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***

“They didn’t act like people and they didn’t act like actors.  It’s hard to explain.” – J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951

There’s a reason that Catcher in the Rye, published 70 years ago, has become such an iconic book, praised and condemned in equal measure. It is because it is about lying, phoniness, acting, Hollywood, theater, plagiarism, and at its core, a society of liars.

Actors in a masquerade willing to don masks and face other faces with the veiled glances of the defeated.  It is about the massive social confusion that entered American life in an intense way following World War II, a world of propaganda and performance.  Although the book seems to be directed at adolescents, it is for adults, and while annoying many of them with its adolescent lingo, it cuts to the heart of our current life-the-movie society.  Adults have become kids, and Holden Caulfield knew that they would.  Or were.  Maybe he wanted it.  We now live in a society of costumed children, asking to be tricked.

“If you want to know the truth,” Holden keeps repeating, knowing that most people don’t, since they prefer the Show.

It is also a fall book with echoes of falling leaves in a dying land.  Football and war, Halloween and all souls drifting down in the crepuscular light of late October and the coming November remembrance of Veteran’s Day, once called Armistice Day, when the mad slow action film of WW I, the war to end all wars with millions dead in rat infested trenches, is commemorated, as if anything has changed and such memories are not secret celebrations of the heroic sacrifices the gullible make for their masters.  War is a racket; the ultimate racket.

Liam Clancy reminds us of this truth regarding the “Great” War and all the others that have followed. Millions of deaths brought on by lying government bastards.  Actors in the mass masquerade.

But it goes deeper than lying leaders.  For lying is the leading cause of living death in the USA, and the pharmaceutical companies have no prescription for it.  If they did, and if they cared, which they don’t, they would have manufactured such a drug long ago.   It would have killed them of course, but since their business is profits not suicide, they don their masks of solicitude and bank the spoils, while producing poison to shoot people with.

The great English writer, D. H. Lawrence, warned us long ago to not let the living-dead eat us up.  Yet we are still being devoured by a refusal that knows no name since it is not just them but us – victims and executioners, both in a mutual deadly game.

Death is a big hit, as everyone knows. It fascinates far more than does life.  One glance at the mass media will confirm that.  Fear, death, and disaster are the daily menu, interspersed with kitsch uplift. Propaganda feeds on it.  Up down all around spin that wheel and rattle your brains.

But the ghosts of fall remind us to beware of this necrophilia.  The dead return and wander among us, masked children wandering through the streets looking for handouts.  Adults laughing those tight grim laughs.  How cute!

Nietzsche said that “all things are entangled, ensnared, and enamored.”  I find this especially true during the autumnal season, especially the Halloween weekend of ghosts, death, and masks.  It is enchanting and disturbing if you give it thought.  Its symbolism explains the Covid propaganda and panic more than a thousand factual articles. It explains the warfare state and adults’ refusal to defiantly oppose it.  It explains the nihilistic underpinning of society and children’s fears and wishes to use a magic wand to change the world to one that celebrates life not death. That is the true treat that their unconscious playacting requests.  But the candy the adults give them conceals the poison the adults can’t face.  The poison that they have ingested.

I think of how all persons are, by definition, masked, the word person being derived from the Latin, persona, meaning mask.  Another Latin word, larva, occurs to me, it too meaning mask, ghost, or evil spirit.  The living masks light up for me as I think of ghosts, the dead, all the souls and spirits circulating through our days, swirling like dead leaves in the wind.

While etymology might seem arcane, I think it offers us a portal into our lives, not just personally, but politically and culturally as well. Word usage is at the heart of linguistic mind control, and we are in a world where the minders of the public’s mind have become adept at fashioning language to their devious ends.  Orwell predicted this in Nineteen Eighty-Four with his explanation of Newsspeak:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.  It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought – that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc – should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words.

A quick check of the latest dictionary updates will corroborate Orwell’s point about the future dictionary when Newspeak has been fully established, the meaning of words will be so changed that anything can mean anything, even its opposite.

Shakespeare, the ultimate wordsmith, was right, of course, to tell us that “all the world’s a stage,” though I would disagree with the bard that we are “merely” players.  It does often seem that way, but seeming is the essence of the actor’s show and tell.  But who are we behind the masks?  Who is it uttering those words coming through the masks’ mouth holes (the per-sona: Latin, to sound through)?

Halloween.  The children play at scaring and being scared.  Death walks among them and they scream with glee.  The play is on. The grim reaper walks up and down the street. Treats greet them.  The costumes are ingenious; the masks, wild.  It’s all great fun, the candy sweet.  So what’s the trick?  When does the performance end?

As Halloween ends, the saints come marching in followed by all the souls.  The Days of the Dead.  Spirits.  Ghosts walk the streets.  Dead leaves fall.  The dead are everywhere, swirling through the air, drifting.  We are surrounded by them.  We are them.  Until.

Until when?  Perhaps not until we dead awaken and see through the charade of social life and realize the masked performers are not just the deadly politicians and celebrities, not only the professional actors and the corporate media performers, but us.

And while these days of the dead and children’s games can bring us to wonder whether we act like people or actors – “even if it’s hard to explain” – whether behind the double masks we realize we can be genuine actors if we go deep enough, the celebration of Veterans/Armistice/Remembrance Day a few days later should  emphatically remind us of the Masters of War and the need to see through their masks, as Bob Dylan tells us.  The evil performers who “play with my world like it’s your little toy” with their endless lies.

Norman O. Brown so well describes our stage set:

Ancestral voices prophesying war; ancestral spirits in the danse macabre or war dance; Valhalla, ghostly warriors who kill each other and are reborn to fight again.  All warfare is ghostly, every army an exercitus feralis (army of ghosts), every soldier a living corpse.

It seems to me that Albert Camus was right, and that we should aspire to be neither victims nor executioners.  To do so will take a serious reevaluation of the roles we play in the ongoing national tragedy of lie piled upon lie in aggressive wars around the world and in election farces that perpetuate them.  The leading actors we elect are our responsibility.

We produce and maintain them.  They are our mirror images; we are theirs.  It is the danse macabre, a last tango in the land of bad actors, our two-faced show.  This masquerade ball that passes for political reality is infiltrated by the ghosts of all those victims we have murdered around the wide world.  We may choose not to see them, but they are lurking in the shadowy corners.  And they will haunt us until we make amends.

“Do you not know there comes a midnight hour when everyone has to throw off his mask?” warned Kierkegaard.  “Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked?  Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this?  Or are you not terrified by it?”

“Whenever I take up a newspaper,” Ibsen added, “I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.”

Yet the children and the eloquent voices of the genuine actors I have so liberally quoted here remind us of what is possible if we chase the light and stop the masquerade.  That would be cause for a real holiday celebration.

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

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

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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

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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***

While the US Navy continues to argue that US national security requires that its 80-year-old leaking 20 story underground jet fuel tanks remain open, I argue the opposite – that for US national security reasons the 200-million-gallon facility be closed down before a catastrophic leak destroys the potable water supply for 400,00 residents of Oahu.

Once the aquifer is contaminated by a predicted major fuel leak, it cannot be flushed out or be rehabilitated. US Navy officials have said that the water from a contaminated aquifer would have to be filtered either by a massive filtration system that does not yet exist or individual households would have to filter the water at home.

The Navy does not have a filtration system on the island of Oahu and citizens do not have sufficient bottled water or individual household filtration systems should there be a catastrophic leak of toxic jet fuel into our water supply. The state of Hawai’i that issues the permit for the underground fuel tank system to remain open is playing with our lives by allowing this ticking time bomb of the leaking tanks to continue.

Graphic by Sierra Club Hawai’i

Leaks occur regularly. At least 73 fuel leaks have been documented at the Red Hill facility, according to the Board of Water Supply. The Sierra Club estimates that more than 180,000 gallons of fuel have leaked since construction of the tanks during World War II.

Graphic by Sierra Club Hawai’i

The recent leaks include 27,000 gallons of fuel leaked from Tank 5 in 2014, and never recovered. In March 2020, a pipeline connected to Red Hill leaked an unknown amount of fuel into Pearl Harbor. Roughly 7,700 gallons of fuel was collected. The Navy confirmed it was an active leak in January 2021, but misled the public for months. In May 2021, approximately 1,000 gallons of jet fuel was released. The cause is still under investigation. In July 2021, a leak of 100 gallons that is suspected to be connected to the Red Hill facility was found at Kilo Pier on Pearl Harbor naval base.

At long last, on October 27, 2021, the State of Hawai’i Department of Health fined the US Navy $325,000 for its environmental violations at the Red Hill facility.

No doubt there have been other leaks that have occurred that no one knows about, or that the Navy knows about but is not making public. I say that as a 29-year US military veteran who retired as a Colonel.

Graphic from U.S. Marine Corps

We know that many military personnel and their families have been sickened from chemical leaks that the commanders of the bases knew about, but did nothing to resolve. In a major case on water supply pollution at military bases, the pollution at the US Marine Base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina resulted in a Congressional act “Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012”

that provided a presumptive service connection of exposure to contaminants in the water supply for Veterans, Reservists, and National Guard members who later developed one of the following eight diseases:

• Adult leukemia
• Aplastic anemia and other myelodysplastic syndromes
• Bladder cancer
• Kidney cancer
• Liver cancer
• Multiple myeloma
• Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
• Parkinson’s disease

High levels of “Forever Chemicals” have been found on over 175 military bases from the Chesapeake Bay to the West Coast, Great Lakes, Alaska and Florida.

The 100,000+ military personnel and their families assigned military organizations on Oahu including the Indo-Pacific Command headquarters at Camp Smith-Aiea, the headquarters of the US Navy of the Pacific at Pearl Harbor, the headquarters of the US Air Force of the Pacific at Hickam Air Force Base, the headquarters of the US Army of the Pacific at Fort Shafter and the Coast Guard Regional headquarters at Sand Island should be very concerned that the military they work for is refusing to close down the jet fuel tanks that can jeopardized their lives, much less the 300,000 civilians in the Honolulu area who rely on the aquifer’s waters.

Two other military base underground fuel tank systems have been closed down and above ground fuel tanks installed at the Point Loma facility in San Diego, California and the Manchester facility in the state of Washington. Department of Defense funds were allocated for the construction of new above ground fuel tanks.

In the 2022 Department of Defense budget of $778 BILLION to which Congress added an extra $20 BILLION over what the military and administration had requested, surely the water supply and health of 400,000 residents of Oahu, including the military personnel who live in the aquifer area and staff the important military commands located on Oahu, are more important than the fuel for the aircraft, ships and other vehicles that are operated under these commands.

If military personnel are sick from the contaminated water supply, then the national security of our country is jeopardized by one of the military commands that has not made the safe storage of jet fuel a priority.

The Pentagon spent $8 trillion of our US tax dollars over the past ten years, which is the equivalent of over $1.5 million per minute. Within the 2022 $778 BILLION budget surely $5 BILLION can be found to close down the Red Hill jet fuel tanks and construct above ground tanks.

Above ground fuel tanks are not difficult to construct. There are already many above ground tanks on the island of Oahu.

Ironically, what seems to be most difficult is the will to finally admit that 80-year-old leaking fuel tanks must be closed down for the human security of 400,000 residents of our community. On October 29, 2021 over 200 persons participated in a virtual Red Hill Task Force meeting. The overwhelming majority of public comments made at the meeting were to close the Red Hill fuel tanks down.

The time has come for the Red Hill fuel tanks to be closed before catastrophe strikes and the water supply of 400,000 on a national defense strategic location, an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 2400 miles from the continent, is polluted forever.

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Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. As a reservist, she had assignments with the Indo-Pacific Command. She was a US diplomat for 16 years and served in US Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the U.S. government in March 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq. She is the co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience.

Featured image: US Navy photo of inside of one of the 20 massive jet fuel tanks inside Red Hill, Oahu, Hawai’i (Source: Antiwar.com)

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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Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

For years, Iyad Shallouf, a farmer who owns a piece of land near the Gaza seashore, used to fill tanks with freshwater for people’s use in his neighbourhood. Today he can barely buy his own water to irrigate the crops. 

With the exacerbating water problem in Gaza, farmers, especially those in the western areas of the blockaded Strip, face the brunt of the water pollution crisis due to their lands’ proximity to the contaminated seawater.

Instead of using water wells for irrigation, they have to buy water several times a month in order to avoid damage to their crops.

“Here in the al-Mawassi area [adjacent to the sea], we endure a suffering that only God knows. Our crops get damaged by the contaminated saline water, so we now avoid using the regular ways of irrigation and instead buy water to irrigate the crops,” Shallouf, 45, from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, told Middle East Eye.

“I already have a water well which would have saved me a lot of money if used for irrigation, but the elevated chlorine concentration and salinity levels have rendered the well useless. We cannot even use it for bathing because the water would damage our skin.”

Shallouf said he had tried to grow several types of crops in the past, but always ended up incurring huge losses due to the damage caused by poor quality water.

Deterioration of water quality  

The long-term Israeli blockade has caused a “serious deterioration” of water quality in Gaza, making 97 percent of the water contaminated, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

The situation is compounded by an acute electricity crisis that stymies the operation of water wells and sewage treatment plants, leading to about 80 percent of Gaza’s untreated sewage to be discharged into the sea while 20 percent seeps into underground water, the NGO said.

It added that recent data shows about a quarter of the diseases spread in Gaza are caused by water pollution, and 12 percent of the deaths of young children and infants are linked to intestinal diseases related to contaminated water.

“A civilian population caged in a toxic slum from birth to death are forced to witness the slow poisoning of their children and loved ones by the water they drink and likely the soil in which they harvest, endlessly, with no change in sight,” Muhammed Shehada, the group’s chief of programmes and communications, said in an oral statement made at the 48th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) earlier this month.

As a result of the water pollution, farmers and landowners in most areas of the coastal enclave have to pay about two Israeli shekels (around $0.60) for each 1,000-litre-tank used for irrigation.

“We use huge amounts of water for the crops, the 1,000-litre tank is nothing. If we have to pay two shekels for every tank, the whole process sometimes becomes unworthy of the efforts,” Shallouf said.

Iyad Shallouf says he pays around 100 shekels ($31) per day to fill up the 80 cubic metre artificial water pond on his land, which is used for irrigation (Mohammed al-Hajjar/MEE)

Shallouf spends around $1,000 a month to buy water and to fill artificial water ponds in his land for irrigation. Sometimes, the high costs of water and fertilisers, combined with the shortage of fuel and electricity used to pump the water, lead to heavy losses for farmers.

“Today, our decision as farmers to plant certain type of crops is completely linked to the availability of water. For example, you probably won’t see farmers growing cucumbers or strawberries in these areas, because these types of crops require large amounts of fresh water. So instead we grow green peppers and other crops that don’t require much water.”

In the area where Shallouf’s farm is located, vast areas of agricultural lands have been turned into residential areas because of the water shortage.

“Many farmers thought it was not worth it to continue growing crops that would eventually get damaged by contaminated water or by the lack of fresh water, so they just sold their lands or built residential homes and apartments on them instead.”

‘Unfit for human consumption’

The water crisis has been steadily worsening since the beginning of the Israeli blockade, and reached its peak in 2020.

In 2020, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated that only 10 percent of the population of the blockaded enclave had direct access to clean and safe drinking water, while more than one million residents – around half of the population – lacked water and sanitation interventions.

Water with high saline levels in several areas across the Strip forces hundreds of thousands of households to buy water for drinking and bathing.

A Palestinian man checks the water tap in his home in Gaza’s al-Nuseirat refugee camp, where water supply is constantly interrupted, on 5 March 2019 (Mohammed al-Hajjar/MEE)

While the seawater has a salinity of roughly 30,000 parts per million (ppm), domestic water in some areas in Gaza reaches up to a third this number.

This is equivalent to 10 grams of salt per one litre of water, a level considered very high, according to Ahmed Safi, a Palestinian expert in water and environmental sciences.

“Much of the water in Gaza, including drinking water, is contaminated by nitrates, in addition to salt and high levels of chlorine, which causes residents multiple diseases. In some areas, you cannot even use the water for bathing,” he said.

“The main reason for the water crisis in Gaza is the overuse of groundwater caused by the population increase due to many factors, starting from the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees during the Palestinian Nakba back in 1948.”

More than 2.1 million people live in the coastal enclave, covering a total area of 360 square kilometres, making the blockaded Strip one of the most densely populated areas on earth.

