contacts in the Northern Territories to ‘Quarantine Camps’ by army truck.
“We’re conscious of the fact that this can have some impacts on people’s mental health as well as their general well being,” Police Commissioner Jamie Chalkner told NT News.
Of note, the Northern Territories are home to a large percentage of indigenous Australians. As the Epoch Times‘ Steve Milne notes:
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2018-19, almost one in five Indigenous Australians lived in overcrowded dwellings (18 percent), compared to 5 percent of non-Indigenous Australians. Although this percentage had decreased from 27 percent in 2004, it still meant an estimated 145,340 Indigenous Australians were living in overcrowded dwellings in 2018-19.
In addition, the more remote an area, the higher the proportion of Indigenous Australians living in overcrowded dwellings (26 percent in remote areas and 51 percent in “very remote” areas), compared to 8 and 22 percent in non-remote areas.
Five days ago, NT Senator Malarndirri McCarthy told ABC that over crowding in Indigenous communities was a “massive problem,” pointing to the region’s second cluster of new infections – which included nine members of McCarthy’s direct family, including her sister who flew from Katherine to Robinson River while unknowingly bringing COVID-19 with her, per the report.
“If we could get housing in there right now, I would be pushing that straight away to the federal government and the NT government to work on that, but we obviously need the resources to do so,” she said.
Of the nine new cases in Binjari, four are women and five are men, including a 78-year-old woman who has been transported to Darwin Hospital.
There were zero new COVID-19 cases reported on Sunday, however Minister Gunner said he was worried about ‘mingling between households’ in Binjari and Rockhole, whose populations are around 220 and 130 respectively.
On Sunday, Gunner said: “Yes, these are strong measures, but the threat to lives is extreme.”
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A new study touts the power of natural immunity to fight off the worst effects of the coronavirus.
The researchers, who reported their results last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, examined 353,326 COVID-19 patients in the Arabian Peninsula nation of Qatar who were infected anywhere between Feb. 28, 2020, and April 28, 2021.
The research excluded about 87,500 people who were vaccinated over the time span of the study.
Out of the rest of the group studied, only 1,304 contracted COVID-19 again, with none requiring intensive care treatment for the disease, formally known as SARS-CoV-2.
“In earlier studies, we assessed the efficacy of previous natural infection as protection against reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 as being 85 percent or greater,” the researchers, from Qatar’s National Study Group for COVID-19 Epidemiology, wrote.
“Accordingly, for a person who has already had a primary infection, the risk of having a severe reinfection is only approximately 1 percent of the risk of a previously uninfected person having a severe primary infection.”
We live in a strange world where people who don’t take a medicine for a virus because they already have natural immunity and can’t transmit to other people, are being blamed for not taking a medicine that doesn’t stop those who take it from transmitting the virus to other people.
The researchers noted that the duration of natural immunity needs to be better understood.
“It needs to be determined whether such protection against severe disease at reinfection lasts for a longer period, analogous to the immunity that develops against other seasonal ‘common cold’ coronaviruses, which elicit short-term immunity against mild reinfection but longer-term immunity against more severe illness with reinfection,” the study said.
Natural immunity works. Not perfectly, but it works. Better than the vaccines work.
Reinfection from Covid-19 is rare, severe disease is even rarer, a study of people in Qatar findshttps://t.co/t9vD6h9O8t
“If this were the case with SARS-CoV-2, the virus (or at least the variants studied to date) could adopt a more benign pattern of infection when it becomes endemic,” the study said.
The study noted that once-infected individuals have “90 percent lower odds of resulting in hospitalization or death than primary infections.”
“Four reinfections were severe enough to lead to acute care hospitalization. None led to hospitalization in an ICU, and none ended in death,” the study reported.
“Reinfections were rare and were generally mild, perhaps because of the primed immune system after primary infection.”
Switzerland just extended the period where post infection immunity is solid proof of immunity from 6 months to one year. They recognise the obvious fact that natural immunity is stronger and longer lasting than that provided by vaccines. Hello @sajidjavid
“When you have only 1,300 reinfections among that many people, and four cases of severe disease, that’s pretty remarkable,” said John Alcorn, an expert in immunology and professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh, according to CNN.
Alcorn was not part of the team that conducted the study.
One potential weak spot in the study, according to CNN: It was limited to citizens of Qatar, and might not be universally replicable.
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A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on Tuesday voted narrowly to recommend Emergency Use Authorization of Merck’s five-day pill to treat COVID, despite the panel expressing a host of concerns about the drug’s safety and efficacy.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Antimicrobial Drugs Advisory Committee on Tuesday voted narrowly, 13 to 10, to recommend Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of Merck’s five-day pill to treat COVID.
The drug, molnupiravir, sold under the brand name Lagevrio and developed with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, is an antiviral medication that inhibits the replication of certain RNA viruses, including SARS CoV-2.
Potential patients would take an 800-milligram pill every 12 hours for five days after COVID symptoms begin.
The FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must both sign off before the drug is granted EUA and made available to the public.
The FDA panel “recommended Merck’s treatment be authorized for people with COVID who are at high risk of becoming severely ill. That would most likely cover tens of millions of Americans who are older or have medical conditions such as obesity, diabetes or heart disease,” The New York Times reported.
Molnupiravir was given in clinical trials to people allegedly infected with the variants Delta, Mu and Gamma, according to The Times.
Dr. Nicholas Kartsonis, a Merck executive, said that with the newly discovered variant, Omicron, “we expect based on what we know … that molnupiravir would be effective.”
Just a few days prior to the vote, study data was released showing the effectiveness of the treatment declining from earlier data.
“The drug manufacturer filed for an Emergency Use Authorization last month after its study suggested molnupiravir reduced the risk of hospitalization by 50%. But updated data from Friday showed a 30% reduction in hospitalizations among more participants.”
The federal government in June signed a $1.2 billion contract with Merck while the experimental treatment was still in clinical trials, according to ABC News. That contract was to purchase treatments for 1.7 million people. But the government has since increased that contract, agreeing to purchase “3.1 million courses of the drug, with the option to purchase more,” The Hill reported.
Panel recommends Merck COVID pill, despite ‘more questions than answers’
A number of FDA panelists, including some who voted to recommend the molnupiravir, expressed hesitation about the drug.
“Many members of the advisory committee described the vote as a difficult one, in which they had to carefully weigh the risks and benefits of a drug that could help those most at risk but raised many unanswered questions. Several committee members recommended that Merck’s emergency use authorization be revisited and potentially withdrawn if another treatment becomes available later.”
Dr. David Hardy, who voted to recommend the drug, said there’s a “need for something like this” but admitted the “efficacy of this product is not overwhelmingly good.”
Lindsey Baden, the committee’s chairman, made similar statements calling it “an incredibly difficult decision” with “more questions than answers.”
Dr. Sankar Swaminathan, who voted against recommendation, said more research was needed on how the drug will affect human DNA and the potential for it to cause birth defects.
“The risk of widespread effects on potential birth defects, especially delayed effects on the male, have not been adequately studied,” Swaminathan said.
Dr. James Hildreth expressed concerns with mutant variants escaping, telling the panel:
“Even if the probability is very low, 1 in 10,000 or 100,000, that this drug would induce an escape mutant from which the vaccines we have do not cover, that could be catastrophic for the whole world actually.”
Molnupiravir was already approved in the UK even as similar concerns were expressed.
“You are putting a drug into circulation that is a potent mutagen at a time when we are deeply concerned about new variants. I can’t imagine doing anything more dangerous…. If I were trying to create a new and more dangerous virus in humans, I would feed a subclinical dose [of molnupiravir] to people infected.”
Too many unknowns and potential risks?
As new treatments garner approval despite questionable data, public health officials continue to reject, and in some cases prohibit the use of, older, safe and well-known drugs.
In fact, doctors who have treated COVID patients from the beginning have reported successful results with drugs that have been readily available and in use for years.
Dr. Meryl Nass, a member of Children’s Health Defense (CHD) scientific advisory board, in an email told The Defender:
“We are witnessing another FDA charade, as its Pharma-connected advisory committee members narrowly voted to authorize molnupiravir.
“Plucked from the antiviral boneyard, molnupiravir went through a series of transfers that magically converted it from a failed drug developed at taxpayer expense to a blockbuster drug for Merck and its partner, Ridgeback.”
Molnupiravir reduced hospitalizations by only 30%, is clearly less useful than monoclonal antibodies and works “nowhere near as well as multiple other drugs for COVID,” Nass said.
Nass said molnupiravir’s mechanism of action is inducing mutations — in viruses, but “maybe in us too, as postulated by several FDA committee members.”
“It’s simply another dangerous drug that will help the federal health agencies look like they are doing something, while doing nothing to curtail the pandemic,” Nass said. “And because it is being authorized, instead of being licensed, anyone injured by the drug cannot sue for damages and is unlikely to collect any benefits.”
Mary Holland, CHD president and general counsel, told The Defender:
“There are many problems with Merck’s new cash cow — Merck doesn’t know if it will drive new mutant variants; Merck hasn’t tested the drug on vaccinated people, who will get it; and the drugmaker doesn’t know if it will be effective against new variants.
“The biggest problem, though, is the continued governmental, medical and media suppression of existing, off-patent drugs, including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. These products are known to be safe, effective, affordable and available. Authorizing Merck’s new bonanza while suppressing safer, more effective, less expensive alternatives points up the abject failure of the FDA to protect public health.”
Follow the money?
The answer to why this new drug is being authorized for emergency use may very well come down to the incentives.
Ivermectin is actually produced by Merck, but because of government rules Merck would be unable to profit off the drug.
“Due to generic drug substitution rules at pharmacies, Merck could spend millions of dollars to get a COVID-19 indication for ivermectin and then effectively get zero return,” according to David Henderson and Charles Hooper. “What company would ever make that investment? Ivermectin is an old, cheap, off-patent drug. Merck will never make much money from ivermectin sales.”
“We plan on giving money to a drug company for a drug that is in no way going to surpass what we already have available right now and can be used. That money should instead be given to supply ivermectin to the country. This is a colossal waste of taxpayer money.”
American taxpayers funded the development of molnupiravir through a $19 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), according to The Intercept.
The cost to produce one molnupiravir treatment is $17.74 to Merck but the purchase contract to the U.S. government is $712 per treatment, The Intercept reported.
Meanwhile, Merck expects to make up to $7 billion in profit from the drug for which U.S. taxpayers funded the development and production.
Similar profit motives were apparent in the approval of remdesivir. Despite concerns addressed by the World Health Organization, the NIAID’s DirectorDr. Anthony Fauciwas calling it the “standard of care” as drug company Gilead’s initial sales projections from the drug last year were $3 billion.
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The FDA has refused to even explore approval of cheap, safe, and effective repurposed drugs for 20 months, despite mounds of evidence from studies vouching for their efficacy and safety. So, naturally, now that the agency is on track to issue an emergency use authorization to the first outpatient drug for COVID, this one must be the greatest thing since penicillin, right? Wrong! In fact, the drug is so dangerous and has so many known and unknown side effects that the FDA advisory committee members basically admitted this was a “difficult” decision and that they could rescind the authorization later on. This decision makes their rejection of ivermectin, fluvoxamine, nitazoxanide, and hydroxychloroquine all the more indefensible.
If you liked remdesivir, you will surely like Merck’s molnupiravir, which was developed with the help of the same entities guarding its approval based on flawed data produced by the company itself that is making over $1 billion off the federal government. No conflict of interest whatsoever!
Although the fix was in because no drug produced by Merck or Pfizer – no matter how dangerous – will ever be turned down, the approval was as revealing as it was appalling. The fact that the vote even by these compromised hacks was 13-10 demonstrates just how problematic molnupiravir likely is out of the gate.
Yesterday, the FDA’s Antimicrobial Drugs Advisory Committee voted 13-10 to approve molnupiravir at 800 milligrams twice a day for five days of COVID treatment for people in at-risk categories. It still needs official approval from the FDA and the CDC before it can be used, but the fix has long been in.
As CNBC reports, even those who voted for the drug admitted that it was a difficult decision and asked to revisit the authorization down the road. They conceded, as I have warned, that this drug can be mutagenic and cause birth defects, in addition to the fact that Merck’s own manipulated data show the efficacy is very modest.
“Given the large potential population affected, the risk of widespread effects on potential birth defects, especially delayed effects on the male, has not been adequately studied,” warned Dr. Sankar Swaminathan, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Utah School of Medicine, who voted no.
As CNBC reports:
The FDA and Merck both recommended against using the drug in kids and pregnant women. Molnupiravir was found to be lethal to embryos in pregnant rats, also causing birth defects and reducing fetal body weight. It also caused other defects that interfered with bone growth in young pups, along with other abnormalities, the data shows.
Just like the vaccines and remdesivir, this drug hits the triple crown – fails on efficacy, causes injury, and also induces mutants and viral escape, possibly making the virus worse. In the FDA’s briefing document on the drug for yesterday’s meeting, it states clearly that “there are potential safety concerns pertaining to MOV, including embryofetal toxicity, bone and cartilage toxicity, and mutagenicity.” They also observe that there is evidence molnupiravir “may increase the rate of changes in the viral spike protein, which, in theory, could enhance SARS-CoV-2 spike protein evolution.”
“Of particular interest, in some participants, MOV treatment was associated with amino acid changes at sites/regions of spike that are likely under immune or other evolutionary pressure,” warns the onetime gatekeeper that has now become a collaborator with Big Pharma. This sounds an awful lot like Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche’s warning about the vaccines placing evolutionary pressure on the virus, which likely resulted in making it more durable this year than in 2020. “Collectively, these analyses indicate MOV treatment may increase the rate of emergence of SARS-CoV-2 populations with amino acid changes in the viral spike protein, consistent with its mutagenic mechanism of action,” warns the FDA.
Nonetheless, Dr. Michael Green, a pediatric transplant specialist at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases, said the lack of available therapies swayed him and others to vote to approve the drug.
The problem is that after incurring such unknown risk for a drug that has never succeeded and has known safety problems, the efficacy is very modest. Even Merck’s own trial shows barely any efficacy for Delta, and we all know by now how reliable the data can be from the manufacturer itself!
The FDA approves Molnupiravir by 13 votes to 10.
If you're hit by Delta, Merck's trial data show with a 95% confidence that your risk of hospitalization or death is:
Even more bizarrely, after Merck announced a 50% reduction in hospitalizations from the first phase of its trial announced in October, just last week the company announced that the combined efficacy is down to 30%. As some have pointed out, that raises serious concerns as to what has happened with the drug’s trial, given that the data from just phase 2 would indicate negative efficacy for the drug, with 4.7% hospitalized in the placebo group compared to 6.2% in the molnupiravir group.
Also, remember that it has already bombed out in terms of efficacy for moderate COVID and never had the potential to work in late stages because it is not anti-inflammatory like ivermectin. The FDA concedes up front that there is zero proven benefit after day five of symptoms.
So, we are trading so much risk of injury and making the virus worse for a short window of potentially modest efficacy at a cost of $700 per person. If this is the standard for approval during an emergency, how on earth could the FDA refuse to greenlight drugs that have already established a robust safety profile for decades when independent studies from people who don’t stand to benefit show much greater efficacy and for a broader spectrum of disease at a cheaper price?
The FDA and NIH are willing to give a drug known for birth defects with low efficacy to women of childbearing age outpatient but won’t even allow a Nobel Prize-winning drug safer than Tylenol as a last resort to someone dying.
Again, why would our government refuse to recommend any of these therapeutics and treatments but continue to support remdesivir and now approve molnupiravir, two dangerous and likely ineffective drugs? And what does that tell us about the process and transparency behind the FDA’s perceived safety and efficacy of the vaccines?
There are no innocuous answers to these questions.
Janet Cragan, a medical officer at the CDC and a panelist on the FDA advisory committee, bizarrely conceded at Tuesday’s meeting that “there are definite concerns about the potential effects of this drug on the embryo and the fetus,” but then said she has problems denying the drug to people! “I don’t think you can ethically say it’s OK to give this drug in pregnancy. [But] I’m not sure you can tell a pregnant women who has Covid-19 that she can’t have the drug if she has decided that’s what she needs.”
Well, how about denying the safest drugs around to everyone with COVID for the past 20 months???!!!
Roy Baynes, the Merck executive at the meeting, even had the nerve to suggest that it’s not for the FDA to tell doctors not to use the drug even in pregnant women! “But I think the idea here is that ultimately the physician is the best position to determine the relative risk-benefit for their patients,” said Baynes.
With its eight mechanisms of action against COVID and award-winning safety profile established for decades, ivermectin trounces molnupiravir in every consideration. As a 2017 article published in Nature’s Journal of Antibiotics observed, “Few, if any, other drugs can rival ivermectin for its beneficial impact on human health and welfare.” The authors noted that “ivermectin is continuing to surprise and excite scientists, offering more and more promise to help improve global public health by treating a diverse range of diseases, with its unexpected potential as an antibacterial, antiviral and anti-cancer agent being particularly extraordinary.” They fortuitously predicted, “Essentially, a unique, multifaceted ‘wonder’ drug of the past and present may yet become an even more exceptional drug of the future.” Sadly, our government is denying that future and that of several other important safe, off-patent drugs.
Anyone who can’t see the conflict of interest in this powerful juxtaposition is willfully blind to the irremediable corruption in the NIH, the CDC, and the FDA.
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Since early 2020, the “new, dangerous, unprecedented COVID strain” playbook has remained the same. It’s now been almost two years since the first “new strain” came on the scene.
Here’s how the hype cycle works:
A random nation-state detects a new coronavirus strain. That information is then introduced to the public by the press through hysterical means, setting off a chaotic few days in global financial markets, and a frenzied churnalism race to get the most eyes locked in on their respective publications. “Is a new plague on the horizon?” the ruling class sycophants ask. Academics in credentialed organizations will present a baseless statistical model or two that are totally detached from reality, igniting more government and press hysteria over the coming “plague.”
South African Dr Angelique Coetzee first raised the alarm over the Omicron variant and says the rest of the world is over-reacting.
"Patients I've seen had mild symptoms and recovered. None were admitted and no oxygen was needed. The hype makes no sense to at all."@JuliaHB1pic.twitter.com/c14pbzveN6
Next, your local and federal power-drunk politicians comes to the “rescue,” reminding you plebs that they’re here to help! The government first signals that there is nothing major to worry about, at least, for now. They’ll let you know if something changes, and assure you that their best people are monitoring the situation.
Initial government “measures” are restored. This is the first step in the direction of COVID tyranny. It comes in the form of nonsensical edicts like directed travel bans to the region where the new strain surfaced.
Breaking: NANTUCKET, Mass. (AP) — US to ban travel from South Africa, 7 other African nations by non-US citizens beginning Monday due to COVID-19 variant.
The ruling elite will then tell you to start acting like the good cattle that you are. Based on the advice of their “expert” Government Health bureaucrats, if you remain well behaved and extra compliant, COVID won’t come to get you. The Faucists will remind you to “trust the science” of masks and other forms of submissive virtue signaling, and ask you to thank the “public health experts” who are working day and night to protect you. You need government. No one is safe without the CDC and FDA. No one. The bureaucrats are the science and they know best. Questioning them is akin to questioning the concept of science itself.
As the new strain becomes more dominant and envelops more PCR tests, suddenly, the new strain is no longer mild. It’s the plague! Worse than ever! Government must now spring into action with “measures” (lockdowns, business closures, curfews and the like) that will further steal your basic rights and liberties.
BREAKING: New Covid restrictions could be announced as soon as tomorrow after Boris Johnson was handed alarming new evidence of the virulence of a mutant new strain. PM in a meeting now.
Record deaths. New mutant strain out of control. Banned from travelling to dozens of countries around the world. Billions spaffed up the wall. Months-long lockdown beckoning. Record cases predicted for Christmas Day. pic.twitter.com/yYgVGNiGha
New strain of COVID could be 70% more transmissible, Hancock hinting at months of lockdown, not clear if schools will return, British traffic cut off from Europe, No Deal days away – and MPs have broken up for Xmas, which has been cancelled. Make sense of that in a democracy.
Are lockdowns off the table? "Yes, for now" Biden says. "Yes." He adds, "if people are vaccinated and wear their masks, there's no need for the lockdown."
The “war on the virus” is now in full bloom, and you better take a side, because you don’t want to be “on the side of the virus.” The new strain is the biggest threat yet. Worse than all the other new strains that caused the “plague of the century.” Academics and Government Health bureaucrats will show you another model or two to hammer home this point.
Biden: "For all of you asking when things will get back to normal, here's the truth: the only way to get our lives back, to get our economy back on track, is to beat the virus…I'm using every power I have as president of the U.S. to put us on a war footing to get the job done." pic.twitter.com/HmyKq8oRNq
We are at war with this virus — and the health care workers on the front lines are our soldiers. It is unacceptable that they don’t have the lifesaving masks, gowns, and protective gear they need. https://t.co/10Z6G7Rb2h
They insist that all of the things that didn’t work to stop a virus last time must be employed to stop a virus this time. And the more compliance, the better. Four shots, not three. Three masks, not two. Quarantine camps not only for the infected, but for close contacts too. The government will insist on quadrupling down on “the measures” as the only way forward, because this strain is the worst of them all.
Step back and think about it– We are 1 year into a global pandemic (with massive loss of life, and total societal disruption) and a mannequin study would lead the CDC to issue guidance about 2 masks instead of 1
The cycle repeats itself every time there is a new variant. And regardless of whether it’s the Alpha variant or any of a possible 100,000 mutations to the coronavirus, every tyrannical measure taken by governments to “slow the spread” or “stop the virus” has only made overall health significantly worse. As evidenced by the last two years, the government can only cause harm in embracing authoritarian coronavirus policies. Omicron is just their latest excuse. Don’t buy into the new variant hype. Don’t take the bait this time.
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U.K. reports on child deaths from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that, in the weeks since the COVID shot has been administered to children between ages 12 and 15, recorded deaths have risen by 44 percent above the 2015-2019 average for the same time period.
According to the ONS’ “five-year average weekly deaths by sex and age group” figures between 2015 and 2019 among children ages 10-14, there were 41 deaths recorded from week 38 (late September) to week 45 (early November). Within the same time period, the weekly figures recorded for the year 2021 show that 59 children died, representing a 43.9 percent rise in deaths over the five-year average.
A report from The Exposé notes that deaths among 10-14-year-olds have been consistently above that of the national five-year average since the shots started being administered to children, save for one week, week 42. Week 38 saw more than double the deaths among the young age group, going from a five-year average of three deaths to eight deaths in 2021.
The single largest weekly death count was observed in week 40, about two weeks after the jab had been rolled out, at which point 11 children died in 2021 compared with the five-year average of four, representing a 175 percent rise in deaths.
Breaking down the data into male and female categories, The Exposé showed that although more boys’ deaths were recorded, 2021 has marked a greater percentage of increase in deaths for girls.
Overall, 24 boys died between weeks 38 and 45 on the five-year average scale, whereas 34 died in 2021, marking a 41.7 percent increase in deaths. The greatest number of boys’ deaths were recorded in Week 40, during which time seven boys died, up 250 percent from the five-year average.
Among girls age 10–14, ONS records show an average increase of 47 percent in weeks 38 to 45 of 2021 over the five-year average, going from 17 deaths to 25. The greatest weekly record was in week 40, in which four girls ages 10-14 died, up 100 percent from the five-year average.
While the quantities might appear low, the sudden change in recorded deaths is stark. For the 16 weeks before the COVID jab rollout, for example, an increase in deaths of only around 3.9 percent is observed, a factor of 10 less than the weeks thereafter. The highest increase in deaths recorded during the prior 16 weeks was in week 28, in which a 200 percent increase from the five-year average occurred, going from two to six deaths.
Unlike the time after the shots started being administered to 12-year-olds, the earlier period saw some large drops in deaths from the five-year average to now, with the largest decrease in deaths observed in week 23, during which time deaths dropped by 55.6 percent, down to four deaths from nine.
Though there is a pattern of increased deaths since the shots began being used in children, the causes of the deaths were not published.
The push to vaccinate young children comes despite the fact that children face extremely low risk from COVID-19. This combined with the thousands of reports of serious adverse events and deaths after the jabs has led numerous experts to criticize the push to inject children with the experimental shots.
This summer, researchers with Johns Hopkins School of Medicine found a “mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukemia” when they “analyze[d] approximately 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with COVID in health-insurance data from April to August 2020.”
In response to the finding, lead researcher Dr. Marty Makary accused the CDC of basing its advocacy of school COVID vaccination on “flimsy data.”
On September 13, 2021, England Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty advised that the government roll out its COVID-19 vaccination program to children ages 12 and over, with the National Health Service (NHS) deploying a children’s vaccination scheme nationwide by the following Monday, September 20.
Britain Health Secretary Sajid Javidsuggested at the time that parents’ wishes could be overruled regarding jabbing their children against COVID, saying “as long as we believe the child is competent enough to make that decision, then the child will prevail.”
The government quickly acted on Whitty’s advice despite weeks earlier receiving contrary advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which declared against both the necessity and safety of implementing the jabs for children.
The JCVI, an independent adviser to the U.K. government on immunization programs, determined in a September 3 statement that the “available evidence indicates that the individual health benefits from COVID-19 vaccination are small in those aged 12 to 15 years.” They added that the any benefit granted by the abortion-tainted shots are only “marginally greater than the potential known harms,” while acknowledging that “there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms.”
Given the uncertainty of risks involved with the COVID shots, the JCVI considered the benefits “too small to support advice on a universal programme of vaccination of otherwise healthy 12- to 15-year-old children at this time.”
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Americans live under a governmental regime that openly breaks its own laws. The government not only believes it can do whatever it can get away with politically, not only believes that it can torture its foreign foes and claim the torture is a state secret, not only can bribe and coerce witnesses into saying what the government wants to hear, but it also can authorize criminals to commit crimes.
Here is the backstory.
The inspector general of the Department of Justice recently reported on the excesses of federal law enforcement. The section of his report on the FBI is enough to cause any fair person to realize that the FBI needs radical reforms or even dissolution.
In the George W. Bush-caused-and-inspired war on terror, the CIA has come out as the gang that couldn’t read the Constitution. We have learned as recently as three weeks ago in an American military courtroom in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that CIA agents for years engaged in horrific torture of detainees from the Middle East, only to conclude that they either had been telling the truth before the torture or they genuinely knew nothing about the subject matter of their interrogation under torture.
When this was revealed, the prosecutors — who are both military and civilian — did not challenge any of it. Rather, they pointed out that FBI “clean teams” interrogated the tortured detainees after the CIA had finished with them and did so without torture. Thus, the prosecutors argued, it is the testimony of FBI agents, not that of the CIA torturers, that the government plans to use at trial.
The use of clean teams continued the government’s desired public perception of the FBI as the good guys and the CIA as the bad guys. Some CIA folks have appeared to relish their badness. President Donald Trump’s second CIA director, Gina Haspel, a lifer in the agency, was known as “Bloody Gina.” One can only imagine how that nickname came to her.
FBI agents have revealed that they have stopped torture when they could and not engaged in it when offered. Did they do this because they know torture is profoundly immoral and criminal or because they needed to be able to testify in court that they never abused prisoners? And, by the way, staying away from torture and revealing it furthers the clean reputation of the Bureau.
Unless, that is, FBI agents were transferred to the CIA and thus stopped being FBI agents so that they could engage in dirty deeds without besmirching the Bureau. Sounds absurd, right?
Well, it happened; and it was revealed last week at Guantanamo Bay. There, the government revealed that nine FBI agents became CIA agents in 2002 and 2003 so that they could engage in torture and not discredit the FBI by doing so.
One of the prosecutors intimated in court that the FBI-turned-CIA agents were better interrogators than the real CIA agents and their testimony — what they will claim the tortured detainees “freely” told them — is “the most critical evidence” that the government plans to present.
Does it matter under federal law if the torturers are real CIA agents or temporary ones? Only to the government.
Torture is and has been a felony since the World War II era, and it was outlawed universally by the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Charter and the Convention Against Torture, all treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory.
Also revealed last week was the involvement of FBI agents in the misuse of informants in domestic law enforcement. We learned that from 2012 to 2018, the FBI paid $294 million to its informants and spent an average of $42 million a year on their expenses.
Even more troubling is the pattern of informant criminality. The inspector general revealed that from 2011 to 2013, FBI agents “authorized” their informants to commit 22,500 federal and state crimes, and none was prosecuted.
Authorized? There is simply no constitutional authority for law enforcement to authorize crimes. The president cannot authorize crimes. Congress cannot authorize crimes. The courts cannot authorize crimes. But the FBI does.
The feds recently charged 12 people for participating in a plot that the FBI created to kidnap the governor of Michigan. It paid 18 informants to entrap the 12 and foment the plot. No informants were charged. We know of two FBI informants in the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol Building, who naturally will never be charged.
Today’s FBI can be as lawless as the folks it pursues. Not all agents fall for this. Many are truly clean men and women, but the crime statistics are staggering. There is no way FBI agents could authorize this level of crimes and pay criminals this much money without approval at the top.
Most informants are themselves criminals. They work for the FBI in a devil’s bargain to get the charges against themselves dropped or reduced in return for tailored testimony or entrapping others.
Informants not only make money working for the FBI, they not only get their charges reduced, but they also get to return to their old ways and commit crimes in the bargain.
What happens when the government breaks its own laws?
It should be against the law to break the law. Unfortunately, it is not. A dirty little secret — known to politicians, public officeholders, lawyers and judges — is that the government and its collaborators break the law every day, with impunity.
When the FBI breaks the law, it becomes the law — a situation the Constitution was enacted to prevent. It establishes precedent that becomes part of government culture. Precedent forms the basis for future lawbreaking, and culture fosters an expectation of entitlement.
How does the FBI decide which laws to break and whose lawbreaking to excuse? What befalls the victims of these authorized crimes? Why do we tolerate this?
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This means: “To err is human, to persevere (in one’s error) is diabolic”, a sentence attributed to the Greek philosopher Seneca.
When observing the behavior of our governments, especially in Belgium, this sentence immediately comes to mind.
Whether in Belgium, France, Quebec, Canada, the countries most obsessed with the certainty that only an RNA/DNA injection considered as a vaccination can save the population from SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, we always find the same anti-COVID pattern:
Fear
Guilt
Certainty of being right
What is happening here is exactly what is happening in France, in Quebec, in Canada and in all the countries that only have this RNA/DNA injection as a solution to get out of the crisis to propose to their population.
Here, the ministers and specialists are called Frank Vandenbroucke (Minister of Health), Elio Di Rupo (Walloon Minister-President), Marc Van Ranst, Emmanuel André (virologists advising the government), as in Quebec there is François Legault (Prime Minister), in Canada, Justin Trudeau (Prime Minister), or in France, Jean Castex (Prime Minister) and Olivier Véran (Minister of Health).
Only the faces and mimics change, otherwise, it’s the same, the same words, the same behavior, the same instructions:
Keep your distance
Put on masks
Vaccinate yourself
Be afraid
In a Belgian newspaper of October 21, Mr. Vandenbroucke invites us to “prepare ourselves to face the fourth wave” [1].
In this editorial they ask: “Is Belgium ready for a fourth wave? [2].
As for Elio Di Rupo, he gets angry and insists on the need to be vaccinated because for him, “to die free is to die” [3].
It must be said that the third dose of vaccine does not attract the crowds in our country [4].
Since April 2020, our “specialists” have been following in the footsteps of those in power, when they have not preceded them, to warn us, to tell us that it is far from over, to keep the fire under the pan and to keep us in fear of these viruses, which are decidedly tenacious.
Other specialists, clinical doctors remind us in a deafening media silence that fear is very deleterious for the immune system.
Fear paralyses our white blood cells and hinders our adaptive immune responses.
These are the ones that the RNA/DNA injections hastily called vaccines are supposed to stimulate.
Stimulate on one side, hinder on the other.
Psycho-neuro-endocrino-immunology or PNEI, a medical specialty in exponential development, has long been studying the interactions between the nervous, endocrine (hormones) and immune systems and emphasizes the profound reciprocal influences between these fundamental systems of the human body [5].
Numerous studies demonstrate that chronic stress can suppress adequate immune responses and/or aggravate inadequate, excessive immune responses [6].
The severe forms of COVID are precisely characterized by an excessive immune response, up to the point of a devastating cytokine storm for our organs.
Since March 2020, for 19 months, our governments and their advisors, relayed by our journalists, have been stressing and have decidedly only these weapons to transmit a message to the populations: fear, threat, warning.
They use and abuse stress, which has become chronic, permanent and endless, and is much more deleterious to our immunity than the virus itself [7-8-9-10].
After 19 months, it is certain that these government officials, scientific advisors and journalists will not change, and that unless they are replaced by more competent and knowledgeable people, we are condemned to endure their distressing forecasts and their compulsive mantra: “vaccinate yourself”, for a long time to come.
Don’t they think, after such a large percentage of the Belgian population has been injected with their products (more than 80%), that they might have been wrong after all?
Can’t they even consider that this compulsion for “vaccination” [11] is the origin of the problem, via the selection of more aggressive variants and the facilitation of infection by antibodies [12]?
The people, the peoples, have a right to something other than these anxious and repetitive speeches today.
After 19 months, other ways must be considered and people have the right to know that there are other ways, as many doctors are saying despite the censorship, despite the dangers, despite the threats of death or of losing their jobs.
The truth is priceless and always finds its way.
The treatment for COVID, even if it is serious, exists and is called ivermectin.
Taking ivermectin would prevent the outbreak of symptomatic forms and would strongly decrease the evolution towards severe forms, which would relieve hospitals and intensive care units.
For some “unknown” reason, it is not “allowed” to be discussed.
“For example, Wikipedia cannot mention the peer-reviewed meta-analyses of Dr. Tess Lawrie or Dr. Pierre Kory published in the American Journal of Therapeutics. Wikipedia is not allowed to publish the recent meta-analysis on ivermectin written by Dr. Andrew Hill. Also, it is not allowed to say anything about ivmmeta showing the 61 studies involving 23,000 patients that show up to 96% reduction in deaths [prophylaxis] with ivermectin.” [13]
We are not allowed to explain to people how ivermectin has contained the COVID pandemic in India or Africa.
The serious scientific literature supports these claims, here is a sample:
The reviewed literature suggests that there seems to be sufficient evidence for the safety of oral ivermectin, as well as the efficacy of the drug in the early treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19.
(The reviewed literature suggests that there seems to be sufficient evidence about the safety of oral ivermectin, as well as the efficacy of the drug in the early-treatment and the prophylaxis of COVID-19.)
Considering the urgency of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, simultaneous detection of various new mutant strains and future potential re-emergence of novel coronaviruses, repurposing of approved drugs such as ivermectin may merit special attention.
(Considering the urgency of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, simultaneous detection of various new mutant strains and future potential re-emergence of novel coronaviruses, repurposing of approved drugs such as Ivermectin could be worthy of attention.)
Ivermectin plays a role in several biological mechanisms, therefore it could serve as a potential candidate in the treatment of a wide range of viruses including COVID-19 as well as other types of positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses.
(Ivermectin plays a role in several biological mechanisms, therefore it could serve as a potential candidate in the treatment of a wide range of viruses including COVID-19 as well as other types of positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses.)
If we are afraid of ivermectin for some imaginary danger, then we should really be afraid of penicillin and aspirin.
And paracetamol, even more so!
Those who are afraid of ivermectin, then run away from paracetamol!
Since the beginning of its prescription in humans (1980s), with 4 billion human prescriptions to its credit, ivermectin has saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people!
Ivermectin has never killed anyone, unlike penicillin, aspirin, or paracetamol: anaphylactic shock, hemorrhagic shock, and severe liver failure threaten you if you take penicillin, aspirin or paracetamol.
With ivermectin?
Almost nothing, no danger.
Yes, you can be cured in two days of COVID, that’s my clinical experience in the field.
I know a young man who was hospitalized with a 100% oxygen mask. He was about to be intubated and transferred to the ICU.
After two doses of oral ivermectin, he was weaned off the oxygen and could go home.
I know of dozens of cases in which the severe-looking COVID improved without the need for hospitalization after taking 2 to 5 doses of ivermectin (12 mg per oral dose).
What about glutathione?
It is the king of antioxidants [14]. 81,000 scientific articles support its role as a protector of the body, in particular of immunity.
What are our governments waiting for, since they think they are our general practitioners, and these advisors and experts to push us to take glutathione, especially in anticipation of waves and winter?
Especially since researchers have shown that the experimental RNA/DNA products called “anti-COVID vaccines”, which are now being discouraged by the creator of this technology [15], cause major oxidative stress with accelerated cellular aging, especially of immune cells [16].
Boosting our glutathione reserves should be our priority, rather than blocking its production by taking paracetamol!
We should take 1 Gr of glutathione per day, in two doses and in gastro-resistant capsules, or liposomal glutathione in combination with liposomal vitamin C.
It is time to awaken the doctor in all of us [17], like the Greeks of old who worshipped Aeneas, the sister of Panacea and daughter of Aesculapius, the god of medicine.
Aeneas whispered in everyone’s ear the common sense advice to stay healthy: rest, hygiene of life, good food, cleanliness, nature, meditation, use of plants and natural medicine.
However, it is an intensivist doctor, an anesthesiologist specialized in all kinds of techniques and medicines that pushes you in this direction.
Leave the path advised by our governments, their advisors and their journalists: the path of fear, vaccine obsession, social isolation, under-breathing and endless stress.
You deserve better and, above all, you deserve real answers, real solutions:
Boost your immunity and antioxidant levels: vitamin C, zinc, selenium and most importantly, glutathione.
Treat COVID with ivermectin possibly combined with azithromycin.
Avoid paracetamol, which blocks glutathione, and proton pump inhibitors, which alter your microbiota (all the useful bacteria in your intestine).
Take a walk in living nature and take a deep breath.
[15] Robert Malone, pionnier des « vaccins à ARNm », déclare que « la protéine Spike native est toxique » — Santé et Bien-être — Sott.net In the first part of this video, Robert Malone goes into detail about his career as a scientist and the history of the invention of this messenger RNA technology 30 years ago. On the safety of [these] “vaccines”, he states that it is not the technology of [these] “vaccines” that is the problem, but the native Spike protein that is toxic. He regrets that the benefit/risk ratio has not been calculated for each category of the population and asks for evidence and not opinions from the various regulatory authorities after having been informed of the various toxicities, particularly cardiac.
[17] Il est temps de réveiller le médecin qui sommeille en nous – Le blog de Bien-être-soi (tdg.ch)Numerous assessment tests will teach you to diagnose yourself and become your own doctor, in other words, an individual who takes charge of his or her health and not just a victim who suffers from the disease. You are not the disease. It is obvious that we have at our disposal all the resources to get out of this time of confusion. We just have to remember that and aspire to connect with it!
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The Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times has disclosed, citing high-level “source”, that Beijing had no intentions to invite US and Western politicians to the 2022 Winter Olympics on February 4-20. This followed the US President Joe Biden’s innuendo that he’s considering a diplomatic boycott of the Games.
The White House apparently sensed that Biden was unlikely to be on Beijing’s guest list. Period. Tass had quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying following a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Dushanbe on September 16 that President Vladimir Putin had accepted “with delight” an invitation to the Games from Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Biden waited for two more months to arrive at the conclusion that he’s not on Xi’s list of invitees.The Olympic rules stipulate that for politicians to attend the Games, they must first be invited by the host country while the International Olympic Committee endorses it.
The Global Times report said that “as the host country, China has no plan to invite politicians who hype the “boycott” of the Beijing Games.” It noted wryly that Biden’s talk of boycott was “nothing but self-deception.”
In an indirect reference to the pandemic conditions in the US, Global Times observed, “Given the grave situation of the COVID-19 pandemic globally, it is not proper to invite foreign guests on a large scale, which can be easily understood by people with common sense.”
