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Operation Coronavirus has shown how mass hypnosis can be inculcated into entire populations, around the world. We are now 20 months into “2 weeks to flatten the curve” and there are still many people hopelessly lost in the official narrative.

The NWO (New World Order) controllers know that narrative is everything. To control the information and to control the way people interpret that information is the absolute power to control perception. Why do you think Bond villain and WEF head Klaus Schwab just held another WEF (World Economic Forum) event on introducing The Great Narrative? A really effective narrative has a hypnotizing effect. This article will take a deeper look at how the official COVID narrative has been able to induce people into a state of fear, disempowerment, compliance, obedience and mass hypnosis – and how it continues to do so – in a manner identical to the brainwashing propaganda of a cult.

Still Buying the Official Narrative … 

Look around you. Do you see many people, including family, friends and colleagues, who are still buying into the official narrative – even at this stage in the game when there has been so much information to destroy it?

Even when Big Pharma have admitted the vaccine was never designed to stop transmission?

Even when recent statistics from VAERS (as of November 12th 2021) show 875,653 adverse events following COVID vaccines and 18,461 COVID vaccine deaths?

We need to recall that the 2010 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care study concluded that under 1% of vaccine adverse events or side effects are ever reported; going by that, that would mean 87 million COVID vaccine injuries and 1.8 million COVID vaccine deaths in the USA – a nation of 330 million (over 1/4 of the country injured). Mass murder is certainly no exaggeration.

Clinical Psychology Professor Explains Mass Formation

In this interview on The Pandemic Podcast, Mattias Desmet, a professor of clinical psychology at the Belgian University of Ghent, explains the psychological reason why so many still buy into the narrative.

He outlines 4 conditions that need to be present that allow people to fall for an absurd official narrative, become hypnotized and fall into what he calls mass formation. Mass formation (also known as mass psychology, mob psychology or crowd psychology) studies how human behavior is influenced by large groups of people.

This brief description gives an overview of it. Gustave Le Bon, Sigmund Freud, Leon Festinger and Philip Zimbardo have all contributed to the understanding of this concept. Essentially, when people become part of a crowd, they deindividuate. There is a tendency for people to give away their personal identity, self-responsibility, self-awareness, guilt, empathy and other individual morality-related attitudes and behaviors. A mob mentality can take over.

Desmet cites the following 4 conditions as necessary precursors to mass hypnosis:

1. Lack of social bond/connectedness
2. Lack of meaning/sense making
3. Free-floating anxiety and psychological discontent
4. Free-floating frustration and aggression

When you have a society where there is already a lot of general anxiety, and where people are uprooted psychologically and spiritually because they are disconnected from their essence and their purpose (and from other humans too), they are ripe for exploitation. The NWO controllers melded together this free-floating anxiety with the fear of the virus (fear of disease/death).

I encourage all readers to familiarize themselves with the NWO blueprint which was revealed in 1969 by Dr. Richard Day. It talks about how the world would be socially engineered so that everything would be chaotic and in a constant state of flux, and people would be encouraged to move away from their hometowns and families, so that people would be more disconnected from each other and feel less grounded.

Desmet describes how such people with these 4 conditions develop a very small field of attention, both mentally and emotionally, and seem unable to expand it even when faced with the facts. He gives examples from historical totalitarian regimes, saying that usually only around 30% of the population becomes hypnotized. Another 40% is not hypnotized but is cowardly, too afraid to speak up. This is why people must continue to speak out now during the COVID scamdemic. Historically, once the opposition is silenced or destroyed, the dictator becomes even more monstrous, metaphorically devouring his own children (killing his own people/supporters) as Hitler and Stalin both did.

Mass Hypnosis Leads to Mass Psychosis

Mass hypnosis isn’t even the final destination. It can go even further into mass psychosis, where an entire population becomes infected with madness and loses its ability to think clearly and rationally. Sound familiar? This After Skool/Academy of Ideas video does a great job of explaining mass psychosis – an epidemic of madness that occurs when a large portion of society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions. With anxiety already present in large amounts in the population, the foundations were already there to generate a pandemic of compliance – for that is what Operation Coronavirus really is, a pandemic of compliance. With decades or even centuries of relentless propaganda, the general population was a fertile ground for seeds of collectivism and authoritarianism to be sown and grown.

The Corona-Initiation Ritual and the COVID Cult

Beyond mass hypnosis and mass psychosis, we can even take this analysis one step further – into the subconscious realms and into the occult. The mass psychosis video touches briefly on how people can more effectively be brought under the heel of totalitarianism by isolation. This is something I highlighted in a July 2020 article entitled Exposing the Occult Corona-Initiation Ritual where I outlined how the lockdowns, quarantines, masks, social distancing and other COVID restrictions mimicked the exact elements of a ritual. In a later article entitled The COVID Cult and the 10 Stages of Genocide, I suggested that we are actually dealing with the phenomenon of a cult – the COVID Cult.

Take a look at this list of cult characteristics below found at this website and ask yourself – how many of these apply to the COVID Cult?

Think about all the unaccountable adoration that has been heaped on Gates, Fauci and the vaccine.

Think about all the excessively zealotry and commitment that has gone into establishing the (utterly false) dogma that SARS-CoV-2 and COVID are respectively the most dangerous virus and disease – ever.

Think about all the censorship that has occurred in a vain attempt to obliterate dissent. Think about all the effort that has gone into fostering the division, separation and the us vs. them mentality.

Think about the way the ends justifies the means (COVID vaccine injuries and deaths don’t matter because we must stop the virus at any cost).

Think about all the shame and guilt hurled at those standing for bodily autonomy (dirty, selfish anti-vaxxers who will kill Grandma).

• The group displays an excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader, and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.
• Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
• Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, or debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
• The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (e.g., members must get permission to date, change jobs, or marry—or leaders prescribe what to wear, where to live, whether to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).
• The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and its members (e.g., the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).
• The group has a polarized, us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
• The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders, or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).
• The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (e.g., lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).
• The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and control members. Often this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.
• Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.
• The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
• The group is preoccupied with making money.
• Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.
• Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
• The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave—or even consider leaving—the group.

Another site has 6 key cult characteristics. Again, consider just well these fit the current COVID Cult:

• Authoritarian Leadership
• Exclusivism
• Isolationism
• Opposition to Independent Thinking
• Fear of Being “Disfellowshiped”
• Threats of Satanic Attack

Then, after the acute phase of the crisis has passed, the hypnosis remains. People (who lacked meaning before the formation of the cult) find a new meaning by bonding together over the (false) details of the narrative, e.g. “we’re all in this together” so we can “build back better.”

Final Thoughts: Implications of the Mass Hypnosis/Psychosis for Those Outside the Cult

The entire COVID scamdemic has been a giant occult ritual. This is because the forces that run the world are steeped in black magic, seeking to shape the world after themselves. People participate in rituals to show they belong to the group. The more absurd the ritual is, the better it functions as a ritual – it becomes unique to that group. Anyone under the ritualistic spell may accurately be said to be a member of the COVID Cult. This explains the astonishing ease with which people forgot their self-respect, their common sense, their innate immune systems and their unalienable, sovereign, inherent, god-given human rights … and threw them all in the gutter over a supposed “emergency.” What else could explain it?

So what are the implications of all this for those who outside the cult who maintained their sanity? Well, we have to treat those in the COVID cult as under a spell of delusion, trauma and mind control. We have to figure out the best ways to deprogram them. Meanwhile, we must remain grounded in our own sanity and inherent rights as the NWO controllers try to turn the pressure up on those around the world who are outside the cult.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @crg_globalresearch. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative media / independent news site The Freedom Articles, author of the book Cancer: The Lies, the Truth and the Solutions and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com. Makia is on Steemit and Odysee/LBRY.

Sources

https://thefreedomarticles.com/internet-of-bodies-pushed-by-wef-klaus-schwab/

VAERS COVID Vaccine Data Show Surge in Reports of Serious Injuries, as 5-Year-Olds Start Getting Shots

https://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Mass+Psychology

https://thefreedomarticles.com/new-world-order-blueprint-revealed/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/exposing-the-occult-corona-initiation-ritual/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/covid-cult-and-the-10-stages-of-genocide/

Characteristics Associated With Cults

Six Sociological Characteristics of Cults

https://thefreedomarticles.com/satanic-black-magic-rules-the-world/

Featured image is from Mises Wire

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

After killing dozens of Syrian civilians in a 2019 bombing, the US military exonerated itself and concealed evidence. It’s the latest scandal for a shadowy US war in Syria that has evaded oversight.

The New York Times has exposed one of the US military’s worst massacres and cover-up scandals since My Lai in Vietnam.

On March 18, 2019, amid a battle with Islamic State fighters, the US Air Force bombed a crowd of civilians taking shelter near the town of Baghuz, Syria, killing a reported 70 people. The attacks occurred within a 5-minute span: an initial strike, and then another with heavier bombs as survivors fled. The Times’ Dave Philipps and Eric Schmitt report:

Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet… dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors.

US military personnel in Qatar watched the attack in real time via a surveillance drone at the scene. The high-definition footage showed that only two or three armed men were near the crowd, and were not engaging in any kind of combat activity that would have justified a defensive military strike.

“Who dropped that?” a confused analyst typed on a secure chat system being used by those monitoring the drone, two people who reviewed the chat log recalled. Another responded, “We just dropped on 50 women and children.” An initial battle damage assessment quickly found that the number of dead was actually about 70.

Instead of accountability, “at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike,” Philipps and Schmitt write. The site of the bombing was bulldozed; the unit that conducted the strike vindicated itself; key evidence was buried; military logs were altered; and investigations were stalled and subverted. Although the Pentagon’s independent inspector general managed to launch a probe, “the report containing its findings was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike.”

The bombing was called in by a classified special operations unit, Task Force 9, which led US ground operations in Syria. Two months after the March 2019 massacre, the task force completed a civilian casualty report on the strike that claimed that only four civilians were killed. It also determined that the strike was lawfully conducted in self-defense.

The Baghuz killings likely only came to light because of whistleblowers who challenged the cover-up from within. Lt. Col. Dean W. Korsak, an Air Force lawyer present at the Qatar air base when the massacre was observed, immediately ordered officials to preserve evidence, including video, and urged superiors to open a war crimes investigation. When they refused, Korsak alerted the Pentagon’s independent inspector general.

Earlier this year, after two years of inaction, Korsak shared details about the cover-up with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“I’m putting myself at great risk of military retaliation for sending this,” he wrote. “Senior ranking U.S. military officials intentionally and systematically circumvented the deliberate strike process.”

…[Korsak] wrote that a unit had intentionally entered false strike log entries, “clearly seeking to cover up the incidents.” Calling the classified death toll “shockingly high,” he said the military did not follow its own requirements to report and investigate the strike. There was a good chance, he wrote, that “the highest levels of government remained unaware of what was happening on the ground.”

When Korsak alerted the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, an Air Force major replied that the office would likely only probe the massacre if there was a “potential for high media attention, concern with outcry from local community/government, concern sensitive images may get out.”

The Senate Armed Committee reached out to Korsack after being approached by another whistleblower, Gene Tate, an investigator at the Pentagon’s Inspector General office. Tate told the Times that he witnessed similar stonewalling and censorship.

“Leadership just seemed so set on burying this. No one wanted anything to do with it,” Tate said. “It makes you lose faith in the system when people are trying to do what’s right but no one in positions of leadership wants to hear it.”

After raising concerns at multiple levels, Tate says that in October 2020 “he was forced out of his position and escorted from the building by security.”

In response to the New York Times, Central Command acknowledged the Baghuz massacre for the first time. But it continues to deny the civilian toll, insisting that just four civilians were killed. According to the Times, a US military statement claimed that 60 of the dead may have not have been civilians, “in part because women and children in the Islamic State sometimes took up arms.”

The Times uncovered additional evidence that the cover-up is part of a broader pattern of US forces ignoring safeguards against attacking civilians in Syria, and hiding the death toll.

According to the Times, some officials believed that Task Force 9, the unit behind the strike, “was systematically circumventing the safeguards created to limit civilian deaths… by late 2018, about 80 percent of all airstrikes it was calling in claimed self-defense.”

Previous mass casualty causing military operations in Syria have also evaded scrutiny. As a New Yorker report observed in 2020, US bombings in Syria have “reduced parts of the country to wasteland.” In Raqqa, US adopted “a strategy of physical annihilation applied against a city that still harbored a significant civilian population”, causing an “utter decimation” that “might be unique in this century.”

According to the Times’ exposé  on Baghuz, US officials assessing civilian deaths in places like Raqqa “did not investigate on the ground and often based their findings on how many dead civilians they could definitively identify from aerial footage of the rubble.”

Baghuz Cliff, Syria. (J. Steffen @ WikiMapia)

Parallels to My Lai massacre in Vietnam

News of the Baghuz massacre comes just days after the US military exonerated itself for the killing of 10 civilians, including seven children, in its August drone strike in Kabul.

The US military’s cover-up of the Baghuz massacre also parallels the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. A reported 504 Vietnamese civilians, including 182 women and 173 children, were slaughtered by US forces in My Lai and neighboring My Khe 4 on March 16, 1968. Just like in Baghuz, the US military unit involved in the My Lai massacre – the 11th Infantry Brigade — carried out an investigation and exonerated itself.

The atrocity was revealed in November 1969 by journalist Seymour Hersh, who interviewed two of the key perpetrators. Hersh’s report, published by the small anti-war outlet the Dispatch News Service, helped turn US public opinion against the Vietnam war.

The Baghuz massacre was kept hidden from the public for a year longer than My Lai was. Hersh’s story came out 18 months after the My Lai massacre; the Baghuz slaughter occurred on March 18, 2019, and was revealed by the New York Times on November 13, 2021 — more than two years later. Coincidentally, the Times’ story was published one day after the 52nd anniversary of Hersh’s report on My Lai: November 12, 1969.

US massacre in Baghuz follows decade-long dirty war in Syria with little oversight

The lack of accountability for US bombings that kill civilians is only one element of a years-long US warfare campaign in Syria given a blank check by Congress and kept largely from public view.

Against the will of the Syrian government — and with no authorization from the United Nations Security Council or the US Congress — the US military continues to occupy a large swath of northeast Syria with hundreds of troops. As I reported in September, the Biden administration has deceived the public about both the nature of the US mission in Syria and its motives.

Although the US claims that its “sole purpose” in Syria is fighting ISIS, the US military has in fact barely done any fighting over the last two years. In 2019, now-senior Biden official Dana Stroul admitted that the US military occupation in Syria in “not only about completing the anti-ISIS fight.” In reality, Stroul explained, occupying the “resource-rich”, “economic powerhouse” region in Syria’s northeast — which contains the country’s “hydrocarbons” and is its “agricultural powerhouse” — gives the U.S. government “broader leverage” to influence “a political outcome in Syria” in line with US dictates.

At a US gov-funded think tank, this official who oversaw Congress' Syria Study Group outlines the continued regime-change strategy.

She says the US military "owned" 1/3rd of Syrian territory, including its oil/wheat-rich region. And the US is trying to block reconstruction funds pic.twitter.com/NIEJ9elxhs

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 5, 2019

Underscoring the bipartisan mission, Stroul’s rationale was expressed more crudely by President Trump in January 2020, when he told Fox News that he had backed off a withdrawal from Syria in order to “to take the oil. I took the oil.”

The US Congress is so committed to deploying US troops to steal Syrian resources that it refuses to even debate it. In September, a proposed amendment from Rep. Jamal Bowman (D-NY) that would require Congressional authorization for the U.S. military force in Syria was defeated 141-286.

Although the U.S. military launched operations in Syria in 2014, this vote marked the first time that either chamber of Congress has taken a recorded floor vote on whether to authorize the deployment of hundreds of troops there.

The Congressional endorsement of continued military occupation in Syria pleased the Biden administration, which “doesn’t want a cap on military operations in Syria,”Politico reported. “The United States is in Syria for the sole purpose of enabling the campaign against ISIS, which is not yet over,” a National Security Council spokesperson claimed, omitting the hegemonic motives previously admitted by Stroul and Trump.

The Congressional abrogation of its oversight and war authority powers in Syria follows its decade-long rubber stamp on arguably the most catastrophic and deadly US operation of them all: Timber Sycamore, the multi-billion dollar CIA program that armed and trained insurgents seeking to overthrow Syria’s government.

Just like the cover-up over the Baghuz massacre, US officials concealed the costs and consequences of the massive covert CIA operation.

Timber Sycamore proved to be “one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the C.I.A”, the New York Times reported in 2017, after Trump ordered its cancellation. With “a budget approaching $1 billion a year,” or “about $1 of every $15 in the CIA’s overall budget,” the CIA armed and trained nearly 10,000 insurgents, spending “roughly $100,000 per year for every anti-Assad rebel who has gone through the program,” the Washington Post revealed in 2015. Citing a “knowledgeable US official,” the Post’s David Ignatius reported in 2017, the “many dozens of militia groups” given “many hundreds of millions of dollars” by the CIA “may have killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers and their allies over the past four years.”

As David McCloskey, a former CIA analyst who worked on Syria during the program’s early years, told me in a recent interview for The Grayzone, the US continued this program despite the internal understanding that “al-Qaeda affiliated groups and Salafi jihadist groups were the primary engine of the insurgency.” The US government’s tacit alliance with Al Qaeda, McCloskey said, was “a tremendously problematic aspect of the conflict.”

4/ Ex-CIA analyst David McCloskey: "I think there’s an understanding that al-Qaeda affiliated groups and Salafi jihadist groups were the primary engine of the insurgency." pic.twitter.com/RWGNDaWpFv

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) November 11, 2021

US support for an Al Qaeda-dominated insurgency was privately acknowledged at the highest levels in the Syrian war’s early years. In February 2012, Jake Sullivan — now Biden’s National Security Advisor — wrote to Hillary Clinton: “AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”

Although Sullivan made that admission in secret, the most publicly blunt acknowledgement of the US “side” in Syria came two years later from his current boss. In Syria, there was “no moderate middle,” then-Vice President Joe Biden told a Harvard audience in 2014. Instead, Biden said, US “allies” in Syria “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were Al-Nusra, and Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”

Biden on Syria, 2014: US allies "poured hundreds of millions of dollars & tens…thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were…
Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis."pic.twitter.com/0mAaThVf2x

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) June 8, 2021

Biden’s only error was omitting the extensive US role in concert with its “allies.”

The CIA and its allies’ arming of a jihadi-dominated insurgency prolonged the Syrian war and led to untold atrocities. In the coastal Latakia region, a Human Rights Watch investigation found that US-armed insurgents were responsible for “the systematic killing of entire families.” The US-backed insurgents there were bent on “sectarian mass murder”, Robert F. Worth of the New York Times found:

In Latakia, some people told me that their city might have been destroyed if not for the Russians. The city has long been one of Syria’s safe zones, well defended by the army and its militias; there are tent cities full of people who have fled other parts of the country, including thousands from Aleppo. But in the summer of 2015, the rebels were closing in on the Latakia city limits, and mortars were falling downtown. If the rebels had captured the area — where Alawites are the majority — a result would almost certainly have been sectarian mass murder. Many people in the region would have blamed the United States, which armed some of the rebels operating in the area.

Congress is mandated to oversee CIA programs like the covert dirty war in Syria. But instead, “there is no evidence that the intelligence committees ever used their powers to prevent, seriously modify, or terminate this fatally flawed operation,” former Congressional staffer Stephen Weissman wrote in Foreign Affairs last year. Even when the House Intelligence Committee voted in 2015 to cut the CIA program’s $1 billion budget by 20 percent, Weissman observes, “the actions of the committee’s Senate counterpart were never made public, so it’s possible that even that modest reduction never went into effect.”

Congress has also rejected oversight when it comes to the impact of its crippling sanctions on Syria. The Caesar Act, approved by voice vote in December 2019, aggressively seeks to prevent Syria’s reconstruction and has, in the unapologetic wordsof former Trump envoy James Jeffrey, “crushed the country’s economy.” In 2020, then-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard advanced a measure that would require regular reports on how sanctions impact civilians of targeted states like Syria. But the proposal was ultimately stripped by the Senate.

Last Congress, @TulsiGabbard passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to require detailed reporting on the impact of sanctions on innocent people.

The amendment was stripped out of the final bill by the GOP Senate. https://t.co/SfavfhPwRR

— Erik Sperling 🌍 #BidenEndTheBlockade 🇾🇪 (@ErikSperling) January 22, 2021

The prevailing rejection of accountability for US warfare in Syria is so extreme that not even high-level whistleblowers and explosive evidence can ensure public scrutiny. Whereas two brave US military officials managed to expose the massacre in Baghuz, the US media — including the New York Times — continues to ignore the OPCW scientists who challenged a US-backed cover-up at the world’s top chemical weapons watchdog.

The US, Britain and France bombed Syria in April 2018 after accusing it of committing a chemical weapons attack in Douma that same month. Leaked OPCW documents later revealed that the inspectors who investigated the scene in Douma found no evidence of chemical weapons use. Their findings instead suggest that the incident was staged by insurgents to frame the Syrian government. But the team’s original report was doctored, censored, and ultimately kept from the public. A US delegation was also brought in to meet with the inspectors and try to influence the probe in its favor. Although a series of explosive OPCW leaks have been released since May 2019, primarily at WikiLeaks and The Grayzone, Congress and US media outlets have refused to even acknowledge the scandal.

By revealing that the military murdered dozens of civilians and then concealed the crime, the New York Times’ Dave Philipps and Eric Schmitt have pierced the media and Congressional blockade surrounding US operations in Syria. After a decade of covert dirty warfare; devastating military strikes; and crippling sanctions on Syria, there are many more scandals to come to light.

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Featured image: Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. US military officials watched the Baghuz massacre here via drone footage in real time. (US Air Force)

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***

A “perfect storm of Russian aggression during the coming winter months” is all but inevitable. Watch it on your screens while you properly freeze.

As much as with “brain dead” NATO (copyright Emmanuel Macron) no one ever lost precious assets betting on the incompetence, narrow-mindedness and cowardice of political “leaders” across the Atlanticist EU.

There are two main reasons for the latest German legalese gambit of suspending the certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

1. Retaliation, directly against Belarus and Russia, “guilty” of the disgraceful refugee drama at the Poland-Belarus border.
2. Politicking by the German Greens.

A high-ranking European energy executive told me,

“this a game where Germany does not hold a winning hand. Gazprom is very professional. But imagine if Gazprom decided to deliberately slow down their deliveries of natural gas. It could go up tenfold, collapsing the entire EU. Russia has China. But Germany does not have a workable contingency plan.”

This ties up with a proposal that is sitting at a crucial desk in Moscow for approval for two years now, as I reported at the time: an offer by a reputable Western energy firm of $700 billion for Russia to divert their oil and gas exports to China and other Asian customers, away from the EU.

This proposal was actually the key reason for Berlin to resolutely counteract the U.S. drive to stop Nord Stream 2. Yet the torture never stops. Russia now faces an additional hurdle: a carbon tax on exports to the EU which include steel, cement and electricity. That may well be extended to oil and natural gas.

Every sentient being across the EU knows that Nord Stream 2 is the easiest path to lower natural gas prices across Europe, and not the EU’s blind neoliberal bet of buying short term in the spot market.

“They are going to freeze”

Seems like the Bundesnetzagentur, the German energy regulator, woke up from a deep slumber just to find out that the Swiss-based company Nord Stream 2 AG did not meet the conditions to be an “independent transmissions operator” and could be certified only if it was “organized in a legal form under German law.”

The fact that neither the Germans nor the Swiss company were aware of it during the long, previous, always turbulent stages is very hard to believe. So now it looks like Nord Stream 2 AG will have to establish a subsidiary under German law only for the German section of the gas pipeline.

As it stands, the company is not “in a position” to comment on details and especially “the timing of the start of the pipeline operations.”

Nord Stream 2 AG will have to transfer capital and personnel to this new subsidiary, which will then have to present a full set of documentation for certification all over again.

Translation: gas from Nord Stream 2 will be absent during the coming winter in Europe and the pipeline, at best, might start running only by mid-2022.

And that certainly ties in with the politicking angle, as the German regulators are de facto waiting for the new German ruling coalition to emerge, including the neoliberal Greens who are viscerally anti-Nord Stream and anti-Russia.

The European energy executive did not mince his words on a quite possible scenario:

“If Germany does not obtain their oil and natural gas by land now they cannot fashion a fall back position, as there is not sufficient LNG capacity or oil for that matter to supply the EU this winter. They are going to freeze. Much of their economy will be forced to shut down. Unemployment will soar. It would take four years to build up LNG capacity for natural gas but who will build it for them?”

Germany has zero margin of maneuver to dictate conditions to Gazprom and Russia. The gas that Gazprom won’t sell to northern Europe will be sold to eastern and southern Europe via Turk Stream, and most of all to Asian clients, which do not engage in blackmail and pay much better than the Europeans.

What is also clear is that if by a misguided political decision Nord Stream 2 gas is eventually blocked, the fines to be collected by Gazprom from the European consortium that begged for the construction of the pipeline may exceed 200 billion euros. The consortium is made up of Engie, Shell, Uniper, Wintershall Dea and OMV.

It’s against this background that the offer on the table in Moscow becomes even more than a game-changer. The bold recommendation to the Kremlin – with financing already in place – is that Russia’s natural resources including oil and natural gas should be redirected to China, as part of the Russia-China strategic partnership.

The proposal argues that Russia needs no trade with the EU, as China is way ahead of them in most advanced technologies. That certainly provides Moscow with the upper hand in any negotiations with any German government. As I mentioned it to the European energy executive, his terse comment was, “I doubt they will desire to commit suicide.”

It’s all Putin’s fault

It would be too much to expect from German and EU politicians the clear-sightedness of the government of Serbia, which is considering importing 3 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas annually for 10 years. Gazprom has been on the record for years demonstrating the practical, reliable and cost-conscious aspects of long-term contracts.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, commenting on the migrant crisis at the Poland-Belarus border, noted how “Poland behaves outrageously, while the leadership in Brussels applies double standards that are so apparent and naked that they can’t fail to understand that they are embarrassing themselves.”

The case of Nord Stream 2 adds extra layers to EU self- embarrassment as it concerns the wellbeing of populations already living inside Fortress Europe. Let them freeze, indeed – or pay virtual fortunes for natural gas that should be readily available.

As we all know, Germany, Nord Stream 2, Ukraine, Belarus, it’s all interlinked. And according to a Ukrainian lunatic profiting from an Atlanticist platform, it’s all Putin’s fault – guilty of conducting hybrid war against the EU.

It will be up to the “resolve of Poland and Lithuania” to “counter the Kremlin threat”. The ideal framework in this case should be the Lublin Triangle – which unites Poland and Lithuania with Ukraine. These are the lineaments of the new Iron Curtain, erected by the Atlanticists, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, to “isolate” Russia. Predictably, German Atlanticists are a crucial part of the package.

Of course, to be successful, these actors should “also seek greater U.S. and UK engagement”, with every movement complementing “the role of NATO as the ultimate guarantor of peace in the region”.

So behold, EU mortals: a “perfect storm of Russian aggression during the coming winter months” is all but inevitable. Watch it on your screens while you properly freeze.

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Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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

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***

B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, which dared to brand as “apartheid” Israel’s regime for governing occupied Palestinians, has now exposed Israel’s use of settler aggression to grab Palestinian land. In its report, “State Business: Israel’s misappropriation of land in the West Bank through settler violence, B’Tselem says. “Israel has taken over some ..using official means: using military orders, declaring [an] area ‘state land,’ a ‘firing zone’ or a ‘nature reserve,’ and expropriating land. Other areas have been effectively taken over by settlers through daily acts of violence, including attacks on Palestinians and their property.”

Although B’Tselem argues the “two tracks appear unrelated,” in fact, they constitute a single track. Settler violence is an “informal tool in the hands of the state to take over more and more West Bank land. The state supports and assists these acts of violence and its agents sometimes participate in them directly. As such, settler violence in a form of government policy, aided and abetted by official state authorities with their active participation.”

According to the report, Israeli settlers have taken over 11 square miles of farm and pasture land in the occupied West Bank during the past five years.

Settler violence includes stoning, threatening, burning fields, destroying trees and crops, damaging homes and vehicles, stealing crops, and, B’Tselem says, “in rare cases, homicide”. Settlers most prone to violence are those dwelling on some of the 150 wildcat settlements, dubbed “farms”, which are not officially recognised by the state but are provided with electricity, water, roads and protection by the state. The Israeli military does not respond to settler attacks on Palestinian persons or property.

B’Tselem states,

“The military avoids confronting violent settlers as a matter of policy, although soldiers have the authority and duty to detain and arrest them. As a rule, the military prefers to remove Palestinians from their own farmland or pastureland rather than confront settlers, using various tactics such as issuing closed military zone orders that apply to Palestinians only, or firing tear gas, stun grenades, rubber-coated metal bullets and even live rounds at Palestinians not settlers.”

The olive harvest is an especially temse time for Palestinian farmers as settlers mount attacks on families picking the fruit, steal olives, uproot trees and threaten farmers trying to reach their trees.

According to B’Tselem,

“Complaints are difficult to file, and in the very few cases in which investigations are in fact opened, the system quickly whitewashes them. Indictments are hardly ever filed against settlers who harm Palestinians and when they do, usually cite minor offences, with token penalties to match in the rare instance of a conviction.”

B’Tselem argues that settler violence is “part and parcel of Israel’s apartheid regime, which aims to create a Jewish-only space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The regime treats land as a resource designed to serve the Jewish public, and accordingly uses it almost exclusively to develop and expand existing Jewish residential communities and to build new ones. At the same time, the regime fragments Palestinian space, dispossesses Palestinians of their land and relegates them to living in small, over-populated enclaves”.

B’Tselem’s January 2021 report on Israel’s practice of apartheid, has, in particular, encouraged international human rights groups and commentators to use this term, blackened by the South African white regime’s discrimination against repression of the native population. This development amounted to a major, even revolutionary, liberating change in how some view Israel and are prepared to speak about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. This month’s report on settler violence as a tool of the apartheid regime is bound to have repercussions in the war of words between Israel and its critics and detractors. Palestinians began to use this term in the early 2000s when Israel began to build its “apartheid wall” across the West Bank, seizing wide tracts of Palestinian land and cutting Palestinian farmers off from their farms.

While B’Tselem contends that settler violence has become “part and parcel of life under the occupation in the West Bank,” Israeli colonising violence long predated 1967 and was practiced by early Israeli settlers with the encouragement and support of the British mandatory authority. A British officer who made his name in the World War II campaign against Japan, Orde Wingate launched his career in 1936 during the Palestinian revolt against Britain by training Jewish fighters to fight Palestinian irregulars defending their lands. Captain Wingate, a committed Christian Zionist, formed the Special Night Squads of British soldiers and Jewish militiamen to mount offensive operations against Palestinians rather than rely on simply defending Jewish colonies. This approach has been used by the Israeli state and military since then. Consequently, Wingate is seen by Israelis as the father of the Israeli Defence Force,” which, thanks to Wingate, has always been the “Israeli Offence Force”.

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Featured image: Separation wall between Israel and the West Bank near Jerusalem. Photo by Mazur Travel/Shutterstock.

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A new clause added by the UK government to a proposed new nationality and borders bill would give the government the power to strip people of their British citizenship without giving them notice.

The clause, titled the “Notice of decision to deprive a person of citizenship”, exempts the government from having to give notice if it is not “reasonably practicable” to do so, or if stripping citizenship is in the interests of national security and diplomatic relations.

The proposed change to the current law is sponsored by Home Secretary Priti Patel. The bill is currently proceeding through the House of Commons but has yet to be considered by the upper house of the UK parliament, the House of Lords, which can propose amendments to legislation.

“British citizenship is a privilege, not a right. Deprivation of citizenship on conducive grounds is rightly reserved for those who pose a threat to the UK or whose conduct involves very high harm,” a Home Office spokesperson told Middle East Eye.

“The Bill doesn’t extend our power to remove citizenship. The requirement to give notice of a decision to deprive citizenship will be disapplied where it is not practicable to do so.”

In 2002, the UK introduced measures that allowed British-born nationals and naturalised citizens to lose their nationality rights. Successive governments gradually broadened the scope of those powers.

The government’s use of the powers then rose in response to the perceived threat posed by British nationals returning from Syria.

Out of 172 people deprived of citizenship between 2010 and 2018, 104 of those cases occurred in 2017, according to Home Office figures.

Critics and civil liberties groups say removing citizenship is already a contentious power and scrapping the notice requirement would make the government’s capacities even more draconian.

“Citizenship is the right to have rights, and stripping a person of citizenship can have life-changing and sometimes deadly consequences,” said Emily Ramsden, a senior officer on migration and citizenship at Rights and Security International (RSI).

“Allowing the government to strip people of citizenship without even telling them would deepen the already Kafkaesque struggle of people deprived of citizenship – most of whom are likely from migrant communities – to protect their rights against abuses of power that are allowed to go unchecked by independent judges.”

‘Morally abhorrent policy’

The proposed change to the law comes after the High Court ruled against the government in a case brought by a woman, known as D4, detained in the al-Roj camp in northern Syria for the families of suspected Islamic State (IS) group fighters.

The court ruled that the UK government’s decision to revoke her citizenship in December 2019 was “null and void” because she had not been notified of the decision until her lawyers asked the government to repatriate her in October 2020. She subsequently appealed the decision.

The new clause would remove the need to notify individuals that their citizenship has been revoked in a number of circumstances.

Other proposed rule changes in the bill have also attracted criticism. The current version of the bill would criminalise anyone arriving in the UK by an illegal route, and also criminalises anyone who seeks to save their lives.

On the other hand, it would give immunity to Border Force staff if people die in the English Channel during operations to push migrant boats out of British waters.

“The US government has condemned citizenship-stripping as a dangerous denial of responsibility for your own nationals. Ministers should listen to our closest security ally rather than doubling down on this deeply misguided and morally abhorrent policy,” Maya Foa, the director of Reprieve, told the Guardian newspaper.

A Home Office spokesperson told MEE that the decision to deprive a person of citizenship “must be reasonable and proportionate”, and that it would work “in accordance with international law”.

It is illegal to revoke someone’s citizenship if the measure would leave them stateless, meaning that those targeted must be dual nationals or legally entitled to claim citizenship of another country.

In 2019, the UK revoked the citizenship of Shamima Begum, the British woman who at 15 travelled to Syria to join IS.

Earlier this year, Middle East Eye reported on the case of a British man who was able to return to the UK after four years stranded abroad, after the government was found to have wrongly assessed that he was entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship.

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***

The Interior Department is scheduled to auction off more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday for oil and gas leasing, the largest U.S. lease sale ever. The sale comes just days after President Biden pledged at COP26 to reduce carbon emissions.

“The Biden administration is lighting the fuse on a massive carbon bomb in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s hard to imagine a more dangerous, hypocritical action in the aftermath of the climate summit,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This will inevitably lead to more catastrophic oil spills, more toxic climate pollution, and more suffering for communities and wildlife along the Gulf Coast. Biden has the authority to stop this, but instead he’s casting his lot in with the fossil fuel industry and worsening the climate emergency.”

On Aug. 31, the day the lease sale was announced, the Center and other environmental and Gulf groups sued the administration over its decision to hold the sale.

The lawsuit says Interior is relying on an outdated environmental analysis that fails to consider new information regarding the numerous harms inherent in offshore drilling. It also asserts that Interior is ignoring a December federal appeals court ruling by relying on the same modeling rejected in that case for failing to properly consider harm to the climate from more oil drilling. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s greenhouse gas analysis for the Gulf lease sale repeats these errors, concluding that not having the lease sale will result in more greenhouse gases.

Interior’s own estimates show the Gulf sale will lead to the production of up to 1.12 billion barrels of oil and 4.42 trillion cubic feet of gas over the next 50 years. That’s equivalent to annual emissions from 130 coal-fired power plants.

“It’s deeply troubling that the people charged with protecting our public lands and oceans are ignoring court rulings and their own data showing this lease sale is illegal and reckless,” Monsell said. “President Biden can’t claim to be addressing the climate emergency or caring about environmental justice if he continues to treat the Gulf of Mexico and coastal communities as sacrifice zones.”

Biden could use his executive authority to halt fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters. Instead he has abandoned campaign promises to end new federal oil and gas leasing and extraction. His administration has approved 3,091 new drilling permits on public lands at a rate of 332 per month, outpacing the Trump administration’s 300 permits per month. The Gulf leasing poses a disproportionate threat to Black, Indigenous and other people of color and to low-income communities.

Since Interior completed its environmental analysis in 2017, significant new information has emerged showing the worsening climate emergency and the potential for increased harm to endangered species, including Rice’s whales, found only in the Gulf of Mexico and among the most endangered whales on the planet.

In August the United Nations affirmed that the climate crisis is “unequivocally” the result of human influence and that this influence now has a strong hand in climate and weather extremes. That month the Gulf region was lashed by Hurricane Ida, one of the strongest and most rapidly intensifying hurricanes ever to make landfall. The storm caused thousands of oil and chemical spills and other accidents in the region.

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***

Attorney Aaron Siri is a Vaccine Injury attorney, one of just a handful of such attorneys in the U.S.

Since the passage of the 1986 National Vaccine Injury Compensation law, one cannot sue pharmaceutical companies for vaccine injuries and deaths.

A special U.S. Vaccine Court handles all cases with select judges chosen by the U.S. Government, and there only about 100 lawyers in the United States that are even trained to litigate in this special “court.”

The irony with COVID-19 vaccine injuries and deaths, is that even this very highly specialized and controlled government court will not try vaccine injury cases related to the COVID-19 experimental shots, mainly because they are still under Emergency Use Authorization and not fully approved by the FDA yet.

So Aaron Siri’s firm is suing the FDA, since there is no avenue in place within the U.S. Judicial system to sue the drug companies, or anyone else for that matter, for damages caused by the experimental COVID-19 “vaccines.”