Around 70 percent of the population are refugees who were forced to leave their hometowns and villages in other parts of the occupied Palestinian territories upon the creation of Israel.

“The treatment of wastewater is another complicated problem. For years, sewage systems depended on pits in the ground that collected wastewater, eventually seeping into groundwater and contaminating it with nitrates. This system is still being used in some areas until now,” Safi added.

As a result, there has been a 13-14 percent increase in the number of kidney failure patients every year in the Strip, according to Dr Abdullah al-Qishawi, head of the dialysis department at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.

“We currently have 1,000 patients who come to the dialysis department three times a week. Of those cases, at least 20 percent are caused by water contamination,” he told MEE.

“Here in the dialysis department, you will notice that most patients come from areas adjacent to the borders, where the water crisis remains at its peak.”

Qishawi said that although there are no specialised studies in Gaza that address the relation between the rising number of kidney failure cases and water contamination in the Strip, doctors can assume that contaminated water is the cause for kidney problems.

“Kidney failure is usually caused by other diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure or renal calculi. However, a large number of people diagnosed with kidney failure in Gaza do not suffer any of these diseases, which is an indication that it is caused by the water that is unfit for human consumption,” he explained.

Power cuts

The electricity supply in Gaza remains highly dependent on the political situation. During tensions between Israeli and Palestinian armed groups, the Israeli authorities usually suspend fuel shipments and close the Kerem Shalom crossing at the junction of Gaza–Israel, forcing the Strip’s sole power plant to shut down.

In the best situation, residents of the Gaza Strip receive electricity in an eight-hour rotation – eight hours of electricity followed by eight hours of blackout.

During these long hours of power cuts, the functionality of the Strip’s infrastructure is severely affected, and generators that pump clean water from wells into homes would stop working, essentially cutting off water resources for a large portion of the local population.

“Our daily schedule depends on the availability of electricity and water. If we have electricity, that means that we have water to bathe, cook, wash the dishes, clean, and drink. If there is no electricity for several hours, our life simply stops,” Areej Muhammed, a 29-year-old mother from west of Gaza, told MEE.

“During the time when electricity and water are shut off, we just sit there waiting for it to come back. We reschedule all our tasks and daily routine according to the schedule of water and electricity,” she added.

A report of a field assessment of health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2016 revealed that over one quarter of illnesses in the Gaza Strip are related to the pollution of water, which is also a primary cause of child morbidity.

In 2017, the European Union and Unicef funded a €10m seawater desalination plant in Gaza to improve access to drinking water for thousands of residents. But with the ongoing power crisis, the plant cannot work at full capacity.

However, due to fuel shortages, treatment plants that process wastewater work at a reduced capacity, forcing the water authority to dump contaminated and partially treated sewage water into the sea.

Devastated infrastructure

In the Israeli military’s successive attacks on the Gaza Strip since 2008, Israeli forces have targeted the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure multiple times, including areas containing water wells and pipelines, sanitation facilities, as well as municipality buildings operating sanitation and sewage services.

In its latest attack in May, Israel launched an 11-day-military operation on the Strip, directly targeting vital civilian infrastructure, and resulting in long-term damage.

A Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment conducted by the World Bank in the aftermath of the attack revealed that the Strip has incurred up to $380m in physical damage and $190m in economic losses, directly affecting the residents’ right to access safe water.

A child cycles near a water desalination plant run by the local water authority in al-Nuseirat refugee camp, on 15 March, 2019 (Mohammed al-Hajjar/MEE)

Before the attack in May, the average daily consumption of water in Gaza per capita was around 88 litres, which was between the WHO’s recommendation of 50-100 litres required per person per day to ensure that the most basic needs are met and few health concerns arise.

In the aftermath of the attack, Oxfam reported that 400,000 people in Gaza did not have access to a water supply as a result of the severe destruction in infrastructure.

Today, hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents have to buy water from private desalination plants.

“About two years ago, my youngest son suffered from severe diarrohea and abdominal pain, and it turned out it was due the consumption of domestic tap water. After that day, I started buying water from trucks,” Abu Sameh Omar, 40, a resident of central Gaza city, told MEE.

“We usually can afford (to buy) the minimum amount of drinking water each month. It is more expensive than the water we receive at home, but that option is undrinkable.”

“What I cannot afford is to allow my children to drink that water and fall ill.”

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Featured image: Palestinian children drink water from a public water tank in al-Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza on 15 March, 2019 (Mohammed al-Hajjar/MEE)

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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***

E-mails sent to millions of employees across Canada titled: ‘COMPULSORY VACCINATION POLICY AGAINST COVID-19’ emphasize that companies are promoting safety in the workplace in order to prevent the potential spread of the virus (today, while writing this text, 34,802 people or 0.09% of the total population are reported to be infected), which is why the decision to apply mandatory vaccination for all employees was enacted. 

This decision enters into effect on November 1, 2021.

Every employee working from an office, attending meetings or in the field must be fully vaccinated, regardless of the nature of their employment, whether working from the office or remotely.

Furthermore, by no later than December 31, employees should provide proof and confirmation that they have been vaccinated or provide medical documentation or give some other reason based on the Human Rights Act that exempts them from the vaccination requirement. Along with a written request for ‘exemption’, they should also enclose a confirmation of a medical or religious reason based on the Human Rights Act. The request will be taken into account by the company’s management on an individual basis and may or may not be accepted. Also, all those who have not been fully vaccinated are urged to do so immediately. Companies are generous in giving a 3-hour paid leave if needed, in order to receive the vaccine.

However, there was not a single word in the e-mailed announcement about the Canadian Constitution and what it states about the adopted measures. Namely, on the basis of which law and article can a decision be made regarding the mandatory immunization of the entire population? In Canada, the flagship of Western democracy, this basic constitutional question is almost never posed or talked about.

On the other hand, on October 13, 2021 the French Senate rejected the bill mandating compulsory vaccination against the Coronavirus disease. The proposal submitted by the Socialists at the end of August was rejected by 262 votes, with only 64 senators voting to put the bill forward. Thereby, the Senate has failed to adopt the law which “which establishes a mandatory vaccination against COVID-19.”

As the Constitution is the highest law of a state, the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia (one of those small countries often called ‘backward’ and ‘uncivilized’ in the West) stipulates that the universal human right is the right to freedom. People make decisions by their own free will regarding issues that concern their well-being and health, while the Constitution of Serbia ‘incorporates’ the right of citizens to independently make decisions regarding these matters.

As a small number have trust in the justice of the Canadian system and the Human Rights Act (which mainly deals with the LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQA and LGBTQ2S populations), many Christian Orthodox believers have flocked to their churches seeking not only solace but also a written request of exemption from the mandatory vaccinations – based on religious reasons.

The church is a fortress and a beacon in this general planetary chaos, as it always has been in previous centuries.

However, the Greek and Serbian Orthodox Churches clergy in Canada quote to their parishioners, just like to the author of this text, the government guidance, with the request to remain anonymous.

“I am sorry, but a decree from the Diocese was sent and we have no authority to give any such confirmation.”

“The situation is completely muddled but we must endure to the end. Try not to get vaccinated. We pray to God to help us.”

“Most bishops and a number of priests have already been vaccinated. Only one Russian priest issues certificates of exemption, thus respecting the will of the faithful.”

If a believer seeks confirmation and refuses to be vaccinated, why does the church deny them this opportunity?

One priest acknowledged that the Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church held no view on this issue, but it permitted each priest to hold his own opinion. The religious body considers the vaccination policy a medical issue but it also has a political stance, which is why the Synod declines to issue ‘exemption’ certificates. In fact, unvaccinated residents can leave Canada until October 30, 2021 but they cannot return without a vaccination certificate. The same rule applies to domestic travel by plane, train, or boat between the many provinces and territories of Canada.

In any case, the only bright spot in these muddled times is the afore mentioned Russian priest who consented to provide an ‘exemption’ certificate but the question still remains whether the managements of various companies will accept it or not.

You see, it is raining… The weather is bad 

When joining the protest rally that took place in Toronto (with a population of over 6 million) on Saturday, October 16, to rub shoulders with those fighting against the restrictive (new) Covid measures and standing for freedom and the right to have their opinion and their position and to preserve the dignity given to them by birth as human beings, we two Serbs (my friend and I) found ourselves among some hundred or so ‘Canadian’ protesters, several Chinese people, and one Australian. When we asked an ‘authentic’ Canadian woman why there were so few people at the protest, unlike in Australia or Europe, the answer was completely shocking: “You see, it’s raining… the weather’s bad.”

A Chinese man at the October 16, 2021 protests

Appeased by actual well-being (the rich) or fake comfort (the majority of the population is deep in debt), on this rainy day Canadians chose to watch TV or dine at a restaurant (restaurants restrict entrance to COVID-19 vaccine certificate holders).

The question arises: why was there no closing credits theme music at the protest for the end credits for democracy in this vast country!? After all, the foundation of democracy is the freedom of choice… 

The overture for the October or July “Trail balloon” 

In mid-July, some distressing news appeared on local portals: “Seneca College is the first Canadian university requiring all students and employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.”

Considering that at that point in time, a mere 0.001% of the population were infected, according to official data, it was unclear why the Seneca College management had decided on this drastic measure.

In fact, this decision posed numerous questions that required answers from the Seneca College representatives, as well as those from the legal and medical professions, but also the international community, which kept its silence during the summer of 2021.

Other universities in Ontario, including Ryerson, Ontario Tech and Western University, stated then that they would require vaccinations for students living in dormitories but not for those living off-campus.

In Manitoba, university representatives assured concerned students, professors and staff that they would not make vaccinations compulsory. “We can’t demand anybody to get the vaccine. That’s not within our power or in the province’s power,” the president of Brandon University, David Docherty, told CBC News TV.

It is now completely clear that this decision by Seneca College was not just a ‘trial balloon’ but rather, an overture for the measures adopted on October 6, and that young people in this country, once a symbol of democracy, would not have a choice regarding vaccinations at any of Canada’s universities.

The bold representatives of the universities in the province of Manitoba spearheaded by Docherty have realized that “the province’s power” is not at all relevant but that rather, it has passed into the hands of the PM who autonomously makes decisions for the betterment of the nation.

At any rate, Prime Minister Trudeau, as soon as he announced the new COVID-19 measures, left for a vacation to the District of Tofino (British Columbia), which is known for its wild nature, ancient rainforests, and sandy beaches where visitors can surf all year round. As October remains remarkably warm, Canadians, while fearing for their jobs and freedom of movement, can conjure up their PM performing miraculous acrobatics on a surfboard. For, once they allow themselves to be deprived of their freedom of opinion and the right to choose, it is guaranteed that those who are to come after Trudeau will also be ‘surfing’ on the very same wave.

The dark (non)democratic autumn days are quickly passing by and heading towards camps for the unvaccinated. But in all honesty: the tradition of labour camps and reserves in Canada is rich and long.

There are some 3,100 reserves in Canada for the indigenous nations, according to a 2011 survey. The rights and freedoms of Canada’s First Nations are regulated by the Indian Act passed in 1876 by the Canadian Parliament, and the Canadian federal government has been given the exclusive authority to pass laws relating to “Indians and the land reserved for them.”

At the beginning of the First World War, thousands of immigrants were considered enemies of Canada just because they had arrived from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and they were confined in labour camps across the country. Thousands of Ukrainians, as well as Serbs, Hungarians, Germans, and Romanians were arrested and taken to camps where they subsisted in harsh conditions, starving and freezing, until 1919. The most famous camp that housed many Serbs was located in northern Ontario.

During the Second World War, there were about 40 camps in Canada intended for the accommodation of German soldiers captured in North Africa. One such camp in Manitoba, operating from October 1943 to October 1945, housed German prisoners of war who were engaged in numerous work projects.

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Marina Bulatović  is a journalist and regular member of the Independent Journalists’Association of Serbia (NUNS) since 1998.

Featured image: There was a wide variety of badges for purchase at the protest/All images in this article are from the author

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The United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has dented the credibility of the trans-Atlantic relationship and dealt a body blow to the NATO. These developments add to the already existing frustration in Washington that the European allies disfavour its confrontational Indo-Pacific Strategy. Europe regards China as an economic competitor and ‘systemic rival’, but prefers the path of engagement and dialogue. 

While a break-up of the trans-Atlantic alliance is inconceivable, the centrifugal forces at play are unprecedented. The China-focused policy of the US is contributing to the unraveling of the Western alliance system. The Quad, which the Trump administration resuscitated to counter the challenges posed by China’s rise, has no European content. 

The West Asian Quad (Quad-2), comprising the US, Israel, the UAE and India, which the Biden Administration unveiled two weeks ago, also follows the same format — the US networking with regional partners. 

Both Quad-1 and Quad-2 have China in their crosshairs. Both are conceived as ‘coalitions of the willing’. Both formats have sea power as the dominant paradigm. Both are anchored on the control of the chokepoints in sea lanes — the Malacca Straits and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait respectively. The Malacca Straits provide sea passage to the Indian Ocean from the South China Sea; the Bab el-Mandeb Strait connects the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. 

Now, it is on the Yemeni island of Socotra, which overlooks the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait, that the UAE and Israel have created an intelligence gathering base. The UAE has deployed hundreds of troops on the strategic island since May 2018, disregarding the protest by the Yemeni government. The base can provide critical security services to the US regarding the Chinese economic activity, especially its trade with Europe, and the movements of the Chinese Navy. 

The island of Socotra is known as the “Jewel of the Gulf of Aden” and is the largest of the archipelago of the same name, which consists of four islands and two islets sitting at a strategic location in the Indian Ocean, off the Horn of Africa’s coast, in the Arabian Sea. Most exports of oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf that transit the Suez Canal and the Suez-Mediterranean Pipeline pass through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. read more

For years, the UAE has been seeking to annex the island, and the collapse of the Yemeni state due to years of instability has paved the way for this takeover. 

An interesting sideshow here is the UAE’s diplomatic, military and economic competition with Saudi Arabia in Yemen. For the UAE, controlling Socotra means strengthening its commercial and military projection in the Indian Ocean, thus emphasising its rising inter-regional prestige. 

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia’s interest lies in curbing the Emirati influence on the island thereby reaffirming Riyadh’s pre-eminence in Yemen as well as in the balance of power in the Gulf region. 

Security analysts estimate that the spy base in Socotra will also be used to monitor Pakistan, especially Gwadar Port. Clearly, the Quad-2 impacts the power dynamic in the region. read more

The Israeli media has reported that Socotra Island is “attracting a lot of attention from the Israeli security services.” It is entirely conceivable that in reality, the base is an US-Israeli project. The US has been making efforts to derail the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor which connects Gwadar to Kashgar in Xinjiang. 

The Israeli military intelligence website Debka File reported in May that the UAE is also building a new air base on a volcanic island off Yemen called Perim Island, which will give the “means of controlling oil tanker and commercial shipping through the Red Sea’s southern chokepoint and up to the Suez Canal.” read more

The well-known Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, Bruce Riedel wrote in an analysis in May that Saudi Arabia and the UAE have “entrenched their hold on strategic parts” of Yemen and are “unlikely to give up their gains without significant international pressure.”

Riedel wrote that the Saudis occupied the province of al-Mahrah, Yemen’s second largest, which borders on Oman and has 20 bases and outposts in the province now. Al-Mahrah port gives Saudi Arabia direct access to the Indian Ocean. According to Riedel, Riyadh plans to build an oil pipeline from Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province through al-Mahrah to the sea which would ease Saudi dependence on the Straits of Hormuz for exporting oil. 

On the other hand, the UAE’s focus is on Yemen’s strategic islands.  Riedel wrote: “The United States should not be a party to the dismemberment of Yemen. It is not too early to quietly put down a marker that if a cease-fire is arranged in Yemen, the Saudis and Emiratis will need to evacuate al-Mahrah, Mayun, and Socotra, and return control to the Yemenis.” read more

Indeed, given such high stakes affecting the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy to contain China, it is improbable that Washington will ask the UAE, Israel and Saudi Arabia to leave Yemen alone. 

Put simply, Quad-1 and Quad-2 are joined at the hips. Given the Quad-2’s agenda to monitor China and Pakistan, Washington has thoughtfully invited India to join. Of course, Israel and the UAE also have very friendly ties with India.