The snub comes hardly a fortnight after Biden’s virtual meeting on November 15 with Xi Jinping. In a larger perspective, though, this extraordinary episode falls in place, given the provocative manner in which the Biden Administration has been taunting Beijing by transgressing over China’s core interests lately.
On the other hand, Xi’s exceptional gesture toward Putin by personally conveying the invitation to the Games in a phone call in August bears testimony to the high quality of the two countries’ “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era”.
In a lengthy commentary on the topic on November 30 pinned on the regular bilateral consultation between the heads of governments of China and Russia yesterday, Global Times singled out the rapidly expanding and deepening ties between the two armed forces. It pointedly noted,
“On military cooperation, the two countries recently signed a roadmap for closer ties, which, according to military experts, indicates that Russia and China have common interests and views on strategic stability and regional security, especially in the Pacific region.
“Such enhancement of cooperation in the defence sector is also viewed as a reaction to the West’s pressure on Russia and to the alarming signals that China received from the US and its allies, experts said.
“Wu Qian, spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense, said at a press conference on Thursday that the Chinese military expects an even better relationship with its Russian counterpart, and is willing to play a bigger role with it in safeguarding world peace and stability.”
The above two reports in the Global Times appeared on a day when the Kremlin signalled that Russia-China strategic relations are poised for a historic leap. In separate remarks yesterday, Putin and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin beckoned Moscow’s willingness for a de facto alliance with Beijing.
Putin positively evaluated China’s “growing defence potential as it (Russia) enjoys the highest level of relations with the country and is itself ramping up its armed forces.” In his characteristic nuanced way, Putin drew a loaded comparison with the existing alliance between the US, UK and France!
Again, during the consultations between the two prime ministers yesterday, Mishustin proposed to Premier Li Keqiang that in the prevailing “complex external environment” of sanctions, “unfriendly actions”, “unfair competition” and “illegitimate unilateral sanctions as well as political and economic pressure,” Russia and China should also “team up” for their joint development.
Mishustin pointed at an intertwining of plans between the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union and China’s Belt and Road initiative. “This is important for bolstering the interconnection in Eurasian space, it will help guarantee the economic progress of Russia and China and create a solid foundation for the formation of a Greater Eurasian partnership,” Mishustin told Li, while also reiterating that Putin had earlier presented this idea.
To be sure, Putin’s visit to Beijing in February holds the promise of a profound elevation of the Sino-Russian partnership from its already high level. A transition is under way from the close cooperation between the two powers to coordination and active pooling of resources to support each other not only for safeguarding their core interests in the face of the growing belligerence in the Biden Administration’s strategies but also at a global level to build network of regional alliances.
The Pentagon’s 2021 Global Posture Review, which was announced on Monday signals a global posture and the intention to develop a “global response capability” that embraces not only the Indo-Pacific and Europe but also includes “enduring posture requirements” in the Middle East, in Africa and Latin America. This is a far cry from the pacifist agenda Biden had previously espoused and his loud claim at the very inception of his presidency that diplomacy “is back at the centre” of US foreign policy.
Significantly, Putin’s remarks yesterday also touched on third-country cooperation between Russia and China as a major vector of their partnership. “We have many fields of cooperation with China. One of them concerns our work in third countries. It is well underway but it may be expanded further. Why? Because we share roughly the same approaches and principles, ” Putin said.
Putin stressed that Moscow supported Beijing’s efforts to create a global infrastructure of trade routes. “We support our Chinese friends’ efforts based on the One Belt One Road strategy,” Putin said.
Interestingly, Putin singled out West Asia as potentially a theatre of Russia-China coordination. Indeed, Putin spoke in this vein as the Sino-Russian coordination has shifted to a common stance robustly endorsing the Iranian demand on the lifting of US sanctions and the Vienna negotiations getting off to a promising start.
The bottom line is that by any reckoning of diplomatic practice, the co-authorship of a powerful opinion piece in an influential American magazine last week by the Russian and Chinese ambassadors in Washington Anatoly Antonov and Qin Gang lambasting Biden’s Summit of Democracy proclaims that the Sino-Russian alliance is already sailing on the Potomac River. Alas, the National Interest was ordered to remove the piece from its website! (read it here)
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Not to be missed. From the New Atlanticist and the Atlantic Council. Offered by Ian Brzezinski, son of Zbigniew (as he mentions in the article), senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO policy.
His brother Mark is on his way to becoming U.S. ambassador to Poland just in time for the impending catastrophe in northeastern Europe. The two sons are positioning themselves to reprise their father’s role in confronting and defeating Russia (and Belarus) over Poland.
Hence the labored analogy that serves as the theme of the piece.
The writer alludes to the simultaneity of Washington’s 1980 dual crusade/jihad on the Soviet Union’s northwestern and southeastern frontiers – Poland and Afghanistan, to variously degrees religiously motivated – which has been missed for over forty years.
Many of the measures the author recommends the U.S. and NATO employ against Moscow have already been enacted and others are in the process of being implemented; indeed, they resemble the template he’s using as a current model to a remarkable degree.
With some one hundred thousand troops, heavy armor, attack aircraft, missiles, and other offensive capabilities parked along Ukraine’s northern and eastern borders, Russia has positioned itself for another invasion of its neighbor.
[Biden and his handlers] should look to history for clues about how to deter the Kremlin from attacking a non-NATO member within its sphere of influence: In late 1980 then President Jimmy Carter and his national security team stopped an imminent invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union.
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The Carter administration used both overt and covert channels to warn Solidarity’s leadership and the Polish government. [T]he Warsaw-born Brzezinski reached out directly to the movement’s leaders and even to Pope John Paul II, a native Pole….
Meanwhile, the White House informed and mobilized the support of allies in NATO and beyond. Carter engaged his counterparts in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and Australia, among others.
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Foreign ministers, meanwhile, reviewed a set of firm economic and diplomatic sanctions that were provided to the press. They included:
terminating all large-scale economic projects, including a new natural gas pipeline linking Siberia and Western Europe
recalling Allied ambassadors from Moscow
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To reinforce those economic threats, Brzezinski coordinated with Lane Kirkland, the powerful and staunchly anti-communist head of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), who led the international labor movement’s preparation of a worldwide boycott of the shipment of goods to and from the Soviet Union.
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The credibility of these signals was bolstered by NATO’s significant force posture along its eastern frontier: More than twenty Allied divisions were stationed along the Iron Curtain, with many more prepared to pour in as reinforcements. The more than three hundred thousand US troops deployed to Europe constituted a decisive part of that forward defense.
Meanwhile, the United States had been working to weaken the Soviets in Afghanistan….
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A template for today?
Today, Biden and his own national security team should compare their current context, approach, and next steps to deter Russian aggression to Carter’s management of the 1980 crisis.
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…As the prospects of another Russian invasion mount, NATO must today match the level of resolve it exercised under the far more challenging contingency it faced in 1980.
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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.
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On 13 November 1941 a significant conference was convened in Nazi-occupied Belarus, at the city of Orsha, in order to decide whether the Wehrmacht should resume its advance on Moscow, or go over to the defence for the winter.
The German Army Group North and Army Group South commanders, Ritter von Leeb and Gerd von Rundstedt, both wanted to switch to a solid defensive line, and thereby rest on the territorial gains made against the USSR up until mid-November 1941. Hindsight is useful but their views were undoubtedly correct.
Field Marshal von Leeb, who had no fondness for the Nazis being a staunch monarchist and catholic, was also considered a world authority on defensive warfare, and his opinion should especially have been heeded. Some of von Leeb’s early writings on defensive warfare were translated into Russian, and had even been incorporated into the Soviet Army’s Field Service regulations of 1936, according to Samuel W. Mitcham, the American military historian. Von Leeb himself believed, “Defence is mostly the necessary recourse of distress; the defenders are nearly always in a critical position”.
Already on the night of 11 November, the temperature just west of Moscow had dropped to minus 20 degrees Celsius. Because of Nazi arrogance and negligence, Wehrmacht troops were not furnished with winter clothing, nor did they have basic medical and military supplies. They were in no condition to fight a winter war that could succeed. Some German soldiers resorted to stealing the felt boots, fur caps and long great coats from dead Russian troops. Regardless, more and more Germans were exiting the battlefield due to frostbite, severe cases of which were first recorded on 7 November 1941.
The Army Group Center commander, Fedor von Bock, had a different opinion to von Leeb and von Rundstedt. Army Group Center was tasked with capturing Moscow and bringing the war to a successful conclusion. Driven by personal ambition and his hope that the Russians were almost finished, Field Marshal von Bock, ignoring the fierce weather and weakened state of his army, insisted that the march towards Moscow should continue.
Adolf Hitler supported this stance. As did the Army High Command Chief-of-Staff Franz Halder, who said at the Orsha meeting that “the enemy is worse off than we are; he is on the verge of collapse”.
Hitler, Halder and von Bock were influenced too by recollections of the First World War. Haunting the Orsha conference like a ghost was the German memory of the September 1914 Battle of the Marne which, it is no exaggeration to say, cost the German Empire victory in World War I. During the Battle of the Marne in northern France, possible German success was thrown away due to a lack of resolution. Though the past usually has lessons to teach, they can be misunderstood, and the similarities are few between the Battle of the Marne and the German position in the late stages of Operation Barbarossa.
It was agreed, therefore, that the advance on Moscow would resume, as it did on 15 November 1941. In awful conditions the Germans struggled forward, pushing Soviet forces back to the Volga Reservoir, about 75 miles north of Moscow. On 22 November Panzer Group 3 entered Klin and promptly captured it, 52 miles from Moscow. On 24 November the town of Solnechnogorsk fell, 38 miles north-west of the Russian capital.
On 27 November 1941 the 7th panzer division formed a bridgehead over the Moscow-Volga Canal; and also on 27 November, the 2nd SS panzer division Das Reich captured Istra, a mere 31 miles from Moscow. However, as of 26 November the Germans had suffered 743,122 casualties; taking into account illnesses and those unavailable through frostbite, the number would slightly exceed 750,000 German casualties in early December 1941. This total is obviously high but, in comparison, Red Army casualties amounted to almost 5 million by the end of 1941, more than 6 times greater than German losses.
In late November 1941, it was becoming clear that the possibility of the Germans capturing Moscow was a slim one. During the first two weeks of November, Joseph Stalin had dispatched 21 fresh Soviet divisions from Siberia and Central Asia to the Moscow sector. Before on 5 October 1941, Stalin had decided to create a strategic reserve of 10 armies, most of which were retained for the counter-offensive that was soon to come. The Germans had barely any new divisions to throw into the fighting. The weakened Luftwaffe previously failed to eliminate the Trans-Siberian rail line, across which the fresh reserves of Soviet troops had been transported.
On 28 November 1941, Panzer Group 3 established a foothold over the Moscow-Volga Canal, but it could proceed no further. Over 100 miles to the south of Moscow, the 2nd Panzer Army was unable to capture the city of Tula. This meant that the planned German pincers envelopment of Moscow, from the south-east and the north-west, could not now be implemented. In the first week of December 1941, Panzer Group 4 pushed a division to within 18 miles of Moscow but it was halted by Soviet resistance.
With a last throw of the dice Hitler decided, as Moscow could not be taken by encirclement, that he would wipe the city out by flooding it with water. Hitler compiled an order that was sent to the 33-year-old SS Obersturmfuehrer Otto Skorzeny, who would become one of the most famous – or infamous – soldiers of the war. Hitler’s order expounded that Skorzeny’s unit, belonging to the Das Reich panzer division, should advance to capture the sluices of the reservoir on the Moscow-Volga Canal. They would thereafter open the sluices and “drown” Moscow by turning it into a gigantic artificial lake.
By the start of December 1941 Skorzeny and his men, though they could see the spires of Moscow and the Kremlin in their binoculars, were waist deep in snow and could not advance to carry out Hitler’s order. Skorzeny complained how “in spite of the confusion of our logistics and in spite of the bravery of the Russian soldiers, we would have taken Moscow in the beginning of December 1941 if the Siberian troops had not intervened. In the month of December, our Army Group Center did not receive a single division as reinforcement or replacement”.
On the night of 4 December, the temperature near Moscow plunged to minus 31 degrees Celsius and, 24 hours later, the thermometer sank lower still to minus 36. The German soldiers were fighting desperately in the evergreen woods that lay around Moscow, and further progress was impossible. With this halt the truth suddenly hit home.
Army Group Center’s final effort to take Moscow had failed, and the failure left it in a most dangerous position. They were holding a front around 600 miles in breadth, and against an enemy which, though it had suffered unprecedented losses, seemed if anything to be growing stronger. The Soviet counter-attack was launched on 5 December 1941, timed beautifully to strike the Germans at their weakest moment.
For all of the vast extent of front, von Bock’s army had in reserve a single, understrength division. This was military redundancy, the result of German overconfidence along with Hitler and the high command’s willingness to gamble recklessly. Like players who continually doubled their stakes, they faced ruin should the dice fall the wrong way.
With the temperature below minus 30, the panzers and trucks were becoming immobile because the oil in their sumps was freezing solid, and the Germans had very little antifreeze. Their horses were dying from the cold, and the Wehrmacht was still heavily reliant on these animals for transportation. Even the lubricating oil in guns and other weaponry was starting to freeze, rendering them unserviceable. Out of the 26 trains per day, which the German logistics staff calculated were necessary to maintain Army Group Center, only eight to 10 trains were arriving every 24 hours.
So much for the successful eight week campaign envisaged in Barbarossa’s planning. From the German viewpoint, the invasion could only be regarded as a monumental failure. The objective had been to secure a 1,300 mile line from Archangel, in the far north-west of Russia, to the Caspian Sea – running eastwards of Moscow and including nearly all of European Russia. As December 1941 began, the reality was that the depleted German divisions stood outside of Moscow and Leningrad, Soviet Russia’s two largest cities; while to the south, German forces were stopped 300 miles west of the Caspian Sea. Neither had the Caucasus region been penetrated, following the German retirement from Rostov-on-Don on 2 December.
What were the reasons for the inability to accomplish any of these aims? No single cause can be put forward but some are more important than others. Barbarossa’s strategic planning was inadequate and amateurish. It called for an offensive across an extremely broad front, which served to dilute the force of the attack, and give the Soviet Army time to recover from the opening blows. With Hitler’s mark all over it, the German high command had attempted to reach too many targets at the same time (Leningrad, Crimea, Caucasus, Murmansk, Kiev, Moscow, Donbass).
Mitcham observed, “By sending them racing all over Russia, Hitler had contributed greatly to the wear on his panzers. Tank units had less than 50 percent of their authorized strength when Operation Typhoon, the final drive on Moscow, began”.
Moscow ranked as Soviet Russia’s most important city. Apart from being the USSR’s biggest urban area, the capital was its communications, transportation and administrative hub, which enabled each part of the Soviet Army front to be reinforced. Moscow was a vital industrial center and it headquartered the country’s all powerful leader, Stalin.
From the invasion’s outset on 22 June 1941, had Army Group Center been directed towards Moscow in a single great thrust – and protected on the flanks by Army Groups North and South – the capital may well have fallen at the end of August 1941. Such strategic thoughts were beyond the Nazi hierarchy, luckily for the world. Two months into the invasion, on 21 August, previous strategic mistakes could have been rectified by assigning Moscow primary importance on that date; but Hitler compounded the errors by reasserting the plan to capture numerous objectives. The advance on Moscow was postponed for what would be a critical six weeks (until 2 October 1941).
When Hitler’s orders of 21 August were forwarded by telephone on 22 August to Field Marshal von Bock, whose goal had been to capture Moscow, he was very upset. He said it was “unfortunate… All the directives say taking Moscow isn’t important!!… I want to smash the enemy army and the bulk of this army is opposite my front!” On 24 August von Bock continued, “They apparently do not wish to exploit under any circumstances the opportunity decisively to defeat the Russians before winter!”
Note the repeated use of exclamation marks by von Bock, a normally cold and unemotional Prussian not given to hysterics. His views here would prove accurate in every sense. General Halder went so far as to say that Hitler’s 21 August directive “was decisive to the outcome of this campaign”; and in December 1941 von Bock, having seen his prediction come true, again lambasted the 21 August directive, calling it “a terrible mistake”.
There were some other factors, perhaps secondary, behind the German failure. Russian resistance, military capacity, and resources were much greater than the Nazis had anticipated. Overall, the quality of Soviet military hardware was impressive, in particular the T-34 medium tank and KV heavy tank. Yet in 1941 there were, combined, only about 2,000 T-34 and KV tanks available to the Soviets, and most of these had been destroyed before winter by the enemy.
British historian Evan Mawdsley wrote, “In 1941 the Germans were able to cope with the superior number of Soviet tanks, by means of some excellent towed anti-tank guns. The 88mm, which was actually a heavy anti-aircraft gun, gave the Wehrmacht the firepower to knock out even the T-34 and KV”. Consequently, the high standard of Soviet armour, in some instances superior to the German, was not a decisive factor in 1941 when the crucial fighting was unfolding.
The Nazis faced increased resistance, at least in part because of the brutality of their rule in the conquered regions. In the Ukraine, for example, the Wehrmacht had initially been welcomed as liberators by a considerable part of the population. Before long, potential allies would evolve into implacable enemies when the true face of Nazi occupation was revealed, and this certainly did not help the Wehrmacht’s cause.
The size of the Soviet landmass, far larger than western Europe where the Germans were triumphant the year before, is a sometimes overlooked factor in Barbarossa’s failure but it was important. The terrain’s vastness was enhanced by German strategic blunders. The Soviet road network was much inferior when compared to the road system in France. This proved a hindrance to the Germans, especially when the heavy rains arrived in the second half of October 1941, turning the ground into rivers of mud.
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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Sources
Niklas Zetterling, Anders Frankson,The Drive on Moscow 1941 (Casemate Publishers; First Edition, 19 Oct. 2012)
Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., Hitler’s Field Marshals and Their Battles (Guild Publishers, 1988)
Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 (Hodder Arnold, 23 Feb. 2007)
Ian Johnson, “August 2017: Stalingrad at 75, The Turning Point of World War II in Europe”, Origins, Current Events in Historical Perspective
Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov (Icon Books, 2 May 2013)
Andrew Roberts, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (Harper, 17 May 2011)
Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 2nd edition, 3 April 1985)
R. Ording, The Churchill Equation (Dorrance Publishing Co., 3 April 2018)
Featured image: Troops of the 158th Rifle Division fighting near the Vitebsk railway station during the assault on the city (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)
Comments Off on History of World War II: Operation Barbarossa, Consequences of the Wehrmacht’s November 1941 Orsha Conference, Advance on Moscow Resumes
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Nijeer Parks knows all too well about the injustices committed by police in the United States. In February 2019, the then 31-year-old Black man from New Jersey had a warrant out for his arrest. His alleged crime: stealing snacks from a hotel gift store and fleeing when confronted by police. Upon hearing about the warrant, Parks went to the police station to (he thought) quickly remedy what was a clear case of mistaken identity. At the time of the alleged crime he was 30 miles away, sending money to his partner at a Western Union.
Upon reaching the station however, Parks had no opportunity to demonstrate his innocence. He was handcuffed and thrown into the county prison, where he stayed for 10 days before being granted bail. The prosecutor in the case sought a 20-year sentence—taking into account prior drug convictions and trumped-up charges including shoplifting, resisting arrest and aggravated assault. Taking a plea deal, he was told, would only reduce the sentence to six years. Parks and his partner used all their savings to fight the charges, and fortunately the case was dropped in November 2019, after it became clear the police had no real evidence to back up their charges.
It’s disgraceful enough that anyone could be imprisoned for days just for being accused of a petty crime. But Parks’ case had an additional morbid twist: the decision to arrest him was based solely on the workings of a (faulty) computer algorithm. An image from a fake driver’s licence taken from the suspect at the gift store was scanned by facial recognition software, and it identified Parks as a match. This was the only evidence used for the arrest, which is ridiculous when you compare pictures of Parks and the real suspect, showing few similarities apart from them both being Black and having a beard. And this case is far from unique. Parks is one of at least three Black men in the US who have been wrongly arrested after being identified by facial recognition technology.
Today big tech is just as important for policing operations as the companies that manufacture their weapons, with artificial intelligence (AI) being used by police around the world to streamline criminal investigations, engage in mass surveillance, and, supposedly, predict and stop crimes before they occur.
As with the use of AI in the military and workplaces like Amazon, the kind of AI used by police doesn’t actually involve genuinely intelligent machines. Instead, what AI can achieve for policing is the integration and analysis of huge amounts of data—piecing it together like a puzzle to help direct law enforcement operations. The concerning thing for ordinary people is where this data comes from: the many “digital traces” we all leave behind minute by minute, hour by hour as we go about our daily lives. Thanks to a rapidly growing data brokering industry estimated, in 2019, to be worth US$232 billion, our electronic data is mined without our knowledge, packaged and sold to the highest bidder. Police are one of the industry’s main clients.
One of the industry’s major players is facial recognition company Clearview AI. The New York-based company has harvested, without permission, more than 3 billion pictures from Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook. The company’s algorithms match photos from this database to images loaded by clients into their facial recognition software. A report published in Buzzfeed News found that employees from more than 1,100 US police departments have used Clearview AI. And the technology isn’t just restricted to the US. Here in Australia, although police have previously denied using the technology, a leaked list of Clearview AI customers revealed that the Australian Federal Police, as well as state police in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, have trialled the company’s technology in recent years.
Other AI companies gain access to much more than just our social media profiles. Palantir, a company that was set up with funding from the US Central Intelligence Agency, is an example. The company was named, ominously, after the powerful palantíri seeing stones from The Lord of the Rings and, since its founding in 2003, has been known mostly for assisting with surveillance operations for the US military. It is widely credited (although this hasn’t been officially confirmed) with tracking down Osama Bin Laden.
In more recent times, Palantir has expanded its client base well beyond the military, and chief among them are the police. The company’s software allows cops to connect data from multiple sources to determine relationships between different individuals, locations and objects. Crime data from police can be combined with anything from birth and death data, phone records, automatic licence plate readings and social media posts to stitch together an intricate social web, showing police who is a relative of whom, who is dating whom, the physical and personal details of these individuals as well as what phones and cars they are using.
In her 2020 book Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing, Sarah Brayne examines the use of AI by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). She finds that the programs used by police can swiftly produce a list of crime suspects even from the vaguest starting information. A Palantir engineer Brayne interviewed presents her with a hypothetical robbery scenario in which the suspect is “male, average build” with a “black 4-door sedan”, and demonstrates how these scanty details, when entered into the company’s software, generate a list of 13 “matches” with corresponding driver’s license numbers within the space of a minute.
Another disturbing technological frontier is the use of “predictive policing”—algorithms that supposedly can help avert future crimes. AI is very far from achieving the “Precog” type visions of the future seen in the film Minority Report. However, its use in this area is highly problematic nonetheless. Police use predictive policing algorithms to attribute a score or rating to individuals that—based on a range of data points—are claimed to indicate their likelihood of committing future crimes. These scores are then used by police to direct where they put their resources.
This technology isn’t new. A 2014 report from the Police Executive Research Forum showed that 38 percent of US police departments surveyed were using some form of predictive policing technology. In her book Brayne examined the LAPD’s Operation LASER (short for “Los Angeles Strategic Extraction and Restoration”), which was launched in 2011. The operation involved the use of Palantir software to generate crime “hot spot maps” and “chronic offender bulletins” (which look like wanted posters for individuals the software has deemed likely to commit ongoing crime), which are given to police for use on their regular patrols.
In Australia, the New South Wales Police’s Suspect Target Management Plan (STMP) has existed in different incarnations since 1999. The STMP assigns risk scores to people with prior convictions to identify who should be subjected to ongoing surveillance. Victoria Police trialled a predictive policing algorithm targeting youth from 2016 to 2018, but have refused to provide any details about the program.
Some have argued that the use of AI technology could be beneficial in policing, possibly helping to reform the criminal justice system. A 2016 report by the Obama administration, for instance, claimed, “When designed and deployed carefully, data-based methodologies can help law enforcement make decisions based on factors and variables that empirically correlate with risk, rather than on flawed human instincts and prejudices”. Accounts of how these technologies work in practice, however, show there is nothing objective or unbiased about them. If anything, the use of computer algorithms to guide police appears only to entrench and exacerbate existing biased policing practices.
This is in part due to weaknesses of the technology itself. The case of Nijeer Parks is just the tip of the iceberg. When the American Civil Liberties Union ran its own test of Amazon’s facial recognition software Rekognition, images of 28 members of the US Congress were falsely matched with photos from a police mugshot database. And just like a racist cop, these algorithms are more likely to get it wrong for certain people already disproportionately targeted by law enforcement. A 2019 study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology—which tested the accuracy of 189 facial recognition algorithms—showed that, depending on the specific algorithm, they were between 10 and 100 times more likely to spit out a false positive match for Asian and African American faces compared to whites.
The predictive policing programs show similar biases. The LAPD’s Operation LASER provides a clear example. According to Sarah Brayne’s research, the scoring system used to produce their chronic offender bulletins lets existing police biases in at the ground floor. Offenders are identified by the system in part based on previous criminal convictions and in part on how many times they have been stopped by police. So someone who the police have—for whatever reason—been harassing, will be identified by the system as a likely future offender, warranting yet more harassment.
Reports on other predictive policing programs show the targeting of communities already subjected to ongoing police harassment and violence. A 2017 Youth Justice Coalition report on STMP in New South Wales, for instance, found 44 percent of those targeted by the program were Aboriginal people, many of whom had no prior convictions. The report details the experience of a young Aboriginal man identified as James. Despite having no prior convictions in the state, James was listed by the program as being a likely offender. Following this, he was stopped by police on a monthly basis, and in one incident was capsicum sprayed after questioning officers as to why they were stopping him.
The AI technologies used by police are now also being rolled out to enhance surveillance by other repressive state agencies. Palantir has expanded into immigration, with one of its more recently acquired clients being the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). The use of Palantir’s technologies to spy on undocumented immigrants has led to some of the biggest ICE raids in the country’s history. This includes raids on a series of chicken-processing plants in Mississippi in 2019, in which 680 people were arrested.
The clear evidence that these technologies offer no solution to the entrenched racism and other problems in policing has resulted in some resistance to the use of AI programs. The LAPD had to abandon Operation LASER in 2019 after ongoing pressure from Stop LAPD Spying Coalition activists. In recent years workers at Amazon, Microsoft and Google have demanded the companies stop supplying AI to the police, ICE and the military. And students at the University of California Berkeley stopped Palantir from coming on to their campus to hold recruiting sessions.
These activists are right to resist the use of AI technology by the police and other repressive agencies. Policing is rotten because it is an essential part of a rotten capitalist system—which uses the ongoing surveillance and repression of the working class and poor communities to ensure that the rich stay rich. AI in policing can only contribute to, not solve, the injustices of modern policing. It doesn’t matter whether a cop is armed with a gun or with a computer, we have to take a stand against them all.
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Sanctions kill. The most notorious example of killer sanctions was imposed by the US and its Western allies on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990. These sanctions were not restricted to military materiel but severely limited the provision of food and medical supplies for Iraqi civilians who died of malnourishment and preventable diseases.
In a 1996 television interview, Leslie Stahl asked former US-Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who assumed the post in 1997, “We have heard that half a million children have died… is the price worth it?”
She replied, “I think this is a very hard choice. But the price — we think the price is worth it.” At that time, the estimate of fatalities was 575,000.
In December 1996, the UN implemented the oil-for-food programme which alleviated some of the most brutal aspects of the sanctions regime but it remained in place until after the US conquest of Iraq in 2003. Protracted sanctions plus the two US wars on Iraq produced an outflow of millions of Iraqis which continues today with hundreds seeking asylum in Europe along with Syrians, Afghans, Somalis and others from countries suffering from sanctions.
Former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Denis Halliday, said in 1999.
“We are now… responsible for killing people, destroying their families, allowing their older parents to die for lack of basic medicines…We’re allowing children to die who were not born yet when [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein made the mistake of invading Kuwait.”
Despite widespread high-level criticisms of its use of sanctions, Washington has continued to bludgeon recalcitrant governments to force them to capitulate to US political and economic demands. In a 1998 report for the Brookings Institution, former State Department director of policy planning Richard Haass called sanctions the “policy tool of choice for the United States in the post cold-war world” and pointed out that the US “maintains economic sanctions against dozens of countries”.
Haass warned that sanctions are “blunt instruments that often produce unintended and undesirable consequences”. He cited the cases of Haiti where sanctions caused “economic distress” that led to an exodus of Haitians to the US and Pakistan where weapons embargoes “increased its reliance on a nuclear option”.
Although sanctions also harm US businesses and farmers exporting their products and produce to embargoed countries, Haass pointed out, “Sanctions tend to be easier to introduce than to lift” as it is “difficult or impossible to build a consensus for rescinding a sanction, even if there has been some progress on the matter of concern, if the sanction has been shown to be feckless or counterproductive, or if other interests can be shown to suffer”.
Haass concluded, “All too often, the economic, humanitarian and foreign policy costs of US sanctions far outweigh any benefits.”
At present, the US imposes sanctions on dozens of countries or their citizens, including Afghanistan, Belarus, Burundi, Central African Republic, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Crimea, Cuba, North Cyprus, North Korea, Veezuela, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Libya, Myanmar, Russia and Iraq. Separate sanctions number in the tens of thousands.
Haass was a critic of the Biden administration’s “withdrawal of choice” from Afghanistan in 2021 as, in his view, the US should have left its troops in that country. The mission had not been accomplished, US military presence was not “untenable” and troops were still “welcomed by the host government”. Therefore, Haass argued, “Withdrawal was a choice, and, as is often true of wars of choice, the results promise to be tragic.” Sanctions contribute heavily to the tragedy.
Afghanistan is the most egregious ongoing example of the use by the West of sanctions to punish 38 million civilians who are now ruled by the Taliban, Pushtun irregulars who defeated the mighty Nato alliance, led by the US. The flow of hard currency into the country has stopped, the GDP has shrunk by 40 per cent, the economy is broken, banks dole out small amounts of local cash to desperate depositors, salaried workers have not been paid in months, women with jobs are told to stay at home depriving their families of essentials, children are being sold and drought has reduced the annual harvest of food crops.
In October, UN Development Programme chief, Achim Steiner, warned, “We have to step in, we have to stabilise a ‘people’s economy’ and in addition to saving lives, we also have to save livelihoods. Because otherwise, we will indeed confront a scenario through this winter and into next year where millions and millions of Afghans are simply unable to stay on their land, in their homes, in their villages and survive.” He said $660 million will be needed over the next 12 months for a fund to support local communities by providing cash to organisations and Afghan workers in public works programmes. A basic income would be paid to elderly and disabled people and grants given to micro-enterprises. The UN has begun COVID and polio vaccination drives.
Despite UN efforts, Dominik Stillhart, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, has called the situation in Afghanistan a “catastrophe”. At the end of a six-day visit to that country in late November, he stated, “I am livid. Pictures viewed from afar of bone-thin children tightly elicit gasps of horror. When you’re standing in the paediatric ward in Kahdahar’s largest hospital, looking into the empty eyes of hungry children and the anguished faces of desperate parents, the situation is absolutely infuriating. It is so infuriating because this suffering is man-made. Economic sanctions meant to punish those in power in Kabul are instead freezing millions of people across Afghanistan out of the basics they need to survive.” He accused the international community of turning its back on Afghanistan.
World Food Programme director, David Beasley described the situation in Afghanistan “as bad as you possibly can imagine”. Afghanistan is becoming the “worse humanitarian crisis we have ever seen“.
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Iranian officials with knowledge of the investigation, meanwhile, tell the NY Times that the hackers also seized control of the ministry’s fuel storage tanks and may have gained access to data on international oil sales, a state secret that could expose how Iran evades international sanctions.
Israel was behind a cyberattack on Iran’s nationwide fuel distribution system in late October that paralyzed the Islamic republic’s 4,300 gas stations, two US defense officials speaking on condition of anonymity told the New York Times over the weekend.
The attack came on the heels of previous cyberattacks in recent months, which shut down vital services and infrastructure in Iran – from disruptions to traffic lights and train services to water and electric supplies.
No one assumed responsibility for disabling the gas stations or for the previous attacks in Iran. In Tehran, too, officials were careful not to point a finger at the “usual suspects,” although Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said that a country with cyber-capabilities wanted to “make people angry by creating disorder and disruption.” The foreign and Israeli press had already attributed the cyberattacks to Israel, saying their objective was to apply pressure on the Iranian regime and stall its nuclear progress.
In response to the alleged Israeli attack, the Iran-affiliated hacker group “BlackShadow” hacked the servers of Israeli internet company Cyberserve. The hackers shuttered the company’s servers and threatened to leak data pertaining to hundreds of thousands of users.
Cyberserve is a web hosting company that provides servers and data storage for companies such as Kan public broadcaster, the Israel Lottery, Birthright, the Dan and Kavim public transportation companies, the Children’s Museum in Holon, LGBTQ dating app “Atraf,” tour booking company Pegasus, the Israeli Children’s Museum, and dozens of other sites.
Israel also accused Iran of carrying out a cyberattack in early April on a minor water facility that sought to poison the water supply delivered to hundreds of thousands of homes in the greater Tel Aviv area.
Meanwhile, to get pumps back online, the NY Times reported, Iran’s Oil Ministry had to send technicians to every gas station in the country. Once the pumps were reset, most stations could still sell only unsubsidized fuel, which is twice the price of subsidized fuel.
It took nearly two weeks to restore the subsidy network, which allots each vehicle 60 liters (about 16 gallons) a month at half price.
The alleged Israeli hack, however, may have been more serious than an inconvenience to motorists, the NY Times report speculated.
A senior manager in the Oil Ministry and an oil dealer with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke to the NYT on the condition of anonymity “to avoid repercussions” said that officials were alarmed that the hackers had also seized control of the ministry’s fuel storage tanks and may have gained access to data on international oil sales – a state secret that could expose how Iran evades international sanctions.
According to the NYT, because the oil ministry’s computer servers contain such sensitive data, the system operates unconnected to the internet, leading to suspicions among Iranian officials that Israel may have had inside help.
Three senior Israeli officials, who asked not to be identified in order to discuss secret cyber issues, told the NY Times that Black Shadow was either part of the Iranian government or freelance hackers working for the government.
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The UK government is considering boycotting China’s winter Olympic Games to be held in Beijing. The British foreign office cites “international efforts to hold China to account for its human rights violations in Xinjiang.”
“It is the longstanding policy of the government that the determination of whether genocide has taken place should be made by a competent court with the jurisdiction to try such cases, rather than by the government or a non-judicial body.”
Setting aside the pathetic allegation of “human rights violations” (vastly downgraded from the absurd allegation of a genocide) in Xinjiang, Britain ought to look in the mirror and submit its own human rights abuses and genocides to the International Criminal Court or International Court of Justice. It will take many years because there are so many abuses and genocides to be tried.
How does one think that the Indigenous populations were subdued in the colonies of Australia, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia? Did the Indigenous peoples roll over and say please depopulate us, so you can take the land?
Did the Nepalese, Bhutanese, the peoples of the Indian subcontinent, and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) say please subdue us and rule over us?
No need to be mired too far in the past for British aggression and war crimes. There have been plenty in the 20th and 21st centuries.
In 1912, Britain carried out the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in Amritsar, Punjab. In 1948, Britain ended the Palestine Mandate and facilitated the Jewish ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Near the end of 1946, British troops of the Scots Guards murdered 24 Malays in the Batang Kali Massacre. In 1952, Britain carried out the Mau Mau Massacre in Kenya.
Recently, the Guardian published an article, “Slaughter in Indonesia: Britain’s secret propaganda war,” that described Britain’s role in, according to the CIA, “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century.”
Didn’t British Prime Minister Tony Blair conspire with George W Bush to fix the facts and intelligence around a policy that led to a staggering estimate that “2.4 million Iraqis have been killed since 2003 as a result of our country’s illegal invasion, with a minimum of 1.5 million and a maximum of 3.4 million” posited on the lie of Iraq having weapons-of-mass-destruction (which Britain actually has)?
Were the Brits not also found guilty of war crimes in Afghanistan? Were the Brits not involved in the destruction of Libya and the carnage in Syria?
It leads anyone with a slight insight into history to ask upon what moral basis do Brits claim a right to denounce other countries for alleged crimes?
Yes, there was a violent skirmish between China and India in 2020, but China has not been at war for over 40 years — a 3 weeks and 6 day war with Viet Nam in 1979. And one must not overlook the war crimes Britain committed against China. After all, Britain fought the Opium Wars to force China to open its market to opium in the mid-19th century. The Qing dynasty was weak and China lost. As penance, China had to cede Hong Kong and Kowloon to Britain and pay reparations.
Has Britain ever repaid the ill-gotten reparations along with rent for the colonization of Hong Kong?
What should one conclude about the British politicians who denounce China without irrefutable evidence? Are they dishonest charlatans or are they intellectually inept as far as their own history?
Any human rights abuses or war crimes that China or any nation might commit must be judged, not by bombast but with solid evidence. Such evidence must be presented to a neutral tribunal, not by the scofflaws, but by reputable countries as untarnished and unbiased as possible by great crimes.
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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be emailed at: kimohp@gmail. Twitter: @kimpetersen. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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Who gets to decide when it comes to bodily autonomy?
Where does one draw the line over whose rights are worthy of protecting? And how do present-day legal debates over bodily autonomy, privacy, vaccine mandates, the death penalty and abortion play into future discussions about singularity, artificial intelligence, cloning, and the privacy rights of the individual in the face of increasingly invasive, intrusive and unavoidable government technologies?
Caught up in the heated debate over the legality of abortion, we’ve failed to think about what’s coming next. Get ready, because it could get scary, ugly and overwhelming really fast.
Thus far, abortion politics have largely revolved around who has the right to decide—the government or the individual—when it comes to bodily autonomy, the right to privacy in one’s body, sexual freedom, and the rights of the unborn.
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause provides for a “right to privacy” that assures a woman’s right to abort her pregnancy within the first two trimesters.
In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the Supreme Court reaffirmed its earlier ruling in Roe when it prohibited states from imposing an “undue burden” or “substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.”
No matter how the Supreme Court rules in Dobbs, it will not resolve the problem of a culture that values life based on a sliding scale. Nor will it help us navigate the moral, ethical and scientific minefields that await us as technology and humanity move ever closer to a point of singularity.
Here’s what I know.
Life is an inalienable right. By allowing the government to decide who or what is deserving of rights, it shifts the entire discussion from one in which we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” (that of life, liberty property and the pursuit of happiness) to one in which only those favored by the government get to enjoy such rights. The abortion debate—a tug-of-war over when an unborn child is considered a human being with rights—lays the groundwork for discussions about who else may or may not be deserving of rights: the disabled, the aged, the infirm, the immoral, the criminal, etc. The death penalty is just one aspect of this debate. As theologian Francis Schaeffer warned early on: “The acceptance of death of human life in babies born or unborn opens the door to the arbitrary taking of any human life. From then on, it’s purely arbitrary.”
If all people are created equal, then all lives should be equally worthy of protection. There’s an idea embraced by both the Right and the Left according to their biases that there is a hierarchy to life, with some lives worthier of protection than others. Out of that mindset is born the seeds of eugenics, genocide, slavery and war.
There is no hierarchy of freedoms. All freedoms hang together. Freedom cannot be a piece-meal venture.My good friend Nat Hentoff (1925-2017), a longtime champion of civil liberties and a staunch pro-lifer, often cited Cardinal Bernardin, who believed that a “consistent ethic of life” viewed all threats to life as immoral: “[N]uclear war threatens life on a previously unimaginable scale. Abortion takes life daily on a horrendous scale. Public executions are fast becoming weekly events in the most advanced technological society in history, and euthanasia is now openly discussed and even advocated. Each of these assaults on life has its own meaning and morality. They cannot be collapsed into one problem, but they must be confronted as pieces of a larger pattern.”