We have previously covered Aaron Siri’s lawsuit, which represents brave doctors who have chosen to put their careers on the line to dare to expose vaccine deaths and injuries caused by the experimental shots, and these physicians are the plaintiffs. See: MIT Scientist and Professor on Exposing COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries: “You Have to be Careful Because You Could be Eliminated”

Today, Attorney Siri published an update on his case against the FDA, where he wrote:

The FDA has asked a federal judge to make the public wait until the year 2076 to disclose all of the data and information it relied upon to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.   That is not a typo.   It wants 55 years to produce this information to the public.

So, let’s get this straight. The federal government shields Pfizer from liability.  Gives it billions of dollars.  Makes Americans take its product.  But won’t let you see the data supporting its product’s safety and efficacy.  Who does the government work for?

Read the full article on his Substack page.

Attorney Aaron Siri gave testimony in Washington D.C. earlier this month at Senator Ron Johnson’s Roundtable Discussion. See: Doctors and COVID-19 Vaccine Injured Testify in Washington D.C. to Crimes Against Humanity – CDC, FDA, NIH, Fauci are No Shows

We have extracted his 10-minute address, and uploaded it to our Bitchute and Rumble channels.

How Does Big Pharma and Corporate America Avoid Justice for their Crimes in the U.S.?

Image source.

The 1986 National Vaccine Injury Compensation law that Congress enacted, and President Ronald Reagan signed into law, is only one example of how Congress protects Corporate America by shielding them from having to defend their criminal activities in the American judicial system that the rest of the population has to work through in proving innocence or guilt.

Recently Pam Martens of Wall Street on Parade published an article that exposed how the corporate rich get away with this with the help of Congress: Wall Street Is Not Only Rigging Markets, It’s Also Rigging the Outcome of its Private Trials

Some excerpts:

When it comes to sycophants, Wall Street has no shortage of them willing to shill for its egregious private justice system called mandatory arbitration – a system which systematically guts the guarantee of a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

Think about that carefully, the industry that is serially charged with rigging markets and other felonious acts, is allowed by Congress to run its own privatized justice system. This is something one would expect to find in a banana republic, not in a country that lectures the rest of the world on democratic principles.

Wall Street’s private justice system effectively locks the nation’s courthouse doors to both its workers and customers, sending the claims before conflicted arbitrators who do not have to follow legal precedent, case law or write legally-reasoned decisions.

Wall Street is the only industry in America that has for decades contractually banned both its customers and its employees from utilizing the nation’s courts for claims against the Wall Street firm as a condition of opening an account or getting a job there.

Instead of being able to go to court with a claim of fraud if you’re a customer, or a claim for labor law violations, like failure to pay overtime or sexual harassment if you’re an employee, Wall Street makes its customers and employees sign an agreement to take all such claims into an industry-run or privately-run arbitration system.

The above graphic from the study by the American Association for Justice shows how claimants faired in mandatory arbitration forums run by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and JAMS. The findings cover a broad range of industries, not just Wall Street.

These private justice systems are certainly not fair, and on Wall Street, they are far from cheap. Fees to claimants can run into tens of thousands of dollars as opposed to a few hundred dollars to file in court.

Study after study has found that arbitrators most often rule in favor of the corporate interest over the consumer because the arbitrators are financially dependent on repeat business from these corporations.

What Wall Street and its army of lawyers like most about this private justice system is its darkness. Unlike a public courtroom, the press and the public are not allowed to attend the hearings.

There are no publicly available transcripts of the hearings as there would be in court. It is next to impossible to bring a court appeal of an arbitration ruling because Wall Street’s biggest law firms have spent decades convincing the courts that these arbitration decisions must be permanently binding.

Another fatal flaw for claimants in these private justice systems is that there is no jury selection from a large public pool of random citizens but rather a repeat-player pool of highly compensated arbitrators.

Read the full article here.

As I have written previously many times, the American judicial system is owned by the Globalists, and we should not expect justice there.

These legal actions do have some value, and that value is mainly in the public realm where the evil deeds of these corporations and federal health agencies that are also owned and controlled by Global Corporate Criminals, can be exposed to the public.

Just don’t expect the judicial system to protect your rights. They protect Corporate profits and control.

If you want to live as a free person, start acting like one, but don’t expect the corrupt system to protect your freedoms.

Resist medical tyranny. Protect your children.

Yes, the costs are high, and you may need to even give up your life by choosing to live as a free person.

But for me personally, I would rather die free than live as a slave to this evil, corrupt world system.

We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true.

And we are in him who is true–even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. (1 John 5:19-20)

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Featured image is from Health Impact News

Trends in Mortality and Morbidity in the Most Vaccinated Countries : Twenty-one Proven Facts

By Gérard Delépine, November 17, 2021

In the spring of 2021, before the emergence of the Delta variant, Israel had been the first country in the world to believe it had achieved herd immunity with the Pfizer injection. But its very high rate of injection did not allow it to avoid a new wave with the establishment of a new absolute record of daily contaminations (11000/D or the equivalent for France of 70000 cases/D).

Everyone Missed this One… Vaccinated People Are Up to Nine Times (9X) More Likely to be Hospitalized than Unvaccinated People

By Steve Kirsch, November 17, 2021

There was a hidden gem in a blog post by Aaron Siri that nobody picked up. It was evidence that vaccinated people are 9X more likely to be admitted to the hospital than unvaccinated. It is hard to get good, honest data out of hospitals nowadays for some reason. I have no clue as to why that is. You’d think things would be more transparent.

The Organized “Takedown” of The Global Fertilizer Supply? Global Crisis in Farming and Food Production

By F. William Engdahl, November 17, 2021

The global energy shortages which have driven prices for coal, oil and natural gas to explosive highs in the last months are a predictable consequence of the mad pursuit of “Zero Carbon” economic policies that have seen foolish governments subsidize a growing share of electricity from unreliable solar and wind generation.

The Road to Fascism: Paved with Vaccine Mandates and Corporate Collusion

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, November 17, 2021

The heavy-handed collusion between the Techno-Corporate State and the U.S. government over vaccine mandates is merely the latest manifestation of the extent to which fascist forces are working to overthrow our constitutional republic and nullify the rights of the individual.

CDC Twisted the Definition of Vaccine – A Lie to Make Billions of Dollars for Drug Companies

By Joel S. Hirschhorn, November 17, 2021

CDC once was a federal agency that nearly everyone respected.  That no longer is the case.  Now there are many reasons why CDC should be widely disrespected.  Its latest debacle is how it changed the definition of vaccine.

China Enters Era of “Cultural Resolution”

By Tom Clifford, November 17, 2021

The cult of personality, once believed dead and buried, has been resurrected. No, we are not on the verge of a new cultural revolution but we are in a time of cultural resolution. To confirm this, the Chinese Communist Party endorsed a “historical resolution” this month, putting Xi behind Mao but ahead of Deng Xiaoping the man who “made modern China”. It says that Xi is core leader and his beliefs are bedrock doctrine.

U.S. Terrorism 101: The Bert Sacks Story

By Edward Curtin, November 17, 2021

Let me tell you about Bert Sacks.  Perhaps you’ve heard of him.  His experiences with the U.S. government regarding terrorism tell an illuminating story of conscience and hope.  It is a story of how one person can awaken others to recognize and admit the truth that the U.S. is guilty of crimes against humanity, even when one is unable to stop the carnage.  It is a tale of witness, and how such witness is contagious.

Fully Informed Consent for Dependent Children. The Absence of Which May Make Injecting Vulnerable Children a Form of Medical Malpractice

By Dr. Diane Perlman, November 17, 2021

At least 42% of American children already have acquired robust natural immunity which is far superior compared to vaccine immunity and that those with naturally-acquired immunity receive no benefit from the vaccines – only risks, some of which may be lethal.

29,934 Deaths 2,804,900 Injuries Following COVID Shots in European Database of Adverse Reactions – Corporate Journalists Have Pericarditis after Pfizer Shots

By Brian Shilhavy, November 16, 2021

A third Australian journalist has developed pericarditis (heart inflammation) after her first Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Eleni Roussos, an ABC News journalist and anchor in the Darwin ABC newsroom, was hospitalized on November 5th and diagnosed with pericarditis according to her sister Koulla Roussos.

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

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The role of the parliamentarian, historically, is one of service.  The desire to hold two jobs, or more, suggests that such service is severely qualified.  In the quotient of democracy and representation, the MP who is ready to tend to the affairs of others is unlikely to focus on the voter.  I represent you, but I also represent my client who so happens to be parking his cash in offshore tax havens.  I represent you, but I am moonlighting as an advisor for an armaments company.

This condition has become rather acute in the British political scene.  While a backbencher earns £81,932 annually plus expenses, they may pursue consultancies in the private sector as long as they do not engage in lobbying – a ridiculous fine line.  Astonishingly, there is no limit on the number of hours they may spend on these additional jobs.  Accordingly, members of parliament have shown marked confusion on how to separate their various jobs.  Every so often, business has tended to find its way into the member’s office.

A stunning feature of the British system is that there is no revolving door to speak of.  Politicians can seamlessly undertake contracts and perform services, irrespective of their parliamentary position.  The conditions and rules have a Gilbert and Sullivan absurdity to them.

One such figure exemplifies this.  Between October 2016 and February 2020, Conservative MP Owen Paterson received remuneration for lobbying efforts on behalf of two companies: the medical diagnostics company Randox, and meat processing entity Lynn’s Country Foods.  The report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, conveyed to the Parliamentary Committee on Standards, was a thorough and scathing effort on Paterson’s exploits.

In his dealings with Randox, the Commissioner found that Paterson “sought to promote Randox products, including their ‘superior technology’ and thereby sought to confer benefits on Randox.” He “sought assistance with accreditation for Randox’s technology” and sought to promote “other, unrelated, Randox technologies”.  Then came the seedy connection: efforts to promote Randox testing by government agencies.

The smelly nature of Paterson’s advocacy for Lynn’s arose because of efforts made by the MP to approach the Food Standards Agency, at the request of the company, because of concerns dealing with the mislabelling of the food producer’s ham product and a product used by Lynn’s to cure bacon.  The Commissioner also noted Paterson’s initiated contact with the Minister of State (DfID) on the subject of laboratory calibration in developing countries.  All were held to be “in breach of the rules on paid advocacy.”

Paterson, for his part, has claimed that the investigation was uncalled for, unjust and pernicious, having allegedly caused his wife’s suicide in June 2020.  The Standards Committee did take this into account as a mitigating factor on the penalty, and noted Paterson’s “passion for and expertise in food and farming matters”.  For all that, the members found that the MP’s conduct had been “an egregious case of paid advocacy.”  He had “repeatedly failed to perceive his conflict of interest and used his privileged position as a Member of Parliament to secure benefits for two companies for whom he was a paid consultant”.  Bringing the House into disrepute, a penalty of suspension of 30 sitting days was warranted.

The response from the governing Tories was one abundant in viciousness.  In trying to save Paterson from the 30-day suspension, Conservative MPs put forth an amendment in an effort to dismantle the very watchdog that had found Paterson out.  A review of the investigation’s findings on Paterson’s conduct was also proposed.  As committee chair Chris Bryant rued, “The definition of injustice is you change the rules in the midst of the process.”

It logically fell upon the investigator to face the chop.  Stone was duly rounded on.  Her office was deluged with abusive messages.  The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, revealed after the vote that Stone had been called upon to consider her position.  It was, claimed Kwarteng on breakfast radio, “difficult to see what the future of the commissioner was”.  Within hours, she found out that her position would probably be safe, with Johnson’s government having executed yet another one of its famous U-turns of spectacular confusion.

The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, had a rather novel interpretation of the proceedings in approving an amendment that would essentially abolish the standards system – if one could even call it that.  “The issue in this case, which involved a serious family tragedy, is whether the member of this House had a fair opportunity to make representations in this case and whether, as a matter of national justice, our procedures in this House allow for proper appeal.”

Despite Johnson’s efforts to save Paterson, the MP quit on November 4.  And just to make matters worse, a raging fire had been lit, enveloping other members of the government.   Former Attorney General, Sir Geoffrey Cox, was the next figure to find himself burning brightly.  Cox had received some £6 million in addition to his MP salary for a retainer with the law firm Withers. This included an annual fee of £400,000, and an additional £156,916.08 for 140 hours of work undertaken between April and May 31, 2021.

To show the high regard he held for the voters of his electorate, Cox had also been in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) for a number of weeks, meaning that he was absent from his constituency while being an advisor on a corruption inquiry.

To the likes of Paterson and Cox can be added scores of Tory MPs, among them Johnson  himself, who is estimated to have received £4 million from second job income over the course of 14 years.

With typical, and in this case cringing understatement, International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan has suggested that it would be “wise” to review the rules around second jobs.  But she did not favour a total ban, suggesting that Parliament would somehow miss out if MPs could not perform such services as that of a doctor or nurse.

Such a view is also held by Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, who claimed it was vital that MPs “maintain connections to the world beyond so that we may draw the insight and expertise that this experience offers”.

In an effort to make some modification to the rules, Johnson has now proposed a measure that any outside role undertaken by parliamentarians, paid or otherwise, can be undertaken “within reasonable limits”.  Trevelyan has suggested that “reasonable”, in this context, is 15 hours.  Labour’s defeated proposal had been to place all second jobs, bar a select few, on the banned list.

The central question to this unfolding farce remains: If you are doing other jobs that are not directly connected to your function as a parliamentarian, are you really representing your constituency?  The likes of Cox, more brazen than ever, square the circle in thinking you do.

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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]

Featured image is from (@OwenPaterson) / Twitter

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Introduction

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Americans and the people of Great Britain, Europe, Canada, and Australia have heard for decades that they live in “The Free World.”

This world contrasted to the Soviet world where civil liberty was replaced with internal passports, with punishments for criticizing authorities and disagreeing with the narrative, and with mandates issued by a dictator instead of laws from elected representatives.

It is ironic that today it is the Western World that has the characteristics that were assigned to life under Soviet Rule–internal Covid passports, censorship for speaking the truth, and now, today (Nov 14, 2021), the Chancellor of Austria, a “free country,” ordered one-third of Austrian citizens under home arrest. They are lock-downed beginning tomorrow (Monday).

The home arrests of millions of Austrian citizens will be enforced by the Austrian Gestapo.

The Austrian interior minister Karl Nehammer boasted: “As of tomorrow, every citizen, every person who lives in Austria must be aware that they can be checked by the police.”

Shades of Stalinist Russia! And it is not only Austria.

Australia’s government has used the “Covid pandemic” to establish a dictatorial government that looks more Nazi with each passing day. Canada seems only a step or two behind. Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Olaf Scholz has given warning that extraordinary measures are forthcoming to restrain Covid this winter. What he means is that extraordinary controls will be put on the German people.

Even in the US the White House Puppet, Joe Biden, is attempting to force all employers to require their workforces to be vaccinated or fired. He is meeting resistance from some federal courts and some Republican governors. Americans, being the only armed Western people, are capable, if led, in standing up against the executive branch overthrow of the US Constitution, under which Biden’s orders are grounds for his impeachment and removal from office.

Looking at the behavior of the Western governments in general, it is legitimate to ask, “where is the free world?”

What does it mean to be free when citizens are punished for refusing to submit to a medical intervention that is a violation of the Nuremberg Laws and the US Constitution? How can people who are coerced be free?

The fact of the matter is that the entire “free world,” US included, would be much freer if we were ruled by Russia. In Russia President Putin has made it clear that vaccination is a personal choice and there can be no coercion of the individual as under rule in the West.

Not only does the “free world” no longer respect freedom, it no longer respects science and facts. It has been firmly established by scientists and medical experts that vaccination does not protect against the virus and does not prevent the vaccinated person from spreading the virus. At the present time it is the vaccinated, not the unvaccinated, who are dying from a multiple of causes in hospitals.

The “vaccine” not only has serious and deadly side effects, as the US, EU, and UK adverse reaction reporting systems reveal, but also the evidence is now conclusive that the “vaccine” destroys natural immunity. The consequence is that the vaccinated are dying not only from side effects of the vaccine but also from the entire range of diseases that the damaged human immune system can no longer combat.

It is a known fact that hardly any children are affected in a harmful way by Covid. But we know that children are devastated by the “vaccine.” So why did the corrupt FDA approve vaccination for children who do not need it but are damaged and killed by it?

Are we experiencing merely the incompetent professionals of a decaying West, or are we witnessing a genocide made possible by the insouciance of Western peoples and fear orchestrated by their unaccountable rulers?

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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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The NASA image below shows the October 2021 temperature anomaly. The Arctic is heating up enormously, with anomalies showing up of up to 9.1°C. 

The image below shows that the global temperature over the past century, i.e. from 1920 to 2020, has risen by 1.3°C. The image shows anomalies from 1900-1920. When adjusting data to reflect a pre-industrial base, ocean air (2m) temperatures and higher polar anomalies, temperatures may have crossed 2°C long ago.

The image below shows two trends, based on NASA 1880-October 2021 data, adjusted to reflect a pre-industrial base, ocean air (2m) temperatures and higher polar anomalies. The linear trend (green) misses the point that the temperature rise is accelerating. The polynomial trend (black) shows the potential for 3°C to be crossed by 2026.

Acceleration of the temperature rise may speed up further soon, for a number of reasons:

Aerosols: As cleaner alternatives become more economic, and as calls for cleaner air become stronger, this could result in a strong temperature rise soon, as sulfate cooling falls away and more black carbon may result from more wood burning and forest fires, as discussed at the aerosols page.

Sunspots: Within a few years time, sunspots will be reaching the peak of their cycle, and they are looking stronger than forecast, as illustrated by the image on the right showing sunspots up to October 2021.

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The Elmo doll loves the vaccine.

Do you want your kid vaccinated?

Then get the Vaccinate Me Elmo Doll and terrify your kid to a safer tomorrow.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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The most powerful leader since Mao. In reality, President Xi Jinping has less control than Mao Zedong but is more powerful as China was not the global economic titan it is today when the Great Helmsman died in 1976.

But Xi feels less comfortable than his status implies he should as he bids to be president for life.

The mountains are high and the emperor is far away is a saying in China that hints at how difficult it is to run a country of 1.4 billion people across 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities and two special administrative regions. Then there are 3,000 prefecture and county level regions, and at least 40,000 township divisions. Consequently, local governments have long turned a blind eye to some Beijing diktats, a dynamic captured by a saying in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: “A general in the field is not bound by the orders from his sovereign.”

China is top heavy. Public dissent is verboten, and officials hide problems and silence whistle-blowers.

Simply put there is often nothing to be gained by trying to correct a wrong. When Covid-19 first appeared in Wuhan, police targeted eight doctors who tried to warn the public. The city’s mayor later said he had to wait for Beijing’s instructions before releasing information on the outbreak.

The cult of personality, once believed dead and buried, has been resurrected. No, we are not on the verge of a new cultural revolution but we are in a time of cultural resolution.

To confirm this, the Chinese Communist Party endorsed a “historical resolution” this month, putting Xi behind Mao but ahead of Deng Xiaoping the man who “made modern China”. It says that Xi is core leader and his beliefs are bedrock doctrine.

Without mentioning names, previous leaders are dammed.

Before Xi took office, the resolution says, China’s “capacity to safeguard its national security was lacking’’.

Xi has expanded China’s global influence, the resolution adds, with no hint of irony but it warns that the party needs to remain vigilant to tackle dangers ahead.

“Constant retreat will only bring bullying from those who grab a yard if you give an inch,” says the resolution ignoring that, officially, China is on the metric system. But it sounds better than grab a meter if you give a centimeter. “Making concessions to get our way will only draw us into more humiliating straits,” it claims.

This will give Xi the type of unquestioned authority necessary to push his agenda through. The endorsement is only the third of its kind since the founding of the party – the first was passed by Mao in 1945 and the second by Deng Xiaoping in 1981. The question is why was it necessary?

China was the future once, now it seems the past is looming ahead.

The light-touch relative liberalism of the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras are a distant memory. Dissent during their presidencies was allowed online and universities could debate democracy and constitutional change, even if discreetly.

Under Xi they resemble almost halcyon days. The genuine pride felt in China’s rising global status seems to have kept the middle class broadly in line but this is not a blank check. An economic downturn could change the equation.

Already property values are falling and the true cost of Evergrande and other failed developers has still to be factored in. And there is a sense that an opportunity has been lost. The international atmosphere has changed and China realizes it should have capitalized more in the goodwill it enjoyed globally up to about say four years ago. And the Taiwan issue has yet to be settled, from Beijing’s point of view.

This is a pivotal 12 months with a major party congress in October next year, when Xi will seek confirmation of his third unlimited term.

Both Jiang and Hu were forced to step down after two five-year terms each. This was meant to prevent the life-term power grab that Mao had enjoyed. Xi, in contrast, has made it clear that he intends to go for a third term and beyond. There seems little chance of home-grown political opposition derailing his plans. Xi has the army and presidency.

Xi, China’s first ruler for life since Mao, came to office extolling the virtues of the Chinese Dream. It is little mentioned today.

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Israeli human rights group B’Tselem in a report on Sunday, November 14, stated that it has documented 451 instances of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of 2020. It claimed that in most of the cases, Israeli security forces did not intervene to stop the violence or protect the Palestinians. According to the report, in 66% of such settler attacks, the Israeli forces did not even report to the scene. In 170 attacks, Israeli forces were present on the scene but either did not intervene, or actively participated in the attacks, resulting in the deaths of five Palestinians and the arrest of 22 others. In only 13 attacks did the Israeli forces take action to “prevent the settler violence.”

According to the report,

“the state fully supports and assists these acts of violence, and its agents sometimes participate in them directly. As such, settler violence is a form of government policy, aided and abetted by official state authorities with their active participation. Settler attacks against Palestinians are a strategy employed by the Israeli apartheid regime, which seeks to advance and complete its misappropriation of more and more Palestinian land. When the violence occurs with permission and assistance from the Israeli authorities and under its auspices, it is state violence. The settlers are not defying the state; they are doing its bidding.”

Such acts of violence aimed at intimidating Palestinians constitute one of the two main ways that Israel confiscates and annexes Palestinian land, the other being with the help of the judicial system to officially misappropriate and take over Palestinian property.

The report includes several instances of settler violence to show how the illegal Israeli settlers and the Israeli state work hand-in-hand to execute this systematic “massive takeover” of Palestinian land. One of the cases cited involved the Ma’on farm, an illegal outpost erected in the southern West Bank on about one square mile of land. As per the report, settlers here have regularly attacked and harassed Palestinians in the area who used to historically use the land for pasture. This ultimately resulted in the confiscation of the land by the Israeli state. The farm now illegally occupies about 264 hectares (652 acres) of land and also now has an additional sub-post.

According to B’Tselem, violent attacks by settlers against Palestinians have seen an uptick in recent months, especially during the olive harvesting season in the months of October and November. The livelihood of approximately 80,000-100,000 Palestinian families is dependent on olive harvesting. Moayyad Besharat, programs and project manager at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, added that the olive harvest this season has been the toughest in recent memory.

Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settler violence in the northern West Bank, said that these attacks are “planned and not spontaneous.” While such settler attacks have been documented in books, research reports and documentaries, little or no action has been taken by the Israeli authorities against the settlers, says the report. It states that “Israel’s inaction continues after settler attacks on Palestinians have taken place, with enforcement authorities doing their utmost to avoid responding to these incidents. Complaints are difficult to file, and in the very few cases in which investigations are in fact opened, the system quickly whitewashes them. Indictments are hardly ever filed against settlers who harm Palestinians and when they do, usually cite minor offenses, with token penalties to match in the rare instance of a conviction.”

The report emphasizes that settlers act as a proxy of the state and inaction by the authorities encourages such violence. B’Tselem said that “state violence – official and otherwise – is part and parcel of Israel’s apartheid regime, which aims to create a Jewish-only space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”

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Featured image: Israeli settlers have been accused of repeatedly setting fire to Burin’s olive groves, such as here in 2017. (Photo: MEE/Muna Asous)

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Major health organizations across the world have changed several definitions of medical terms, including the definitions for “vaccine,” “herd immunity” and “pandemic,” which in turn have a significant impact on everyday life. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now considering changing the definition of “fully vaccinated”

Israel and Australia have already pushed back the goal post. Citizens must get a booster at six months after their second jab or lose all “passport freedoms.” Australian premier Daniel Andrews has actually stated that, going forward, life for the vaccinated will “be about the maintenance of your vaccination status”

Updating the definition of “fully vaccinated” will also have the side effect of skewing mortality statistics, giving government another round of ammunition for false claims. We’ve been repeatedly told that we’re now in a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and this lie will gain new traction once fully vaccinated people are dropped into the unvaccinated category, six months after their last dose

The National Basketball Association is urging players who got a single-dose Janssen shot as recently as two months ago to get a Pfizer or Moderna booster, or face game-day testing starting December 1, 2021. Players who completed a two-dose regimen are being told to get a booster at the six-month mark

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is already talking about expanding its COVID-19 vaccine rule, so that small businesses with fewer than 100 employees may also be required to force the jab on their employees or face stiff fines. The public comment period closes December 6, 2021

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In recent years, and especially after the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020, major health organizations across the world have changed several definitions of medical terms, which in turn have a significant impact on everyday life. In fact, were it not for the World Health Organization changing its definition of “pandemic” back in 2009, we wouldn’t even be in this mess.

Like the swine flu before it, SARS-CoV-2 would not have qualified as a pandemic were it not for the WHO erasing a few key words from the definition. Pre-2009, the official definition of a pandemic was:^1,2

“… when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.”

Then, in 2009, the WHO removed the severity and high mortality criteria (“enormous numbers of deaths and illness”), leaving the definition of a pandemic as “a worldwide epidemic of a disease.”³

By removing the restrictive criteria of severe illness causing high morbidity and leaving geographically widespread infection as the only criteria for a pandemic, the WHO has the ability to declare a pandemic any time there’s more cases of a given disease than normal.

Having this ability is of crucial importance, seeing how the WHO has played a central role in the technocratic takeover we’re now facing. The WHO has emergency powers over its 194 member countries, so when the WHO declares an international public health incident, all member states are required to follow along “in lock step” with the WHO’s directives.

Were it not for the WHO, nations would respond to any given outbreak in any number of ways. Trying to influence them to respond in ways that benefit the technocracy would be like herding cats. Without lockstep coordination between all the world’s nations, using a biosafety narrative to control people and shift wealth distribution on a global scale simply would not be feasible.

But there’s also an even greater and more long-lasting implication for society. By redefining what certain words and terms mean, the rising biosecurity state is attempting to change your perception of what’s true and what is false. In the process, they’re perverting science into something ruled by faith, speculation and biased opinion. The dangers of that are incalculable.

What Is a ‘Vaccine’?

In September 2021, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shocked medical experts by changing the definition of a vaccine from “a product that produces immunity therefore protecting the body from the disease,”⁴ to “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”⁵

The key change is that a “vaccine” no longer produces immunity, so it no longer protects you against the disease. It only stimulates an immune response against a given disease. This definition was obviously contrived to describe the limited function of the COVID-19 gene therapy injections, which do not make you immune and can’t prevent you from getting or spreading the infection.

By any definition of a vaccine in use before 2021, the COVID shot is not a vaccine. At best, the shot will reduce your symptoms. This also means they cannot, ever, produce herd immunity. This despite the redefinition of herd immunity, from being something produced as a result of natural infection, to something resulting from mass-vaccination.

The WHO changed their definition of herd immunity in October 2020, likely in anticipation of the global mass vaccination campaign. To reiterate, in the past, herd immunity meant when enough people had acquired immunity to an infectious disease, such that the disease could no longer spread widely in the community.

Before science introduced vaccinations, herd immunity was achieved by exposure to and recovery from normal exposures to an infectious disease. Courtesy of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, before October 2020, the WHO’s definition of herd immunity included both vaccine immunity and “immunity developed through previous infection.”⁶

However, in October 2020, the updated definition dropped natural immunity altogether. The current definition now reads as follows:⁷

“‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached.”

Adding insult to injury, they also specify that “Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.” This totally ignores the billions of people throughout history who have been infected naturally with measles, mumps, chicken pox and other infectious diseases, and who now have lifelong immunity to those diseases thanks to their natural infection, as opposed to vaccines that wane and need regular boosters.

Definition of ‘Fully Vaccinated’ May Soon Be Rewritten

Speaking of boosters, the rollout of COVID jab boosters means the CDC will most likely rewrite the definition of “fully vaccinated” as well. As reported by Axios, October 22, 2021:⁸

“Currently, the CDC’s definition is the following: ‘Fully vaccinated persons are those who are ≥14 days post-completion of the primary series of an FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccine’ … ‘We may need to update our definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ in the future,’ [CDC director Rochelle] Walensky said during a press briefing.”

It’s not complicated to understand what such a redefinition will mean. It means that anyone who has received the initial single- or double-dose of COVID “vaccine” will magically be considered unvaccinated again once a certain amount of time has elapsed. As noted by The Atlantic,⁹ the term “fully vaccinated,” if redefined, will lose its meaning.

Not surprisingly, the CDC director’s comments are a complete reversal of her position in late September 2021. According to The Epoch Times, at that time she said officials were not considering changing the definition of “fully vaccinated.”¹⁰

Just one month later, at the end of October 2021, The Epoch Times reported Walensky was now suggesting that the definition “may change as boosters become more commonplace.” Coincidentally, just five days after that, the CDC announced their recommendations for a booster shot for everyone, even suggesting a fourth dose for certain immunocompromised individuals.¹¹

How Is Segregation Even Remotely Acceptable?

The redefinition of “fully vaccinated” will be a means to enforce never-ending booster shots, as your vaccine pass will expire at a certain time after each dose and, with it, all of your so-called “freedoms.” It’s quite clear that the whole idea behind vaccine passports is to create segregation.

We’re seeing this in Australia and a number of other countries, where unvaccinated individuals are being excluded from economic and social activities.^12,13 Australian premier Daniel Andrews has actually stated that, going forward, life for the vaccinated will “be about the maintenance of your vaccination status.” Can you believe it? That’s what “life” has been reduced to now. Maintaining your vaccination status.

We’re seeing the same scenario play out in Israel too, where vaccine passports expire six months after the second COVID dose. If you refuse to get the next dose, you’re shunned from society like everyone who refused from the get-go.

In Australia, individuals are even facing arrest if they don’t take the booster shots when required. It’s mindboggling to consider that all of this is happening because of an illness that has killed just .012% of the population and 1% of those infected.^14,15 And the reason it can happen at all is because certain word definitions have been unscientifically manipulated and altered to support their heinous actions.

New Definitions Will Skew Mortality Statistics Too

Updating the definition of “fully vaccinated” will also have the side effect of skewing mortality statistics, giving government another round of ammunition for false claims.

We’ve been repeatedly told that we’re now in a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and this lie will gain new traction once fully vaccinated people are dropped into the unvaccinated category, six months after their last dose.

We’re already seeing this narrative roll out in Israel. As reported by The Wall Street Journal,¹⁶“unvaccinated Israelis have made up the bulk of those severely ill” in recent days. However, it also states that officials attribute this to the fact that over 2 million people have gotten the third booster shot. This implies that far from being completely unvaccinated, some of those counted as “unvaccinated” may actually only be lacking the third booster:

“‘The most vulnerable group right now are those people who have been inoculated with two doses and not the third,’ Mr. Bennett said in a cabinet meeting last week, adding that they behaved as if they were fully protected, but weren’t.”

In the video below, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko testifies before the rabbinic court in Israel about the side effects being seen following the COVID-19 shot and the success he’s had in treating his patients with simple nutraceuticals and off-patent drugs. Despite his testimony and their own data, health officials in Israel are still pushing everyone to get a booster shot.

Watch the video here.

NBA Players Face New Booster Rules

In the U.S., the National Basketball Association (NBA) is now urging players who got a single-dose Janssen shot as recently as two months ago to get a Pfizer or Moderna booster, or face game-day testing starting December 1, 2021.¹⁷ Players who completed a two-dose regimen are being told to get a booster at the six-month mark.

It was obvious that this would happen, but I think many were naively thinking that if they just comply with the initial round of jabs, life would go back to normal. Just get fully vaccinated and you’re done. The fact that nothing is going back to normal should be a wakeup call that the initial understanding of the consequences of these regulations was wildly incorrect.

The shots are not about eliminating COVID-19. They’re part of a system for mass control. Ultimately, this system will enslave everyone in it, as opting out means forgoing any possibility of making a living, getting an education, buying anything or going anywhere. The truth of this will become painfully apparent once digital vaccine passports are tied to a new digital central bank currency.

Already, the government in Australia is confiscating people’s bank accounts and canceling their driver’s licenses to recover COVID fines. They’re also canceling unemployment benefits and shutting down bank accounts until people get the jab.¹⁸ Such actions can be automated once banking is tied to a digital health pass.

Perhaps now more people will start to realize that there will be no end to the number of times they’ll be required to acquiesce to medical experimentation. And let’s not forget, each time you get the jab, you face the potential of side effects that can disable you for life, or kill you outright. To force experiment on military personnel, athletes, pregnant women and children is truly incomprehensible. In response to the NBA’s new rule, sports commentator Clay Travis tweeted:¹⁹

“Wake up, sheep. The NBA is already mandating the vaccine booster now. This won’t ever end, we [are] going to make 100% healthy people get COVID shots every six months for the rest of their lives?”

Along the same vein, Inner Sports founder Garret Kramer tweeted, “On what planet do we continue to mandate drugs for people who are not sick? Say NO.” Golf champion Steve Flesch also chimed in, saying “This world and league is getting more asinine by the day.”²⁰

We Must Unite Against Tyranny

DeSantis: “Those individuals who have gone through a normal vaccination series for COVID—you will be determined to be unvaccinated very soon…They’re gonna to tell you: ‘You have to get a booster, otherwise you could face loss of employment’…This is just the tip of the iceberg.” pic.twitter.com/hGe5t4YJ8O

— Michael P Senger (@MichaelPSenger) November 5, 2021

As noted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during a recent press conference, in which he spoke out against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s requirement — imposed at the behest of the Biden administration — that businesses with 100 employees or more must require all staff to get the jab:

“To be clear about what OSHA is doing — they’re clearly not doing science, because they reject immunity through prior infection, they reject the Israel study … that shows people who have recovered from COVID have strong protection …

Make no mistake about it, those individuals who have gone through a normal vaccination series for COVID, you will be determined to be unvaccinated very soon. They will do that.

They’re going to tell you, ‘You’re unvaccinated and you have to get a booster, otherwise you could face loss of employment. That is going to happen … So, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s going to get more restrictive. There’s going to be more power brought to bear going forward if we don’t stand up now.”

As I predicted, OSHA is already talking about expanding the COVID-19 vaccine rule to small businesses of 100 employees or less as well. NTD reported, November 5, 2021:²¹

“The emergency temporary standard, issued by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and scheduled to go into effect on Friday, is presented as only applying to firms that have 100 or more employees. But OSHA is seeking public comments on that aspect of the standard, and it may be ultimately expanded to include smaller businesses, the agency said in the 490-page document.²²

OSHA said it is ‘soliciting stakeholder comment and additional information to determine whether to adjust the scope of the ETS,’ or emergency standard, ‘to address smaller employers in the future.’”

Forcing even small businesses, which would probably include the self-employed, would be an unmitigated disaster for the U.S. economy. But, of course, that is the goal, so there’s every reason to assume the rule will be expanded unless the pushback is deemed too overwhelming. The open comment period closes December 6, 2021. As of this writing, more than 3,100 comments have been submitted. You can submit your comment here.

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CDC once was a federal agency that nearly everyone respected.  That no longer is the case.  Now there are many reasons why CDC should be widely disrespected.  Its latest debacle is how it changed the definition of vaccine.

Just imagine this: The entire push for COVID “vaccines” was based on a lie – they did not meet the official CDC definition of a vaccine.  By doing this the government could coerce the entire population to get the shot.  Calling them “vaccines” was the biggest lie from Fauci and the key to drug companies making many billions of dollars.

Why would the government’s key public health agency change the definition of what a vaccine is in the midst of a pandemic?  After millions of Americans have taken the shot?  And millions more are being beaten into taking it for the first time and others to get booster shots.

Words matter

Here is the key point.  It became widely recognized by medical experts and informed citizens that COVID vaccines clearly did not fit the official CDC vaccine definition.  CDC thought the answer was not to fix what was deficient with the COVID vaccines or stop their use by most people as so many medical experts advised.  Their response was to change the vaccine definition to fit the so-called vaccines.

This was done so that vaccine mandates could keep getting pushed by the government.  Of course, the COVID “vaccines” should be referred to as gene therapy products, even better than calling them experimental vaccines.

To see how corrupt this action by CDC was, it is necessary to examine the details of the vaccine definition debacle.

Prior to September 1, 2021 here is how CDC defined vaccine:

A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.  Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but can also be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.

This definition had been used for years and it makes sense.  No expert or sensible citizen would find fault with it.  But did it honestly apply to the COVID vaccines?

Then this is what CDC concocted:

A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.  Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.

Here is what CDC also said:

Immunity: Protection from an infectious disease.  If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected.

Think about that last sentence: You can be exposed to COVID without being infected; but we know that is not true for fully vaccinated people who still get infected.

This is the key language in the original definition:

“stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.”

How rational to invoke the purpose of a vaccine to stimulate an immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease that protects the recipient from that disease.  Exactly what everyone for years thought was the correct way to think about a vaccine.  People want permanent protection from the COVID infection disease.

But now CDC has taken out the language referring to getting immunity for a specific disease and getting protection from that disease.

Now, COVID vaccines do not have to directly produce immunity.  No, now they only have to stimulate the body’s immune system.

You don’t get immunity because COVID vaccines do not directly produce immunity.  They do not directly kill the COVID virus.  Vaccinated people can still have high viral loads and also transmit the virus to others.  While some individuals may get some health benefits from COVID shots, they do not necessarily protect the entire population.  This is why mandates to get everyone the shots really do not make sense from a public health perspective, that Alexander has well substantiated.