However, a few caveats must be added. First, it is one hundred percent certain that whatever UAE and Israel do in Yemen and the Arabian Sea will have an Iran angle to it. In fact, Iran is under no illusions on that score. The Tehran Times recently featured an interview with Yemen’s ambassador to Iran. According to the ambassador, it is an Anglo-American condominium that is at work in Yemen and it is only with US backing that the UAE and Saudi Arabia have pursued such an interventionist policy. read more

The conflict in Yemen has been one of the most brutal wars in the post-Cold War era. Why should India have Yemeni blood on its hands? Equally, Quad-2 has an anti-Iran dimension to it. India-Iran ties can never be the same gain if Delhi teams up with the US and Israel, UAE in Iran’s immediate neighbourhood. 

Third, Quad-2 is a major step in boosting the US-Indian quasi-alliance. As the latest developments in Sudan show, a nasty geopolitical struggle is erupting for control of the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea. For Israel, the great game provides ideal setting to get embedded in Arab politics. But India needs to be circumspect. 

It is not in India’s interests to needlessly annoy a host of countries in the region and from outside the region such as Turkey, Iran, Qatar, China, Pakistan — and even Russia. The bottomline is that the government must explain how India benefits out of this joyride in Quad-2. 

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Featured image: A virtual meeting of the foreign ministers of India, Israel, UAE and the US took place on October 18, 2021

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Lawyer Dipali Ojha of the Indian Bar Association details the efforts she and her colleagues are making to push India’s courts to hold corrupt covid task force officials accountable for multiple acts of malfeasance, to stop the rollout of a newly developed DNA vaccine for children approved under an emergency use authorization [EUA], and to investigate the doctor who issued the EUA.

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Whether it was “a coup or not a coup” by definition, description or explanation, what happened October 25 was simply power shift or appropriately political power grab under gun point (unconstitutional change of government and state power) in Sudan. It has sparked several academic and non-academic discussions throughout the world. Chairman of the Sovereignty Council of Sudan Abdel Fattah Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, as first steps in an announcement publicly declared a state of emergency and suspended both the council and the government.

He, however, defended the state administrative forcible change over as a necessary step to prevent civil war. He further suspended a number of provisions of the constitutional declaration, which sets the frames of the interim period after toppling of President Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled the country for 30 years, and determines relations between the military and civilian authorities, but sternly promised that next political elections planned for July 2023.

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan sets the primary task to resolve the stalemate between political forces and the army, reshape the declaration towards the transition to the civilian government and political elections. “We are aiming to see through a transition to a civilian government. The mistrust between transitional parties occurred after the signing of the peace agreement in Juba,” Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said in his first public address to the nation.

Sudan, located in northeast Africa, has deepening economic crisis, so many social and political forces. While some are advocating for developing democracy, others have, under the circumstances, aligned with the military, which has accused the civilian governing parties of mismanagement and monopolizing power. Apparently, the Sovereign Council – established as a collective presidency body comprises both civilians and military leaders, but tensions between the civilian and military leaders have persisted since after toppling Omar al-Bashir.

Condemnation have routinely come from the United Nations, the African Union, Regional Organizations and individual external countries. Multiple international actors, including the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, have made clear their support for Sudan’s civilian transition. Human Rights Watch, for instance, has seen the takeover risks precipitating a reversal of the small but important gains made over the course of the last two years under the now-dissolved transitional government.

Interesting and most importantly, there are two main issues to understand and take into consideration, here. The first the strategic location of Sudan and second who is the new Sudanese leader in relation to key global players in the North and Northeast Africa.

Sudan as Strategic Location

As noted by Dr. Mohamed Chtatou, Professor of Education Science at the University in Rabat, there are different economic, geopolitical and geostrategic challenges in the Mediterranean Sea, the location of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Sudan.

At the crossroads of three continents, the Mediterranean is an area under tension, with important strategic issues: confrontation between Arabs and Europeans, rivalry between powers, colonization, control of the straits and the Suez Canal. It remains a space of confrontation between great powers, and distant powers (United States, Russia) continue looking to invest in it, and now includes newcomers like China.

He further argues that the region is one of the oldest maritime trade areas and thus subject to many challenges. The Mediterranean Sea junction of three continents and bordered by a great diversity of countries and cultures, is also in the age of globalization. He stresses the function of a maritime corridor, not only of interest to the Egypt of the canal but also some containerization hubs in the region.

Further tracking down from the Maghreb coastline to Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, there are many competing interests within EU countries, notably between France and Germany, and in the Arab world. Nevertheless, from a strictly economic point of view, the Maghreb remains a strategic trade area for the EU since the majority of exports and imports from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia go to or come from European countries. Likewise, in terms of energy, Algeria alone supplies around 15% of the EU’s natural gas needs. Along these, Sudan also presents itself for foreign naval base.

Who is Abdelrahman al-Burhan?

According to a report written by Oscar Rickett from Middle East Eye, General Abdel Fattah al-Burkhan is the Chairman of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereign Council (TSC) since April 2019, and is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. He is described as a veteran soldier, and had long been one of Bashir’s reliable lieutenants – both literally and politically.

Born in 1960 into a Sufi family in a village north of Khartoum, Burhan studied in a Sudanese army college, then later in Jordan and at the Egyptian military academy in Cairo, where fellow alumni included future Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He is married and has three children.

Burhan and Sisi are longstanding friends, though the Sudanese general has lifelong affiliations with the kinds of Islamist movements that Sisi has outlawed. Still, as Patrick Smith, editor of Africa Confidential, told Middle East Eye (MEE), the two military leaders are united by “the greater good of stopping democracy”.

His first international trip after becoming Sudan’s de facto head of state was to Egypt in May 2019. From there he went on to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. Earlier in his working life, Burhan served briefly as Sudan’s defence attache in Beijing, but his military career under Bashir was defined by prominent roles played in South Sudan, Darfur and Yemen where, as head of the armed forces, he helped supply the Saudi-led coalition with Sudanese mercenaries.

Burhan’s time in Darfur is significant also because it brought him into contact with the warlord Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, widely known as Hemeti. Hemeti became leader of the Janjaweed, the Arab militias that brought death and despair to Darfur, and which have since morphed into the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), with Hemeti still at the helm.

As head of the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces respectively, Burhan and Hemeti are both allies and rivals. Hemeti serves as vice president of the transitional military council, but his family and the RSF benefit enormously from their control of gold mines in Darfur, as well as from the patronage of the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Sudan’s military has, in theory, a bigger budget, and is in control of a significant military industrial complex.

These various sources of power and wealth have come under threat from Sudan’s civilian-led government and it is thought that this is partly why Burhan and Hemeti have moved when they have. Burhan was due to step down as the military’s chair of the sovereign council this year, to be replaced by a civilian appointee.

Both he and Hemeti are said to be mindful of being held accountable for past actions in Darfur, and Burhan had been lobbying to dissolve the civilian-led council of ministers, according to Africa Confidential. Hemeti is a more charismatic, more cartoonish figure than the quietly spoken, methodical Burhan, and the RSF leader is more closely associated with the atrocities surrounding the transition to democracy – most notably, the massacre of more than 128 people in Khartoum in June 2019 – than the armed forces general.

Russia’s Relationship with Sudan

As the local Russian media, recopying or quoting from Vedomosti, Kommersant financial newspaper writes, “Under al-Bashir, Khartoum and Moscow launched talks on the establishment of a Russian naval facility in Sudan on the Red Sea.

A related agreement was signed with Sudan’s Sovereign Council after al-Bashir’s ouster, but it wasn’t ratified and in June 2021, the chief of staff of the Sudanese Armed Forces said that the African country planned to review the agreement’s conditions. Now, with the new political developments, the issue of a Russian naval facility in Sudan “has been put on the back burner” as there are no reliable politicians in Sudan, who would be willing to publicly discuss the topic with Russia.

“It’s Washington who is the key actor in the Sudanese drama. Much will depend on whether the United States will continue to unequivocally condemn the coup or soften its position. If Washington moves to bring sanctions back in order to support civilian activists, it will lead to a complete socio-economic disaster in Sudan,” Associate Professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities Sergei Seregichev told Kommersant.

According to him, any future developments in Sudan will play into Russia’s hands but it would be more beneficial for Moscow if the military remained in power in the country because the less influence the West has in Sudan the better.

What is more, many Russian academics and politicians share the above view from Associate Professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities Sergei Seregichev, that Abdel Fattah al-Burhan remains number one in Sudan. Despite everything including, at the same time, with high expectation to see the involvement of the people in the political process and developing a genuine democracy, Russia practically needs leaders who cooperates usefully and manipulatively to realize its strategic goals in the region.

Egypt’s General Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and Sudan’s General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan are suitable for Russia. These two situations also compared well to Libya, Russia continuously advocates for all-inclusive political forces paradigm, but offer enormous support for Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar. The obvious trends are that Russia follows that Gaddafi-era, Mubarak-era and Bashir-era military personalities to enforce or operationalize its military-technical cooperation – a very good sign for boosting geo-strategic influence in the part of Africa.

The UN and the African Union

The United Nations, the African Union, Regional Organizations and individual external countries raised dissatisfaction about the political developments, further condemned the undemocratic and forced change in Sudan. Of course, these were routinely reported in the media. UN Secretary General António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, in an official statement posted on Twitter, said “there must be full respect for the constitutional charter to protect the hard-won political transition.”

The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, has learned with deep dismay of the serious development of the current situation in Sudan. Faki Mahamat calls for the immediate resumption of consultations between civilians and military within the framework of the political declaration and the constitutional decree. He, however, reaffirms that dialogue and consensus be the only important path to save the country and its democratic transition, and further calls for the necessary strict respect of human rights. In the end, Sudan was suspended from the African Union.

Interestingly, Russia is among a few countries that have been extra mindful in its criticisms of the power swift in Sudan. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Russian Special Presidential Envoy for the Middle East Mikhail Bogdanov and Ministry’s Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, considered as “unacceptable” the foreign intervention in Sudan’s internal affairs.

On October 18, Sergey Lavrov issued a stern warning to external countries and specifically to the United States during a press conference with his Guinea-Bissau counterpart Suzi Carla Barbosa. He unreservedly reminded that Russia initially sought to preserve the territorial integrity and unity of Sudan, by all means necessary, but a number of actors, led by the United States decided that the Sudanese people should live in separate states.

“We believe that any interference in this country’s internal affairs must be stopped,” he said. “The Sudanese people must define their own fate; we expect that everyone who is trying to counter this principle now realize their responsibility not to allow another hotbed of destabilization on the long-suffering continent of Africa.”

The Minister underscored that

“Russia did a lot to make this ‘divorce’ peaceful, but interference has begun after it: the imposition of approaches to the building of democracy in its Western understanding, of shock reforms, which caused a reverse reaction. The social and economic state of the people and unemployment has worsened abruptly, and the traditional structure of the Sudanese society is currently under serious tension.”

On October 27, Bogdanov had a phone call with US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman, after which the ministry issued an official statement.

“The sides discussed the recent development in the Republic of Sudan. The Russian side underscored the need for prompt stabilization of the situation, settlement of the existing intra-Sudanese controversies via an inclusive dialogue with involvement of all political forces in the interest of achieving a national accord. And further the resolution of urgent social and economic problems of Sudan,” the Ministry said in its statement, adding that the Russian side “emphasized the unacceptability of external intervention in the internal affairs of this country.”

On October 21, during her weekly briefing, Zakharova reiterated thus:

“I can only reaffirm our position. I would like to remind everyone that some external players, primarily the United States, decided that it would be better for the Sudanese if they suddenly lived in two different states. A campaign of foreign interference was launched, with attempts made to impose on the Sudanese the approaches and ways to build democracy that the West deemed appropriate. As the result, serious tensions have developed in the traditional structure of the Sudanese society.”

She believes that

“any interference in the internal affairs of Sudan, or any other country, should be stopped and that the Sudanese people must determine their own future themselves. It is our fundamental principle, which is based on international law and the UN Charter. We do hope that all those who are trying to reject this principle are aware of their responsibility for the future of the state and the people whose life they want to change according to their own pattern.”

Understanding Russia’s Special Interest in Sudan

While the creation of the two separate Sudanese states were determined through a referendum – the will of the Sudanese themselves, it is equally important to understand Russia’s frequent expression of sympathy and its special interest in Sudan. Russia has had “friendly relations” with Sudan, dating back from Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled the country for 30 years.

Before his overthrow, Omar al-Bashir made one more trip to Russia in November 2017, agreements were reached on Russia’s assistance in modernizing the Sudanese armed forces. Khartoum also said at the time it was interested in discussing the issue of using Red Sea bases with Moscow. That proposal drove Moscow into signing a document, after several discussions and negotiations, the possibility of constructing a naval base in the region, along the Red Sea and in the Indian Ocean.

According to the executive order, the published document says “an agreement between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Sudan on creating a facility of the Navy of the Russian Federation in the territory of the Republic of Sudan be adopted” and further authorizes “the Defense Ministry of Russia to sign the aforementioned agreement on behalf of the Russian Federation.” The document stipulates that a maximum of four warships may stay at the naval logistics base, including “naval ships with the nuclear propulsion system on condition of observing nuclear and environmental safety norms.”

That document submitted by Russia’s Defense Ministry, approved by the Foreign Ministry, the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Investigative Committee of Russia and the Russian Cabinet. As the document says, the Russian Navy’s logistics facility in Sudan “meets the goals of maintaining peace and stability in the region, is defensive and is not aimed against other countries.”

Foreign Minister of Sudan Mariam Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi following talks in Moscow on July 12, this year, together with Lavrov, agreed to the ratification of the document by both the State Duma of the Russian Federation and Parliament of Sudan. On July 1, President of Russia Vladimir Putin submitted an agreement on building a Russian naval station in Sudan for ratification by the State Duma. Earlier, Sudan announced its decision to revise the 25-year agreement that was first brokered by its ousted leader Omar al-Bashir during a meeting with Vladimir Putin in 2017 to establish a Russian naval base in Port Sudan, on Sudan’s Red Sea coast.

After the 2017 meeting, the project did not take up immediately though. But signifies that Russia will make one huge stride by establishing a naval facility in Sudan. It distinctively marks its maritime security presence in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea region. Sharing a northern border with Egypt, Sudan is located on the same strategic coastline along the Red Sea. Russia needs both Sudan (Northeast Africa) and Egypt (conduit to Maghreb) to have unshakeable influence in the region.

During the first Russia-Africa summit held in Sochi, President Vladimir Putin held business discussions with Chairman of the Sovereignty Council of Sudan Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman al-Burhan. Putin noted that “Sudan is certainly one of our long-standing reliable partners” referring to days of Omar Al-Bashir.

With the internal political processes are taking place there, Putin said “the signing of the constitutional declaration, the formation of the Sovereignty Council and the establishment of a transitional government to be the first steps aimed at getting the country on the path of sustainable development. Many tasks still lie ahead. We intend to continue rendering all necessary aid and support for the normalization of the situation.”

Abdel Fattah Burhan replied:

“Our relations have a long history: 60 years ago they began to develop, and you have always supported Sudan, always stood by Sudan, and we always know that Russia stands together with countries that fight for their rights, for justice. We would like to tell you that the changes in Sudan are positive. They are happening in a successful and positive way. Today armed forces and coalition forces play an important role in these events, and they want to build the future of Sudan.”

“As you have already mentioned in your speech, our relations are developing, and these bilateral relations are based on several agreements. We hope that we will sign new documents and cooperation agreements, and you will help us, in particular, to build up our armed forces,” the Sudanese leader said, and concluded “We have much common ground, such as, investment cooperation. We also cooperate at international forums, and share common positions on many international problems.”

African Leaders and Sustainable Development Goals

In this 21st Century, Africa need development especially building its most needed infrastructure, modernizing agriculture (large-scale food-production) and adding value to products (industrialization). Thus, foreign partners and potential external investors have to logically realize these, but it’s for African leaders to know that muscle-flexing (militarized or weaponized) approach is simply incorrect to addressing today’s Sustainable Development Goals.

In addition, rhetoric are not only ineffective in terms of conflict resolution but also may, in fact, be aggravating tensions and violence. Instead, African leaders require comprehensive development-oriented policies combined with good governance, these are the best solution, at least, to minimizing social conflicts and economic disparities, ultimately ensure that long-term peace and harmony on the continent.

Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed, on October 28 meeting with diplomats emphasized the “vital importance” of peace and security in Africa, and highlighted how all African Union members, and other regional and sub-regional groups, can make lives more secure across the continent. She deployed African leaders’ largely ad hoc approach to the continent’s development issues, most often relegated to the background.