Beware slippery slopes. To suggest that the end justifies the means (for example, that abortion is justified in order to ensure a better quality of life for women and children) is to encourage a slippery slope mindset that could just as reasonably justify ending a life in order for the great good of preventing war, thwarting disease, defeating poverty, preserving national security, etc. Such arguments have been used in the past to justify such dubious propositions as subjecting segments of the population to secret scientific experiments, unleashing nuclear weapons on innocent civilians, and enslaving fellow humans.
Beware double standards. As the furor surrounding COVID-19 vaccine mandates make clear, the debate over bodily autonomy and privacy goes beyond the singular right to abortion. Indeed, as vaccine mandates have been rolled out, long-held positions have been reversed: many of those who historically opposed the government usurping a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and privacy have no qualms about supporting vaccine mandates that trample upon those very same rights. Similarly, those who historically looked to the government to police what a woman does with her body believe the government should have no authority to dictate whether or not one opts to get vaccinated.
What’s next? Up until now, we have largely focused the privacy debate in the physical realm as it relates to abortion rights, physical searches of our persons and property, and our communications. Yet humanity is being propelled at warp speed into a whole new frontier when it comes to privacy, bodily autonomy, and what it means to be a human being.
We haven’t even begun to understand how to talk about these new realms, let alone establish safeguards to protect against abuses.
Humanity itself hangs in the balance.
Remaining singularly human and retaining your individuality and dominion over yourself—mind, body and soul—in the face of corporate and government technologies that aim to invade, intrude, monitor, manipulate and control us may be one of the greatest challenges before us.
These battles over COVID-19 vaccine mandates are merely the tipping point. The groundwork being laid with these mandates is a prologue to what will become the police state’s conquest of a new, relatively uncharted, frontier: inner space, specifically, the inner workings (genetic, biological, biometric, mental, emotional) of the human race.
Everything we do is increasingly dependent on and, ultimately, controlled by technological devices. For example, in 2007, there were an estimated 10 million sensor devices connecting human utilized electronic devices (cell phones, laptops, etc.) to the Internet. By 2013, it had increased to 3.5 billion. By 2030, there will be an estimated 100 trillion sensor devices connecting us to the internet by way of a neural network that approximates a massive global brain.
The end goal? Population control and the creation of a new “human” species, so to speak, through singularity, a marriage of sorts between machine and human beings in which artificial intelligence and the human brain will merge to form a superhuman mind.
Advances in neuroscience indicate that future behavior can be predicted based upon activity in certain portions of the brain, potentially creating a nightmare scenario in which government officials select certain segments of the population for more invasive surveillance or quarantine based solely upon their brain chemistry.
Clearly, we are rapidly moving into the “posthuman era,” one in which humans will become a new type of being. “Technological devices,” writes journalist Marcelo Gleiser, “will be implanted in our heads and bodies, or used peripherally, like Google Glass, extending our senses and cognitive abilities.”
Transhumanism—the fusing of machines and people—is here to stay and will continue to grow.
In fact, as science and technology continue to advance, the ability to control humans will only increase. In 2014, for example, it was revealed that scientists had discovered how to deactivate that part of our brains that controls whether we are conscious or not. Add to this the fact that increasingly humans will be implanted with microchips for such benign purposes as tracking children or as medical devices to assist with our health.
All of this indicates a new path forward for large corporations and government entities that want to achieve absolute social control.
It is slavery in another form.
Yet we must never stop working to protect life, preserve our freedoms and maintain some semblance of our humanity.
Abortion, vaccine mandates, transhumanism, etc.: these are all points along the continuum.
Even so, there will be others. For instance, analysts are speculating whether artificial intelligence, which will eventually dominate all emerging technologies, could come to rule the world and enslave humans. How will a world dominated by artificial intelligence redefine what it means to be human and exercise free will?
Scientists say the world’s first living robots can now reproduce. What rights are these “living” organisms entitled to? For that matter, what about clones? At the point that scientists are able to move beyond cloning organs and breeding hybrid animals to breeding full-bodied, living clones in order to harvest body parts, who is to say that clones do not also deserve to have their right to life protected?
These are ethical dilemmas without any clear-cut answers. Yet one thing is certain: as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, putting the power to determine who gets to live or die in the hands of the government is a dangerous place to start.
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Throughout the various phases of the global pandemic, people’s preferences in terms of epidemiological strategies have tended to overlap closely with their political orientation. Ever since Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro expressed doubts as to the wisdom of a lockdown strategy in March 2020, liberals and those on the Left of the Western political spectrum, including most socialists, have fallen over themselves to adhere in public to the lockdown strategy of pandemic mitigation — and lately to the logic of vaccine passports. Now as countries across Europe experiment with tighter restrictions of the unvaccinated, Left-wing commentators — usually so vocal in the defence of minorities suffering from discrimination — are notable for their silence.
As writers who have always positioned ourselves on the Left, we are disturbed at this turn of events. Is there really no progressive criticism to be made about the quarantining of healthy individuals, when the latest research suggests there is a vanishingly small difference in terms of transmission between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated? The Left’s response to Covid now appears as part of a broader crisis in Left-wing politics and thought — one which has been going on for three decades at least. So it’s important to identify the process through which this has taken shape.
In the first phase of the pandemic — the lockdowns phase — it was those leaning towards the cultural and economic right who were more likely to emphasise the social, economic and psychological damage resulting from lockdowns. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s initial lockdown scepticism made this position untenable for most of those leaning towards the cultural and economic Left. Social media algorithms then further fuelled this polarisation. Very quickly, therefore, Western leftists embraced lockdown, seen as a “pro-life” and “pro-collective” choice — a policy that, in theory, championed public health or the collective right to health. Meanwhile any criticism of the lockdowns was excoriated as a “right-wing”, “pro-economy” and “pro-individual” approach, accused of prioritising “profit” and “business as usual” over people’s lives.
In sum, decades of political polarisation instantly politicised a public health issue, without allowing any discussion as to what a coherent Left response would be. At the same time, the Left’s position distanced it from any kind of working-class base, since low-income workers were the most severely affected by the socio-economic impacts of continued lockdown policies, and were also those most likely to be out working while the laptop class benefitted from Zoom. These same political fault lines emerged during the vaccine roll-out, and now during the Covid passports phase. Resistance associates with the Right, while those on the mainstream Left are generally supportive of both measures. Opposition is demonised as a confused mixture of anti-science irrationalism and individualistic libertarianism.
But why has the mainstream Left ended up supporting practically all Covid measures? How did such a simplistic view of the relationship between health and the economy emerge, one which makes a mockery of decades of (Left-leaning) social science research showing just how closely wealth and health outcomes are connected? Why did the Left ignore the massive increase in inequalities, the attack on the poor, on poor countries, on women and children, the cruel treatment of the elderly, and the huge increase in wealth for the richest individuals and corporations resulting from these policies? How, in relation to the development and roll-out of vaccines, did the Left end up ridiculing the very notion that, given the money at stake, and when BioNTech, Moderna and Pfizer currently make between them over US$1,000 per second from the Covid vaccines, there might be motivations from the vaccine manufacturers other than “the public good” at play? And how is it possible that the Left, often on the receiving end of state repression, today seems oblivious to the worrying ethical and political implications of Covid passports?
While the Cold War coincided with the era of decolonisation and the rise of a global anti-racist politics, the end of the Cold War – alongside the symbolic triumph of decolonisation politics with the end of apartheid – ushered in an existential crisis for Left-wing politics. The rise of neoliberal economic hegemony, globalisation, and corporate trans-nationalism, have all undermined the Left’s historic view of the state as an engine of redistribution. Combined with this is the realisation that, as the Brazilian theorist Roberto Mangabeira Unger has argued, the Left has always prospered most at times of great crisis — the Russian Revolution benefited from the World War One, and welfare capitalism from the aftermath of the World War Two. This history may partly explain the Left’s positioning today: amplifying the crisis and prolonging it through never-ending restrictions may be seen by some as a way to rebuild Left politics after decades of existential crisis.
The Left’s flawed understanding of the nature of neoliberalism may also have affected its response to the crisis. Most people on the Left believe that neoliberalism has involved a “retreat” or “hollowing out” of the state in favour of the market. Thus, they interpreted government activism throughout the pandemic as a welcome “return of the state”, one potentially capable, in their view, of eventually reversing neoliberalism’s allegedly anti-statist project. The problem with this argument, even accepting its dubious logic, is that neoliberalism hasn’t entailed a withering away of the state. On the contrary, the size of the state as a percentage of GDP has continued to rise throughout the neoliberal era.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Neoliberalism relies on extensive state intervention just as much as “Keynesianism” did, except that the state now intervenes almost exclusively to further the interests of big capital – to police the working classes, bail out large banks and firms that would otherwise go bankrupt, etc. Indeed, in many ways, capital today is more dependent on the state than ever. As Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan note: “[A]s capitalism develops, governments and large corporations become increasingly intertwined. … The capitalist mode of power and the dominant-capital coalitions that rule it do not require small governments. In fact, in many respects, they need larger ones”. Neoliberalism today is more akin to a form of state-monopoly capitalism – or corporatocracy – than the kind of small-state free-market capitalism that it often claims to be. This helps explain why it has produced increasingly powerful, interventionist, and even authoritarian state apparatuses.
Something similar is happening today, as state contracts for Covid tests, PPE, vaccines, and now vaccine passport technologies are parcelled out to transnational corporations (often through shady deals that reek of cronyism). Meanwhile, citizens are having their lives and livelihoods upended by “the new normal”. That the Left seems completely oblivious to this is particularly puzzling. After all, the idea that governments tend to exploit crises to further entrench the neoliberal agenda has been a staple of much recent Left-wing literature. Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, for example, have argued that under neoliberalism, crisis has become a “method of government”. More famously, in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein explored the idea of “disaster capitalism”. Her central thesis is that in moments of public fear and disorientation it is easier to re-engineer societies: dramatic changes to the existing economic order, which would normally be politically impossible, are imposed in rapid-fire succession before the public has had time to understand what is happening.
There’s a similar dynamic at play today. Take, for example, the high-tech surveillance measures, digital IDs, crackdown on public demonstrations and fast-tracking of laws introduced by governments to combat the coronavirus outbreak. If recent history is anything to go by, governments will surely find a way to make many of the emergency rules permanent – just as they did with much post-9/11 anti-terrorist legislation. As Edward Snowden noted: “When we see emergency measures passed, particularly today, they tend to be sticky. The emergency tends to be expanded”. This confirms, too, the ideas on the “state of exception” posited by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, who has nonetheless been vilified by the mainstream Left for his anti-lockdown position.
Ultimately, any form of government action should be judged for what it actually stands for. We support government intervention if it serves to further the rights of workers and minorities, to create full employment, to provide crucial public services, to rein in corporate power, to correct the dysfunctionalities of markets, to take control of crucial industries in the public interest. But in the past 18 months we have witnessed the exact opposite: an unparalleled strengthening of transnational corporate behemoths and their oligarchs at the expense of workers and local businesses. A report last month based on Forbes data showed that America’s billionaires alone have seen their wealth increase by US$2 trillion during the pandemic.
Another Left-wing fantasy that has been shuttered by reality is the notion that the pandemic would usher in a new sense of collective spirit, capable of overcoming decades of neoliberal individualism. On the contrary, the pandemic has fractured societies even more – between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, between those who can reap the benefits of smart working and those who can’t. Moreover, a demos made up of traumatised individuals, torn apart from their loved ones, made to fear one another as a potential vectors of disease, terrified of physical contact – is hardly a good breeding ground for collective solidarity.
But perhaps the Left’s response can be better understood in individual rather than collective terms. Classic psychoanalytic theory has posited a clear connection between pleasure and authority: the experience of great pleasure (satiating the pleasure principle) can often be followed by a desire for renewed authority and control manifested by the ego or “reality principle”. This can indeed produce a subverted form of pleasure. The last two decades of globalisation have seen a huge expansion of the “pleasure of experience”, as shared by the increasingly transnational global liberal class – many of whom, somewhat curiously in historical terms, identified themselves as on the Left (and indeed increasingly usurped this position from the traditional working-class constituencies of the Left). This mass increase in pleasure and experience among the liberal class went with a growing secularism and lack of any recognised moral constraint or authority. From the perspective of psychoanalysis, the support from this class for “Covid measures” is quite readily explained in these terms: as the desired appearance of a coterie of restrictive and authoritarian measures which can be imposed to curtail pleasure, within the strictures of a moral code which steps in where one had previously been lacking.
Another factor explaining the Left’s embrace of “Covid measures” is its blind faith in “science”. This has its roots in the Left’s traditional faith in rationalism. However, one thing is believing in the undeniable virtues of the scientific method – another is being completely oblivious to the way those in power exploit “science” to further their agenda. Being able to appeal to “hard scientific data” to justify one’s policy choices is an incredibly powerful tool in the hands of governments – it is, in fact, the essence of technocracy. However, this means carefully selecting the “science” that is supportive of your agenda – and aggressively marginalising any alternative views, regardless of their scientific value.
This has been happening for years in the realm of economics. Is it really that hard to believe that such a corporate capture is happening today with regard to medical science? Not according to John P. Ioannidis, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Stanford University. Ioannidis made headlines in early 2021 when he published, with some colleagues of his, a paper claiming that there was no practical difference in epidemiological terms between countries that had locked down and those that hadn’t. The backlash against the paper – and against Ioannidis in particular – was fierce, especially among his fellow scientists.
This explains his recent scathing denunciation of his own profession. In an article entitled “How the Pandemic Is Changing the Norms of Science”, Ioannidis notes that most people – especially on the Left — seem to think that science operates based on “the Mertonian norms of communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism”. But, alas, that is not how the scientific community actually operates, Ioannidis explains. With the pandemic, conflicts of corporate interest exploded – and yet talking about them became anathema. He continues: “Consultants who made millions of dollars from corporate and government consultation were given prestigious positions, power, and public praise, while unconflicted scientists who worked pro bono but dared to question dominant narratives were smeared as being conflicted. Organized skepticism was seen as a threat to public health. There was a clash between two schools of thought, authoritarian public health versus science – and science lost”.
Ultimately, the Left’s blatant disregard and mockery of people’s legitimate concerns (over lockdowns, vaccines or Covid passports) is shameful. Not only are these concerns rooted in actual hardship but they also stem from an understandable distrust of governments and institutions that have been undeniably captured by corporate interests. Anyone who favours a truly progressive-interventionist state, as we do, needs to address these concerns – not dismiss them.
But where the Left’s response has been found most wanting is on the world stage, in terms of the relationship of Covid restrictions to deepening poverty in the Global South. Has it really nothing to say about the enormous increase in child marriage, the collapse in schooling, and the destruction of formal employment in Nigeria, where the State Statistics agency suggests 20% of people lost their jobs during the lockdowns? What about the reality that the country with the highest Covid mortality figures and excess death rate for 2020 was Peru – which had one of the world’s strictest lockdowns? On all this, it has been virtually silent. This position must be considered in relation to the pre-eminence of nationalist politics on the world stage: the electoral failure of Left internationalists such as Jeremy Corbyn meant that broader global issues had little traction when considering a broader Western Left response to Covid-19.
It is worth mentioning that there have been outliers on the Left – radical-left and socialist movements that have come out against the prevailing management of the pandemic. These include Black Lives Matter in New York, Left Lockdown Sceptics in the UK, the Chilean urban left, Wu Ming in Italy and not least the Social Democrat-Green alliance which currently governs Sweden. But the full spectrum of Left opinion was ignored, partly due to the small number of Left-wing media outlets, but also due to the marginalisation of dissenting opinions first and foremost by the mainstream Left.
Mainly, though, this has been a historic failure from the Left, which will have disastrous consequences. Any form of popular dissent is likely to be hegemonized once again by the (extreme) Right, poleaxing any chance the Left has of winning round the voters it needs to overturn Right-wing hegemony. Meanwhile, the Left holds on to a technocracy of experts severely undermined by what is proving to be a catastrophic handling of the pandemic in terms of social progressivism. As any kind of viable electable Left fades into the past, the discussion and dissent at the heart of any true democratic process is likely to fade with it.
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Toby Green is a professor of history at Kings College London. His latest book is The Covid Consensus: The New Politics of Global Inequality (Hurst).
Thomas Fazi is a writer, journalist and translator. His latest book ‘Reclaiming the State’ is published by Pluto Press.
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If you want to know who is likely to be at war, just look at who is given the Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian (NATO) Parliament. Obama got it just days into office before he escalated the war in Afghanistan. Henry Kissinger got it in the 1970’S. And two years ago the Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed got the prize for making “peace” with Eritrea. Within a year, the much-praised peace deal between Abiy Ahmed and Eritrea’s dictator, President Isaias Afwerki, the two had united to wage war against the Ethiopian Tigray people in the province bordering Eritrea. The alliance of the two was clearly about eliminating the powerful formerly-ruling Tigray minority. Who now stands to gain in the growing debacle?
Today the reality is that Abiy Ahmed and his demoralized soldiers are in dire straits as the better-trained Tigray guerilla forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), approach Addis Ababa. There is good reason to believe that Biden’s Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, is manipulating events behind the scenes and not for peaceful resolution.
Nominally, the war was launched by Abiy because the Tigray state disobeyed the new government’s covid ban on scheduled elections. Clearly the Tigray, who ruled Ethiopia as a minority ethnic group for almost three decades until 2018–when it was forced by popular protests to yield rule to Abiy– were at a severe disadvantage, as Abiy gave a green light to Eritrea’s brutal dictator, Isaias, to invade the Ethiopian Tigray state from the north while Abiy’s military attacked from the south. Isaias’s soldiers carried out murder of thousands of Tigray civilians and carried out war crimes including rape and pillage in what has been called ethnic cleansing. The Eritrean forces, estimated at some 80,000 occupied a third of the region of Tigray. All communications were cut by the invaders.
Isaias and Nobel Peace Prize awardee Abiy Ahmed launched what can only be called a war of annihilation against the Tigray TPLF. They have imposed a siege of food supplies in the region and some 900,000 are reportedly on verge of starvation. Villages, cities and farms have been destroyed as the Eritrean forces reportedly used drones supplied by the UAE to bomb the land. The Tigray leadership and their trained military, the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front, TPLF, fled to the hills to wage guerilla warfare, as Abiy openly called the Tigray TPLF, a “cancer” on Ethiopian society, and to the TPLF as “weeds.”
Tigray Reversal
Now one year into the war to destroy the Tigray, the TPLF has managed to dramatically regain much of Tigray state occupied by Eritrean troops as well as unite with the anti-Abiy Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) to move on the capitol, Addis Ababa. Reportedly Abiy’s army has been devastated by military losses and mass desertions.
On June 28, 2021 seven months after the supposedly powerful Ethiopian National Defense Forces rolled through Tigray, the Tigrayan Defense Force (TDF), the rebranded military force of the TPLF, reconquered the Tigrayan provincial capital Mekelle, marching in with thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean prisoners. By that point according to Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation of Boston, of 20 Ethiopian NDF federal army divisions, “seven have been completely destroyed, three are in a shambles.”
The situation is now so dire that in late November Abiy announced he was going to the front to lead his troops against the TPLF. And in early November he called on civilians to muster for the defense of the capital. That was not a sign of strength, but of desperation as his military is reportedly in total disarray. Abiy is from the ethnic Amhara group. The Amhara are the largest ethnic group with almost 35% of the 118 million population. Oromo have some 27% and Tigrayan, 6%. The military alliance of Tigray TDF forces with Oromo have reversed the odds in the ill-fated war. As of mid-November they were some 270 km from Addis Ababa.
Chaos to Spread
At this point the most likely outcome of Abiy’s two-year Tigray War is the breakup of Ethiopia into ethnic civil war, and the descent of Eritrea into economic and political disarray. As analyst Gary Brecher described the likely outcome, “What if the TDF/OLA forces go all the way to Addis and take control of ‘what is now Ethiopia’? It’s a pretty safe bet that their alliance would dissolve in a matter of months, and the country would descend to a multi-ethnic war between provinces, then between towns…”
Washington and several EU states are playing a covert role in fanning the war, while posing as “neutral.” The Biden Administration, guided on its Horn of Africa policies by Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, sanctioned Isaias and his Eritrean military for its role in the war on November 12, tilting the odds to advantage potentially of the TPLF.
On November 21, a secret meeting via zoom took place moderated by Ephraim Isaac.
Ephriam Isaac, now at Institute of Semitic Studies, Princeton, is chair of a murky outfit known as The Peace and Development Center based in Washington, which calls itself, “an independent national not-for-profit and non-governmental organization working for conflict prevention, conflict resolution, peace building and development in Ethiopia and the horn of Africa.” Its website lists as sponsors the US National Endowment for Democracy, a self-admitted CIA front which specializes in regime change color revolutions; USAID, which has often been involved in CIA covert operations, and the UN.
Ephriam Isaac was close to the late TPLF Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, and was instrumental in helping to bring the TPLF to power in 1991. Present at the recent zoom meet were also Ambassador Vicki Huddleston, former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs during the Zenawi era, along with Donald Yamamoto, one of the US government’s most senior Africa experts who just retired. And former and present senior diplomats from UK, France, and the EU. They all agreed that as Huddleston said, “Abiy should step down, there should be an all-inclusive transition government.” The secret video conference suggests that NATO countries, led by the US, are going out of their way to favor the TPLF.
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
This Tigray war at some point will bring into question the fate of the controversial Blue Nile River dam, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a huge project about 45 km east of the border with Sudan and close to the Tigray province. Despite the repeated efforts of Egypt, and partially Sudan, to diplomatically get Ethiopia to halt the dam, the Abiy Ahmed regime has refused to cooperate in any way. In July, Abiy proceeded with the second phase of a multi-year filling of the dam ignoring the protests of Sudan and Egypt who are both dependent on water from the Blue Nile for their survival.
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is located in Ethiopia (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
The GERD, with a capacity of 6.5 gigawatts will be Africa’s largest hydroelectric power plant and the world’s seventh-largest dam. It can hold 74 billion cubic meters of water – more than the volume of the entire Blue Nile, originating in the northern Ethiopia highlands, origin of 85% of the Nile’s water flow. The temptation for Egypt to intervene, even covertly, on the side of the Tigray is huge and may in fact according to some reports, be ongoing. Were that intervention to sabotage the dam, the fuse would be lit for a war spanning from the Horn of Africa to Cairo. Among other things that would clearly impact shipping traffic through the Horn of Africa, the only link to the Indian Ocean via the Mediterranean. It is the entrance to the Red Sea which is the world’s second largest shipping lane.
Erdogan’s Turkey is also involved in the Horn of Africa. On November 21, Somalia’s Army Chief Gen. Odawaa Yusuf Rageh met Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar in Anakara, where they reportedly discussed political and military cooperation. Turkey has also been supplying military drone aircraft to Abiy Ahmed’s army. Somalian President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed ‘Farmaajo’, joined the war on Tigray along with Eritrea and Ahmed. Somalia invaded Ethiopia in the 1977 Somali invasion of the Ogaden region of Ethiopia before being defeated by a Soviet-backed Ethiopian army. With Turkish backing, at some point Somalia could decide it opportune to again invade Ethiopia, especially if Tigrayans take Addis Ababa.
With Ethiopia in internal civil war, Sudan’s military could decide it might benefit from a war with Ethiopia as well. Already Ethiopia’s Abiy has accused Sudan of taking advantage of the war by seizing territory in Ethiopia. US Envoy and Color Revolution specialist Jeffrey Feltman was in Khartoum in October meeting with the Sudan military just a day before the military ousted the civilian Prime Minister. Unclear is what role the Machiavellian Feltman played in the military move. Despite a subsequent reinstatement of the civilian Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, the Sudan military is clearly now in control. Tens of thousands of Tigray war refugees fled across the border to Sudan. Situation highly unstable.
On November 23 US Envoy Jeffrey Feltman made a visit to Ethiopia and after, he commented that Abiy told him he was confident he can push the Tigray forces back to their home region in the north of the country. Feltman said, “I question that confidence.” That’s a strange comment from a US Envoy who claims to demand the Tigray forces withdraw from the territories they have gained. Were the Biden Administration serious about supporting the elected Abiy Ahmed government and preventing disintegration of Ethiopia they would clearly do more to make that happen.
In all this geopolitical spaghetti bowl there is also the case of the growing presence of China in the Horn of Africa where it has welcomed Eritrea into its Belt and Road Initiative and established a military naval base in Djibouti alongside a critical US base Camp Lemonnier, and gained a major share ownership of Djibouti’s container port, Port of Doraleh, via its state-owned China Merchants Group. Djibouti is also a participant in China’s BRI. Djibouti controls access to both the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and links Europe, the Asia-Pacific, the Horn of Africa, and the Persian Gulf. It lies directly across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait from Yemen and is Ethiopia’s only sea trade link.
China has kept a low profile during the Tigray War but it suggests the potential of a New Great Game for domination of the region from the Horn of Africa to Egypt along the Red Sea. US covert backing for the Tigray TPLF and the role of Feltman in the region suggests that Washington once more is determined to wreak maximum chaos as it did with help of Feltman in Syria and the Arab Spring color revolutions.
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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image is from NEO
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This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.
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Describing the Italian reality of these days is increasingly something that tears the soul of all those who love Italy, our homeland so beautiful and lost. We live days steeped in sadness and fear and both sadness and fear are administered to us in large doses by a despotic government in which one individual, Mario Draghi, is the third unelected Prime Minister in three consecutive years.
A few days ago, the tyrant who is holding Italy in his hands these days with the complicity of an increasingly weak and deprived Parliament, officially introduced apartheid in our country and called it “Super Green Pass”:
from 6 December 2021 and until 15 January 2022 (at least), all those who are healthy but not vaccinated will no longer be able to attend gyms, theaters, restaurants, public places, they will not be able to use trains and subways. Those who are not vaccinated will be able to work, for the moment, but only with the negative swamp, done every 48 hours, going to work by bike, by car or on foot. For now, unvaccinated can still walk into a store and buy food, they can still get gas.
For the first time in human history, the healthy are considered as plague victims, to be kept separate from the rest of the world.
But thanks to the Super Green Pass, the vaccinated can now do all those things they did even before, when it seemed that it was a normal right for everyone to be able to do them without the need for any particular certificate: they called it “Democracy” and said that for them it was like air. What a bitter irony of fate for those defenders of Freedom!
The government hides its failures in managing the epidemic by placing the blame on Italians who are not vaccinated and who, above all, do not want to get vaccinated because vaccines are experimental, they can invalidate or kill you with their side effects and because it is under the eyes of everybody that the vaccinated become infected and contagious in turn.
It makes no sense to isolate unvaccinated healthy people and torment their existence because they invoke Article 32 of our Constitution for their protection, Constitution written when epidemics and vaccines already existed and which recognizes the right of Italians to refuse any experimental health treatment. The vaccinated infected, even without obvious symptoms, can move freely and becomes a perfect spreader of the disease, as is actually happening.
But the tyrannical government of Mario Draghi and his health minister, the immovable Roberto Speranza, has staked everything on vaccines, deceiving the population about their absolute effectiveness and promising a return to normality that it could not possibly guarantee.
One dose, two doses, a booster as a third dose, but already looking at the fourth. Let’s vaccinate the old and the young, pregnant women (!!!), children and babies. Even the healed.
The treatments that could have saved thousands of human lives, Italian flesh and blood, continue to be prohibited for political principles and not for scientific reality. However, such treatments continue to be used in a semi-clandestine manner by brave doctors and the proof of their effectiveness lies not only in the huge number of healed but in the fact that not even this despotic government has so far had the courage to denounce the doctors who prescribe them. Now a class hatred against the unvaccinated is ruthlessly fomented so as to hide the faults and shortcomings of a government in dire straits.
Last year, in the middle of an epidemic, the government of another non-elected Prime Minister was careful not to upgrade the intensive care units in our hospitals but spent almost a billion euros to buy plastic wheelchair school desks to use in schools so as to maintain the “social distance” between students and reduce infections. They are now in landfills because they are clearly useless. That same government spent another 200 million euros as a tax bonus on the purchase of electric skateboards to reduce pollution in cities.
On the other hand, why upgrade hospitals during a worldwide epidemic due to a mutable virus?
Now we are back to zero. They tell us that intensive care units “are in pain” and that the fault lies with the unvaccinated.
In this climate of pseudo-scientific hysteria, Nobel laureates like Luc Montagnier are still treated like old fools. Scientists like John Ioannidis or Peter Doshi suddenly become fools and the British Medical Journal just “a newspaper”.
No, the fault is not of those who did not want to get vaccinated. The fault lies with those who have ruled us and still rule us.
These are the words of Senator RichardBlack, Purple Heart in Vietnam, which show us reality for what it is:
“People who require a Green Pass for daily living are not free.”
And those of Black are accompanied by the words of Vera Sharav:
“I experienced Nazism. I know how to recognize when it shows itself.”
Dear Mrs. Sharav, we believe you. And that’s why we tell you with all our heart not to come to Italy these days.
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Honduras’-twelve-year nightmare prompted by a U.S.-backed coup came to an end this week with the election of Xiomara Castro as the country’s new president, with 68 percent voter turnout.
Thousands of Hondurans poured into the streets the day after the vote, shooting fireworks and singing “J.O.H., J.O.H., and away you go,” a reference to the deeply unpopular outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernández.
Castro is the wife of José Manuel Zelaya, Honduras’s president from 2006 to 2009, who was overthrown in the 2009 coup, and served as Castro’s campaign manager.
Zelaya had earned the wrath of Honduras’ reigning oligarchy and U.S. by raising the minimum wage, increasing teacher pay, opening the door to restoring the land rights of small farmers, and joining the Hugo Chavez-led Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), which aimed to integrate Latin American economies independent of the U.S.
Miguel Angel, a political activist in his 20s who fled Honduras after the coup, stated that “Zelaya was the best president Honduras had ever had”; one who “followed through on his campaign promises.” The latter proved to be his undoing as the wealthy “didn’t like the fact that a man of power gave a plate of food to the poor.”
Improved Prospects
With Castro now in charge, Honduras’s prospects are suddenly much better—the poor may indeed get a plate.
Castro campaigned on a platform of cleaning up corruption, adopting a new constitution, loosening restrictions on abortion, and adopting more social democratic policies compared to the neoliberal austerity measures that have devastated Honduras since the coup.
Hernández was nevertheless considered by the Washington establishment as a trusted partner on sensitive issues, including counterterrorism and anti-narcotics efforts, and had won plaudits for privatizing the health-care and education sectors and vowing to help curb immigration from Honduras.
Asfura’s candidacy was tainted by his link to influence peddling in Costa Rica in the Panama Papers, and by his being named in a government investigation into embezzlement of more than one million dollars of city funds in Tegucigalpa where he was mayor.
The charges stemmed from an investigation into a complex series of transactions that ended with tax funds shunted to personal accounts, according to court documents.
Reversal of Anti-Historic Counteroffensive
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez characterized the 2009 coup against Zelaya as part of a “retrograde and anti-historic counter-offensive by the U.S. empire,” whose aim was to “roll back the union, sovereignty and democracy of our continent.”
The Center for Economic and Policy Research in 2017 concluded that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) dropped by two percent and unemployment rose from 3 to 7.4 percent in the years after the coup in Honduras, while the women’s underemployment rate more than doubled.
The majority of Hondurans, nevertheless, are feeling better about their future prospects today than they had been before the election.
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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].
For no good reason, the world is cringing at the news of the OMICRON mutation of the Covid-19 coronavirus even though data on its infectiveness and mortality are as yet unknown.
On this show we’ve repeatedly mentioned the work by “La Quinta Columna” in Spain. That name means “the Fifth Column,” and it’s a group of dissident researchers who have investigated these vaccines. Most importantly, they’re the ones who studied a vaccine sample and found graphene oxide in it.
I wrote this book to help Americans—and citizens across the globe—understand the historical underpinnings of the bewildering cataclysm that began in 2020. In that single annus horribilis, liberal democracy effectively collapsed worldwide.
On Black Friday, alarmist media commentaries on rising COVID “cases” converged with dire reports of falling prices on the New York Stock Exchange. The plunge was attributed to claims that a new COVID “variant” was emerging in Southern Africa.
As we know, the objective of vaccination is to eliminate or significantly reduce the incidence of the targeted disease. If a vaccine works, then in a highly vaccinated population we will see either complete elimination of the disease or a significant decrease of its incidence.
Countering global alarmism about the omicron variant of COVID-19, the doctor who first discovered it says the strain is “mild” and hasn’t caused an uptick in hospitalizations.
It’s the powerful financiers and billionaires who are behind this project which has contributed to the destabilization (Worldwide) of the real economy. And there is ample evidence that the decision to close down a national economy (resulting in poverty and unemployment) will inevitably have an impact on patterns of morbidity and mortality.
While in a nation that borders both Belarus and Russia, Stoltenberg twice mentions NATO’s Article 5 in his brief remarks and responses to questions by journalists.
So, GloboCap has crossed the Rubicon. The final phase of its transformation of society into a pathologized-totalitarian dystopia, where mandatory genetic-therapy injections and digital compliance papers are commonplace, is now officially underway.
An unclassified summary of the Defense Department’s Global Posture review was released Monday and in the words of the indomitable Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, the song of American military primacy worldwide pretty much “remains the same.”
NATO has consistently spread hysteria about the alleged strengthening of Russian military personnel near Ukraine, and has once again escalated this narrative. The NATO summit in Riga on Tuesday and Wednesday served as another round of aggressive and provocative posturing against Russia, but it is unlikely to unify the Atlantic bloc that is becoming increasingly divided.
All resources that are essential to life, including human life, are naturally renewable. There is a natural cycle that causes these resources to be regenerated, this includes the natural cycles of water, oxygen, vegetation (including food) and so forth. Thus, everything that is essential for life is already naturally renewable on Earth.
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Another fault line has opened in the mining wars. In Serbia, resistance is gathering steam against various deals made between Belgrade and companies that risk environmental degradation and lingering spoliation.
In this regard, the globe’s second largest metals and mining corporation, features prominently. Rio Tinto, bruised in reputation but determined in business, finds itself in a hunting mood in the Balkans, hoping to establish a lithium mine and processing plant in the valley of Jadar.
As the infamous destroyer of the Juukan Gorge Caves outlines in a statement, the Jadar site is intended to “produce battery-grade lithium carbonate, a critical mineral used in large scale batteries for electric vehicles and storing renewable energy”. This greening shift – because all canny mining entities are doing it – promises to “position Rio Tinto as the largest source of lithium supply in Europe for at least the next 15 years.” In an effort to make matters sound even more impressive, Jadar will also “produce borates, which are used in solar panels and wind turbines.”
The company has been extensively involved in cultivating relations with the government of Aleksandar Vučić. As far back as 2018, Prime Minister Ana Brnabić was already convinced what the future lithium borate project might hold. “As Jadar can significantly influence the development of the whole region, the government has established an inter-ministerial working group to cooperate with the investor on all aspects of the project.” Capitulation, rather than cooperation, would be the more accurate description.
How the Anglo-Australian mining giant finds itself in this position has been troubling to local activists and the citizenry of Jadar for years. The Ne damo Jadar (We won’t let anyone take Jadar) group is particularly concerned by the clandestine memoranda of understanding signed between the company and the Serbian government. Zlatko Kokanović, vice president of the group, states the position with irrefutable clarity.
“Rio Tinto’s proposed jadarite mine will not only threaten one of Serbia’s oldest and most important archaeological sites, it will also endanger several protected bird species, pond terrapins, and fire salamander, which would otherwise be protected by EU directives.”
An online petition against the mine, which has garnered 283,364 signatures to date, also notes the risk posed to “thousands of sustainable multi-generational farms” through the poisoning of water sources. This was bound to occur given generous use of sulphuric acid in separating the lithium from the jadarite ore.
Rio has countered this by vague promises that it will conduct sound environmental assessments and neutralise any risks arising from sulfuric acid, arsenic and the inevitable tailings that will follow. In the words of the CEO Jakob Stausholm,
“We are committed to upholding the highest environmental standards and building sustainable futures for the communities where we operate.” Stausholm promised, “that in progressing this project, we must listen to and respect the views of all stakeholders.”
Ever since Rio Tinto began sniffing around in Serbia, evidence of such listening and respect has been in short supply. Requests and concerns by locals go unaddressed. Its use of private security goons has also been a point of some nastiness. Marijana Petković, a member of Ne damo Jadar, insists that they have been harassing and conducting surveillance of villages which are proximate to the mine. One has to keep the local tribes in check.
In June, the company claimed that the security contractors were “engaged to carry out activities in full compliance with the Law on Private Security, which provides for both the way of securing private property and moving at a certain time between several mutually separated places/facilities”.
The company also countered with its own claims that, as a law-abiding entity, it has been unjustly attacked by fractious thugs intent on disrupting the prospects for local improvement. After a protest that same month, Rio Tinto stated that “employees working on the Jadar project were examined for injuries at the Loznica Emergency Centre, where they were provided with assistance.”
Serbian lawmakers have certainly been facing a mouthful from the Alliance of Environmental Organisations of Serbia (SEOS) and the Kreni-promeni organisation. The latter has produced a video to counter Rio Tinto’s own glossy narrative of the lithium project which has saturated much of the media. Hearty efforts by Kreni-promeni to convince the Serbian public broadcaster RTS to broadcast its rebuttals have so far failed.
The eternally calculating Vučić has decided to put the issue of Rio Tinto’s lithium mining effort to a referendum, enabling the mining giant to further step up its campaign to convince voters. The protestors are in no doubt that the measure is designed to secure approval in order to outmanoeuvre the contrarians.
A large protest movement is taking shape in Serbia, centred on the importance of clean water, air, soil and observance of sound environmental regulations. The month of November saw protesting efforts that involved blocking roads in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Užice, Loznica and Kruševac, amongst others.
Rio Tinto, environmental vandal par excellence, has shown, along with other mining giants, a marked tendency to ignore local grievances and fears while flattering gullible authorities with promises of a glittering future. The future for the Jadar valley, outlined by one sceptical ecologist, Mirjana Lukić Anđelković is suitably dark. The company, she told the morning program TV Nova S “Wake Up” in March this year, promises to mine for six decades and “make a mountain of tailings.” Where there are tailings, “there is no grass, nothing grows.”
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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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There are now over half a million Israeli citizens who have settled illegally on Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in an attempt to ethnically cleanse the whole of former Palestine, in blatant violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that has declared all such settlements illegal under international law and a violation of Article 4 of the Geneva Conventions on Human Rights. That resolution was passed 14-0 on 23 December 2016 by permanent members, China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom (together with non-permanent members: Angola, Egypt, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal, Spain, Ukraine, Uruguay and Venezuela).
The resolution states that Israel’s settlement activity constitutes a “flagrant violation” of international law and has “no legal validity”. It demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
For the 14th consecutive year, Israel also continues its illegal air, land and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, restricting the movement of people and goods in and out of the area, which continued to have a devastating impact on the human rights of Gaza’s 2 million inhabitants. Israel stopped the entry of construction materials and fuel into Gaza repeatedly. This shut down the only power plant in Gaza, leading to a further reduction in the supply of electricity, which had already been available for only about four hours a day. Israel also imposed a full maritime closure and repeatedly limited entry of goods to food and medicine only. The measures amounted to collective punishment at a time of increasing COVID-19 infections in Gaza.
Population statistics for Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, show c.400,000 exclusively Jewish citizens of Israel plus more than 20,000 Israeli citizens still living illegally in settlements on the Golan Heights.
The state of Israel is the only undeclared nuclear weapon state in the world, today, and is estimated to have built between 100-400 nuclear warheads, enough to destroy the whole of the Middle East and Europe. It’s underground nuclear silos in the Negev Desert are undeclared to and uninspected by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
This is the state that is heavily supported by the government of Boris Johnson which grants export licenses to it for military equipment and which now proudly declares increased bilateral trade and political cooperation with a foreign occupation force that is armed to the teeth with undeclared weapons of mass destruction. It is too far-fetched even for a film script – yet, tragically, it is true!