Apparently, the only logical way to understand what CDC has done is to accept the truth belatedly seen by CDC that COVID vaccines do not, in fact, produce effective immunity for COVID infection and do not provide effective protection, once vaccinated, from that infection.

Much of the public surely does not yet know what CDC has acknowledged for the COVID vaccines.  Odds are that everyone who depends on mainstream media for good information about the pandemic has not been informed about what CDC has done and its implications.

The new vaccine definition, if publicly known, would reduce public confidence in current COVID vaccines.  You don’t have to be a medical expert to see how the new definition has been created to accommodate COVID shots.

In fact, these definition changes reflect what is now known about the limitations of the COVID vaccines.

Fully vaccinated people can still get COVID disease, referred to as breakthrough infections that, contrary to what the government says, can be very serious, often requiring hospitalization and sometimes causing death, as was the case for Colin Powell.

Such serious effects have been well discussed by Kampf.   Other times, breakthrough infections greatly disrupt lives, as recently described by Madrigal, a strong proponent of COVID shots.

Moreover, the COVID vaccines are now widely known from considerable clinical evidence to lose their effectiveness typically in about six months.  And even worse, they do not provide hardly any protection against variants like the delta variant.  Same disease but from a different virus in terms of its complex genetic makeup.  So, befitting the new CDC definition the COVID shots really do not have long lasting effective immunity to the specific COVID infection caused by all variants.

Elsewhere on the CDC website is a glossary of many terms; here is what is especially relevant to the debate about COVID vaccines:

Attenuated vaccine: A vaccine in which a live microbe is weakened (attenuated) through chemical or physical processes in order to produce an immune response without causing the severe effects of the disease.  Attenuated vaccines currently licensed in the United States include measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, rotavirus, yellow fever, smallpox, and some formulations of influenza, and typhoid vaccines.

Most people would read this and find that it fits with what they think of as vaccines that have been routinely taken by most people, especially children.  Clearly, COVID vaccines do not fit this definition.  But seeing this established view of vaccines helps explain why so many people resist and reject the COVID shots.  They are so fundamentally different than long accepted and used vaccines.

Natural immunity

One of the biggest pandemic scandals is that the government refuses to give full credit to natural immunity that people get from once being infected by the COVID virus.  It should be officially recognized as equivalent to “vaccine” immunity.

The following CDC glossary definition is especially relevant:

Active immunity: The production of antibodies against a specific disease by the immune system.  Active immunity can be acquired in two ways, either by contracting the disease or through vaccination.  Active immunity is usually permanent, meaning an individual is protected from the disease for the duration of their lives.

This CDC definition of active immunity recognizes that you can get it by contracting the disease versus through vaccination.  In other words, it recognizes what today is commonly called natural immunity achieved by once being infected by the COVID virus.  And that such immunity is likely permanent and better than vaccine immunity, as recent clinical studies substantiate.  But it also infers that active immunity obtained through vaccination is also permanent, which clearly is not the case for COVID shots, as evidenced by breakthrough infections.

Also note that it has recently been revealed that CDC has not been able to provide any proof of at least one instance of an unvaccinated, naturally immune individual transmitting the COVID-19 virus to another individual.

And a new study found that almost 60 percent of the people with antibodies had no idea they had even had COVID at all.  But they would have natural immunity.  Quite consistent with the reality that most people suffer no significant health impacts from being infected with the COVID virus, regardless of all the fear mongering by Fauci and others.

Conclusions

To sum up, a close look at what CDC has done lately reinforces the thinking of millions of people who have reservations and concerns about getting COVID genetic therapy shots that pose myriad adverse impacts and sometimes death.

There is a rational, science basis for thinking that the limited benefits of those shots do not adequately offset their risks.  This is true for the vast majority of healthy people, especially children, who have extremely low risk from COVID infection for serious illness, hospitalization or death.

Mandates that do not recognize natural immunity are merely a sham tactic to make money for drug companies.

How interesting it would be, in the context of informed consent, if people were shown the original and new CDC vaccine definitions as a means to stimulate productive discussion with medical providers of COVID shots.

*

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Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Pandemic Blunder and many articles, podcasts and radio shows on the pandemic, worked on health issues for decades. As a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he directed a medical research program between the colleges of engineering and medicine.  As a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, he directed major studies on health-related subjects; he testified at over 50 US Senate and House hearings and authored hundreds of articles and op-ed articles in major newspapers.  He has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years.  He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and America’s Frontline Doctors.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

“… we’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.” – Professor Eric Rubin of Harvard University, actually testifying to the VRBPAC panel regarding the high incidences of myocarditis and deaths, mostly in younger males following mRNA injections 

***

At least 42% of American children already have acquired robust natural immunity which is far superior compared to vaccine immunity and that those with naturally-acquired immunity receive no benefit from the vaccines – only risks, some of which may be lethal.

An hour of informed consent is worth a lifetime of regret.

Children are not capable of giving informed consent.  Parents are capable but many defer to the CDC or their healthcare giver as a trustworthy authority (which they often aren’t), despite evidence of incomplete and fraudulent data, exclusion of subjects from the study, whistleblower testimony and expert warnings in public comments.

As a parent or guardian you are responsible to do your own due diligence regarding the short and long-term safety of your child.

Before you allow your child to be injected with the mRNA with a still-experimental polyethylene glycol and other ingredients, some not disclosed, you are responsible for being fully informed. The best time to become informed is before injecting this onto your child’s body, not after.

Note below the famously never shown on mainstream media that show that Americana children with no chronic illnesses have an essentially ZERO chance of dying from Covid-19, even if they receive NO treatment!!

Informed Consent

Any person who consents to a medical procedure for themselves or their dependents, must be informed of ALL the known or potential adverse effects of the treatment.

If they have not been FULLY INFORMED, those responsible for injecting the vaccine may be guilty of malpractice and liable to being sued for adverse events (which cannot legally be done to the conscienceless pharmaceutical giants).

___ I agree (or not) to allow my child to receive the Pfizer BioNTech mRNA injection knowing that it remains experimental and that safety testing is incomplete and inconclusive

___ I am informed (or not) that mRNA injections are technically not “vaccines,” and that they do not prevent infection and transmission.

____ I am informed (or not) that effectiveness of the Pfizer ‘”accines” wanes in a few months and my child may be required to take booster shots several times a year, indefinitely.

___ I am informed (or not) that there is no fully approved FDA covid vaccine that is available in the US

___ I am informed (or not) that the FDA and CDC are permitting administration of the Pfizer mRNA injections to 5 – 11-year-old based on an EUA, Emergency Use Authorization, even though there is no emergency for 5 – 11-year-olds.

___ I am informed (or not) that Covid-19 poses no risk to healthy children. The few children who died had serious illnesses like leukemia, cystic fibrosis and other serious diseases. They died with Covid, not from Covid.

___ I am informed (or not) that there exist protocols for effective early treatments for Covid that prevent hospitalizations and deaths, and that doctors who have been educating about these have been censored.

___ Most children who get Covid have mild symptoms, if any, and acquire superior, robust and enduring natural immunity shown to persist for many years or a lifetime and is effective against variants. T-cell tests demonstrate natural immunity whether or not there are also antibodies.

____ I am informed (or not) that at least 42% of American children already have acquired robust natural immunity which is far superior compared to vaccine immunity and that those with natural immunity have no benefit from the vaccines and no legitimate reason to incur the risk.

____ I am informed (or not) that those with natural immunity to Covid-19 have at least a 30% higher risk of adverse reactions to the shots, including death, and have been warned by experts like Dr. Hooman Noorchasm and many others of this unnecessary, high risk.

____ I am informed (or not) that we have no information now about long-term reactions that may show up in days, weeks, months, years or decades

____ I am informed (or not) that the Pfizer shots instruct the cells to manufacture toxic spike proteins which circulate the body and lodge in many organs, in high concentrations in the endothelial cells, ovaries and testes, spleen, heart, and cross the blood-brain barrier

___ I am informed (or not) that based on animal studies and “vaccine” data thus far that some scientists are concerned about vaccine-induced infertility and chronic diseases in the future

___ I am informed (or not) that those receiving the vaccines have a risk of myocarditis, especially high in young males, and that instead of the expected rate of 1 -4 cases in 12 – 17 year-olds there were 128.

___ I am informed (or not) that the CDC has not adequately investigated the 800 cases of myocarditis and has falsely claimed that there is more myocarditis from getting Covid than from the “vaccines.”  Their “remedy” for this undeniable risk was increased surveillance.

___ I am informed (or not) that the  CDC’s voluntary VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. It is estimated that only 1% – 10% of adverse events are reported. Doctors, injured, and their family members describe toxic spike proteins that penetrate ovaries, testes, brain, spinal cord, nervous system, heart, lungs, intestines, kidneys, and cross the placenta in pregnant women.

___ I am informed (or not) that the adverse effects from mRNA “vaccines” may include micro-clots in their cardiovascular system, anaphylactic shock, allergic reactions, blood clotting and bleeding disorders, thrombosis in the brain other thrombotic events, myocarditis, pericarditis, heart damage, stroke, tinnitus, vertigo, etc.

___ I am informed (or not) that if my child has symptoms of concern after the first shot, they should not get the second

___ I am informed (or not) that longer term events might include antibody dependent enhancement, (ADE) development of autoimmune diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, prion disease and an increase in chronic diseases and reproductive harms including infertility.

Studies used as a basis for approval for Emergency Use Authorization

___ I am informed (or not) that the studies were conducted by Pfizer, with conflicts of interest, and not by any independent researcher, and that all the data was controlled by Pfizer, including elimination of subjects who had adverse reactions to the first or second dose.

___ I am informed (or not) that the studies were conducted on very few subjects, far, few fewer than other treatments before being administered to the public, too few to detect reactions that occur in 1/5000 of the population

___ I am informed (or not) that subjects were followed for a very short time, so no long-term effects beyond 2 months can be known

___ I am informed (or not) that the only adverse reactions to the shots recoded include arm soreness, fever chills, and fatigue and there was no way to record other adverse reactions.

___ I am informed (or not) that many subjects who had adverse reactions were eliminated from the study

___ I am informed (or not) that most with adverse reactions and severe adverse reactions were misdiagnosed, told it was psychological, denied and abandoned.

___ I am informed (or not) that studies were methodologically flawed in many ways

___ I am informed (or not) that studies extrapolating from those done on 12 – 17 year-olds, it is a statistical certainty that there will be adverse reactions, injuries, disabilities, trauma and deaths among 5 – 11 year-olds.

____ I am informed (or not) that the childhood Pfizer dose is 1/3 of the adult dose, but it is not less if one accounts for weight. The lower the weight, the more likely the adverse effects.

Risk/Benefit Analysis

Each person has a unique risk/benefit ratio. It is not one size fits all.

Older people with co-morbidities have a higher risk from Covid and a lower risk from the “vaccines.” Younger people have almost no risk at all for Covid and increasingly higher risks from the “vaccines” with younger age.

*

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Our thanks to Dr. Gary G. Kohls for bringing this article of Dr. Perlman to our attention.

Diane Perlman, PhD, is US convener of Transcend International, guest editorialist of Transcend Media Service, visiting scholar at George Mason University, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Resolution.

Featured image is from NaturalNews.com

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***

“Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.”—Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We are moving fast down the road to fascism.

This COVID-19 pandemic has shifted us into high gear.

The heavy-handed collusion between the Techno-Corporate State and the U.S. government over vaccine mandates is merely the latest manifestation of the extent to which fascist forces are working to overthrow our constitutional republic and nullify the rights of the individual.

In early November 2021, the Biden Administration drew its line in the sand for more than 100 million American workers: get vaccinated against COVID-19 (by Nov. 22 for federal workers, and Jan. 4 for federal contractors and companies with more than 100 employees) or else.

Or else what?

For many individuals with sincere objections to the vaccine, either based on their religious beliefs or some other medical or philosophical concern, non-compliance with workplace vaccine mandates will mean losing their jobs and the possibility of no unemployment benefits.

One survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management estimated that 28% of employed Americans wouldn’t get a COVID vaccine even if it meant losing their jobs.

Although OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) is requiring that employees be paid for the time it takes to get vaccinated and recover from any side effects, those who refuse to get vaccinated but keep their jobs will have to test negative for COVID weekly and could be made to shoulder the costs of those weekly tests. Healthcare workers are not being given an option for testing: it’s the vaccine or nothing.

To give the government’s arm-twisting some added strength, companies that violate the workplace mandate rules “can face fines of up to $13,653 per violation for serious violations and 10 times that for willful or repeated violations.”

In other words, as Katrina Trinko writes for USA Today, “the government is turning employers—who are not paid by, nor work for, the government—into an army of vaccine enforcers.”

You know who won’t suffer any harm as a result of these vaccine mandates? The Corporate State (manufacturers, distributors, and health care providers), which were given a blanket “get out of jail” card to insulate them from liability for any injuries or death caused by the vaccines.

While this vaccine mandate is being presented as a “targeted” mandate as opposed to a national mandate that impacts the entire population, it effectively leaves those with sincere objections to the COVID vaccine with very little options beyond total compliance or unemployment.

This has long since ceased to be a debate over how best to protect the populace at large against an unknown pandemic. Rather, it has become a massively intrusive, coercive and authoritarian assault on the right of individual sovereignty over one’s life, self and private property.

As such, these COVID-19 mandates have become the new battleground in the government’s tug-of-war over bodily autonomy and individual sovereignty.

Already, the legal challenges to these vaccine mandates are piling up before the courts. Before long, divided circuit court rulings will make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will be asked to decide whether these mandates constitute government overreach or a natural extension of the government’s so-called emergency powers.

With every new court ruling that empowers corporations and the government to use heavy-handed tactics to bring about vaccine compliance, with every new workplace mandate that forces employees to choose between their right to bodily autonomy and economic livelihood, and with every new piece of legislation that insulates corporations and the government from being held accountability for vaccine injuries and deaths, our property interest in our bodies is diminished.

At a minimum, our right to individual sovereignty over our lives and our bodies is being usurped by power-hungry authoritarians; greedy, self-serving corporations; egotistical Nanny Staters who think they know what’s best for the rest of the populace; and a short-sighted but well-meaning populace which fails to understand the long-term ramifications of trading their essential freedoms for temporary promises of safety and security.

We are more vulnerable now than ever before.

This debate over bodily autonomy, which covers broad territory ranging from forced vaccinations, abortion and euthanasia to forced blood draws, biometric surveillance and basic healthcare, has far-reaching ramifications for who gets to decide what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

On a daily basis, Americans are already being made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States: we are now guilty until proven innocent.

This merely pushes us one step further down that road towards a total control society in which the government in collusion with Corporate America gets to decide who is “worthy” of being allowed to take part in society.

Right now, COVID-19 vaccines are the magic ticket for gaining access to the “privileges” of communal life. Having already conditioned the population to the idea that being part of society is a privilege and not a right, such access could easily be predicated on social credit scores, the worthiness of one’s political views, or the extent to which one is willing to comply with the government’s dictates, no matter what they might be.

The government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

When all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle, we should all be leery and afraid.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, nothing good can come from totalitarian tactics—no matter how benevolent they appear—that are used to make us cower, fear and comply with the government’s dictates.

*

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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

Featured image is from Mercola

For more than 20 years, Global Research has been bringing our readers a broad spectrum of voices analyzing complex global situations. 

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In relation to the corona crisis, we are publishing on a daily basis the writings of prominent scientists, health professionals and  social analysts.

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Frustration and Anger after Glasgow Climate Summit. Can We Still Win the Race Against Time?

By Marc Vandepitte, November 17, 2021

The stakes of this summit were high. The meeting can be summed up as ‘one point five to keep the planet alive’. After fourteen days of negotiations, the anger among climate activists and countries from the South is great and rightly so. What’s next?

U.S. Terrorism 101: The Bert Sacks Story

By Edward Curtin, November 17, 2021

Since the annual U.S. Veterans Day holiday honoring military veterans was just observed on November 11, it seems more than appropriate to suggest the creation of a U.S. Victims Day, just as in a similar effort at truth in labeling, the Defense Department should be renamed the Offensive War Department.

Trends in Mortality and Morbidity in the Most Vaccinated Countries: Twenty-one Proven Facts

By Gérard Delépine, November 17, 2021

None of the champions of vaccination have succeeded in eliminating the virus, nor in avoiding strong resurgence of the epidemic, and very few have totally liberated their vaccinated people from the supposedly health liberating measures imposed without scientific proof of their effectiveness.

Covid Jab Is Far More Dangerous than Advertised. Dr. Peter McCullough

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, November 17, 2021

Certainly, data very clearly show the mass “vaccination” campaign has not had a discernible impact on global death rates. On the contrary, in some cases the death toll shot up after the COVID shots became widely available.

Colossal Financial Pyramid: BlackRock and The WEF “Great Reset”

By F. William Engdahl, November 17, 2021

The firm, BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, invests a staggering $9 trillion in client funds worldwide, a sum more than double the annual GDP of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Switzerland – The World’s Last Bastion of Democracy? The “Covid Law” Equals “Martial Law”

By Peter Koenig, November 16, 2021

Mr. Robert Kennedy Jr. came to Bern for a specific reason and what he said to the Swiss is that Switzerland was the Last Bastion of Democracy in the World. The upcoming Referendum on 28 November 2021, where the Swiss have the opportunity to vote for or against a Covid Law – a Martial Law in disguise – that had quietly been ratified in September 2020 by Parliament, but had to be put on ice, because a referendum was immediately launched against it.

Video: Dr. Daniel Nagase at Vancouver City Hall. The Impacts of Artificial Spike Protein on Children’s Immunity

By Dr. Daniel Nagase and Mark Taliano, November 16, 2021

Dr. Daniel Nagase, persecuted for saving his patients’ lives with Ivermectin, explains that the experimental injections are particularly dangerous for children. Notwithstanding the fact that the jabs do not work, and that natural immunity is superior, he explains that the introduction of an artificial spike protein into chidrens’ developing immune systems presents added risks of changing their DNA, impairing their immune “specificity”, and increasing their risks of cancer.

Masar Badil and The Alternative Palestinian Path: This Movement Is for You if You Are Sick of the “Capitulation Process”

By Rima Najjar, November 16, 2021

If you believe in Palestinian liberation and return and the exercise of our people’s right to self-determination on their entire national soil on the path to building a democratic, participatory human society, and building the institutions of this democratic Palestine, as a society and as a state, then Masar Badil is the movement for you.

Researcher Speaks Out on Pfizer COVID Vaccine Trial, Calls It a ‘Crazy Mess’

By Jeremy Loffredo, November 16, 2021

On the latest episode of “The Jimmy Dore Show,” comedian and political commentator Jimmy Dore discussed the recent bombshell report in The BMJ on Pfizer’s Phase 3 COVID vaccine trial. The BMJ’s report exposed faked data, blind trial failures, delayed follow-ups on serious adverse reactions and the silencing of researchers who were critical of the trials practices.

Sudanese Mass Organizations Reject Overtures by Military Junta

By Abayomi Azikiwe, November 16, 2021

On October 25 the military leadership of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemetti), took complete control of the state and placed under house arrest interim Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

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).

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

A project of the multilateral development banking system, the Rockefeller Foundation and the New York Stock Exchange recently created a new asset class that will put, not just the natural world, but the processes underpinning all life, up for sale under the guise of promoting “sustainability.”

Last month, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced it had developed a new asset class and accompanying listing vehicle meant “to preserve and restore the natural assets that ultimately underpin the ability for there to be life on Earth.” Called a natural asset company, or NAC, the vehicle will allow for the formation of specialized corporations “that hold the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water.” These NACs will then maintain, manage and grow the natural assets they commodify, with the end of goal of maximizing the aspects of that natural asset that are deemed by the company to be profitable.

Source: Unlimited Hangout

Though described as acting like “any other entity” on the NYSE, it is alleged that NACs “will use the funds to help preserve a rain forest or undertake other conservation efforts, like changing a farm’s conventional agricultural production practices.” Yet, as explained towards the end of this article, even the creators of NACs admit that the ultimate goal is to extract near-infinite profits from the natural processes they seek to quantify and then monetize.

NYSE COO Michael Blaugrund alluded to this when he said the following regarding the launch of NACs: “Our hope is that owning a natural asset company is going to be a way that an increasingly broad range of investors have the ability to invest in something that’s intrinsically valuable, but, up to this point, was really excluded from the financial markets.”

Framed with the lofty talk of “sustainability” and “conservation”, media reports on the move in outlets like Fortune couldn’t avoid noting that NACs open the doors to “a new form of sustainable investment” which “has enthralled the likes of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink over the past several years even though there remain big, unanswered questions about it.” Fink, one of the world’s most powerful financial oligarchs, is and has long been a corporate raider, not an environmentalist, and his excitement about NACs should give even its most enthusiastic proponents pause if this endeavor was really about advancing conservation, as is being claimed.

How to Create a NAC

The creation and launch of NACs has been two years in the making and saw the NYSE team up with the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG), in which the NYSE itself holds a minority stake. IEG’s three investors are the Inter-American Development Bank, the Latin America-focused branch of the multilateral development banking system that imposes neoliberal and neo-colonalist agendas through debt entrapment; the Rockefeller Foundation, the foundation of the American oligarch dynasty whose activities have long been tightly enmeshed with Wall Street; and Aberdare Ventures, a venture capital firm chiefly focused on the digital healthcare space. Notably, the IADB and the Rockefeller Foundation are closely tied to the related pushes for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and biometric Digital IDs.

The IEG’s mission focuses on “pioneering a new asset class based on natural assets and the mechanism to convert them to financial capital.” “These assets,” IEG states, make “life on Earth possible and enjoyable…They include biological systems that provide clean air, water, foods, medicines, a stable climate, human health and societal potential.”

Put differently, NACs will not only allow ecosystems to become financial assets, but the rights to “ecosystem services”, or the benefits people receive from nature as well. These include food production, tourism, clean water, biodiversity, pollination, carbon sequestration and much more. IEG is currently partnering with Costa Rica’s government to pilot its NAC efforts within that country. Costa Rica’s Minister of Environment and Energy, Andrea Meza Murillo, has claimed that the pilot project with IEG “will deepen the economic analysis of giving nature its economic value, as well as to continue mobilizing financial flows to conservation.”

With NACs, the NYSE and IEG are now putting the totality of nature up for sale. While they assert that doing so will “transform our economy to one that is more equitable, resilient and sustainable”, it’s clear that the coming “owners” of nature and natural processes will be the only real beneficiaries.

Per the IEG, NACs first begin with the identification of a natural asset, such as a forest or lake, which is then quantified using specific protocols. Such protocols have already been developed by related groups like the Capitals Coalition, which is partnered with several of IEG’s partners as well as the World Economic Forum and various coalitions of multinational corporations. Then, a NAC is created and the structure of the company decides who has the rights to that natural asset’s productivity as well as the rights to decide how that natural asset is managed and governed. Lastly, a NAC is “converted” into financial capital by launching an initial public offering on a stock exchange, like the NYSE. This last stage “generates capital to manage the natural asset” and the fluctuation of its price on the stock exchange “signals the value of its natural capital.”

Source: IEG

However, the NAC and its employees, directors and owners are not necessarily the owners of the natural asset itself following this final step. Instead, as IEG notes, the NAC is merely the issuer while the potential buyers of the natural asset the NAC represents can include: institutional investors, private investors, individuals and institutions, corporations, sovereign wealth funds and multilateral development banks. Thus, asset management firms that essentially already own much of the world, like Blackrock, could thus become owners of soon-to-be monetized natural processes, natural resources and the very foundations of natural life itself.

Both the NYSE and IEG have marketed this new investment vehicle as being aimed at generating funds that will go back to conservation or sustainability efforts. However, on the IEG’s website, it notes that the goal is really endless profit from natural processes and ecosystems that were previously deemed to be part of “the commons”, i.e. the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. Per the IEG, “as the natural asset prospers, providing a steady or increasing flow of ecosystem services, the company’s equity should appreciate accordingly providing investment returns. Shareholders and investors in the company through secondary offers, can take profit by selling shares. These sales can be gauged to reflect the increase in capital value of the stock, roughly in-line with its profitability, creating cashflow based on the health of the company and its assets.”

Researcher and journalist Cory Morningstar has strongly disagreed with the approach being taken by NYSE/IEG and views NACs as a system that will only exacerbate the corporate predation of nature, despite claims to the contrary. Morningstar has described NACs as “Rockefeller et al. letting the markets dictate what in nature has value – and what does not. Yet, it’s not for capitalist institutions and global finance to decide what life has value. Ecosystems are not ‘assets.’ Biological communities exist for their own purposes, not ours.”

A New Way to Loot

The ultimate goal of NACs is not sustainability or conservation – it is the financialization of nature, i.e. turning nature into a commodity that can be used to keep the current, corrupt Wall Street economy booming under the guise of protecting the environment and preventing its further degradation. Indeed, IEG makes this clear when they note that “the opportunity” of NACs lies not in their potential to improve environmental well-being or sustainability, but in the size of this new asset class, which they term “Nature’s Economy.”

Source: IEG

Indeed, while the asset classes of the current economy are value at approximately $512 trillion, the asset classes unlocked by NACs are significantly larger at $4,000 trillion (i.e. $4 quadrillion). Thus, NACs open up a new feeding ground for predatory Wall Street banks and financial institutions that will allow them to not just dominate the human economy, but the entire natural world. In the world currently being constructed by these and related entities, where even freedom is being re-framed not as a right but “a service,” the natural processes on which life depends are similarly being re-framed as assets, which will have owners. Those “owners” will ultimately have the right, in this system, to dictate who gets access to clean water, to clean air, to nature itself and at what cost.

According to Cory Morningstar, one of the other aims of creating “Nature’s Economy” and neatly packaging it for Wall Street via NACs is to drastically advance massive land grab efforts made by Wall Street and the oligarch class in recent years. This includes the recent land grabs made by Wall Street firms as well as billionaire “philanthropists” like Bill Gates during the COVID crisis. However, the land grabs facilitated through the development of NACs will largely target indigenous communities in the developing world.

As Morningstar notes:

“The public launch of NACs strategically preceded the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the biggest biodiversity conference in a decade. Under the pretext of turning 30% of the globe into “protected areas”, the largest global land grab in history is underway. Built on a foundation of white supremacy, this proposal will displace hundreds of millions, furthering the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples. The tragic irony is this: while Indigenous peoples represent less than 5% of the global population, they support approximately 80% of all biodiversity.“

IEG, in discussing NACs, tellingly notes that proceeds from a NAC’s IPO can be used for the acquisition of more land by its controlling entities or used to boost the budgets or funds of those who receive the capital from the IPO. This is a far cry from the NYSE/IEG sales pitch that NACs are “different” because their IPOs will be used to “preserve and protect” natural areas.

The climate change panic that is now rising to the take the place of COVID-19 panic will surely be used to savvily market NACs and similar tactics as necessary to save the planet, but – rest assured – NACs are not a move to save the planet, but a move to enable the same interests responsible for the current environmental crises to usher in a new era where their predatory exploitation reaches new heights that were previously unimaginable.

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Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond.

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***

The stakes of this summit were high. The meeting can be summed up as ‘one point five to keep the planet alive’. After fourteen days of negotiations, the anger among climate activists and countries from the South is great and rightly so. What’s next?

Key issues and (missing) results

1.5°C. The final text explicitly states that the aim must be to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C and not to 2°C. That is a good thing, but that is only an aspiration, a target. With the current national plans of all countries combined, we are heading for a catastrophic warming of 2.4°C.

Annual revision. Until now, there was a major climate summit every five years. From now on it will be held annually. Each country will then be required to review its climate plans against the targets and, if necessary, improve them and make them more ambitious. In itself this is a good thing. However, poor countries that are far less responsible for historical emissions and have far fewer resources at their disposal will now come under just as much pressure as the rich countries.

‘Fossil fuels’. It may sound unlikely, but since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, no summit has explicitly referred to the phase-out of fossil fuels. Now, for the first time, this summit did. There were pledges and alliances to phase out the use of fossil fuels. However, a look at the details shows that they will bring little or no change in the short term.

To avoid a climate crisis, oil and gas production should immediately and steadily decline by 3 percent per year from now on. Instead, production continues to increase year after year (it exceptionally did not in 2020, but that was the covid year).

Subsidies. It was agreed to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. Annually, the sector still receives as much as $5,900 billion in subsidies. This should not be ‘phased out’ but should be reduced immediately and dramatically. $5,900 billion is far more than what is needed to enable a rapid green energy transition.

Keeping it in the ground. For the temperature of the planet to stay below 1.5°C, according to the scientific journal Nature, 89 percent of proven coal reserves, 58 percent of oil reserves and 59 percent of gas reserves must remain underground. The lobbyists of the fossil fuel industry did everything they could to avoid being confronted with binding agreements made on this. They succeeded.

Coal. Coal is the big culprit, but many countries of the South are extremely dependent on it. India, for example, depends on coal for 70 percent of its energy, China for almost 60 percent. Under the influence of these countries, the final text was toned down: ‘phase-out’ of coal burning was replaced by ‘phase-down’.

The director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) hopes “that advanced economies take a leading role and become an example for the emerging world. If they don’t do it, they shouldn’t expect the emerging world to do it.”

Methane. More than 100 countries signed an agreement to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent between 2020 and 2030. That was the low-hanging fruit of the summit. It could reduce the global average temperature by about 0.1°C by 2050. We must remember that this is only as much as the warming we have experienced since COP21 in Paris in 2015.

Climate justice. According to the IAE, an annual investment of $4,000 billion will be needed until 2030 to achieve zero emissions. About 70 percent of that, or $2,800 billion, should go to the emerging and developing countries. This is necessary to realize the energy transition there, to compensate for the damage caused by warming, and to enable these countries to adapt to climate change.

The 100 billion dollars annual aid pledged in Copenhagen in 2009 is only a trifle of what is needed, and that meagre promise has not even once been kept. The summit went no further than a vague call ‘to mobilize climate finance from all sources to reach the level needed to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, including significantly increasing support for developing country Parties, beyond $100 billion per year.’ Nowhere does it specify how that funding will happen or how big it should be.

Deforestation. More than 100 world leaders have pledged to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. The problem with this nice-sounding promise is that it is neither enforceable nor transparent, and it lacks a financing plan. Moreover, logging is allowed to continue in the meantime.

The equation

As is typical of such summits, glowing promises and polite calls are easily brushed aside. What is usually missing – and this summit is no exception – is a long-term action plan and concrete commitment from the participants. There is no enforceability at all.

The good news is that a consensus has been reached and agreements have been made to meet every year. Also good news is that China and the US, the two biggest emitters, have agreed to work closely together despite the very tense atmosphere between them. This cooperation is an important precondition for tackling important dossiers in the future.

The big winner of this summit is the fossil sector. With more than 500 lobbyists, they formed the largest delegation of this climate summit. The sector can sleep soundly: despite the great promises and alliances, this sector still holds its grip on the global economy, at least in the short term.

The big losers are the countries of the South. They bear the least responsibility for global warming, but take the heaviest blows. Nor do they have the resources to realize the necessary energy transition. Yet climate justice was one of the main demands of the vast majority of the countries and of the many climate activists.

The countries of the North are unwilling to bear the cost of their historic climate debt. This makes them primarily responsible for the ongoing climate degradation. Without a serious transfer of resources – a multiplicity of what they are now promising – we are heading for a climate disaster.

Certainly, the result could have been worse. But we cannot ignore the fact that the heads of government ultimately failed. Lia Nicholson, chief negotiator for Antigua and Barbuda and chair of the 37-member Alliance of Small Island States, said: ‘We are extremely disappointed and we will express our grievance in due course.’

‘Our fight is far from over. We must recognize that this is a fight that we cannot afford to lose,’ said Selwin Hart, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Climate Change. UN Secretary-General Guterres, for his part, reiterates his urgent appeal: ‘Our fragile planet is hanging by a thread. (…) It is time to go into emergency mode – or our chance of reaching net zero emissions will itself be zero.’

Greta Thunberg fully agrees with that urgency. Together with a number of young climate activists from around the world, she petitioned Guterres to declare a ‘climate emergency’.

The real battle is not fought at such a summit, but outside of it. That battle has yet to begin. It is up to us to build a different balance of power and to force government leaders and the economic elite to take a different course. A course that does not safeguard the profits of the large capital groups, but that of the planet. A course that does not pass costs on to the common man or woman, or to the countries of the South.

We will all have to seek forms of struggle that ensure the survival of our planet and that this is achieved in a social way.

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Since the annual U.S. Veterans Day holiday honoring military veterans was just observed on November 11, it seems more than appropriate to suggest the creation of a U.S. Victims Day, just as in a similar effort at truth in labeling, the Defense Department should be renamed the Offensive War Department.

For the victims of American terrorism far outnumber the American soldiers who have died in its wars, although I consider most U.S. veterans to be victims also, having been propagandized from birth to buy the glory of war, not the truth that it’s a racket that serves the interests of the ruling class.

Such wars, carried out with bombs, drones, mercenaries, and troops, or by economic embargoes and sanctions, are by their nature acts of terrorism.  This is so whether we are talking about the mass fire bombings of Japanese and German cities during WW II, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the carpet bombings and the agent orange dropped on Vietnam, the depleted uranium on Iraq, the use of terrorist surrogates everywhere, the economic sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Syria, etc.  The list is endless and ongoing.  All actions aimed at causing massive death and damage to civilians.

According to U.S. law (6 USCS § 101), terrorism is defined as an act that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources; is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State or other subdivision of the United States; and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.

By any reasonable interpretation of the law, the United Sates is a terrorist state.

Let me tell you about Bert Sacks.  Perhaps you’ve heard of him.  His experiences with the U.S. government regarding terrorism tell an illuminating story of conscience and hope.  It is a story of how one person can awaken others to recognize and admit the truth that the U.S. is guilty of crimes against humanity, even when one is unable to stop the carnage.  It is a tale of witness, and how such witness is contagious.

In November 1997 Sacks led a delegation to Iraq to deliver desperately needed medicines ($40,000 worth, all donated) that were denied into the country because of US/UN economic sanctions.  For such an act of human solidarity, he was later fined $10,000 by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Sacks had refused to ask for a license to travel to Iraq or to subsequently pay the fine for compelling reasons connected to his non-violent Gandhian philosophy, which teaches that non-cooperation with evil is as much an obligation as cooperation with good.

Source: iraqikids.org

For years previously, Sacks had been learning, as would have anyone who was following the news, that the American sanctions under George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton following the illegal and unjust Gulf War, had been aimed at crippling the Iraqi infrastructure upon which all civilian life depended.  Iraq had been devastated by the U.S. war of aggression, and a great deal of its infrastructure, especially electricity and therefore water purification systems, had already been destroyed. Clinton kept up the sanctions and the bombing in support of Bush’s war intentions. So much for differences between Republicans and Democrats!  Regular Iraqis were suffering terribly.  All this was being done in the name of punishing Saddam Hussein in order to oust him from power, the same Hussein whom the U. S. had supported in Iraq’s war with Iran by assisting him with chemical and biological weapons.

As Sacks later (2011) wrote in his declaration to the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington when he sued OFAC:

Weeks after the end of the Gulf War, on March 22, 1991, I read a New York Times front- page story covering the UN report by Martti Ahtisaari on the devastating, ‘near- apocalyptic conditions’ in Iraq after the Gulf War. The report said, ‘famine and epidemic [were imminent] if massive life-supporting needs are not rapidly met. The long summer… is weeks away. Time is short.’ The same article explained U.S. policy this way: ‘[By] making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people, [sanctions] will eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power.’ This sentence has stayed with me for twenty years. It says to me that my government – by inflicting suffering and death on Iraqi civilians – hoped to overthrow President Saddam Hussein, and that we would simply call it “making life uncomfortable.” [my emphasis]

The years to follow the first war against Iraq revealed what that Orwellian phrase really meant.

In 1994 Sacks read a survey on health conditions of Iraqi children in The New England Journal of Medicine that said: “These results provide strong evidence that the Gulf War and trade sanctions caused a threefold increase in mortality among Iraqi children under five years of age. We estimate that an excess of more than 46,900 children died between January and August 1991.”

And that was just the beginning.  For the number of dead Iraqi children [and adults] kept piling up as a result of “making life uncomfortable.”

Anton Chekov’s story “Gooseberries” pops into my mind:

Everything is quiet and peaceful, and nothing protests but mute statistics: so many people gone out of their minds, so many gallons of vodka drunk,so man y children dead from malnutrition. . . . And this order of things is evidently necessary; evidently the happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and without that silence happiness would be impossible. It’s a case of general hypnotism. There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man someone standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him — disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others.

Sacks has long been that man with a gentle hammer, far from happy, comfortable, or contented in what he was learning.  In 1996 he watched the infamous CBS 60 Minutes interview of Madeleine Albright by Leslie Stahl who had recently returned from Iraq. Albright was then the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and soon to be the Secretary of State.  Stahl, in reference to how the sanctions had already killed 500,000 Iraqi children, asked her, “Is the price worth it?” – Albright blithely answered, “The price is worth it.”

In April 1997, a New England Journal of Medicine editorial said that “”Iraq is an even more disastrous example of war against the public health . … The destruction  of the country’s power plants had brought its entire system of water purification and distribution to a halt, leading to epidemics of cholera, typhoid fever, and gastroenteritis, particularly among children. Mortality rates doubled or tripled among children admitted to hospitals in Baghdad and Basra…” [my emphasis]

The evidence had accumulated since 1991 that the U.S. had purposely targeted Iraqi civilians and especially very young children and had therefore killed them as an act or war.  This was clearly genocide.  In its 1999 news release, UNICEF announced: “if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998.”

The British journalist Robert Fisk called this intentional destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure “biological warfare”: “The ultimate nature of the 1991 Gulf War for Iraqi civilians now became clear. Bomb now: die later.”  In his declaration to the court, Sacks wrote that the Centers for Disease Control, in warning about potential terrorist biological attacks on the U.S., clearly lists attacks on water supplies as terrorism and biological warfare:

Water safety threats (such as Vibrio cholerae and Cryptosporidium parvum): Cholera is an acute bacterial disease characterized in its severe form by sudden onset, profuse painless watery stools, nausea and vomiting early in the course of illness, and, in untreated cases, rapid dehydration, acidosis, circulatory collapse, hypoglycemia in children, and renal failure. Transmission occurs through ingestion of food or water contaminated directly or indirectly with feces or vomitus of infected persons.