She explicitly pointed to a military coup d’état in Sudan, to continuing conflict in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region, and persistent threats of terrorism and violent extremism. In her observation, there has been “a rise in seizures of power by force” and “a proliferation of militias” across Africa.

She said that despite these “worrisome developments” happening there in Africa, Africans have continue working relentlessly for a prosperous, sustainable and peaceful continent, based on the universal principles of human rights, as witnessed through growing cooperation between the United Nations, African Union and sub-regional organizations on sustainable development, elections and peace processes.

As always trumpeted, the global perception is that Africa remains as one of the world’s least developed regions, and deep-seated poverty despite its resources. In conclusion, and for this argument on conflict resolution must be seen inextricably incorporated into pursuing development goals, there is one simple surest way for an African Solution to African Problems: for Africa leaders necessarily resolve to “focus on sustainable development” and be abreast with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the AU’s Agenda 2063.

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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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Too few among today’s citizens have come to the realization that the very same tactics used to spread fear of global warming and the demonization of a CO2 as the causal agency for climate change, is identical in principle to those techniques used to spread hysteria over a new pandemic. In both cases, the same sleight of hand was deployed by the same imperial interests designed to persuade humanity that our survival is threatened by a non-existent danger, while our salvation is found in a poison.

In this presentation delivered to the 76th Stiftung Corona Ausschuss, Canadian Patriot Review’s Matthew Ehret lays out the fallacy of statistical thinking, the fraud of computer models, manipulated data sets and false consensuses used to get seemingly educated people to turn off their own powers of thinking. Not only is the history of the Anglo American promotion of eugenics (pre and post WWII) featured in this lecture, but we also shed light on the causes of today’s manufactured energy crisis, the ugly agenda behind the Great Reset and also debunk the belief that CO2 has any causal connection to climate change.

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This article was originally published on The Canadian Patriot.

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

Featured image is from The Canadian Patriot

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Once upon a time there was an organization called North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO for short. It was founded in 1949, and today consists of a group of 30 countries from Europe and North America. NATO supposedly exists to protect the people and territories of its members. Of the 30 member countries, 28 are in Europe and only two, the US and Canada, are in the Americas.

As part of NATO’s “Open Door Policy”, meaning that any country in the Euro-Atlantic area is free to join NATO if it is prepared to meet the standards and obligations of membership, contributes to the security of the Alliance, and shares NATO’s values of democracy, reform, and the rule of law. That’s part of what the NATO rules say.

Since 1949, NATO’s membership has grown from 12 to 30 countries. In 2020 NATO welcomed North Macedonia as the 30th member of the NATO Alliance.

NATO was created by the US Pentagon in close collaboration with the CIA, after WWII, under the pretext of providing “collective security against the threat posed by the Soviet Union.” So, NATO laid the groundwork for cheating the world into believing that the Soviet Union, just having lost some 30 million people in WWII and with a destroyed infrastructure – would be a threat to Europe. But big wonder, the deceit-media propaganda worked, as it does today with Covid, and as it does most of the times, currently painting another hot war on the wall.

Fearmongering is part of the strategy. For everything. Keep people in fear and they are vulnerable for any kind of manipulation. This is an old axiom, going back even farther than the Roman Empire. And it still works. People haven’t caught on to it – yet.

When that will happen – namely that people see behind this farce, behind the Bluff, the world will change. We will suddenly – or gradually, but ever faster – realize, the power is with us, the people.

Well-off people, especially in the US and Europe, living in the cocoon of a “comfort zone” believe anything they are told by the authorities, and by extension – by the bought media. These people obey the authorities, because after all, why thinking for themselves, if you pay a government that is supposed to do the thinking for you – right? The better off they are, the better they may be enslaved – and what’s worse, they become adamant and stubborn and righteous. They behave exactly as the “authorities” want them to behave to transform society into a tyranny, still under the pretext – “we are a democracy.” And yes, as long as we go along, we are doomed.

NATO should have taught us a good lesson. But if it had not been for Russia and China, we would still be crawling on our knees to please NATO, not even noticing that NATO is an empty shell, has no power and all they have left is some pompous people on top and in the middle, who would love to continue just for a bit longer keeping control over Europe and – well, they would like to believe – over the rest of the world.

One of the founding principles of NATO is Article 5 of its charter, which states that an armed attack on one member nation would be considered as an attack on all; insinuating a threat that NATO could start a WW if a country aggressed and provoked enough by NATO – say, the Soviet Union, now Russia, and / or China, would retaliate against NATO’s constant aggressions and provocations.

That was NATO then, and that’s what NATO would like to be today, and what they still pretend to be. But pretending is just about all they are able to muster at this point. Pretending is just another word for nothing left to lose (quote from Janis Joplin’s Bobby McG, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose”). That’s NATO at its worst.

For some strange reason, until very recently, Russia has remained in an observer status associated with NATO, actually it’s hard to believe, associated with the arch-enemy number one? – The only and maybe THE explanation could be that by preserving this observer status they thought they were also some kind of an insider — but, that was an illusion from day one onwards.

Although there has never been a written record found to attest that NATO promised Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in 1990, not to move an inch beyond Berlin, Moscow believed the Genscher promise and that of other senior West German officials, in order to agree to the German unification. Today NATO supporters, even in German, say the only way a unified Germany could come about, was a “Germany unified in NATO”. It was a sheer lie, as none of NATO’s rules can legally negate a member country’s sovereignty. But the lie was swallowed and became the precedent-setting expansion of NATO.

That was then. Now is Now – 30 years later. NATO has expanded all the way to the doorsteps of Moscow. They would love to make Ukraine a NATO member, to move even closer to Moscow. One of the reasons for the “western fabricated” conflict with and in Belarus, is that toppling Lukashenko, would give the west an opportunity to put in a pro-western dictator, who eventually would open Belarus’s doors for NATO. The west is arrogantly and unrealistically dreaming. Mr. Putin and the Kremlin as whole will, of course, never allow such a move. But megalomania doesn’t see any limits.

In a related note, to better understand the whereabouts and purpose of NATO, faced with increasing pressure to dissolve the five member UN Security Council, President Putin warned on October 21, 2021: “If we remove the veto right of the permanent members, the UN would die the very same day – it would turn into the League of Nations. It would simply become a discussion platform”.

It may well be that the UN Security Council with five veto votes – as fragile as it may be – may fall apart, in which case the “geniuses” behind NATO may have thought, NATO may take over the role of the UN Security Council, all in the interest of the dying western empire.

NATO was created in 1949, just after WWII, very much with the League of Nations in mind. Created in 1919, just after WWI, the League of Nations was an imperial hoax, pretending and selling its world peace interests to a WWI beaten-down world as the last and greatest hope for “lasting peace”. By now we know the real history.

Fast forward. As RT aptly analyses on 25 October 2021,

“NATO’s bullish new plan to fight Russia on the seas, the skies and in space could backfire, igniting a catastrophic nuclear conflict. NATO’s new strategy to fight Russia across the width of Europe – from Baltic to Black Sea – has been approved. Unsurprisingly, the details are secret, but bloc officials have confirmed it includes nuclear, cyber and space warfare.”

“As you would expect, NATO insists that this cross-continental strategy will serve only defensive purposes and the US-led group has also emphasized that it does not believe that Russian attacks are imminent. In other words, NATO presents this initiative as an act of due diligence: Preparing for the worst imaginable scenario, while helping to avoid it ever becoming a reality by deterrence, as German Minister of Defense Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has duly underlined.”

In other words, despite everything that was said and promised during Germany’s recent election campaign, to keep an open door to improve relations with Russia, is out of the window with the German Defense Minister’s statement. The “deterrence” argument is a sheer aggression towards Russia. It surely pleases NATO and much of the west’s neoliberal leadership, but certainly not a vast majority of Germans, and European citizens, who are eager to improve relations with a peaceful neighbor.

Yes, Russia is a peaceful neighbor.

Russia has never aggressed anybody – other than in self-defense, i.e., beating Nazi-Germany back to Berlin in WWII. Aggression is not in Russia’s nature. This contradicts all of western mainstream media lies. But like with other lies and hoaxes, the well-being living standards of Europeans bars them from seeing the light, from even wanting to see the truth. That’s sad. As when they will see the truth, because it crushes in on them, on us Europeans, it might be too late.

Of course, Moscow sees things differently – and rightly so. For the Kremlin expansion of NATO eastward has been an issue since the early 1990s, since the broken promise by German Foreign Minister Genscher – “NATO will not expand an inch towards the east”. As President Putin indicated on many occasions, there will be no expansion of NATO into Ukraine, nor into Belarus – or else. And the “else” is important, as NATO well knows.

Russia’s defense system is exponentally more efficient and more powerful and faster than that of the west. Therefore, continuing on this abysmal note, as NATO does, is not more than a bluff, and of course, an attempt to keep the west believing that NATO still has teeth, when in fact NATO is an empty shell; an empty over-stretched shell, with members, whose population would by a vast majority want to exit NATO – for whom NATO has no purpose anymore. It’s a sheer threat to peace. As the people and that’s what eventually counts – are not afraid of Russia or China.

It’s the fear-machine spreading false information – the western amply paid and ”subsidized” media – that make believe the danger is in the east. In fact, they keep building and maintaining a Manichean wall and view throughout the west. The Manichean philosophy is an old religion that breaks everything down into good or evil. It also means “duality,” so if your thinking is Manichean, you see things in black and white. And that’s precisely what the west is doing. It’s a reborn philosophy out of Washington. Massive cold war propaganda spread during the four decades after WWII throughout Europe, and by extension parts of Asia and Latin America.

NATO is spread so thinly around the globe – take the many direct or loaned military bases in the South China Sea, and surrounding China and Russia on land – some 3,000 bases – how could they be effective against the latest state of the art weaponry of Russia and China. None of the two countries are boasting with “deterrents”. They don’t need to.

They know and the west, especially Europe, should wake up to the idea – the hard reality – that the future is where the sun rises – in the East.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He is also a non-resident Sr. Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Global WAR-NING: Geoengineering Is Wrecking Our Planet and Humanity

By Prof. Claudia von Werlhof, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Elana Freeland, Claire Henrion, Conny Kadia, and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 30, 2021

It seems that natural catastrophies have started to surround us everywhere – from the animal world next to us as well as from the sky above us. Is “nature” the enemy that has to be combatted today, be it by vaccinating humanity against the coronavirus that allegedly jumped out of the wilderness attacking us, be it by tearing down industrial production and consumption in order to avoid the alleged greenhouse gas CO₂ emissions, being officially identified as the sole culprit of a so-called global warming? Or be it by applying methods of an alleged civil “geoengineering” against an ongoing climate change that seems to threaten the world?

Zervou Refugee Camp: Silence Is Not an Option for Greece’s Samos Island

By Chris Jones, October 29, 2021

One of the biggest and most costly construction projects on Samos in recent years is now open. I cycled around the completed site this past week. It is awesome in its scale (over 6 hectares) and is a dramatic addition to the island’s infrastructure.

Worldwide Walkouts! Protests against Illegal Covid Mandates

By Children’s Health Defense, October 29, 2021

People around the globe are protesting the loss of liberty, illegal mandates and tyrannical government overreach. Over the last eighteen months we’ve witnessed a removal of the liberties we hold dear. Every man, woman and childs’ basic human rights are under attack and we believe the power is with the people.

Video: The Vaccine is More Dangerous than COVID-19: Dr. Peter McCullough

By Dr. Peter McCullough and Michael Welch, October 26, 2021

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!

Promoting a New Tyranny under the Guise of Saving the Planet

By Michael Welch and Cory Morningstar, October 30, 2021

According to The Guardian, the world nations, bound by treaty in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), agree to “avoid dangerous climate change” by reducing greenhouse gas emissions established as the principal component of our distorted weather conditions.

The Psychological Impacts of Covid-19 Pandemic Measures: Lockdowns, Warnings, “Social Distancing”, “New Variants”. Drastic Increase in Depression and Anxiety

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, October 29, 2021

According to the researchers and collaborators from the Australian University of Queensland and the University of Washington, the psychological interactions of lockdowns, warnings, “social distancing” and ever new “variants” led to a drastic increase in depression, anxiety disorders and permanent worry.

Nearly Two Million Americans Dead from COVID Vaccines, Infections, and Collateral Impacts: Dr. Joel Hirschhorn

By Joel S. Hirschhorn, October 29, 2021

During the pandemic many deaths have occurred, approaching 2 million Americans.  Ponder this: Have large numbers of excess deaths over pre-pandemic years resulted from something other than COVID infections?

‘Hundreds of Thousands’ of COVID Vaccine Injury Reports Backlogged in VAERS, Analyst Says

By Children’s Health Defense, October 29, 2021

On the latest episode of “Doctors and Scientists,” host Brian Hooker interviewed Jessica Rose, Ph.D., a computational biologist and Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) analyst. Rose discussed the problematic flaws in the VAERS system.

Freedom of Information Requests: Health/ Science Institutions Worldwide “Have No Record” of SARS-COV-2 Isolation/Purification

By Christine Massey, October 30, 2021

The central question raised in this study is the following: is there reliable evidence that SARS-CoV-2  has been isolated  from an “unadulterated sample taken from a diseased patient”?

Video: Big Pharma Imposed the “Vaccine” and “Digital Certificate”: “Undisclosed Contract” with EU Governments. Members of the EU Parliament Press Conference

By Global Research News, October 30, 2021

Watch the video for the Undisclosed Contract between Big Pharma and the EU governments. It is outlined at 14.00.

A Letter to UK’s Chief Coroners Office on Disturbing COVID and COVID Vaccination Deaths

By John O’Looney, October 29, 2021

I write to you with very grave concerns around these Covid vaccinations and Covid generally, over the last 20 months I have seen a series of very disturbing patterns and patterns in death rates and circumstance’s surrounding Covid.

The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 30, 2021

The E-book includes analysis of curative and preventive drugs as well as a review of Big Pharma’s Covid-19 “messenger” mRNA vaccine which is an “unapproved” and “experimental” drug affecting the human genome.

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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Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

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Without a quiet change to federal law just before the onset of COVID-19, the experimental, mRNA COVID jabs may never have been labelled as vaccines.  

A previous article on LifeSiteNews.com described the major conflicts of interest observable during the process leading up to the U.S federal government’s emergency use authorization of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. In December 2019 (before reported outbreak of COVID-19), the U.S. federal government signed a contract with one COVID-19 vaccine maker, Moderna, which “stated ‘mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates [are] developed and jointly owned” by both Moderna and the U.S. federal government, the article explains.

This article discusses the additional significant fact that, also in December of 2019, the U.S. federal government changed the definition of “biological product” in federal laws governing vaccine labeling, emergency use authorization, and approval. The U.S. federal government labels vaccines as “biological products.”

A thorough discussion of the significance of the change of the U.S. federal law cannot be provided here due to the technical, scientific, and pharmaceutical terminology and descriptions required. A basic summary is as follows: without the December 2019 change to U.S. law defining “biological product,” the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines may have been required to be labeled as something other than a vaccine.   

Stated slightly differently, the U.S. federal government’s definition of “biological product” which was used up until a few weeks before the reported outbreak of COVID-19 may have prohibited the mRNA COVID-19 products from being labeled as vaccines.  

It would probably be much more difficult for governments and/or employers to mandate receiving coronavirus mRNA substances labeled as drugs or other non-vaccine products. Guilt-tripping physicians, nurses, and others into receiving and supporting mRNA COVID-19 substances with the potential false accusation of “anti-vaxxer” would also be out of the question if the substances were not labeled as vaccines. 

New definition of ‘biological product’ weeks before COVID

It should be noted that to become approved in the United States, vaccine manufacturers are required to submit a “Biologic License Application” to the U.S. federal government. (Page 2) U.S. federal law has vaccines included in the category of “biological products.”

Prior to the 2019 change to U.S. federal law, the legal definition of biological product was as follows: 

The term “biological product” means a virus, therapeutic serum, toxin, antitoxin, vaccine, blood, blood component or derivative, allergenic product, protein (except any chemically synthesized polypeptide), or analogous product, or arsphenamine or derivative of arsphenamine (or any other trivalent organic arsenic compound), applicable to the prevention, treatment, or cure of a disease or condition of human beings. (emphasis added)

The December 2019 change to the definition of “biological product” is found in the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020, and is as follows:  

SEC. 605. BIOLOGICAL PRODUCT DEFINITION.