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Both the governments and the media in chorus are now engaged in a renewed fear campaign focussing on the emergence of a new “deadly” SARS-CoV-2 variant.
Last May it was the Delta variant(B.1.617.2), which allegedly originated in India. And now it’s Omicron (B1.1.529) which, according to the WHO’s “technical advisory group” was first detected in South Africa. According to reports, Omicron has a “very unusual constellation of mutations”
Anthony Fauci is leading the disinformation campaign, already pointing to the need for restrictions on air travel. Meanwhile US stock markets have dropped amid a new wave of Covid panic.
“I would not be surprised if it is, we have not detected it yet, but 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)
“Partial lockdowns” are already contemplated including bans on international travel. The stated intent is to “save lives”.
In the UK, “…there are growing fears” that the newly discovered Omicron variant, “could impact Christmas”.
Rest assured, While “there’s no reason to panic,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci, the new Omicron variant must “be taken seriously and warrants the newly imposed travel ban against South Africa and seven neighboring countries.” (CNN)
A travel ban against Africa, using the Covid-19 omicron variant as a pretext, could also have devastating social and economic impacts on the African Continent, including the disruption of trade relations. Is there a hidden agenda?
Moreover, it is worth noting that throughout sub-Saharan Africa, large sectors of the population have refused the vaccine. The percentage of the population which is vaccinated is exceedingly low. In this regard, Washington is intent upon enforcing the vaccine program in Africa on behalf of Big Pharma. Joe Biden has generously offered to deliver 570.4 million doses of the vaccine to developing countries, a large share of which will be channeled to Africa in the form of “foreign aid”.
The Ban on Air Travel
Preliminary reports (see below) confirm that the ban in air travel is not limited to African countries. Sofar, the US, UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Iran, Japan, Thailand and the EU have announced restrictions on air travel.
“A new COVID-19 variant discovered in South Africa has markets rattled, and airline stocks are selling off more than most. Shares of Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL), Southwest Airlines (NYSE:LUV), American Airlines Holdings (NASDAQ:AAL), United Airlines Holdings (NASDAQ:UAL), JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ:JBLU), Hawaiian Holdings (NASDAQ:HA), and Spirit Airlines (NYSE:SAVE) all traded down by as much as 10% in Friday’s abbreviated market session.”
UPDATE: Chaos and restrictions on air travel, not to mention the ongoing engineered bankruptcy of the airline industry Worldwide. This in turn has contributed to undermining business transactions, international commodity trade and production.
On Wall Street, manipulation, inside information, foreknowledge and speculative trade prevail.
Omicron has contributed to a steep increase of Big Pharma shares. CNN Business
Are We Moving Towards a Fourth Wave Lockdown?
Starting in May-June 2021 extending into October, the alleged dangers of the Delta Variant were used to speed up the vaccination program. “A Fourth Wave” had already been announced for Fall -Winter 2021.
Is a lockdown (comparable to March 2020) on the drawing board, requiring stay at home confinement, social distancing and the closure of economic activity?
As we recall, Dr. Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, London recommended the adoption of the March 11, 2020 lockdown at a time when there were 44,279 “Confirmed Covid-19 Cases” worldwide outside of China. According to his “mathematical model”, (generously funded by the Gates Foundation) the lockdown was intended to save an estimated 600,000 British lives.
“The March 11, 2020 lockdown was heralded as a means to containing the alleged “pandemic”. Nonsense.”
In June 2021, a second authoritative “mathematical model” was put forth by Dr. Ferguson to “justify” a “Fourth Wave Lockdown”. The erroneous “assumption” behind the modelling exercise was that the Delta Variant was “deadly”.
According to Prof Neil Ferguson: “the Delta variant of coronavirus is 30% to 100% more transmissible than the previously dominant variant”. (quoted by the Guardian). What he fails to mention is that virus variants are always “less vigilant” and “less dangerous” in comparison to the original virus.
Detecting Covid-19 Variants
The Variant narrative is based on fake science. How are “the new strains” of the original virus detected and identified?
The methodology applied Worldwide, to detect Covid-19 is the PCR test.
The test, however, reveals genetic fragments of several viruses (e.g. corona as well seasonal influenza). It does not under any circumstances identify the virus (or the variants thereof).
The PCR Test Does Not Detect the Covid-19 Omicron Variant
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.
The substantive issue, however, does not solely pertain to the identity of the virus. What is at stake is that the original 2019 novel coronavirus was never isolated and purified by the WHO, which was responsible for the configuration of the PCR test.
Is this 2003 SARS-CoV-1 “point of reference” being used to detect and identify (using the RT-PCR test) the Omicron and Delta Variants of the “original” 2019 novel corona virus (SARS-CoV-2)? Sounds absurd.
The answer to this question is examined below.
Erroneous Assessment by the WHO Technical Advisory Group
The WHO’s “technical advisory group confirmed in a report dated November 26, 2021 that the PCR test had been used to identify the Omicron Variant of SARS-CoV-2 despite the fact that the WHO does not possess an isolate of the original 2019 novel coronavirus, nor is the PCR technique in a position to detect the variants of the original virus (as outlined above):
…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. Current SARS-CoV-2 PCR diagnostics continue to detect this variant. Several labs have indicated that for one widely used PCR test, one of the three target genes is not detected (called S gene dropout or S gene target failure) and this test can therefore be used as marker for this variant, pending sequencing confirmation. Using this approach, this variant has been detected at faster rates than previous surges in infection, suggesting that this variant may have a growth advantage.
emphasis added
The Validity of the PCR Test
In January 2021, the WHO admitted that the PCR-RT test is Invalid as a means to detect / identify both the original virus as well as the variants.
The contentious issue pertains to the Ct enlargement threshold:
“If the test is conducted at a 35 Ct threshold or above (which was recommended by the WHO), genetic segments of the SARS-CoV-2 virus cannot be detected, which means that ALL the so-called confirmed “positive cases” tabulated in the course of the last 18 months are invalid.
“Invalid Positives” is the Underlying Concept. What is at stake is a “Flawed Methodology” which leads to invalid estimates of “Confirmed Covid-19 Cases”.
Of significance, the country-level reports quoted below confirm that the Invalid PCR test is being used to detect /identify cases of Covid-19 omicron infection among arriving airline passengers. “The UK requires that travelers must take a PCR test and quarantine on arrival until a negative result is returned”.
Health officials in New South Wales, Australia, have begun urgent testing after two people who arrived on a flight from southern Africa overnight tested positive to the coronavirus, [PCR test] Reuters reports.
… Urgent genomic sequencing is underway to determine if they have been infected by the new omicron … variant of concern,” the health department of New South Wales said in a release.
Switzerland has widened quarantine requirements to stem the spread of the new Omicron coronavirus variant to travellers arriving from Britain, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Egypt and Malawi, where cases have been detected, its health ministry said.
On Friday, Switzerland banned direct flights from South Africa and the surrounding region due to the detection of the new variant while also imposing restrictions on travel from other countries including Hong Kong, Israel and Belgium.
Israel is to ban the entry of visitors from all countries due to the Omicron variant, Reuters reports.
“The decision by the government to reimplement the need for a PCR test from all individuals arriving in the UK from abroad on day two, with self-isolation until a negative [PCR] test is reported, while frustrating for those travelling, is essential in order to rapidly identify cases of infection with the Omicron variant and implement prompt isolation and targeted contact tracing to limit the spread of the variant in the UK.
The deceptive political statements regarding the Omicron Variant are totally meaningless, they have no scientific basis.
The unspoken objective is to justify new repressive policy measures including the vaccine passport as well as the destabilization of the airline industry Worldwide, which since March 2020 is already in a state of bankruptcy.
It is worth noting that the WHO’s report on the Covid Omicron Variant, described as “deadly” was released on Friday November 26, two days prior to Switzerland nationwide referendum on Vaccine Passport (November 28, 2021).
“The UK’s minimum gap for Covid booster jabs will be halved from six months to three, after the government accepted advice from its vaccines watchdog to speed up the programme to limit the spread of the Omicron variant”.
Timely panic and propaganda in favour of tyranny.
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About the Author
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.
He has undertaken field research in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific and has written extensively on the economies of developing countries with a focus on poverty and social inequality. He has also undertaken research in Health Economics (UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), UNFPA, CIDA, WHO, Government of Venezuela, John Hopkins International Journal of Health Services (1979, 1983)
He is the author of twelve books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015).
He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at [email protected]
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.
For no good reason, the world is cringing at the news of the OMICRON mutation of the Covid-19 coronavirus even though data on its infectiveness and mortality are as yet unknown.
The Director of the National Institute For Infectious Diseases says the dreaded OMICRON variant of Covid-19, which was first detected in South Africa, is likely (but not actually confirmed) in the US. The White House, protecting against political criticism for failure to take action, restricted entry of non-citizens from eight south African nations.
A report in Nature Magazine says the OMICRON variant exhibits a large number of mutations found in other variants and “it seems to be spreading quickly.” (“Seems to be.” “Seems to be…” (Author’s repetition for emphasis.)
How does temporary protection end up being efficacious?
CNBC, reporting on the waning immunity of Covid-19 vaccines, cites a study published in Science that immunity from one RNA-spike protein vaccine dropped from 86% to 43% from February to October and another RNA-spike protein vaccine from 89% to 58%, while an Adenovirus vector vaccine fell from 86% to 13%. Booster shots are said to be 95% effective, but that is only early after vaccination. That is because the vaccines only address spike protein, not the virus itself. (“Not the virus itself.” “Not the virus itself.” Author’s repetition, so readers don’t miss this point.)
Preventive measures are a farce
The World Health Organization states: “Individuals are reminded to take measures to reduce their risk of COVID-19, including proven public health and social measures such as wearing well-fitting masks, hand hygiene, physical distancing, improving ventilation of indoor spaces, avoiding crowded spaces, and getting vaccinated.” What do you call a President who orders people around without authority or substantiation? (I’ll answer that for you: a tyrannist.)
Mutations are not new nor unexpected. Coronaviruses, like influenza viruses, mutate rapidly and often these mutations don’t result in any developing pandemic and fizzle out.
A Reuters report says: “the new variant has over 30 mutations in the part of the virus that current vaccines target” and that Omicron’s mutations “are likely to render certain Covid-19 treatments, including some manufactured antibodies, ineffective.” Oh, so the vaccines and booster shots are/aren’t effective, which is it?
If the drugs are effective there will be no reason to continue with mass vaccination. So few people actually end up with severe infections or have fatal infection, it would be better to just treat the seriously ill with these new drugs and skip problematic vaccines altogether. Right?
As of November of 2020, there were 83,475 gene sequences available on Sharing All Influenza Data, 29,903 which were “complete whole genome of the earliest-sequenced Covid-19 from Wuhan, China, which were used for comparison with later strains. However, researchers say: “there is an unrelenting generation of genomic variants for ANY RNA virus.” However, these were laboratory-made sequences, not the mother or sister virus.
Couldn’t identify a single mutation that correlated with increased transmission
Incongruently, in 2005 researchers reported that coronaviruses exhibit “stable genomes which change very little over time.” What happened since 2005? Somebody or some thing is now causing them to mutate rapidly.
Do mutations even matter?
Frightening news reports abound about severity and fatality rates associated with newly mutated Covid-19 virus in circulation.
However, a report in Nature Magazine asks: “Do Covid-19 Mutations Even Matter?” The report went on to say: “Scientists have this crazy fascination with these mutations.”
Reporter Ewen Callaway writes: “Different Covid-19 strains haven’t yet had a major impact on the court of the pandemic, but they might in the future.” (“Might in the future.” “Might in the future.” Repeated so readers don’t overlook this point.)
OK, we’re going to mandate lockdowns, face masks, etc., etc. over a maybe/maybe-not deadly mutation.
Callaway quotes another scientist to say: “What’s irritating are people taking their results in very controlled settings, and saying this means something for the pandemic. That, we are so far away from knowing.” In other words, interpreting these mutations is a crap shoot in the real world.
About those pseudo-viruses
And get this, no one is monitoring mutations in the virus itself because it is potentially too dangerous to experiment with. So, researchers are using made up pseudo-viruses. Hey, maybe medical writer Jon Rapoport and Dr. Andrew Kaufman, who keep banging their pie tins about the non-existent virus, are right?!
Nature Magazine report: “The pseudo-viruses carry only the coronavirus spike protein, in most cases, and so the experiments measure only the ability of these particles to enter cells, not aspects of their effects inside cells, let alone on an organism. They also lack the other three mutations that almost all D614G viruses carry. “The bottom line is, they’re not the virus!” says the report. (Exclamation point added.)
The dreaded D614G mutation
The chart below marks the spread of the dreaded D614G mutation.
Other genome data have emphasized this stability — more than 90,000 isolates have been sequenced and made public (see www.gisaid.org). Two Covid-19 viruses collected from anywhere in the world differ by an average of just 10 RNA letters out of 29,903!
Despite the virus’s sluggish mutation rate, researchers have catalogued more than 12,000 mutations in SARS-CoV-2 genomes. But the report in Nature Magazine says: “scientists can spot mutations faster than they can make sense of them. Many mutations will have no consequence for the virus’s ability to spread or cause disease, because they DO NOT ALTER THE SHAPE OF A PROTEIN.”
Mutations could be beneficial
But a report published at Technology Networks states: “The D614G mutation causes a flap on the tip of one spike to pop open, allowing the virus to infect cells more efficiently but also creating a pathway to the virus’ vulnerable core. So, is that mutation beneficial or deleterious?
The report goes on to say: “With one flap open, it’s easier for antibodies — like the ones in the vaccines currently being tested — to infiltrate and disable the virus.”
Unauthentic virus
But there’s more. The report says “earlier work, however, relied on a pseudo-typed virus that included the receptor-binding protein but was not authentic. (“Not authentic.” “Not authentic.” Author’s repetitive emphasis.).
Researchers were using reverse genetics. Researchers caution that the pathology results may not hold true in human studies.” They didn’t use a real virus in the lab, only a manipulated virus. Did you get that?
“At present, based on the most recent government data, only about three Americans in a thousand could conceivably transmit Covid-19 to someone. In other words, nearly 99.7 percent of people in the United States are currently no threat to anyone of spreading the virus. And despite the large case count, 24 out of every 25 cases are recovered, meaning not only that those people are no longer threats, but also that they now have the strongest form of immunity against Covid-19.”
“From the outset, media reports on Covid-19 have been calculated to stoke fear. Whether out of sensationalism for clicks, desire to shape political outcomes, or panic in the pressrooms, media have offered an unrelenting diet of terror about the pandemic with little to no context.
The idea that nearly everyone recovers from this virus, as from other illnesses, rarely entered the news stories, let alone the minds of the terrified populace. As the total case numbers rose, quietly so did the number of those who had recovered and now were immune. Case numbers were also never placed in the context of an even much larger number: the population.”
Here is Sanders’ the threat-free index estimates as of November 15:
Presumed recovered: 45,265,569
Active cases: 1,118,866
Percent of total cases presumed recovered: 96.0%
Percent of total cases that are active: 2.4%
Percent of the total U.S. population with active cases of Covid: over 0.3%
Percent of the U.S. population to have died with or from Covid-19: over 0.2%
Percent of the U.S. population posing no threat of passing along COVID-19: nearly 99.7%z.
This means, if you enter a COSTCO store and it has 300 shoppers in it, or a church with 500 worshipers, or even a football stadium with thousands of fans, given only a small number you actually come in contact with, the chance you would be exposed to the virus, let alone infected, is nil.
I get the distinct idea all these restrictions and mandates without legal authority are just drills to train Americans to comply, much like dogs get trained. Then the poison is slipped into the Kool-Aid.
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I just got my copy of RFK Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci. Flipping through the first couple of chapters, one thing really stood out — that Fauci dispenses some $7 billion in research grants to “public health” researchers all over the world. He has held that position for 30 years. This means that for thirty years there has been one-man monopoly control over virtually all public health-related “peer review.”
This proves in spades what a clownish, lying, incompetent, corrupt stooge Fauci is when he responds to criticism with statements like “everyone I know agrees with me on this.” Yeah, everyone who works for him and is paid by him, or wishes to work for him and be paid by him (with taxpayers’ money). This means that “public health” peer review is a joke and a fraud. No other profession in the world would be taken seriously if one single government bureaucrat was effectively in charge of all the professional publications in the entire field.
And what Fauci doesn’t control through government funding, other government bureaucrats at NIH and elsewhere do. They are Fauci wannabes in this corrupt, stinking, fraudulent field of “public” health. No wonder Dr. Scott Atlas, a real doctor and medical researcher, was so shocked at the immense incompetence he was exposed to while serving on President Trump’s COVID task force and sitting through meetings with dopey Fauci and that goofy scarf woman. He told Tucker Carlson that the two of them seemed 100% detached from and unaware of the relevant science and did nothing but repeat leftist lockdown/masking/you-must-obey/jab-every-child/shut-down-all-the-schools-and-churches talking points without even discussing any scientific basis for any of it.
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NATO has consistently spread hysteria about the alleged strengthening of Russian military personnel near Ukraine, and has once again escalated this narrative. The NATO summit in Riga on Tuesday and Wednesday served as another round of aggressive and provocative posturing against Russia, but it is unlikely to unify the Atlantic bloc that is becoming increasingly divided.
The Atlantic bloc continues to accuse Moscow of non-existent threats in order to justify their own strengthening of troops near Russia’s borders and to carry out various military manoeuvres. The foreign ministers of NATO also discussed in Riga other important current affairs, such as the migration crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border.
Ahead of the meeting in Riga, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced that tens of thousands of NATO soldiers were at his country’s border and that the West was using migrants to restrain the Belarusian army in the event of a conflict with Russia. He warned that the Belarusian army will not be idle if there is a conflict on the Russian-Ukrainian border or in Donbass.
Lukashenko’s argument is curious though as it was Belarus, and not the West, that brought tens of thousands of migrants to the borders of Poland and the Baltic countries. This was Lukashenko’s response to the West’s pressure and sanction campaign against his government following the 2020 presidential election. He now complains though that the migration weapon that he himself aimed against the European Union is now being used to restrain the Belarusian military.
NATO countries are also using the migration crisis for its own purposes by accusing Moscow, without evidence, of being involved in Minsk’s actions against Poland and the Baltic countries. In this way, NATO attempts to create a justification to deploy its troops near Russia’s borders, which of course will not be for the purpose of confronting the migration crisis.
Ahead of the meeting in Riga, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also stated that the proposal to hold a Russia-NATO Council meeting remains in force since the Alliance is supposedly committed to maintaining a dialogue with Moscow. At the same time, he called on Moscow to be more transparent in its actions and stressed that there are NATO battle groups in the Baltic states and Poland, noting their readiness to resist any “aggression.”
However, despite Stoltenberg’s claims, Moscow has previously stated that it has no information about NATO’s plans to establish a dialogue. In this way, NATO maintains a pressure campaign against Moscow, but at the same time claims that it wants to build a dialogue.
This is further complicated because of the fact that NATO members do not have the same position and policies towards Russia. It is evident that the Anglosphere in NATO, along with their Polish and Baltic proxies, are the most enthusiastic for confrontation with Russia when the rest of Europe is becoming increasingly indifferent or opposed.
Take for example that only on Tuesday, the Greece-Russia Cooperation Protocol was signed and will see the two countries strengthen cooperation in tourism, energy, transport, science and technology, cultural matters and issues relating to tax administration. It also comes as France, which is still critical of Russia in some regards, continually calls for “strategic autonomy” from Washington and improved relations with Moscow.
None-the-less, as the US and UK are the most influential and powerful countries in NATO, the Atlantic alliance’s course towards Russia remains largely the same as during the Cold War era. Due to this, NATO are promoting anti-Russian hysteria to create an appropriate atmosphere so that all responsibility for a possible escalation can be blamed on Moscow. This is despite the fact that Moscow repeatedly calls for de-escalation and stresses that it has no interest in military confrontations.
As NATO is becoming increasingly divided into two blocs, prominently the Anglosphere and its Baltic-Polish partners against the rest of continental Europe, which also does not account for a rogue Turkey, the bloc is constantly looking for enemies, real and imagined, to justify its existence. As the alliance was created to oppose the Soviet Union, it has struggled to find a justification for its existence after European communism fell in 1991.
In the context of competing interests within NATO, attempting to remain relevant, and a general disinterest amongst most of NATO to confront Moscow, the chances of the alliance making a united front against Russia are weak. In fact, many continental European countries fear that a sustained policy of so-called deterrence could further undermine regional stability, which will of course negatively affect the security of some NATO members.
In this way, it is unlikely that NATO achieved much during the two-day meeting in Riga as state interests among the members are being prioritized over Washington’s anti-Russia interests being enacted under the NATO platform.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
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I was in Athens, Greece earlier this month and I had the chance to participate for the very first time in the annual 17 November march on the U.S. Embassy.
When I was working as a CIA officer in Athens between 1998 and 2000, we used to evacuate the Embassy every year on 17 November, lest we be the subjects of violence from the crowd, which always numbered in the tens of thousands and would sometimes smash windows and throw balloons filled with red paint at the Embassy.
The annual event commemorates the date in 1973 when Greece’s far-right military dictatorship, the Junta, attacked unarmed, peaceful students at the Athens Polytechnic University demonstrating for a return to democracy.
Students demonstrating for return to democracy at Athens Polytechnic University in 1973. [Source: greekcitytimes.com]
Dozens of students were killed, the Junta was universally condemned, and the event led to the dictatorship’s slow collapse the following summer.
So why demonstrate at the U.S. Embassy?
It’s because the U.S. government was singlehandedly responsible for installing the dictatorship in 1967. The coup led to a seven-year period of official violence, torture, and grief that is still so much at the front of most Greeks’ minds, that a Greek need say only “the seven years,” την επταετία, for literally everyone to know about what he is speaking.
The cause of the coup was not at all complicated. It was a U.S. obsession with communism.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, the father and grandfather of future prime ministers, made an official visit to Washington in 1967, during which President Lyndon Johnson reportedly told him, “If you don’t get a handle on your communism problem, we’ll do it for you.”
Papandreou was a centrist politician. There was no problem with communism in Greece at the time. The Greek civil war between leftist and rightist forces had ended 15 years earlier, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) was formally banned, and public opinion strongly favored the right-of-center king.
That wasn’t good enough for Washington, though. A former CIA colleague of mine, Gust Avrakotos, who was later portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the film Charlie Wilson’s War and who was a major figure in Junta-era Greece, told me that he caught wind of a planned coup the night before tanks took to the streets on April 21, 1967.
Despite the fact that he was a strident anti-communist, Gust called a meeting with a senior colonel to warn him not to overthrow Papandreou’s government. The colonel denied any knowledge of a coup, but hours later, he was one of the senior officers commanding those tanks in the streets.
What Gust didn’t know was that the White House, the National Security Council, and the State Department had already made the decision to overthrow the government and install the colonels. Democracy was dead in the place where it had been born.
Since the fall of the Junta in 1974, the KKE was legalized in 1981 and Greece has been governed by socialists for 21 years, conservatives for 20 years, and even communists for four years.
Relations between Greece and the United States today are close. Greece is an active member of NATO and a member of the European Union. The economy is strong after years of economic deprivation, and Greeks are known to be friendly, hospitable, and generous.
Every Greek, though, is taught in school that it was the United States that killed the country’s democracy. It was the United States, ostensibly the country’s “protector,” that did away with Greece’s freely-elected government and installed a brutal military dictatorship. Greek children are taught about similar experiences among Chileans, Vietnamese, Kenyans, and others.
Greek Colonels on trial in “Greeks Nuremburg” in 1975. [Source: wikipedia.org]
U.S. covert actions are not lost on most Greeks. They are a forgiving people, but they don’t want to be like the United States. They learned some lessons from oppression, and they want to make sure that their experiences won’t be repeated.
For example, because of police excesses during the Junta, the police are not permitted to search people’s homes or to carry out arrests during nighttime hours. The Junta used to send police to people’s homes in the middle of the night to break down the door and make arrests. No more. If there’s going to be an arrest—or even a legal search—it must be done during daylight hours.
Police also are not allowed on the campus of any college or university for any reason. Ever.
They caused so much grief with their violence against peaceful, unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators on 17 November 1973 that Greeks are determined to never let that happen again.
Universities occasionally become safe havens for arch-criminals like graffiti artists and jaywalkers, of course, but society has accepted that. And the military has been permanently banned from any domestic role whatsoever. There will never be tanks in the streets again, unless it’s to defend the country from a Turkish invasion.
We can all learn from the Greeks’ experiences. Foreign meddling is wrong. It never ends well. It’s never something to be proud of. It never engenders thanks.
On the contrary, it’s a miracle that the U.S. and Greece now have close relations. It’s taken three generations to get over the anger. But every Greek knows what Washington did to them, and nobody will ever forget, especially on the 17th of November.
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John Kiriakou was a CIA analyst and case officer from 1990 to 2004. In December 2007, John was the first U.S. government official to confirm that waterboarding was used to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners, a practice he described as torture.
Kiriakou was a former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a former counter-terrorism consultant. While employed with the CIA, he was involved in critical counter-terrorism missions following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but refused to be trained in so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” nor did he ever authorize or engage in such crimes.
After leaving the CIA, Kiriakou appeared on ABC News in an interview with Brian Ross, during which he became the first former CIA officer to confirm the existence of the CIA’s torture program. Kiriakou’s interview revealed that this practice was not just the result of a few rogue agents, but was official U.S. policy approved at the highest levels of the government.
Kiriakou is the sole CIA agent to go to jail in connection with the U.S. torture program, despite the fact that he never tortured anyone. Rather, he blew the whistle on this horrific wrongdoing.
Featured image: Greeks march in front of U.S. embassy on November 17, 2006, to commemorate 1973 massacre by U.S.-backed military junta. [Source: commons.wikimedia.org]
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On Black Friday, alarmist media commentaries on rising COVID “cases” converged with dire reports of falling prices on the New York Stock Exchange. The plunge was attributed to claims that a new COVID “variant” was emerging in Southern Africa. Building on this news, the televised talking heads covering stock markets were suddenly pressed into duty as number-rattling promoters of the latest stage in the ongoing COVID Reset. The large amount of ink and airtime devoted to explanations of the investment implications of the new African variant add more evidence to the contention that the COVID Reset is mostly about banking, finance and debt manipulation rather than health care.
Crucial to the success of the emerging scheme to keep the COVID Reset in overdrive is the growing boosterism to promote booster injections. Boost the boosters seems to be the new advertising mantra of the vaccine obsessives.
Injection manufacturers are already lining up sequences of booster shots being designed to meet misguided expectations that yet more rounds of injection will protect humans from the incursions of one variant after the next of COVID-19. It seems so-called COVID variants are now being presented to the public by Covid Officialdom as receptacles for bundles of mutations.
Coronaviruses have long been deemed valuable for medical and military research because they evolve quickly through inevitable and rapid mutations. Patent lawyer David E. Martin has highlighted the commercial value of this fast-evolving category of viruses by pointing to at least 4000 patents claiming monopoly rights to corona-related products and procedures.
For at least two decades, bioweapons and vaccine manufacturers have built up a thriving coronavirus industry which is now becoming a core feature of the ascendant pharmaceutical industry. As carefully detailed and documented in Robert F. Kennedy’s new blockbuster, The Real Anthony: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, the pharmaceutical industry also has close ties to the intelligence agencies and to Pentagon programs for “biodefense.”
A fresh surge of fear mongering is being launched by the vast media apparatus channelling the pronouncements of Covid Officialdom. The new twist in the old false narrative comes once again from the operatives of the World Economic Forum who mostly take their orders from the Wall Street and Geneva Lords overseeing the manufactured COVID crisis.
Geneva is the global headquarters of the WHO, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and of Bill Gates’ Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, GAVI. According to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, “GAVI is the new NATO.” Like NATO, GAVI sometimes governs governments. GAVI’s founder and primary moving force has been granted diplomatic immunity by the Swiss government. Indeed, it seems that Gates and his close partner, Anthony Fauci, also have immunity from the criminal laws of the United States. See this.
Wall Street’s home stock exchange is being manipulated to keep the viral hysteria alive. One spinoff is to transform the latest iteration of the celebrity virus into a speculative platform for small investors. When COVID patients die, some stock speculators will benefit while others will lose in the zone where short and long bets compete for traction. The one constant in this gambling process is that those running the rigged stock market casinos always come out ahead.
On November 26, “Black Friday,” the Dow Jones average lost almost 1000 points. The public was told a tall tale that this dramatic drop came about because a new and particularly “concerning” variant of the celebrity virus was poised to renew the spread of infection throughout the world.
The stock market plunge was timed to coincide with a day known for conspicuous consumption on steroids. Market Watch hinted at the manipulation when it reported “Black Friday is Fertile Grounds for Scams.” Indeed, the sudden materialization of a new variant on Black Friday could well be part of a scam timed to coincide strategically with the run up to Christmas, 2021. Many large and small businesses depend on robust Christmas sales to survive economically. Apparently the economic survival of small business is no longer seen as beneficial in some elite circles. See this.
Hours before Wall Street introduced the newest COVID hysteria on the New York Stock Exchange, the World Health Organization highlighted the new variant by giving it a simple name. That name is Omicron, a word that identifies the fifteenth letter in the Greek alphabet. Caught up in the initial burst of Omicron hysteria, the Prime Minister of Belgium proposed that the change in nomenclature should extend to christening the new variant as COVID-21. See this.
Up until the eve of Black Friday, the new variant was named B.1.1.529. The former B.1.1.529 is said to emanate from the southern portion of the African continent. Generally speaking, Africa south of the Sahara is not a region where large sectors of the population have been snared into the frenzy of the media-generated COVID panic. Nor have most people been lured into the false apprehension that COVID injections represent some sort of “safe and effective” health panacea. See this.
It is being reported by the media minions of Planet COVID that the Omicron variant has its origins in the region of Botswana and Johannesburg. On Black Friday there were many reports that the supposed COVID variant is spreading from throughout South Africa and to neighbouring countries. The initial rationale for pushing the panic button on Black Friday was that single cases said to be infected with the B.1.1.529 variant were identified in each of Hong Kong, Belgium and Tel Aviv.
What is never discussed in mainstream media is how the different variants are identified in a system of COVID “testing” that has yet to earn any points for honesty and reliability, let alone for scientific rigor. There is nothing in the current round of reports to suggest that anything has changed. The makers of the Omicron scare seem not to have transcended the appalling record of Covid Officialdom. The resort of the Team Covid to fraud and fakery has from its inception been an essential strategy in manufacturing the crisis in public health.
Once again extravagant conclusions are announced without the provision of any supporting proofs. Once again the COVID media minions are pointing their cameras at TV doctors whose ignorance and/or dishonesty is invariably well rewarded. For almost two years these TV doctors and the government health officials beside them have been integral agents in driving the hideous unfolding scandal. This scandal purposefully involves deceiving the public in many ways to persuade or bully them into taking COVID jabs. The evidence is now incontrovertible that the clot shots are having lethal or horribly injurious effects on millions of jab recipients.
The supposed discovery of individual cases of Omicron in Europe, the Orient and the Middle East was deemed to be sufficiently grave to shut down a number of international air connections. The news of many grounded flights led to a particularly precipitous fall in the stock prices of already bankrupted airlines. Are plans underway to crash the airline industry even deeper into debt so that the remnants can be picked up by members of the multi-billionaires club for a few cents on the dollar?
Against the advice of the WHO, the governments of UK, Canada, France, and Israel shut down flights to and from a long and growing list of counties mostly in the southern region of the African continent. Switzerland widened the net, imposing new quarantine requirements for air travellers coming in from Britain, the Czech Republic, Egypt, the Netherlands, and Malawi.
Omicron is said to emanate from South Africa and also from Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Angola and Mozambique. Hence the plandemic is being reconfigured yet again to present Africa south of the Sahara as a major new source of novel infection. Are the plandemic’s planners and operatives playing the race card yet again, this time on a global scale? In announcing the transformed situation, the BBC pronounced from the lead bully pulpit of Covid Officialdom, “World Races to Contain Omicron.” See this.
Reporting on a Possible New Plague Emanating from Africa
On November 25 in the British journal Nature, Ewen Callaway introduced B.1.1.529 and the investigation of it in South Africa. He wrote,
“Researchers in South Africa are racing to track the concerning rise of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The variant harbours a large number of the mutations found in other variants, including Delta, and it seems to be spreading quickly across South Africa.
A top priority is to follow the variant more closely as it spreads: it was first identified in Botswana earlier this month and has since turned up in a traveller arriving in Hong Kong from South Africa. Scientists are also trying to understand the variant’s properties, such as whether it can evade immune responses triggered by vaccines and whether it causes more or less severe disease than other variants do.”
Many of the early reports in mainstream media emphasized the concentration of mutations in the notorious spike proteins of the Omicron variant. The effort to alter and manipulate spike proteins is a major facet of the coronavirus industry including in its bioweapons branch. For instance at the end of January 2020 the University of New Delhi’s Kusuma School of Biological Sciences identified a genetically engineered spike protein with HIV-related inserts in what was then described in the scientific literature as 2019nCOV. See this.
The Kusma School’s report was widely condemned at the time. This important pioneering study was dismissed because it was declared to be out of step with the now-discredited theory that the celebrity virus had its origins in a chance transfer of the viral pathogen from an animal to humans in a Wuhan wet market. See this.
In 2021 much of the controversy swirling around the inadequately tested COVID jabs highlights the genetic inducements to produce proliferations of pathogenic spike proteins throughout the vascular systems of injection recipients. This pathogenic feature of the clot shots is causing some to see them as bioweapons instigating, for starters, heart attacks, strokes, myocarditis, infertility and hemorrhaging.
Most of the reports of Omicron emphasize that the South African variant hosts many mutations, most of them concentrated in spike proteins. Accordingly, NBC News may be laying the groundwork for many new panic-inducing stories to come when it cites the words of, for instance, Pasi Penttinen. Penttinen is the public health emergency response manager at the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. He told reporters, “It looks like this particular [Omicron] variant has a very concerning set of mutations especially in the spike protein.” See this.
On 27 November the Daily Express reported, “South African scientist Tulio de Oliveira said at a media briefing the Omicron Variant contains a collection of 50 mutations. More than 30 of these, he emphasized, are in the spike protein that interacts with human cells upon entry [including through injection].”
ABC’s News’ spin was introduced with the pronouncement that “Experts peg Omicron as the ‘worst variant that we have come across.’” As if to address the growing constituency of skeptics who well understand that Junk Science is regularly deployed to generate viral hysteria, the headline writers added, “Scientists say Omicron has 50 mutations. To put that into perspective, the highly transmissible Delta variant has 19.”
See the video of Anthony Fauci on CNN in a classic presentation of his slippery deceptiveness disguised as science.
The Omicron commentaries include a statement by Prof. Willem Hanekom. Prof. Hanekom is a compliant alumnus of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One of Prof. Hanekom’s custom-made titles just happens to announce he is “co-chair of the South African COVID Variant Research Consortium.” See this.
This Gates-funded vaccine promoter declared,
“The variant is mostly in Gauteng province, the Johannesburg area of South Africa. But we’ve got clues from diagnostic tests [please explain]… that suggest the variant is all over South Africa [scientific conclusion?]… This is a unique opportunity. There’s still time for people who did not get vaccinated to go and get the vaccine, and that will provide some protection, we believe, against this infection, especially protection against severe infection, severe disease and death,” he said. “So I would call on people to vaccinate if they can.” See this.
Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, BlackRock and COVID-19
It would be perfectly in character for the corrupt leadership of many Wall Street institutions to deploy the New York Stock Exchange as a launching pad for the Omicron variant scare. As chronicled by Pam Martens and Russ Martens in their daily missives appearing in Wall Street on Parade, the Federal Reserve has blamed many financial woes for which it was responsible on the Covid-19 pandemic.
Slowly, however, the credibility is breaking down of all those who justify their actions by dependence on the official COVID narrative. This narrative initially presented the rise of COVID-19 as the outcome of an act of God that could not have been predicted or planned for. Thankfully this fairy tale is now being more widely exposed as the misleading myth it is. This process of widened critical thinking is being helped by the startling revelations emerging from Robert F. Kennedy’s magnum opus.
In May of 2020 the Federal Reserve reported it had entered the year “in a healthy financial condition.” This characterization covered over the fact that the Federal Reserve “for the second time in 12 years, had to engage in trillions of dollars in Wall Street bank bailouts after assuring Congress for years that the financial system was fine.” The Fed needed to adopt the narrative of the COVID pandemic as a random act of nature “in order to cover up its own negligent supervision of the behemoth banks.” See this.
The May 2020 article in Wall Street on Parade draws on an earlier article dated March 20. The earlier article highlight the stock market crash where the New York Stock Exchange lost more than a fifth of its value. The headline reads “The Fed Has Pumped $9 Trillion into Wall Street Over the Past Six Months.” This money was secretly dispersed to big banks at near zero interest. One of the biggest of these, JP Morgan Chase, gave Jamie Dimon, its Chairman and CEO, a $30 million pay package after he oversaw the guilty pleas to three of four federal felony charges against his bank. See this.
The Federal Reserve, like the Bank of Canada, operates under a shroud of veiled obfuscation. Especially in the era of the manufactured COVID crisis, the public is kept mostly in the dark of how much new money is being created in the name of helping people to ride out the COVID crisis. What is being mostly kept from public view is how much of the new money is secretly going into slush funds, many of them to reward friends cronies for political services rendered.
Accordingly, the claims of emergency measures are being malevolently deployed so that we are left largely in the dark about where the new debt-laden money is going. As the Martens co-authors explained on 20 March, 2020
“Since the Fed turned on its latest money spigot to Wall Street [in September of 2019], it has refused to provide the public with the dollar amounts going to any specific banks. This has denied the public the ability to know which financial institutions are in trouble. The Fed, exactly as it did in 2008, has drawn a dark curtain around troubled banks and the public’s right to know, while aiding and abetting a financial coverup of just how bad things are on Wall Street.”
A new financial crisis broke out on Wall Street in September of 2019, months before the celebrity virus began to monopolize headlines in the winter and spring of 2020. This crisis resembled the first indication in late 2007 that something was drastically wrong on Wall Street prior to the deep stock market crash that came subsequently.
The crisis in 2007 was a freezing of credit in the so-called Repo market where big Wall Street institutions borrow and lend money over short periods like one or two days. This freeze in the viability of the Repo market signalled a breakdown of trust between financial institutions. As I described it in August of 2020 in an article entitled, “Lockdowns, Coronavirus and Banks: Following the Money,”
“It was in this atmosphere that the Repo Market became problematic in December of 2007 just as it showed similar signs of breakdown in September of 2019.
In both instances the level of trust between those in charge of financial institutions began to falter because they all had good reason to believe that their fellow bankers were overextended. All had reason to believe their counterparts were mired by too much speculative activity enabled by all sorts of novel experiments including in various forms of derivative dealing.
In December of 2007 as in the autumn of 2019, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was forced to enter the picture to keep the financial pumps on Wall Street primed. The New York Fed kept the liquidity cycles flowing by invoking its power to create new money with the interest charged to tax payers.
As the financial crisis unfolded in 2008 and 2009 the privately-owned Federal Reserve Bank of New York stepped forward to bail out many financial institutions that had become insolvent or near insolvent. In the process precedents and patterns were established that are being re-enacted with some modifications in 2020.
One of the innovations that took place in 2008 was the decision by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to hire a large Wall Street financial institution, BlackRock, to administer the bailouts. These transfers of money went through three specially created companies called Maiden Lane. Replicas of these companies are now referred to as Special Purpose Vehicles in the course of the payouts of 2020.”