By January 1997, as a result of such statements and those of U.S. military and government officials and reports in medical journals and media, Sacks concluded that the United States government was guilty of the crime of international terrorism against the civilian population of Iraq.  And being a man of conscience, he therefore proceeded to lead a delegation to Iraq to alleviate suffering, even while knowing it was a drop in the bucket.

It is important to emphasize that the U.S. government knew full well that its intentional destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure would result in massive death and suffering of civilians.  Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said of such destruction that “If I had to do it over again, I would do exactly the same thing.”  All the deaths that followed were done as part of an effort at regime change – to force Hussein out of office, something finally accomplished by the George W. Bush administration with their lies about weapons of mass destruction and their 2003 war against Iraq that killed between 1-2 million more Iraqis.  The recent accolades heaped on Colin Powell, who as Secretary of State consciously lied at the UN and who led the first war against Iraq – two major war crimes – should be a reminder of how unapologetic U.S. leaders are for their atrocities.  I would go so far as to say they revel in their ability to commit them.  Because he called them out on this by doing what all journalists and writers should do, they have pursued and caged Julian Assange as if he were a wild dog who walked into their celebratory dinner party.

In this 1991 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency document, “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities,” you can read how these people think.  And read Thomas Merton’s poem “Chant to be Used in Processions around a Site With Furnaces,” and don’t skip its last three lines and you can grasp the bureaucratic mind at its finest. Euphemisms like “uncomfortable” and “collateral damage” are their specialties.  Killing the innocent are always on their menu.

Bert Sacks and his delegation got some brief media publicity for their voyage of mercy.  He believed that if the American people really knew what was happening to Iraqi children, they would demand that it be stopped.  This did not happen.  His tap with the hammer of conscience failed to awaken the hypnotized public who overwhelmingly had elected Clinton to a second term in 1996 six months after the 60 Minutes interview.  Yes, “Everything is [was] quiet and peaceful, and nothing protests but mute statistics.”

Although the evidence was overwhelming that Iraqi children in the 1990s were dying at the rate of at least 5,000 per month as a direct result of the sanctions, very few major media publicized this.  The 60 Minutes show, with its shocking statement by Albright, was an exception and was seen by millions of Americans.  After that show aired, to claim you didn’t know was no longer believable.  And although most mainstream media buried the truth, it was still available to those who cared.  There were some conscience-stricken officials, however.  In his declaration to the court, Sacks wrote:

The first two heads of the “Oil-for-Food” program – Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck – each resigned a position as UN Assistant Secretary General to protest the consequences of the U.S. imposed sanctions policy on Iraq. Mr. Halliday said, ‘We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that.’ He called it genocide.

There were also, doctors, politicians, independent writers, and Nobel Peace Laureates who called the policy genocide and said, “Sanctions are the economic nuclear bomb.”  Sacks told the court that “Finally, this list includes a 32-year career, retired U.S. diplomat – Deputy Director of the Reagan White House Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism – who says: ‘you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in [terrorist] activities. Ours is one of them.’”

Military planners, moreover, wrote in military publications that it was desirable to kill Iraqi civilians; that it was an essential part – if not the major part – of war strategy.  They called it “dual-use targeting” and called themselves “operational artists.”

Sacks was able to reach a few officials and journalists who realized this was not art but massive war crimes.  This showed that it is not impossible to change people, hard as it is.  The judge in his court case, James L. Robart, while agreeing that OFAC had not exceeded its authority in fining him, acknowledged that the court had to accept as true that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children as reported by UNICEF had come to constitute genocide, but [my emphasis] U.S. law prohibited the bringing of any consideration of genocide into a legal proceeding, which allows the U.S. government to commit this crime while barring any other party from raising the issue legally.

In other words, the U.S. government can accuse others of committing genocide, but no one can legally accuse it.  It is above all laws.

Ten months before his 1997 trip to Iraq, Sacks met with Kate Pflaumer, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington.  He says:

We met in her office and I asked her for the legal definition of terrorism pursuant to the laws of the United States. She asked what could she do for me. I said “Prosecute me for violating U.S. Iraq sanctions by bringing medicine there.” She said, “I won’t do that for you! Can I help in any other way?” I asked for the U.S. legal definition of terrorism. She pulled out a law book, had her secretary copy the page for me, and didn’t forget my request.When she left office, she wrote the op-ed on June 21, 2001…calling U.S. Iraq policy terrorism! The two main elements relevant to the issue here are: (1) it is an act dangerous to human life; and (2) done apparently to coerce or intimidate a civilian population or a government (see 18 U.S.C. § 2331).

On June 21, 2001, Ms. Pflaumer, then the former U.S. Attorney, wrote in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the following:

The reality on the ground in Iraq is not contested. Thousands of innocent children and adult civilians die every month as a direct result of the 1991 bombing of civilian infrastructure: sewage treatment plants, electrical generating plants, water purification facilities. Allied bombing targets included eight multipurpose dams, repeatedly hit, which simultaneously wrecked flood control, municipal and industrial water storage, irrigation and hydroelectric power. [Four of seven major pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31 municipal water and sewerage facilities. Water purification plants were incapacitated throughout Iraq. We did this for “long term leverage.” These military decisions were sanctioned by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.]

In May 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reaffirmed that the “price” of 500,000 dead Iraqi children was “worth it. ”

Article 54 of the Geneva Convention states: “It is prohibited to attack, destroy or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” and includes foodstuffs, livestock and “drinking water supplies and irrigation works.”

Tittle 18 U.S. Code Section 2331 defines international terrorism as acts dangerous to human life that would violate our criminal laws if done in the United States when those acts are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.

Thus did Kate Pflaumer, in an act of conscience and upholding her legal obligation as an attorney, call the U.S a terrorist state.  This probably never would have happened without the non-violent hammer of Bert Sacks, who over the years has made nine trips to Iraq with other brave and determined souls who are a credit to humanity.  Messengers of love, truth, and compassion.

Despite their witness, such U.S. terrorism continues as usual.

We cannot let “nothing protest but mute statistics.”  The first lesson in U.S. Terrorism 101 is to become people with hammers, and hammer out truth and justice for the world to hear.  Bert Sacks has done this.  We must follow suit.

Therein lies our only hope.

For by any reasonable interpretation of the law, the United Sates is a terrorist state – beyond the law.

P.S.  The case against Sacks was eventually dismissed because the U.S. government did not sue Sacks in a timely manner.

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

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He is the author of Seeking the Truth in a Country of Lies

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“Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies is a dazzling journey into the heart of many issues — political, philosophical, and personal — that should concern us all.  Ed Curtin has the touch of the poet and the eye of an eagle.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Edward Curtin puts our propaganda-stuffed heads in a guillotine, then in a flash takes us on a redemptive walk in the woods — from inferno to paradiso.  Walk with Ed and his friends — Daniel Berrigan, Albert Camus, George Orwell, and many others — through the darkest, most-firefly-filled woods on this earth.” James W. Douglass, author, JFK and the Unspeakable

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During his first official visit to Moscow under the military rule in Mali, Abdoulaye Diop, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, held extensive discussions with his counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The discussions in November focused on increasing bilateral cooperation in economic sectors. But particularly significant was Russia’s military assistance to strengthen the position of the new government and to fight rising terrorism in the Sahel region.

Lavrov reaffirmed commitment to further develop the long-standing military-technical cooperation and military ties. Several agreements to this effect have been signed in recent years.

“We will fulfill them, including by supporting the Malian government’s efforts to ensure the country’s defence capabilities, which is especially relevant in the face of the persisting terrorist threat,” he said during the media conference.

“We do understand the need to reinforce Mali’s counter-terrorism potential. In this connection, the Russian state supplies the necessary equipment, weapons and ammunition. The risk of a power vacuum in the country’s north should not be allowed to materialise in the wake of the decision by our French colleagues to withdraw part of their troops from Mali and close three of the five military bases in regions with the most active terrorist groups,” he added.

Lavrov explained that terrorist groups have been increasingly active, especially in the north of the country, and therefore does not offer a favourable environment for launching an election campaign. This threat exists and could become more acute following the decision of the French government to considerably reduce its military presence in Mali (Operation Barkhane), especially in the north of the country where terrorists feel increasingly relaxed.

As for the nervous reaction of the French and some other Western representatives to Mali’s plans to work with a private military company from Russia in the past few months (something the Prime Minister of Mali spoke openly about at the UN General Assembly session), the decision is exclusively within the competence of the lawful Malian government.

On November 12, Russian top diplomat Sergey Lavrov and defence chief Sergey Shoigu held a meeting with their French counterparts in Paris. According to Vedomosti, local Russian business and financial newspaper, Paris has repeatedly expressed concern about Russia’s activities in the region that France considers to be its backyard.

In June, Paris announced plans to significantly reduce its participation in a counterterrorism operation in Mali and its neighboring countries, which had been launched in 2014. In August, news came that Mali’s authorities had launched talks with the Russian private military company Wagner Group that could replace the French military. Reuters reported that a possible contract could be worth $10.8 million a month.

In an interview, Grigory Lukyanov, a Senior Researcher at the Russia’s Institute of Oriental Studies, explained that the current goal is to boost business ties, particularly in the field of resource extraction and security services, where Russia has competitive advantages. In the future, Mali is capable of becoming a transport hub for commodities coming from the west and south to Africa’s north and then to the European Union, so apart from France, China and the United States are also interested in it. It’s vital for Paris to remain in its former colony and France is reluctant to let other players enter the country.

According to Lukyanov, France views the region as the former outskirts of its empire, while for Russia, Mali is a shady remote country and Moscow could trade activities there for a number of concessions related to other issues, crucial for its relations with France, the EU and the West in general. As far as Paris is concerned, it will most likely replace the current Malian government, which is sending pro-Russian signals, with another one that will better suit its goals.

As well-known facts, two military coups have taken place in Mali since August 2020. The first one, which occurred on August 18, 2020, ousted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Interim President Bah Ndaw was removed from power by the military on May 26, 2021, while Deputy President Assimi Goita became Mali’s Transition President based on the Constitutional Court’s order.

There have been discussions at the United Nations Security Council, African Union, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) about rivalry and competition for influence between France and Russia in Mali. The Economic Community of West African States, the regional bloc, has already suspended its membership and imposed a number of sanctions against Mali’s transitional leaders after they informed the organisation they would not be able to hold presidential and legislative elections next February.

It reiterates the need to adhere to the transition timetable in respect of the elections scheduled for February 27, 2022 and calls on the transition authorities to act accordingly to ensure expeditious return to constitutional order. Accordingly, it calls on the international community to take the necessary measures to ensure that the transition authorities respect their commitment to an expeditious return to constitutional order.

The African Union, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and foreign organizations such as the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) have requested a quick transition to a civilian government. They further urged that efforts are taken to resolve outstanding issues relating to sustainable development and observing strictly principles of democracy.

The Republic of Mali, home to nearly 20 million people, is a landlocked country located on rivers Senegal and Niger in West Africa. As a former French colony, it persistently faces serious development challenges primarily due to its landlocked position and it is the eighth-largest country in Africa. Over the years, reform policies have had little impact on the living standards, majority highly impoverished in the country. As a developing country, it ranks at the bottom of the United Nations Development Index (2020 report).

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a frequent and passionate contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

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Now that news about Masar Badil is beginning to surface, some Palestinians and their allies may be a bit confused. How does this movement differ from initiatives out there, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) and the One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC), that have already achieved some traction on the international scene?

Like BDS and ODSC, Masar Badil is a popular mass movement with supporters from diverse Palestinian viewpoints. But there is a fundamental (not simply rhetorical) difference to approaching the Palestinian struggle among these movements. BDS is a tactic without a political program (included in Masar and expanded to up “the economic costs to the Zionist entity… to isolate it in international diplomacy and ostracize its official and semi-official academics, athletes, artists and journalists.”) And although Masar is for a single, undivided Palestine from the river to the sea, it defines itself as struggling for the liberation of all of Palestine, which is not exactly the same demand as that made by “one democratic state,” which seeks to dismantle apartheid in Israel, rather than to liberate (decolonize Palestine) and then go on from there to grapple with humanitarian and practical issues vis-a-vis Israeli Jews.

In an excellent report on the conference titled “Masar Badil Founded in Madrid, Sao Paolo and Beirut,” Blake Alcottwrites:

The language used by Masar Badil is refreshing: All of Palestine is occupied, not just the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. In most contexts, the present colonialist state ruling Palestine is referred to as the Zionist entity rather than ‘Israel’. Most participants define Palestine as Arabic in linguistic, historical and cultural ways. There is no mincing of words in describing the Palestinian Authority as not only corrupt but, in terms of leading or speaking for Palestinians, illegitimate. Most participants would not limit the term settler to those in the West Bank — a view captured by a graffito of last May: “There is not a city in Israel that was not at one time Sheikh Jarrah.”

Because Masar Badil’s rhetoric derives from Marxist ideology and the revolutionary history of the PLO in its early years (See: The Palestinian National Charter: Resolutions of the Palestine National Council July 1–17, 1968), and because the movement correctly identifies the enemies of the Palestinian revolution as Zionism, Israel, imperialism and Arab reaction, some people associate it with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but it is not, in fact, linked to any of the existing Palestinian political blocs.

At long last, more and more people are speaking out, albeit cautiously, against Zionism, not simply as a legalized apartheid regime that has been dehumanizing Palestinians since it violently manifested itself in Palestine as a Jewish state in 1948, but crucially as a settler-colonial regime. They reject the Zionist claim (aka Israel’s “narrative”) to the land of Palestine as a land belonging to Jews worldwide, rather than to its indigenous population, and ally the Palestinian struggle for liberation from Zionist colonization with that of other struggles worldwide, including the struggles of the Filipino, Turtle Island, Indian and South African peoples.

Those speaking out against Zionist ideology include Jews who hark back to when a Jewish anti-Zionist movement was alive and well as expressed, for example, in the 1931 lyrics: Oy Ir Narishe Tsienistn / Oh You Foolish Little Zionists / Глупые Сионисты:

You want to take us to Jerusalem
So we can die as a nation
We’d rather stay in the Diaspora
And fight for our liberation

It’s worth noting that among the many organizations and activists that participated in Masar Badil conference was the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.

Masar Badil salutes “the whole struggle of our Palestinian people in all their places of residence, and all the resistance forces in Palestine.” It promotes an alternative path of revolutionary resistance meant to isolate the Zionist state.

Its rallying cries are bold, direct, straightforward and unapologetic:

Long live the struggle of our Palestinian people everywhere!

No voice is louder than the voice of the Palestinian people!

Glory to the martyrs, freedom to the prisoners!

We shall return and be victorious!

Although rooted in revolutionary political thought, Masar Badil has gone beyond generalities. In the conference that took place in Madrid, Spain; Beirut, Lebanon; and Sao Paulo, Brazil between 30 October and 2 November 2021, Masar Badil

… not only discussed the politics of Palestinian organizing and resistance but also developed a five-year plan and numerous policy proposals that lay out a distinct plan for upcoming activities. Committees focusing on organizing Palestinian students, protecting and implementing the Palestinian right to return and advancing the boycott of Israel were launched, while the conference planned to develop a network of Palestine centers in cities around the world, focusing on the needs of Palestinian refugees alongside political organizing and education.

Masar Badil has a very sacred task, namely, to protect the Palestinian revolution at this critical time in Palestine’s history, a 4,000-year long history, as historian Nur Masalha details it in his book with that title, from Late Bronze Age Egypt through the Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic empires to the modern era.

Related:

Masar Badil: This movement is for you if you are sick of the “capitulation process” (Nov. 11, 2021)

Masar Badil and the elephant in the room (Nov. 1, 2021)

Masar Badil: How to make an alternative revolutionary path a reality (Oct. 30, 2021)

Masar Badil Means Standing Strong (Oct. 29, 2021)
Understanding that the only recourse for Palestinians is continued revolt

There is no escape for Israel from growing Palestinian power (Oct 22, 2021)
We are not afraid, but clearly they are

Will this conference that celebrates the Palestinian revolutionary struggle cut through the still deafening media static of Israel’s “narrative?” (Oct. 21, 2021)

A Giant Leap for Palestine? Stay Tuned! (Oct 15, 2021)
Celebrating the path of resistance for the Palestinian people

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

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Masar Badi–Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement (Source: Rima Najjar)

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According to a September 2021 analysis, based on conservative, best-case scenarios, the COVID shots have killed five times more seniors (65+) than the infection

In younger people and children, the risk associated with the COVID shot, compared to the risk of COVID-19, is bound to be even more pronounced

Data show higher vaccination rates do not translate into lower COVID-19 case rates

The COVID shots are an epic failure. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports having more than 30,000 spontaneous reports of either hospitalizations and/or deaths among the fully vaccinated; data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services show 300,000 vaccinated CMS recipients have been hospitalized with breakthrough infections; 60% of seniors over age 65 hospitalized for COVID-19 have been vaccinated

50% of reported deaths after COVID-19 “vaccination” occur within 24 hours; 80% occur within the first week. According to one report, 86% of deaths have no other explanation aside from a vaccine adverse event. A Scandinavian study concluded about 40% of post-jab deaths among seniors in assisted living homes are directly due to the injection

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October 26, 2021, Global Research published an interview with Dr. Peter McCullough, in which he reviews and explains the findings of a September 2021 study published in the journal Toxicology Reports, which states:¹

“A novel best-case scenario cost-benefit analysis showed very conservatively that there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic.

The risk of death from COVID-19 decreases drastically as age decreases, and the longer-term effects of the inoculations on lower age groups will increase their risk-benefit ratio, perhaps substantially.”

McCullough has impeccable academic credentials. He’s an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist and a full professor of medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine in Dallas. He also has a master’s degree in public health and is known for being one of the top five most-published medical researchers in the United States, in addition to being the editor of two medical journals.

Authors Defend Their Paper

Not surprisingly, the Toxicology Reports paper has received scathing critique from certain quarters. Still, corresponding author Ronald Kostoff told Retraction Watch that the criticism has actually been “an extremely small fraction” of the overall response, which by and large has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive. Kostoff went on to say:²

“Given the blatant censorship of the mainstream media and social media, only one side of the COVID-19 ‘vaccine’ narrative is reaching the public. Any questioning of the narrative is met with the harshest response …

I went into this with my eyes wide open, determined to identify the truth, irrespective of where it fell. I could not stand idly by while the least vulnerable to serious COVID-19 consequences were injected with substances of unknown mid and long-term safety.

We published a best-case scenario. The real-world situation is far worse than our best-case scenario, and could be the subject of a future paper.

What these results show is that we 1) instituted mass inoculations of an inadequately-tested toxic substance with 2) non-negligible attendant crippling and lethal results to 3) potentially prevent a relatively small number of true COVID-19 deaths. In other words, we used a howitzer where an accurate rifle would have sufficed!”

COVID Jab Campaign Has Had No Discernible Impact

Certainly, data very clearly show the mass “vaccination” campaign has not had a discernible impact on global death rates. On the contrary, in some cases the death toll shot up after the COVID shots became widely available. You can browse through covid19.healthdata.org³ to see this for yourself. Several examples are also included at the very beginning of the video.

This trend has also been confirmed in a September 2021 study⁴ published in the European Journal of Epidemiology. It found COVID-19 case rates are completely unrelated to vaccination rates.

Using data available as of September 3, 2021, from Our World in Data for cross-country analysis, and the White House COVID-19 Team data for U.S. counties, the researchers investigated the relationship between new COVID-19 cases and the percentage of the population that had been fully vaccinated.

Sixty-eight countries were included. Inclusion criteria included second dose vaccine data, COVID-19 case data and population data as of September 3, 2021. They then computed the COVID-19 cases per 1 million people for each country, and calculated the percentage of population that was fully vaccinated.

According to the authors, there was “no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last seven days.” If anything, higher vaccination rates were associated with a slight increase in cases. According to the authors:⁵

“[T]he trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.”

Getting back to the Toxicology Reports paper,⁶ which is being referring to as “the Kostoff analysis,” McCullough says the analysis is definitely making news in clinical medicine. The paper focuses on two factors: assumptions and determinism.

Determinism describes how likely something is. For example, if a person takes a COVID shot, it’s 100% certain they got the injection. It’s not 50% or 75%. It’s an absolute certainty. As a result, that person has a 100% chance of being exposed to whatever risk is associated with that shot.

On the other hand, if a person says no to the injection, it’s not 100% chance they’ll get COVID-19, let alone die from it. You have a less than 1% chance of being exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and getting sick. So, it’s 100% deterministic that taking the shot exposes you to the risks of the shot, and less than 1% deterministic that you’ll get COVID if you don’t take the shot.

The other part of the equation is the assumptions, which are based on calculations using available data, such as pre-COVID death statistics and death reports filed with the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reports System (VAERS).

Mortality Data

As noted by McCullough, two reports have detailed COVID jab death data, showing 50% of deaths occur within 24 hours and 80% occur within the first week. In one of these reports, 86% of deaths were found to have no other explanation aside from a vaccine adverse event. McCullough also cites a Scandinavian study that concluded about 40% of post-jab deaths among seniors in assisted living homes are directly due to the injection. He also cites other eye-opening figures:

• The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports having more than 30,000 spontaneous reports of either hospitalizations and/or deaths among the fully vaccinated
• Data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services show 300,000 vaccinated CMS recipients have been hospitalized with breakthrough infections
• 60% of seniors over age 65 hospitalized for COVID-19 have been vaccinated

COVID Shots Are ‘Failing Wholesale’

“When we put all these data together, we have clear-cut science that the vaccines are failing wholesale,” McCullough says. The shots are particularly useless in seniors.

Again, based on a best-case conservative scenario, seniors are five times more likely to die from the shot than they are from the natural infection. This scenario includes the assumption that the PCR test is accurate and reported COVID deaths were in fact due to COVID-19, which we know is not the case, and the assumption that the shots actually prevent death, which we have no proof of.

All things considered, you are FAR better off taking your chances with the natural infection, as McCullough says. The Kostoff analysis also does not take into account the fact that there are safe and effective treatments.

It bases its assumptions on the notion that there aren’t any. It also doesn’t factor in the fact that the COVID shots are utterly ineffective against the Delta and other variants. If you take into account vaccine failure against variants and alternative treatments, it skews the analysis even further toward natural infection being the safest alternative.

FDA and CDC Should Not Run Vaccine Programs

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the CDC claim not a single death following COVID inoculation was caused by the shot, they should not be the ones making that determination, as they are both sponsoring the vaccination campaign.

They have an inherent bias. When you conduct a trial, you would never allow the sponsor to tell you whether the product was the cause of death, because you know they’re biased.

What we need is an external group, a critical event committee, to analyze the deaths being reported, as well as a data safety monitoring board. These should have been in place from the start, but were not.

Had they been, the program would most likely have been halted in February, as by then the number of reported deaths, 186, already exceeded the tolerable threshold of about 150 (based on the number of injections given). Now, we’re well over 17,000.⁷ There’s no normal circumstance under which that would ever be allowed.

“The CDC and FDA are running the [vaccination] program. They are NOT the people who typically run vaccine programs,” McCullough says. “The drug companies run vaccine programs.

When Pfizer, Moderna, J&J ran their randomized trials, we didn’t have any problems. They had good safety oversight. They had data safety monitoring boards. The did OK. I mean I have to give the drug companies [credit].

But the drug companies are now just the suppliers of the vaccine. Our government agencies are now just running the program. There’s no external advisory committee. There’s no data safety monitoring board. There’s no human ethics committee. NO one is watching out for this!

And so, the CDC and FDA pretty clearly have their marching orders: ‘Execute this program; the vaccine is safe and effective.’ They’re giving no reports to Americans. No safety reports. We needed those once a month. They haven’t told doctors which is the best vaccine, which is the safest vaccine.

They haven’t told us what groups are to watch out for. How to mitigate risks. Maybe there are drug interactions. Maybe it’s people with prior blood clotting problems or diabetes. They’re not telling us anything!

They literally are blindsiding us, and with no transparency, and Americans now are scared to death. You can feel the tension in America. People are walking off the job. They don’t want to lose their jobs, but they don’t want to die of the vaccine! It’s very clear. They say, ‘Listen, I don’t want to die. That’s the reason I’m not taking the vaccine.’ It’s just that clear.”

Bradford Hill Criteria Are Met — COVID Jabs Cause Death

McCullough goes on to explain the Bradford Hill criterion for causation, which is one of the ways by which we can actually determine that, yes, the shots are indeed killing people. We’re not dealing with coincidence.

“The first question we’d ask is: ‘Does the vaccine have a mechanism of action, a biological mechanism of action, that can actually kill a human being?’ And the answer is yes! because the vaccines all use genetic mechanisms to trick the body into making the lethal spike protein of the virus.

It is very conceivable that some people take up too much messenger RNA; they produce a lethal spike protein in sensitive organs like the brain or the heart or elsewhere. The spike protein damages blood vessels, damages organs, causes blood clots. So, it’s well within the mechanism of action that the vaccine could be fatal.

Someone could have a fatal blood clot. They could have fatal myocarditis. The FDA has official warnings of myocarditis. They have warnings on blood clots. They have warnings on a fatal neurologic condition called Guillain-Barré syndrome. So, the FDA warnings, the mechanism of action, clearly say it’s possible.

The second criteria is: ‘Is it a large effect?’ And the answer is yes! This is not a subtle thing. It’s not 151 versus 149 deaths. This is 15,000 deaths. So, it’s a very large effect size, a large effect.

The third [criteria] is: ‘Is it internally consistent?’ Are you seeing other things that could potentially be fatal in VAERS? Yes! We’re seeing heart attacks. We’re seeing strokes. We’re seeing myocarditis. We’re seeing blood clots, and what have you. So, it’s internally consistent.

‘Is it externally consistent?’ That’s the next criteria. Well, if you look in the MHRA, the yellow card system in England, the exact same thing has been found. In the EudraVigilance system in [Europe] the exact same thing’s been found.

So, we have actually fulfilled all of the Bradford Hill criteria. I’ll tell you right now that COVID-19 vaccine is, from an epidemiological perspective, causing these deaths or a large fraction.”

Zero Tolerance for Elective Drugs Causing Death

There may be cases in which a high risk of death from a drug might be acceptable. If you have a terminal incurable disease, for example, you may be willing to experiment and take your chances. Under normal circumstances however, lethal drugs are not tolerated.

After five suspected deaths, a drug will receive a black box warning. At 50 deaths, it will be removed from the market. Considering COVID-19 has a less than 1% risk of death across age groups, the tolerance for a deadly remedy is infinitesimal. At over 17,000 reported deaths, which in real numbers may exceed 212,000,⁸ the COVID shots far surpass any reasonable risk to protect against symptomatic COVID-19. As noted by McCullough:

“There is zero tolerance for electively taking a drug or a new vaccine and then dying! There’s zero tolerance for that. People don’t weigh it out and say, ‘Oh well, I’ll take my chances and die.’ And I can tell you, the word got out about vaccines causing death in early April [2021], and by mid-April the vaccination rates in the United States plummeted …

We hadn’t gotten anywhere near our goals. Remember, President Biden set a goal [of 70% vaccination rate] by July 1. We never got there because Americans were frightened by their relatives, people in their churches and their schools dying after the vaccine.

They had heard about it, they saw it. There was an informal internet survey done several months ago, where 12% of Americans knew somebody who had died after the vaccine.

I’m a doctor. I’m an internist and cardiologist. I just came from the hospital … I had a woman die of the COVID-19 vaccine … She had shot No. 1. She had shot No. 2. After shot No. 2, she developed blood clots throughout her body. She required hospitalization. She required intravenous blood thinners. She was ravaged. She had neurologic damage.

After that hospitalization, she was in a walker. She came to my office. I checked for more blood clots. I found more blood clots. I put her back on blood thinners. I saw her about a month later. She seemed like she was a little better. Family was really concerned. The next month I got called by the Dallas Coroner office saying she’s found dead at home.

Most of us don’t have any problem with vaccines; 98% of Americans take all the vaccines … I think most people who are still susceptible would take a COVID vaccine if they knew they weren’t going to die of it or be injured. And because of these giant safety concerns, and the lack of transparency, we’re at an impasse.

We’ve got a very labor-constrained market. We’ve got people walking off the job. We’ve got planes that aren’t going to fly, and it’s all because our agencies are not being transparent and honest with America about vaccine safety.”

Early Treatment Is Crucial, Vaxxed or Not

As noted by McCullough, the vast majority of patients require hospitalization for COVID-19 is because they’ve not received any treatment and the infection has been allowed free reign for days on end.

“To this day, the patients who get hospitalized are largely those who receive no early care at home,” he says. “They’re either denied care or they don’t know about it, and they end up dying.

The vast majority of people who die, die in the hospital; they don’t die at home. And the reason why they end up in the hospital, it’s typically two weeks of lack of treatment. You can’t let a fatal illness brew for two weeks at home with no treatment, and then start treatment very late in the hospital. It’s not going to work.

There’s been a very good set of analyses, one in the Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases … that showed, day by day, one loses the opportunity of reducing the hospitalization when monoclonal antibodies are delayed … No doctor should be considered a renegade when they order FDA [emergency use authorized] monoclonal antibody. The monoclonal antibodies are just as approved as the vaccines.

I just had a patient over the weekend, fully vaccinated, took the booster. A month after the booster she went on a trip to Dubai. She just came back, and she got COVID-19! … I got her a monoclonal antibody infusion that day. [The following day] she started the sequence of multidrug therapy for COVID-19. I am telling you, she is going to get through this illness in a few days …

Podcaster Joe Rogan just went through this. Governor Abbott was also a vaccine failure. He went through it. Former President Trump went through it. Americans should see the use of monoclonal antibodies in high risk patients, followed by drugs in an oral sequenced approach. This is standard of care!

It is supported by the Association of Physicians and Surgeons, the Truth for Health Foundation, the American Front Line Doctors, and the Front Line Critical Care Consortium. This is not renegade medicine. This is what patients should have. This is the correct thing! …

If we can’t get the monoclonal antibodies, we certainly use hydroxychloroquine, supported by over 250 studies, ivermectin, supported by over 60 studies, combined with azithromycin or doxycycline, inhaled budesonide … full-dose aspirin … nutraceuticals including zinc, vitamin D, vitamin C, quercetin, NAC … we do oral and nasal decontamination with povidone-iodine.

In acutely sick patients we do it every four hours, [and it] massively reduces the viral load … Fortunately, we have enough doctors now and enough patient awareness, patients who … understand that early treatment is viable, is necessary, and it should be executed.”

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Notes

^1, 6 Toxicology Reports September 2021; 8: 1665-1684

² Retraction Watch October 4, 2021

³ Covid19.healthdata.org

^4, 5 European Journal of Epidemiology September 30, 2021

⁷ OpenVAERS Data as of October 15, 2021

⁸ SKirsch.io/vaccine-resources

Featured image is from TrialSiteNews

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

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The recent unprecedented surprise two-day visit by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) William Burns to Moscow for talks with his counterparts has triggered considerable discussion within retired spook circles in and around Washington. Even among active CIA employees the preparations for the trip were tightly held with few advisers briefed on the agenda that had been prepared for the meetings, which were clearly initiated at Langley’s request. Burns met with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev as well as Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergei Naryshkin last Tuesday. President Vladimir Putin was briefed on the meetings on the following day. Concerning the discussions, a Kremlin spokesman said only that “Of course, dialogue at this level and dialogue on such sensitive issues is extremely important for bilateral relations and for the exchange of views on the problems that we have” elaborating only that various international issues were discussed. A US Embassy press release echoed the Russian comments.

There is a consensus that Burns, a former Ambassador to Russia and a Russian speaker, was on a mission ordered by the president to create a more stable and predictable relationship.

The move comes in spite of US issuance of a new wave of sanctions for past presumed Russian offenses in April. Leaks regarding the visit, if verifiable, indicate that Burns was in Moscow to discuss specifically alleged Russian ransomware hacking and even the widely discredited view that Moscow has been continuing its interference in US elections. If all of that is so, the visit would be pointless as the Kremlin has denied any such involvement and dismissed claims that the alleged Russian hackers are in any was associated with the government.

The most popular narrative currently making the rounds among some conspiracy theorists is that the Biden Administration has compiled what might be described as a dossier on the expansion of Chinese influence operations worldwide and is keen to make the case that they threaten everyone, including the Europeans and Russians. Presumably Burns would have been in Moscow to share that information in hopes that the burgeoning de facto alliance between Russia and China can be reversed. Whether Burns was successful in such a task remains to be seen, but it of course would not take into account that views in Beijing and Moscow have been shaped and hardened by confrontational activity that the United States has been engaged in both in the Baltic and South China Sea.

Joe Biden for his part has not helped any rapprochement by his assurances to defend Taiwan and his critical comments about Vladimir Putin at the recent climate change conference in Glasgow. So one must ask why is it that an Administration that is increasingly seen as disconnected and incapable at home been persisting in provocative policies that could plausibly lead to war against major powers like China and Russia? Particularly given the fact that recent war games and exercises have suggested that the in-disarray US armed forces might well be defeated? Is the trip of William Burns to Moscow something of a wake-up call to the fact that US foreign policy basically makes no sense?

Unfortunately, the Republicans are equally locked into an adversarial mode when it comes to Russia and China. Ex-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, is now calling for economic war against Beijing. Some might conclude that everything in contemporary Washington comes down to a latter-day opera buffa in which an assortment of comic characters parade for a moment only to be replaced by the next bumbler sporting an equally ridiculous message.

Russia aside, witness the recent wave of China bashing, begun by Barack Obama with his pivot to Asia, continued under Donald Trump with his China virus rants, and endorsed by Joe Biden’s team which persists in labeling Beijing as enemy number one. No one steps back and considers even for a moment that the US is China’s largest market and that the US in turn relies on Chinese manufactured products to fill its Walmarts. If ever two nations had good reasons not to go to war, it would be China and the United States, yet the US desire to confront the “Red Menace” to include defending Taiwan continues to drive policy.

So, it remains to be seen what might come out of the William Burns delegation going to Moscow. But there have been other recent visits by senior American officials. If you really want to consider policy making that is brain dead, the prize would have to go to the recently concluded trip made by State Department Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland to Moscow. The mainstream media that reported the trip saw it, just like the Burns trip, as a gesture being made by the Biden White House to mend fences with the Vladimir Putin government. But if that were so, the selection of Nuland as the interlocutor was particularly inappropriate. She is a hard-core neoconservative who is married to Robert Kagan. She was in fact on a Russian sanctions list before her trip and had to be removed from it so she could carry out the official travel. Nuland is best known in the media for having said in an intercepted phone call “Fuck the EU” when a colleague suggested that the European Union might have a role to play in the future direction of Ukraine.

Nuland at State Department under Barack Obama was in fact the driving force behind demanding regime change in Ukraine to oust its pro-Russian government. She would drop in on Kiev’s Maidan Square with her buddy Senator John McCain to pass out cookies to demonstrators. After the government was changed to satisfy Washington, it was admitted that the US had spent something like $5 billion to bring about the “revolution.” Moscow and Putin, however, were not amused and promptly moved to take back Crimea and to stir up resistance in the largely ethnic Russian Donbass region.

Nuland met in Moscow with the Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. What she chose to discuss belies suggestions that she was there to talk nice and mend fences. A major issue was a demand from Washington to greatly reduce the Russian diplomatic presence in the United States. The number that Nuland reportedly presented to Ryabkov was that 300 dips would have to go. The demand reportedly came from Congressional pressure to greatly reduce the number of accredited Russians based on the claim that Moscow had interfered in American elections. Nuland had with her two lists of names for removal, and suggested that the first fifty should be returned home by January.

The Russians responded that they were willing to lift all sanctions of US diplomats if Washington would reciprocate by lifting sanctions on Russian diplomatic missions in the US. Nuland said that was not acceptable. Ryabkov countered with his observation that many of the diplomats were accredited to the United Nations and were not accountable to the US approved diplomatic list. Ryabkov elaborated that “If you will insist, we are ready to close down all US missions in Russia, and to lock down our remaining offices at Washington. We can terminate all diplomatic interaction; if you want our relations be based on the number of our nuclear missiles, we are ready. But it’s your choice, not ours.” So the discussion obviously went nowhere.

In fact, the discussion went downhill from that point, including as it did US disapproval of Russian involvement in Mali and in Libya and a sounding out of possible Kremlin response if the Biden Administration pushes forward with plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. The Russians also confirmed that they would not permit hosting US intelligence personnel on military bases in former Central Asian Soviet countries “the ‘Stans” to monitor developments in Afghanistan. Crimea was apparently not mentioned.

Ryabkov concluded that “…he and Nuland made no progress on normalizing the work of their diplomatic missions, which has been hampered by multiple rounds of sanctions, adding that the situation could exacerbate even further. The Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated Moscow’s readiness to respond in kind to any unfriendly US action.” The only positive development was thin gruel, coming when Ryabkov floated a suggestion that Putin might be willing to meet with Joe Biden at some undesignated point in the future to discuss mutual concerns.

One has to wonder who exactly selected someone as toxic as Victoria Nuland to go to Russia, but worse was to come after her return to America. Any Putin-Biden summit meeting is now less likely than it was several weeks ago as right after Nuland’s departure for the United States, the bilateral relationship worsened.

The NATO headquarters in Brussels declared several Russian diplomats ‘personae non gratae’, and the Russian Foreign Ministry responded to the provocation by sending home all NATO representatives present at diplomatic missions in Russia. In response back in the United States, the media and some Congressmen and Biden Administration officials immediately began to press forward with their plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, a vital or even existential issue for Russia that guarantees to scuttle any attempts to actually improve relations. And the White House continues to make a bad situation worse by suggesting that it has an obligation to “defend Ukraine.”