Section 351(i)(1) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 262(i)(1)) is amended by striking “(except any chemically synthesized polypeptide).”

Thus, prior to the 2019 change which was made soon before the reported outbreak of COVID-19, “any chemically synthesized polypeptide” would not be regulated by the FDA as a “biological product.” This could be interpreted to mean that if a supposed “vaccine” was a “chemically synthesized polypeptide,” then apparently it would not be regulated as a biological product.   

But chemicals labeled as “vaccines” require biologic product license applications; thus, it seems that according to the previous definition of “biological product,” any chemical entity that is a chemically synthesized polypeptide could not be labeled as a vaccine.  

The significance of this change is that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines chemically synthesize the SARS-CoV-2 “Spike” (also known as the “S”) protein. (As of the time of this writing in August 2021), both mRNA COVID-19 vaccines which were given “emergency use authorization” by the FDA are “nucleoside modified” which means that they are “chemically modified” and programmed to synthesize the SARS-CoV-2 S protein.

Thus, the wording of the previous definition of “biological product” seems to suggest that the mRNA COVID-19 “vaccines” could not legally be labeled as vaccines. That would be a major problem for public health officials and “vaccine” makers.  

COVID vaccines and ‘chemically synthesized’ mRNA

Without getting overly technical, it should be noted that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are the first products which use the technique of “synthetic” or “chemically synthesized” mRNA to be given emergency use authorization by the FDA. (Pages 748-749)   

After injected into humans, the chemically synthesized mRNA COVID-19 vaccines synthesize – or “produce” – a protein which is similar to the “spike” or “S” protein of SARS-CoV-2. Proteins “contain one or more polypeptides.” Thus, the synthesis of the “S” protein is also described as “polypeptide synthesis.” 

A more specific explanation of the chemical synthesis of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines from the scientific literature is as follows: 

The chemical components of mRNA vaccines are pleasantly unremarkable, consisting primarily of RNA plus “water, salt, sugar, and fat,” with two notable exceptions. The first is the lipid nanoparticles that encapsulate the mRNA and facilitate its delivery, which are excellently reviewed elsewhere. The second is the non-natural RNA nucleobase N1-methylpseudouridine (m1Ψ; Figure 1b), which enhances immune evasion and protein production. (Page 748, emphasis added) 

For this article, it is important to know that a chemical component of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines is N1-methylpseudouridine. The chemical N1-methylpseudouridine “enhances…protein production.” “Protein production” may also be stated as “protein synthesis” or “polypeptide synthesis.” Another way to state this is that N1-methylpseudouridine is a chemical which participates in the polypeptide synthesis of the “S” protein necessary for the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. 

This means, then, that the “S” protein necessary for the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines could be accurately described as a “chemically synthesized polypeptide.”  

Now, refer to the definition of “biological product” before the December 2019 change to U.S. federal law. The law previously excluded “any chemically synthesized polypeptide” from the definition of “biological product.” That definition, then, would seemingly exclude the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines from being labeled as a “biological product.”  

But since “vaccines” require a Biologic License Application, then it would seem that with the previous definition of “biological product,” COVID-19 mRNA “vaccines” could not be labeled as vaccines. 

More evidence of a falsified pandemic?

It is unknown if the legal definition of “biological product” was amended by Congress to remove “except any chemically synthesized polypeptide” to permit foreseen chemically synthesized COVID-19 mRNA substances to be labeled as “vaccines.”  

However, the fact that this significant change was made on page 595 of a 716-page law which is normally used for appropriating U.S. federal funding suggests the possibility of an attempt at being conspicuous.  

The aforementioned change to U.S. federal law is also relevant to discussions in previous articles which described updates to U.S. federal laws made soon before COVID-19 suggesting the possibility that COVID-19 may be some sort of falsified pandemic exercise.  

Specifically, the timing of the change – before COVID in December of 2019 – along with the apparent hurried status – burying the change on page 595 of a U.S. federal funding act – again suggests the possibility that COVID-19 may be a falsified pandemic exercise which U.S. federal government public health officials and politicians were preparing for by attempting to legally protect themselves with several significant changes to laws, strategies, and plans governing and regulating public health “emerging threats,” pandemics, vaccines, or related subjects. 

It is also worth repeating that the U.S. federal government partially owns an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, and soon before their imposition onto Americans, the U.S. federal government seemingly ensured COVID-19 mRNA vaccines would be legal.  

Of course, the timing and apparent conspicuousness of the 2019 change to the U.S. federal law which seemingly ensured that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines could legally be labeled as “vaccines” could merely be a coincidence. If keeping track of the large number of major coincidences regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, though, the reasonable person might at least be cautious of anything certain persons and entities communicate regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The capitalist system attempts to divert attention away from its obvious failings in every way that it can, from mindless entertainment to the contrived drama of January 6th and missing person stories to their most valuable diversion – Donald Trump!

That is why the collapse of the latest diversional politics reflected in the Build Back Better (BBB) has not generated the attention that it deserved, and when it did garner attention, it was framed as some grand battle of personalities.

However, the real story of the Democrats’ inability to fashion an agreement on the BBB social infrastructure bill, is not related to the supposed disagreements between the personalities of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and the individuals who make up the “progressives.” No, the focus and real story is related to the shortsightedness, greed and arrogance of the capitalist oligarchy that is unwilling to make any sacrifices to preserve their system and, consequently, making it increasingly difficult for their political servants in Congress to serve their interests without serious political consequences.

As I previously wrote, Biden’s mission was to stabilize the neoliberal order by giving it a more humane face through subterfuge and slick marketing.  A ruse of change was necessary because the rulers were quite clear that they were not going to allow substantial change in the systemic plunder that characterizes the current neoliberal stage of capital, [although] they understood that the crisis for workers and the poor will continue and become even more acute.

That potentially explosive social and political situation was the basis for the tentative agreement among the rulers that some degree of ameliorative social spending would be allowed. I am sure they got some degree of satisfaction when they cleverly thought that as their messaging strategy, they could spin the plan as some great Roosveltian departure from neoliberalism.

Captured rhetorically in the Build Back Better legislation, the legislation incorporates a number of policies from the Green Party and Sander’s campaign with the plan to dangle them before the public to demonstrate that the democrats were concerned with the plight of workers and the so-called middle class. Policies like free community college tuition, expanded Medicare, paid family and sick leave, new funding for housing and pre-K and child-care, subsidies for healthcare and expanded Medicaid and millions for climate change policies.

However, initially at a price tag of over six trillion dollars, it was understood that this was not serious. Democratic Party operatives understood that a reconciliation bill passed only by Democrats would have to be reduced significantly. And it was. The six trillion was reduced to 3.5 trillion. But this is where it also got messy.

When the progressives did not initially play the role assigned to them which was to give rhetorical support to the Biden reform agenda but then defer to the more important infrastructure legislation passed by the Senate, it forced the competing capitalist interests out into the open and undermined what had been a general consensus among them to support some degree of social spending.

An army of lobbyists were unleased in Washington from the energy companies concerned with the bill’s climate proposals, big pharma concerned about giving the government the power to negotiate drug prices – to healthcare industry and insurance companies and individual capitalist concerned with maintaining the Trump tax cuts of 2017.

The result?

Biden called the progressives to the white House and announced that the new top numbers would have to be between 1.7 and 1.9 trillion. Why? The reason for this number was never revealed. It certainly did not reflect the result of any new agreement between the progressives and neoliberal forces. It was probably a number that Biden, along with Manchin and Sinema had agreed to in order to moderate the more costly aspects of the bill, and to ensure that there would be no significant increase in taxes for the wealthy.

Regardless of where it came from, it was a dictum to the progressives to cave. In fact, it became clear that even that number was not secure because Manchin and Sinema continued to hold out for no more spending above 1.5 trillion.

And what was response from the “progressives”?

Representative Pramila Jayapal, chair of progressive caucus, emerged from the meeting at the White House and acknowledged that cuts were coming but stressed that many of the progressives’ policy priorities in health care, education and social spending remained intact. She also had some strange praise for Biden as “the inspirer, he is the closer, he is the convincer, the mediator-in-chief,” … “He really is doing a phenomenal job.”

Unfortunately, for everyone who thought the progressives were prepared to struggle for their legislation, the signal that they were open to Biden’s number translated into lost leverage with “power” dramatically shifting from the progressives back to the neoliberal party bosses, who, of course, included Biden even though Manchin and Sinema were his stand-ins.

Reports then started to circulate that the proposal for two free years of community college was going to be eliminated. Paid family leave would be cut from 12 weeks to as low as 4 weeks, and child tax credit would be extended by only one year. Inclusion of dental care under Medicare to be scaled back to an $800 voucher and vision and hearing eliminated. Medicare negotiations with Big Pharma to cut prescription drug prices, while still on the table, looks pretty doubtful in light of the enormous pressure being exerted by the pharmaceutical companies. It looks like that the funding for elderly home care and public housing will be slashed and any substantial increase in taxes on the wealthy is off the table.

Even at $3.5 trillion, the capitalist oligarchy understood that the ameliorative measures in the bill were not meant to address the deepening economic crisis facing workers. Yet, there were elements in the bill that would have represented policies that still would have provided some material advantages to workers, particularly to Black women workers who now make up the majority of the Black labor force.

But the Democratic Party, along with its array of allied social forces — labor unions, feminist groups and NGOs — were not prepared to fight for those changes. In fact, these groups were told to stand down.

The Mild Reforms of the BBB legislation were not Benevolent Gifts from the Rulers but Should Be Seen as Individual and Collective Human Rights

A state’s legitimacy is based on its ability to address the human rights of the residents and citizens of that nation. Housing, food, the right to health, a clean environment, the means to make a living, education, real social security, which includes security from unemployment, sickness and social deprevation, and even the right to leisure, are all human rights that the capitalist order is unable to protect and fulfill because it does not even recognize them as human rights.

That is why the capitalist system’s legitimacy crisis will only be exacerbated by the Democrats when they attempt to sell the stripped-down version of what was already an inadequate bill to address the human rights and needs of the working class and the poor in the U.S.

Politically, regarding 2022, it means that any idea that the Democrats could deliver reforms which could win back the millions of white working-class voters who voted for Obama twice has been undermined by the greed, shortsightedness and sectorial conflicts of interests within the ruling capitalist class.

What the BBB debacle has created is another opportunity to demonstrate that reforms of the system are not possible and that the only two paths that exist are either more blatant fascism or socialist transformation and decolonization.

That choice continues to reside with the people, whether they know it or not.

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Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) and the steering committee of the Black is Back Coalition. He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. He was awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shim award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.  

Featured image is from BAR

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In the aftermath of the military coup in the Republic of Sudan, the 55 member-state African Union (AU) has suspended the putsch regime from participation in its diplomatic activities.

Yet will this largely symbolic move have a concrete impact on the behavior of those who are behind the seizure of power in this oil-rich state?

Over the last 14 months, several African governments have been subjected to numerous attempts and actual military usurpations of political authority. In Niger, which is one of the world’s largest producers of uranium, it was reported that elements within the defense forces were thwarted in efforts to take control of the government on March 31 of 2021.

Of course, in Mali, there have been two major shifts in power since August 2020 that were carried out by military officers trained and supported by the United States through its Africa Command (AFRICOM). Bamako and other areas of the large state were open for access by the Pentagon which has sought to penetrate the military and administrative structures of the AU member-states.

These collaborative efforts by the Malian, Guinean, Chadian and Sudanese governments with AFRICOM did not create greater security and stability. In fact, quite the opposite is the case since the founding of AFRICOM nearly 14 years ago. Several thousand AFRICOM troops are stationed in Djibouti and other regions of the African continent. Nonetheless, the advent of Islamic insurgencies in Nigeria, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cameroon and Niger has occurred under the military presence of the Pentagon along with France, Britain and other allied NATO forces.

The political and economic ambitions of the military in Sudan have been a source of acrimony for many years. In April of 2019, it was the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) which overthrew former President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Although the Transitional Military Council (TMC), as they named themselves, claimed the removal and detention of al-Bashir was carried out in order to implement the demands of the “Glorious December Revolution”, a subsequent crack down on democracy protesters resulted in the massacre of June 3 of the same year. Several months later due to the intervention of the AU, the formation of a transitional Sovereign Council was initiated.

This transitional process was endorsed by the AU, the United Nations as well as several western imperialist states including the U.S. Just prior to the forced dissolution of the Sovereign Council, U.S. Envoy to the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, visited Khartoum and met with military and political leaders of the interim administration. The State Department has stated that it had no forewarning or inclination that a coup plot was underway. Such an assertion has been viewed with skepticism inside and outside of the country. The open cooperation between the Sudanese interim regime and the U.S. in all likelihood would involve intelligence penetration of the state and society. Why would Feltman visit the country if there was not an awareness of the critical situation prevailing among the various factions of the Sovereign Council?

Just hours after the coup on October 25, the AU issued the following statement:

“The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, has learned with deep dismay of the serious development of the current situation in Sudan, which has resulted, among other things, in the arrest of Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok and other civilian officials. The Chairperson calls for the immediate resumption of consultations between civilians and military within the framework of the Political Declaration and the Constitutional Decree. The Chairperson reaffirms that dialogue and consensus is the only relevant path to save the country and its democratic transition. The Chairperson further calls for the release of all arrested political leaders and the necessary strict respect of human rights.”

However, what will be the repercussions for the military leaders of Sudan? Does the AU have the political capacity to impose sanctions that would cripple the ability of the junta to continue its suppression of the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese workers, youth, women, farmers, intellectuals and professional associations?

Demonstrations have continued since the October 25 coup. A call for a “March of Millions” went out aimed at mobilizing the people for actions throughout the country on October 30.

Most of those filling the streets of Khartoum and other cities are demanding a return to civilian rule in the country. Obviously, the military leadership is committed to maintaining its hegemony over the bureaucratic levers of the state. The military has economic interests in the state apparatus and in the private sectors. In order to ensure any semblance of democratic rule, it will be necessary to divest the military from its holdings.

The Role of the AU in Resolving the Crisis

This political quagmire and deteriorating economic situation are not limited to Sudan and other states within West and Central Africa where coups and attempted military seizures of power are taking place. The class position of the military within post-independence African society is a manifestation of the legacy of colonial rule. These military and police institutions were inherited from the imperialist dictators of Europe and are reinforced by their contemporary neo-colonial descendants.

In order to create an atmosphere of revolutionary democratic transformation, it would require a complete break with the colonial past. This is almost an impossible process absent of a severing and reconfiguring of economic links to international finance capital.

Sudan has substantial petroleum resources although the partition of 2011 lessened its status in regard to exploration and exporting of this valuable commodity. Other natural resources found in Sudan include natural gas, chromium ore, copper, iron ore, mica, silver, gold, tungsten, zinc, among others. The Blue and White Nile which originates in Ethiopia’s highlands and the Central African lakes, both join in the capital of Khartoum to constitute the Nile River proper which flows into Egypt.

Port Sudan is in the east of the country in the Red Sea state. This municipality has its own oil refinery and is the hub for most of the international trade. The city of Port Sudan has been the scene of mass demonstrations resulting from disagreements with the transitional administration which has now been overthrown.

Therefore, the country would be in an excellent position economically with the proper political leadership and governance. Sudan is not alone in its representation of such social contradictions. Africa as a whole cannot effectively benefit from its own resources without a program for political rectification. The AU, which is a reflection of this continental dilemma exhibited through the governments which dominate the organization, would inevitably be a critical factor in reforming the political culture within the entire region.

Moreover, in the immediate term, the increasing proliferation of military coups and the attempts to take power through force of arms, has to be addressed swiftly and firmly in order to halt the further erosion of the authority of the AU Executive Council along with the Peace and Security Council. AU founding documents and protocols categorically prohibit military coups. It is up to the leadership of the AU to develop means to implement these regulations.

Such a position being taken by the AU would indeed involve a direct political confrontation with the U.S., France and its allies operating on the continent. The previous U.S. administration of Donald Trump forced the interim Sovereign Council to commit to paying hundreds of millions of dollars to survivors of the victims of terrorist attacks which were carried out in other countries more than two decades before. As part of this package, the Sovereign Council was compelled to violate its own Israel Boycott Act of 1958 by recognizing Tel Aviv. These agreements were signed without any national debate since there was no legislative body within the Sovereign Council. The Gulf monarchies such as the UAE through the Trump administration’s “Abraham Accords” have sought to recognize Israel openly and to collaborate with its intelligence and military apparatus against the Islamic Republic of Iran and other states and organizations resisting imperialism in West Asia. The “Abraham Accords” are designed to enhance U.S. hegemony in Africa and West Asia as well as undermining the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people for national liberation and statehood. This was the price that the interim Sudanese regime paid to be taken off the U.S. so-called “list of state sponsors of terrorism.”