In August of 2019 BlackRock organized a meeting of central bankers and their advisers in Jackson Hole in Wyoming. This meeting was planned and implemented well before the Covid crisis reared its head. In retrospect, the timing and content of the meeting signifies the current crisis began with a plan to reorganize global banking and finance, not attend to a public health problem. Pam Martens and Russ Martens introduce their article on the Jackson Hole meeting with the headline that “BlackRock Authored the Bailout Plan Before There Was a [Health] Crisis.” See this.
One way to see this meeting is as an introduction to some of the core concepts of the so-called “Great Reset” that were later promoted most zealously by the likes of Karl Schwab, Justin Trudeau and the officers of the International Monetary Fund. The BlackRock plan was entitled Dealing With the Next Downturn.
The report was authored and presented at Jackson Hole by Stanley Fischer, former Governor of the Central Bank of Israel, Philipp Hildebrande, former Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, Jean Boivin, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, and Elga Bartsch, Economist at Morgan Stanley.
The plan called for a further merger of monetary policy and fiscal policy, in other words a further merger of private central banks and governments. Monetary policy determines the size of the money supply and debt rates. These powers are exercised by private central bankers who were well represented at the Jackson Hole event. Fiscal policy involves spending decisions and such. This area of jurisdiction is usually retained as the formal domain of government authority. Reflecting on the animosity generated in 2007-2010 by the $16 trillions of so-called “bailout” money that went to “too-big-to-fail” financial institutions, the bankers proposed “going direct” with government payouts of “helicopter money” to small businesses and to members of the general public.
BlackRock Investment Institute distributed copies of Dealing With the Next Downturn to the VIPs assembled at Jackson Hole. The subtext of the document’s title called for a transition From Unconventional Monetary Policy to Unprecedented Policy Coordination.
One of the core themes of the essay was the importance of learning from the Bailouts of 2007-10 to keep to a minimum the public animosity against the reset being planned. The authors wrote
There is growing political discontent across major economies – and central banks are one of the targets. Widening inequality has fostered a backlash against elites. There are many drivers of inequality, including at its root technology, winner-take-all dynamics and globalisation. The global financial crisis and the resulting forced bailout of financial institutions deemed too big too fail has added fuel to this backlash.
Not acting during the global financial crisis would have almost certainly led to a Great Depression-like outcome – much higher unemployment and even worse inequality. Yet that counterfactual provides no solace to those feeling left behind. And the monetary policy tools themselves might have increased inequality – and are certainly perceived to have done so – by pushing up the prices of assets owned by only a fraction of the population. Governments, not central banks, are ultimately accountable for issues of inequality and redistribution. And a greater use of fiscal policy tools is needed to offset the impact of central bank policies on inequality, including the impact of monetary policy. See this.
Once the anticipated economic downturn came in 2020 BlackRock was hired by the Federal Reserve in the US as well as by the Bank of Canada and the Swedish Riksbank. The financial devastation was caused primarily by the ruination of many small businesses and supply chains through the forced subversion of “lockdowns.”
BlackRock took on government-like powers as a powerful participant in several financial resets. Generally speaking, BlackRock was in demand to valuate and oversee the purchase of corporate bonds. Many varieties of corporate bonds are often prominently included among so-called Junk Bonds.
In a column originally published in the Prince George Daily News, Peter Ewart observed that the remnants of free-market capitalism are now being eliminated altogether. As it stands now, governments take their signals more and more from the likes of BlackRock whose executives decide what businesses should or should not be bolstered with government backing. The government financial favours extended to the largely unregulated manufacturers of the COVID injections offer a telling example of monopoly capitalism at work. Ewart writes,
The situation also shows how the economic system in both Canada and the U.S. is not classical capitalism but rather state monopoly capitalism, where giant enterprises are regularly backstopped with public funds and the boundaries between the state and the financial oligarchy are virtually non-existent.
Another preparatory assembly that occurred in 2019 is Event 201. This meeting of insiders in and around the orbits of Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, Johns Hopkins University, and the intelligence agencies was organized as a simulation exercise. It just happened that the simulation exercise basically went live in the weeks ahead. The simulation turned out to be very much like the manufactured COVID crisis that gathered momentum in winter and spring of 2020.
Less well known is the pandemic simulation, Crimson Contagion, organized by Robert Kadlec. Spanning a period from January to August of 2019, Kadlec invited many officials to join in a scenario where a contagious disease spread from China to much of the rest of the world. See this.
As Robert F. Kennedy documents, Kadlec long worked closely with Anthony Fauci who has derived much of his budget and clout in government from his role in processes resulting in the US design and development of bioweapons. This military research and development often proceeds with the development of vaccines as antidotes to the illnesses caused by bioweapons.
Kennedy’s disdain for Fauci is palpable. He writes in his new book, “Tony Fauci does not do public health; he is a businessman, who has his office to enrich his pharmaceutical partners and expand the reach of influence that has made him the most powerful—and despotic—doctor in human history.”
Another indicator of prior knowledge of the coming pandemic was evident in the actions of many at the upper end of the US business community. As reflected in the surge of 1500 resignations of prominent American CEOs, many corporate executives may have been well aware in 2019 and that something very disruptive was being planned to begin in 2020. Many of the resigning executives also cashed out their stock portfolios. See this and this.
Vaccine Passports and the Growth of Tyranny
The engineered stock market plunge on Black Friday was part of a long saga that is coming to constitute the most elaborate instance of psychological warfare ever mounted. This psychological warfare is inflicting enormous damage on the mental health of large swaths of the population, but especially on children. The frequency throughout the plandemic of many forms of child abuse, including injections and forced masking, is not be taken lightly.
This hybrid war on humanity is at once psychological, biological and financial. One aim is to depopulate the planet and plunge the survivors of this atrocity into new forms of transhuman enslavement. The opening stages of this new form of enslavement involve inserting bio-digital nanotechnology into our persons so we can be better monitored and controlled. Looking to the future of society where much more of the work will be done by robots, some are trying to bring humans into conformity with the rhythms and demands of far-reaching robotization.
The current round of injections reflects a desire on the part of Bill Gates and others of his ilk to reconstitute humans as a new variety of GMOs. The creation of genetically modified humans will make them more susceptible to monitoring and external manipulation through advances in the techniques and technologies of Artificial Intelligence, AI.
The creation of so-called vaccine passports should be seen for what it portends in terms of integrating humans more deeply into expanding networks of increasingly powerful Artificial Intelligence.
The introduction of vaccine passports opens the door to the creation of a standardized system of collecting and instrumentalizing data to increase the means of tyrannizing humanity under private and central authority. Such a development would take the private and central control of banks one giant step further.
The advancement of this scheme requires the collection and organization of great masses of data on every human on the planet. By combining financial data, medical data, human genome data, police data, travel data, contact data, and much much more, the private owners of this hugely valuable information resource would acquire many new and unprecedented levers of power. They would be well situated to achieve mastery over the survivors of the depopulation scheme.
Even from the distance of their remote locations, the future masters of the world’s primary data cache would be in a powerful position to reward us, penalize us, torture us, impoverish us, or even shut down our lives altogether. One way of picturing their power is to imagine the implementation of a cashless money transfer system, an outcome already being associated with the elaboration of vaccine passports. This kind of system could be deployed to deny to individuals displaying attributes of disobedience and non-compliance, the capacity to, for instance, purchase food. Humans would become subject to determinations made on the basis of digitalized social credit scores potentially far more ruthless in their intent than anything that now exists in China.
This effort to universalize and standardize a single worldwide system of data passports creates in the twenty-first century a movement that draws on precedents established in the history of banking during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There is much potential for continuity in the transition from control by centralized and privatized banks to full-blown tyranny through the provision of private and centralized health care. This continuity is reflected in the current genesis of a world where huge masses of data are coming to be seen as the new universal currency, the new gold.
It seems that those who have emerged victorious from this banking history have seized on the exploitation of so-called public health as a new means of making themselves even richer and more omnipotent. They are engaged in removing the few remaining checks and balances on which the fragile viability of our imperfect democracies and recognitions of human rights have depended. By bringing human survivors of depopulation under the authority of private and central systems of “public health,” the process continues of privatizing and centralizing power. The greatest mass of humanity would be placed under the iron grip of a tiny minority.
The move to subject humans to cradle-to-grave programs of mandatory vaccines would destroy the autonomy available to those with healthy systems of natural immunity. The imposition of extortion, like the crimes being expressed in jobs-for-jabs ultimatums, is forcing many segments of the work force towards new forms of coerced submission. The resulting demoralization of many is one of many factors pushing skyrocketing rates of suicide, domestic violence and addictions.
New forms of oppression are coming into existence by treating immunity to disease into a commodity. Our oppressors are implicitly telling us that this commercialized immunity is henceforth to derive exclusively from the spout of injected needles. The cost of industrially narrowing the spectrum and vitality of natural immunity comes at a very high human price. Natural immunity would be destroyed from endless rounds of required vaccines as administered through the control device of so-called vaccine passports.
Fingers Crossed
Quite clearly stock markets have long since ceased to be some sort of self-sustaining instrument of free market capitalism. Stock markets, like the economic structures that contain them, are notoriously subject to manipulation by those that control large concentrations of wealth.
Indeed, in the fast-moving course of the gruesome COVID Reset, the extent of the power invested in private central bankers is being illustrated with greater clarity every day. Governments of first world countries are going the way of third world countries. Canada, the United States, UK and Europe increasingly face the same kind of unscrupulous creditors’ tactics described by John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. See this.
Throughout the world our governments are falling more deeply under the self-interested sway of private central bankers. These private central bankers are more than happy to use their ill-gotten powers over the creation of money to facilitate the fast growth of national debts. These national debts are of course payable with compound interest charged ultimately to increasingly rare middle class taxpayers. Such taxpayers generally lack the access that rich people enjoy to tax havens and high end accountants.
As governments fall more deeply under the control of the private central bankers whose core institution is the Swiss-based Bank of International Settlements, they become more and more subject to external control over what they can and cannot do in the name of their citizens. Everywhere this process is unfolding it is average citizens who are losing out as the bankers gain more and more new ground. Thus it is that the little that remains of free market capitalism is diminishing every day along with the dwindling middle class.
Given this background it is not a stretch to posit that the New York Stock Exchange runs largely as a scripted spectacle serving the interests of wealth and power. The stock market crash of Black Friday supposedly on account of Omicron hysteria was quite likely a classic display of show biz razzle dazzle meant to keep in business the COVID machinery of fear mongering.
The Wall Street leviathan, BlackRock is a proxy of the money-creating Federal Reserve and a go-between with the US Treasury branch. BlackRock is also a major facilitator of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s wish to run up the national debt as quickly as possible as he rushes towards the phantom oasis of the Great Reset.
BlackRock’s silent partner is Vanguard. Together these monopolistic enterprises have a significant stake in almost every major company on earth. BlackRock emerged from the Wall Street giant, Blackstone, the firm that financed much of Lucky Larry Silverstein’s lucrative bets that reaped for him huge insurance payoffs from the events of 9/11. See this.
Meanwhile many small investors were left sitting in front of their TVs on Black Friday wondering what to make of the banner headline proclaiming, “Stocks Sink Amid Fears of New South African Covid Variant.”
How would this statement affect the modest retirement savings of TV viewers feeling cast adrift by this news that a new wave of COVID pandemonium might be on its way from Africa?
Those tuned in to Yahoo finance commentator, Simeon Hyman, might have found some assurance in his advice. Hyman began his commentary by advising his viewers that in spite of the dip in stock prices, he would stick with investments in corporate shares, equities, rather than purchase government bonds.
Hyman continued, “You have to look to the equity market and you just have to cross your fingers and hope that this variant isn’t another wave.” Perhaps crossing one’s fingers as an investment strategy makes about as much sense as heralding a new Omicron variant said to host a big bundle of mutations.
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Dr. Hall is editor in chief of the American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.
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Countering global alarmism about the omicron variant of COVID-19, the doctor who first discovered it says the strain is “mild” and hasn’t caused an uptick in hospitalizations.
Governments across the world are imposing new travel bans and other virus restrictions in response to claims the new strain is more transmissible and could prove more deadly than delta.
However, those with the most expertise on the ground in South Africa are all saying the opposite.
Barry Schoub, chairman of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Vaccines, told Sky News that the panic had been misplaced.
“The cases that have occurred so far have all been mild cases, mild-to-moderate cases, and that’s a good sign,” said Schoub.
Again contradicting claims that the new strain is likely to be more dangerous than delta, Schoub also pointed out that the omicron variant having a large number of mutations and therefore makes it less “fit” than the dominant delta strain.
“At the same time, one could make the point that while Omicron could soon become the dominant strain due to its higher R-nought (or pace of transmission), that could be a blessing in disguise as it pushes out the much more dangerous (and more stable) delta strain,” notes Zero Hedge.
Angelique Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association, echoed Schoub’s sentiments, noting that the patients infected with omicron had “symptoms (that) were so different and so mild from those I had treated before.”
Coetzee asserted that she hadn’t observed any “prominent symptoms” and that the variant doesn’t appear to be putting pressure on hospitals.
“What we are seeing clinically in South Africa and remember, I’m at the epicenter, that’s where I’m practicing, is extremely mild,” she stressed.
Responding “definitely” when asked if authorities were panicking unnecessarily, Coetzee attempted to dispel alarmist fearmongering.
“We haven’t admitted anyone” to the hospital with the new variant, she said. “I spoke to other colleagues of mine, the same picture.”
"Round about the 18 November, I all of a sudden encountered unusual symptoms" in a patient who was "extremely tired for the past two days"
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December 1st, 2021 by Prof. Dr. Pablo Campra Madrid
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On this show we’ve repeatedly mentioned the work by “La Quinta Columna” in Spain. That name means “the Fifth Column,” and it’s a group of dissident researchers who have investigated these vaccines.
Most importantly, they’re the ones who studied a vaccine sample and found graphene oxide in it.
Dr. Pablo Compra joins us.
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Sudan literally cannot afford to militarily provoke Ethiopia even if Egypt partially bankrolls this campaign. This simple pragmatism might be the only thing stopping the scenario that was warned about in this analysis. Sudan’s false claims against Ethiopia over the weekend could have been a way of showing deference to its Egyptian patron even if Khartoum isn’t serious about attacking its neighbor like Cairo might want.
Sudan alleged over the weekend that the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) and its allies killed six of its soldiers during an attack in a disputed border region. Ethiopian government spokesman Legesse Tulu denied the claims the day after and clarified that “A large group of insurgents, bandits and terrorists had entered [from Sudan]. The Ethiopian National Defence Force and the local militia have destroyed them.” Khartoum’s information provocation occurred right around the time that the ENDF liberated the town of Chiffra in northern Afar Region. This suggests that the two events might be connected, in particular, that Sudan sought to establish the pretext for possibly militarily provoking Ethiopia sometime in the coming future in order to save the TPLF on its Egyptian patron’s behalf.
To explain this theory, the foreign-backed regime change terrorists are on the backfoot despite prior Western propaganda to the contrary, which was confirmed by the liberation of Chiffra. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who’s leading the war effort from the front lines, also just called on the TPLF to peacefully surrender. It’s therefore clear that the dynamics have completely changed since early November when the TPLF was on the offensive after Ethiopia’s state of emergency inspired thousands of its citizens to volunteer with the ENDF in order to help their country survive its existential crisis. For this reason, it makes sense why the TPLF’s Egyptian backers might push their Sudanese proxy to consider provoking military tensions with Ethiopia in order to save this terrorist group from its impending defeat.
Sudan, in its present form, cannot really be regarded as an independent country. Although the recent coup was partially reversed per the latest power-sharing deal that was agreed to in late November, that state still remains largely under its Egyptian neighbor’s influence. Khartoum also supports Cairo against Addis Ababa when it comes to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) issue. Mr. Legesse’s claim that the TPLF invaded Ethiopia from Sudan suggests some level of support from the latter. This in turn lends credence to the scenario that this country might be pushed into militarily provoking Ethiopia under the false pretext of “defending” itself from the ENDF’s debunked “invasion”. That could serve to dramatically internationalize the conflict and buy the TPLF some time to reconsolidate its fleeing forces.
Of course, it should go without saying that no such scenario might ultimately materialize, but it nevertheless can’t be dismissed at this point considering Sudan’s latest information provocation of falsely alleging an attack against its forces by the ENDF and its allies. This dangerous claim advances the scenario of wider conventional clashes between these neighboring nations against the context of Ethiopia’s ongoing domestic conflict. Addis Ababa’s debunking of Khartoum’s twisted interpretation of events also suggests that Sudan is playing a key role in supporting the TPLF’s terrorist-driven regime change war. Cairo has been banking on that group remaining a powerful force for internally partitioning Ethiopia and didn’t expect the ENDF to make such rapid gains against it so soon.
Faced with the predicament of its proxies being defeated in the coming future contrary to Egypt’s prior predictions that they’d at least be able to hold their ground in the Afar and Amhara Regions that they invaded over the summer, it’s indeed possible that Cairo could ask Khartoum to provoke military tensions with Addis Ababa. This could even be pushed through by a false flag attack or another twisted interpretation of the ENDF’s defensive anti-terrorist operations against the Sudanese-backed TPLF. From Egypt’s strategic standpoint, that might be the best option for saving its proxies, but it of course would require Sudan’s compliance. It remains unclear though whether its largely Egyptian-influenced government would risk sacrificing itself for its two allies’ sake, Egypt’s and the TPLF’s.
Sudan is among the poorest countries in the world and sharply divided with internal contradictions that threatened to spiral into civil war prior to the recent power-sharing agreement per the restored Prime Minister’s own words in an interview that he gave to the Financial Times earlier this week. It literally cannot afford to militarily provoke Ethiopia even if Egypt partially bankrolls this campaign. This simple pragmatism might be the only thing stopping the scenario that was warned about in this analysis. Sudan’s false claims against Ethiopia over the weekend could have been a way of showing deference to its Egyptian patron even if Khartoum isn’t serious about attacking its neighbor like Cairo might want.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.
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An unclassified summary of the Defense Department’s Global Posture review was released Monday and in the words of the indomitable Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, the song of American military primacy worldwide pretty much “remains the same.”
Of course the summary of the GPR, which has been long anticipated, doesn’t offer much detail, but the bottom line is this: China remains a key “pacing threat” and it will be met. There seems to be no plan, however, for reshuffling U.S. military forces from other theaters to grow the foot print in East Asia. Instead, Washington aims to build upon its strategic partnerships in the region. Where there is actual growth in the footprint, mentioned below, much of that had already been announced previously:
(The GPR) directs additional cooperation with allies and partners to advance initiatives that contribute to regional stability and deter potential Chinese military aggression and threats from North Korea. These initiatives include seeking greater regional access for military partnership activities; enhancing infrastructure in Australia and the Pacific Islands; and planning rotational aircraft deployments in Australia, as announced in September. The GPR also informed Secretary Austin’s approval of the permanent stationing of a previously-rotational attack helicopter squadron and artillery division headquarters in the Republic of Korea, announced earlier this year.
Most of the hullabaloo over the Australia-UK-U.S. (AUKUS) agreement in September had been over the transfer of nuclear submarine technology to Australia. But as David Vine pointed out in this RS article, AUKUS is also allowing the U.S. to station more assets and personnel Down Under, including, “combined logistics, sustainment, and capability for maintenance to support our enhanced activities, including…for our submarines and surface combatants” and “rotational deployments of all types of U.S. military aircraft to Australia.”
As the Wall Street Journal noted Monday in its summary of the summary, the Biden administration’s goal of meeting “China’s military buildup and more assertive use of power” doesn’t seem to be coming at the expense of U.S. force posture in other parts of the world. Those forces are largely staying put.
According to the DoD summary, in Europe, the GPR “strengthens the U.S. combat-credible deterrent against Russian aggression and enables NATO forces to operate more effectively.” This includes leaving the 25,000 troops President Trump wanted to take out of Germany right where they are in the region (which we already knew about). There is no further detail on how Washington plans to “strengthen the deterrent” against Russia, though we know there have been plenty of efforts on Capitol Hill to send more troops to Europe.
Those hoping to see the Biden administration begin to extricate from the Middle East won’t find much solace in this summary either. Without committing either way, the DoD says “the GPR assessed the department’s approach toward Iran and the evolving counterterrorism requirements following the end of DoD operations in Afghanistan. In Iraq and Syria, DoD posture will continue to support the Defeat-ISIS campaign and building the capacity of partner forces. Looking ahead, the review directs DoD to conduct additional analysis on enduring posture requirements in the Middle East.”
The big news here is that Washington is not even considering leaving Iraq and Syria, which many smart analysts deem essential not only for American interests, but for the security of the region. On the greater question of whether there will be a major shift toward reducing the U.S.-led security obligations in the Middle East, the summary, at least, seems to punt. On Africa and the Americas, as indicated by the release yesterday, no discernible change in posture.
This shouldn’t come as any surprise, as the signs of status quo are all around us — just read the RS piece by Nick Turse on U.S. commando presence in Africa, and then in Europe. Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, National Guard units from Virginia and Kentucky sent 1,000 troops to Africa for “Task Force Red Dragon.” As Page/Plant wrote, “everything that’s small has got to grow,” and this footprint isn’t going anywhere, at least not yet.
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Featured image: President Joe Biden greets members of the military at a FEMA COVID-19 vaccination site Friday, Feb. 26, 2021, at NRG Stadium in Houston. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
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Washington is talking itself into war again. The signs are unmistakable.
Admirals are warning of China’s preparations to invade Taiwan and defense hawks on the Hill point to Taiwan as simply the first step in China’s long-term strategic bid for global military hegemony. Nervous European allies see a Russian troop concentration in Eastern Ukraine as evidence for an impending Russian invasion and the Biden administration responds by saying that America’s support for Ukraine is “ironclad.”
When U.S. politicians and senior military leaders invoke the threat of war, Americans must treat their comments seriously. With this in mind, it’s important to understand what did and what did not happen 80 years ago.
From 1920 until the outbreak of war with Imperial Japan, the Navy’s Pacific Fleet practiced fighting the Imperial Japanese Navy on an annual basis. These exercises informed extensive, detailed war plans that were developed in the 1930s.
Normally, after concluding the exercises, the fleet returned to its bases on the West Coast. In 1940, however, the fleet was ordered to remain at Pearl Harbor. Admiral James Richardson, commander-in-chief, U.S. Fleet, regarded the decision with grave concern.
Admiral Harold Stark, chief of naval operations, explained the decision to his subordinate commanders in a letter dated May 27, 1940, in which he said, “You are there because of the deterrent effect which it is thought your presence may have on the Japs going into the East Indies.”
Today, there is little doubt that the decision to retain the fleet in Hawaii was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s, not Stark’s. Admiral Stark repeatedly warned FDR of the potential danger of being drawn into a two-front war with Japan and Germany. General George Marshall, Army chief of staff, agreed with Stark.
On June 17, 1940, Marshall convened a meeting with Army planners to specifically examine the worst-case scenario: a Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Marshall knew the Philippines could not be defended for long without reinforcement against a determined Japanese attack. If the fleet were destroyed in Pearl Harbor, an operation to relieve the beleaguered American garrison in the Philippines would be impossible. As they often do, policy decisions in Washington outpaced U.S. military preparations.
On July 26, 1941 FDR issued an executive order freezing Japanese assets in the U.S. and halting all trade with Japan. Army and Navy strategic planners understood Japan’s strategic dilemma: Either Tokyo meets FDR’s conditions for lifting the oil embargo—the complete evacuation of Japanese forces from China—or Tokyo secures oil, rubber and other critical war materials by striking south to conquer the resource-rich Dutch East Indies.
Retaining the fleet in Hawaii did nothing to deter Japan. The war plans developed in the 1930s were shelved. Neither the U.S. armed forces nor the resources to implement the plans existed in December 1941.
After Pearl Harbor, 30,000 U.S. Soldiers tasked to relieve the American garrison in the Philippines were diverted to Australia. The U.S. Navy could fight its way across 8,000 miles of ocean and deliver them safely. The humiliating surrender of American forces on Corregidor followed in May 1942.
Is now the time for President Biden to take inflexible policy positions on Eastern Ukraine or Taiwan from which it is extremely difficult to retreat? Resorting to the use of military power against continental opponents like China or Russia—nations that fight in their own “near abroad”—demands the persistent employment of powerful U.S. and allied ground, air, and naval forces. America’s armed forces today are no more ready for this mission than were our forces in December 1941.
Moreover, the great powers that once stood between Washington and its opponents in 1941 no longer exist. With few exceptions, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a collection of U.S. military protectorates that bring modest capability to a U.S.-led fight. Germany is an economic superpower, but a military pygmy.
To date, only Japan has rebuilt a fraction of its former military power, but the notion that Japan would join the U.S. in a war against China or Russia is fanciful. In nearly all but Washington’s eyes, China is not Imperial Japan and Russia is not the Soviet Union. If anything, everyone in Asia wants to do business with China, not fight a destructive regional war.
For the moment, Washington and its NATO allies are discovering that the most dangerous threat is not a handful of Russian soldiers in green uniforms without insignias, nor is it a coordinated cyber-attack: It is a high-end conventional offensive launched by Russian ground forces from Russian soil that could prove impossible to halt.
Will Moscow’s patience with Ukrainian attacks on Russian-held territory in the Donbass finally end? The answer is unclear.
It is known that all of the nuclear armed submarines in Russia’s Pacific fleet recently put to sea on high alert. Moscow’s move does not indicate a readiness to employ nuclear weapons. Rather, the action is a signal to Washington that if U.S. and allied forces should falter in a future collision with Russian forces in the Black Sea or Eastern Ukraine, Moscow possesses a secure second-strike nuclear weapons capability that the U.S. armed forces cannot defeat.
Pearl Harbor is a grim reminder that threats without the ability to carry them out do not constitute deterrence. The thought is certainly worthy of President Biden’s consideration.
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Douglas Macgregor, Col. (ret.) is a senior fellow with The American Conservative, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a decorated combat veteran, and the author of five books.
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I’m a voracious reader of Covid books but nothing could have prepared me for Scott Atlas’s A Plague Upon Our House, a full and mind-blowing account of the famed scientist’s personal experience with the Covid era and a luridly detailed account of his time at the White House. The book is hot fire, from page one to the last, and will permanently affect your view of not only this pandemic and the policy response but also the workings of public health in general.
Atlas’s book has exposed a scandal for the ages. It is enormously valuable because it fully blows up what seems to be an emerging fake story involving a supposedly Covid-denying president who did nothing vs. heroic scientists in the White House who urged compulsory mitigating measures consistent with prevailing scientific opinion. Not one word of that is true. Atlas’s book, I hope, makes it impossible to tell such tall tales without embarrassment.
Anyone who tells you this fictional story (including Deborah Birx) deserves to have this highly credible treatise tossed in his direction. The book is about the war between real science (and genuine public health), with Atlas as the voice for reason both before and during his time in the White House, vs. the enactment of brutal policies that never stood any chance of controlling the virus while causing tremendous damage to the people, to human liberty, to children in particular, but also to billions of people around the world.
For the reader, the author is our proxy, a reasonable and blunt man trapped in a world of lies, duplicity, backstabbing, opportunism, and fake science. He did his best but could not prevail against a powerful machine that cares nothing for facts, much less outcomes.
If you have heretofore believed that science drives pandemic public policy, this book will shock you. Atlas’s recounting of the unbearably poor thinking on the part of government-based “infectious disease experts” will make your jaw drop (thinking, for example, of Birx’s off-the-cuff theorizing about the relationship between masking and controlling case spreads).
Throughout the book, Atlas points to the enormous cost of the machinery of lockdowns, the preferred method of Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx: missed cancer screenings, missed surgeries, nearly two years of educational losses, bankrupted small business, depression and drug overdoses, overall citizen demoralization, violations of religious freedom, all while public health massively neglected the actual at-risk population in long-term care facilities. Essentially, they were willing to dismantle everything we called civilization in the name of bludgeoning one pathogen without regard to the consequences.
The fake science of population-wide “models” drove policy instead of following the known information about risk profiles.
“The one unusual feature of this virus was the fact that children had an extraordinarily low risk,” writes Atlas. “Yet this positive and reassuring news was never emphasized. Instead, with total disregard of the evidence of selective risk consistent with other respiratory viruses, public health officials recommended draconian isolation of everyone.”
“Restrictions on liberty were also destructive by inflaming class distinctions with their differential impact,” he writes, “exposing essential workers, sacrificing low-income families and kids, destroying single-parent homes, and eviscerating small businesses, while at the same time large companies were bailed out, elites worked from home with barely an interruption, and the ultra-rich got richer, leveraging their bully pulpit to demonize and cancel those who challenged their preferred policy options.”
In the midst of continued chaos, in August 2020, Atlas was called by Trump to help, not as a political appointee, not as a PR man for Trump, not as a DC fixer but as the only person who in nearly a year of unfolding catastrophe had a health-policy focus. He made it clear from the outset that he would only say what he believed to be true; Trump agreed that this was precisely what he wanted and needed. Trump got an earful and gradually came around to a more rational view than that which caused him to wreck the American economy and society with his own hands and against his own instincts.
In Task Force meetings, Atlas was the only person who showed up with studies and on-the-ground information as opposed to mere charts of infections easily downloadable from popular websites.
“A bigger surprise was that Fauci did not present scientific research on the pandemic to the group that I witnessed. Likewise, I never heard him speak about his own critical analysis of any published research studies. This was stunning to me. Aside from intermittent status updates about clinical trial enrollments, Fauci served the Task Force by offering an occasional comment or update on vaccine trial participant totals, mostly when the VP would turn to him and ask.”
When Atlas spoke up, it was almost always to contradict Fauci/Birx but he received no backing during meetings, only to have many people in attendance later congratulate him for speaking out. Still, he did, by virtue of private meetings, have a convert in Trump himself, but by then it was too late: not even Trump could prevail against the wicked machine he had permissioned into operation.
It’s a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington story but applied to matters of public health. From the outset of this disease panic, policy came to be dictated by two government bureaucrats (Fauci and Birx) who, for some reason, were confident in their control over media, bureaucracies, and White House messaging, despite every attempt by the president, Atlas, and a few others to get them to pay attention to the actual science about which Fauci/Birx knew and care little.
When Atlas would raise doubts about Birx, Jared Kushner would repeatedly assure him that “she is 100% MAGA.” Yet we know for certain that this is not true. We know from a different book on the subject that she only took the position with the anticipation that Trump would lose the presidency in the November election. That’s hardly a surprise; it’s the bias expected from a career bureaucrat working for a deep-state institution.
Fortunately, we now have this book to set the record straight. It gives every reader an inside look at the workings of a system that wrecked our lives. If the book finally declines to offer an explanation for the hell that was visited upon us – every day we still ask the question why? – it does provide an accounting of the who, when, where, and what. Tragically, too many scientists, media figures, and intellectuals in general went along. Atlas’s account shows exactly what they signed up to defend, and it’s not pretty.
The cliche that kept coming to mind as I read is “breath of fresh air.” That metaphor describes the book perfectly: blessed relief from relentless propaganda. Imagine yourself trapped in an elevator with stultifying air in a building that is on fire and the smoke gradually seeps in from above. Someone is in there with you and he keeps assuring you that everything is fine, when it is obviously not.
That’s a pretty good description of how I felt from March 12, 2020 and onward. That was the day that President Trump spoke to the nation and announced that there would be no more travel from Europe. The tone in his voice was spooky. It was obvious that more was coming. He had clearly fallen sway to extremely bad advice, perhaps he was willing to push lockdowns as a plan to deal with a respiratory virus that was already widespread in the US from perhaps 5 to 6 months earlier.
It was the day that the darkness descended. A day later (March 13), the HHS distributed its lockdown plans for the nation. That weekend, Trump met for many hours with Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and only a few others. He came around to the idea of shutting down the American economy for two weeks. He presided over the calamitous March 16, 2020, press conference, at which Trump promised to beat the virus through general lockdowns.
Of course he had no power to do that directly but he could urge it to happen, all under the completely delusional promise that doing so would solve the virus problem. Two weeks later, the same gang persuaded him to extend the lockdowns.
Trump went along with the advice because it was the only advice he was fed at the time. They made it appear that the only choice that Trump had – if he wanted to beat the virus – was to wage war on his own policies that were pushing for a stronger, healthier economy. After surviving two impeachment attempts, and beating back years of hate from a nearly united media afflicted by severe derangement syndrome, Trump was finally hornswoggled.
Atlas writes: “On this highly important criterion of presidential management—taking responsibility to fully take charge of policy coming from the White House—I believe the president made a massive error in judgment. Against his own gut feeling, he delegated authority to medical bureaucrats, and then he failed to correct that mistake.”
The truly tragic fact that both Republicans and Democrats do not want spoken about is that this whole calamity is that did indeed begin with Trump’s decision. On this point, Atlas writes:
Yes, the president initially had gone along with the lockdowns proposed by Fauci and Birx, the “fifteen days to slow the spread,” even though he had serious misgivings. But I still believe the reason that he kept repeating his one question—“Do you agree with the initial shutdown?”—whenever he asked questions about the pandemic was precisely because he still had misgivings about it.
Large parts of the narrative are devoted to explaining precisely how and to what extent Trump had been betrayed. “They had convinced him to do exactly the opposite of what he would naturally do in any other circumstance,” Atlas writes, that is
“to disregard his own common sense and allow grossly incorrect policy advice to prevail…. This president, widely known for his signature “You’re fired!” declaration, was misled by his closest political intimates. All for fear of what was inevitable anyway—skewering from an already hostile media. And on top of that tragic misjudgment, the election was lost anyway. So much for political strategists.”
There are so many valuable parts to the story that I cannot possibly recount them all. The language is brilliant, e.g. he calls the media “the most despicable group of unprincipled liars one could ever imagine.” He proves that assertion in page after page of shocking lies and distortions, mostly driven by political goals.
I was particularly struck by his chapter on testing, mainly because that whole racket mystified me throughout. From the outset, the CDC bungled the testing part of the pandemic story, attempting to keep the tests and process centralized in DC at the very time when the entire nation was in panic. Once that was finally fixed, months too late, mass and indiscriminate PCR testing became the desiderata of success within the White House. The problem was not just with the testing method:
“Fragments of dead virus hang around and can generate a positive test for many weeks or months, even though one is not generally contagious after two weeks. Moreover, PCR is extremely sensitive. It detects minute quantities of virus that do not transmit infection…. Even the New York Times wrote in August that 90 percent or more of positive PCR tests falsely implied that someone was contagious. Sadly, during my entire time at the White House, this crucial fact would never even be addressed by anyone other than me at the Task Force meetings, let alone because for any public recommendation, even after I distributed data proving this critical point.”
The other problem is the wide assumption that more testing (however inaccurate) of whomever, whenever was always better. This model of maximizing tests seemed like a leftover from the HIV/AIDS crisis in which tracing was mostly useless in practice but at least made some sense in theory. For a widespread and mostly wild respiratory disease transmitted the way a cold virus is transmitted, this method was hopeless from the beginning. It became nothing but make work for tracing bureaucrats and testing enterprises that in the end only provided a fake metric of “success” that served to spread public panic.
Early on, Fauci had clearly said that there was no reason to get tested if you had no symptoms. Later, that common-sense outlook was thrown out the window and replaced with an agenda to test as many people as possible regardless of risk and regardless of symptoms. The resulting data enabled Fauci/Birx to keep everyone in a constant state of alarm. More test positivity to them implied only one thing: more lockdowns. Businesses needed to close harder, we all needed to mask harder, schools needed to stay closed longer, and travel needed to be ever more restricted. That assumption became so entrenched that not even the president’s own wishes (which had changed from Spring to Summer) made any difference.
Atlas’s first job, then, was to challenge this whole indiscriminate testing agenda. To his mind, testing needed to be about more than accumulating endless amounts of data, much of it without meaning; instead, testing should be directed toward a public-health goal. The people who needed tests were the vulnerable populations, particularly those in nursing homes, with the goal of saving lives among those who were actually threatened with severe outcomes. This push to test, contact trace, and quarantine anyone and everyone regardless of known risk was a huge distraction, and also caused huge disruption in schooling and enterprise.
To fix it meant changing the CDC guidelines. Atlas’s story of attempting to do that is eye-opening. He wrestled with every manner of bureaucrat and managed to get new guidelines written, only to find that they had been mysteriously reverted to the old guidelines one week later. He caught the “error” and insisted that his version prevail. Once they were issued by the CDC, the national press was all over it, with the story that the White House was pressuring the scientists at the CDC in terrible ways. After a week-long media storm, the guidelines changed yet again. All of Atlas’s work was made null.
Talk about discouraging! It was also Atlas’s first full experience in dealing with deep-state machinations. It was this way throughout the lockdown period, a machinery in place to implement, encourage, and enforce endless restrictions but no one person in particular was there to take responsibility for the policies or the outcomes, even as the ostensible head of state (Trump) was on record both publicly and privately opposing the policies that no one could seem to stop.
As an example of this, Atlas tells the story of bringing some massively important scientists to the White House to speak with Trump: Martin Kulldorff, Jay Bhattacharya, Joseph Ladapo, and Cody Meissner. People around the president thought the idea was great. But somehow the meeting kept being delayed. Again and again. When it finally went ahead, the schedulers only allowed for 5 minutes. But once they met with Trump himself, the president had other ideas and prolonged the meeting for an hour and a half, asking the scientists all kinds of questions about viruses, policy, the initial lockdowns, the risks to individuals, and so on.
The president was so impressed with their views and knowledge – what a dramatic change that must have been for him – that he invited filming to be done plus pictures to be taken. He wanted to make it a big public splash. It never happened. Literally. White House press somehow got the message that this meeting never happened. The first anyone will have known about it other than White House employees is from Atlas’s book.
Two months later, Atlas was instrumental in bringing in not only two of those scientists but also the famed Sunetra Gupta of Oxford. They met with the HHS secretary but this meeting too was buried in the press. No dissent was allowed. The bureaucrats were in charge, regardless of the wishes of the president.
Another case in point was during Trump’s own bout with Covid in early October. Atlas was nearly sure that he would be fine but he was forbidden from talking to the press. The entire White House communications office was frozen for four days, with no one speaking to the press. This was against Trump’s own wishes. This left the media to speculate that he was on his deathbed, so when he came back to the White House and announced that Covid is not to be feared, it was a shock to the nation. From my own point of view, this was truly Trump’s finest moment. To learn of the internal machinations happening behind the scenes is pretty shocking.
I can’t possibly cover the wealth of material in this book, and I expect this brief review to be one of several that I write. I do have a few disagreements. First, I think the author is too uncritical toward Operation Warp Speed and doesn’t really address how the vaccines were wildly oversold, to say nothing of growing concerns about safety, which were not addressed in the trials. Second, he seems to approve of Trump’s March 12th travel restrictions, which struck me as brutal and pointless, and the real beginning of the unfolding disaster. Third, Atlas inadvertently seems to perpetuate the distortion that Trump recommended ingesting bleach during a press conference. I know that this was all over the papers. But I’ve read the transcript of that press conference several times and find nothing like this. Trump actually makes clear that he was speaking about cleaning surfaces. This might be yet another case of outright media lies.
All that aside, this book reveals everything about the insanity of 2020 and 2021, years in which good sense, good science, historical precedent, human rights, and concerns for human liberty were all thrown into the trash, not just in the US but all over the world.
Atlas summarizes the big picture:
“in considering all the surprising events that unfolded in this past year, two in particular stand out. I have been shocked at the enormous power of government officials to unilaterally decree a sudden and severe shutdown of society—to simply close businesses and schools by edict, restrict personal movements, mandate behavior, regulate interactions with our family members, and eliminate our most basic freedoms, without any defined end and with little accountability.”
Atlas is correct that “the management of this pandemic has left a stain on many of America’s once noble institutions, including our elite universities, research institutes and journals, and public health agencies. Earning it back will not be easy.”