So why was CIA Director William Burns in Moscow and what did he accomplish? God only knows!

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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

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In lieu of Covid-19 killer vaccines, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, MD, the acclaimed treating family physician for heads of state, has successfully cured over 6,000 Covid-19 patients with a combo of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, quercetin, Vitamin C and Vitamin D as an alternative treatment resulting in a 99% survival rate. While his notable accomplishments have garnered nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and Presidential Medal of Freedom, speaking out publicly against the dangers of the so-called vaccines has caused him to endure daily death threats, character and career assassination attempts and widespread censorship. Because he is a courageous speaker of the truth, supplying an effective, inexpensive health remedy that openly opposes the cabal’s genocidal depopulation agenda, he is deemed a threat to the New World Order medical and political tyranny.

After being de-platformed off all the social media, on October 25, 2021 Dr. Zev Zelenko boldly exposes “the demons” behind this the eugenics depopulation agenda;

I am a conspiracy realist.

Vanguard and Black Rock [sic] are stakeholders in all industry, media, academia, and politics.

Vanguard and Black Rock invest in each other through something called circular ownership.

Thus, consider Vanguard and Black Rock as a monopoly that owns everything. With due diligence you will discover that the major stakeholders of this monopoly are:

• Rothschild family
• Du Pont family
• Rockefeller family
• Carnegie family
• Orsini Family
• American Bush family
• British Royal family

They use the following foundations to ferment chaos around the world

• Bill and Melinda Gates foundation
• Soros Open Society foundation
• Clinton foundation

These foundations are instrumental for geopolitical destabilization. Chaos is good for business and power acquisition. Only a divinely inspired force can overcome this Goliath. The world will be redeemed by acts of goodness and kindness. We need collective divine consciousness in order to merit divine intervention. The owners of the vanguard/black rock monopoly are a manifestation of the primordial serpent.

I am VERY optimistic about an upcoming redemptive event that will rebalance our dark world.

Fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the ride. –

Vladimir Zev Zelenko, MD

***

Even a cursory examination amazingly done by Tim Gielen exposing today’s two biggest controlling stakeholders –Vanguard and BlackRock – shows that the same handful of monopolists succinctly pointed out by Dr. Zelenko, essentially own and control the entire world.

Their absolute power over humanity has permitted them to literally get away with murder while toxically destroying our planet.

For example, take the top worldwide food industry manufacturers as the largest name brand corporations – Coca Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, Nestle and Mondelez International, all these giant makers of our chemically processed food are controlled by the same two biggest monopolizing shareholder investors Vanguard and BlackRock. The world’s third and fourth largest investment companies are Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and State Street Corporation.

The Communications Technology Industry

Another example in this monopoly game is the largest companies in the technology industry. Facebook owns WhatsApp and Instagram, and Alphabet as the parent company of all Google businesses, owns YouTube, Gmail, and the largest sponsor of Android, the world’s largest mobile app platform, the near exclusive operating system of all smart phones, and Apple IOS, the other major operating system.

Thus, Bill Gates’ Microsoft Corporation, Facebook, Apple and Alphabet constitute the four largest Big Tech companies that virtually all the world’s computers, telex and smart phones run on.

The same two top investors – Vanguard and BlackRock, also own the most controlling shares of all these corporations in the Big Tech industry. In fact, all the companies that build computers, TVs, smart phones and household appliances – IBM, HP, Intel, Sony and Dell, including the biggest online marketplaces Amazon and E-Bay, the largest department and grocery store chains, all the payment methods, all are owned by the same giant investment firms Vanguard and BlackRock.

Every Single Industry on Earth is Owned or Controlled by the same Two Top Investors

All the agricultural products, seeds owned by Monsanto, tobacco, alcohol and Big Pharma corporations, now killing us with their so-called vaccines masquerading as bioweapons, all are owned by the same bloodlines.

The economic game is totally rigged, from all the top internet travel websites, all the top airlines, the top airplane manufacturers, the top hotel and restaurant chains, the top oil refineries that fuel all the planes, trains, boats, trucks and cars, the steel corporations and mining companies that supply all the raw materials used in all modes of transportation, construction, textile and clothing manufacturing, all have the same controlling owners, including the so called green industry making solar panel and wind turbines.

By 2028 Bloomberg confirms that these two owners of the world – Vanguard and BlackRock – will possess $20 trillion.

Black Rock is considered the fourth arm of the government with its intimate ties to the Rothschild central banks. Even BlackRock’s largest shareholder is Vanguard and vice versa, although Vanguard ensures complete anonymity of its individual owners. But too late, overwhelming evidence proves that it’s the same handful of “nobility families” that the good Dr. Zelenko outed.

A recap – everything on earth is literally owned and controlled by these same top investment companies along with the largest banks, mutual funds, insurance companies and even political nations, owned and controlled through bribery and blackmail, all of these domains are completely dominated by the same controlling bloodlines – the Rothschild, Rockefeller, Du Pont, Carnegie, Orsini, Bush and Windsor family dynasties, along with a few lesser known yet equally powerful clans covered by Fritz Springmeier’s tome Bloodlines of Illuminati.

To lock in their controlling stranglehold on humanity, even all the smaller investment firms in the Fortune 500 are owned by the same familiar larger ones in a hierarchically vertical pyramid power structure.

Like the late great comedian George Carlin astutely observed over a dozen years ago, it’s all one “big club [of psychopaths] and you ain’t in it,” running virtually every single aspect of our lives and every single enterprise on the planet, including both legal and illegal, bar none.

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Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate, former Army officer and author of “Don’t Let the Bastards Getcha Down,” exposing a faulty US military leadership system based on ticket punching up the seniority ladder, invariably weeding out the best and brightest, leaving mediocrity and order followers rising to the top as politician-bureaucrat generals designated to lose every modern US war by elite design. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In Los Angeles he found himself battling the largest county child protective services in the nation within America’s thoroughly broken and corrupt child welfare system. The experience in both the military and child welfare system prepared him well as a researcher and independent journalist, exposing the evils of Big Pharma and how the Rockefeller controlled medical and psychiatric system inflict more harm than good, case in point the current diabolically lethal pandemic hoax and genocide. As an independent journalist for the last 8 years, Joachim has written hundreds of articles for many news sites, particularly Global Research and lewrockwell.com.

As a published author of a 5-book volume series entitled Pedophilia& Empire: Satan, Sodomy & the Deep State, Joachim’s books and chapters are Amazon bestsellers in child advocacy and human rights categories. His A-Z sourcebook series fully documents and exposes the global pedophilia scourge and remains available for free at Joachim’s blogsite at http://empireexposed.blogspot.com/ and https://pedoempire.org.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi will run for president of Libya in the country’s first direct presidential election set to be held starting on December 24.  He is the son of Libya’s late leader Muammar al-Gaddafi who was murdered on October 20, 2011.

Gaddafi wore traditional garments as he addressed the camera and recited a verse from the Koran while announcing his bid to lead the country out of chaos and war.  The UN-sponsored plan has called for both presidential and parliamentary elections to be held simultaneously.

Gaddafi was captured by a militia after his father’s murder and was held for six years, receiving a death sentence that was later overturned.

Also running for the top seat is the military commander Khalifa Hafter, who has led a secular army fighting the Radical Islamic terrorists who are in control of the western headquarters at Tripoli.  The UN-backed government in Tripoli was stacked with members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Other candidates in the running are Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah and parliament speaker Aguila Saleh.

Gaddafi has gradually re-emerged onto the public stage despite being still wanted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court.

Since Muammar Gaddafi died, Libya has been a country in war and filled with terrorists, who disguise themselves sometimes in suits and ties and pretend to be leaders. Violent intervention in Libya was not chiefly about the security of the people: it was about the security of global banking, money, and oil.

Macron asks for foreign troops to leave during Paris meeting

On Friday French President Emmanuel Macron hosted a meeting in Paris which brought together the leaders of France, Libya, Germany, Italy, and Egypt, as well as the US vice president, Kamala Harris.  Both Turkey and Russia sent lower-level representatives to the meeting which sought to unify support for the December election in Libya, as well as call for the departure of foreign fighters.

Leaders in Paris decided “that individuals or entities, inside or outside of Libya, who might attempt to obstruct, undermine, manipulate or falsify the electoral process and the political transition” could face sanctions.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a video message to the meeting warned of outside influence.

Turkey has rebuffed Macron’s call on foreign powers to remove their forces from Libya, and responded with a statement, “We are there as a force of stability and help to the Libyan people. And our priority as far as security is concerned is to help the Libyans establish their united Libyan National Army.”

While Turkey is bolstering the Muslim Brotherhood power base in Tripoli, the Russians have supported Haftar’s secular forces in the east, and France has faced accusations of backing Haftar, but publically claims to be neutral.

The current political situation

Libya is currently led by an interim government but remains politically unstable, while the civil war has Libyan militias as well as foreign-backed militias fighting in the fourth largest country in Africa, with the largest city and capital, Tripoli, located in western Libya and contains over three million of Libya’s seven million people.

The US-NATO attack on Libya 2011

US and NATO claimed to intervene in Libya for humanitarian reasons, under “the responsibility to protect”.

In November 2001, General Wesley Clark, author of “Winning Modern Wars”, was at the Pentagon and was told, “There was a total of seven countries beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan.” A senior military officer explained the five-year plan then being discussed. The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) had a “hit list” of Arab nations. The common feature of all 7 nations on the US hit list is they had independent central banks, not part of the Bank cartel that is establishing “One World Money”. Nations whose governments own and operate their national currency system possess monetary defenses against financial warfare; therefore, the US is systematically destroying those defenses.

In 2000 Libya had achieved economic independence, with its water, food, oil, and state-owned bank. Libya had arisen under Gaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa. Education and medical treatment were free, and having a home was considered a human right.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a “threat” to the financial security of the world. The huge threat of the 143 tons of gold held by Libya, and the economic threat poised if Libyan gold were to displace the French franc (CFA) as a prime African currency. This quantity of Libyan gold and Libyan silver as well is valued at more than $7 billion. The great fear was that Libya might lead North Africa into a high degree of economic independence with a new Pan-African currency.

In February 2011, the first protests broke out in Benghazi. From the outset, Western and foreign Special Forces were on the ground in Libya, with a massive supply of AK47 assault rifles and ammunition. What was reported by western mainstream media as a ‘popular uprising’, was a well-planned and orchestrated US-NATO attack on Libya for ‘regime change’, and stealing the countries resources. Al Qaeda terrorists were embedded with the US-backed opposition.

On March 19, 2011, at a meeting of the ‘rebel council,’ they announced the creation of a new oil company, the designation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya, and the appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi. The rebels in Libya announced they were creating a new bank, a central bank, replacing the previous state-owned Libyan bank. The rebels took a break from slaughtering unarmed civilians across Libya, to announce a new banking system, which was in line with western aims. The new Central Bank of Benghazi was established to stop any ideas of a gold currency for Africa. Economic analysts were astounded that Al Qaeda terrorists could also be astute banking specialists, capable of establishing a whole new banking authority for an oil-rich nation. The ‘revolution’ was just in the beginning stages, and yet a new bank was the first order of business. This made it obvious that it was the new bank that was of primary importance, not securing the humanitarian concerns of the residents of Libya.

On March 27, 2011, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was briefed on clear evidence of war crimes on the part of US-NATO-backed rebels.

The Gold

In 2008, while giving a speech at an Arab League Summit in Damascus, Syria, Qaddafi predicted that America will kill more Arab leaders, as they had done with Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

In 2009, while Qaddafi was acting head of the African Union, he planned to create a gold-backed African currency to compete with the dollar and euro. Oil and all resources in Africa would be traded in Gold.

Until the US-NATO invasion, the gold dinar was issued by the Central Bank of Libya (CBL). The Libyan bank was 100% state-owned and independent. Foreigners had to go through the CBL to do business with Libya. The Central Bank of Libya issued the dinar, using the country’s 143.8 tons of gold.

Qaddafi’s plan would have strengthened the whole continent of Africa in the eyes of economists backing sound money, but it would have been especially devastating for the US economy, the American dollar, and particularly the elite in charge of the system.

The plan was designed to establish an alternative to the French African franc (CFA) in the French-speaking African nations. Libya’s gold reached an all-time high of 143.82 Tons in the second quarter of 2000 and a record low of 116.64 Tons in the fourth quarter of 2011, as reported by the World Gold Council.

There was a huge amount of Libyan gold missing at the end of 2011 after Gaddafi was murdered, and when the US-NATO invasion forces were in control of the country.

The refugee boats to Europe

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has urged the Libyan government to immediately address the dire situation of asylum-seekers and refugees.

Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR’s Special Envoy for the Western and Central Mediterranean Situation, said “The Libyan authorities must come up with a proper plan that respects their rights and identifies durable solutions.”

About 3,000 people are currently sheltering outside the Community Day Centre (CDC) in Tripoli, where UNHCR and its partners have been providing medical assistance and other services, while the UNHCR continues to call on the authorities to respect the human rights and dignity of asylum-seekers and refugees, stop their arbitrary arrest and release them from detention.

Libyan migrants are risking their lives almost daily to cross the Mediterranean Sea to arrive on Europe’s shores.  The election next month may bring security and peace to Libya and give residents a chance to rebuild their lives at home, instead of taking a boat ride to the depths of the sea.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

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***

The European Union database of suspected drug reaction reports is EudraVigilance, and they are now reporting 29,934 fatalities, and 2,804,900 injuries, following COVID-19 injections.

A Health Impact News subscriber from Europe reminded us that this database maintained at EudraVigilance is only for countries in Europe who are part of the European Union (EU), which comprises 27 countries.

The total number of countries in Europe is much higher, almost twice as many, numbering around 50. (There are some differences of opinion as to which countries are technically part of Europe.)

So as high as these numbers are, they do NOT reflect all of Europe. The actual number in Europe who are reported dead or injured following COVID-19 shots would be much higher than what we are reporting here.

The EudraVigilance database reports that through October 19, 2021 there are 29,934 deaths and 2,804,900 injuries reported following injections of four experimental COVID-19 shots:

• COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE MODERNA (CX-024414)
• COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE PFIZER-BIONTECH
• COVID-19 VACCINE ASTRAZENECA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19)
• COVID-19 VACCINE JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S)

From the total of injuries recorded, almost half of them (1,311,861) are serious injuries.

“Seriousness provides information on the suspected undesirable effect; it can be classified as ‘serious’ if it corresponds to a medical occurrence that results in death, is life-threatening, requires inpatient hospitalisation, results in another medically important condition, or prolongation of existing hospitalisation, results in persistent or significant disability or incapacity, or is a congenital anomaly/birth defect.”

A Health Impact News subscriber in Europe ran the reports for each of the four COVID-19 shots we are including here. It is a lot of work to tabulate each reaction with injuries and fatalities, since there is no place on the EudraVigilance system we have found that tabulates all the results.

Since we have started publishing this, others from Europe have also calculated the numbers and confirmed the totals.*

Here is the summary data through November 6, 2021.

Total reactions for the mRNA vaccine Tozinameran (code BNT162b2, Comirnaty) from BioNTech/ Pfizer: 14,002 deaths and 1,266,500 injuries to 06/11/2021

• 34,377   Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 196 deaths
• 37,779   Cardiac disorders incl. 2,050 deaths
• 348        Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 31 deaths
• 17,188   Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 10 deaths
• 1,129     Endocrine disorders incl. 5 deaths
• 19,593   Eye disorders incl. 30 deaths
• 107,066 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 565 deaths
• 324,554 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 3,983 deaths
• 1,433     Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 74 deaths
• 13,777   Immune system disorders incl. 72 deaths
• 49,517   Infections and infestations incl. 1,517 deaths
• 18,101   Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 217 deaths
• 31,592   Investigations incl. 432 deaths
• 8,709     Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 243 deaths
• 159,698 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 172 deaths
• 1,080     Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 105 deaths
• 217,201 Nervous system disorders incl. 1,500 deaths
• 1,753     Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 50 deaths
• 200        Product issues incl. 2 deaths
• 23,195   Psychiatric disorders incl. 171 deaths
• 4,438     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 221 deaths
• 40,100   Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 5 deaths
• 54,682   Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 1,568 deaths
• 59,950   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 123 deaths
• 2,583     Social circumstances incl. 19 deaths
• 3,002     Surgical and medical procedures incl. 40 deaths
• 33,455   Vascular disorders incl. 601 deaths

Total reactions for the mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273(CX-024414) from Moderna: 8,196 deaths and 375,242 injuriesto 06/11/2021

• 7,867     Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 89 deaths
• 12,009   Cardiac disorders incl. 881 deaths
• 150        Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 5 deaths
• 4,533     Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 326        Endocrine disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 5,527     Eye disorders incl. 27 deaths
• 31,082   Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 317 deaths
• 101,013 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 2,904 deaths
• 612        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 36 deaths
• 3,605     Immune system disorders incl. 14 deaths
• 13,769   Infections and infestations incl. 727 deaths
• 7,861     Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 152 deaths
• 6,833     Investigations incl. 136 deaths
• 3,556     Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 195 deaths
• 45,788   Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 163 deaths
• 496        Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 60 deaths
• 64,074   Nervous system disorders incl. 802 deaths
• 696        Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 7 deaths
• 71           Product issues incl. 2 deaths
• 6,817     Psychiatric disorders incl. 139 deaths
• 2,171     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 158 deaths
• 7,439     Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 7 deaths
• 16,508   Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 872 deaths
• 20,140   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 74 deaths
• 1,693     Social circumstances incl. 35 deaths
• 1,285     Surgical and medical procedures incl. 77 deaths
• 9,321     Vascular disorders incl. 312 deaths

Total reactions for the vaccine AZD1222/VAXZEVRIA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford/ AstraZeneca: 5,973 deaths and 1,065,560 injuries to 06/11/2021

• 12,976   Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 243 deaths
• 18,819   Cardiac disorders incl. 676 deaths
• 184        Congenital familial and genetic disorders incl. 7 deaths
• 12,521   Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 583        Endocrine disorders incl. 4 deaths
• 18,723   Eye disorders incl. 29 deaths
• 101,828 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 306 deaths
• 280,708 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 1,426 deaths
• 929        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 57 deaths
• 4,646     Immune system disorders incl. 28 deaths
• 31,579   Infections and infestations incl. 399 deaths
• 12,147   Injury poisoning and procedural complications incl. 172 deaths
• 23,340   Investigations incl. 142 deaths
• 12,279   Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 88 deaths
• 158,583 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 92 deaths
• 607        Neoplasms benign malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 21 deaths
• 220,125 Nervous system disorders incl. 937 deaths
• 504        Pregnancy puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 10 deaths
• 183        Product issues incl. 1 death
• 19,750   Psychiatric disorders incl. 58 deaths
• 4,004     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 57 deaths
• 14,909   Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 37,574   Respiratory thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 707 deaths
• 48,852   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 48 deaths
• 1,458     Social circumstances incl. 6 deaths
• 1,343     Surgical and medical procedures incl. 25 deaths
• 26,406   Vascular disorders incl. 430 deaths

Total reactions for the COVID-19 vaccine JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S) from Johnson & Johnson: 1,763 deaths and 97,598 injuries to 06/11/2021

• 936        Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 38 deaths
• 1,746     Cardiac disorders incl. 152 deaths
• 35           Congenital, familial and genetic disorders
• 964        Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 1 death
• 59           Endocrine disorders incl. 1 death
• 1,290     Eye disorders incl. 6 deaths
• 8,253     Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 73 deaths
• 25,729   General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 469 deaths
• 118        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 11 deaths
• 416        Immune system disorders incl. 9 deaths
• 3,906     Infections and infestations incl. 137 deaths
• 879        Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 18 deaths
• 4,611     Investigations incl. 99 deaths
• 591        Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 44 deaths
• 14,470   Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 42 deaths
• 52           Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 3 deaths
• 19,444   Nervous system disorders incl. 191 deaths
• 38           Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 1 death
• 25           Product issues
• 1,324     Psychiatric disorders incl. 16 deaths
• 383        Renal and urinary disorders incl. 21 deaths
• 1,928     Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 6 deaths
• 3,444     Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 225 deaths
• 2,962     Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 7 deaths
• 303        Social circumstances incl. 4 deaths
• 666        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 53 deaths
• 3,026     Vascular disorders incl. 136 deaths

*These totals are estimates based on reports submitted to EudraVigilance. Totals may be much higher based on percentage of adverse reactions that are reported. Some of these reports may also be reported to the individual country’s adverse reaction databases, such as the U.S. VAERS database and the UK Yellow Card system. The fatalities are grouped by symptoms, and some fatalities may have resulted from multiple symptoms.

***

Third Australian Corporate Journalist Hospitalized With Pericarditis After Pfizer COVID-19 Shot

The COVID World is reporting that 3 corporate journalists have now been hospitalized with heart disease (pericarditis) after taking Pfizer shots.

by The COVID World

DARWIN – A third Australian journalist has developed pericarditis (heart inflammation) after her first Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Eleni Roussos, an ABC News journalist and anchor in the Darwin ABC newsroom, was hospitalized on November 5th and diagnosed with pericarditis according to her sister Koulla Roussos.

She was released after tests, but after seeing no improvement in her health, she was readmitted to the emergency room of Darwin Private Hospital. She was released two days ago on November 13th.

Her sister, Koulla Roussos, wrote on Facebook about the health scare on November 6th:

On November 13th, she gave more detail on Facebook, saying:

She [Eleni] had her three children in that hospital [Darwin Private Hospital] and the staff at the Jabiru ward were by her side at each birth. Now, years on, the staff at the Jacana ward were crucial in her recovery during this, the most difficult time of her life. Whilst she is still not over the line, she leaves this hospital today thanks to the care and attention of cardiologist Dr Marcus Ilton. Special thanks to nursing staff – Sasi, Jacinta, Molly, Mariana, Alex and Earl for their amazing work.

We also want to extend our gratitude to our immediate and extended families, friends, colleagues, strangers, archangels and saints, the community support and spirit was overwhelming. Your flowers, chocolates, emails, phone calls, constant text messages day and night and prayers touched us deeply. We have been humbled by the will of providence and chance to realise that love and science go hand in hand.

Read the full article at The COVID World.

***

Georgia Clark: 27-Year-Old Journalist Hospitalized 10 Days After Receiving Second Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine, Diagnosed With Pericarditis

by The COVID World

SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES – Georgia Clark, a news reporter for the Daily Telegraph has developed pericarditis (heart inflammation) after her second Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. The journalist, experienced severe flu-like symptoms and chest pain a week after her injection and checked into the emergency room on Wednesday, August 4th. Research shows that the 27-year-old suffered from pericarditis as a result of her inoculations.

Georgia Clark received her first Pfizer shot on July 3rd.

She received her second shot on July 25th.

She posted a video message from her hospital bed on August 11th.

Georgia Clark spent two nights in Concord Hospital.

Read the full article at The COVID World.

***

Denham Hitchcock: Journalist Rushed To Hospital 25 Days After Receiving Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine, Diagnosed With Pericarditis

by The COVID World

SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES – A 45-year-old journalist was rushed to hospital 25 days after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Denham Hitchcock, a Channel 7 News reporter, got his shot on or around August 1st. He was then later hospitalized after suffering pins and needles in his arm, a racing heart and dizziness. He was diagnosed with pericarditis as a result of the vaccine.

The reporter spoke from his hospital bed after being diagnosed with inflammation of the pericardium — a sac-like structure with two thin layers of tissue that surround the heart to hold it in place and help it work. A small amount of fluid keeps the layers separate so there’s less friction between them as the heart beats.

A common symptom of pericarditis is chest pain, caused by the sac’s layers becoming inflamed and possibly rubbing against the heart. It may feel like pain from a heart attack.

Hitchcock made the decision to share his story because “as a journalist, it would be hypocritical not to.”

He took to social media and posted this on Instagram:

Read the full article at The COVID World.

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Courageous people who oppose discrimination against the unvaccinated and division in society still exist. At the risk, or rather the certainty of being the target of defamation and exclusion, Felix Gottwald has spoken up.

When international German movie star Til Schweiger reminded his audiences that he daughter now suffers from narcolepsy because of an earlier mass vaccination experiment against swine flu with the untested drug Pandemrix, he was humiliated and defamed, including being called an “asshole” on German public broadcaster ARD.

Gottwald, Austria’s most successful Olympic athlete and until most recently head of Bundes-Sport GmbH, resigned from his lucrative job to protest against the Austrian government’s tyrannical Corona policy.

“With three gold, one silver and three bronze medals, the former Nordic combined athlete is Austria’s most successful Olympic athlete in history,” the heute.at portal described Gottwald. “In spring 2021 he was appointed chairman of the national sports committee in federal sports GmbH. But he has now walked out because he is not satisfied with the government’s Corona policy – especially with Vice Chancellor and Sports Minister Werner Kogler.”

In an open letter on Facebook the athlete from Salzburg noted:

“There may be a lot going on in our country, but certainly not about the health and well-being of the Austrians and the people living in Austria – and that in the midst of the greatest health crisis. Division, agitation, discrimination – these are the government imperatives of the hour.”

Gottwald clearly does not agree with the arbitrary Corona rules. In his letter he also writes:

“As a demonstrably healthy person who uses sensible and reasonable measures to contain the pandemic in a very responsible manner, I am now, like millions of others, excluded from social life and thus from life that is full of sport.”

Gottwald challenged Kogler:

“As Sports Minister, it is up to you to set levers in motion that promote and not prevent exercise and (popular) sport in what is probably the greatest health crisis of our time. How far are you ready to go? And: How far are you as a government ready to go?”

Gottwald declared that he has lost all confidence in politics. On social media, the most successful Austrian Olympic athlete is celebrated once again as a “hero”.

“I am deeply ashamed of our country and as an Austrian I am angry, sad and disconcerted at the same time. I’ve lost all confidence in politics and, with the best of intentions, I can’t think of any arguments why I should believe a syllable of it. The type of discourse within politics, the choice of words, the incongruence, the disregard that reaches me as a responsible citizen and taxpayer, irritate me deeply and would probably drive any company in the private sector into ruin immediately.”

In his hard-hitting open letter, he added:

“As Austria’s most successful Olympic athlete, I have often lost and only rarely won. As an athlete, I have learned to deal with defeat and failure, to learn from them, to develop myself further and to treat myself and others with respect and dignity. I currently miss these virtues entirely on the part of politicians.”

Gottwald said he had been convinced that Austria “had learned from history” but was now “shocked to find that we as a society have become more presumptuous, ruthless and discriminatory than I have ever seen before”.

Austrian Army Union joins mass protest

After FPÖ chief Herbert Kickl called for a mass protest on November 20 in Vienna, the Federal Army Union (FGÖ ) has now joined in a letter published on November 14. It wants to stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms. The union expressly pointed out that anyone and everyone can demonstrate – even during lockdown since the demonstration cannot be banned.

The federal army union expects that the police will be “cooperative” and that there will be no escalations. The chairman of the Social Democratic Union (FSG) group in the police union, Hermann Greylinger, left no doubt in an interview that the police are currently unable to carry out Corona controls.

The President of the Federal Armed Forces Union FGÖ, Manfred Haidinger stated on behalf of his union that they would take part in the demonstration for fundamental and civil rights on November 20 in Vienna and that no one should fear reprisals.

“We hereby make it clear that participation in meetings is a particularly protected legal asset and has also been taken into account in the current draft ordinance”. Participation and travel from all over Austria are permitted. “The ban on a gathering registered by citizens as well as the prohibition of a party rally has been ruled as illegal,” Haidinger explained. The reason for this are judgments by the Vienna Administrative Court. “There is no longer any possibility of appeal against the judgments. They are therefore trend-setting for the right of assembly as a whole.”

Doctors harshly enforce vaccine sales

Medical Association President Thomas Szekeres told the ORF press hour on November 14, that compulsory vaccination must be “forced on” the population:

“I mean, it’s a question of whether you tie someone down and then give them the injection.” During the press hour, he once again excelled as a model propagandist. He explicitly advocated “that unvaccinated people also have massive disadvantages in their job”.

His deputy, Harald Mayer, has also been aggressively stirring up panic with the “fourth wave” allegedly rolling in. Mayer sees compulsory vaccination as well as a lockdown for everyone happening before Christmas.

Austrian Health Minister Mückstein has meanwhile announced lockdowns. And the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians in Baden-Württemberg in Germany recommended that its contracted doctors resort to non-treatment for the unvaccinated.

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Featured image: Felix Gottwald is a former Austrian Nordic combined athlete. With three gold, one silver and three bronze medals, he is the most successful athlete in Austrian Olympic history . In total, he won 18 medals at the Olympic Games and World Championships. Facebook

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Just for the record…Just because the FDA, CDC and the Public Health Agency of Canada have found no issues with the vaccines, doesn’t mean they are safe. Here’s unassailable proof they aren’t.

We have to stop blindly trusting our trusted authorities that they are giving us good information. It isn’t warranted. We should always insist on hearing both sides of the story.

We should be extremely suspicious when not a single leading medical advocate of the vaccine is willing to debate a team of qualified scientists who disagree with the narrative.

For example, it is well known that Merck received approval from the FDA to give Vioxx to 2 year old children just 3 weeks before Merck pulled the drug for safety issues.

We’re doing it again now with our kids and this time the drug companies aren’t going to pull it even though there is compelling evidence is in plain sight of everyone.

Here are three pieces of unassailable proof that the COVID vaccines are the most dangerous in history and should be immediately pulled:

1. The VAERS data shows 8,456 deaths in the US (note: if you are using openvaers, be sure to “flip the switch” to show domestic only). Even using the most conservative assumptions of 223 background deaths (the highest annual death toll in VAERS history for domestic deaths), this is 8,233 “excess” deaths. Something caused those deaths. That’s a HUGE number. It’s a public health disaster. If it wasn’t the vaccine, then what did the CDC find caused all these excess deaths? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Note that I didn’t even have to multiply by the VAERS under-reporting factor (URF) of 41 (calculated via the CDC’s own methodology). There are only 226M vaccinated people. That’s a death rate from the vaccine of at least 36 deaths per million vaccinated (assuming the most conservative possible URF of 1). That’s 36 times more deadly than the deadliest vaccine in human history, a vaccine that is too unsafe to use. It has no business being on the market. Note that all reports in VAERS are validated by HHS before they are allowed to appear in VAERS. Mistakes do happen. There are at least 2 records of the 1.6M in VAERS that were gamed, one by Dr. David Gorski (who is proud of breaking Federal law to do that).
2. A prominent group of neurologists with 20,000 patients has had around 2,000 patients with vaccine-related adverse reactions. In the 11 year history of the practice, they’ve never had a patient with a vaccine-related adverse reaction. While this could happen just by bad luck, the chance of it happening by “bad luck” is less than 1 in 10**100, i.e., impossible. This is a huge increase in significant neurological events that is inexplicable if the vaccines are safe. This is further evidence that the increase in the events reported in VAERS is not “stimulated reporting.” NOTE: The doctors won’t come forward publicly for fear of retribution (loss of medical license). That’s why nobody knows. With the doctors’ permission, I’m happy to disclose it to the NY Times or other allegedly reputable news source under NDA if they want to do a story on it.
3. And then there is the 60-fold increase in the rates of adverse events happening in front of our eyes. Hard to explain since it never happened before the vaccines rolled out.

When I say unassailable, I mean that nobody can argue using evidence that these happened due to something other than the vaccine as the primary cause. The “using evidence” is key. People make hand-waving arguments all the time to dispute hypotheses. What matters is arguments with supporting evidence. That appears to be non-existent in all three cases.

Extra credit

And then I got this which matches what I’ve heard from others. It’s a bit hard to explain if the vaccines are safe. Check with your own neurologist if you don’t believe me.

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What do the Federal Reserve and neoconservatives have in common? They both refuse to admit that their policies — the neocons’ promotion of perpetual war and the Fed’s manipulation of the money supply — are complete failures, having produced the opposite of the promised results.

The latest example of the Federal Reserve engaging in Bill Kristol-like levels of denial is the Fed’s continued insistence that the return of 70s-style inflation is a “transitory” phenomenon resulting from the end of the lockdowns. The Fed has acknowledged the “transitory” inflation will last until at least 2022, yet it is still determined to keep interest rates at or near zero until the “jobs situation” improves.

To be fair, the Fed has finally announced plans to cut back on its money-pumping activities by reducing by 15 billion dollars a month its monthly purchase of 80 billion dollars of Treasury bonds and 40 billion dollars of mortgage-backed assets.

It is unlikely that the Fed will stick to its plans to “taper” its purchase of Treasury bonds. The Fed’s Treasury bond purchases enable the federal government to run up the debt without increasing taxes or paying punishingly high interest on the debt.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that by 2030 the federal debt interest cost will more than double to 829 billion dollars. That is more than the government spent on the military in 2020!

Despite the looming fiscal crisis, Congress is unlikely to cut spending anytime soon. Instead, Congress members are debating a 1.75 trillion dollars “social spending” plan, having just passed a 1.2 trillion dollars infrastructure bill. Contrary to the claims of President Biden and his allies, this new spending will not reduce inflation. What it will do is hasten and deepen the inevitable economic crisis caused by government overspending.

Of course, most Republicans will continue opposing big increases in spending and debt … as long as a Democrat sits in the Oval Office. A Republican who becomes president will likely believe, as Dick Cheney has said, that President Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter. The difference between the parties is Republicans are less likely to raise taxes. So, no matter who controls Congress and the presidency, spending and debt can keep increasing.

The Fed may also take dramatic action to keep interest rates low if other purchasers of federal debt demand higher interest rates in anticipation of future inflation. Such a situation would be a sign of what Ludwig von Mises called a crack-up boom. A crack-up boom occurs when the public anticipates continuing devaluation of the currency, causing them to factor future price increases into their economic plans.

Crack-up booms are preceded or accompanied by economic crises that can lead to the rise of authoritarianism. However, this is not inevitable. Important steps can be taken including cutting spending on militarism and corporate welfare, phasing out the entitlement and welfare programs, and auditing and ending the Fed. Those of us who know the truth should seek to convince our fellow citizens of the importance of restoring a limited, constitutional government that does not try to run the economy, run the world, or run our lives.

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UK citizens are being exposed to potentially harmful mixtures of pesticides that can currently be found in almost all grapes, oranges and herbs, according to a new report based on official government data. Researchers singled out the twelve fruit and vegetables most likely to contain a cocktail of pesticides, known as the dirty dozen.

Pesticides Action Network (PAN), a non-governmental network, found that between them, grapes, oranges, dried fruit, herbs, pears, peas, beans, okra, lettuce, beans, carrot, and mango all contained detectable levels from 122 different pesticides. The list includes 47 pesticides with links to cancer, 15 reproductive or developmental toxins that can affect sexual functions, and 17 cholinesterase inhibitors that can affect the respiratory system.

The pesticides are also related to environmental concerns, PAN said. Half of the top 12 pesticides found are groundwater contaminants, meaning that they persist in water bodies, potentially impacting aquatic biodiversity or drinking water quality. The list also includes acetamiprid, a neonicotinoid that represents a threat to bee health.

“These figures highlight the wide array of chemicals that we are exposed to daily through our diets. While safety limits continue to be set for just one pesticide at a time, the evidence is growing that chemicals can combine to be more toxic,” Nick Mole from PAN said in a statement. “We have limited understanding of the long-term impact to human health.”

The most polluted food

PAN looked at the UK Government’s annual report on pesticide residues in food for 2020 and analyzed the data. The government tested last year 2,460 samples of 33 different types of food and tested for up to 371 pesticides. Almost 40% of the samples had a residue at or below the maximum acceptable level, while 2.5% were over that level.

Samples of potatoes, pumpkin, peas, pears, oranges, okra, kiwi, herbs, grapes, cauliflower, and beans had pesticides above the accepted level, according to the government data. Every fruit and vegetable analyzed contained more than one pesticide, especially oranges (86% of the samples), grapes (87%), and herbs and dried fruit (81%).

However, the data also shows a drop in the overall percentage of fruit and vegetables containing more than one pesticide, going from 48% in 2019 to 30% in 2020. PAN questioned the UK’s decision to not analyze this year strawberries, lemons, and pre-packed salad, which ranked on top of the list last year on the use of pesticides.

The report also looked at starchy food and grains, specifically bread, rice, and rye. Almost 70% of the samples had pesticides but at or below the maximum acceptable level. Of the 162 samples of bread tested, 45 had more than one pesticide, glyphosate being the main one. More than half of the samples of rye also had more than one pesticide.

“The UK Government only tests around 3,000 samples of food for pesticides each year”, Mole said in a statement. “They justify this by arguing that it’s unnecessary to test more because they run a risk-based system which focusses in on food items which are most likely to pose a threat. But actually they have failed to test three-quarters of last year’s produce of concern.”

The full government report can be accessed here. 

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An attempt on the life of Iraq’s Prime Minister, a disputed election, the gunning down of unarmed demonstrators, and a broken US withdrawal promise have all highlighted the chaos of Iraq today, but some are still pretending as if the US-Iraq war has ended.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, three drones were said to have been used as part of an assassination attempt against the current Iraqi Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, injuring at least 7 people in the process. This came following large-scale protests across Iraq’s Capital, Baghdad, on Friday, in which Iraqi security forces had opened fire and injured at least 124 people, killing an unspecified number according to some sources.

The demonstrations came in rejection of last months elections results, which saw a resounding victory for the ‘Saeroun movement’ of popular Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Parties loyal to the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU/PMF), saw significant losses in their seats in parliament and claimed that voter fraud occurred, with some accusing the United Arab Emirates of interfering with the election results.

Although the Iraqi PM, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, did announced and launch an investigation into the shootings, he has largely been blamed for having been implicated, and many directly accuse the PM of orchestrating the attacks on unarmed demonstrators. The circumstances behind the assassination attempt have also sparked much debate as to who was truly behind the attack. This has primarily come out of suspicions surrounding the failure of US C-Ram air defense systems not being activated, nor their sirens until after the explosions were heard, as the PM’s residence is located inside the US Embassy’s Greenzone.