In the aftermath of the military coup of April 2019, Saudi Arabia and the UAE pledged up to $3 billion to the Sudanese coup makers. Such overtures to non-democratic structures only fuels the sense of impunity under which they operate.

Until these questions are debated and resolved inside the AU Executive Council and within member-states, the efforts to halt the renewed epidemic of military coups will remain elusive. Effectively finding solutions to the present crises is essential in fostering political stability, continental unity, sustainable development and genuine sovereignty in the years and decades to come.

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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 youth demonstrate against coup, Oct. 25, 2021 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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***

Hailed by The Nation as “the Senator from the Left” and by Mother Jones as “the first 1960s radical elected to the U.S. Senate,” he was killed in a 2002 plane crash just 10 days before a crucial election he was likely to win—a win that would have clinched Democratic control of the Senate by a single vote.

Although officially designated an “accident,” could a new investigation reclassify it as an “assassination,” placing Wellstone in the ever-lengthening line of murdered political figures—from John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy—who threatened the status quo?

In the fall of 2002, in the midst of a heated re-election campaign—and after delivering a strong rebuke to the Iraq War in the Senate chamber two weeks earlier—Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone (D) was beginning to pull ahead of his Republican opponent, Norm Coleman.

The Democrats at that point only had a slim 50-49 one-seat advantage in the Senate.

But then, on October 25^th, Wellstone’s plane went down, and history was changed.

With Wellstone dead, the Democrats convinced Walter Mondale—Jimmy Carter’s Vice President—to come out of retirement at age 74 to run against Coleman, but he lost narrowly.

The Republicans in turn reclaimed control of the Senate, which they nailed down with the victory of Saxby Chambliss over Max Cleland—attributed by many to illegal Republican machine manipulation of the vote.

A Democratic Party politician told investigator Michael Ruppert: “I don’t think there’s anyone on the Hill who doesn’t suspect it [that Wellstone was assassinated]. It’s too convenient, too coincidental, too damned obvious.”^[1]

A former CIA operative further told Ruppert: “having played ball (and still playing, in some respects) with this current crop of re-invigorated old white men, these clowns are nobody to screw around with. There will be a few more strategic accidents. You can be certain of that.”^[2]

The World Socialist Website noted that, after gutting the social safety net and plotting the criminal invasion of Iraq, “to imagine that the neo-fascist GOP leadership would suffer moral “qualms over a conveniently timed plane crash would be naive in the extreme.”

Official Explanation

Wellstone was traveling on October 25^th with his wife and daughter to the funeral of the father of one of his good friends and supporters in the Minnesota State legislature, Tom Rukavina.

Official blame for the crash was initially placed on the weather, which was misdescribed as involving freezing rain. The day of the crash was overcast and chilly but above freezing.

The plane was also equipped with a very sophisticated de-icing system which it did not actually need to activate.

When the weather was eliminated as a cause, responsibility for the crash was directed against the pilots, even though the principal pilot, Richard Conry, 55, had 5,200 hours of experience, the highest possible rating, and had passed his Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) “flight check” just two days before the fatal flight.

One former co-pilot who had accompanied him 50 times described him as the most careful pilot with whom he had ever flown.^[3]

“It is heartbreaking,” said Gary Martin of St. Paul, who brought flowers to place on the fence outside of Paul Wellstone’s University Avenue headquarters. [Source: twincities.com]

Early Arrival of FBI Indicates Foreknowledge

The arrival of an FBI team from the Twin Cities in Minnesota at the scene of the crash in Eveleth as early as noon—when the site was only identified an hour earlier and FAA authorities only confirmed the crash at 12:15 p.m.—raises immediate suspicion that they were there to clean up the scene of incriminating evidence.

Jurisdiction over an investigation of this kind was held by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and the travel time between the Twin Cities—193 miles from the crash site in a remote area of Eveleth—was at least two and a half hours.

This is a highly conservative estimate, particularly considering the fact that the crash site according to the local sheriff was a “real unpleasant piece of property that required all-terrain vehicles.”^[4]

The FBI team would have had to have left the Twin Cities, at the latest, at 9:30 a.m.—and probably well before—to get to the crash scene by noon—an hour before Wellstone’s plane crash and well before there were any signs of problems with the flight.

Never Trust a Spook

By late afternoon, an FBI spokesman, Paul McCabe, issued a statement—repeated in newspapers across the country—that there was no indication the crash had been related to terrorism.

That a definitive conclusion could be rendered so quickly appears to be impossible.

The NTSB nevertheless deferred to the FBI’s judgment—even though it was supposed to have jurisdiction over the investigation—and reiterated the claim that there was no foul play.

A year-long investigation seemingly confirmed the latter conclusion.

The NTSB at the time was headed by Carol Carmody who was a former employee of the CIA.

Wellstone had in the past questioned the abuses of the CIA and was skeptical of the intelligence surrounding 9/11 and the Iraq War.

Wellstone was also strongly pro-union when Carmody had managed a firm that administered Taft-Hartley pension plans [Taft-Hartley was a notoriously anti-union law passed by Congress in 1947].

After the crash, Carmody searched for an in-flight voice recorder—which there was none, or which the FBI removed from the scene and destroyed.

She also breached protocol by announcing that the weather was behind the crash when this was speculation—only factual information is supposed to be released.

James Sanders, author of a book on the 1996 crash of a TWA flight, referred to Carmody as a “political hack willing to accommodate those who can make her a brighter future.”^[5]

Sanders believes that the TWA flight crashed after a bomb went off on board and that Carmody helped to cover this up.

Carmody was also involved in the investigation and apparent cover-up of a plane crash that killed Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan (D) in October 2000 when he was in the thick of a campaign for the U.S. Senate against John Ashcroft (R), who was later appointed as Attorney General by President George W. Bush.

[Source: stltoday.com]

Suspicion Deepens

More suspicion about the possibility of a cover-up was aroused by a) the destruction of records of planes landing in Duluth the morning of the Wellstone crash, b) missing information from logs about those at the crash scene, and c) the NTSB’s cancelation of a public meeting for comments from citizens about the crash.^[6]

First responders to the crash scene were ordered not to take photos by the FBI, and even the Associated Press had trouble getting photos—its photographer was only allowed 15 minutes at the crash site, which was unusual.^[7]

The NTSB’s year-long investigation was chaired by two public relations specialists—and not aviation experts—appointed by George W. Bush, whose personal dislike of Wellstone was well known and long-standing.

One, Ellen Engelman Connors, worked on Bush’s Homeland Security team, and the other, Mark Rosenker, was director of the White House’s military office.

Secret History

The NTSB had a record of covering up aerial terrorism dating back to the Nixon administration.

Sherman Skolnick’s 1973 book, The Secret History of Airplane Sabotage, detailed the sabotage of a United Airlines plane in Chicago in December 1972, a month after Richard Nixon’s re-election.

Crash scene of United Airlines flight 553 carrying 12 passengers related to the Watergate burglary. [Source: roughdiplomacy.org]

Twelve passengers related to the Watergate burglary died in the crash, including Mrs. E. Howard Hunt, wife of the Watergate burglar and CIA operative who herself served in the CIA.

According to Skolnick, Ms. Hunt had more than $2 million in valuables, obtained by blackmailing Nixon over his role in the 1963 assassination of JFK.

Skolnick’s team reviewed unpublicized NTSB files which indicated sabotage, and Skolnick accused the NTSB—which headed the investigation—of participating in a cover-up.^[8]

What Happened to Wellstone’s Plane

The St. Paul Pioneer reported the day after the crash that there was “no distress call or any indication of trouble before the plane went down about 10:20.”

The pilot’s last transmission occurred at 10:18 a.m. where there was “no evidence from the pilot’s voice that there was any difficulty, no reported problems, no expressed concerns.”^[9]

At 10:19 a.m., radar showed that the aircraft began drifting south. The last radar appearance—coming two minutes later—showed that the plane took a curious turn west, away from the runway and then a steep dive, indicating that the plane was out of control.

The wing flaps, which should have been fully extended for landing, were extended only to 15 degrees—the setting used for an initial approach descent.^[10]

Two eyewitnesses claimed that they heard the engines of the plane cutting out, or going on and off—a phenomenon not in alignment with an aerodynamic stall, which the official investigation claimed.

After the plane cut out, a diving noise was heard, followed by an explosion.

Another witness reported hearing a gunshot going off or loud bang beforehand—indicating a possible sniper attack.

Other eyewitnesses saw blue smoke coming from the crashed airplane—which indicated an electrical, and not fuel, fire—and evidence that the fuselage burned badly, and the wings did not.

The latter was odd because the fuel was in the wing tanks, which had been separated from the fuselage as it went through the trees and should have emitted thick black smoke.

Another oddity was that the wing section was charred but the tree that the plane supposedly clipped was not.

This would indicate that either the wing was moved from the crash site (unlikely and illegal) or the wing was on fire before the plane hit the ground—caused possibly by a bomb–accounting for the lack of damage to the tree itself.

Autopsy reports indicate that three of the victims had smoke in their lungs which implied they had survived the moment of impact long enough to be affected by the fire, or that the plane was on fire on the way down.^[11]

More Evidence of Foul Play and Cover-up

Jim Ongaro who was within a stone’s throw of the plane, told investigator Jim Fetzer that he received an odd call on his cell phone at about the exact time of the crash in which he heard a cross between a roar and a loud humming noise on the other end. A friend further left him a message which he never received on voicemail.^[12]

Ongaro also said that another friend told him that co-workers of his that were pilots said that there was no way that the plane should have burned up the way it did.

When Ongaro emailed the Duluth office of Congressman James Oberstar, Oberstar (D-Minn.) responded by stating that the FBI had already investigated any possibility of foul play and ruled it out.

According to researcher Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs) and James H. Fetzer, the key to understanding the crash was the complete cessation of communication between the pilots and the control tower in the minutes before the crash.^[13]

Pilot error or mechanical problems could not account for loss of communication nor could difficult weather, indicating foul play.

Four Arrows and Fetzer speculate that a small bomb may have caused the crash, or direct energy weapons that the military had developed, or an electromagnetic pulse that police use to stop carjackers during high-speed chases.

Previous Assassination Attempt

Wellstone had survived a previous assassination attempt in December 2000 when he had traveled to Colombia.

At the time, Wellstone was a leading congressional critic of Plan Colombia, a $1.3 billion program to finance Colombia’s War on Drugs which involved aerial spraying of coca fields by private military contractors who stood to make a huge amount of money.

As Wellstone was traveling from the airport in Bogota after his arrival, a bomb was found along his route. The State Department downplayed the incident and it was thereafter forgotten.^[14]

Paul Wellstone during his visit to Colombia in March 2001 where he survived an assassination attempt. Wellstone was a strong critic of Plan Colombia. [Source: politico.com]

The next day, Wellstone and his staff were sprayed with glyphosate, a chemical that has been routinely documented as the cause of a variety of illnesses in the local population. It has left certain regions of Colombia, as one native put it, “without butterflies or birds.”

Manipulation of Pilots?

Despite an excellent reputation, Richard Conry served two years in federal prison for mail fraud in connection with a family business he was running.

This criminal past suggests the possibility that he was manipulated into participating in a conspiracy plot and convinced to carry something on board the plane that he thought was contraband or narcotics but was really a tracking device or bomb.^[15]

If that was the case, this would explain why Conry sounded nervous in a routine pre-flight phone call with air traffic controllers about the weather.^[16]

Co-pilot Michael Guess, 30, also had a criminal record, so he could have been manipulated as well.

Was the Murder Weapon an Electromagnetic Weapon?

Researchers Four Arrows and Fetzer believe that Wellstone’s plane may have been taken down by an electromagnetic weapon (EMP)—such as a laser beam—that the military applied in Iraq.

EMPs are capable of unleashing in a flash as much electrical power—2 billion watts or more—as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours, and destroying any electronics within 1,000 feet of the flash by short-circuiting internal electrical connections.

According to Four Arrows and Fetzer, there are a number of ways that EMPs could have been used in the Wellstone crash.

A small incendiary bomb may have been placed in the airplane and activated by radio wave when the plane was near the airport or a pulse bomb could have been fired at the airplane on approach causing the electronics system to go out of control.

Jamming could have been activated and a decoy VHF Omnidirectional Radio Range (VOR) signal sent, tricking the plane’s instruments and pilots into believing the airport was somewhere several degrees off the true course to the runway, with the pilot following that signal into the ground.

The non-descript van, full of covert electronic jamming equipment, afterwards would have casually left the area, looking just like any other TV repair truck or moving van.^[17]

Two witnesses—Megen Williams and a blond-haired man interviewed on CNN—said they observed a flash of light at the rear of the plane shortly before the crash, giving credibility to the EMP/laser weapon theory.^[18]

After being struck by EMP, Wellstone’s aircraft could have functioned more or less normally but without any control systems, instruments or radios. This would account for the assertion that the plane engines were still running when the plane hit the ground.

When the plane crashed, someone may have made sure cockpit instruments were consumed in flames—on the remote chance that a serious full inquiry were to be demanded.^[19]

An Idealist in Washington

Paul Wellstone was a rare breed in U.S. politics: an idealist and true progressive who was dubbed “the conscience of the U.S. Senate.”

The son of Ukrainian immigrants who stood only 5’5″, Wellstone grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1969 after writing a thesis entitled “Black Militants in the Ghetto: Why They Believe in Violence.”

A championship wrestler in high school and college, Wellstone’s political outlook was forged through his participation in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s.^[20]

In 1969, Wellstone moved to Northfield, Minnesota, to teach political science at Carleton College where he stayed for the next 21 years.

The FBI took note of the bushy-haired college professor when he was arrested on May 7, 1970, at a protest against the Vietnam War at the Federal Office Building in downtown Minneapolis.

According to a New York Times Magazine profile, Wellstone was often at odds with other faculty and the Carleton administration, and was in his element instigating protests—from fighting Carleton’s investment policies in South Africa to battling banks that were foreclosing on farms.^[21]

In 1974, at the age of 28, Wellstone was granted tenure when students and other colleagues rallied to his defense after he was going to be dismissed because he chose not to write for academic journals.^[22]

In the early 1980s, Wellstone began his political career working in Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich’s office after helping to organize grassroots opposition to high-voltage electricity transmission lines in rural Minnesota.^[23]

Wellstone with Rudy Perpich, right, in June 1990 after Wellstone wins party endorsement for Senate. Lt. Gov. Marlene Johnson is in the center. [Source: startribune.com]

After a failed bid for state auditor, Wellstone was named in 1984 to the Democratic Party National Committee and, in 1988, became the state campaign co-chairman for Jesse Jackson’s bid for the presidency, and national co-chair of Democratic Party nominee Michael Dukakis.

Casting himself as a political outsider, Wellstone ran for the United States Senate in 1990—using a rickety green school bus, a humorous ad campaign styled after a Michael Moore documentary and a pledge to serve only two terms—and upset the Republican incumbent, Rudy Boschwitz, who outspent Mr. Wellstone by seven times.^[24]

One of his first acts as a Senator was to stage an emotionally charged press conference at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in which he urged the Bush Sr. administration not to attack Iraq.^[25]

Wellstone subsequently established his credentials as a populist in the tradition of Robert La Follette who took on corporate power like almost no one else of his generation.^[26]

Just before his death, Wellstone had proposed putting $2 billion into Minnesota’s schools instead of further tax cuts for the top 1% of incomes.

Wellstone further a) stopped last-minute efforts by drug companies to extend exclusive patents and promoted a strong patients’ rights bill and decent prescription drug benefits; b) said no to privatizing social security; c) helped strengthen and pass the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill; d) passed laws banning gifts to members of Congress; and e) though Jewish, called on Israel to be more compromising with its Arab neighbors.