Internationally, we have Sweden as an example of a country that (mostly) kept its sanity. Domestically, we have South Dakota as an example of a place that stayed open, preserving freedom throughout. And thanks in large part to Atlas’s behind-the-scenes work, we have the example of Florida, whose governor did care about the actual science and ended up preserving freedom in the state even as the elderly population there experienced the greatest possible protection from the virus.
We all owe Atlas an enormous debt of gratitude, for it was he who persuaded the Florida governor to choose the path of focussed protection as advocated by the Great Barrington Declaration, which Atlas cites as the “single document that will go down as one of the most important publications in the pandemic, as it lent undeniable credibility to focused protection and provided courage to thousands of additional medical scientists and public health leaders to come forward.”
Atlas experienced the slings, arrows, and worse. The media and the bureaucrats tried to shut him up, shut him down, and body bag him professionally and personally. Cancelled, meaning removed from the roster of functional, dignified human beings. Even colleagues at Stanford University joined in the lynch mob, much to their disgrace. And yet this book is that of a man who has prevailed against them.
In that sense, this book is easily the most crucial first-person account we have so far. It is gripping, revealing, devastating for the lockdowners and their vaccine-mandating successors, and a true classic that will stand the test of time. It’s simply not possible to write the history of this disaster without a close examination of this erudite first-hand account.
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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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While in a nation that borders both Belarus and Russia, Stoltenberg twice mentions NATO’s Article 5 in his brief remarks and responses to questions by journalists.
As can be seen below he also:
Commends NATO battle groups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, all of which border Russian territory and three of which also border Belarus, and visits the NATO battle groups commanded by Canada and the U.S.
Repeatedly stresses the unity of NATO and the European Union in the conflicts with Belarus and Russia
When asked about NATO’s Nuclear Posture Review, he confirms that the U.S. “states that they will maintain this high level of US presence in Europe, and actually also some elements of further increase”
Accuses Russia of a major military buildup near Ukraine, promising more assistance to the latter and apostrophizing Russia in the imperative mood (Russia needs to, they need to)
Denounces Belarus for a litany of crimes, internal and as affect NATO’s Eastern Flank
Threatens the Republika Srpska, reminding it that NATO has troops in Bosnia and Kosovo
Applauds the decision by the new U.S. administration and its allies in Congress to effect the “lifting, removing the ceiling of the number of troops posted in Germany, and also actually establishing a new command in Germany”
Emphasizes around-the-clock NATO air patrols over the Baltic and Black Seas (which frequently include U.S. strategic, nuclear-capable B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers)
Lauds the fact that NATO has tripled its Response Force to 40,000 troops
It is great to be back in Riga, back in Latvia.
Latvia is a very staunch and committed NATO Ally.
It is great to be here at the Foreign Ministers Meeting that starts today and that will take place today and tomorrow.
The foreign ministers have a very full agenda.
They will address a wide range of different issues.
In particular the situation in and around Ukraine.
We see Russian military build-up, we see heavy armour, we see drones, and combat ready troops.
And we call on Russia to be transparent because this is unprovoked and unexplained.
So therefore, Russia needs to be transparent, and they need to reduce tensions, and de-escalate.
We will also of course address the situation on the border with Belarus, where we see the Lukashenko regime using vulnerable people to put pressure on neighbouring countries.
We stand in solidarity with all Allies affected.
And we also work very closely with the European Union.
Because neither the European Union nor NATO has all the tools in the toolbox.
But together we can provide a strong response to what we see.
And it was a great pleasure and a demonstration of this unity, NATO-EU, when I travelled together with the President of the European Commission to the region, to Lithuania and Latvia, on Sunday.
And it demonstrates that the two organisations stand together in solidarity with the Allies and the member states of the EU affected.
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Thomas Gutschker (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung):
Secretary General, the US has just concluded its Nuclear Posture Review. How do you assess that? Would you expect reinforcement at the Eastern Flank? Secretary Blinken has somewhat risen the expectations on that in a press conference he gave earlier today.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General:
So what we see is continued US commitment to European security. Over the last years the United States has increased their military presence in Europe with more troops, more preposition equipment, more exercises.
And just in this region, we have a US battlegroup in Poland, we have a new armoured brigade.
And the Posture Review, which has now been published, states that they will maintain this high level of US presence in Europe, and actually also some elements of further increase.
I welcome the strong commitment by the United States to European security, not only words but also in deeds.
And this is then confirmed in this posture review, including by lifting, removing the ceiling of the number of troops posted in Germany, and also actually establishing new command in Germany.
All of this fits into the broader picture of a strong US commitment, also with increased presence in Europe.
Teri Schultz (Deutsche Welle):
Hi. Mr. Secretary General, you continue saying that Russia will face costs and consequences if the aggression goes further. Without knowing yet what Allies might ask for, – I know what’s under discussion here today-, what could NATO provide?
We’ve seen condemnation, we have the eFP [enhanced Forward Presence], we have the, you know, very high readiness force. What could you offer if they asked for more reassurance?
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General:
NATO is here to defend and protect all Allies against any threat.
And we demonstrate that commitment also by the presence of NATO troops and forces on Allied territory with the four battle groups in the Baltic countries.
I visited the battlegroup yesterday led by Canada. And then the battlegroup in Poland. And also with air policing, and also naval presence both in the Black Sea and in the Baltic Sea.
And then we can also quickly reinforce if needed. We have tripled the size of the NATO Response Force over the last years to around 40,000 troops.
And all of this demonstrates our ability to defend all Allies against any threat.
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It was actually the increased presence of NATO troops in this Eastern part of the Alliance, in the Black Sea region, and in the Baltic region was triggered by Russia’s use of force against Ukraine back in 2014, with the illegal annexation of Crimea, and with the continued destabilization of Donbas, Eastern Ukraine….
I think it is important to distinguish between NATO Allies and partner Ukraine. NATO Allies, there we provide [Article 5] guarantees, collective defence guarantees, and we will defend and protect all Allies.
Ukraine is a partner, a highly valued partner. We provide support, political, practical support. Allies provide training, capacity building, equipment and I am absolutely certain that Allies will recommit and reconfirm their strong support to Ukraine also during the meeting today.
But as I said there’s a difference between a partner Ukraine and an Ally like for instance Latvia.
Nadina Maličbegović (Al Jazeera Balkans):
Mr. Secretary General, if I may ask you about the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. What can we expect? You know about the separatists rhetoric which is coming from Republika Srpska on one side. On the other side, we know that withdrawal from the armed forces couldn’t be without war. The situation is very tense. Okay, for NATO, what would be the red line? I mean, what should happen for you to intervene in that case? Because we are not a member state.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General:
…We have a significant presence in Kosovo with the KFOR and also in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Of course, we are concerned about the increased tensions we see. Therefore we welcome that NATO and the European Union are working very closely together in the region, both in Kosovo but also in Bosnia Herzegovina. Our concern in Bosnia Herzegovina is of course, any attempt to undermine the multi ethnic institutions and especially the armed forces….NATO has been important in helping to build the armed forces of Bosnia Herzegovina into a strong multi ethnic institution. Therefore we are concerned about the inflammatory rhetoric of Mr. Dodik and the Republika Srpska, we continue to support all efforts to reduce tensions and to continue to provide support, capacity building for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Aliaksandr Papko (Belsat TV):
Dear Secretary General, Aliaksandr Papko, Belsat TV. Yesterday, Alexander Lukashenko said – I will quote that: “Belarusian army is ready to react at any NATO movement” and if the West start the war in Ukraine he will support Russia. So, today we’ll discuss Belarus. Probably this migration crisis is not the first hybrid attack Lukashenko regime will inflict on the EU. So what message would you deliver to Mr. Lukashenko today? What will be your response to any new hybrid attack and what message will you deliver to Belarusian people, which is largely opposed to Lukashenko regime? Thank you.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General:
Mr. Lukashenko should stop using vulnerable people as pawns in a political game….And that is the clear message from all NATO allies, from both President von der Leyen and me when we visited Lithuania and Latvia on Sunday. And NATO has also provided some support to Lithuania that was directly affected by this a few weeks ago, and also we have been in contact with some partner nations, nations of origin for the migrants and also some other nations to prevent them from becoming transit nations to help to reduce the pressure when it comes to the number of migrants coming to Minsk and to the border of Belarus. Mr. Lukashenko should stop cracking down on peaceful protests in Belarus and release all political prisoners and allow democratic processes and respected democratic rights of the people of Belarus to decide their own future….NATO’s presence in this region…was triggered by the aggressive actions of Russia back in 2014….And as I have stated several times now, there will be a high price to pay for Russia, if they once again use force against the independence sovereign nation, Ukraine. We have demonstrated our ability to impose costs, economic, political actions. And also, over the years also increased our military presence in this region, just to make sure that all allies are totally defended and protected against any Russian aggressive actions.
Julia Rech (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen):
What is this high price you’re talking about? What exactly is that high price and do you exclude the military intervention there?
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General:
So we have different options and we have demonstrated over the years in reactions to Russia’s previous use of military force against Ukraine that we can sustain heavy economic and financial sanctions, political sanctions. And also the fact that we have increased our presence there in the region, both in the Black Sea region but also in the Baltic region, in the air, on land and at sea…. Again, I think we need to understand the difference between a NATO Ally, Latvia, other Baltic countries, Poland, Romania, and a close and highly valued partner, Ukraine. We provide support to Ukraine, we help Allies provide training, capacity, equipment. For the NATO Allies, we have the security guarantees, Article 5 and we have the military presence to remove any room for miscalculation, about our ability to defend and protect all Allies.
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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.
Comments Off on On Doorstep of Belarus, Russia: NATO Chief Speaks of Article 5, Nuclear Policy, Military Buildup Along Eastern Flank, Three Potential Casus Belli
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The Greek government announced one of the world’s most radical COVID vaccine mandates on Tuesday, declaring that all people over age 60 must get the vaccine in less than two months or face fines.
Anyone over 60 years old who does not get the first shot by January 16 will face a monthly fine of 100 euros (around $112), according to the Greek Reporter. The money from the unvaccinated will reportedly be distributed to Greek hospitals.
The move makes Greece the second country in Europe, following Austria, to impose a blanket vaccination mandate for citizens.
Around 61 percent of the Greek population is “fully vaccinated,” and more than 500,000 people older than 60 continue to refuse the experimental COVID-19 jab, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement Tuesday.
Mitsotakis described his extreme new mandate as “an act of justice for the vaccinated” and a “health fee.”
“Unfortunately, of the 580,000 unvaccinated of our fellow citizens over the age of 60, only 60,000 set up appointments to get vaccinated in November,” Mitsotakis said. “Those over 60 who have not been vaccinated will have to make an appointment by January 16, otherwise a fine of 100 euros will be imposed,” he added.
The prime minister also said that the omicron variant “is a concern for us and means we must be vigilant.”
Greece's Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, pictured with "The Great Reset" book by WEF's Klaus Schwab pic.twitter.com/4UIx6m2mhS
Earlier this month, Greece mandated proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to access a wide range of businesses and public services, including banks and shops. Mitsotakis’s government additionally unveiled twice weekly testing rules for all unvaccinated public and private workers.
The country’s notably harsh COVID-19 regime has repeatedly sparked intense protests.
Incredible! A literal human tide makes waves on a Monday in #Athens, #Greece against draconian vaccine mandates and passports.
The government has recently doubled down on the "pandemic of the unvaccinated" narrative and banned those that do not comply from all enclosed venues. pic.twitter.com/QFUm8FnuPJ
Mitsotakis’s “health fee” also comes amid an ongoing economic slump in the southern European country. The average Greek pension is roughly 730 euros per month, according to The Independent.
“People may not have enough to eat. How will they pay? Some could be sick, some could not be able to pay, some this, some that,” one retiree who cannot get jabbed due to health problems told the outlet. “It is not a correct decision.”
Despite Greece’s vaccine rollout, previous vaccination mandates, and strict public limitations, the nation has reported a record spike in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks. Greece has a COVID case fatality rate of just 1.9 percent, according to Johns Hopkins University. 18,067 of the nearly 1 million Greeks who have contracted the virus have died of it, as of Tuesday.
Greece uses the Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, Janssen, and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines, all of which have significant connections to abortion and documented links to serious side effects. Millions of adverse reactions and tens of thousands of deaths potentially connected to COVID vaccination have been reported to the EU’s drug reaction database.
Though Europe has among the highest rates of “full vaccination,” many highly-vaccinated European countries have seen a historic surge in infections and a wave of breakthrough cases, which have dominated recent COVID deaths in multiple countries, including the U.K. and Sweden.
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Featured image: Greece Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (Source: Shutterstock)
December 1st, 2021 by The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
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The latest assessment of the status of all the UK’s 245 regularly-occurring bird species – Birds of Conservation Concern 5 – shows that 70 species are now of ‘highest conservation concern’ and have been placed on the assessment’s Red List. The newly revised UK Red List now includes familiar Welsh avian species, such as the swift, house martin and greenfinch that have been added for the first time.
The report placed 70 species on the Red list, 103 on the Amber list and 72 on the Green list. Worryingly, the Red List now accounts for more than one-quarter (29%) of the UK species, more than ever before. Most of the species were placed on the Red List because of their severe declines, having halved in numbers or range in the UK in recent decades. Others remain well below historical levels or are considered under threat of global extinction.
Birds of Conservation Concern 5 is a report compiled by a coalition of the UK’s leading bird conservation and monitoring organisations reviewing the status of all regularly occurring birds in the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. Each species was assessed against a set of standardised criteria and placed on either the Green, Amber or Red List – indicating an increasing level of conservation concern.
Swift has moved from the Amber to the Red List owing to an alarming decrease in population size, with a decrease of 72% seen in Wales between 1995 – 2018. This is higher than the UK average and sees Wales have the highest decline across the UK. These join other well-known birds, such as the cuckoo and wood warbler, already on the Red list, which migrate between the UK and sub-Saharan Africa each year. Work to address their declines must focus on both their breeding grounds here and throughout the rest of their migratory journey, which requires international cooperation and support.
The familiar garden bird, the greenfinch has moved directly from the Green to the Red List after a population crash (71% in Wales since 1995) caused by a severe outbreak of the disease trichomonosis. This infection is spread through contaminated food and drinking water, or by birds feeding one another with regurgitated food during the breeding season. Garden owners can help slow transmission rates by temporarily stopping the provision of food if ill birds are seen and making sure that garden bird feeders are cleaned regularly.
Previous Birds of Conservation Concern reports have highlighted the plight of farmland, woodland and upland birds. This report adds more farmland and upland species to the Red list. Fifty-nine species of bird remain on the Red list from previous assessments; many of these, such as starling, curlew and turtle dove, are continuing to decline. The current rate of decline in curlews in Wales, thanks to work carried out by BTO Cymru, suggests that the species could be extinct as a breeding bird within the next 12 years. It is now considered as one of the most pressing bird conservation priorities in Wales. Habitat loss and unfavourable habitat management are some of the reasons behind the decline. It has led to a decline of almost 70% in numbers since 1995 and its range has contracted by half.
As outlined in the 2019 State of Nature report, our bird populations face many pressures both here and abroad. These include changes in the way land is managed (particularly farmland which makes up 80% of Wales’ land area), climate change, urbanisation, invasive non-native species and pollution.
The report also raises concerns over the status of wintering bird populations, with species such as Bewick’s swan joining the red list. With the European climate warming, some birds that breed in the Arctic are ‘short-stopping’ in eastern Europe rather than flying to Britain.
Rook is another important species to Wales that’s moving from the Green list to Amber list. It has been placed on the amber list because it is now being classed as vulnerable to extinction at a European scale. Over 20% of the European population of rooks breed in the UK, and in Wales numbers declined by 58% between 1995 and 2018. Another bird moving high up on the amber list is wheatear. Numbers of the upland songbird are plummeting, triggering a need to understand the cause of their decline.
Julian Hughes, RSPB Cymru Head of Species, said:
Seeing an increase in the number of species on the red list is once again worrying. This new assessment shows that we are losing many of Wales’s most well-loved and familiar bird species, underlining the seriousness of the nature emergency we face. Wales is already one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and we need urgent action to turn this around, including strong legally-binding targets to halt and recover the loss of nature, and a Sustainable Farming Scheme that supports nature-friendly farming. The rapid decline of species such as rook and wheatear is alarming and needs to be addressed urgently.
Kelvin Jones, Development Coordinator, BTO Cymru:
“It is very worrying to see the growing Red List reflecting ongoing declines in Wales’ birds. However, we are working to turn things around. Our research tracking Curlew breeding in North Wales, for example, should help pinpoint where conservation action is needed to help save this iconic species. It is largely thanks to volunteers taking part in BTO schemes and surveys that we have such a good understanding of the population trends of birds in Wales, and we are grateful to each and every person who gives us their time to help monitor our bird life.”
Patrick Lindley, Senior Ornithologist, Natural Resources Wales, said:
“In response to the nature crisis, the 5th assessment of UK birds presents a snapshot of the ‘health’ of our birds within the UK. The problems that confront UK birds, whether they are breeding or non-breeding populations, are problems that confront entire ecosystems. It is vital that we ensure resilient ecological networks across Wales are the ‘beating heart’ of nature conservation.
“For some species, the UK report highlights optimism, with two familiar Welsh species of woodland birds (pied flycatcher and song thrush) moving from the Red list to Amber list. However, other species are faring badly. The curlew is now considered to be the most pressing bird conservation priority in Wales and the UK and the time for effective action is fast running out. It is increasingly recognised that our natural environments are important not only to their biodiversity, but also for the multiple benefits that nature brings to people. The challenge to us all is to communicate these wider benefits across all of our society to help contribute to reversing these declines.”
The changing lists
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Fire it burns in your soul, Fire it lights up your heart,
You oppressed all over the world, Something is calling move on,
Here and now in your own land, Here and now justice to demand,
The fire, the water, the burning desire, For a world that meets the needs and rights of all – stand tall,
This old world has to go, Like the kings who hoarded the gold,
It’s the few who rule over the whole, It’s the whole to rule over the new,
Here and now in your own land, Here and now justice to demand,
The fire, the water, the burning desire, For a world that meets the needs and rights of all – stand tall,
Love it fills up your soul, Love it lifts up your heart,
Not of one, of a few – but for all, This Humanity breaking down walls,
Here and now in your own land, Here and now justice to demand,
The fire, the water, the burning desire, For a world that meets the needs and rights of all – Move On!
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This is an article version of a class Cynthia Chung gave for the symposium “The Earth Next 100 Years” which can be viewed here.
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This might seem like a rather ignorant or simplistic question to some. Many will think the answer rather obvious, that the Limit to Growth is determined by limited resources, of course!
However, it turns out this answer is not so simple when we start to ask ourselves some basic follow-up questions. For instance, what determines the limit to a resource? Is a specific resource something that is fixed in its amount, in its availability on Earth that remains unchanged for all time?
That is, can a resource only be used up or can it also be reproduced, regenerated?
Obviously, if a resource can be regenerated, then the “limit” to that specific resource will be determined by the rate it is used vs. the rate it is able to be replenished.
Click below to access video (available)
All resources that are essential to life, including human life, are naturally renewable. There is a natural cycle that causes these resources to be regenerated, this includes the natural cycles of water, oxygen, vegetation (including food) and so forth. Thus, everything that is essential for life is already naturally renewable on Earth.
The concern is thus, that we are using these resources too quickly with the rate of human population growth, such that these renewable resources will become scarce, causing us to reach a point where the collapse of civilization and rapid depopulation will be inevitable due to extreme scarcity in these essential resources. Not to mention the effects this will have on other life forms on Earth.
This point of catastrophe is calculated as the point when the human population will exceed its carrying capacity. However, what determines the carrying capacity?
Thomas Malthus himself, who was the one to create the Malthusian growth model, never actually specified an exact number for when the human population would hit its carrying capacity. This was because it was understood that the carrying capacity is not something fixed but could be increased or decreased depending on human-made innovations, such as agriculture. Thomas Malthus did however, make the prophecy that we would hit our carrying capacity by 1890, about 100 years from the time he made the prediction, which needless to say was very much off the mark.
[It should be noted that Malthus was fully convinced that his prophecy was accurate and that the only way to avoid such a catastrophe was to severely curb the growth of the human population immediately. This included the denial of medical care and food to the needy since it was thought by the followers of Malthus, that the postponement of their death would only use up further resources without any contribution to society. Sounds a little familiar doesn’t it?]
The reason why Malthus was so far off the mark was because such a point in the future concerning the human carrying capacity, cannot be determined by a linear extrapolation. This is because as already mentioned, human innovations change our relationship to the resources we use in a qualitative manner and not just a quantitative manner. Qualitative change has always been the mathematician’s nightmare in producing models that will supposedly predict trends in the future. How can a mathematical model predict all qualitative change that will happen in the future, is it even possible? (For more on this refer to my paper “The Curse of Game Theory: Why it is in Your Self-Interest to Exit the Rules of the Game“).
This is something really important to keep in mind. There is no specific agreed upon number that when the human population reaches x this will be our carrying capacity. Such a number can only be fixed if we were to have absolutely no change in our societies alongside a growing population.
But we do have change, and that is everything.
Human innovations have so far, and continue, to not only increase the quantity of resources produced, but we have also made qualitative changes such as increasing diversity and efficiency in the biosphere itself. For instance, much of the basic foods we eat today, were created through human-made innovations, such as corn, apple, watermelon, banana etc.
Even livestock did not exist in the form they do today if it had not been for human-made innovations. These innovations go back centuries, well before we knew anything about the genetic domain. The ability to not only grow our own food but to increase its efficiency in nutrition is a very important ability that has allowed for the sustaining of more people on Earth.
There is also the concern over limited space. We have a finite amount of space on Earth, this is true, and thus there is only so much space to support a decent standard of living, and in harmony with other life forms on Earth. Many think we are fast approaching the dystopic visions that have been heavily pumped into our stream of consciousness, such as these.
Picture to the right is of what a future apartment is thought to look like in the dystopic futuristic vision of the movie “Fifth Element.”
Isn’t this inevitable? After all there is only so much room, and the poor will only be able to afford the smallest living spaces as land becomes an increasingly scarce resource. Not to mention, how will this affect our capability to grow food if space becomes severely limited? Can any kind of ecosystem or habitat coexist with us at that point?
This will be difficult for many to wrap their heads around, since not only are such dystopic predictions everywhere but also, there is a very real problem with how some modern cities are choosing to build themselves.
Let us first deal with the question of how much space we currently have, and then move onto this question of how cities should choose to organize themselves such that standard of living can actually increase with population growth rather than decrease.
Computer graphic of the entire human population if it were dumped into the Grand Canyon. Made by Vsauce, from his video “How Many Things Are There?“
Here is a rather extreme example, but I think it communicates the point effectively in terms of the sheer mass of the entire human population in context to the size of the world. If we were to amass the entire world population, it would not even come close to filling up the Grand Canyon. We could pile everyone into one big pile into the Grand Canyon which would look like the picture above.
Here is a more humane example, where we can fit the entire human population (at 7.4 billion) all into one-story townhouses back to back into just the state of Texas, we wouldn’t even need to build two-story townhouses. So, we are nowhere near running out of actual space presently and it won’t be until much much further in the future that such a thing would start to become a concern, and by then, who knows what kind of capabilities we will have. Suffice to say, it is not a crisis now, and won’t be for hundreds of years if ever.
Another concern is will we run out of space for food production?
According to the USDA Economic Research Service on international agricultural productivity, the world is increasing its rate of food productivity in relation to the rate of human population growth (see graph below). And according to Our World in Data, the amount of space required to grow our food is decreasing, due to increased efficiency (see graph below).
Looking at the USDA graph we can see, that in comparison to the population growth between 1960, 1980, 2000 and today, our rate of food production has been increasing.
Thus, not only do we have more than plenty of space to fit the human population on Earth, but we also find that world food production is increasing, in relation to population growth, and the amount of space required to produce this food has decreased.
So we are presently nowhere near hitting our carrying capacity.
What we are seeing presently are a lack of essential resources such as food and water in localised regions. There is not a shortage of food production occurring, we are and do have the capability of producing enough food for the entire world population. The reason why certain areas are suffering from critical shortages are due to political and economic reasons, which I will get a little into later on.
In terms of the argument for overcrowding in certain cities of the world, as you can see above, India, eastern Asia (primarily China) and also Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa are among the most densely populated areas in the world.
The common conception is that if you have that sort of population density, you have no choice but to have overcrowding in your cities. However, as we saw with the previous example, if we can fit the world population into Texas with a townhouse each, then the top countries in population size are not really overcrowded. The issue is more so, especially in the areas of Africa and India, a question of living standard. It is also a question of how cities with large populations are organized.
Shanghai
Shanghai is the most populated city in China, with a population close in size to the entirety of Canada, it is about a third the size of the entire population of UK. With such a population density many in the West, who are not used to such things, think the living standard must be a lot lower.
Century Park, the largest park in Shanghai at 346 acres.
However, what we would see if we actually visited Shanghai, is that it is actually quite a nice city. Above is a picture of Century Park, one of the many parks in Shanghai.
Let us look at another example.
Beijing
Beijing is the capital of China, and also holds quite a large population density.
Chaoyang park
Above are the plans for the renovation of Chaoyang park, which already exists, but to which the Chinese government wants to beautify further and add more trees and so forth. To the left we can see the plan they have to incorporate more trees in between buildings and along the streets.
China, actually, takes it very seriously to have a balance between their rapid city growth and the need to include parks and trees so that there is also a connection to nature. If you have ever been to China, this is one thing that immediately stands out.
Many of these parks are not the average run of the mill either. They are made following the philosophy of feng shui which includes the idea that a park should invoke deeper reflection and a profound connection to Nature.
Nanjing is a good example of a city in China that is full of very thought-through and beautiful parks.
Parks in Nanjing
In comparison, let us look at what the population density for Canada looks like.
Needless to say, we are nowhere near “running out of space” for people. And China has shown that cities can still be beautiful with an increasing living standard alongside a high population density.
2019 NASA study demonstrating a vast increase of biomass on earth due primarily to human activity from India and China
In addition, we see that countries such as China and India with among the highest population densities, also are among the greenest regions on Earth. This has largely been due to China and India’s decision to implement man-made forests. This was done to address pollution problems, since trees are excellent air purifiers. They also happen to be great consumers of C02. Large regions of greenery also make for excellent temperature control, much of these areas were previously desert. By invoking better temperature control, we also decrease the occurrence of extreme weather phenomena (for more on this refer to another lecture of mine). This also shows that large ecosystems can thrive in regions with high population densities.
Another fear that is often heard is that drinkable water will become a scarce resource which will cause us to have water wars in the future.
Post-apocalyptic vision portrayed in the recent Mad Max film
This is again, a situation where if we chose to do absolutely nothing and make no changes or innovations then this would be a possibility, just like with any resource.
Presently there is over 16 million square km in area that make up the world desert. About 2/3 of the world is desert, with the Sahara making up 9.2 million square km of this area (though as we saw with the previous NASA world map, the earth is greener than it was 20 years ago and continues in this direction thanks to man-made forests).
Planting green vegetation is an excellent way to keep water inland and not lose it to the oceans. It is also, as already mentioned, excellent at regulating global temperature and for temperature control reducing extreme fluctuations in climate. For example, the Sahara desert is responsible for a lot of the hurricane activity that hits the eastern coast of the United States. This is due to the rapid temperature change from very hot to very cool that air currents experience when traveling over the Sahara followed by the Atlantic Ocean.
Not only is 2/3 of the world desert, but grassland regions are presently experiencing desertification, and are a major cause in water and food shortage in those localized regions. In addition there is a lack of clean water leading to further sickness and disease.
Allan Savory is someone who has talked extensively about a rather simple and cost effective solution to this problem (his Ted Talk presentation can be viewed here). His technique (which is actually just the return to an age old practice) has shown great success in former desert regions of Africa, the United States and Mexico.
Comparison of two nearby regions in Zimbabwe on the same day, one to the right managed by Allan Savory’s holistic management.
Comparison of continuous herd grazing to the left vs. returning to herding style management to the right in Arizona, United States
Before and After picture of same land region in Mexico after decades of using Allan Savory’s approach.
This was accomplished by Allan Savory and his team by using rotation of herd grazing in order to stimulate plant growth. This allowed for old plant life (that acts sort of like necrotic tissue) to be trampled on by the passing herd such that the soil can breathe more easily and is at the same time fertilized by manure. For more on the details of this refer to his lecture.
Another exciting prospect for the future is weather control, through the controlled ionization of river systems in the sky!
Atmospheric ionization systems have been successfully used to increase precipitation, and effect associated weather processes. This has been done in multiple locations around the world, cumulatively for three decades. With further development of these technologies, droughts around the world could be overcome in a completely new way: by the management of the water resources of the sky!
It has been reported in multiple studies that periods of low solar activity, and high galactic influence (that is cosmic rays) affect the amount of rainfall and also the amount of glaciation formation.
When we are in different galactic environments we see changes in our climate system. We also experience temperature change depending on whether we are moving above or below the galactic plane, as pictured below. Thus, through observations of many studies, we are finding that galactic processes dictate how climate and weather are expressed on Earth.
A study by Pérez & Peraza found that modulation of fluxes of galactic cosmic rays could also be the cause of Earth’s periods of ice ages. And that it could be connected with movement of our Solar System within the arms of our spiral galaxy as depicted in the above picture. They hypothesized that when the Solar System is inside the arms, there is more dust, so there is less flux of the galactic cosmic rays. And between the arms, we have the larger fluxes of the galactic cosmic rays. And these periods coincide, temporally, with periods of increased and decreased temperature of our planet.
Rainfall was produced in Mexico by using an iron mast that is connected by thin wires to peripheral towers. If for example, you put positive potential on this installation, the positive ions will be moved by the electric field up to the upper layers; and moving to the upper layers, they gain more and more water molecules and become nuclei to form clouds.
If you put your installation near the seashore—you can collect the humidity and then transport it, because you can put the different potentials (one positive the other negative) between two installations. This creates movement of the air, which is filled by these nuclei for the formation of clouds inland.
This thus helps to move air filled with humidity inland for cloud formation and rainfall further inland.
Sergey Pulinets has had impressive results using this process, and was able to fill up three dams in Mexico using this technology after one and a half years. They were even able to fight off forest fires in the Yucatan Peninsula, creating artificial rain using this technology, which yielded about 20-30% increase in precipitation.
What this technology has shown us is that we live in a constant electric field which exists between the ionosphere and the ground; the potential difference between the ionosphere and the ground which is the source for much weather formation, including cloud formation and thunderstorms as well as other weather phenomena.
The above picture looks like something out of a sci fi movie, but in fact, is a rather natural occurrence. These phenomena are referred to as Sprites or Red Sprites which are large-scale electric discharges that occur high above thunderstorm clouds, giving rise to a quite varied range of visual shapes flickering in the night sky. They are usually triggered by the discharges of positive lightning between an underlying thundercloud and the ground.
Thus Pulinets makes the point, their ionization technology uses everything that is given to us by nature, helping a little bit with this ionization to create additional centers of nucleation.
We have found through studies that the Sun, as well as high-energy radiation (such as cosmic rays) from the galaxy, are actually a constant input shaping the environment of the atmosphere, affecting climate, weather and how water moves through the water cycle.
Thus Pulinets’ ionization technology, is actually acting in a very similar fashion to the ionizing effects of the galaxy.
That is, both the sun and galactic cosmic rays (which have much higher energy) are the only known sources of ionization. This is the source of the Northern Lights. They excite the molecules, and atoms. In the case of the Northern Lights, its is oxygen and nitrogen particles that are excited, which cause us to see the green and red lines of the polar lights.
As we gain a better understanding of our galactic processes, we will also gain further understanding and control on how to control weather formation. In the future this will likely be the cheapest and easiest way to green deserts.
C02 Generators
C02 generators are forms of technology used today to grow vegetation in greenhouses and show much promise in their use for space travel, they can pump up to 1500 parts per million of C02 and the average C02 in the earth’s atmosphere is 400 parts per million.
C02 generators offer a lot of promise in producing yield in typically uninhabitable regions such as Antarctica or in space such as on the Moon or Mars.
So, where did the domineering concept of “Limits to Growth” that still penetrates the consciousness of present day policies come from?
In 1968, the Club of Rome, a think tank of an elite membership, was founded to address the problems of mankind. It was concluded in their extremely influential book titled “The Limits to Growth,” published in 1972, that such problems could not be solved on their own terms and that all were interrelated. It should also be made known to the reader that the Club of Rome was involved at nearly the inception of the World Economic Forum (WEF). It was clear that the conclusions found by the Club of Rome were meant to dictate policy amongst the global elite through the WEF venue.
Rather timely (or perhaps conveniently), one year after the publication of “The Limits to Growth,” in 1973, Australia’s largest computer made shockwaves predicting future trends such as pollution levels, population growth, availability of natural resources and quality of life on earth. ABC’s This Day Tonight aired the story on 9 November, 1973, which can be viewed below.
As the heading above summarizes, this super computer apparently predicted when the end of civilization would occur. Depending on the parameters it was given (it is after all only a computer), the year as to which civilization would end would change, but one thing was consistent, that no matter what year, civilization was most definitely on a course to its doom.
Let us look at a few of these predictions shall we?
Here is a rather simple example of a prediction in chromium availability that was made by this super computer in Australia. If we look at the chart on the left, we see that according to the computer, the reserves of chromium will decrease as usage rates increase such that approximately 50 years into the future (pretty much where we are today in 2021) we should see a spike in actual cost of chromium. This spike in cost will decrease usage rates until no one can any longer afford to pay for the cost of chromium as its reserve levels reach a low.
However, if we look at the chart to the right (that was updated, by Jason Ross with the Schiller Institute, to what has actually occurred up to present day), we see that the reserves of chromium were decreasing up till the mid 1970s but then increased drastically to a much higher level. This in turn has affected the usage rates of chromium such that they are so high they cannot be shown on the graph, and are about 2.5 charts higher.
Suffice to say this super computer prediction of future trends for just ONE resource, chromium, was way WAY off!
With this in mind, let us look at some of the more general and much more complex predictions this super computer made for us.
Here we see four different parameters given to the super computer. Figure 35 shows the standard prediction of what the resource availability was in 1973. The next graph, figure 36, accounts for if these reserves were actually double what we assume them to be (this is key here since it acknowledges that such a thing is not really known but rather estimated). Figure 39 accounts for if resources were unlimited with pollution control. And figure 42 accounts for if resources were unlimited with pollution controls, increased food production and “perfect” birth control.
In each of the four scenarios, the doom of human civilization occurred during a different decade, but all occurred before the year 2100.
In the case of the first scenario, resources would be depleted to such a point that it would cause the plummet of food production and industrial growth, population growth would continue to increase until it was completely unsustainable and then it would collapse with nothing to fall back on. In the second scenario, with double the resources, pollution would increase to such a point that it would eventually lead to the death of the human population. In the third scenario, with unlimited resources and pollution controls, there would be a shortage of food unable to sustain the growing human population. In the fourth scenario, with unlimited resources, pollution controls, increased food production and “perfect” birth control, it appears industrial growth has caused an increase in pollution despite the pollution controls, which in turn causes food production levels to drop which causes the human population to collapse?
So it appears the moral of the lesson is that if we do not curb our industrial growth, no matter what sort of controls or increase in resources we gain, we will be headed for a collapse point in the somewhat near future.
The highly problematic chromium prediction made by this super computer is a very good indication of why these predictions are not, and will not be accurate for anything that occurs in the future. The reason for this being, that they cannot account for any sort of change, most importantly qualitative change.
We should also not be naïve that such a policy outlook is not wholly separated from the realm of politics.
In 1991, Club of Rome co-founder Sir Alexander King stated in the “The First Global Revolution” (an assessment of the first 30 years of the Club of Rome) that:
“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.” [emphasis added]
This is the moral of the lesson that is very clearly being enforced today, that the real enemy is humanity itself, where we are told to see ourselves only as akin to a virus which consumes its host Earth.
But what if our character does not lie in such a view? What if our character is actually more akin to that of a builder, a creator?
Everything that lives on this Earth consumes, but as we appreciate in any ecosystem, it also gives in return for what it takes. Is it possible that humans have a natural role to play in all of this?
Let us look at some of these qualitative changes we are presently experiencing that will prove to completely change the playing field this super computer thought it was operating in.
The graph shows the global distribution of electricity (China has certainly surpassed UK, Italy and Spain at this point since the data comes from six years ago and China has been making rapid progression in its energy production). What this means is that the greater majority of the world would need to produce one nuclear reactor every 3 days for 30 years to catch up to the level of 900 W/person that we enjoy in North America and South Korea.
If we look at the social progress index vs energy per country, we can see very clearly that energy is the leading factor in standard of living in a country.
Nuclear power is the greatest source of energy density we presently have available.
Here we see Cuautemoc holding a lead pellet that is equivalent in size to 300g of uranium. This one little pellet has the capability to power the energy needs of one person living in a first world country for 80 years. The price of this pellet of uranium is $60/kg.
Presently the concern over fission nuclear power is the waste factor. One very effective solution to this that already exists are Breeder Reactors.
In a normal nuclear fission reactor as seen on the left, it requires at least 4% of fissile fuel (ready for reaction) vs. fertile fuel U-238 which requires a reaction with a neutron to produce the fissile fuel U-235, which is then ready for a fission reaction. After approximately three years, the percentage of fissile fuel is too low to continue the cycle. At this point, the spent fuel typically consists of about 0.6% of heavy isotopes known as transuranic elements, which are the most dangerous component of spent fuel since it can stay radioactive for thousands of years. These heavy isotopes can undergo further reactions that allow them to eventually undergo fission.
The fission waste products which we see amount to about 3% of the spent fuel, are much less radioactive and have many useful applications such as in the field of medicine.
Once the fuel is spent in these normal nuclear fission reactors, it is stored, since it can still be used but it requires a different reactor set up. Breeder reactors are presently something that currently exists that can process spent fuel.
What Breeder Reactors use in their fresh fuel is 20% fissile and 80% fertile such that by x number of years, they still have a large percentage of fissile fuel.
Closing the fuel cycle.
Using a reprocessing plant, we can mix the spent fuel of a breeder reactor with that from a normal reactor and create fresh fuel for both types of reactors [see image above]. In this cycle, the heavy isotopes never leave the cycle and thus are not waste products, they continue within the cycle until they are broken down to fissile fuel which can then be used. Thus the only waste product in such a system are the fission products which are much less radioactive.
There are many beneficial uses for fission products such as medical isotopes. We have enough uses for fission products that they need not be left stored somewhere but can be used to further benefit society.
However, this will certainly not be enough to assuage the fears of many on the safety of nuclear fission reactors, so let us take a look at this question of the nature of radioactivity and how it interacts with our world, with or without nuclear reactors.
First off, believe it or not, but the question of what level of radiation is safe vs. unsafe has never been clearly explained in media reportings. Most people don’t really know how to think about what is considered an unsafe level of radiation.
Does the average individual know how to think about the qualitative difference between 6 mSv vs. 50 mSv on human life or life in general? Or the effects on nature with such background levels of radiation? The answer is a resounding no. (We will come back to this question shortly)
Much of what has fueled this fear of background radiation levels are the events of Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Source: Wikipedia.
However, upon a closer inspection, we see that in the case of Chernobyl the number of deaths that were clearly attributed to Chernobyl were less than 100, which were directly related to the blast of the accident. In the case of Fukushima we see surprisingly only one confirmed death in relation to the incident, with only 16 non-fatal injuries.
So why has there been so much media sensation over the sheer horror caused by these two incidents? Well, this has been due to the estimates (yes , estimates, which even Wikipedia acknowledges) of how many deaths have been caused due to the long-term effects of these two blasts, namely in cancer deaths.
However, there is a very large problem with how these estimates are being calculated.