Immediately after the assassination attempt the PM said: “I was and still am a redemption project for Iraq and the people of Iraq. The missiles of treachery will not discourage the believers and will shake a hair of the stability and determination of our heroic security forces to preserve people’s security, achieve justice and set the law in place,” stressing the need for dialogue in Iraq.

Anti-Iranian media, including Saudi-State news outlet al-Arabiya, attempted to attach immediate blame to groups like Kataeb Hezbollah and other groups attached to the PMU. But all fingers seem to point not to Iranian aligned PMU militias or parties, but instead at the United States, according to the PMU affiliated Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba Party.

Not only have Iran, Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah, Palestinian Resistance Parties and Yemen’s Ansarallah, allies of the Iran-backed PMU, condemned the assassination attempt, but it seems that PMU parties are coming out very strongly in condemnation and accusing the US of being behind the attack.

The suspicions of the US government being involved in the assassination attempt have to be taken seriously, not only because of the US air defenses seemingly having faltered on all levels at the time, but because the framing of the attack would have worked to severely divide Iraq if the assassination attempt was successful. It may not have mattered who was truly responsible if the attack would have succeeded, chaos would have broken out and it may have immediately appeared to have been the PMU’s response to the gunning down of their demonstrators.

If the US government was responsible, in full or in part, it may explain why such basic drones were used to pull off the unsuccessful operation. By using these types of drones, it would make the attack seem like an attack carried out by a rogue militia and would fall in line with the types of strikes carried out, believed to be perpetrated by the PMU, on US forces earlier this year.

According to Iraq’s President, Barham Salih, who spoke to US President Joe Biden in September on deepening bilateral ties and cooperation, said “We cannot accept that Iraq will be dragged into chaos and a coup against its constitutional system,” addressing the attack in a tweet. Moqtada al-Sadr added that the attack was committed with the aim to “return Iraq to a state of chaos to be controlled by non-state forces”.

But the reality is that Iraq is controlled by non-State forces. In fact, there is nothing free or democratic about Iraq. Since the US invasion in 2003, which toppled the former Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, the American regime forces have not left the country alone and continue to control its local, as well as national, institutions in an indirect manner. Through the power of its so-called NGO’s, described by former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in 2001, as a “force multiplier”, the US government has effectively set up a system of chaos and societal control in Iraq.

After pillaging Iraq’s resources and selling them off to its corporations, the US decided to issue countless reconstruction contracts, worth roughly $60 Billion. These contracts were allocated for the sectors of water, electricity systems and of course oil, spanning through to everything from female empowerment workshops, to school uniforms, anti-corruption efforts, and civil society organizations. Naturally the abundance of funds were exploited by everyone from the corporate elites, down to local community leaders in Iraqi villages. This created an environment of outright corruption, which lingers until this day, not only that, but it provided the US government a means, through the likes of USAID, to essentially bankroll a US dominance on the civil society level and influence every aspect of Iraqi life.

On top of this, the US government not only fanned the flames of sectarian hatred, which was barely in existence before its invasion, but implemented a Confessionalist political system just as the French colonialists did in Lebanon. This system is built to designate a power sharing, across government, between religious sects, and is in accordance to their populations statistically. As was the case historically, the US placed additional focus on what is now known as Iraqi-Kurdistan, backing the ‘Kurdish Regional Government’, all as a means of fragmenting and weakening the country. The boundaries of Iraq were first decided by the UK and Prince Faisal, specifically with the aims of sectarian division in mind, the US has simply jumped in to work on what the United Kingdom started with their Arab puppets.

Now, the US Biden administration has admitted that they are not leaving Iraq, despite promising to withdraw from their combat mission inside the country. Not a surprise, but definitely alarming to say the least. Instead of the US government being held accountable for its actions, the Western media and the media of the Arab reactionary regimes, are attempting to place all the blame for Iraq’s current chaos on Iranian backed militias and corruption internally.

This approach is outright propaganda, not only against Iran and its allies, but also attempts to cover up the US role in making Iraq the corrupt and violent nation it is today. The terrorism of the US empire did not end in 2003, at the end of the official US occupation, with the so-called “nation building”, or when the US began limiting its troop numbers. The terrorism continues today, and the corruption infests every aspect of Iraq. Unless the US government is permanently driven from Iraqi soil, including its so-called NGO’s and businessmen, Iraq will never be free, peaceful, nor democratic — by design.

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Robert Inlakesh is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, writer, Middle-East analyst & news correspondent for The Last American Vagabond.

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US military officials have justified a 2019 airstrike in the eastern Syrian governorate of Dayr al-Zawr which killed dozens of women and children, claiming it was “necessary” in order to defeat armed ISIS fighters.

The statement comes on the heels of an in-depth report by The New York Times, which alleges that the US military covered up the apparent war crime committed near the town of Baghuz on 18 March, 2019.

According to the investigation, a US F-15E attack jet dropped a 500-pound bomb on a “large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank.” This was followed by two 2,000-pound bombs which killed most of the survivors from the first strike.

The report goes on to say that officials at the US military’s Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar immediately questioned the reasons for the attack, with at least one message on a secure chat system reading “We just dropped on 50 women and children.”

This was allegedly followed by an extensive cover-up of the Baghuz strike “at nearly every step,” as the US military made moves to conceal the reality of the attack. According to the NYT: “The death toll was downplayed. Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. And top leaders were not notified.”

On top of this, a report by the Defense Department’s independent inspector general “was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike.” The cover-up also included intentionally entered false strike log entries, as the military did not follow its own requirements to report and investigate the strike.

In response to the damning revelations, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) has maintained that at least 80 people were killed during the airstrikes, “including 16 Islamic State fighters and four civilians.” However, the number of civilians among the 60 fatalities “could not be determined because multiple armed women and at least one armed child were observed.”

Following up on this claim, CENTCOM spokesman Captain Bill Urban told reporters on 15 November that the probe could not “conclusively characterize the status of more than 60 other casualties,” adding that some women and children, “whether through indoctrination or choice, decided to take up arms in this battle and as such could not strictly be classified as civilians.”

Still, Urban went on to say that “it is also highly likely that there were additional civilians killed.”

The news comes just two months after the US military admitted to having killed at least 10 civilians in August this year – including seven children – in a botched airstrike during their chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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The Trump-inspired attempted coup finally nailed the lie of the US being a global beacon of democracy. No wonder autocrats in Sudan, Tunisia and elsewhere are feeling emboldened

Over the last few months, there have been several coups and attempted coups in the Arab world. All of these coups – in Tunisia, Sudan and the attempted coup in Jordan – suggest a nasty turn in the dreams of the region after the Arab Spring protests of 2010 and 2011 had promised the “Holy Grail” of democracy.

The Tunisian coup was particularly disheartening, as much hope had been invested in the democratic process that had resulted in a relatively well-functioning power-sharing polity.

The chronology of these coups, happening as they did in the aftermath of the attempted US coup orchestrated by the former President Donald Trump on 6 January, bears some analysis.

In April, news emerged from Jordan that there had been an attempted coup by Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, the eldest son of the late King Hussein and his fourth wife, the US-born Queen Noor, in which allegedly the Saudis were also involved.

In July, in Tunisia, President Kais Saied declared that he would rule by decree and suspended the newly minted constitution. In October, in Sudan, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan staged a military coup against the civilian-military alliance, led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, that had governed since the 2019 ousting of dictator Omar al-Bashir.    

Global consequences

These are all variations on the theme of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s military coup of July 2013 in Egypt – when the democratically elected Mohamed Morsi was deposed – with the bloody Syrian military dictatorship as Sisi’s role model.

Supported by the regimes in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, old-fashioned Arab dictators are back in the saddle, makings sure their autocratic regimes crush any aspirations for democracy their restless populations might hold. Meanwhile, on 6 January, in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”, the world watched in horror at the attempted coup, with Trump exposing the hidden underbelly of the US’s imperial claim on democracy.

It is worth considering whether the attempted coup in Washington had any catalytic effect on the rest of the world in general and on these old-fashioned Arab coups in particular?

To be sure, the Syrian and Egyptian models long predated the American attempted coup, while those in Jordan, Tunisia and Sudan followed. But what can we make of this concurrence: mere coincidence or a more substantial connection, from the US to Jordan, to Tunisia, to Sudan?

The events of 6 January at the US Capitol were hardly the first time the world had witnessed an American-inspired coup. The US has long been organising coups around the world – as evidenced in Guatemala, Chile and Iran, to give just three examples. But still, the image of Americans going on the rampage in Washington DC has global consequences – Arab dictators do as America does, not as America says.

‘End of US hegemony’

Most decent Americans who still have a faint hope in a functioning democracy are deeply and rightly concerned that the entire Republican Party is now cast in the image of Trump. If Trump, as has been suggested, is poised to return in the 2024 presidential election with a vengeance, it will once and for all put an end to the US charade of claiming to be a global beacon of democracy.

There is a Republican plot against the poorest and most vulnerable Americans to deny them their rights to vote, very much on the model of the racist Jim Crow laws that sustained the rule of the white supremacists in the US for a century. The state of angst now palatable in the US daily news has global consequences.

Some have suggested the term “self-coup” for what Trump tried to do between the time he was declared to have lost the election early in November 2020 and late January 2021 when he was unceremoniously kicked out of the White House.

“Trump’s measures to overturn the elections since 3 November constitute a ‘coup’, as they involve illegal usurpation of state power, even when it may not involve the use of force,” wrote Charles T Call for Brookings, a Washington think tank. “Yet it is a ‘self’-coup because it is perpetrated by the head of government rather than military officers or others against that chief executive.” This might be a case of parsing words between a “coup” and a “self-coup”, but still, the fact of the proto-fascism at the root of Trump’s presidency has shaken the democratic claims of this country to its foundations.

In a piece for The Economist, Francis Fukuyama wrote about “the end of American hegemony”.

“The truth of the matter is that the end of the American era had come much earlier,” he wrote. “The long-term sources of American weakness and decline are more domestic than international. The country will remain a great power for many years, but just how influential it will be depends on its ability to fix its internal problems, rather than its foreign policy.”

Fukuyama is telling the world that the decline of the US imperial exercise is due to its domestic disorder – and that it is this disorder that is the source of chaos around the globe. No one is minding the shop, as it were. The corrupt cop on the beat has been caught red-handed plotting to overthrow its claim to democracy.

Democracy as an abstraction

The abstract ideal of democracy has long since lost any credibility. The US and the leading nations of Europe have an ugly colonial and imperial underbelly that belies their claims on being a legitimate model for democracy.

But the recent attempted coup in the US, and the possible return of Trump, has marked a critical point when the racially foregrounded, white-supremacist backbone of any US claim to democracy was globally exposed. The entire American experience is increasingly viewed as a model of hypocrisy, duplicity and delusional politics, with a consistent record of human misery.

The US has for most of its history posited itself as the leader of the free world. But can the US after four years of Trump, freely and enthusiastically elected by millions of Americans, sustain that delusion? Could a presidency that began like a reality TV show and ended with an attempted coup have any claim on such a lofty title?

Of course, in reality, the US has never been any such leader; its long history of genocide, slavery and xenophobia could scarcely lend itself to any such presumption.

The events of 6 January placed the US in the same ballpark as Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan, where the pretence of democracy in the former and the absence of democracy in the latter come together to map out a different topography of democratic prospects around the globe.

As I write, the entire machinery of the Republican Party is hard at work disenfranchising an entire segment of the electorate from voting in general elections. How is that different from the military thugs in Egypt or Sudan disregarding the democratic will of their people?

Democracy is the aggregate sum of all its practices around the globe and not a mystical power hanging on its ideals and aspirations. The coups and attempted coups in the Arab world are today integral to a global culture of illegitimate state power seeking to keep itself in control despite political desolation, social unrest, economic despondency, and environmental calamity.

Such states are the very source of that global menace – not a solution to it.

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Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University in the City of New York. His latest books include Reversing the Colonial Gaze: Persian Travellers Abroad (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and The Emperor is Naked: On the Inevitable Demise of the Nation-State (Zed, 2020). His forthcoming book, On Edward Said: Remembrance of Things Past, is scheduled to be released by Haymarket Books later this year.

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Refugee crises are often manufactured by governments.  They can be done at the source: war, famine, rapacious institutions.  They can also be manufactured by the refusal of governments to accept those seeking asylum, sanctuary and refuge.

The latter is very much in evidence in Europe: governments of the European Union are staring down desperate humans keen to travel into the EU; Belarus, engaging in its own form of mega-trafficking, has become a conduit for the movement of asylum seekers and migrants fleeing from Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.

Despite being granted Belarussian visas at considerable cost, many being initially housed in government hotels, their stay is only intended as temporary.  After brief respite, they are pushed towards the country’s border with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.  How they get there is not entirely clear.  Some migrants are escorted by uniformed men; others pay additional fees to be transported.  It has also been reported that Belarusian security forces have furnished instructions and tools – axes and wire cutters – to aid the crossing of the border.  Attempts by Belarussian personnel to destroy border fences near Czeremcha, and disorientate Polish soldiers with stroboscopes and lasers, have also been noted.

Once at the border, the migrants are not allowed to approach any checkpoints to seek asylum. Nor are they allowed to return to Minsk, threatened by Belarusian border guards who insist on keeping them there.

Trapped in purgatorial fashion along the border, the migrants find themselves sleeping in rude conditions and left at the mercy of the elements.  There have inadequate supplies, lack warm clothing and are starving.  One estimate has put the death toll at nine.

All political sides are making hay from this suffering.  Lukashenko can be accused of being an opportunistic trafficker of desperate folk and keen on jailing opponents in a desperate bit to stay in power, but Poland’s Law and Justice Party has happily stirred xenophobic hysteria.  Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and President Adrzej Duda are part of an administration that does not shy away from demonising arrivals they associate with terrorists with kinky characteristics.  Doing so supplies an appropriate distraction from accusations of corruption, galloping inflation and a troubling rise in COVID-19 numbers.

In September, the Minister of the Interior, Mariusz Kamiński, and the National Defence Minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, appeared at a press conference to show a picture of a man copulating with a cow.  The content had been allegedly found on a phone belonging to an Afghan migrant lurking in the woods.  Spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, Stanisław Żaryn, suggested that this was an act “associated with sexual disorders”, signalling a government campaign to link refugees with zoophilia and paedophilia.

In a gesture of such refined generosity, TVP Info, the main propaganda outlet of the ruling party, ran a video with a suitably prurient title: “He raped a cow and wanted to enter Poland?”  There were two problems with the footage: the material, recorded on a VHS videotape, was drawn from bestiality porn from the 1970s; and the animal in question was a mare, not a cow.

Earlier this month, Duda signed a bill into law to construct what was described as “a high-tech barrier on the border with Belarus to guard against an influx of irregular migrants.”  The barrier, valued at some €350 million, was “needed due to increased migratory pressure from Belarus”.  The right to asylum had all but entirely vanished.

Liz Throssell, spokesperson from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), is adamant that, “The human rights of migrants and refugees have to come first.”  Unfortunately, she was far from informative on what solutions might be pursued on the Belarus-EU border.  “It is really important they must be respected under international human rights refugee law, but as for the political dimension to this, I would leave that to others to address”.

Along the Belarus-Polish border, refugees and migrants have been instrumentalised, their rights assiduously ignored.  Lukashenko has been accused of using a form of “hybrid” warfare by throwing migrants at the border like willing assailants of rabid intent.  The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, makes the point.  “It is a hybrid attack, a brutal attack, a violent attack and a shameful attack.”  Such nasty terminology has turned those wishing to make their way to the EU into foot soldiers in a political cause they wish to play no part in.  Wedged in between this vicious play of power, these unfortunates trapped on the border find themselves divested of their humanity, their desires, their wishes.

The EU is also playing its own vile game, falling back upon frontier states who have held themselves up to be saviours of European civilisation.  “It is important that Lukashenko understands that [the regime’s] behaviour comes with a price,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned after talks with US President Joe Biden.  Sanctions are being considered against the airlines that have been accused of facilitating human trafficking.

There is one final perversion in all this.  In essentially condemning human trafficking, the EU and its counterparts are condemning the right to asylum, which such trafficking aids.  With that sentiment, von der Leyen would regard Oskar Schindler and his more recent equivalent, Iraq’s Ali Al Jenabi, as traffickers worthy of punishment.

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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]

Featured image: Migrants on the Belarusian-Polish border. Leonid Shcheglov/BelTA/TASS

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Israel rushed to designate six Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist organisations” after learning that investigators had discovered NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware on the phones of the group’s staff members, Ynet has reported.

Israeli officials were also caught off guard last week when the US blacklisted the NSO Group, saying its activities were contrary to US national security interests.

Warned one hour before the US blacklisting was made public, the Israeli officials were forced to hold several urgent situation meetings, with one official reportedly blurting out in a meeting: “What the fuck?!”

The three incidents – the discovery of spyware on the Palestinian NGOs’ phones, the designation of these NGOs as terrorist organisations, and the blacklisting of NSO Group – all happened within a three-week period and reflect brewing US-Israel tensions, according to the report by a Ynet senior military and political analyst.

“This is part of a campaign that has long been not just a conflict between the American internet industry and the cyber company from Herzliya, nor a conflict between the government and the NSO,” Ynet reports. “But a broad front that opened between the White House and the State Department and the Israeli government.”

‘Retroactive cover-up’

According to Ynet, Israel had started the process of banning the Palestinian groups earlier this year, but hastened its decision when it learned about an investigation led by the Dublin-based Front Line Defenders (FDL), which revealed on Monday that the phones of Palestinian activists working for the outlawed groups had been hacked.

The report comes as speculation mounts that Israeli security services were behind the hacking, which involved both Israeli and Palestinian telephone numbers.

Among those hacked are Ubai al-Aboudi, a US citizen who heads the Bisan Center for Research and Development, and French national Salah Hammouri, a field researcher at Addameer.

FDL, whose work was reviewed and verified by Amnesty and Citizen Lab, told Middle East Eye that they cannot say definitively who was behind the hacking of the NGOs. But Haaretz has reported that the export licence issued by the Israeli defence ministry to NSO Group only permits Israeli security services to monitor Israeli phone numbers.

Human rights advocates have said the discovery of the spyware on the phones, shortly before Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz designated the groups as terrorist organisations, is suspicious.

Others have drawn firm conclusions.

“The Israeli government sought to retroactively cover up and justify the use of the spyware on members of the six designated Palestinian organisations and others who communicated with them,” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said on Monday.

Israeli security sources denied that they used Pegasus to hack the Palestinian human rights activists, according to Ynet, which also revealed that Israeli officials had been unsuccessful in convincing their US counterparts that the groups had terrorist links.

NSO Group has said that “due to contractual and national security considerations” it cannot confirm or deny its government customers.

“As we stated in the past, NSO Group does not operate the products itself; the company licence approved government agencies to do so, and we are not privy to the details of individuals monitored,” a spokesperson told The Guardian.

The Israeli government will reportedly be increasing its lobbying efforts in the coming days to push the US to backtrack on its decision to blacklist the NSO Group.

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Millions of Nicaraguans went to the polls on November 7, 2021, re-electing the leftist Sandinista Front and President Daniel Ortega by a large margin.

The Joe Biden administration refused to recognize the results, however. The United States and its allies in the European Union and the Organization of American States (OAS) have instead launched what essentially amounts to a new coup attempt against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

On November 10, President Biden signed the RENACER Act, which will impose more crushing sanctions on Nicaragua. Washington’s escalating campaign of economic war was supplemented by the OAS’ claim that the election was “illegitimate.”

This campaign of hybrid warfare aimed at overthrowing Nicaragua’s Sandinista government has many parallels with the ongoing US coup attempts against Venezuela and Cuba, as well as the military putsch the OAS oversaw against Bolivia’s elected socialist President Evo Morales in 2019. Indeed, it involves many of the same tactics and players.

Nicaraguan voters in Chinandega on November 7, 2021

Following the line of Washington and Brussels, international corporate media outlets have spread an array of demonstrably false claims about Nicaragua’s 2021 elections, incorrectly reporting, for instance, that the government banned anti-Sandinista parties, that is imprisoned opposition candidates, or that voter turnout was negligible.

Unlike the foreign reporters spreading these falsehoods from Florida, Costa Rica, or Spain, The Grayzone was on the ground in Nicaragua to observe the electoral process.

This reporter, Ben Norton, visited 4 different polling stations in various parts of Chinandega, one of the largest cities in the country.

There, I spoke to more than a dozen average voters, to hear their experiences and get their perspectives on the election. Everyone I interviewed said the process was clean, fair, and transparent, and that they were able to vote without any difficulties.

I took these photos at different voting centers in Nicaragua on election day on November 7

As you can see, there were a lot of people voting, in a transparent, well organized election. The polls were full, but people were able to go in, vote, and go home in a quick, open process pic.twitter.com/LizeKgRCcN

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 9, 2021

Myth: the opposition was barred from participating in Nicaragua’s 2021 elections

Although its correspondent Natalie Kitroeff was reporting from Mexico, not Nicaragua, the New York Times leveled several baseless accusations against the Sandinista government in an attempt to discredit its electoral victory.

Among the most absurd of these claims is that Nicaragua prevented opposition parties from participating and closed voting stations.

This is simply false. There were a total of seven different alliances participating in Nicaragua’s 2021 elections: five national opposition parties (all of which were right-wing), another regional opposition party on the Caribbean Coast, and finally the leftist Sandinista Front-led alliance, which itself consists of nine parties.

The following parties competed in the November 7 elections:

National opposition parties

• Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC)
• Independent Liberal Party (PLI)
• Alliance for the Republic (APRE)
• Nicaraguan Christian Way (CCN)
• Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance Party (ALN)

Regional opposition party on Caribbean Coast

• Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka (YATAMA)

FSLN alliance

• Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)
• Nationalist Liberal Party (PLN)
• Christian Unity Party (PUC)
• Alternative for Change (AC)
• Nicaraguan Resistance Party (PRN)
• Multiethnic Indigenous Party (PIM)
• Yapti Tasba Masraka Raya Nani Movement Party (Myatamaran)
• Autonomous Liberal Party (PAL)
• Progressive Indigenous Movement Party of the Moskitia (Moskitia Pawanka)

These are the 7 options in Nicaragua's elections today:
-5 national opposition parties (all right-wing)
-1 regional party on the Caribbean Coast
-Sandinista Front-led alliance

So there are 6 options on the national ballot and 7 options on the coast (which has political autonomy) pic.twitter.com/hsWRoyXr1z

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 7, 2021

The Sandinistas created a system of political autonomy for Nicaragua’s eastern Caribbean Coast, responding to requests for self-determination by the large Indigenous and Afro-descendent communities there.

This meant that, in the two separate zones of the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (RACCN) and South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (RACCS), there were seven options on the ballot in the election for regional lawmakers.

Everywhere else in Nicaragua, there were six options on the ballot, five of which were anti-Sandinista opposition parties.

The ballots in Nicaragua’s November 7, 2021 elections. The right is the ballot on the Caribbean Coast, with 7 options. The left is the ballot everywhere else, with 6 options.

Myth: voter turnout was negligible

Another unfounded accusation spread by foreign corporate media outlets to attack the integrity of Nicaragua’s elections is that voter participation was supposedly very low.

According to official results from Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), the Sandinista Front won 75.87% of the total of 2,921,430 votes, with 65.26% turnout.

The main opposition party, the PLC, got 14.33%. The other four opposition parties each got 3% or less.

Western governments sought to discredit these electoral results by claiming the CSE is unreliable. But anyone even vaguely familiar with the history of recent Nicaraguan politics can see that this 2021 outcome is highly consistent with both polling and past results.

Nicaraguan voters in Chinandega on November 7, 2021

In Nicaragua’s 2016 elections, which were observed by the OAS, the FSLN got 72.44% of the vote, and the PLC garnered 15.03%, with 68.2% participation – figures very similar to those of 2021.

And in the 2011 elections, which were monitored by the Carter Center, European Union, and OAS, the Sandinista Front won 62.46% of the vote.

Moreover, the results in the 2021 election are unsurprising when one considers the months of opinion polling before the vote. The most respected, and really only credible, apolitical polling firm in Nicaragua is M&R Consultores. (CID-Gallup did an extremely inaccurate study on behalf of the right-wing opposition, which was plagued with problems and heavily criticized for its bad methodology.)

In the lead-up to the November 7 vote, M&R Consultores’ surveysconsistently found that 60 to 70% of Nicaraguans supported the Sandinista Front and the government of President Ortega.

61% of Nicaraguans say the country is better with a leftist Sandinista government.

Just 4% strongly sympathize with the right-wing opposition.

The US govt-backed opposition groups, which have millions of dollars in foreign funding, can't even get 1% support from the population. pic.twitter.com/QqYmWN5liF

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) May 26, 2021

When considering these polls in combination with past elections, the 2021 results appear utterly unsurprising. But the cold, hard data did not interrupt the wave of disinformation flowing from corporate media across the world.

Several major news outlets published the dubious claim that only 18.5% of Nicaraguans participated in the vote. In each case, the source was a shady, little-known organization called Urnas Abiertas, which appears to have fabricated the figure out of whole cloth.

Indeed, Urnas Abiertas has not published any raw data publicly, and scarcely exists as an organization.

Urnas Abiertas calls itself a “citizen observatory,” but has no technical credentials to speak of. Its official website and social media pages contain no concrete information about the group and do not even disclose the identities of its staff members.

The report it published after the election is totally anonymous and is just four pages long (in both Spanish and English). The document does not include any of the raw data it supposedly collected. It vaguely describes its methodology in two brief paragraphs, without identifying any of the people who purported to run a massive secret monitoring operation.

The organization’s previous reports are also anonymous, not naming any authors or researchers, and, once again, do not contain raw data or detailed information about methodology.

Moreover, the logos at the bottom of these past reports show that Urnas Abiertas collaborates with a series of right-wing opposition groups in Nicaragua that are funded by CIA cutouts.

Nicaraguan anti-Sandinista opposition NGOs that Urnas Abiertas lists as its allies, including numerous US government-funded groups

In fact, only two people have been publicly identified with this shadowy organization, and both are partisan right-wing activists who work in the Western government-funded nonprofit-industrial complex, without any technical background or experience in election monitoring.

The man most closely linked to Urnas Abiertas is Pedro Salvador Fonseca Herrera, an anti-Sandinista activist sponsored by the European Commission – a clear conflict of interest, given the EU’s refusal to recognize the election and its role in openly funding and supporting the extremist opposition in Nicaragua.

Fonseca Herrera previously worked in Washington, DC as a “consultant” for the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2017 and 2018, during the violent OAS-backed coup attempt in Nicaragua.

One of the only two people publicly associated with Urnas Abiertas

Before that, Herrera organized with the regime-change lobby group Techo, which also happens to be the former employer of the only other known person associated with Urnas Abiertas, Olga Valle López.

Valle López’s LinkedIn profile shows that she, too, has worked with Techo, which is funded by Latin American governments and major Western multinational corporations, and pushes their interests in Latin America by destabilizing left-wing states.

Fonseca Herrera and Valle López were identified as “researchers” with Urnas Abiertas in an event in October organized by the US government-funded Wilson Center and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), a Western state-backed lobby group.

The event, a panel discussion titled “Nicaragua 2021 elections: A painful plan to end with democracy,” did not even pretend to be impartial; it explicitly aimed to discredit the country’s vote weeks before it even took place. The host, from International IDEA, referred to the forthcoming vote as an “electoral farce.”

Fonseca Herrera and Valle López spoke alongside US government-funded right-wing Nicaraguan and Venezuelan opposition figures, and their inflammatory comments made it extremely clear that these two anti-Sandinista activists are political operatives, not impartial electoral observers. They had already established their conclusion that Nicaragua’s election was supposedly illegitimate weeks before it even took place.

The panel discussion was in fact the presentation of a report of the same name that Urnas Abiertas published in a joint effort sponsored by International IDEA and Venezuelan right-wing activists at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB).

Unlike the other reports published by Urnas Abiertas, this document named the authors: three foreigners from International IDEA, two Venezuelan anti-Chavista activists, and just two Nicaraguans: Olga Valle y Pedro Fonseca.

The foreign authors of Urnas Abiertas’ report trying to discredit Nicaragua’s 2021 elections before they even took place

In other words, this document that purported to inform people about the situation on the ground in Nicaragua was almost entirely written by non-Nicaraguans outside of the country. And it had the support of a Western government-funded lobby group and Venezuelan right-wing activists at UCAB, a key hub for the anti-Chavista opposition.

UCAB, one of the most elite private universities in Venezuela, is run by the Catholic Church, which has played a major role in coup attempts in both Venezuela and Nicaragua. At the beginning of the US-sponsored putsch in Venezuela in 2019, UCAB hosted coup leader Juan Guaidó. The university is directed by Francisco José Virtuoso, an ultra-conservative priest who openly supported the coup attempt and Guaidó.

A section of an October 2021 Urnas Abiertas report showing it was sponsored by International IDEA and the Venezuelan opposition-controlled UCAB

In short, Urnas Abiertas is a tiny fringe group run by two young anti-Sandinista activists with no expertise in election monitoring. It is not even clear if they are physically in Nicaragua or outside of the country – although they do have the support of Western governments and the right-wing Venezuelan opposition.

These clear conflicts of interest and Urnas Abiertas’ flagrant lack of credibility did not however stop the Los Angeles Times from publishing a puff piece praising Urnas Abiertas and claiming without a shred of evidence that it secretly mobilized 1,450 volunteers at 563 voting centers across Nicaragua to observe the election.

Considering Urnas Abiertas has fewer than 1,300 followers on Twitter, it seems extremely implausible that such a miniscule outfit could secretly mobilize 1,450 electoral observers, especially without attracting attention from the government. But this did not stop corporate media from printing the absurd claim.

US government-funded opposition media outlets in Nicaragua also amplified the shadowy group’s unsubstantiated allegations of 81.5% abstention in the 2021 election. But once again, they presented absolutely zero evidence to back up these claims.

All indications show Urnas Abiertas to be nothing more than an opposition front group posing as a monitoring organization – and with the stated intent of discrediting the Nicaraguan election results before the vote even took place.

Myth: Nicaragua arrested opposition presidential candidates

An even more common accusation made by Western capitals and corporate media outlets to discredit Nicaragua’s 2021 election is that the Sandinista government arrested seven “presidential hopefuls” from the right-wing opposition.

The figures who were detained have been variously described in the international media as “precandidates” or “possible challengers.” But in reality, not a single one was an actual registered candidate.

On the November 7 election, there were indeed six different presidential candidates to choose from. President Ortega was not even the first name or face on the ballot. (Number one was Walter Espinoza Fernández, the presidential candidate from the PLC.)

As for the opposition figures who were detained several months before the election, The Grayzone documented how they were arrested for conspiring with a foreign government (the United States), taking millions of dollars from Washington in a large money-laundering scheme to organize a violent coup attempt in 2018, in which hundreds of Nicaraguans were killed and the country was destabilized, and in which right-wing extremists hunted down, tortured, and murdered Sandinista activists and state security forces, even setting some on fire.

That the opposition leaders who were detained received millions of dollars from the US government to carry out these operations is an undeniable matter of public record, confirmed by documents from CIA cutouts such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

In any other country on Earth, these figures would have faced similar, if not more severe legal consequences. Accepting millions of dollars in funding from a foreign state as you attempt to violently overthrow your elected government is illegal everywhere on the planet.

But when Nicaragua enforces its laws – even when they are laws modeled after long-existing US legislation – Washington condemns the country as “repressive” or “authoritarian.”

The United States, European Union, and OAS habitually refer to violent criminals as “political prisoners” after they are arrested in Nicaragua. People arrested for murder and rape have ended up on US-sponsored “political prisoner” lists.

In one high-profile case that caused a national scandal in Nicaragua, a charged murderer who had been active in the violent tranque barricades in the 2018 coup attempt was arrested, but later dubbed a “political prisoner” and released under pressure by the US, EU, and OAS. It was not long before he returned to his violent ways, stabbing his pregnant girlfriend to death.

Another US-designated Nicaraguan “political prisoner” was let out of jail, only to be caught again with explosives and guns, planning a terrorist attack on a pro-Sandinista mayor’s office.

.@BenjaminNorton traveled to Jinotepe, Nicaragua to report the shocking story of how the US and OAS lobbied for the release of violent criminals behind a 2018 coup attempt

One man they called a "political prisoner" stabbed his pregnant girlfriend to deathhttps://t.co/6fA6TZOgmO

— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) February 28, 2020

If an opposition figure is arrested for violating a law in Nicaragua, in an offense that would be punishable in any country, Washington often reflexively responds by dubbing that person a “political prisoner.” If they are wealthy and powerful, the US claims they were a “presidential hopeful,” even if they made no effort whatsoever to go through the legal process of officially registering as a candidate.

This is a way to try to maintain impunity for US-backed coup-plotters and money-launderers. It is the geopolitical equivalent of the strategy that Washington-sponsored insurgents in Hong Kong openly espoused in the New York Times: “use the most aggressive ‘nonviolent’ actions possible to push the police and the government to their limits,” and then frame that state’s self-defense against foreign aggression as a form of “repression” and “authoritarianism.”

One of the reasons the United States was particularly furious about Nicaragua arresting the coup leaders it had cultivated is because Washington clearly had made plans to repeat the putschist strategy that saw it appoint Juan Guaidó as so-called “interim president” of Venezuela.

US government officials and their right-wing Central American allies not-so-subtly hinted that they planned to recognize right-wing oligarch Cristiana Chamorro as the unelected “interim president” of a parallel Nicaraguan coup regime. When she was arrested for money laundering in June, it foiled their new destabilization plot.

Nicaragua has an election in November and concerns are growing the US may try to impose a fake "interim president" like Juan Guaidó

The US State Dep't special envoy and right-wing Central American leaders recently referred to opposition oligarch Cristiana Chamorro as "president" pic.twitter.com/MmGIquS2dC

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 24, 2021

Myth: there were no foreign electoral observers and journalists

Another myth spread by foreign media outlets is that there were no foreign observers and journalists in Nicaragua for its 2021 elections. This is yet another massive distortion.

The Nicaraguan government did prevent the Organization of American States (OAS) from sending observers, given the US-funded group’s well-documented role in orchestrating a right-wing military coup in Bolivia in 2019.

But there were hundreds of foreigners accredited to accompany the elections, from more than two dozen countries, including:

• United States
• Canada
• Spain
• France
• Germany
• Britain
• Ireland
• Italy
• Belgium
• China
• Russia
• Argentina
• Peru
• Puerto Rico
• Dominican Republic
• Colombia
• Costa Rica
• Guatemala
• Honduras
• Mexico
• Uruguay
• Venezuela
• Cuba
• Panama
• Brazil
• Chile

In total, there were 232 foreigners accredited from 27 countries, 165 to accompany the election and 67 as journalists.

They monitored voting centers in all 10 departments of Nicaragua (Managua, Masaya, Estelí, Chinandega, León, Granada, Matagalpa, Rivas, Chontales, and Carazo), as well as both Caribbean Coast autonomous regions (RACCN and RACCS).

The Nicaraguan government chose to use the term acompañante(meaning someone who accompanies) to refer to these international monitors, rather than “observer,” because of the history of so-called observers from the OAS and EU meddling in the country’s internal electoral process on behalf of the anti-Sandinista opposition.

225 people accredited to accompany Nicaragua's election have visited voting centers in 10 departments; Esteli, Chinandega, León, Rivas, Chontales, Matagalpa, Masaya, Granada, Carazo and Managua, and two Autonomous Regions; RACCN and RACCS. pic.twitter.com/YlGX04euG4

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) November 7, 2021

The final misleading charge spread by the New York Times and other corporate media outlets to delegitimize the 2021 elections is that Nicaragua barred parties from holding large public rallies. This is technically true, but not because of political reasons, but rather due to Covid-19 health restrictions.

In fact, the Sandinista Front itself has not held an official rally since March 2020, before any cases were discovered in the country. Many foreign nations have imposed much harsher restrictions, while banningprotests and attacking demonstrators with no outrage from the self-declared “international community.”

Latin American left warns of US-OAS coup attempt in Nicaragua

The United States has a long history of blood-soaked meddling in Nicaragua. The US military invaded and occupied the Central American country numerous times in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Then Washington helped install the right-wing dictatorship ruled by General Anastasio Somoza, which it subsequently propped up until the Sandinista Revolution of 1979.

In the 1980s, the CIA waged a terrorist war on Nicaragua, arming and training far-right Contra death squads that, as one of their former leaders admitted, “burn down schools, homes and health centers as fast as the Sandinistas build them.”

Since the violent coup attempt failed in 2018, the US government has been escalating its economic warfare on Nicaragua. Late that year, the Donald Trump administration implemented the NICA Act, which imposed aggressive sanctions on the small Central American nation.

Several more rounds of US sanctions on Nicaragua followed in the next two years. Then, on November 3, in a flagrant form of election meddling, just four days before the 2021 election, the House of Representatives voted 387-35 to pass the RENACER Act, which will hit Nicaragua with a new round of economically punishing sanctions.

The Grayzone reported on a September Congressional session hosted by neoconservative lawmakers, where participants made it clear that Washington had been preparing a brutal campaign of economic warfare against Nicaragua, while also planning to expel the country from the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and Organization of American States (OAS).

On November 9, the OAS officially announced that it had rejected the results of Nicaragua’s elections, branding them “illegitimate.”

This declaration was published almost exactly two years to the day after the OAS did the same in Bolivia, spreading false accusations of “fraud” in order to justify a military coup against the country’s democratically elected president, Evo Morales.

We reject the results of the illegitimate elections in #Nicaragua.

I urge countries of the OAS to respond to this clear violation of the Democratic Charter during its #OASassembly.

Report of the Secretariat for Strengthening of Democracy: @Almagro_OEA2015 https://t.co/8CBUz303Dp

— OAS (@OAS_official) November 9, 2021

In a clear reflection of its ulterior motives, the OAS held a neoliberal “Private Sector Forum” calling on foreign corporations to invest in Latin America on the same day it denounced Nicaragua’s elections.