Wellstone receiving re-nomination for a second term in the Senate at the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Convention in Minneapolis in June 1996. [Source: politico.com]

Wellstone additionally a) helped pass a strong Minnesota-friendly farm bill with amendments that reduced the advantages of corporate agribusiness; b) led the fight to stop Big Oil from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; c) championed tribal sovereignty and native Indian rights; and d) stood up for fair trade against the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and World Trade Organization (WTO), which eased restrictions on big business.^[27]

A Very Convenient Death

After Wellstone’s death, a poll in the St. Paul Pioneer found that 69% of readers felt that Wellstone was killed owing to a GOP conspiracy.

Michael Niman, a professor of journalism at Buffalo State College, wrote that “Wellstone emerged as the most visible obstacle standing in the way of a draconian political agenda by an unelected government. And now he is conveniently gone.”

The day after Wellstone’s death, the GOP transferred $700,000 to be used in the effort to defeat Democratic Party Senator Max Cleland in Georgia, money that the GOP had planned to use against Wellstone in Minnesota.

The Bush family’s hatred of Wellstone went back to 1991 when, at a reception for new congresspeople, he told then President George H.W. Bush that the country “would be ripped apart if it went to war.” Bush turned to one of his advisers after and asked: “who is this chickenshit?^[28]

Subsequently, at a swearing in ceremony in the Senate, Wellstone handed Vice President Dan Quayle a videotape of a Minnesota town meeting where the Bush administration’s war policies were criticized.

Wellstone in January 1991 handing Vice President Dan Quayle videotape of Minnesotans criticizing the Gulf War. [Source: politico.com]

In the 2002 election cycle, George W. Bush had made terminating Wellstone’s Senate career his foremost priority.

Political reporter John Nichols wrote: “The Bushies despise Wellstone, who unlike most Senate Democrats has been fighting spirited battles against the new administration policies on everything from the environment to the tax cuts for the rich to military aid for the ‘Plan Colombia’ drug war boondoggle. The Bush camp has been focusing highest-level attention on ‘Plan Wellstone’—its project to silence progressive opposition.”

By October 2002, Bush had visited Minnesota four times to drum up support for his hand-picked candidate, former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman, a strong supporter of the Iraq War.^[29]

Large sums of money were being funneled into the state, including one million dollars for advertisements attacking Wellstone that were put up by an anonymous group calling itself “Americans for Job Security.”

At a meeting with war veterans in Willmar, Minnesota, two days before his death, Wellstone said that Vice President Dick Cheney had told him, “if you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota.”

Obviously this was no idle threat.

Two weeks earlier, Wellstone had spoken eloquently on the Senate floor against the Iraq War and the “wisdom of relying too heavily on a preemptive go it alone military approach”—prompting a bump for him in the polls that shocked the Bush administration.

Senator Wellstone was slated to win re-election after voting against George Bush’s “war resolution” in Congress. [Source: oilempire.us]

As Chairman of a new Securities Reform Committee, Wellstone was also at the time trying to block the nomination of William Webster, former CIA and FBI head and “best friend of big business and big accounting firms” to be the new chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) Accounting Oversight Commission.

Wellstone had further tried to bar corporate tax dodgers from being eligible for Defense Department contracts, and successfully amended the Homeland Security bill to bar those companies from getting contracts with the new Department of Homeland Security.

After the November election—and Wellstone’s tragic death—the final version of the Homeland Security bill gutted the Wellstone amendment and corporate lobby groups were able to land billion-dollar defense contracts in Iraq and elsewhere.^[30]

As one of the few genuine progressives in Congress, Wellstone would have been a formidable presidential candidate in 2004.

With the increasing exposure of the Bush administration’s corruption in books like Greg Palast’s The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2002) and Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men(2004), he would have had a better chance to beat Bush than any other candidate.

That is why his plane had to be taken down.

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

1. Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs) and James H. Fetzer, Ph.D., American Assassination: The Strange Death of Senator Paul Wellstone (El Prado, NM:”Vox Pop, 2004). 

2. Sue Cantrell, who lives a few hundred yards from Camp Peary, the CIA training camp in Williamsburg, Virginia, reported that the night before Wellstone’s death, at around 1:15 a.m., she heard a “large plane take off from the runway [at Camp Peary]. In the previous three years of living here, I have never heard a plane take off in the middle of the night.” 
3. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination. 
4. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 11, 82, 83. 
5. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 18. 
6. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 85.
7. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 85.
8. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 124, 125. 
9. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 18. The FAA spokeswoman stated that there were no signs of distress coming from the plane’s crew on its final approach. 
10. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 44. The stall warning on a King Air—which Wellstone flew in—is quite loud. With two pilots and six passengers, it could not have been missed. Thus, there was ample time to regain speed. 
11. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 131. 
12. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 48, 49. 
13. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 61. 
14. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 54. 
15. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 101. 
16. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 101. 
17. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 101, 146. The authors present a scenario in which the plane ran off course, and the cockpit was zapped, resulting in a pilotless plane. When the decoy VOR was switched off, the plane’s instruments re-oriented to the Eveleth airport causing a sharp right turn. After the plane crashed, someone made sure cockpit instruments were consumed in flames—on the remote chance that a serious full inquiry were to be demanded—as the cable TV/power company/telephone service vehicle made its escape from the scene of the crime. 
18. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 136, 146. 
19. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 146. One other oddity is that Raytheon representatives were on the crash scene after Wellstone’s plane was downed. Not only did Raytheon make the King Air A-100 plane on which he flew but they also manufactured high-tech weapons of the kind that were used to bring the plane down.
20. See Bill Lofy, Paul Wellstone: The Life of a Passionate Progressive (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005); Senator Paul Wellstone, The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda (New York: Random House, 2001). 
21. Dennis J. McGrath and Dane Smith, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington: The Inside Story of a Grassroots U.S. Senate Campaign (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 33, 34. Wellstone made enemies on the Carleton Board of Trustees when in 1971 he urged the removal of its chairman, Edson Spencer, Vice-President of Honeywell Corporation which manufactured anti-personnel bombs used in Vietnam. Wellstone accused Spencer of managing a “criminal corporation.” 
22. McGrath and Smith, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington, 34. 
23. Lofy, Paul Wellstone, 51; Wellstone, The Conscience of a Liberal, 9, 10, 11, 17. In 1982, Wellstone was arrested for trespassing at a bank in the central Minnesota town of Paynesville after leading a protest of farmers who were protesting bank foreclosures and seizure of their land after they had been saddled with heavy debt. Wellstone had further supported a strike of meatpackers at the Hormel Company in southern Minnesota in 1985/6. With a gift for oratory and his success as a political organizer, he subsequently emerged as a leader in Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). 
24. McGrath and Smith, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington. 
25. Lofy, Paul Wellstone, 67. 
26. The only black hole in Wellstone’s record was his misguided support for the war in Bosnia and bombing of Kosovo. 
27. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 157-173; McGrath and Smith, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington, xxiii. 
28. Lofy, Paul Wellstone, 67, 68. 
29. A moderate Republican, Coleman had been part of the hippie counterculture who sold out to the establishment. In the 1980s, he was described by a local journalist as a “clean cut pin striped cigar smoking law and order prosecutor who liked schmoozing with business leaders a whole lot better than with welfare rights activists.” Lofy, Paul Wellstone, 116. After becoming Mayor of St. Paul, Coleman switched from the Democratic Party to Republican and started adopting conservative economic policies, opposed drug legalization and adopted hawkish views on Iraq, Iran and Gaza in alignment with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). After his Senate career ended, Coleman founded the American Action Network, a conservative advocacy organization with ties to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, and became a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. 

30. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 33. A mental health reform bill Wellstone championed, requiring insurance companies to provide mental health coverage on par with physical health coverage, was also blocked. 

Featured image: Wellstone as a young political science professor at Carleton College. [Source: Minnesota.publicradio.org]

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While Chardin is certainly a racist, in his defense he believed in vastly expanding eugenics for all races, and called for employing the best of science to improve the human gene pool, Matthew Ehret writes.

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As we approach the long-awaited COP26 summit in the UK, one gets a sense of a creepy cultish mode of speaking among some of the top echelons of imperial thinkers setting the cultural tone for the proceedings which profess to profoundly transform a new epoch in human history. World Economic Forum shining stars like Yuval Harari, Klaus Schwab, and Ray Kurzweil speak giddily about an impending evolutionary shift where human society will become something more than human.

Renowned futurist and lead Google Engineer Ray Kurzweil gave this moment of bifurcation a name: “The Singularity”. In 2005, he described this moment saying:

“Our version 1.0 biological bodies are likewise frail and subject to a myriad of failure modes… The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains… The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots. There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality.”

Kurzweil and Harari even predicted the date 2050 to be the magical moment which the new age of human-machine unification will be consolidated, as artificial intelligence, bio-engineering babies with CRISPR technology, and interfacing our brains with microchips in the ‘internet of things’ will finally see the birth of a new species.

In a 2018 WEF sermon, Harari said:

“We are probably among the last generations of homo sapiens. Within a century or two, Earth will be dominated by entities that are more different from us, than we are different from Neanderthals or from chimpanzees. Because in the coming generations, we will learn how to engineer bodies and brains and minds. These will be the main products of the 21^st century economy.”

Other modern geniuses in today’s secular pantheon of demigods like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have poured billions into ventures such as Neuralink and Facebook’s brain-chip interface plans to advance this new age and “keep humans relevant” in the face of machines that will certainly send our frail species to the dinosaurs.

Will God play a role in these futurist equations?

Of course not. Modern evolutionary science has proven that all talk of God, soul, meaning, and purpose are absurd.

All we have is complexity, bifurcation (transformation of states), and random stochastic motion of atoms in a nihilistic world of chance. Luckily, intelligent design has finally emerged in this new era out of the chaotic whimsy of all past epochs… and those intelligent designers are found among Harari’s sponsors who control such power structures as Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other power structures sitting atop the pyramidal hierarchy in this new dystopia. (1)

Listening to any of them talk, you sort of get the feeling that Harari and his elite group of Davos philosophers wish to become the high priests of a new synthetic religion named Transhumanism.

Before one gives in to the notion that either “The Singularity” or “Transhumanism” are in any way novel concepts that arose in the minds of these luminaries of the Great Reset, rest assured, that as powerful as these modern priests may appear to be, creative they are not.

In fact the very essence of the Singularity and Transhumanism find their origins in the earliest formulations of Galton’s eugenics and Nietzsche’s cynical revival of the old theories of Gorgias.

Galton, Darwin and Nietzsche: The Rise of the Ubermenschen Cult

It was Friedrich Nietzsche who taught, following Gorgias’ student Callicles 2000 years earlier, that it is only by courageously severing ourselves from the illusory force of our conscience, that we may tap into the creative energy and strength needed to impose our will onto the weak in a struggle for survival. The new human to emerge out of this struggle of ‘will to power’ over the weak and unfit would become a new breed of elite Uber menschen capable of directing evolution according to scientific principles.

The Nietzschean eugenicists orbiting the elitist and ironically inbred world of Francis Galton absorbed this immoral ethic into their new scientific religion which utilized statistics to decide whose lives would be worth preserving, and whose worth eliminating via euthanasia, sterilization or selective breeding.

In his essay Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims (1904) Galton said that this new science:

“must be introduced into the national conscience, like a new religion. It has, indeed, strong claims to become an orthodox religious, tenet of the future, for eugenics co-operate with the workings of nature by securing that humanity shall be represented by the fittest races…. I see no impossibility in Eugenics becoming a religious dogma among mankind.”

The most important keystone giving structural cohesion to the theories of both Nietzsche and Galton were found in the writings of a work published in 1859 titled The Origin of Species by one Charles Darwin. If Darwin’s theories explaining the causes of new species fell, then so too would any arguments held by the devotees of Nietzsche and Galton’s eugenicists.

Why?

In simple terms: Darwin’s theory (which simply re-packaged the ideas outlined earlier by Thomas Malthus) demands that it be assumed that new species arise from randomness and gradual change devoid of creative leaps. The Darwinian model broke with other theories that sought to find directionality, purpose, harmony, and reason in nature by imposing random mutations on the very small.

These random mutations were akin to dice constantly being rolled on a roulette table which occasionally give the “winner” of evolutionary craps that bigger claw, or faster sprint or prettier feather needed to beat out the weaker, slower or less pretty competitor in the race for satisfying our appetites within a world of diminishing returns. Since randomness replaced the “outdated” concept of motive force inherent in deism, no over arching directionality were permissible in this Darwinian universe. Only change and complexity devoid of morality.

Of course, this theory didn’t satisfy the actual fossil records which were devoid of creative leaps, or randomness (or basic common sense for that matter), but that was nothing a vast amount of propaganda couldn’t hope to solve.

Religion was of course a major problem, and even though it is often asserted arrogantly that all opponents of Darwinism were simple minded creationists who all adhered to a literal interpretation of scripture, the truth is far different. Figures like James Dwight Dana, Benjamin Silliman, Charles Cuvier, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Karl Ernst von Baer all approached evolution from the standpoint of harmonics (how do parts within a whole and how do species fit into a biosphere)? They also addressed, to varying degrees such matters as purpose, intention and creative change.

Within the first years of the 20^th century, the overarching spirit of God was not fully broken, and cultural optimism still prevailed as a dominant force even among scientists. Discoveries made by great minds like Max Planck, Dimitry Mendeleev, Madame Curie, Albert Einstein, and countless others only confirmed the belief that the universe was not only ordered and reasonable, but also that a profound harmony existed within the human species and all of creation. Those who lived within this optimistic cultural field believed that it were both necessary and possible to end imperialism and establish a world of peace, justice and cooperation likened to St. Augustine’s City of God on this earth before the new millennium.

Such scientists didn’t believe this passively of course, but acted as living proofs of principle by 1) making discoveries of principle, 2) sharing those discoveries with others and 3) translating those discoveries into new forms of scientific and technological progress.

To the degree that this were done (and to the degree that political economic systems conformed to this reality), the Nietzschean science of eugenics was an impossible pill to swallow.

Enter Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Born in 1881 in Auvergne, France, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was enrolled in a Jesuit school at 14 and when the order was barred from France in 1901, finished his studies in England where he fell under the influence of a leading modernist theologian named George Tyrrell. The modernists were obsessed with reconciling Christianity with the new ethics and science emerging in the modern age. One of the most difficult challenges confronted by Jesuit modernists within the church during this period was reconciling the two seemingly irreconcilable systems of Christianity and Darwinism. Where Christianity saw mankind as sacred, the mechanistic universe of Darwinian evolution denied the existence of the divine in humanity or the broader universe.

Harmonizing these two worlds became Chardin’s new mission in life.

It wasn’t long before Chardin’s talents were recognized as the young man had already acquired a following of devotees amidst his own classmates and even some superiors of the order. After teaching paleontology in Cairo for three years (1905-1908), Chardin was called to return for a relaxing holiday in Piltdown England, when lo and behold, one of the greatest discoveries in history occurred during a short walk as Chardin discovered a skull and bone fragments in a field. It was 1912 and the skull and jawbone were hailed as the long awaited “missing link” between ape and man whose absence frustrated gradualist Darwinians for decades.

International press trumpeted the new discovery as the great proof that Darwin was right, and soon a team of British archeologists were deployed by the Royal Academy to finish the excavation work. Although Chardin quickly became a celebrity, rumblings of doubt among the scientific community persisted- especially among dentists. Why were there no teeth found amidst the Piltdown Man? Why did the jawbone look so similar to that of an orangutang?

Despite the excavation site being remarkably unprotected, with bystanders frequenting the site to poke around freely for weeks, Chardin soon returned once more on holiday and conveniently stumbled on a tooth that no one else saw. This second earth shattering discovery again sent his meteor ever further into space and it wasn’t until years later (1953!) that scientists studying the remains conclusively proved that the Piltdown Man really was a monkey jaw died and shaved along with a human skull. The true owner of the tooth found by Chardin was a dog (painted and shaved carefully to fit the jaw).

In the wake of WWI, Chardin found himself stationed in China, where he would live out the next 20 years of his life.

The Truth of Chardin’s Misanthropic Faith

His theories of a new neo-Darwinism Christianity became extremely popular among wide groupings of his fellow Jesuits, but also sparked concern in Rome where influential bishops and Cardinals were troubled by his work which began challenging fundamental dogma of the Church itself and even the nature of the divinity of Christ, the nature of sin, forgiveness, and mass. It was just too much for the Church to bear and Chardin was soon deprived of his rights to teach or publish his theories and was told instead to focus on missionary work.