Once again, we see a linear extrapolation. In this case the linear non-threshold (LNT) model. How is LNT used to predict the number of deaths that will occur with a certain dose of radiation? Let us look at another example using a more familiar substance to gain a better idea.
Here is an example of the LNT logic with the substance Vodka. Let us say that a person has a 50% chance of dying if they drink a full 750 ml bottle of vodka within 30 minutes.
[Note: the number does not need to be exact but rather our understanding of how the logic is applied, we could change it to 15 minutes or 5 minutes, or 1L or 2L etc. it would not make a difference to how the logic will quickly become an absurdity when further applied.]
If one individual has a 50% chance of dying if they consume one 750 ml bottle in 30 minutes, two individuals that consume together two 750 ml bottles in 30 minutes should result in one death. Since 50% of two bottles drunk in 30 minutes equates to one death.
If ten individuals consume two bottles of 750 ml vodka in 30 minutes which is approximately 10% each, there should still be, according to the logic of LNT, one death that occurs since two bottles equates to one death.
If one hundred individuals were to consume two bottles of vodka in 30 min, which is approximately 1% each, there will still be one death that is predicted by the LNT model, since, you guessed it, two bottles of vodka consumed in 30 minutes will always, always equate to one death.
This is the present model being used to predict future cancer deaths due to radiation exposure. As we can clearly see when we look at the LNT logic using a more familiar substance such as Vodka, it is plain to see that this is very far from an exact science in predicting anything.
There is another issue, and that is, what are unsafe levels of radiation?
First, you may not know that there is a natural background of radiation that we have on Earth, and that it changes depending on several factors, which are naturally caused and not by human activity, as we will see.
Recall that we receive the rays of the sun as well as cosmic rays from our solar system and galaxy and likely beyond, that shape the radioactive environment surrounding and within Earth.
Levels of background radiation measured by a Geiger counter. Left upper picture: 0.09 mSv in Los Angeles, left bottom picture: 0.13 mSv in New York, right picture: 0.14 mSv in Tokyo. Source: Pandora’s Promise Documentary.
Levels of background radiation. Upper left picture: 2.20 mSv flying over the Pacific Ocean, bottom left picture: 30.99 mSv at a beach in Brazil, right picture: 0.30 mSv in New Hampshire, United States.
In the above pictures we clearly see an increase in background radiation than what is typically found in the metropolis cities that preceded. This is because for one thing, background radiation increases the higher your elevation. This makes sense when we again remind ourselves of the fact that we receive our radiation from primarily the sun and cosmic rays.
It has been observed in numerous medical studies that people who live at higher elevations tend to be in better health and live longer.
In the case of the beach in Brazil, as in the case with hot springs which are also highly radioactive compared to typical background radiation levels, these places tend to be recognized by the local community for its healing qualities. Many of the locals at the particular beach in Brazil, reported in the documentary Pandora’s Promise, cover their body with the sand since it has health benefits. This is not a unique phenomenon, there are many beaches throughout the world which are known for their sands having healing qualities.
What are we thus to think of radiation in this context? It appears that higher levels of radiation, up to 300x higher than we experience in metropolis background radiation levels, are actually a benefit to our bodies.
Background radiation levels. Upper left picture: 0.91 mSv village by Chernobyl, lower left picture: 3.67 mSv at the Chernobyl site, upper right image: 0.18 mSv village in Fukushima, bottom right picture: 0.70 mSv by a nuclear waste storage container.
If we were shown the above levels without any context, it would be easy to be concerned about the 3.67 mSv at the Chernobyl site as an indication of an ongoing danger. However, in context to what we just discussed in terms of natural background radiation levels, this does not look concerning at all.
To further this point, let us look at an example of a popular food many of us consume on a somewhat regular basis, the banana!
Did you know that the banana is one of the most radioactive foods? (note: Brazilian nuts are even more radioactive).
As we can see with this wonderful graphic, if we were told that 5 million microSv of radioactive material sank in the ocean, you could imagine the sort of crazed media sensation that would occur throughout the world and even whole cities evacuated. However, if we were rather told that simply 50 million bananas sank in the ocean, no one would bat an eye.
Below is another great graphic to give you an idea of how much radiation exposure an individual receives in different scenarios in terms of bananas.
In addition, it should be noted that it is officially recognized that nuclear power is among the safest energy source in the world, on par with hydropower, wind and solar.
Whatever chart you look at, the consensus is the same, nuclear is just as low in deaths as solar and wind and depending on the chart you are looking at the lowest.
In addition, the material required to produce, solar, hydro, wind and geothermal all greatly surpass the material required to build a nuclear plant (but especially solar which requires very toxic materials for its production and there is no efficient manner to dispose of these toxic panels once no longer in use). In fact, the material required to build solar panels for instance, can only be generated from forms of energy other than solar and wind. This is possibly the greatest contradiction to the thought that solar and wind are capable of replacing all energy forms, since they do not even have the capability of producing their required parts.
If the social progress index is undoubtedly linked to energy production of a country, and nuclear fission is safe and clean, why is there suppression of nuclear power when it has the capability of massively increasing the standard of living throughout the world? Well, as with all things having to do with big ideas, there is the matter of politics. And if politics has decided that industrial growth is not a good thing, well, that means nuclear power is also not a good thing.
This is especially relevant in understanding why nuclear fusion, by far the cleanest and safest form of energy we know we are capable of in the near future, unlike fission, has absolutely no risk of a meltdown since it operates differently from nuclear fission reactors and produces absolutely no waste.
It also has the capability of producing energy that is about 1000x greater than what we are presently capable of with nuclear fission.
So why don’t we have nuclear fusion yet?
As we can see with the above graph, discussion over fusion power has been occurring for quite some time. What was also noted in 1976 studies, were the levels of funding that would be required for fusion to be made possible. As we can see, we have only ever been slightly above the “fusion never” level and since the mid 80s have been well below this level.
Fusion power is a challenging endeavor, which not only needs the support of funding for its materials, but also will likely require, as with all great science, international collaboration, since many great minds always work better than one.
If you think that we do not have the means for this funding perhaps you should take a look at the graph below.
Source: Jason Ross, Schiller Institute
As you can see, the money is there and considering what Europe is presently going through with its energy crisis, I would put forward that only investing in solar and wind is not a stable provider of energy for the people. Just like a farmer doesn’t grow just one type of crop, energy forms that are highly affected by weather are not a reliable primary source of energy for large populations.
Thus the reason why nuclear has not become the leading energy source is a political reason. The reason why we have energy shortages presently in localized regions is also political. It is not due to a scarcity of resources and we will not be even close to reaching any limits in the next one hundred years.
However, it is a valid question to ask, what does our long term future look like here on earth if we transfer over to nuclear power, and eventually fusion power. Will there be a point where we do hit a critical carrying capacity plateau?
Well one very exciting prospect with nuclear fusion is the plasma torch, which has the capability of turning landfills into resource mines.
Plasma torch
The next domain for the future in industry which will completely revolutionise our relationship to resources and waste is located in low and high temperature plasma processes, which will dramatically increase the productivity of steel, iron, titanium and any other metal resources needed for a modern society.
The plasma torch functions by injecting gas into the chamber, the electric discharge traveling from the negatively charged cathode to the positively charged anode heats up with the resistance from the gas to such a high temperature that ionization occurs, which can reach temperatures of 15,000 degrees Celsius, which can reduce any material to its elemental components.
The next step in more powerful and efficient plasma processing will be in fusion plasma torches which will open up a new realm of possibilities in the degree of precision in which we can transform energy and matter.
Contents put into the fusion torch are shock vapourised and become part of the plasma as separate ionised elements and electrons. Once in a plasma state various methods can be used to select the desired elements and isotopes based on their atomic as opposed to their chemical properties, allowing for the formation of very specific chemical compounds creating batches of very pure chemical structures tailored down to the isotopic level.
This will allow for the formation of more advanced materials then we currently can produce, and which are presently impossible to create with lower energy yield technology.
Just to give the reader an indication of how plentiful resources will be with the plasma torch technology, within an average cubic mile of just plain dirt, mining of iron could be increased by 8x, aluminum by 200x, tin by 100x, and zinc by 6x beyond the present annual US production. This will not be necessary, but showcases how abundant resources are just within the United States.
With plasma torch technology, the pure elements can either be safely released into their environment, as is the case for nitrogen or oxygen, or they can be totally recycled as in industrial raw materials, such that absolutely ALL POLLUTION IS THUS ELIMINATED.
The plasma torch technology has been commercialised for decades but it is not in widespread use due to its large use in electricity, which makes it currently very expensive. Only military bases and some specialised industries use it presently.
However, with fusion technology, electricity for nations will become the cheapest it has ever been, making it economically viable for all industrial waste, industrial pollution, landfills, and garbage islands in the ocean to be recycled into resources that can be used once again for commercial and industrial needs.
Suffice to say that the plasma torch technology will not only get rid of all landfills in a clean and sustainable manner, but it also means that there will be no such thing as waste anymore. Since everything we use, can be used over and over again as a resource with no end. Even the material of old, out of date infrastructure can now be reused, once broken down to its elemental components, to supply improved material for new infrastructure. Wood burning and fossil fuels will no longer be needed.
Water canals, nuclear plants and high speed rail all need a lot of steel, much higher than what is our current capacity to produce worldwide.
In a fusion economy there will no longer be such a thing as limited resources, and zero-sum artificial restrictions will cease to exist. There will be enough not only to support a growing population on Earth, but to support populations that in the future will inhabit the surface of the Moon and Mars.
Fusion will also produce the rockets we require in order to travel back and forth to Mars in a timely fashion.
In a fusion economy, the future will look towards the existence of yet-to-be created potential.
The greatest good for the greatest possible number will become a reality. Resource wars and economic competition over limited resources will no longer be and cooperation towards universally beneficial projects not only cross continental, but interplanetary will become the new norm.
Plan for Tianjin, China. Example of how future cities can be designed throughout the world.
I will end here with what China is presently working on which is the Tiangong (meaning Heavenly Palace) space station. It has been decided that the International Space Station (ISS) is no longer to be maintained and will cease to be operational by sometime in the year 2024. China, who has been banned from participating with the ISS, due to the decision of President Obama in 2011, have had no choice but to work on their own space station, and the timing could not be more apt.
By the year 2024, Tiangong will be the only operational space station, and China has made it clear that all countries are welcome to use this space station for their research needs. It should also be noted, that although Tiangong is much smaller than the ISS, it is built in such a way that pieces can always be added on, such that it can grow much larger in size, depending on whether there are enough countries interested, which I think will most certainly be the case.
Tiangong, Heavenly Palace Chinese Space Station
On Sept 29th, 2011 China launched its first space laboratory Tiangong-1, followed by a more advanced space laboratory Tiangong-2 on Sept 15th, 2016. The core module, named Tianhe (meaning Harmony of the Heavens), was launched on April 29th, 2021 marking the start of the Tiangong Space program.
This past mid-October, China launched their second of four crewed missions, Shenzhou-13 to continue to build the Tiangong space station, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2022. During the first crewed mission which concluded this past September, three taikonauts had stayed on Tianhe for 90 days.
This second crewed mission is expected to stay in orbit for six months.
Chinese taikonauts on second crewed mission to the Tiangong space station, from left to right: Zhai Zhigang mission commander, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu.
This is a great reminder to all of us that we really don’t have limits to growth, as long as we are inspired to create, by challenging what is deemed impossible and showing that it is indeed very possible. There are no set limits, there are no set parameters, since our mind has the capability to always set the boundary condition further and further beyond.
Our growth and development does not need to be a negative thing, it can be a very positive thing, in harmony with nature, with the universe, and we can have an optimistic future if we set our course towards that bright star.
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Featured image: Europe at night viewed from space with city lights showing human activity in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and other countries, 3d rendering of planet Earth, elements from NASA
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First published by Global research on November 29, 2021
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So, GloboCap has crossed the Rubicon. The final phase of its transformation of society into a pathologized-totalitarian dystopia, where mandatory genetic-therapy injections and digital compliance papers are commonplace, is now officially underway.
Austria is just the tip of the New Normal spear. Prominent politicians in Germany, including Bavaria’s Markus Söder, and SPD’sKarl Lauterbach, are already calling for an allgemeine Impfpflicht (i.e., “compulsory vaccination requirement”), which should not come as a surprise to anyone.
But, seriously, this is just the beginning of the Winter Siege I wrote about recently. The plan seems to be to New-Normalize Europe first — generally speaking, Europeans are more docile, respectful of all authority, and not very well armed — and then use it as leverage to force the new pathologized totalitarianism on the USA, and the UK, and the rest of the world.
I do not believe this plan will succeed. Despite the most intensive propaganda campaign in the history of propaganda campaigns, there remain enough of us who steadfastly refuse to accept the “New Normal” as our new reality.
We are not “vaccine hesitant” or “anti-vax” or “Covid-denying conspiracy theorists.”
We are millions of regular working-class people, people with principles, who value freedom, who are not prepared to go gently into the globalized, pathologized-totalitarian night. We no longer give the slightest shit whether our former friends and family members who have gone New Normal understand what this is. We do. We understand exactly what this is. It is a nascent form of totalitarianism, and we intend to kill it — or at least critically wound it — before it matures into a full-grown behemoth.
Now, I want to be absolutely clear. I am not advocating or condoning violence. But it is going to happen. It is happening already. Totalitarianism (even this “pathologized” version of it) is imposed on society and maintained with violence. Fighting totalitarianism inevitably entails violence. It is not my preferred tactic in the current circumstances, but it is unavoidable now that we’ve reached this stage, and it is important that those of us fighting this fight recognize that violence is a natural response to the violence (and the implicit threat of violence) that is being deployed against us by the New Normal authorities, and the masses they have whipped up into a fanatical frenzy.
It is also important (essential, I would argue) to make the violence of the New Normal visible, i.e., to frame this fight in political terms, and not in the pseudo-medical terms propagated by the official Covid narrative). This isn’t an academic argument over the existence, severity, or the response to a virus. This is a fight to determine the future of our societies.
This fact, above all, is what the global-capitalist ruling classes are determined to conceal. The roll-out of the New Normal will fail if it is perceived as political (i.e., a form of totalitarianism). It relies on our inability to see it as what it is. So it hides itself and the violence it perpetrates within a pseudo-medical official narrative, rendering itself immune to political opposition.
We need to deny it this perceptual redoubt, this hermeneutic hiding place. We need to make it show itself as what it is, a “pathologized” form of totalitarianism. In order to do that, we need to understand it … its internal logic, and its strengths, and weaknesses.
Pathologized Totalitarianism
I have been describing the New Normal as “pathologized totalitarianism” and predicting that compulsory “vaccination” was coming since at least as early as May 2020. (See, e.g., The New Pathologized Totalitarianism). I use the term “totalitarianism” intentionally, not for effect, but for the sake of accuracy. The New Normal is still a nascent totalitarianism, but its essence is unmistakably evident. I described that essence in a recent column:
“The essence of totalitarianism — regardless of which costumes and ideology it wears — is a desire to completely control society, every aspect of society, every individual behavior and thought. Every totalitarian system, whether an entire nation, a tiny cult, or any other form of social body, evolves toward this unachievable goal … the total ideological transformation and control of every single element of society … This fanatical pursuit of total control, absolute ideological uniformity, and the elimination of all dissent, is what makes totalitarianism totalitarianism.”
In October 2020, I published The Covidian Cult, which has since grown into a series of essays examining New-Normal (i.e., pathologized) totalitarianism as “a cult writ large, on a societal scale.” This analogy holds true for all forms of totalitarianism, but especially for New Normal totalitarianism, as it is the first global form of totalitarianism in history, and thus:
“The cult/culture paradigm has been inverted. Instead of the cult existing as an island within the dominant culture, the cult has become the dominant culture, and those of us who have not joined the cult have become the isolated islands within it.”
“In order to oppose this new form of totalitarianism, we need to understand how it both resembles and differs from earlier totalitarian systems. The similarities are fairly obvious — i.e., the suspension of constitutional rights, governments ruling by decree, official propaganda, public loyalty rituals, the outlawing of political opposition, censorship, social segregation, goon squads terrorizing the public, and so on — but the differences are not as obvious.
And I described how New Normal totalitarianism fundamentally differs from 20th-Century totalitarianism in terms of its ideology, or seeming lack thereof.
“Whereas 20th-Century totalitarianism was more or less national and overtly political, New Normal totalitarianism is supranational, and its ideology is much more subtle. The New Normal is not Nazism or Stalinism. It’s global-capitalist totalitarianism, and global capitalism doesn’t have an ideology, technically, or, rather, its ideology is ‘reality’.”
But the most significant difference between 20th-Century totalitarianism and this nascent, global totalitarianism is how New Normal totalitarianism “pathologizes” its political nature, effectively rendering itself invisible, and thus immune to political opposition. Whereas 20th-Century totalitarianism wore its politics on its sleeve, New Normal totalitarianism presents itself as a non-ideological (i.e., supra-political) reaction to a global public health emergency.
And, thus, its classic totalitarian features — e.g., the revocation of basic rights and freedoms, centralization of power, rule by decree, oppressive policing of the population, demonization and persecution of a “scapegoat” underclass, censorship, propaganda, etc. — are not hidden, because they are impossible to hide, but are recontextualized in a pathologized official narrative.
The Untermenschen become “the Unvaccinated.” Swastika lapel pins become medical-looking masks. Aryan ID papers become “vaccination passes.” Irrefutably senseless social restrictions and mandatory public-obedience rituals become “lockdowns,” “social distancing,” and so on. The world is united in a Goebbelsian total war, not against an external enemy (i.e., a racial or political enemy), but against an internal, pathological enemy.
This pathologized official narrative is more powerful (and insidious) than any ideology, as it functions, not as a belief system or ethos, but rather, as objective “reality.” You cannot argue with or oppose “reality.” “Reality” has no political opponents. Those who challenge “reality” are “insane,” i.e., “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” “Covid deniers,” “extremists,” etc. And, thus, the pathologized New Normal narrative also pathologizes its political opponents, simultaneously stripping us of political legitimacy and projecting its own violence onto us.
20th-Century totalitarianism also blamed its violence on its scapegoats (i.e., Jews, socialists, counter-revolutionaries, etc.) but it did not attempt to erase its violence. On the contrary, it displayed it openly, in order to terrorize the masses. New Normal totalitarianism cannot do this. It can’t go openly totalitarian, because capitalism and totalitarianism are ideologically contradictory.
Global-capitalist ideology will not function as an official ideology in an openly totalitarian society. It requires the simulation of “democracy,” or at least a simulation of market-based “freedom.” A society can be intensely authoritarian, but, to function in the global-capitalist system, it must allow its people the basic “freedom” that capitalism offers to all consumers, the right/obligation to participate in the market, to own and exchange commodities, etc.
This “freedom” can be conditional or extremely restricted, but it must exist to some degree. Saudi Arabia and China are two examples of openly authoritarian GloboCap societies that are nevertheless not entirely totalitarian, because they can’t be and remain a part of the system. Their advertised official ideologies (i.e., Islamic fundamentalism and communism) basically function as superficial overlays on the fundamental global-capitalist ideology which dictates the “reality” in which everyone lives. These “overlay” ideologies are not fake, but when they come into conflict with global-capitalist ideology, guess which ideology wins.
The point is, New Normal totalitarianism — and any global-capitalist form of totalitarianism — cannot display itself as totalitarianism, or even authoritarianism. It cannot acknowledge its political nature. In order to exist, it must not exist. Above all, it must erase its violence (the violence that all politics ultimately comes down to) and appear to us as an essentially beneficent response to a legitimate “global health crisis” (and a “climate change crisis,” and a “racism crisis,” and whatever other “global crises” GloboCap thinks will terrorize the masses into a mindless, order-following hysteria).
This pathologization of totalitarianism — and the political/ideological conflict we have been engaged in for the past 20 months — is the most significant difference between New Normal totalitarianism and 20th-Century totalitarianism. The entire global-capitalist apparatus (i.e., corporations, governments, supranational entities, the corporate and state media, academia, etc.) has been put into service to achieve this objective.
We need to come to terms with this fact. We do. Not the New Normals. Us.
GloboCap is on the verge of remaking society into a smiley-happy pathologized-totalitarian dystopia where they can mandate experimental genetic “therapies,” and any other type of “therapies” they want, and force us to show our “compliance papers” to go about the most basic aspects of life. This remaking of society is violent. It is being carried out by force, with violence and the ever-present threat of violence. We need to face that, and act accordingly.
Here in New Normal Germany, if you try to go grocery shopping without a medical-looking mask, armed police will remove you from the premises (and I am saying this from personal experience). In New Normal Australia, if you go to synagogue, the media will be alerted and the police will surround you. In Germany, Australia, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium, and many other countries, if you exercise your right to assemble and protest, the police will hose you down with water cannons, shoot you with rubber bullets (and sometimes real bullets), spray toxic agents into your eyes, and just generally beat the crap out of you.
And so on. Those of us fighting for our rights and opposing this pathologized totalitarianism are all-too familiar with the reality of its violence, and the hatred it has fomented in the New Normal masses. We experience it on a daily basis. We feel it every time we’re forced to wear a mask, when some official (or waiter) demands to see our “papers.” We feel it when when we are threatened by our government, when we are gaslighted and demonized by the media, by doctors, celebrities, random strangers, and by our colleagues, friends, and family members.
We recognize the look in their eyes. We remember where it comes from, and what it leads to.
It isn’t just ignorance, mass hysteria, confusion, or an overreaction, or fear … or, OK, yes, it is all those things, but it’s also textbook totalitarianism (notwithstanding the new pathologized twist). Totalitarianism 101.
Look it in the eye, and act accordingly.
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Get the Marines ready. Store the supplies. Marshal the allies. The United States is getting ready for war (the preferable term in Washington is policing) in the Indo-Pacific region, and is hoping to do so with a range of expanded bases across client states, or what it prefers to call friends.
On November 29, the Pentagon announced that US President Joe Biden had accepted the recommendations made by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III in the Global Posture Review commissioned in February. The news might have been delivered by Austin himself, but this solemn duty fell to Mara Karlin, discharging her duties as deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. As the GPR remains classified, we are left with a sketchy performance that should make many across the Indo-Pacific seek cover and a bunker.
For the most part, Karlin’s performance was gibberish, masked by lingo hostile to meaning. The review was intended to “inform” the approach of the Biden administration in terms of national defence strategy, which did not mean that it would necessarily inform anybody else. “That guidance asserts that the United States will lead with diplomacy first, revitalize our unmatched network of allies and partners and make smart and disciplined choices regarding our national defense and responsible use of our military,” Karlin stated. How reassuring.
She continued in non-revelatory fashion to mention how the “global posture review assesses DOD overseas forces and footprint along with the framework and processes that govern our posture decision making.” The GPR had “strengthened our decision-making processes by deliberately connecting strategic priorities, global trade-offs, force readiness and modernization, interagency coordination and allied and partner coordination to global posture planning and decisions.”
The only thing to conclude from this remarkable display of non-meaning was that the US imperium was on the march, and it was keen to ensure that its allies would be marching in step with it. At one point, Karlin let the cat out of the bag. A primary focus of the GPR is the Indo-Pacific, with China proving to be the continuing fixation. Cooperation between Washington, its allies and its partners to “advance initiatives” that aid regional stability and deter Chinese military aggression and threats from Pyongyang, are matters of urgency.
This puts Australia, Guam and various Pacific Islands in the spotlight, with the US keen to use them as staging grounds in any forthcoming conflict with Beijing while reducing their troop presence in other global theatres. The press conference was not quite so blunt, but the implications were clear enough. According to Karlin, the Pentagon will seek a “range of infrastructure improvements in Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Australia”. New US rotational fighter and bomber aircraft deployments to Australia and further logistics cooperation with Canberra are promised.
When asked by a journalist why Australia and Guam had been specifically mentioned in the address, Karlin showed some rare candour in admitting that “those were notable, which is why I cited those specifically” though the US was broadly “engaged in consultations with our allies and partners across the Pacific.”
The remarks pertaining to Australia simply affirmed the observations made by Austin in September, the same month the trilateral AUKUS security partnership between Australia, the UK and the US was announced. AUKUS, explained Austin at the time, would “help contribute” to the concept of “integrated deterrence in the region”, an unimaginative way of saying that the US would lead a regional policing effort in the Indo-Pacific, with the assistance of Australia and like-minded partners. While Washington sought “a constructive, results-oriented relationship with the PRC, we will remain clear-eyed in our view of Beijing’s efforts to undermine the established international order.”
Such a clear-eyed disposition involved making good use of Australian territory, with Canberra agreeing to “major force posture initiatives that will expand our access and presence in Australia.”
Access is imperial speak for projecting US power. It sounds so much better than military occupation. Becca Wasser of the Center for a New American Security is well versed in that argot. “If you want to change posture – whether that is expanding or consolidating bases, or deploying new capability – you need access,” Wasser toldBreaking Defense. “Access is something only allies and partners can provide and changes to access usually require a lengthy consultation process.” Appearances must be kept.
A sense of how the GPR has been received can also be gathered from the security think-tankers, those delightful sorts who make it their tanking business to find enemies for budget reasons. A co-authored report by John Schaus of the hawkish Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and Michael Shoebridge of the Canberra-based US appendage, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, praises the Review as “an enormous opportunity to signal, and demonstrate, US commitment to regional security in ways that will reassure partners and deter potential adversaries.”
There is an unabashed encouragement of greater US garrisoning and military presence in Australia. Australia would commit to investing in and expanding naval facilities in Darwin and on the west coast. This, in turn, could be “matched with a greater US naval presence at these facilities, for the purpose of joint activity through the Indian Ocean and up into Southeast Asia.”
The authors take issue with conservative US troop numbers that had been present through Marine Corps rotations in Northern Australia during the Obama-era. It was time to roll up the sleeves and co-opt Australian real estate and resources to advance Washington’s agenda. “Specifically, the United States should forward deploy Navy surface, subsurface, and uncrewed vessels to Australia; expand the Air Force rotational presence to include larger numbers and more frequent presence of high-endurance intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms; and increase both Marine and Army presence to facilitate greater training and integration within the alliance.”
While the GPR remains under lock and key, we can be certain that many of the bellicose wishes of Schaus and Shoebridge are bound to be there. The war monger’s script is getting increasingly long and relentless.
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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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Of course, I expect a backlash every time I write. It comes with the territory. There is no point being a Bari Weiss or a David Frum and crying out against “cancel culture”. Dissension is part of the rough and tumble of a modern world in which everyone – at least, for a little longer – gets their 15 minutes of sounding off, however ignorant their opinions. There are millions of people out there on social media, and some of them seem to have pretty disturbing views.
But I don’t write just to be provocative, as some readers appear to imagine. I write to influence. Not so much what we think – though that’s a nice bonus – but how we go about the task of thinking.
In societies bombarded with propaganda – propaganda that gets ever more sophisticated as software and algorithms learn through billions of tiny mind experiments how to trigger us, arouse us, incentivise us – it is extraordinarily hard to think clearly. It requires a huge amount of mental and spiritual energy to gain distance. That’s very difficult to do if we spend all day working, or we are exposed all day to the news cycle. The biggest problem is not just that our thoughts are likely to be someone else’s (often Rupert Murdoch’s), it is that we don’t even know that they belong to somebody else. That is how propaganda works.
This difficulty means I spend a lot of time thinking about which topics to write about. I need to select issues prominent enough in the news that people will wish to invest a little more time to read my contribution. But at the same time the topic I choose needs to illustrate my chief concerns – that we are being propagandised into ever more polarised, antagonised tribal identities – starkly enough that readers will be prepared to reconsider the strong views they already hold on the matter at hand.
Challenging ever more polarised and deeply entrenched tribal identities often feels like a high-wire act in which the only way to have an impact is to keep raising the wire a little higher. The more an audience loses critical distance on an issue – the more tribal it becomes – the more it has to be jolted out of its complacency, out of its sense of what constitutes normality or sanity. But the jolt itself can prove counter-productive, simply reinforcing the tribe’s certainty that anyone who disagrees must belong to the other tribe, the enemy, and can therefore be safely ignored.
My latest: Noam Chomsky was wrong to add his name to an open letter against 'cancel culture'. Many of the writers and intellectuals who signed it are more interested in stifling free speech than protecting it – and they have powerful allies https://t.co/ylUudPubTD
I have been researching and writing daily on foreign affairs, mostly related to the Middle East, for 20 years. That’s a long time, and inevitably over that period I have grown more confident in my worldview and I have wanted to deepen and broaden my perspective.
Certainly, there are lessons I have learnt from two decades of reporting on, and analysing, Israel and Palestine that I think are of wider import. It is a region whose features I have been able to study with a degree of dispassion – because the so-called “conflict” isn’t exactly mine – but also with a great deal of intimacy – because I ended up marrying into that conflict. I understand very well how a modern settler colonial state works and how a strong tribal identity is key to its success. I understand too the way it inevitably spawns the infrastructure of a militarised, hi-tech, surveillance state, and how an elite needs to constantly manipulate the public into a sense of existential crisis to keep itself enriched and powerful.
Any of that sound familiar outside Israel-Palestine?
The problem is that it is much easier to see how Israeli Jews are propagandised, how they are invested in an entirely manufactured tribal identity that keeps them oppressing Palestinians, than it is to see how we ourselves are propagandised, or how our own manufactured tribal identities work in much the same way.
Which is why every time I write about the United States, where the most propagandised population on the planet lives, I receive the biggest backlash from readers: “Stick to writing about Palestine”; “You don’t know enough about the US to have a view”; “What happened to you – you were great when you just wrote about Israel-Palestine”. And those are the polite responses.
What appears to be upsetting some readers isn’t so much the facts I am writing about. After all, in this intensely globalised world, where we can all read the same newspapers online and we can all watch Youtube videos of the actual events themselves, I know as much as you most likely do about what happened – whether it’s in Nablus, Bristol or Kenosha. Unless you were there, and got an angle on events denied the rest of us, we are debating the same set of real-world events or the same set of corporate media depictions of those events.
The issue often isn’t what we know (though increasingly we choose to close our ears to information that does not confirm our prejudices), it’s how we analyse what we know.
My latest: Our expectation shouldn't be that Kyle Rittenhouse is treated by the police and legal system like a black man. It is that black men, and women, should be treated like a white Rittenhouse; that legal facts should count whatever your skin colour https://t.co/ixo99PxJYS
People who began following me because of my writings on Israel-Palestine, or the acres of related stuff I wrote countering the Zionist misinformation campaigns in the UK intended to vilify Jeremy Corbyn, are already a fairly select group of people who trust my analytical skills when it comes to an issue on which they have managed to see past the propaganda most others are still in thrall to.
What I know through meeting a small proportion of those readers is that their ability to break out of the mainstream mindset was typically based on an unusual or intensely personal experience they had. Maybe they visited Israel and Palestine and were shocked by the yawning gulf between what they had read in the corporate media and what they saw on the ground. Or maybe they knew Corbyn to be an authentic politician and a committed anti-racist and could not believe how he was depicted in every single corporate news outlet in the UK.
Direct experience of the way the news is skewed set them on a path towards questioning the propaganda they had been subjected to over a lifetime.
But just because we manage to break out of the propaganda construct on one issue does not mean we succeed on every issue. Things that feel intensely personal to us, in which we are emotionally or materially invested, are always going to be the hardest to view from a distance. And for obvious reasons, nothing is so personal, so deeply invested in, as our social and political identities. To question our identity is both to loosen ourselves from the rock that anchors us to the ground we know best and to risk alienating the social networks we depend on. Truly liberating oneself from propaganda – transcending the identities that have been largely manufactured for us – is the riskiest of ventures, which is why so few are willing to do it.
I witnessed that especially keenly in Israel-Palestine, where Jews who cast aside the tribal comfort blanket of Zionism were themselves cast out by their own societies. When we criticise Israeli Jews for failing to stand in solidarity with Palestinians, we should also remember how hard it is intellectually and emotionally to go against the grain of your society. It takes significant courage.
Keir Starmer's Labour: – backs right-wing Jewish groups cheerleading for Israel – suspends and expels left-wing Jews who dissent on Israel – suspends and expels non-Jews who wonder aloud whether this might amount to the politicisation of antisemitism https://t.co/snGJIO8ut7
I have seen it too in the way anti-Zionist Jews in the Labour party have been hounded out because they refuse to be used by the parliamentary party’s dominant Blairite wing to settle political scores with the more socialist membership. When these anti-Zionist Jews refuse to abandon their anti-racist principles and become tribal Zionists – Zionists who demand special diplomatic treatment for a self-declared ethnic state that, in turn, demands special privileges for Jews over Palestinians – they are demeaned as self-hating or the “wrong kind of Jews”. Seeing their treatment, one can understand why so many British Jews might never think to question what they have been told – or might prefer to keep their heads down.
And that is the point. It is not that we make a choice to stay propagandised. It doesn’t require any effort from us at all. All we need do is not make a choice. Our socially constructed tribal identities are the default. All we need to do is go about our daily lives as normal.
Propagandised populations
For many of us, who lack a strongly Zionist tribal identity (though of course in the west we have been raised with a more general, colonial Zionist identity since at least the 1917 Balfour Declaration) it is fairly easy to understand how Zionist Jews have been propagandised and how far their thinking can stray from reality. In early 2015 – months after Israel’s horrifying attack on Gaza that killed hundreds of Palestinian children and led to an outpouring of criticism of Israel in the UK and elsewhere – a survey found that 56 per cent of British Jews believed “anti-Semitism in Britain has some echoes of the 1930s”.
Remember this survey was before Corbyn had been elected Labour leader and before the furore about a supposed antisemitism crisis in the party had moved into full gear. God knows, what a similar survey of British Jews would find today.
At that stage, even a prominent liberal commentator for the Israeli Haaretz newspaper found the views of most fellow Jews in the UK preposterous:
“If the majority of British Jews and the authors of the CAA report actually believe that, then it’s hard to take anything they say about contemporary anti-Semitism in their home country seriously. If they honestly think that the situation in Britain today echoes the 1930s when Jews were still banned from a wide variety of clubs and associations, when a popular fascist party, supported by members of the nobility and popular newspapers, were marching in support of Hitler, when large parts of the British establishment were appeasing Nazi Germany and the government was resolutely opposed to allowing Jewish refugees of Nazism in to Britain, finally relenting in 1938 to allow 10,000 children to arrive — but not their parents who were to die in the Holocaust (that shameful aspect of the Kindertransport that is seldom mentioned) — and when the situation of Jews in other European countries at the time was so much worse, then not only are they woefully ignorant of recent Jewish history but have little concept of what real anti-Semitism is beyond the type they see online.”
Paradoxically, Haaretz columnist Anshel Pfeffer would soon subscribe himself to much of the nonsense he excoriates here – as soon, in fact, as Corbyn was elected to head the Labour party.
Which is a reminder of how quickly we can adapt our understanding of what we think of as real, objective facts, or falsehoods, when it helps to protect our tribal identities. We see what we want to see.
Pfeffer, a liberal Zionist, thought the paranoia of conservative Zionist Jews was ridiculous when Ed Miliband, a liberal Zionist like Pfeffer and a gentle critic of Israel, led the Labour party. But once Corbyn took over, a genuine anti-racist who opposed the “liberal” racism inherent in a self-declared Jewish state, Pfeffer started to feel much more ideologically aligned with conservative British Jews. Indeed, he soon shared most of their assumptions about a supposed rise in “leftwing antisemitism” he had derided more generally months previously.
My latest: Polls showing British Jews fear a Labour election victory, as well as Chief Rabbi Mirvis' new anti-Corbyn remarks, should not surprise us. The corporate media have made sure we've been living in a nationwide echo-chamber for the past four years https://t.co/wDOclf3Br3
In short, the survey did not tell us much useful about the state of antisemitism in Britain in 2015. But it did tell us an awful lot about how propagandised many British Jews already were about antisemitism in 2015. It was a signpost, a clue as to where things were about to head.
Losing the plot
Jews, it should go without saying, are not uniquely susceptible to propaganda or uniquely invested in a tribal identity. We all are.
It is easy to point the finger at Zionist Jews for some of their outrageous, self-serving, supremacist views. Much harder to spot those same tendencies in ourselves.
Which is why not only complete strangers harangue me on social media when I turn the spotlight on leftwing tribalism – I expect that – but long-standing followers do too.
If you love my Israel-Palestine stuff, or my Labour party criticisms, but think I’ve lost the plot on the other stuff, please believe me when I say my criticisms of western tribalism spring from exactly the same set of analytical skills I bring to bear on Israel-Palestine. I am not suddenly or arbitrarily applying a whole set of other analytical criteria to the issues you care most passionately about simply out of a perverse desire to provoke you.
My latest: Faced with the pandemic, we have turned on each other. We prioritise ourselves over the foreigner, we set parent against child, we pit the vaccinated against the unvaccinated – all in the name of a bogus humanitarianism and solidarity https://t.co/ZjImGBN38e
It may be, just possibly, that you are provoked because the conclusions I arrive at on issues close to your heart challenge your own tribal identity – what you perceive to be the left, or to be progressive discourse, or to be anti-racism. Accepting my arguments might require you to become more flexible or curious than you want to be, or it might force you to consider that some of your views stand in stark contradiction to other values you profess to believe in. That inconsistency intrigues me enough to write about it, but it may well infuriate you.
Which may explain the strange, angry responses from some followers to the soundbites from my lengthy articles – the snippets – I must necessarily post on social media. Rather than being provoked into reading the article, where they would need to grapple with a complex argument, some followers prefer to comment on the soundbite. But if you are among those who say you are fed up with our modern, dumbed-down, soundbite culture – those, for example, who supported Corbyn because he wasn’t a focus-group politician – you should not really be fetishising that soundbite culture yourself. Well, not if you want to avoid the accusation of hypocrisy.
Carlson clones
If you’re also wondering why all the writers you once loved so much have suddenly become raving Tucker Carlson clones, it might – just might – be because you changed rather than they did. Like Anshel Pfeffer, maybe you arrived at your Corbyn crisis moment. Let me take a punt and suggest that Donald Trump and the rise of the white right may have made your tribal identity seem much more precious to you.
My latest: By fixating on Trump, parts of the left have drifted into worryingly authoritarian ways of thinking – sometimes openly, more often implicitly – as a bulwark against the return of Trump or anyone like him https://t.co/d4pa19t5A5
That won’t have made you a clearer thinker. It will have simply made you an angrier, less compromising, less compassionate thinker. It will have encouraged you to think in zero-sum terms. It will have pushed you away from anyone who does not espouse exactly your pieties. It will have made you less willing to consider the arguments of anyone who no longer echoes your binary view of the world. It will have made you a liberal-left version George W Bush, with his warning: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
That should not surprise us. A tribal left is bound to be the mirror image of a tribal right. They have different pieties, different slogans, but the same intolerance, the same self-righteousness, the same anger.
In tribal times like these, those who see the dangers of tribalism – that it is a tool for dividing us, for weakening us against the power-elites and a billionaire-owned media that relishes and stokes our tribalism – will struggle to be heard. Anything they say that isn’t for the tribe is assumed to be for the enemy. They have moved to the dark side.
In a time of tribalism, the left’s duty is to speak out loudly for solidarity. We need to remember that we are no less exposed to propaganda than the other tribe. That doesn’t mean we have to abandon our principles. But it does mean we have to remember they are as human as we are, that they have the same rights as us, that it is crucially important that we are fair and consistent, that our blindspots can be as big as theirs. Because otherwise we not only entrench our own tribalism, we entrench theirs too.
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Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.
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As predicted by multiple polls, the Sandinistas, led by Daniel Ortega, won a resounding victory on the November 7th elections in Nicaragua. The elections were a referendum on the path that the Sandinista government has taken the country, which is grounded on large investments in social programs that have benefited people, especially the most disadvantaged, in every nook and cranny of the national territory.
Support for the reelection of the Sandinista government was astounding. Of the entire patron electoral (eligible voters), about 65% came out to vote and, of those, about 75.9%voted for the FLSN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) alliance ticket.