The conference perfectly encapsulated the corporate priorities of the coup-sponsoring OAS. Among its most notorious participants was the far-right president of Colombia, Iván Duque, who only came to power thanks to the illegal vote-buying scheme of a drug lord named Ñeñe Hernández, at the orders of political kingpin and US asset Álvaro Uribe.

Palabras del Presidente de Colombia @IvanDuque en el XIII Foro del Sector Privado de las Américas en #AsambleaOEA

"Por una América renovada: el rol del sector privado en la recuperación económica y social"

📺 https://t.co/CenV5VdCJp
📡 https://t.co/YOgQAQjAOY pic.twitter.com/Bas8vZLdvj

— OEA (@OEA_oficial) November 9, 2021

As a victim of US-OAS meddling, Evo Morales immediately recognized the warning signs in Nicaragua, and cautioned about the coming coup.

In statements on Twitter after the vote, Morales congratulated “the honorable people of Nicaragua, which in a demonstration of courage and democratic maturity chose brother Daniel Ortega as constitutional president, despite a campaign of lies, blackmail, and threats by the US.”

The former Bolivian president said the United States is attacking “the democratic will and sovereignty of Nicaragua,” and, “The victory of Ortega is the defeat of yankee interventionism.”

When US President Joe Biden demonized Nicaragua’s 2021 vote as an “electoral pantomime,” Morales retorted, “The only ‘pantomime’ is acted out each day in the White House, where so-called ‘presidents,’ instead of serving their people, follow the orders of transnational corporations, the weapons industry, and the CIA.”

Con insultos, #EEUU intenta desconocer la voluntad democrática y soberana de Nicaragua. La única "pantomima" se actúa cada día en la Casa Blanca donde los llamados "presidentes" en lugar de atender a su pueblo siguen órdenes de transnacionales, industrias armamentistas y la CIA.

— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) November 8, 2021

While Cuba, Venezuela, and other leftist leaders in Latin America congratulated the Sandinista Front and Ortega for their victory, warning of US destabilization efforts, there is a new generation of young, NGO-cultivated, liberal reformist leaders in the region who are much softer on imperialism.

In Chile, Gabriel Boric – the face of the liberal nonprofit-industrial complex – condemned the Sandinistas and affirmed his “solidarity”with right-wing oligarch Cristiana Chamorro, a scion of the most powerful dynasty in Nicaragua, and the daughter of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the first neoliberal president to take power after the Sandinista Revolution thanks to a massive CIA meddling campaign.

Similarly, the foreign ministry of Peru issued a statement denouncing Nicaragua’s elections. It was the latest sign of the debilitation of the country’s newly inaugurated left-wing President Pedro Castillo, whose proudly anti-imperialist Foreign Minister Héctor Béjar was forced by the military to resign just weeks after entering office.

Béjar warned the forced resignation and the right-wing takeover of Castillo’s foreign ministry was “a soft coup, or the beginning of it.”

So while progressive forces enjoy a resurgence in parts of Latin America, the left is also divided between an older generation of revolutionary anti-imperialists and a newer generation of NGO-backed, media-friendly social democrats who acquiesce to US empire.

President Ortega vows resistance against US meddling

For his part, President Daniel Ortega has vowed to continue resisting US and European attempts to meddle in his country’s internal affairs.

The Nicaraguan leader delivered a fiery speech on November 8, the day after the elections, commemorating the 45th anniversary of the killing of Sandinista Front founder Carlos Fonseca Amador by the US-backed Somoza dictatorship.

“It is impossible for Nicaraguans – and I would say for Latin Americans and Caribbeans – it is impossible to stop talking about the interventionist policies, the expansionist, colonialist policies of the United States of America and the European countries,” Ortega said.

Sandinista Youth activists at President Ortega’s speech on November 8, 2021

“We are under the threat of the yankee empire, under the aggressions of the yankee empire, and under the threats of the European colonialists. And I’m not the one saying that; they’re saying it,” the Nicaraguan president added.

“They believe that we are their colony, and they want to tell us how to behave, and they want to decide what type of democracy we should practice,” Ortega continued. “They continue with their colonialist practices, to dominate these lands. But not for good, but rather to subjugate them and exploit them, and involve them in their expansionist and warmongering policies.”

Reflecting on his country’s long history of resistance, the Nicaraguan leader declared that its people would not give in to another foreign conquest.

“In the end, they could not defeat Sandino,” he declared. “Whichever [US] president came to power, whether Democrat or Republican, he came to try to oppress Nicaragua. But he always was met with resistance, with heroism, with the fighting spirit of the Nicaraguan people.”

President Ortega with musicians after his speech on November 8, 2021

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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

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***

The new commander of the Oklahoma National Guard has declared the organization will not enforce the Defense Department’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on its troops, according to local media outlets.

Army Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino was announced as the state’s new adjutant general Wednesday, though he has not yet been confirmed by the state Senate, according to a press release from Gov. Kevin Stitt’s office.

On Nov. 2, Stitt formally requested that DoD not enforce the mandate on the state’s Army and Air National Guard members. In the letter, which his office posted online, he said that 10% of the state’s troops had refused the vaccine and that the mandate was “irresponsible.”

The Defense Department is aware of the Mancino memo and Stitt’s letter and “will respond to the governor appropriately,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

He did not elaborate.

“That said, Secretary Austin believes a vaccinated force is a more ready force,” said Kirby. “That is why he has ordered mandatory vaccines for the total force, and that includes our National Guard, who contribute significantly to national missions at home and abroad.”

The state’s former top general, Army Maj. Gen. Michael Thompson told local reporters Thursday that he learned who his replacement was via social media. He was previously scheduled to transfer command to Mancino on Jan. 15, 2022, according to the Oklahoman.

The day after taking the reins from Thompson, Mancino issued a policy memo declaring that the state would not enforce the mandate on its troops when they are under state control. The move is an apparent rejection of DoD’s orders to discipline and ultimately discharge servicemembers who reject the vaccine.

📝READ: One of first actions taken by new Oklahoma National Guard Adjutant Gen. Thomas Mancino: rescind the #COVID19 vaccine requirement for Guardsmen.

According to memo, however, if they are federally mobilized, members will have to be vaccinated. @OKCFOX pic.twitter.com/cHozZx7zqE

— Dan Snyder (@DanSnyderFOX25) November 12, 2021

“No Oklahoma Guardsman will be required to take the COVID-19 Vaccine,” Mancino says in the Thursday memo, which states that Stitt is the force’s “lawful Commander in Chief” when not mobilized by the federal government.

Although National Guard troops do belong to their governors when not mobilized by the Pentagon, federal requirements often supersede any state uses of the Guard, as senior leaders often emphasize. That’s because the vast majority of Guard funding, training and equipment comes from the federal government.

It’s not yet clear whether the order will jeopardize that funding.

Title 32, the section of the U.S. Code that pertains to the National Guard, includes a section specifying that states that do not comply with Title 32 regulations forfeit their federal funding for the Guard. It’s not clear, though, whether the vaccine mandate meets that legal threshold.

In an email to Army Times, Stitt’s top spokesperson, Charlie Hannema, argued that the “only way Oklahoma would ‘forfeit’ any federal funding for failing to comply with Title 32 would be to ignore the lawful order of the dually elected civilian authority, i.e. The Governor of Oklahoma.”

But Air Force Maj. Matthew Murphy, a National Guard Bureau spokesperson, told Stars & Stripes that the issue of the vaccine mandate was a “legal gray area that would have to be reviewed by our lawyers.”

“This is where the difference between Title 32 and Title 10 becomes a real becomes an issue,” Murphy told Stars & Stripes. “In most instances, the guardsmen are in their Title 32 capacity, which means they’re on state duty. In order to be federalized, they have to be on Title 10.”

In a statement to the Oklahoman, the state’s top spokesperson, Lt. Col. Geoff Legler, explained that the memo “does not provide any protection should they need to attend any military school or training activity run by an active duty component or the Department of Defense.”

When Army Times reached out to the Oklahoma Guard, an official indicated that they were not authorized to make any statement or share the memorandum. National Guard Bureau and DoD spokespeople were unable to immediately offer comment, either.

It is not clear whether Thompson was fired because he refused to rescind a policy memo requiring troops to get the COVID-19 vaccine — he referred questions on the matter to Stitt’s office.

Hannema did not address why Thompson’s departure was abruptly accelerated.

A previous vaccine policy memo from Thompson, which Mancino’s order rescinded, had indicated that there would be “consequences” for “uniformed members and Title 5 [federal] civilian employees” who declined the shot, according to the Oklahoman. The policy was in line with DoD guidance on the issue.

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Featured image: Army Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino issued an order halting the Oklahoma Army and Air National Guard’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccine rollout on Nov. 11, 2021, less than 24 hours after his sudden appointment as the state’s top general. (Oklahoma National Guard)

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***

One wouldn’t know it by scanning the front pages of say WaPo, NYT or Bloomberg where it wasn’t even mentioned, but late on Friday a bad week, month and year for the scrambling Biden administration – which in addition to the recent disaster in Virginia where a public referendum on “wokeness” saw the public overwhelmingly vote down the Democrats’ attempt to subvert social norms, is also facing the worst inflationary inferno since Nixon ended the gold standard – after a U.S. appeals court upheld its decision to put on hold Joe Biden’s unconstitutional order for companies with 100 workers or more to demand COVID-19 vaccines, rejecting a challenge by his administration.

A three-member panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans affirmed its ruling despite the Biden administration’s position that halting implementation of the vaccine mandate could lead to dozens or even hundreds of deaths. No Nov 6, the Fifth Circuit granted a temporary stay on enforcement of the federal mandate, one day after the rule was announced. In its reaffirmation Friday, the court said the mandate “exposes [petitioners] to severe financial risk” and “threatens to decimate their workforces (and business prospects).”

“The mandate is staggeringly overbroad,” the opinion said adding that the vaccine mandate “raises serious constitutional concerns” and “likely exceeds the federal government’s authority.”

“The mandate is a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces (and workers),” Circuit Court Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote for the panel.

pic.twitter.com/DCrg0jBlo2

— AG Jeff Landry (@AGJeffLandry) November 13, 2021

In its ruling, the Fifth Circuit judges agreed with opponents of vaccine mandates, which have become a deeply controversial topic in the United States (as if the country needed any more of those) – supporters say they are a must to put an end to the nearly two-year coronavirus pandemic, while opponents argue they violate the Constitution and curb individual liberty.

“The public interest is also served by maintaining our constitutional structure and maintaining the liberty of individuals to make intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions – even, or perhaps particularly, when those decisions frustrate government officials,” Engelhardt wrote.

At Biden’s orders, the OSHA issued a rule earlier this month requiring U.S. employers with 100 or more workers to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergoing weekly tests for the virus by Jan 4. Businesses that don’t comply face thousands of dollars in fines.

The rule prompted a slate of legal challenges from at least 27 states as well as business and religious groups who argue the mandate is unconstitutional. Biden and other federal officials argue the mandate is necessary to end the COVID-19 pandemic and fully reopen the economy.

White House officials had no immediate comment on the ruling, which was hailed as a victory by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Texas joined other U.S. states, as well as private employers and religious organizations, in legal challenges to the order.

“Citing Texas’s “compelling argument[s],” the 5th Circuit has delayed OSHA’s unconstitutional and illegal private-business vaccine mandate. WE WON! Litigation will continue, but this is a massive victory for Texas and for FREEDOM from Biden’s tyranny and lawlessness,” Paxton wrote.

🚨Citing Texas’s “compelling argument[s],” 5th Circuit has stayed OSHA’s unconstitutional & illegal private-business vaccine mandate. WE WON! Litigation will continue, but this is a massive victory for Texas & FREEDOM from Biden’s tyranny & lawlessness.https://t.co/w7MKyXs73L

— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) November 13, 2021

Biden imposed the requirement in September, telling Americans that “our patience is wearing thin” with those refusing to get inoculated.

But before libertarians rejoice, keep in mind that the admin will now escalate its appeal to the Supreme Court where surprises from so-called “conservative” Supremes are certainly not excluded.

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***

Marx. Lenin. Mao. Deng. Xi.

Late last week in Beijing, the sixth plenum of the Chinese Communist Party adopted a historic resolution – only the third in its 100-year history – detailing major accomplishments and laying out a vision for the future. 

Essentially, the resolution poses three questions. How did we get here? How come we were so successful? And what have we learned to make these successes long-lasting?

The importance of this resolution should not be underestimated. It imprints a major geopolitical fact: China is back. Big time. And doing it their way. No amount of fear and loathing deployed by the declining hegemon will alter this path.

The resolution will inevitably prompt quite a few misunderstandings. So allow me a little deconstruction, from the point of view of a gwailo who has lived between East and West for the past 27 years.

If we compare China’s 31 provinces with the 214 sovereign states that compose the “international community”, every Chinese region has experienced the fastest economic growth rates in the world.

Across the West, the lineaments of China’s notorious growth equation – without any historical parallel – have usually assumed the mantle of an unsolvable mystery.

Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping’s ’s famous “crossing the river while feeling the stones”, described as the path to build “socialism with Chinese characteristics” may be the overarching vision. But the devil has always been in the details: how the Chinese applied – with a mix of prudence and audaciousness – every possible device to facilitate the transition towards a modern economy.

The – hybrid – result has been defined by a delightful oxymoron: “communist market economy.” Actually, that’s the perfect practical translation of Deng’s legendary “it doesn’t matter the color of the cat, as long as it catches mice.” And it was this oxymoron, in fact, that the new resolution passed in Beijing celebrated last week.

Made in China 2025

Mao and Deng have been exhaustively analyzed over the years. Let’s focus here on Papa Xi’s brand new bag.

Right after he was elevated to the apex of the party, Xi defined his unambiguous master plan: to accomplish the “Chinese dream”, or China’s “renaissance.” In this case, in political economy terms, “renaissance” meant to realign China to its rightful place in a history spanning at least three millennia: right at the center. Middle Kingdom, indeed.

Already during his first term Xi managed to imprint a new ideological framework. The Party – as in centralized power – should lead the economy towards what was rebranded as “the new era.” A reductionist formulation would be The State Strikes Back. In fact, it was way more complicated.

This was not merely a rehash of state-run economy standards. Nothing to do with a Maoist structure capturing large swathes of the economy. Xi embarked in what we could sum up as a quite original form of authoritarian state capitalism – where the state is simultaneously an actor and the arbiter of economic life.

Team Xi did learn a lot of lessons from the West, using mechanisms of regulation and supervision to check, for instance, the shadow banking sphere. Macroeconomically, the expansion of public debt in China was contained, and the extension of credit better supervised. It took only a few years for Beijing to be convinced that major financial sphere risks were under control.

China’s new economic groove was de facto announced in 2015 via “Made in China 2025”, reflecting the centralized ambition of reinforcing the civilization-state’s economic and technological independence. That would imply a serious reform of somewhat inefficient public companies – as some had become states within the state.

In tandem, there was a redesign of the “decisive role of the market” – with the emphasis that new riches would have to be at the disposal of China’s renaissance as its strategic interests – defined, of course, by the party.

So the new arrangement amounted to imprinting a “culture of results” into the public sector while associating the private sector to the pursuit of an overarching national ambition. How to pull it off? By facilitating the party’s role as general director and encouraging public-private partnerships.

The Chinese state disposes of immense means and resources that fit its ambition. Beijing made sure that these resources would be available for those companies that perfectly understood they were on a mission: to contribute to the advent of a “new era.”

Manual for power projection

There’s no question that China under Xi, in eight short years, was deeply transformed. Whatever the liberal West makes of it – hysteria about neo-Maoism included – from a Chinese point of view that’s absolutely irrelevant, and won’t derail the process.

What must be understood, by both the Global North and South, is the conceptual framework of the “Chinese dream”: Xi’s unshakeable ambition is that the renaissance of China will finally smash the memories of the “century of humiliation” for good.

Party discipline – the Chinese way – is really something to behold. The CCP is the only communist party on the planet that thanks to Deng has discovered the secret of amassing wealth.

And that brings us to Xi’s role enshrined as a great transformer, on the same conceptual level as Mao and Deng. He fully grasped how the state and the party created wealth: the next step is to use the party and wealth as instruments to be put at the service of China’s renaissance.

Nothing, not even a nuclear war, will deviate Xi and the Beijing leadership from this path. They even devised a mechanism – and a slogan – for the new power projection: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), originally One Belt, One Road (OBOR).

A mountain pass along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Image: Facebook

In 2017, BRI was incorporated into the party statutes. Even considering the “lost in translation” angle, there’s no Westernized, linear definition for BRI.

BRI is deployed on many superimposed levels. It started with a series of investments facilitating the supply of commodities to China.

Then came investments in transport and connectivity infrastructure, with all their nodes and hubs such as Khorgos, at the Chinese-Kazakh border. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), announced in 2013, symbolized the symbiosis of these two investment paths.

The next step was to transform logistical hubs into integrated economic zones – for instance as in HP based in Chongjing exporting its products via a BRI rail network to the Netherlands. Then came the Digital Silk Roads – from 5G to AI – and the Covid-linked Health Silk Roads.

What’s certain is that all these roads lead to Beijing. They work as much as economic corridors as soft power avenues, “selling” the Chinese way especially across the Global South.

Make Trade, Not War

Make Trade, Not War: that would be the motto of a Pax Sinica under Xi. The crucial aspect is that Beijing does not aim to replace Pax Americana, which always relied on the Pentagon’s variant of gunboat diplomacy.

The declaration subtly reinforced that Beijing is not interested in becoming a new hegemon. What matters above all is to remove any possible constraints that the outside world may impose over its own internal decisions, and especially over its unique political setup.

The West may embark on hysteria fits over anything – from Tibet and Hong Kong to Xinjiang and Taiwan. It won’t change a thing.

Concisely, this is how “socialism with Chinese characteristics” – a unique, always mutant economic system – arrived at the Covid-linked techno-feudalist era. But no one knows how long the system will last, and in which mutant form.

Corruption, debt – which tripled in ten years – political infighting – none of that has disappeared in China. To reach 5% annual growth, China would have to recover the growth in productivity comparable to those breakneck times in the 80s and 90s, but that will not happen because a decrease in growth is accompanied by a parallel decrease in productivity.

A final note on terminology. The CCP is always extremely precise. Xi’s two predecessors espoused “perspectives” or “visions.” Deng wrote “theory.” But only Mao was accredited with “thought.” The “new era” has now seen Xi, for all practical purposes, elevated to the status of “thought” – and part of the civilization-state’s constitution.

That’s why the party resolution last week in Beijing could be interpreted as the New Communist Manifesto. And its main author is, without a shadow of a doubt, Xi Jinping. Whether the manifesto will be the ideal road map for a wealthier, more educated and infinitely more complex society than in the times of Deng, all bets are off.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

In a lively rally under full autumn sun, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. addressed a crowd of about 10 to 20,000 people in Bern. He talked about the Covid lies in the US, as well as around the globe – he did not spare Europe, which allows kids being vaccinated from an age as low as 5 years – just like in the US, the Big Brother. He pointed out that the death rate in children from what they falsely call a vaccine was a multiple of the Covid fatality in children.

The manifestation in Bern was organized by the Swiss Public Eye, an Association created in 1968, with the objective of demanding fairer relations between Switzerland and the world’s poorest countries. Public Eye, with its currently 27,000 members, also stands for fairness in trade relations and defends human and civil rights in Switzerland and around the world.

Mr. Robert Kennedy Jr. came to Bern for a specific reason and what he said to the Swiss is that Switzerland was the Last Bastion of Democracy in the World. The upcoming Referendum on 28 November 2021, where the Swiss have the opportunity to vote for or against a Covid Law – a Martial Law in disguise – that had quietly been ratified in September 2020 by Parliament, but had to be put on ice, because a referendum was immediately launched against it. This referendum collected in record time a record number of signatures, never seen before in Switzerland.

Robert Kennedy Jr. referred to the totally undemocratic discrimination which already today takes place in most of Europe, including in Switzerland, where the “unvaxxed”, those who do not have a “vaxx-pass” are excluded from society. They cannot enter a restaurant, cannot go to a gym, or a club, or the movies, or a theatre, or any public event. They are locked out. They are discriminated.

Does Switzerland want a divided society with privileges for those who let themselves be injected with a gene-modifying poison for their convenience, whereas those who resist this illegal, unconstitutional government coercion and blackmail, will be punished and discriminated? This is a question all Swiss – vaxxed or unvaxxed – have to ask themselves. And that while we have the unique opportunity of a People’s Referendum, where we can decide what we want for our future and the future of our children and their children.

A case in point is Austria. As of midnight, of Sunday, 14 November, the Austrian Government has declared the world’s first lockdown for the unvaxxed – unheard of anywhere. Anybody who has not let themselves be injected with this mRNA-poison (or has been healed from “PCR-test proven” Covid) is under strict lockdown.

Never mind the falsehood of the PCR test. Even the WHO admitted earlier this year, the PCR test is not a reliable measure for establishing the presence of the Covid virus.

The world leaders ignore WHO and continue using the false PCR-test to identify Covid, regardless of how invalid it is. But its high false-positives (close to 100%) helps manipulating the statistics. Under this new Austrian lockdown, non-vaxxed people are barred from going to work or going to shops, of leaving their housing unit under threats of big punishment, and the employers who let them work get astronomical fines – see this RT report.

This may happen in Switzerland too, if the Covid law is approved. DEAR SWISS COMPARIOTS – BE AWARE AND BEWARE! Vote NO, on 28 November 2021. Everybody who loves freedom for themselves and for society and for the world, must go to vote NO, in masses.

We the people must and can overcome this tyranny.

Our battle cry is LIBERTÉ! – LIBERTÉ! – LIBERTÉ! Robert Kennedy and all the speakers were leading on the Rally with LIBERTÉ! – It was a truly powerful event. A magic energy flowed through the crowd.

What most Swiss do not know and are not told by their authorities and especially not by the highly paid –  a better term would be “corrupted” – main stream media is that this “Health Martial Law” is valid until 31 December of 2031, until one year after the UN Agenda 2030 ends, under which this Covid crime is running (and, it is of course extendable if deemed necessary); that during this period the government can take any decision – and let me repeat ANY decision – without consulting the Parliament, let alone the people; that the Right to launch Referenda, a unique form of direct democracy will be suspended immediately. Unless, we the people, vote massively NO on 28 November 2021, to this criminal law, this may be the last referendum ever, we may have voted on.

As in most cases where an internal Coup d’État is instigated, and believe me, a yes vote would be equivalent to an internal Coup d’État, a drastic change of Constitution will be put in place. People’s Referenda won’t be part of a new Constitution. Most people do not realize this. They are never told the real story by their government, let alone the media.

Would you believe, dear readers, the Swiss government “subsidizes” – a better word would be “corrupts” – the mainstream media to the tune of 1.7 billion Swiss francs per year about equivalent to close to 2 billion US dollars. And that for a Swiss population of 8.4 million. You may figure out for yourself what the per-capita cost of tax payer’s money is to lie and misinform the Swiss people, day-in-day-out; the very people who finance this fraud unknowingly with their tax money.

If the Covid law would be accepted by a majority – GOD FORBID – Switzerland would no longer be a beacon of democracy in the word, or the last bastion of Democracy, in the words of Robert Kennedy Jr.

Instead, Switzerland would almost instantly turn into a “beacon” of total digitized banking. Every money transaction would be controlled by the Central Bank. Your bank account could be emptied at will: If you don’t behave, money is withdrawn; or you don’t follow orders, or rebel, they could prevent you from buying groceries. All through algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots. Full surveillance.

Have you ever wondered, how it was possible that basically on the same day in March 2020, around 11 March the entire world, all the 193 UN member countries, introduced exactly the same measures to fight a virus that is very similar – and not deadlier at all – to a simple annual flu virus? In fact, the fatality rate of the virus is about 0.07%. In a peer reviewed paper in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), “Covid-19 – Navigating the Uncharted”, the very Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Covid czar, said that the corona virus was comparable to a flu virus.

There must be enormous money powers behind this taking control of the world, at once, and nobody is able to object. Silicon Valley billionaires and social media are part of the game, as well as the Big Financial Sector, Like Black Rock and Vanguard – and other dark forces.

The entire UN system is being coerced into following these dictatorial orders, and the fact that literally all governments play along, must indicate that the order comes with a very, but very heavy – perhaps deadly – stick attached. And maybe a little carrot too, for those politicians, who obey in oppressing and tyrannizing their people. See below a video speech by Ernst Wolff, renowned German financial economist (in German). He demonstrates with clear comparisons, where the world’s power lies; more than power, as we know it, power over life and death; power over whether our civilization will survive – and if they allow it to survive – under what conditions.

Then there is Klaus Schwab’s infamous book, “Covid-19 – The Great Reset” which talks about the transformation from humans to “transhumans”, where the latter will be manipulable like robots through what he calls implanted chips – of course, he doesn’t mean in a bad way. All for the best of humanity. At the end “You will own nothing but you will be happy”. That’s the WEF’s chairman’s conclusion and view of the future. That’s commensurate with the conclusion of the 4^th Industrial Revolution – robotization, digitization, and transfer of assets from the bottom and the middle to a few ultra-rich on the top.

That is the plan. But we can stop it.

Today, all we see, moves in this nefarious direction. Yet, We, the People, have the power to stop it. Without hatred, swinging on a higher frequency – and yes, all of us, vaxxed and non-vaxxed together, because in the end, we are in the same boat. That, my dear compatriots of the world, we have to understand. It’s no good – to say ten years from now, at the end of UN Agenda 2030, “yes, sorry, you were right”.  It’s totally immaterial who is right. The point is we have to stop it together, in solidarity, vaxxed and unvaxxed together. No discrimination – LIBERTÉ!!! For All.

The poison injections they force upon the population – including children, imagine!!! – is turning humans into transhumans, meaning, our minds may eventually be manipulated through 5G and soon to come 6G ultra-microwaves.

That’s why you will need every year a “booster” shot. It has nothing to do with your health. None of the so-called “vaccinations” have anything to do with your health. It has all to do with preparing our body to become receptive to the 5G and eventually 6G ultra-microwaves. And the Swiss Federal Council, plus every leader in the world, who follows this evil narrative and dictate, knows it.

If you look around, you see already 5G antennas everywhere. In many countries, including in Switzerland, 5G is already selectively operational, despite the fact that the Swiss people had voted for and the Swiss authorities had agreed to put a moratorium on the introduction of 5G, until more information about security and possible health effects are known. Not even WHO – the co-masters of the Covid crime – have dared to express themselves about the potential health effects of these ultra-ultra-shortwaves.

A crucial question we all have to ask ourselves: Is Switzerland going to remain the Bastion of democracy and the shining beacon for the world, possibly influencing the people of the rest of the world – calling upon them to wake up and put peacefully through non-obedience a halt to tis biblical crime – which frankly risks to wipe out humanity?

That’s what Robert Kennedy Jr. – and other prominent figures, who spoke at the Bern Rally last Friday, were pledging for – a Grand NO-VOTE – for our Freedom – LIBERTÉ! – LIBERTÉ! – LIBERTÉ! – was the going battle cry at this very special Bern People’s Assembly.

Other prominent speakers included, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, the German lawyer who is leading with a group of more than 1,000 medical and other professionals, lawsuits against the perpetrators around the world of our, the People’s – civil liberties and civil rights. He calls upon the Swiss not to tolerate the planned and already ongoing discrimination between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. He calls for solidarity of the two groups, not division, as solidarity will in the end win back our freedom – and possibly be an influence on peoples of other nations, to do likewise – peacefully, but determined collective non-obedience.

This point on solidarity between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed, the need to hold hands in this coming referendum vote, was also made by Christoph Pfluger, the founder of the Swiss Friends of the Constitutions. He stressed an important point: Together we will win this vote for freedom and against covid tyranny. Togetherness is love for each other and beats discrimination. Togetherness and solidarity break the Covid narrative’s back.

The police and military, now largely under control and in the service of governments and the rich and powerful, those so well described in Ernst Wolff’s speech – see above – when these wardens of security and of people’s safety start realizing that they are in the same boat with the people, with the oppressed and ever more tyrannized people – they may take off their helmets and march with us.

Also present via video were Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, former Professor of microbiology and hygiene at the University of Mainz, Germany, and Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a German physician and politician. He was a member of Parliament until 2009. They are both close collaborators of Dr. Fuellmich.

Both stressed the importance for people, especially young people to go to the polls on 28 November and vote NO against the Covid Law; against discrimination. It is the coming generations who will have to bear the brunt of a covid Coup d’État that would install itself in Switzerland – and throughout the western countries. They too highlighted that Switzerland could make a difference worldwide with a No-vote.

Also speaking at the rally was Catherine Austin-Fitts, a former US investment banker, who knows the ins and outs not only of banking and what banking has become, but also of the ever-increasing role of central banks. She said, if this Covid law was accepted, Switzerland, especially Switzerland – the world’s capital of banking and particularly of central banking with the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) – the Central Bank of all Central Banks, sitting in Basle, Switzerland may be the first country being fully digitized and financially enslaved.

She predicts that Switzerland would be digitized by warp speed – a point, confirmed to me by other Swiss private bankers, who may not agree with the system, but who are bound to it through a job that nourishes and supports their families. They reiterated that we would be controlled by every move; that access to our money, our assets, will be commensurate with our behavior and obedience to the system.

Further were speaking Dr. Thomas Binder, Swiss cardiologist and Dr. Astride Stuckelberger, an international health scientist, formerly with WHO. Both were reminding the audience of the “nonsensical” and criminal measures and dictates ordered against Human Rights, in Switzerland and simultaneously in all 193 UN member countries. They pointed to the harm these measures will do to the entire world population if not stopped. And especially to our children, because they are the next generation, leading into the future.

Dr. Thomas Binder made another important point. He called upon all medical and scientific professionals to remain faithful to their profession of healing to the best of their knowledge. He referred to the Hippocratic Oath, which all medical doctors have to sign. It was written by Hippocrates in the 5^th Century B.C., and it is still held sacred by physicians: to treat the ill to the best of one’s ability, to preserve a patient’s privacy, to teach the secrets of medicine to the next generation, and so on.

Dr. Binder appealed to his medical colleagues in Switzerland and around the world, to be true to his oath and to step out from under government coercion, following their conscience. If this were to happen by the medical and scientific community worldwide – and despite the threats – the covid narrative and tyranny would fall apart.

Then there is a worldwide economic destruction, the result of a disease that, in fact, never existed in a pandemic form. According to Robert Kennedy Jr., the lie about it wiped out 3.8 trillion dollars worldwide, most of it in so-called developing countries, leaving misery, poverty and death behind, while transferring the values of the assets to the few super rich. – See also this . Professor Chossudovsky, author of this thoroughly researched article and Director and Editor of Global Research in Montreal, puts all the evidence together, showing that SARS-CoV-2, alias Covid-19 has never been identified and demonstrates how the case figures and death counts around the world have been manipulated, to instill fear – and to control and oppress the entire world population.

Compatriots – lets vote massively NO on 28 November 2021, so that Switzerland may indeed remain the beacon of democracy in the world – and for worldwide LIBERTÉ – LIBERTÉ – LIBERTÉ!

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)

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

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The following review of Edward Curtin’s book – Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies – appears in the current issue of The Paradigm Explorer and is written by the journal’s Scottish editor David Lorimer.  Director of the Scientific and Medical Network from 1986-2000. He is now Programme Director and continues to edit Paradigm Explorer.  He is author and editor of over a dozen books. He is a Fellow of the International Futures Forum, Founding chief executive of Character Scotland, and former President of Wrekin Trust and the Swedenborg Society. He was educated at Eton and the Universities of St Andrews and Cambridge.

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Edward Curtin (‘from a young age obsessed with truth, death and freedom’) is one of a number of courageous writers including Douglas Valentine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, James Douglass and David Ray Griffin who systematically take the lid off the nefarious, ruthless and manipulative role played in US politics by the CIA.

He is also inspired by Albert Camus, who ‘tried to fight injustice while extolling life’s beauty and the human search for happiness.’ This deeply humane volume of over 40 essays and book reviews is beautifully and incisively written, ranging over a wide field, both existential and political. It makes especially significant reading in the run-up to the 20^th anniversary of 9/11 in highlighting the lamentable shortcomings of tight-lipped mainstream investigative journalism that refuses to question the integrity of official reports for fear of being labelled conspiracy theorists. By 2004, Curtin was convinced (like David Ray Griffin) that the U.S. government’s claims (and The 9/11 Commission Report) were fictitious: ‘they seemed so blatantly false that I concluded the attacks were a deep-state intelligence operation whose purpose was to initiate a national state of emergency to justify wars of aggression, which came to be known euphemistically as “the war on terror.” The sophistica­tion of the attacks, and the lack of any proffered evidence for the government’s claims, suggested that a great deal of planning had been involved.’ (p. 55) [and see his recent essay Second Stage Terror Wars here]

The key political events of the 1960s cascading down to our own time are the CIA-sponsored assassinations (for challenging the interests of the ‘military-industrial-financial-media intelligence complex that rules America to this day’) of JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X, all of which are meticulously documented and exposed in a number of Curtin’s book reviews. He maintains that ‘we live in the era of massive fraud where the trans­national wealthy elites, led by the American war and propaganda machine, continue to try to convince the gullible that they are saviours of humanity even as they lie and cheat and murder by the millions.’ This is a strong claim but it is extensively backed up in what follows. If we turn a blind eye to what Thomas Merton called ‘the unspeakable’ (Matthew Fox told me that he too was probably assassinated) then we become complicit – the only noble response is to exhibit a redemptive courage. In his 2005 Nobel Literature Acceptance Speech, Harold Pinter (quoted) caustically observed “It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good.

Jacques Ellul observed that propaganda deception and the public’s proclivity to believe it and obey are reciprocal. Curtin writes (p. 18) that ‘today’s propaganda is anchored in the events of the 1960s, specifically the infamous government assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, and RFK, the truth of which the CIA has worked so hard to conceal. In the fifty or so years since, a vast amount of new information has made it explicitly clear that these murders were carried out by elements within the U.S. gov­ernment, and were done to silence the voices of four charismatic leaders who were opposed to the American war machine and the continuation of the Cold War. To turn away from this truth and to ignore its implications can only be described as an act of bad faith and culpable ignorance, or worse.’ Official reports are accepted at face value while ‘the power of the oligarchic, permanent warfare state’ has only increased and anyone who questions this line is a conspiracy theorist (a weaponised term invented by the CIA in the 1960s). The political system works to prevent change, and every president has been complicit, including Obama, who told CIA Director Panetta that he would ‘get everything he wanted’ (p. 21): ‘since we know that every president since JFK has refused to confront the growth of the national security state and its call for violence, one can logically assume a message was sent and heed­ed.’

For the peace activist Daniel Berrigan, ‘a human being is a child of God, and as such is called to resist the rule of human death-dealing in the world, to resist violence with love and non-violence. A human being is a lover. This means that a human being is necessarily at odds with the powers-that-be, the governments and corporations that, in the name of peace, prepare for and wage war. It is a view of human being that is bound to be unpopular, more likely to be affirmed with pieties then contradicted by actions.’ (p. 37) People like him are frequently excoriated in their lifetimes and celebrated after death – the government that assassinated MLK created a special national holiday in his honour…

On a more lyrical note, Curtin writes about the importance of silence and poetry: ‘silence, like so much else in the present world, includ­ing human beings, is on the endangered species list’ in a society ‘suffering from socially induced attention-deficit disorder.’ He asks if we shut up long enough to listen to what the silence might reveal? And without poetry, he writes, we are dead: ‘Poetry is the search for truth. It marries outer to inner. It probes reality with words. It suggests, states, intimates, inviting the reader to raid what was previously unspeakable. This ex­ploration is composed of ideas, images, and words arranged in ways that engender powerful emotions and thoughts. Like life, a poem swims in mystery…. true poetry startles. It inspires. It enlivens. It is a distillation of the human spirit, as essential as bread. It is composed of a few simple ingredients, as is bread. They are: the real, actually existing, outside world, and us; the outside world that we are in and that is in us, and our emotional thoughts about our condition. Flour, water, and yeast. The bread rises, the poem forms. (p. 83)

In the interests of space, I will highlight only one further significant theme: our embrace of instrumental logic and technical reason where ‘the theology of technological “progress” operates according to the law of can do, will do’, an ‘innately amoral’ position which ‘has caused many of the problems we seem unable to rem­edy. These include environmental catastrophe, high-tech wars, GM foods, drone killings, drug addiction, biological and nuclear weapons, to name but a few.’ (p. 111) Unlike Camus with his knowledge of Greek thought, we are culturally unaware of hubris and limits, always justifying the Promethean crossing of a new frontier. Now, however, we face potentially terminal existential challenges as a result. Curtin invites readers to think the unthinkable beyond consensus reality and linguistic mind-control as promoted by Edward Bernays in his classic book on propaganda: ‘It is impossible to overestimate the importance of en­gineering of consent. The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process. It affects almost every aspect of our daily lives.’ Even the engineering metaphor is indicative and we are seeing its daily operation.

We need to wake up from this consensus trance of technical efficiency where, as Ellul put it, ‘for every problem caused by technology there is always a technological solution that creates further technological problems, ad infinitum.’ We are engaged in a battle for minds and even souls through technological perception management – Curtin’s courageous and outspoken voice invites us to think the unthinkable and reminds us of what makes us essentially human: it is a call to escape from the high-tech trap of permanent busyness and speed. Living faster is not living better, so take a moment to slow down – advice I need to heed myself. Here is Curtin’s last word: ‘Rhythm, melody, and movement: from these, life is born and sustained. They are also integral to art—music, writing, painting, sculpture, dance…they lie at the heart of spiritual experience, as breath is the inspi­ration that carries us along.’

I urge you to read this outstanding book.

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He is the author of Seeking the Truth in a Country of Lies

To order his book click the cover page.

“Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies is a dazzling journey into the heart of many issues — political, philosophical, and personal — that should concern us all.  Ed Curtin has the touch of the poet and the eye of an eagle.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Edward Curtin puts our propaganda-stuffed heads in a guillotine, then in a flash takes us on a redemptive walk in the woods — from inferno to paradiso.  Walk with Ed and his friends — Daniel Berrigan, Albert Camus, George Orwell, and many others — through the darkest, most-firefly-filled woods on this earth.” James W. Douglass, author, JFK and the Unspeakable

“A powerful exposé of the CIA and our secret state… Curtin is a passionate long-time reform advocate; his stories will rouse your heart.” Oliver Stone, filmmaker, writer, and director

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Dr. Daniel Nagase, persecuted for saving his patients’ lives with Ivermectin, explains that the experimental injections are particularly dangerous for children.

Notwithstanding the fact that the jabs do not work, and that natural immunity is superior, he explains that the introduction of an artificial spike protein into chidrens’ developing immune systems presents added risks of changing their DNA, impairing their immune “specificity”, and increasing their risks of cancer.

He concludes that jabs against just one protein are “stupid”, and that “variants” of influenza are never a problem with natural immunity.

Watch the video here.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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The phenomenon of economic globalization has ensured that all the rational elements of the economy are interrelated with each other due to the consolidation of oligopolies, technological convergence and tacit corporate agreements, so that the third wave of the economic recession that is coming will be global and binding and will have as a collateral effect the irreversible decline of the global economy. To reach that sunset. whose first sketches are already outlined and which will be finished in the next five years, the following elements have contributed:

The incessant bombardment of advertising, the irrational use of plastic cards, the granting of instant credits with bloody interest rates and the invasion of a flood of manufactured products of dubious quality and prices without competition from emerging countries would have favored the establishment of the compulsive consumerism in developed countries. To quench this consumer bulimia,

Stateless multinationals or transnational corporations intensified the policy of relocating companies to emerging countries in order to reduce production costs, which would have resulted in the desertification of countless productive sectors of the First World countries and which would have become evident after the irruption of the health pandemic.

On the other hand, the brutal increase in the consumption of raw materials and manufactured products by China and other emerging countries due to their spectacular growth in GDP, together with the intervention of speculative brokers, has led to a spiral of increases in the prices of raw materials that has resulted in runaway inflation that will force the Central Banks to raise interest rates and that will mean ruin for countries with runaway external debt.

Said Debt would be the result of the substitution of the economic doctrine of Budget Balance of the States by that of Endemic Deficit, (a practice that by mimicry adopted by domestic economies and companies and public and private organizations), and which have contributed to the disappearance of the culture of savings, chronic indebtedness and excessive dependence on Foreign Financing.

This, together with the stratospheric growth of oil and energy prices, will force these countries to adopt policies of decrease with the subsequent contraction of world trade and that will cause the end of economic globalization, having as collateral effects the end of mass tourism , the return of relocated companies and the enthronement of the circular economy and ECO label products that will end up shaping the return to watertight economic compartments on the horizon of the next five years.

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German Gorraiz Lopez is a financial analyst.

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“The history of the world is always weak people fighting strong people. Of weak people who have a correct case fighting strong people who use their strength to exploit the weak.” — Ghassan Kanafani

Masar Badil, Conference of the Alternative Palestinian Path: Towards a new revolutionary commitment, was held in Madrid on Oct. 30, 2021 across four days (and simultaneously in Beirut and Sao Paulo). To understand the political position the conference adopted, read the Madrid Declaration: Issued by the Conference on the Alternative Palestinian Revolutionary Path in Madrid, Spain.

If you believe in Palestinian liberation and return and the exercise of our people’s right to self-determination on their entire national soil on the path to building a democratic, participatory human society, and building the institutions of this democratic Palestine, as a society and as a state, then Masar Badil is the movement for you.

What does this burgeoning movement aim to achieve? Among other things, its objectives are to defend the rights of the Palestinian people, to build bridges of joint action between the homeland and the diaspora on the road to strengthening the unity of the Palestinian national movement as one unified liberation movement, and to build an Arab front against colonialism and Zionism and its local enablers:

… we call upon the Palestinian resistance forces, the various national and popular bodies, the youth, student and feminist movements, the boycott and anti-normalization committees and all the masses of our struggling people in the occupied homeland and throughout the Diaspora to unite nationally to establish a united Palestinian national front to resist racist Zionist settler colonialism in all of Palestine, to confront the Zionist movement and its allies in the world, and to work to break all the cycles of siege by developing the ability of our Palestinian people to restore and liberate their institutions, and to strengthen the position and role of the Palestinian liberation movement and its active presence in the Arab and international arenas.

Our conference considers the Palestine Liberation Organization to be a confiscated and hijacked institution, whose decision-making is dominated by a corrupt class sector, acting as agents of Zionist colonialism, and a weak leadership lacking revolutionary, popular or legal legitimacy. On this basis, we consider that the Organization and its leadership, in their current form, do not represent us and cannot represent the struggles and rights of our people.

The conference therefore calls on all popular forces, associations and organizations affiliated with the Alternative Palestinian Revolutionary Path Movement to escalate the pace of mass struggle inside and outside occupied Palestine and to confront the “self-rule administration” liquidation project on the road to isolating and overthrowing it.

Conference organizers recently released the final documents (in several languages) adopted by the Madrid conference and the conferences of the Masar in Beirut and Sao Paulo as well as the following short video, highlighting the launch of the Masar movement:

What’s notable about this movement is that it is driven by youth, a new generation for a new Palestinian dawn. It’s a movement for the thousands of highly qualified and creative Palestinian youths, wherever they are planted, who are poised to play a major role in forming the Palestinian revolution’s future, and, in the words of Geroge Habash (al-Hakim), “the future of our Palestinian masses, the future of Palestine, the region and the world.”

Image: Capture from the video “Masar Badil on the March in Madrid”. Arabic subtitles in the above are translations of the narrative voice of Ghassan Kanafani speaking in English (interview by Richard Carleton, Beirut, 1970) and saying: “The history of the world is always weak people fighting strong people. Of weak people who have a correct case fighting strong people who use their strength to exploit the weak.”

Related:

Masar Badil and the elephant in the room (Nov. 1, 2021)

Masar Badil: How to make an alternative revolutionary path a reality (Oct. 30, 2021)

Masar Badil Means Standing Strong (Oct. 29, 2021)
Understanding that the only recourse for Palestinians is continued revolt

There is no escape for Israel from growing Palestinian power (Oct 22, 2021)
We are not afraid, but clearly they are

Will this conference that celebrates the Palestinian revolutionary struggle cut through the still deafening media static of Israel’s “narrative?” (Oct. 21, 2021)

A Giant Leap for Palestine? Stay Tuned! (Oct 15, 2021)
Celebrating the path of resistance for the Palestinian people

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

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Samidoun España activist Jaldia Abubakra — capture from video “Masar Badil on the March in Madrid”/from Rima Najjar

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On the latest episode of “The Jimmy Dore Show,” comedian and political commentator Jimmy Dore discussed a report by The BMJ on a whistleblower’s revelations about Pfizer’s Phase 3 COVID vaccine trial.

On the latest episode of “The Jimmy Dore Show,” comedian and political commentator Jimmy Dore discussed the recent bombshell report in The BMJ on Pfizer’s Phase 3 COVID vaccine trial.

The BMJ’s report exposed faked data, blind trial failures, delayed follow-ups on serious adverse reactions and the silencing of researchers who were critical of the trials practices.

A researcher who worked on the trial described the studies to The BMJ as a “crazy mess.”

“Big Pharma are the biggest liars, scammers and criminals in the country — so you know they had to do some shady stuff with the COVID vaccine and sure enough — they did,” said Dore.

Brook Jackson played a central role in the explosive report. Jackson worked as a regional director at Ventavia Research Group, the outside contractor Pfizer hired to conduct the Phase 3 trial.

The BMJ report mentions how in autumn 2020, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla released an open letter to the billions of people around the world “who were investing their hopes in a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine to end the pandemic.”

Bourla wrote that the company was “operating at the speed of science.”

“Science says vaccines can’t end the pandemic because they don’t and were never designed to stop transmission,” Dore argued.

The BMJ reported:

“ … for researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety,” and that “staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the volume of problems they were finding.”

Jackson told The BMJ during her two weeks of employment at Ventavia in September 2020, “she repeatedly informed her superiors of poor laboratory management, patient safety concerns  and data integrity issues.”

Documents obtained by The BMJ also showed a Ventavia executive was aware of staff members who were “falsifying data.”

The BMJ reported that on Sept. 25, 2020, Jackson called the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to warn about unsound practices in Pfizer’s clinical trial. She then reported her concerns in an email to the agency.

Later that afternoon Ventavia fired Jackson. According to her separation letter, obtained by The BMJ, the Pfizer subcontractor deemed her “not a good fit.”

Jackson told The BMJ it was the first time she had been fired in her 20-year career in clinical research.

Dore said:

“That’s not how science works. You’re supposed to have people documenting adverse reactions so the vaccines can be made safer. If you want the vaccinated to shut up about their adverse reactions that makes you part of a cover-up.”

According to The BMJ, Jackson listed more than a dozen concerns with the trial, including participants not being monitored by clinical staff after injection, lack of timely follow-up of patients who experienced serious adverse events, protocol deviations not being reported, vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures, mislabelled laboratory specimens and the targeting of Ventavia staff for reporting trial issues.

The BMJ also spoke with two former Ventavia employees who agreed to speak with the medical journal anonymously for “fear of reprisal and loss of job prospects in the tightly knit research community.” Both former Ventavia employees confirmed Jackson’s complaint.

One former employee told the journal she had “worked on over four dozen clinical trials in her career, including many large trials” but had never experienced such a “helter-skelter” environment as with Pfizer’s Phase 3 trial.

The BMJ reported that since Ventavia collaborated with Pfizer for its initial Phase 3 trial, Pfizer hired Ventavia as a research subcontractor on other vaccine clinical trials, including the COVID vaccine for children and young adults, pregnant women and the trials looking at the safety of a booster dose.

“So Pfizer hired them again! Pfizer subcontracts out the risky work so they can have deniability,” Dore said.

John Campbell, Ph.D., discussed The BMJ report in a recent video, asking if the revelations will harm public trust in industry science.

“We should have perfect integrity and transparency all the way through [the scientific process] so the public can completely trust the clinical data … and this doesn’t help with that,” Campbell said.

Despite the bombshell revelations, the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization to the Pfizer COVID vaccine for children ages 5 to11 years old, while the mainstream corporate press gave the BMJ report little to no coverage.

Children’s Health Defense asks those concerned about the FDA’s failure to investigate Jackson’s claims to contact their members of Congress.

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Jeremy Loffredo is a freelance reporter for The Defender. His investigative reporting has been featured in The Grayzone and Unlimited Hangout. Jeremy formerly produced news programs at RT America.

Featured image is from CHD

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Belarus and Poland are “going rogue” vis-à-vis their Russian and American patrons in the sense of independently doing things that are aimed at provoking their “big brothers” into more actively taking their side for the purpose of catalyzing a larger crisis that they aim to subsequently exploit.

The Western Mainstream Media is lying when it claims that Belarusian President Lukashenko is his Russian counterpart’s “hybrid warfare” puppet. This information warfare narrative is being propagated for the purpose of implicating President Putin in Lukashenko’s unsavory policies by virtue of their political association through the “Union State”. The Russian leader explicitly clarified that he was caught off guard by Lukashenko’s recent threat to cut off gas supplies to Europe. In his words:

“To be honest, this is the first time I hear about it because I spoke with Mr Lukashenko twice recently and he never told me about that, not even a hint. But he can probably do that. Although there is nothing good about it and I will certainly talk to him about this issue, unless he just said it in the heat of the moment…Of course, theoretically, Lukashenko, as president of a transit country, can issue an order to cut off our deliveries to Europe even though it will violate our transit contract. I hope it will not come to that.”

This isn’t “5D chess” or some so-called “cunning plan”, but one of Putin’s typically candid remarks about sensitive issues. He’s genuinely concerned about what his counterpart said, especially since he wasn’t informed of it in advance despite having recently spoken with Lukashenko twice. Putin is implying that the Belarusian leader either said something that he didn’t mean due to his characteristic impulsiveness or might even be trying to pressure Russia into taking his side against Poland and the EU.

The Eastern European Migrant Crisis owes its origins to the US-led West’s wars against Muslim countries that created the conditions for millions of people to want to flee to the EU for economic reasons. The Polish-led anti-Belarusian sanctions over the past year worsened the situation in that targeted former Soviet Republic and made it politically impossible for its leadership to continue voluntarily expending the resources to protect the EU from illegal immigration like it earlier did.

This toxic combination prompted the latest Migrant Crisis, which the Polish government is also exploiting for self-interested political reasons related to provoking a larger East-West crisis in order to sabotage the incipient Russian-US rapprochement. Nevertheless, the Polish people are innocent and deserve to be protected from the threat posed by illegal immigrants invading their country. All of this makes the latest events very complicated.

Be that as it may, there should be no ambiguity about the relationship between Putin and Lukashenko. Although there’s asymmetry in their countries’ capabilities, they still endeavor to treat one another as equals in all respects in order to set a positive example throughout the rest of the post-Soviet space. Lukashenko is still very much his own independent man, which he’s proven on multiple occasions in the past through his sometimes virulent criticism of Russia, especially before last year’s regime change crisis.

Keenly understanding his country’s importance to Russia in the security sense of serving as a physical buffer with NATO, Lukashenko has since tried to trick Putin into supporting him in ways that risk bringing Belarus’ “big brother” into conflict with the West. His latest threat to cut off Russian gas supplies to the West can be interpreted in such a way. The Belarusian leader wanted Putin to feel pressured to support him for the sake of “saving face” and “keeping up appearances”.

The Russian leader, however, was having none of that. In fact, he clearly seems offended that Lukashenko would issue such a threat knowing fully well that the Western Mainstream Media’s information warfare narrative is to misportray their relationship as a patron-puppet one. In other words, Lukashenko purposely manipulated politically Russophobic propaganda in order to pressure Putin for self-interested and very geopolitically dangerous reasons. It’s no wonder that Putin is so upset.

This doesn’t mean that their personal relations, let alone their countries’ strategic ones, will be irreversibly worsened by Lukashenko’s provocation. It’s just that the Belarusian leader is back to his old tricks of trying to play the East off against the West in the hopes that he can exploit the situation to his benefit (and potentially also Poland’s from Warsaw’s perspective considering their similar infowar tricks during this crisis).

Belarus and Poland are “going rogue” vis-à-vis their Russian and American patrons in the sense of independently doing things that are aimed at provoking their “big brothers” into more actively taking their side for the purpose of catalyzing a larger crisis that they aim to subsequently exploit. Minsk wants Moscow to coerce the West into lifting its anti-Belarusian sanctions while Warsaw wants Washington to freeze – if not reverse – its incipient strategic dialogue with the Kremlin.

Neither Belarus nor Poland are “puppets” of Russia or the US in this particular context despite being their mutual defense allies. The Eastern European Migrant Crisis shows how regional countries can manipulate the course of events and narratives thereof for self-interested reasons that even occur at their own patrons’ expense. This is an extremely dangerous trend that must be curbed as soon as possible lest it spiral further out of control and provoke a larger conflict by miscalculation.

*

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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

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***

A new “Sovereign Council” has been inaugurated in the Republic of Sudan without the endorsement of the leading forces within the ousted administration.

On October 25 the military leadership of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemetti), took complete control of the state and placed under house arrest interim Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

These actions were in line with a reemerging phenomenon of military coups on the African continent which began during the 1960s. In many cases, the undemocratic usurpation of authority were guided and marionetted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the State Department as was the case in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1960 and the Republic of Ghana in 1966.

Sudan has been an independent nation since 1956, one of the first national independence movements which succeeded against British imperialism. The following year, 1957, the former Gold Coast became Ghana under the leadership of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) headed then by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

The Sudanese Professional Association (SPA), a founding organization within the broader Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), has rejected an offer by the Transitional Military Council (TMC) of al-Burhan and Hemetti to become a part of the revised “Sovereign Council”. Undoubtedly, the current regime will continue to be dominated by the military.

People opposed the coup and the appointment of another interim body dominated by the military immediately reacted to al-Burhan’s moves by blocking roads with burning tires. Thousands of images of the unrest were widely circulated over social media.

On November 13, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in various cities around Sudan including Khartoum, where the capital is located. Despite the arrest of many political leaders and other repressive measures enacted by the military, the turnout to the protests were enormous. Obviously much of the mobilization efforts were conducted clandestinely since the military coup makers control the armaments, broadcasting services, internet connectivity and other critical organs of the state.

Since the eruption of social unrest in December 2018, untold numbers of people have lost their lives in resistance activities. In the aftermath of four months of marches, rebellions and general strikes, in early April 2019 the military overthrew the administration of the-then President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. However, the people leading the opposition forces wanted a civilian government to determine the future of this centrally located and resource-rich African nation.

An article in the Sudan Tribune said of the manifestations on November 13:

“According to medical reports, five protesters were killed in Khartoum state, four with bullets, and the fifth after inhaling tear gas, and there are many wounded in the various cities of Khartoum State. Besides Khartoum state, reports from other states say that thousands protested in Dongola and Kareema, in Northern State, Atbara of the Nile River State and Madani of Algazira State. In the Darfur region, demonstrators came out in El Fasher and Nyala, where 64 demonstrators were arrested. The pro-democracy protests also took place in Port Sudan of the Red Sea State and Kosti of the While Nile. The 13 November protests were organized by the Sudanese Professionals Associations and the Resistance Committees in support of the civilian state in Sudan.”

Sudan mass demonstrations continue against the coup (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Prime Minister Hamdok has dismissed any suggestion that he resume his duties as interim leader of the Sovereign Council and is demanding the reinstatement of the Constitutional Declaration which was negotiated with the involvement of the African Union (AU). Several other members of the cabinet which was removed in the October 25 putsch also continue to be detained.

Since the first recent military coup of April 2019, which effectively blocked any attempt at forming a national democratic government led by civilians from various political parties, trade unions, mass and professional groupings, the TMC has received support from the monarchies of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and the State of Israel. In defiance of its own constitutional law established in 1958, the Sovereign Council agreed to “normalize relations” with Tel Aviv. Since this measure was adopted at the aegis of the former U.S. President Donald Trump, there appears to have no exchange of diplomatic missions.

Nonetheless, there are several reports claiming that the TMC has deployed a delegation to Tel Aviv for private discussions. Later there were articles saying the Israelis have sent a team to Khartoum for talks. Despite the role of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Israel, the social conditions are dire in Sudan. The political unrest is clearly fueled by the declining living conditions inside the country.

International Impact of the Coup

Of course, the State Department is shuttling back and forth from Washington to Khartoum in an effort to appear concerned about the situation in Sudan. The tactics of the Trump administration, and the essentially unchanged policies of the current President Joe Biden, have been a destabilizing factor in the country.

The initial Sovereign Council which was chaired as well by al-Burhan although Hamdok was the civilian head, agreed to a number of commitments which will further render Sudan into indebtedness to the world capitalist system. International finance capital has agreed to lend Khartoum money under certain conditionalities which will not enhance its ability to become a genuinely independent and self-sustaining state.

Hamdok and al-Burhan signed obligations to pay hundreds of millions in U.S. dollars to survivors of victims of terrorist attacks which occurred long before the removal of President al-Bashir. The Sovereign Council was coercively manipulated into signing such agreements in exchange for the removal of Sudan from the list of “state sponsors of terrorism.”

If anything can be learned from the previous six or more decades of independent African countries is the role of funding institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in derailing the development strategies of post-colonial states. In light of the economic crisis largely precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the potential for a renewed round of borrowing and refinancing of loans among AU member-states is highly likely.

Whither Sudan?

The debt incurred by the Sudanese people compounded by the political discontent caused by the acquiescence to the so-called “Abraham Accords”, designed to undermine solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli regime, unless revoked, will only further hamper the capacity of Khartoum to unify under a civilian administration. Within a broader international context, Washington and Tel Aviv along with their allies among the Gulf monarchies, can only offer further indebtedness and war to the people of Sudan and Africa as a whole.

The AU in a statement from the Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat notes:

“On the 6th of November, the African Union Peace and Security (PSC) Council suspended Sudan’s membership in the regional organization after the 25th October military coup in violation of the African Union brokered constitutional declaration of 17 August 2019 governing the transitional period. The PSC said that the suspension would continue until the reestablishment of a civilian-led authority. However, coup leaders continue to detain Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, his prominent advisers and cabinet members as well as political leaders.”

Nevertheless, until the resources allocated by imperialism and its allies internationally are halted, the continued subversion of the revolutionary democratic process by the TMC will further stall the total transformation of the country. The mass organizations are calling for additional marches and work stoppages. The fragility of the new “Sovereign Council” will be clearly illustrated since it cannot make any serious case for its existence beyond stifling a progressive path forward.

The new regime is composed of the military along with some leaders of the armed opposition groups which had negotiated a peace agreement in Juba, Republic of South Sudan. These maneuvers have been met with derision and civil disorder. At some point, sooner or later, the tenuous alliance engineered by al-Burhan and his international patrons will burst asunder due to the burgeoning domestic and global opposition to, yet another, neo-colonial construct manufactured in Washington, New York and Tel Aviv.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Sudan demonstrators raise flag during anti-coup protest, Nov. 13, 2021 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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***

Have you noticed: moral issues are no longer the domain of clerics and philosophers? Not politicians either.

Our ethics, however capricious they’ve become, evolve largely from the mega entertainment industry. Authors and athletes, singers and poet-rappers, television hosts and comedians, even though they sometimes do so unwittingly, guide our choices, consequently our values as well. Today’s A-list stars —oh, how we adore them—they are who pronounce what’s good and right, bad and wrong. At least we endow them with that power. Even when they don’t intend their statements to be a moral judgement, even after they’ve moved beyond whatever they’re charged with.

Columnist Paul Street, addressing the weakening role of journalism, hints at the moral implications of that slide: “In the name of political neutrality”, he writes, “‘the news’ often produces moral (my emphasis) and intellectual paralysis in its consumers…”.

I agree that morality can be allied with reason; but not always.

So, what do we do in the vacuum created by this paralysis? Well, it’s readily at hand: we simply scroll down the website, click to alternate channels, slide to another app. Thereby we effortlessly find ourselves enveloped by dazzling graphics, stunning talent and, if we choose, fiery one-liner opinions. Though these may not stir us intellectually, they can make us feel woke or hip, soothed or aggrieved, offended or assuaged—somehow engaged.

Star power over our cultural values is imbibed effortlessly. It leaps to the forefront when a perceived transgression arouses someone’s anger. Take for example the attacks against authors J.K. Rowling and Germaine Greer by feminist and transgender activists. Or the assaults on comedian Kevin Hart when his early homophobic remarks came to light. Either they uttered something contemptible that conflicts with the moral standard of a newly potent interest group. Or their influence is so highly valued they’re obliged to endorse the new morality.

Colin Kaepernick’s taking-the-knee at a highly symbolic public event is of a somewhat different order. One wonders if the football star envisaged the fierce reaction to his simple but loaded gesture. Having chosen to make his statement about police brutality against African Americans during the U.S. national anthem in front of crowds and cameras, his action generated intense reactions —public condemnation, termination of a lucrative contract, banishment from the National Football League.

We have yet to see how J.K. Rowling will emerge from cultural assassination, even after a heartfelt defense of her opinion on gender identity. Germaine Greer, a leading feminist voice who starting in the 1960s helped define a new ethic for women, is disinvited from prestigious events and delisted for an honorary degree for her recalcitrance.

Perhaps bolstered by the power of the BLM movement, Nike’s choice of Kaepernick as the centerpiece of its “just do it” social justice campaign and the man’s personal mettle, his immoral kneeling led to a stunning turnaround. Embraced by sports figures nationwide, “taking-the-knee” became a symbol of solidarity in the struggle for justice, and a model marketing tool. Many citizens like me were unfamiliar with Kaepernick-the-quarterback. After witnessing his unjust treatment and his resolve, hearing him speak, we recognize him as a moral leader.

Kaepernick has moved to another stage in his mission. With filmmaker Ava Duvernay, he co-directs and narrates a new film series. “Colin in Black and White” focuses on Kaepernick’s childhood. Though dramatization of young Colin’s encounters with racism is only part of the film’s message. Regularly throughout the story Kaepernick enters the frame to speak directly to viewers about American racism, referencing case histories along with historical and sociological studies. The film series thus becomes a moral lesson on justice and the Black American experience.

Opprobrium of individuals in the public eye is often harsh. Judgements go beyond mere criticism. Beyond a warning. You’re fired, cancelled, banished, de-A-listed. J.K. Rowling’s refusal to join the ‘trend’ in support of transgender identities is unacceptable. Like Greer and others, because she’s a highly-regarded celebrity she deserves censure. And the label “TERF”, trans-exclusionary radical feminist. An “illiberal left” has also entered culture war terminology.

Support for some international causes is morally weighted, too. On the one hand, women’s moral rights were offered as justification for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. By contrast, non-violent programs such as Boycott Divestment and Sanctions in support of Palestinian rights are attacked as immoral; teachers who dare to endorse Palestinian statehood are expelled. (Compare to the warm reception of George Clooney’s advocacy of South Sudan’s secession.)

Was it always so dangerous to be not only successful but a celebrity? Stardom brings huge influence. As such, spurning a new status quo may find you out in the cold.

But the temptation for glory and wealth is double-edged. Our A-listers often exploit their own luminary status to define values for their fans. Trendsetting in food and health, clothing and language is second tier; now it’s motherhood—e.g. Serena Williams on birthing and athletic prowess– sexual license, ostentation and, not unreasonably, political advocacy.

An example of explicit moral messages originating from the liberal left is the HBO show hosted by John Oliver. (Would Noam Chomsky include Oliver as one of his morally responsible intellectuals?) Oliver leaves little doubt about his ethical views on public issues. The format of “Last Week Tonight”, a plate of satire that combines convincing research, smart graphics and provocative narration rendered in his working-class British accent, has won him an enormous following. With disciples quoting Oliver adopting some of his moral indignation; understandable since Oliver himself is hugely pompous and absolutely, f*king unarguable. (Although one wonders if his lectures translate into real social action.)

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is Oliver’s political nemesis. Although Carlson wins without satire, without intellectual airs, too. Isn’t he as much a moralist as Oliver, his statements imbibed as uncritically, repeated as righteously?

Celebrities surely realize they’re not simply entertaining, not only informing. They’re advocating.

Some, like the daringly brilliant Dave Chappelle, seem to welcome a role in this volatile moral game. From his early productions on Comedy Central, Chappelle’s routines flirted with the boundaries of our social code. His edginess and irreverence do more than make us laugh; they make us squirm. He has enjoyed a moral license on a par with fellow comic-writer-actor Larry David. Yet, Chappelle doesn’t rely on funniness alone; he strategically interrupts his hooting audience with a moral tale. Riding on a hilarious, shocking punchline, he slips in a gentle lecture or a sobering anecdote to remind us of the reality behind life’s funny stuff.

Chappelle returns to the stage with a Netflix series that finds him at the center of a moral storm:– that concerning transgender rights. Eager to engage his attackers, he points to their intolerance. It’s more than a free speech issue, Chappelle explains: “My problem has never been with transgender people. My problem has always been with the dialogue about transgender.

In a shrewd shift to satire, he emphasizes the moral position underlying his work: ‘’I feel these things should not be discussed in front of Blacks; it’s f*cking insulting about how these (transgender) people feel inside. Since when has America ever given a f*ck how any of us feels inside?”

Who can argue with that?

To his transgender critics, Chappelle confesses: “…you have to understand that as a policy, I never feel bad about anything I say up here…. I do understand that life is hard and those types of choices do not disqualify you from a life of dignity, happiness and safety.” Then comes his riposte: “Why is it easier for Caitlyn Jenner to change his sex than for Cassius Clay to change his name?” Which returns us to the overriding moral issue for Chappelle — injustice in the Black American experience.

Not everyone gets this. The Economist’s sympathetic review of transphobia charges against the comedian concludes a possible moral theme underlying Chappelle’s mission–that “everyone is flawed and everyone should be accepted”. Not quite.

*

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Barbara Nimri Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon. 

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

“Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”

By Barbara Nimri Aziz

A century ago Yogmaya and Durga Devi, two women champions of justice, emerged from a remote corner of rural Nepal to offer solutions to their nation’s social and political ills. Then they were forgotten.

Years after their demise, in 1980 veteran anthropologist Barbara Nimri Aziz first uncovered their suppressed histories in her comprehensive and accessible biographies. Revelations from her decade of research led to the resurrection of these women and their entry into contemporary Nepali consciousness.

This book captures the daring political campaigns of these rebel women; at the same time it asks us to acknowledge their impact on contemporary feminist thinking. Like many revolutionaries who were vilified in their lifetimes, we learn about the true nature of these leaders’ intelligence, sacrifices, and vision during an era of social and economic oppression in this part of Asia.

After Nepal moved from absolute monarchy to a fledgling democracy and history re-evaluated these pioneers, Dr. Aziz explores their legacies in this book.

Psychologically provocative and astonishingly moving, “Yogmaya and Durga Devi” is a seminal contribution to women’s history.

Click here to order.

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

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***

Nearly three years ago, as US-led coalition forces trapped a remnant of the Islamic State (IS) in a small enclave near the Syrian town of Baghuz, the US military committed a horrific atrocity. As Air Force officers watched the scene via drone cameras in real time, US warplanes murdered at least 80 unarmed women and children with 500- and 2,000-pound bombs. The officers who saw the attack urged that a war crimes investigation begin immediately.

This act of mass murder is a war crime, the kind of offense for which Nazi officers were tried and convicted at Nuremberg. For three years, however, it was covered up by the US and its NATO allies until a devastating, 4,600-word article appeared on Saturday, based on US officers’ testimony, in the New York Times.

The atrocity in Syria inescapably recalls the “Collateral Murder ” video, revealed by whistleblower Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, of US Apache helicopters slaughtering over a dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007. It also recalls the massacre of patients and hospital workers in Kunduz, Afghanistan, in October 2015 and the bombing of wedding parties that killed hundreds.

These murderous acts are not isolated events, however. They are the product of the criminal operations of American imperialism as it has sought to subjugate and conquer the Middle East and Central Asia in three decades of unending war.

The revelations of the act of mass murder in Syria come from Air Force officers at Al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, who were monitoring a high-resolution surveillance drone flying over Baghuz.

That day, the Times writes, the

“US military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors.”

“We just dropped on 50 women and children,” said one officer monitoring the drone, though the US Central Command told the Times that 80 were killed, and the Times wrote that Air Force officers later saw a “shockingly high” death toll in another classified report.

The strike had been called in by a US Special Forces unit, Task Force 9. This unit, which bypasses the chain of command and was not coordinating with Air Force officers in Qatar, was advising the majority-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia attacking Baghuz.

It is not credible to attribute this atrocity to error. Lightly armed IS fighters or civilians at Baghuz were defenseless before drones and fighters that could film and bomb them at will. The Times admits:

“Coalition drones had scoured the camp 24 hours a day for weeks and knew nearly every inch, officers said, including the daily movements of groups of women and children who gathered to eat, pray and sleep near a steep river bank that provided cover.”

US wars in the Middle East and Central Asia have been sold to the population as a “war on terror.” However, the murder in Baghuz is itself an act of terrorism, aimed at demonstrating that American imperialism will stop at nothing to subjugate the population.

A military lawyer, Lt. Colonel Dean Korsak, ordered drone operators and fighter aircrews to conserve footage of the atrocity for investigations. He then “reported the strike to his chain of command, saying it was a possible violation of the law of armed conflict—a war crime—and regulations required a thorough, independent investigation,” the Times reports. Korsak’s concerns were bolstered by reports from CIA officials “alarmed” about Task Force 9’s operations in Syria.

What they encountered, however, was a cover-up orchestrated at top levels of the state, under both the Republican Trump and the Democratic Biden administrations.

Coalition forces in Baghuz oversaw the hiding of the bodies. “Satellite images from four days later show the sheltered bank and area around it, which were in the control of the coalition, appeared to have been bulldozed,” the Times writes. It cites a former US Army Special Forces soldier, David Eubank, who arrived a week after the attack: “The place had been pulverized by airstrikes … There was a lot of freshly bulldozed earth and the stink of bodies underneath, a lot of bodies.”

The US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations contemptuously ignored Korsak’s material. One of its officials bluntly wrote to Korsak that it would likely ignore his report, as it investigates civilian casualties only if there is “potential for high media attention, concern with outcry from local community/government, concern sensitive images may get out.”

Korsak then contacted the US Defense Department’s Independent Inspector General’s office. Gene Tate, a former Navy officer working as an evaluator at the Inspector General’s office, pressed for Korsak’s materials to be investigated. A team at Tate’s office even ruled that war crimes allegations were “extremely credible.” Ultimately, however, Tate was fired and thrown out of his office by security in October 2020.

After Korsak sent the US Senate Armed Services Committee his material, several months ago, the New York Times began investigating.

“I’m putting myself at great risk of military retaliation for sending this. … Senior ranking US military officials intentionally and systematically circumvented the deliberate strike process,” Korsak wrote in an email to the committee.

The bipartisan cover-up of the crimes of US imperialism in Syria is continuing, however. The Senate committee has not responded to either Korsak or Tate. The office of Senator Jack Reed, the committee’s Democratic chairman, refused to discuss the Baghuz atrocity with the Times.

As for the Times itself, after initially posting the article on the top of its site late Saturday evening, it had already begun to bury it by Sunday afternoon. The rest of the media has barely covered the revelations.

It is not hard to imagine what would happen if the US media could pin blame for this atrocity on the governments of Syria, Iran, Russia, China or another country in the Pentagon’s gunsights. There would be morally outraged calls for UN Security Council meetings, sanctions, war threats or US missile strikes in Damascus. When responsibility indisputably lies with the Pentagon, however, it is simply covered up by the US and Western European governments.

The atrocity in Syria again exposes the interests behind the jailing of Assange—who is detained in Britain and facing extradition and death in the United States—and of Manning. Over the 30 years since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union gave them a military opening to wage war across the Middle East, Washington and its allies have laid waste to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and beyond. Millions died in events that were covered up by the mass media but were witnessed by many people who can expose officials who carried out or are complicit in mass murder and war crimes.

The Baghuz atrocity points to a broad official falsification of death tolls in Syria. From 2014 to 2019, as the US, Britain, France and other countries destroyed the IS enclave in Syria and Iraq, they called down 35,000 airstrikes. “Nearly 1,000 strikes hit targets in Syria and Iraq in 2019, using 4,729 bombs and missiles,” the Times notes. However, “The official military tally of civilian dead for that entire year is only 22, and the strikes from March 18 are nowhere on the list.”

While Washington claimed it was killing only a handful of people in Syria, it was hiding reports on masses of people it had killed. The Pentagon was, the Times writes, “overwhelmed by the volume of civilian casualty claims reported by locals, humanitarian groups and the news media, and a backlog of civilian casualty assessment reports sat unexamined for months.”

The vindictive prosecution of Assange and Manning—and threats one can presume are now being made against Korsak and Tate—aim to ensure that war crimes committed as the product of the criminal wars supported by Democratic and Republican administrations alike will go unpunished.

The international working class must demand an end to the horrific persecution of Assange, who faces extradition to the US for revealing crimes such as those exposed by the Times article. Those responsible for the mass murder in Baghuz and its cover-up, along with the unending string of atrocities throughout the region, must be prosecuted.

*

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Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

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Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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New Zealand Tells Schools to Phone the Police if Unvaccinated Staff Show Up

By Paul Joseph Watson, November 16, 2021

Any staff member who hasn’t had the COVID vaccine by November 15th who tries to enter school grounds will be subject to a fine as part of the country’s “no jab, no job” policy.

The Covid-19 Pandemic Does Not Exist

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 15, 2021

Immediately following the March 11, 2020 WHO announcement, the fear campaign went into high gear. Stock markets collapsed on the following day: Black Thursday. On March 18, 2020 a lockdown was launched in the US.

Lukashenko’s Threats to Cut Gas Supplies to Europe, Goes Also Against Russian Interests

By Paul Antonopoulos, November 15, 2021

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Mounting Death Toll from COVID-19 Injections, Mandates Imposed in the Name of “Safety in the Workplace”. Non-consenting Airline Employees Push Back.

By David Skripac, November 15, 2021

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Climate Pollution from Plastics to Outpace Coal Emissions in US by 2030, Report Finds

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The Cruel Joke of COP26: The Road to Zero Emissions Is Strewn with “Alternative Facts”

By Dr. Andrew Glikson, November 15, 2021

Once again, the hopes of billions have been raised, only to be dashed, this time by the cruel joke of COP26, the reality being that “By 2030, governments are planning to extract 110% more fossil fuels than their Paris Agreement pledge to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels would permit”.

The Real Anthony Fauci. RFK Jr. Discusses His Book

By Dr. Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr, November 15, 2021

n a nutshell, Kennedy describes how Fauci turned the National Institutes of Health into an incubator for pharmaceutical products, and essentially sold the entire country to the drug industry. The book is an incredibly well-referenced record of his history of decimating human health, and exposes him as a self-serving charlatan.

Saving Capitalism or Saving the Planet?

By Colin Todhunter, November 15, 2021

The UK government’s Behavioural Insights Team helped to push the public towards accepting the COVID narrative, restrictions and lockdowns. It is now working on ‘nudging’ people towards further possible restrictions or at least big changes in their behaviour in the name of ‘climate emergency’.

COP26 and Pope Francis’ “Greening of Christianity”

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, November 15, 2021

Amidst the early days of the COP26 Summit in Glasgow, Pope Francis made several accolades to world leaders and the entire global Catholica community alike to take bold action in the face of anthropogenic climate change and drastically alter our entire system of values towards a new order.

History of World War II: Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union. Analysis of the Fighting

By Shane Quinn, November 15, 2021

The German-led invasion of the Soviet Union began at 3:15 am, on 22 June 1941, with an enormous artillery barrage along the Nazi-Soviet frontier. The USSR’s hierarchy had counted on it being too late in the year for German forces to attack, despite warnings to the contrary.