The victory of Sandinistas generated expected attacks, which seek to delegitimize the newly elected government in Nicaragua. The U.S., Canada, EU, OAS and their proxies–cynically claiming to be acting on behalf of the “Nicaraguan people”—seek to cripple the Sandinista government’s ability to provide for its population. The November 7th elections revealed the will of the Nicaraguan people; but because this will does not align with U.S. preferences, the elections are marred as “illegitimate,” a “sham,” and “authoritarian.”
Some in the Western imperial left, including academics and journalists, have joined the U.S. State Department in attempting to delegitimize the will of the Nicaraguan electorate and to demonize the Sandinista government—like with other left-wing counterparts across Latin America.
These individuals legitimize the economic and political attack against Nicaragua. The burden will be heaviest for the working class. Importantly, the mainstream media and the imperial left did not go on-the-ground to speak to farmers, union members, indigenous communities, or low-income Nicaraguans about the electoral process, their preferences, and the reason for those preferences. Worse yet, they ignored the multipleoutlets that did just that.
None of these individuals parroting imperial propaganda decried the unjust detention of Steve Sweeny, a journalist and editor of the Morning Star Daily, Britain’s only socialist newspaper, who was prevented by Mexico from covering the Nicaraguan elections.
Instead, these stenographers condemned the electoral process from afar, portraying a dystopian world inside Nicaragua despite not providing a shred of on-the-ground evidence. A self-described “left” outlet, for example, would rather talk to clowns spewing right-wing imperialist talking points in Costa Rica than to working class people in Nicaragua, whose opinion they have ignored and suppressed in their coverage.
Unlike these propagandists, I spoke to Nicaraguan factory workers, domestic workers, stay-at-home mothers, truck drivers, farmers, and community leaders in the outskirts of the city of Estelí, where international electoral companions observed a free and fair election. I sought the opinions of Sandinistas and those who do not identify as such to understand electoral results.
Below, I document the reasons why the Sandinista government enjoys support from the majority of the electorate as well as grievances some sectors of the population wish the government would address. The platitude-, lie-, and interventionist-filled propaganda from Western media, the imperial left, and interventionist governments do not come close to providing an accurate picture of Nicaragua, its culture, or its popular will—or explaining the resounding Sandinista electoral win.
Abstentions: The Case of Esteban
I spoke to Esteban (all names are pseudonyms) on the eve of the elections. Esteban is nota Sandinista—by a long shot. He is a sort of jack-of-all trades handy-man. He is a blue-collar worker who does not support the Sandinista government. Esteban’s main grievance is, he argues, that Nicaraguans pay too much taxes. This concern was startling to me, because he does not pay into the IR system—a 15% income tax.
He suggests that income taxes should be capped at 7%. When I asked him about government projects that taxes help fund, he acknowledged them. He acknowledged, too, that these projects are beneficial to the population, but each time he articulated something wrong with them. For example, Esteban suggests that people who do not use public services, like hospitals, should not pay for them.
He does not argue that Nicaraguans should not have public hospitals. In fact, I was surprised at his defense of a public system. Esteban argued we should have a public system, but that it is unfair for those who do not use it to pay for it. He had an accident recently and had major surgery in Nicaragua at no cost in a public hospital. His perspective reminded me of the “all-government-is-bad” opinion held by many sectors of the rightwing in the United States. Importantly, he did not vote.
What Can We Learn from Esteban? Myths and Reality about Abstentions
I begin with Esteban because one of the attacks against the legitimacy of the Sandinista electoral victory is that there was massive abstention due to political repression. This is demonstrably false. Esteban did not tell me that he feared political repression for his views, which he articulated loudly and proudly; political repression did not figure in his decision not to vote.
His abstention stemmed from his worldview about governments more generally, especially one whose politics prioritize investment in the public sphere for which communal sacrifices are shared.
Furthermore, abstention in this election cycle was not widespread, as the U.S.-backed opposition had hoped and called for. In the figure below, I chart election participation history in Nicaragua since 1984, including the percentage of those who ended up voting (% participation), and, out of those who participated, the percentage who voted for the FSLN. Voter participation is rather stable since the FSLN returned to power in 2006—between a low of 61% (in 2006) and a high of 73% (in 2011)—after a steady decline in participation during the neoliberal period (1990-2006).
In this election cycle, the percentage participating was 65%. The chart also shows that percentage support for the FSLN has been increasing since their return to power.
The 80% abstention rate that some in the mainstream media and imperial left are repeating is a baseless lie. Ben Norton looked into the one organization that has made up the “80%” abstention statistic: Urnas Abiertas. He thoroughly documents its unseriousness, but, more importantly, its links to the U.S.-funded opposition, part of a larger regime-change effort against the FSLN.
For example, he documents that the only two people who have been publicly identified with this organization are “both partisan right-wing activists who work in the Western government-funded nonprofit-industrial complex, without any technical background or experience in election monitoring.” Organizations like this pop up to provide their regime-change operations a veneer of independence and credibility.
“Soft” Support for the Sandinista Government
Carlos is a driver by trade. Yuniel and Joel are factory workers. Before my conversation about the elections with them, I rarely heard them say much about politics. The few things that I had heard were criticisms. I really wanted to understand their perspective because I thought they would be in favor of the opposition.
I was wrong.
Yuniel is primarily concerned with taxes. He informs me that his salary is not enough; therefore, he is upset that he has to pay income taxes from it. He deems it unfair having to pay more taxes if he earns more (in absolute terms, because the rate is fixed). It seemed to me that Yuniel was unclear as to what the taxes are used for, which many explain part of his frustration. Carlos says he mostly keeps his opinions to himself because he works with different kinds of people with varying political views. Carlos is a sub-contractor for a government-funded infrastructure project. He stated that the Sandinista government has done both good things and things he disagreed with.
He describes his job and pay as good, a consequence of infrastructure investments from the government. He is afraid that a new (opposition) president would not invest as much in infrastructure, which would decrease jobs and other economic activities. Joel, finally, does not say much. On the eve of the election, Joel said that the president had done good things. He said it as if to say, we have to admit it. As with Carlos, he also said that if another person wins the presidency, this new president will invest less.
Yuniel, Carlos, and Joel, despite disagreements with the Sandinista government, support the re-election of Daniel Ortega because any other individual—from an opposition party—will not invest as much in the country.
“Soft” Support for Sandinismo and Its Dynamics Across Nicaragua
Yuniel, Carlos and Joel exemplify what some characterize as “soft support” for the FSLN. The opposition (inside and outside the country) hopes to remove Ortega to decapitate and neutralized Sandinismo. To do so, they demonize Daniel Ortega—and his family.
This strategy has not been successful. Yuniel, Carlos, and Joel acknowledge that the Sandinista government has invested in broad-reaching social programs and public infrastructure. President Ortega, they say, has accomplished “good things,” whereas a new president will steal without investing in the country. Government projects will not occur with an opposition-led administration. The support for public health, in particular, is palpable. I asked Carlos what would happen if any government tried to privatized the hospital system. Immediately, he replied: It would not happen; Nicaraguans would rise up in defiance against such a move. In short, despite vague criticism, all three supported the re-election of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista government.
Although it was my impression that Yuniel was the least likely to vote for the continuation of the Sandinista government (if voting at all), on election day, he revealed that he voted for the FSLN alliance ticket.
Further “soft support” partly explains why the FSLN achieved a remarkable 75.9% support among Nicaraguan voters. The journalist William Grigsby points out that there were municipalities in which Daniel Ortega received more votes than there are registered Sandinistas. This dynamic occurred, for example, in six out of eight municipalities of Caribe Sur, including Paigua, La Desenbocadura de Rio Grande, Corn Island, and Parlagu. Even non-Sandinistas, Grisby shows, voted for Daniel Ortega across the country.
One of my respondents, Fanor (see below), referred to this phenomenon as voto progreso—a vote that recognizes the social progress that the Sandinista government has accomplished for Nicaragua and signals desire for its continuation.
Voto ideologico, on the other hand, is a vote for the FSLN that is not only rooted in support of the socialist-oriented policies of the Sandinista government, but one that recognizes the importance of the FSLN as a revolutionary project against imperialism whose significance in and out of Nicaragua lies in providing an alternative to the “savage” capitalism that the U.S. wants to impose on the country—and the world. In the latest credible poll before the election, the expected “voto suave” (soft vote) constituted 17.4% support for the FSLN.
In addition to the soft vote, support from those who “tend to vote” (4.5%) for the FSLN and those who strongly support the FSLN (voto duro, 53.4%) add up to the expected more than 70% support for the FSLN in the elections. The FSLN eventually attained 75.9% of the vote on Nov. 7th.
Yuniel, Carlos and Joel are part of the “soft” support that materialized for the FSLN. Even those who have disagreements with the government, cannot deny—and, in fact, defend—socialist policies that have benefited all of Nicaraguan society.
Falsehoods From the U.S.-backed Opposition
To provide ammunition for those who seek to delegitimize the Sandinista government, the CID-Gallup (not part of the internationally known Gallup) completed a poll on behalf of the opposition that presented widely inaccurate predictions. Unlike the M&R Consultores, which had completed a number of polls across Nicaragua in the months leading up to the election, the one CID-Gallup poll stated that only 19% of the population supported Daniel Ortega.
This poll ignores over 2 million card-carrying Sandinistas in the country and votes from individuals like Yuniel, Carlos and Joel. The implausible CID-Gallup poll, which has been criticized for its methodology, does not accurately capture “hard” support and totally ignores “soft” support.
None of the people I spoke to expressed support for the U.S.-funded opposition members currently detained. The U.S.-funded opposition are lionized by the West outside of Nicaragua. Inside the country, they are largely ignored.
Even if the U.S.-funded opposition had participated in the elections, it wouldn’t have made any difference in the outcome; this faction of the opposition does not have much support in the country, perhaps only among the (very tiny) upper class.
Reporters have documented their political irrelevance. None of my interviewees—not even Esteban—told me they would have voted for any of the people currently in jail whom the mainstream media and imperial leftists—untethered from reality—call “pre-presidential candidates,” “presidential hopefuls,” or more recently “presidential candidates.” No matter how many times this lie is debunked, it re-appears like a regime-change zombie.
Why Does the U.S.-backed Opposition Have So Little Support?
To understand why the U.S.-funded opposition has so little support, we have to remember at least two things. First, the U.S.-funded opposition never coalesced around a single candidate.
Hunger for power fueled infighting and prevented a viable opposition coalition. They only share hatred towards Sandinismo and reliance on U.S. funding.
Frustrated, the U.S. (including its embassy in Nicaragua) was working on getting everyone behind Cristiana Chamorro (to the chagrin of others in the opposition). She was being groomed to be the Nicaraguan Guaidó. Video of a meeting with U.S. officials and their lackeys show how giddy regime changers were about her placement (not election!) in power, repeatedly calling her “President Chamorro.”
The Sandinista government dismantled this plan, which unraveled after her corruption was exposed and she was subsequently placed under house arrest.
The second issue is even more important. The U.S.-funded opposition in jail (and abroad) is intimately associated with the 2018 deadly barricades and subsequent havoc they wreaked on the country. For this reason, even those who disagree with some aspects of the Sandinista government are not turning to the U.S.-funded opposition, and do not care about their detention.
The U.S.-backed attempted coup d’état in 2018 was detrimental for most people in the country. There is no support for another violent clash, as as it inflicted economic, psychological, and social devastation on most of the society, especially the most disadvantaged.
For example, in total, the estimated economic losses due to the coup is about $24,000 million dollars, which include $206.5 million dollars’ worth of damage to local and national governmental institutions, the collapse of 8,708 small businesses, and loss of 119,000 jobs.
The last thing Nicaraguans want is violence in their communities, after having lived through the barricades in 2018 that destroyed the household economy for most Nicaraguans—regardless of political leanings. I was in Nicaragua at the time. Only those who lived through it can understand the coup’s horror.
According to Danto, a campesino who works the land for a living, only the upper class, especially members of the COSEP (Nicaragua’s powerful chamber of commerce), want another revuelta (violent clash), because they are able to weather its associated economic storm and will eventually recoup losses (should they suffer any). COSEP loudly supported the 2018 attempted coup d’état.
Had it succeeded, members of the COSEP would have wielded more political and economic power, hoarding even more wealth away from the Nicaraguan people. [In an opposition newspaper in Nicaragua, which is the voice of the upper-class opposition, there are renewed calls for another revuelta.]
Nicaragua’s business elite supported the 2018 coup attempt. [Source: todaynicaragua.com]
Rejection to violence was loud and clear across the country on election day. As of this writing, not a single violent incident has been documented at polling places on what turned out to be a peaceful election day. Thus, it is not true that Daniel Ortega won re-election because some members of the U.S.-backed opposition currently detained did not participate. Nicaraguans do not want what they have to offer.
A Final Lesson from “Soft” Supporters of the Sandinista Government
Yuniel, Carlos, Joel and Esteban all articulate something else: Health care is a fundamental right and should be provided for free. This idea is now entrenched in Nicaragua society, after fourteen years of the second phase of the Sandinista revolution.
Nicaraguans have come to expect public and free access to medical care. Support for the idea that education should be a fundamental right is also prevalent. Should anyone try to privatize these services, they will find considerable resistance. Privatization efforts, especially of public services, will face stiff resistance, even among non-Sandinistas. This is because public access to these services benefits most of the society.
Nicaraguans do not spend anywhere near in health care as they do in the U.S. Even some right-wing Nicaraguans who have gained green cards or have been naturalized in the United States and are doing well economically take care of their medical needs in free and public hospitals in Nicaragua, given how expensive they are in the United States (while railing against the Sandinista government that provides it).
The “Hard Vote” and a Winning Strategy
Virna, Juliana, and Fanor are part of the “hard vote” and the heart of the Sandinista revolution victory at the polls. All three are active members of the FSLN.
Virna, a domestic worker with kids, comes from a family of Sandinistas. She sees her militancy as a family legacy that must endure. She supports Daniel Ortega and his government because, above all, he looks out for the poor. Everyone whom I interviewed who identified as Sandinista (whether or not they were directly involved in politics) said this, over and over again. The Sandinista government, they repeated, cares about the most disadvantaged.
Virna explained to me that the FSLN had been organizing and were prepared to win this election. As a leader, part of her responsibilities included finding people to help at the polls; she also made sure they had what they needed (including coffee!) and were safe, though she did not work the polls (because she is a local leader for the FSLN—it is against the rules).
She and her colleagues arranged transportation for the elderly and disabled people who wanted to vote but had no means of getting to the polls. Virna was not worried about the FSLN losing the election, because, as she argues, there have been so many benefits for the population, including public and free health care, that it is inconceivable for most of the population to want to put a break on those services. Fanor agreed.
Fanor, a younger local leader, told me that the FSLN’s winning strategy was simple: acompañamiento a las familias (to accompany families) to help address their needs. For some time now, the FSLN has been working to make sure that, as he says, the Sandinista government has a strong and constant presence within households, not just during election time.
Fanor listed a range of services and programs from the Sandinista government that he has helped deliver, including helping elderly with wheelchairs, providing food to those in need, Plan Techo (giving roofing material for disadvantaged households), community cleaning, cemetery upkeep, defraying costs associated with funeral services, disseminating information about vaccination, building communal homes, providing access to clean water, Bono Productivo (in which women are given pigs, chickens, and cows to stimulate household foodsovereignty and economic subsistence), and others.
These local activities, he argues, constitute one type of help the FSLN provides to families. The FSLN, he says, is working on a range of other projects to spur economic growth and to build on food sovereignty. He notes that the FSLN is not relying on big business to spur economic growth. They are working on economic self-sufficiency, prioritizing small and medium businesses and enterprises. His comments are supported by the data.
The Sandinista government’s incentives for a “people’s economy”—one that primarily relies on production from families, communities, cooperatives and associations (small and medium producers/enterprises)—have grown dramatically since the 2018 coup d’état. Although the Sandinista government had been supporting a people’s economy prior to the attempted 2018 coup, the reliance on the capitalist class for wealth generation was higher prior to 2018 than it was subsequently.
Fanor also explained to me that home visits are key to their strategy because community members often do not air all of their grievances in public forums. But in the privacy of their homes, they are more forthcoming about issues they would like addressed in their communities.
As such, he and other people serve as conduits between community members—of all political stripes—and their local FSLN governments. Importantly, the services that Fanor and his associates help deliver are distributed Parejo—to everyone, irrespective of political affiliation. Juliana, a stay-at-home mother and FSLN community leader, underscored this point.
Juliana, who takes care of a family member, told me that, as a FSLN community leader, she sees her work as providing for her community and delivering government assistance to all who need it, regardless of political leaning. She started working with the FSLN after being inspired by the Sandinista triumph in Managua in 1979.
Her mother also has a long history of supporting Sandinistas. Juliana reached her leadership position due to internationally recognizedgender equality efforts from the FSLN, for which Nicaragua ranks, in 2021, #1 in the Americas. She notes that before the FSLN returned to power, there were few, if any, benefits from the government.
Since 2007, she has worked on helping deliver a range of projects to her community. Recently, she helped shepherd an electricity project for her town. Sandinistas and non-Sandinistas benefited from this and other projects in which she has been involved, including Plan Techo. She notes that even liberals—a term used for people who support some faction of the opposition—can see what the government has accomplished for them. She even notes that some Sandinistas get upset because liberales are given jobs at governmental institutions and use these posts to rail against—and undermine—the revolutionary Sandinista project.
All three expected the FSLN to win, describing free and fair elections in peace in their respective communities. Juliana told me that most people in her community came out to vote in the afternoon after church. She informed me that because a faction of the opposition had called for a no vote, at least one bus company who supported the opposition did not offer its services that Sunday. This had a negligible impact on participation because voting locations were widely available. People drove, walked, or got rides to their voting center.
Rank-and-file Sandinistas
I also spoke to Helena, Danto, and Tamo. These individuals support Sandinistas and Helena and Danto identify as such. I did not ask Tamo if he did as well, though it would be surprising if he didn’t identify as Sandinista. All three noted the importance of voting.
Danto recalled that during the Somoza dictatorship, in his town, the vote was bought and paid for with 5 córdobas, a nacatamal (a local dish), and un trago (alcohol). Sandinistas changed all of that, he said. Sandinistas supported the most vulnerable citizens with literacy campaigns, social rights, a legitimate legal authority, and the reduction of corruption in government.
He noted, with confidence, that because Sandinismo advocates for the poor and Sandinistas are well organized, it will be hard to topple the Sandinista government. Helena, along similar lines, argues that the Sandinista government has provided hospitals, schools, housing, and social security benefits to Nicaraguans. In the neoliberal years, she said, they did not get any of that.
A family member of hers received the Bono Productivo and has been trained to work the land to support household economic independence and food sovereignty. She told me that Sandinistas will be in power as long as they have popular support. Ana, an elderly woman, told me that Sandinistas are people of good conscience. Daniel Ortega, in particular, is a good man, she says, who helps those most in need. Reverence for El Comandante (Ortega) has been documented elsewhere. During the Somoza dictatorship, she did not vote, but has voted Sandinista ever since the triumph of the revolution.
Of all the people I spoke to, I gathered Tamo had the least material resources. He works as a cuidandero, or someone who is hired to live in someone else’s land to work it and protect it so that its harvest is not stolen from its owner. Tamo is shy, but agreed to speak with me about the forthcoming elections. He had never been interviewed before (like on TV, he said).
He mentioned the new hospitals, but spent more time talking about the roads that the Sandinista government has built and fixed over the last 14 years in the town he hails from—far away from where he works. The roads, he says, have made a big difference to people in his town, who can now move their “commodities” with ease and sell them elsewhere.
He had been planning to go back to his hometown to vote, but, due to his job, he was notable to vote. In addition to Danto, Sandinistas who left for the U.S. were not able to vote during this election cycle. As Juliana notes, support for the re-election of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista government would have been higher had all those people been able to vote.
The Attempted U.S.-backed Coup D’état in 2108: Its Role in the Electoral Win of the FSLN Alliance Ticket
Virna, Juliana, and Fanor all agree that the FSLN is more organized now than it was prior to the attempted U.S.-backed coup d’état in 2018, which, for each of them, was quite difficult to live through. Fanor noted that he was targeted through social media.
Although Fanor was disappointed by some young people in his generation who initially bought the U.S.-backed propaganda, he and others worked with families during the attempted coup to make sure their family members did not join the deadly barricades so as to avoid a tragedy, which would have divided the community. Not a lot of people in his community, he says, got involved in the coup. During the attempted coup and after, he and his comrades worked to debunk the various lies from the U.S.-funded opposition.
Fanor tells me that he knew that the coup was not going to work because he saw, first hand, how much families were suffering economically as a result of the revuelta, which prevented them from getting to and from work, from reaching hospitals, or from completing other necessary tasks. Thousands of small family business collapsed. Fanor saw how angry community members were about the devastation.
Virna was the subject of attacks and insults from her neighbors. She was surprised because she had been working in her community by providing help and shepherding projects for everyone, regardless of political affiliation. There was a point at the height of the violence that she thought about resigning from her post as FSLN community leader, but she decided to remain steadfast in her work.
Compañeros protected and took care of her, because she is well known in her community. They were afraid that she was being targeted for an attack, which were rampant against Sandinistas all over the country.
Sandinistas were subjected to insults, beating, torture, burnings, and killings; some had their property vandalized or destroyed. Virna spoke heartbreakingly about how difficult it was to endure during the 2018 coup attempt. She used to cry, she says, every time someone was killed, including a young man from her community who was shot in the back by opposition mercenaries. Her story underscores the importance of women in the resistance to the attempted 2018 coup d’état.
Juliana relayed similar fears during the coup due to her leadership in the community. She did not go to the city because she feared the barricades. Juliana was afraid she would be recognized as Sandinista and targeted. She was petrified of walking to her job because opposition mercenaries manning the barricades would sometimes pass by on her way to work.
Working hard to assure an FSLN electoral win is one way, Juliana and others argue, to prevent the rise of new violent coup attempt.
Despite a mountain of evidence that the 2018 violence was a consequence of a U.S.-backed coup attempt, Western media and imperial left refuse to recognize it. In doing so, they obscure, ignore, and erase the suffering and targeting of Sandinistas, who were the victims of U.S. aggression through local proxies. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge this fact will not understand FSLN’s subsequent organization, priorities, and eventual win at the ballot box.
Conclusion
In speaking to regular working people across Nicaragua, I found overwhelming commitment to the second phase of the Sandinista revolution, even among those who expressed some disagreements with the Sandinista government and constantly consume anti-Sandinista propaganda through social and other opposition media.
For Sandinistas and non-Sandinistas alike, the achievements of the Sandinista government since returning to power in 2007 cannot be denied. Moreover, the second phase of the Sandinista revolution has helped change Nicaraguan society, such that people across the political spectrum think of their public services as a right that should not be privatized—a right they are prepared to defend.
This is particularly important when it comes to healthcare. Investments in health, including infrastructure and programming, have garnered plenty of support for the Sandinista government. Recently, the Ministry of Health started vaccinating people for Covid-19 at home who, for whatever reason, are unable to attend a health center but would like to be vaccinated.
Western mainstream media and imperial leftists ignore the voices and perspectives of working-class people, like those I interviewed, because they do not conform to U.S. and their proxies’ narratives. Importantly, my respondents’ views do not conform to the narratives that members of the now-defunct MRS feeds the imperial left in the U.S.
U.S. State Department cables published by Wikileaks show leaders of the MRS are U.S. informants. They have publicly lobbied for economic warfare against their own country. Yet these individuals present themselves as leftists to an international audience obscuring their support for the Nicaraguan rightwing and the goals of U.S. empire in Nicaragua.
Disturbingly, the imperial left takes the vitriol of the MRS members as the voice of the Nicaraguan people, and ignore the perspectives of people like those I highlight here. When imperial leftists write and speak on behalf of the “Nicaraguan people,” they mean to say of “my friends from the MRS and other members of the Nicaraguan upper class.”
The importance of the social class dimension in understanding the Sandinista win at the ballot box cannot be overstated. The FSLN won because it has the support of the working class.
Although they are the majority, their perspective is largely ignored by the Western mainstream media and the imperial left. By contrast, the perspective of the Nicaraguan upper class—especially its elites who live off of U.S. funds, which largely pay for anti-Sandinista propaganda—is magnified and prioritized the Western world over. For this reason, I did not speak to members of the Nicaraguan upper class.
Note on the Term Imperial Left
I use the term “imperial left” following Vijay Prashad’s retort to David Harvey: You live on the other side of imperialism! I say the same thing to leftists in the imperial core, who, whatever their intentions, refuse to acknowledge Nicaraguan sovereignty and have bent themselves into a pretzel trying to justify their alignment with U.S. State Department’s regime-change efforts. Instead of listening to working-class Nicaraguans as I have done here, they pontificate, presuming to speak on behalf of Nicaraguans, judging what they don’t know, including how socialist the socialist-oriented Sandinista government really is.
This an old habit of the imperial left. Why can’t they understand that only Nicaraguans get to decide whether the Sandinista government is committed to the revolutionary aspirations, whether it’s socialist enough, and whether it is worth supporting? It is easy to point the finger at a developing country for its imperfect revolution. It would be much harder to oppose empire and work on building a socialist-oriented project in the United States by listening to and learning from working-class Nicaraguans who engage in building this political project every day.
Do not believe them when they tell you the left is divided. There is no division. The (anti-imperialist) Left is standing with the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua. The rest are either confused or advocating an imperialist political project.
I urge the imperial left to join calls that reject any and all U.S. intervention in Nicaraguan society, even if their Nicaraguan friends want otherwise. The imperial left will not suffer the consequences of U.S, EU, and OAS aggression, which will only generate economic suffering and political conflict for and among Nicaraguans, especially the most vulnerable. Esteban, Carlos, Yuniel, Joel, Fanor, Danto, Juliana, Virna, and Helena will suffer U.S. aggression, not you.
U.S. unilateral coercive measures against Nicaragua will increase its population’s economic pain, and will force more people to migrate to the U.S. in search of economic sustenance. The histrionic response from the U.S. to the Sandinista electoral victory has led some Nicaraguans to believe that the United States will accept all Nicaraguan migrants. Political aggression from the U.S. coupled with economic difficulties that stem from sanctions will increase Nicaraguan migration to the United States. Migration is the harvest of empire.
The 232 internationalcompanions from 27 countries observed peaceful, fair, and democratic elections in Nicaragua. Celebrationserupted all over the country when the results were announced.
The FSLN will visit with communities to hear their grievances, needs, and desires. Elected members of the National Assembly will participate in this effort, which is meant to bolster the FSLN’s bold plan to reduce poverty and increase well-being for all Nicaraguans. As William Grigsby argues, in the next few years Nicaragua will begin to reap what the Sandinista government has been sowing for 14 years—a great leap forward is coming.
Sandinistas are far from done with their revolutionary project.
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Yader Lanuza is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Lanuza’s research examines the causes and consequences of social inequality in three domains: education, family and the criminal justice system. He focuses largely, though not exclusively, on the experiences of immigrants and their offspring from Latin America and Asia. Yader can be reached at: [email protected].
Comments Off on Sandinistas Won a Landslide Victory Not Through Fraud but Because They Uplifted Nicaragua’s Poor and Defeated Intervention Efforts Including the 2018 U.S. Backed Coup Attempt
Finish naturopathic Doctor Ariyana Love says there’s new research out of Spain supporting the idea that at least some batches of the coronavirus vaccine have graphene oxide in them.
Since it is usually not practicable to achieve a 100 percent inoculation rate, the question is what is the vaccination level that will either bring the disease under control or eliminate it altogether? This level is sometimes referred to as “herd immunity.” We were told at first by experts, most notably Dr. Anthony Fauci, that the vaccination rate of 60 to 70 percent would confer herd immunity in regard to Covid 19.
The mRNA jab is, remember, known not to stop people catching covid. And it is known not to stop people spreading it. I don’t believe anyone disputes these facts. And yet vast numbers of deaths and serious injuries have occurred among people who have been jabbed. Look at the item entitled ‘Updated: how many are the vaccines killing?’ on my websites.
Are we prepared to see our loved ones burn alive in a nuclear holocaust in a war with Russia over Ukraine? If not, cut out the macho saber rattling and de-escalate before it’s too late.
The Quirinale Treaty promoted by President of the Republic Mattarella, signed on November 26 by Prime Minister Draghi and President of the Republic Macron, is a 360-degree political treaty by which Italy and France “undertake to develop their coordination and foster synergy between their respective actions at the international level,” implementing “industrial partnerships in specific military sectors” and other programs involving financial burdens for the state.
Governments around the world are either coercing or forcing their citizens to take dangerous inoculations which take away the peoples rights and freedoms while also punishing those who do not comply. Human rights, which western countries claim to champion, have all been destroyed.
A number of defence analysts are convinced that the United States of America, supported by Britain and Australia, is goading China to go to war over Taiwan. They point to constant statements by officials from the three countries pledging to come to Taiwan’s defence if it is attacked by China and the actual presence of US warships in the vicinity of the region as evidence of “an aggressive stance”.
There are no variants. Because there is no virus. SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t exist. I’ve spent the past year and a half proving that. But fantasies do exist. So do covert ops with intentions to deceive. Thus, the “scientific world” is agog over the new South African variant, named B11529 (aka Omicron, Botswana). Woo. The ghost is coming out of the closet. Beware. COVID cases are rising…
US District Judge Matthew Schelp in the Eastern District of Missouri blocked the federal government from mandating Covid jabs for healthcare workers in Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota and New Hampshire.
What a small world we live in. The “Nu variant” scare you keep hearing about is coming from the same people and institutions that spawned the last COVID scare, and the one before that, and the one before that one, dating back all the way to the onset of COVID Mania.
Il Trattato del Quirinale promosso dal presidente della Repubblica Mattarella, firmato il 26 novembre dal presidente del Consiglio Draghi e dal presidente della Repubblica Macron, è un trattato politico a 360 gradi con cui Italia e Francia «s’impegnano a sviluppare il loro coordinamento e a favorire la sinergia tra le rispettive azioni a livello internazionale», attuando «partnership industriali in specifici settori militari» e altri programmi che comportano oneri finanziari per lo Stato.
Per essere ratificato dal Presidente della Repubblica, il Trattato avrebbe dovuto essere prima autorizzato dal Parlamento in base all’Art. 80 della Costituzione, secondo cui «le Camere autorizzano con legge la ratifica dei trattati internazionali che sono di natura politica, o prevedono oneri alle finanze».
Il testo del Trattato è invece rimasto segreto, al di fuori di una ristretta cerchia di governo, finché non è stato pubblicato dopo la firma (pdf qui).
Quale sia lo scopo del Trattato, venuto alla luce al termine di una trattativa segreta, appare chiaro dalla sua tempistica: esso viene concluso nel momento in cui, con l’uscita di scena della cancelliera tedesca Merkel, si stabiliscono nuovi rapporti di forza dell’Unione europea. La Francia, che nel 2022 assume la presidenza semestrale della Ue, sostituisce all’asse Parigi-Berlino quello Parigi-Roma.
Centrale nell’accordo bilaterale è l’Art. 2 relativo a «Sicurezza e Difesa», composto da 7 paragrafi. Italia e Francia si impegnano a «rafforzare le capacità dell’Europa della Difesa, operando in tal modo anche per il consolidamento del pilastro europeo della Nato». Come ha sottolineato Draghi in sintonia con Washington, si deve costruire «una vera difesa europea, che naturalmente è complementare alla Nato, non sostitutiva: un’Europa più forte fa la Nato più forte». Per pagare sia la Nato sia l’Europa della Difesa, sarà necessario un colossale aumento della spesa militare italiana, che già oggi supera i 70 milioni di euro al giorno.
Nel quadro delle «alleanze strutturali» tra le rispettive industrie militari, l’Italia aiuterà la Francia a potenziare le proprie forze nucleari strategiche e i relativi sistemi militari spaziali. Macron ha varato un programma di «modernizzazione» che prevede lo sviluppo di sottomarini da attacco nucleare di terza generazione, armati di nuovi missili balistici, e di un caccia di sesta generazione (Fcas) armato di nuovi missili da crociera ipersonici a testata nucleare.
L’Italia, però, già partecipa al progetto di un altro caccia da attacco nucleare di sesta generazione, il Tempest, promosso dalla Gran Bretagna, per cui collaborerà probabilmente a entrambi a meno che non vengano unificati. Funzionale alla «modernizzazione» delle forze nucleari francesi è il programma, annunciato da Macron in ottobre, di costruire un sistema di piccoli reattori nucleari modulari con una spesa di 30 miliardi di euro. Probabilmente il Trattato prevede una collaborazione dell’Italia anche in questo campo, nel quadro del piano mirante alla reintroduzione del nucleare nel nostro sistema energetico.
Sempre nell’Art. 2 Italia e Francia si impegnano a «facilitare il transito e lo stazionamento delle forze armate dell’altra Parte sul proprio territorio», senza specificare a quale scopo, e a coordinare la loro partecipazione a «missioni internazionali di gestione delle crisi», in particolare nel Mediterraneo, Sahel e Golfo di Guinea.
Si prepara un forte accrescimento della partecipazione di forze speciali italiane – con blindati, aerei ed elicotteri da attacco – alla Task Force Takuba, che sotto comando francese opera in Mali e paesi limitrofi. È schierata in questa regione ufficialmente per la «lotta al terrorismo», in realtà per controllare una delle zone più ricche di materie prime strategiche sfruttate da multinazionali statunitensi ed europee, il cui oligopolio è messo a rischio dai cambiamenti politici in Africa e dalla presenza economica cinese.
In tal modo – declama il Trattato del Quirinale – Italia e Francia unite «contribuiscono al mantenimento della pace e della sicurezza internazionali, nonché alla tutela e alla promozione dei diritti umani».
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“Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation”, remarked Ernest Renan the nineteenth century French Orientalist. This deformation is reflected in nationalist versions of history that are often simplistic, selective, and self-righteous, and self-serving. Zionist narratives of history are, for the most part, no worse and no better than other nationalist narratives. One extreme example of such one-sidedness was Golda Meir who asserted that “All the wars against Israel have nothing to do with it”.
At the other end of the spectrum is Shaul Arieli, a retired colonel in the IDF and an academic, who writes about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a strikingly objective and fair-minded manner. In his previous books Arieli set out to explain the Israeli and Palestinian narratives not in order to take sides but, on the contrary, in order to convey the complexity of the clash between the two nationalist versions of history. This is the only way, he believes, for resolving the conflict: a compromise between the valid claims of both sides, leading to the partition of the disputed land.
In this book Arieli has chosen a different approach. He addresses himself only to his Israeli readers; he urges them to confront their own narrative and to examine critically some of the principal myths on which it is based. This, argues Arieli, will generate a process of purification and self-awareness from which Israeli society will emerge stronger and better equipped to confront the challenges facing it. Most national myths, of course, contain a kernel of truth. The task of the historian is to extract the kernel of hard facts from the penumbra of tendentious interpretations and outright distortions. Arieli earns the reader’s trust by executing this mandate in a rigorous and impartial manner.
The scope of the book is very wide, covering both the pre-independence and the post-independence periods. Some of the myths are very familiar, like “a land without a people for a people without a land”, “there is no Palestinian people”, “Jordan is Palestine”, and the Mufti told the Palestinians to run away in 1948 in the expectation of a triumphal return.
Some of the myths are more complex, for example, the claim that the Palestinians have not abandoned the strategy of stages and they still want to destroy Israel. On all of these myths, Arieli has something original and interesting to say, buttressing his arguments with hard facts and irrefutable statistics. In this review, however, I propose to focus only on the myths propagated by Israel’s two last prime ministers: Labour’s Ehud Barak and Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
Courage on the battlefield is very common, as Bismarck observed, whereas civic courage is rather rare. Ehud Barak was a brave and brilliant soldier but an inept politician who lacked the courage to take the necessary risks for the sake of peace.
The moment of truth came at the Camp David summit in July 2000 which Barak himself had asked Bill Clinton to convene. Barak’s advisers warned him that the Palestinians would not budge from their basic demand for an independent state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank with a capital city in East Jerusalem. Barak believed that with Clinton’s help he could push Yasser Arafat into a corner and force him to settle for less.
What Barak tried to achieve was not the peace of the brave based on international legality but the peace of the bully backed by the acute asymmetry in the power of the two sides. His modus operandi was peace by ultimatum. For two weeks at Camp David, Barak refused to meet with Arafat and to negotiate face-to-face. He tried to dictate the terms of a settlement to his opponent. Every time Arafat turned down an offer, Barak tried a slightly improved offer, the last of which included Gaza and 89 percent of the West Bank but no sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif in the Old City of Jerusalem. When Arafat rejected this offer, the summit ended in failure and Barak bore the lion’s share of the responsibility for this failure.
Following the failure of the summit, Barak invented the myth that there is no Palestinian partner for peace. He claimed that at Camp David he had made the most generous offer imaginable to the Palestinians, but that Arafat rejected the offer and made a strategic decision to return to violence, a decision that led to the outbreak of the second intifada four months later. The claim that Arafat planned and instigated the second intifada is utterly baseless. Instead of admitting his own fault, Barak sought to pin the blame for the impasse on the other side.
The problem with Barak’s post-facto explanation, or more precisely of the myth he invented, was that the great majority of Israelis believed. This myth had dire consequences for the Labour Party, for the peace camp, and for the prospects of a peaceful settlement. For if there was no Palestinian partner for peace, it was only logical for Israelis to vote for a leader who was good at killing Palestinians rather than for a party that advocated negotiations with them. Ariel Sharon fitted the bill perfectly. Consequently, his Likud party was elected in February 2001 and right-wing parties have remained in power ever since. Sharon actually boasted that during his five years in power, there were no peace negotiations of any kind with the Palestinians.
The twelfth and last chapter is about the staggeringly dishonest claim that Benjamin Netanyahu supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The only solid piece of evidence for this claim was his Bar-Ilan speech of 14 June 2009, two and a half months after he formed his second government. In this speech he stated ‘We will be willing to accept a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state’. The speech, however, was only made under intense pressure from the Obama administration and the change of policy it announced was more apparent than real. A month after the speech, Benzion Netanyahu, the prime minister’s octogenarian father told a Channel 2 TV interviewer: ‘Binyamin does not support a Palestinian state, except on conditions that the Arabs will never ever accept. I heard this from him’.
Benjamin Netanyahu remained firmly wedded to the status quo: limited Palestinian autonomy under Israeli rule. In his speech Netanyahu called for negotiations without pre-conditions. But in the same breath he posed a series of pre-conditions to the Palestinians.
First, he dissociated himself from the important understandings that his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, had reached with President Mahmoud Abbas a year earlier.
Second, he rejected Abbas’s demand for a freeze on settlement expansion during the negotiations. In other words, while pretending to negotiate over the division of the pizza, Netanyahu proposed to keep eating it.
Third, there could be absolutely no return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes, not even in symbolic numbers.
Fourth, he insisted that Jerusalem will remain Israel united capital. Moreover, Netanyahu introduced a completely new condition: the Palestinians had to recognise Israel as the state of the Jewish people. The reason Netanyahu posed this condition was because he knew that no Palestinian leader, however moderate, could accept it. It was an absurd condition. In short, Netanyahu never agreed to a two-state solution. In the run-up to the 2015 elections, he himself declared: ‘If I am elected, no Palestinian state will emerge on my watch’. He was re-elected and he was true to his word
The reality behind the last myth gives an unambiguous answer to the question of who the real rejectionist was during Netanyahu’s 15 years at the helm. By exposing the 12 myths that underlie the Israeli position in the conflict, Arieli holds up a mirror to his compatriots. His compatriots need to look long and hard at their face in the mirror, warts and all, if they wish to understand the fundamental reasons for the elusive peace.
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Avi Shlaim is an emeritus professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.
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