To this command Chardin was disgusted, having demonstrated a rather deep antipathy for the Chinese and the poor in general (he never bothered to learn even the rudiments of the Chinese language despite being forced to live there for over 20 years).

Chardin’s racism was seen early on, when in 1929 he wrote:

“Do the yellows [the Chinese] have the same human value as the whites? [Father] Licent and many missionaries say that their present inferiority is due to their long history of Paganism. I’m afraid that this is only a ‘declaration of pastors.’ Instead, the cause seems to be the natural racial foundation…Christian love overcomes all inequalities, but it does not deny them.”

In another letter in 1936, Chardin lays out his hate for both the equality of races and nationalism which he believes should be replaced by a new scientific religion:

“The philosophical or ‘supernatural’ unity of human nature has nothing to do with the equality of races in what concerns their physical capacities to contribute to the building of the world. … As not all ethnic groups have the same value, they must be dominated, which does not mean they must be despised—quite the reverse…In other words, at one and the same time there should be official recognition of: (1) the primacy/priority of the earth over nations; (2) the inequality of peoples and races. Now the second point is currently reviled by Communism…and the Church, and the first point is similarly reviled by the Fascist systems (and, of course, by less gifted peoples!).”

Piltdown Man Hoax 2.0

While avoiding as much human contact with the Chinese as possible, Chardin kept himself extremely busy travelling all over China, Tibet, Xinjiang, Burma and even the USA between 1923-1945. At one point Chardin spent some months in Peking where he joined a Rockefeller Foundation-funded expedition that uncovered a new missing link in 1926. The suspicion that the earlier Piltdown Man was a hoax was spreading across the scientific community, but that didn’t stop Chardin from publishing several scientific papers on his new find creating a new sensation across the world.

Finally, a missing link between ape and man was really discovered and Darwin’s theory could finally be said to be proven true! It was even given a name: Peking Man.

Sadly, anyone wishing to investigate these claims were hard out of luck as the hundreds of bone fragments were quickly plopped in a crate to be sent to the USA for further examination, when they were mysteriously lost, never to be found again. Chardin strangely seemed to feel no remorse over this loss and made zero attempt to track down the prized find. He simply told his friends that there was no point crying over spilt milk and that everyone should go about their day with a renewed faith that Darwinism must be accepted as the essence of Christianity.

To demonstrate the enduring strength of this Piltdown Hoax 2.0, scientists to this very day treat it as a fait accompli and continue to write apologetics for the missing bones.

Creating a New Religion

If there is any doubt that Chardin saw himself as a new Moses carrying out a total insurgency against Christianity, let them simply read his letter to a friend in 1936 “What increasingly dominates my interest is the effort to establish within myself, and to diffuse around me, a new religion (let’s call it an improved Christianity if you like) whose personal God is no longer the great Neolithic landowner of times gone by, but the Soul of the world.”

In a letter dated March 21, 1941, he wrote:

“I cannot fight against Christianity; I can only work inside it by trying to transform and convert it. A revolutionary attitude would be much easier, and much more pleasant, but it would be suicidal. So I must go step by step, tenaciously.”

While many are attracted to such concepts as “the soul of the world” and “a personal god” it is worth asking what sort of new religion and God was Chardin creating?

First of all, Chardin’s new Darwinian Christianity professed to gloss over the problematic randomness function inherent in Darwin’s original directionless system by inserting a form of directionality… but not one encumbered by the idea of morality, purpose or “better/worse”. Instead, Chardin’s directionality would be tied to a future “Omega Point” at which moment humanity would somehow bifurcate into a new evolutionary organism akin to Ray Kurzweil’s idea of “The Singularity” now in vogue.

In Chardin’s system, this future omega point is teleologically driving the increased rate of complexity across time with the entire universe divided into four phases: 1) the big bang creation of the universe (cosmogenesis), 2) the emergence of life (biogenesis), 3) the emergence of cognition (homogenesis) and 4) the spiritual convergence of humanity (Christogenesis). The third phase was also dubbed the age of the Noosphere by Chardin, while the fourth phase is the Omega Point.

Chardin’s Noosphere would be a very different beast from the Noosphere of the Brilliant Russian Academician Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) who was locked into his own parallel fight against the mechanists attempting to crush the soul of science in Russia and which will be the feature of a future article.

Beyond Good and Evil

Replacing the concept of moral change (change for better or worse according to a universal standard of right vs wrong), Chardin introduces the idea of “quantitative complexity”. In fact, in his neo-Darwinian system, acts of evil become themselves acts of pure nature devoid of any moral judgement.

In his Comment je vois les Choses, Chardin says:

“In our modern perspective of a Universe in a process of cosmogenesis, the problem of evil no longer exists.” Events are “essentially subject to the play of probabilities of chance in its arrangements… it is absolutely unable to progress toward unity without engendering [evil] here or there by statistical necessity”.

The very act of bloodshed, war and evil on the earth were merely necessary events on the path of life governed by that beautiful future Omega Point whereby humanity would evolve into a transhuman species of loving cyborgs. Former Jesuit historian Malachi Martin wrote that: “Teilhard was not overly shocked by bloodshed, regarded violence as a necessary concomitant of Evolution, and seemed to have enjoyed war- what he saw of it. Death, bloody or otherwise, was what he called a ‘mutation’.”

Since evil had no actual existence in Chardin’s system (statistics and complexity being the simple effect of Darwinian forces in a struggle for survival), there is nothing stopping him from extolling the virtues of racially targeted eugenics in a closed system of limited resources. In Human Energy, Chardin writes:

“What fundamental attitude…should the advancing wing of humanity take to fixed or definitely unprogressive ethnical groups? The earth is a closed and limited surface. To what extent should it tolerate, racially or nationally, areas of lesser activity? More generally still, how should we judge the efforts we lavish in all kinds of hospitals on saving what is so often no more than one of life’s rejects?…To what extent should not the development of the strong…take precedence over the preservation of the weak?”

Pure Nietzsche, Galton and Malthus (the latter also wearing the frock of a holy man).

Embracing Eugenics

While Chardin is certainly a racist, in his defense he believed in vastly expanding eugenics for all races, and called for employing the best of science to improve the human gene pool:

“For a complex of obscure reasons, our generation still regards with distrust all efforts proposed by science for controlling the machinery of heredity, of sex-determination and the development of the nervous systems. It is as if man had the right and power to interfere with all the channels in the world except those which make him himself. And yet it is eminently on this ground that we must try everything, to its conclusion.”

In 1951, Chardin re-amplified his call for a science and religion of eugenics:

“So far we have certainly allowed our race to develop at random, and we have given too little thought to the question of what medical and moral factors must replace the crude forces of natural selection should we suppress them. In the course of the coming centuries it is indispensable that a nobly human form of eugenics, on a standard worthy of our personalities, should be discovered and developed. Eugenics applied to individuals leads to eugenics applied to society.”

Chardin’s Omega Point here takes on ever greater meaning as the masquerade of “Christ consciousness” and “global love” is torn from the sweet veneer of his message and the full misanthropic eugenical fanaticism of a high priest in some dystopic scientific dictatorship can now be seen. Chardin’s close friendship with the founder of Transhumanism (and leading eugenicist) Sir Julian Huxley here takes on new meaning as well.

Julian and Pierre: High Priests of Transhumanism

Writing of his admiration of Huxley in 1941, Chardin said to a friend:

“I am continuing to work towards a better presentation, clearer and more succinct, of my ideas on the place of man in the universe. Julian Huxley has just brought out a book, or rather a series of essays, called The Uniqueness of Man, in a way so parallel to my own ideas (even though without integrating God as the term of the series) that I feel greatly cheered.”

It is no paradox that the radical atheistic Huxley and the Jesuit priest Chardin found in each other, a kindred spirit.

Julian had been hard at work for decades trying to salvage his grandfather’s work in re-packaging Darwin alongside H.G. Wells and J.B.S. Haldane under a new system called The New Evolutionary Synthesis (outlined in Huxley’s Uniqueness of Man cited by Chardin above). This ‘New Synthesis’ was essentially identical to Chardin’s thesis except devoid of any pretense to harmonize with Biblical scripture.

Chardin was so moved by admiration not only for Julian but the entire Huxley clan, that he wrote his 1949 ‘Man’s Place in Nature’ as an homage to Thomas Huxley’s 1904 ‘Man’s Place in Nature and Other Anthropological Essays’. Julian in turn was so moved by Chardin’s thesis that he wrote the introduction to the priest’s famous treatise The Phenomenon of Man.

In his Future of Man, Chardin wrote that his Omega Point “represents our passage, by translation or dematerialization, to another sphere of the Universe: not an ending of the Ultra-Human but its accession to some sort of Trans-Human at the ultimate heart of things”

Julian Huxley paid homage to Chardin’s Peking man hoax while discussing his parallel views of Transhumanism in 1957 writing in his New Bottles for New Wine:

“I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.”

It is here worth keeping in mind that Julian wasn’t merely an ivory tower commentator, but an extremely active grand strategist, having acted as President of the British Eugenics Society, founded the world’s first environmental organizations (the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and its off-shoot the World Wildlife Fund) and also founded United Nations Education Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1946. In the manifesto for UNESCO, Huxley had explicitly called for reviving eugenics as the most important of all sciences while inducing humanity to accept a world government.

Cybernetics (the science of control using binary processing and machines as models for human minds and society as a whole) was emerging onto the scene by 1945. Chardin tapped directly into this current with a robust enthusiasm of a religious cult leader, even calling for a merging of humanity with machines long before it became cool. In his Future of Man we see Chardin ask rhetorically:

“How can we fail to see the machine as playing a constructive part in the creation of a truly collective consciousness?.. I am thinking, of course, in the first place of the extraordinary network of radio and television communications which… already link us all in a sort of “etherized” universal consciousness. But I am also thinking of… those astonishing electronic computers which, pulsating with signals at the rate of hundreds of thousands a second, not only relieve our brains of tedious and exhausting work but, because they enhance the essential (and too little noticed) “speed of thought,” are also paving the way for a revolution in the sphere of research… all these material instruments… are finally nothing less than the manifestation of a kind of super-Brain, capable of attaining mastery over some super-sphere in the universe.”

Towards the end of his life, a friend asked him how he feels about his works still being banned from publication by the Church. He responded by saying “I have so many friends now, in good strategic positions, that I have no fear of the future. I have won the game.”

When he died in 1955, Chardin’s works were still largely banned as heresy by the Vatican. His work continued to spread as a sort of Soviet-era samizdat recruiting ever more converts to his particular “new and improved Christianity”. The logic used by Chardin’s followers in support of this new cybernetics-brand of religion in opposition to the dogmatic traditionalists of the Vatican was that since the times were changing, so too must religion. The world of the nation state, industrial growth and individualism was a thing of the outdated conservative era. The post-nation-state world of collective planetary consciousness was upon us as society moved towards a mystical omega point. This faith meant that Christianity had to evolve with the times like any creature wishing to avoid extinction within a Darwinian fight for survival.

Over the ensuing decades, followers of Chardin played a major role in shaping the outcome of the Church’s decentralization and liberalization in the form of Vatican II launched by Pope John XXIII in 1962. These same networks concentrated in Ibero-America innovated a new form of doctrine called “Liberation Theology” with the logic that Marxism was the purest expression of Christ’s message and that all true Christians were obliged to take up La Revolutione against capitalism around the world during the dark days of the Cold War. When asked what should be done about the stagnant catholic Church, Chardin called for this new revolutionary Marxist-merger by saying “a good dip into Marxism might start things moving again.”

While Pope John Paul I and II tried to push back against this deconstruction of Christianity, a touch of poison and a couple of assassin’s bullets brought the Holy See quickly back into line, as the ground was set for a full Jesuit takeover of the Church and integration of Christianity into a new eugenics-driven religion.

These topics will be unpacked in a future article.

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Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review. He can be reached at matthewehret.substack.com

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) Harari continues his 2018 speech saying: “For four billion years, nothing fundamental changed in the basic rules of the game of life. All of life was subject to the laws of natural selection, and to the laws of organic biochemistry. But this is now about to change. Science is changing evolution by natural selection with evolution by intelligent design. Not some intelligent design of some God above the clouds. But our intelligent design, and the intelligent design of our clouds. The IBM cloud, the Microsoft cloud. These are the new driving forces of evolution.”

Featured image is from the Public Domain

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The Pfizer- BioNtech Covid-19 mRNA vaccine was launched on November 9, 202o.

Pfizer announced their mRNA-based vaccine candidate, BNT162b2, against SARS-CoV-2 has demonstrated evidence of efficacy against COVID-19 in participants … based on the first interim efficacy analysis conducted on November 8, 2020 by an external, independent Data Monitoring Committee (DMC) from the Phase 3 clinical study. … The evaluable case count reached 94 and the DMC performed its first analysis on all cases. The case split between vaccinated individuals and those who received the placebo indicates a vaccine efficacy rate above 90%,

Wow! Conducted on the 8th of November  2020 (94 cases) and announced immediately the day after on the 9th of November 2020.

And barely one week later ,following Pfizer’s announcement, the World Heath Organization (WHO) hastily decides on November 13, 2020 to modify its definition of “Herd Inmunity”.

Herd immunity is an important concept in medicine which occurs “when a large portion of a community (the herd) becomes immune to a disease [e.g. SARS-2], making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. As a result, the whole community becomes protected — not just those who are immune.” (Mayo Clinic)

What this definition suggests is that social distancing and the face mask could undermine the development of herd immunity.

 “It happens when so many people in a community become immune to an infectious disease that it stops the disease from spreading”.

On November 13, 2020, pressured by Big Pharma, the WHO redefined herd immunity with a view to supporting the mRNA vaccine.

Below (Left) is the official WHO definition (June 2020).

And on November 13, 2020 coinciding with the launching of the Covid-19 “vaccine” (Right) the WHO decided unilaterally to  redefine a fundamental medical concept, focussing solely on the role of vaccination in achieving herd immunity.

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To my knowledge, the peer reviewed definition of herd immunity has not changed.

The new “definition” of the WHO visibly serves the interests of Big Pharma involved in the marketing of the deadly Covid-19 vaccine.

Another version of the WHO’s herd immunity definition was posted on December 31, 2021 which postulates:

“To safely achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, a substantial proportion of a population would need to be vaccinated, lowering the overall amount of virus able to spread in the whole population”.

The broader issue, amply documented, is that the “vaccine” not only creates disease, it undermines the immune system of those who have received the vaccine.

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Important video

A meeting was held at the Milken Institute including Dr. Anthony Fauci, HHS officials and Senior Vice President of the Rockefeller Foundation Dr. Rick Bright,

It happened in October 2019, before the Pandemic.

“Why do we not blow the system up”, disrupting the bureaucratic process, establishing “an entity of excitement”.

Dr. Rick Bright intimated that a new virus from China could be used to enforce a universal vaccine.  “We could use the RNA sequence from that”.

The Milken Institute is generously funded by the Rockefellers and Wall Street.

Although the panel discussion centered on Influenza, the OAN report suggests is that the planning of the Covid-19 pandemic and the mRNA “vaccine” was well underway BEFORE THE PANDEMIC.

The statement of the VP of the Rockefeller Foundation Rick Bright, concerning RNA sequencing of a new virus from China is revealing. Nonetheless, this was a public event broadcast live by C-Span on October 30th, 2019.

Also, less than two weeks earlier, a Table Top Simulation of a new corona virus pandemic was carried out under Scenario 201. The event was sponsored by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, Centre for Heath Security (an event sponsored by the Gates Foundation and World Economic Forum).(Event 201)

In a (February 1, 2020)  interview, Richard Hatchett, CEO of  the (Gates Foundation Supported) Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) intimated that the project to develop a mRNA vaccine commenced in early 2019: “We did that in the last year or so [early 2019]. … ”

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, October 31 2021

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To view the complete C-SPAN video click below:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?465845-1/universal-flu-vaccine

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The Undisclosed Contract between Big Pharma and the EU governments is outlined at 14′.00

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“Writers such as Morningstar are always going to be targeted and they will always face hostility from the status quo. That is the nature of what they do. They pull away the curtain that hides the  horrors and malevolence of those individuals, corporations, and political institutions that oppress the majority of the planet.  And many do not want those curtains removed. Her work deserves the upmost support.”  – John Steppling, American playwright, screenwriter and teacher [1]

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It appears that the attention of the world will be on the 26^th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP26) summit to be held in Glasgow starting on October 31. [2]

According to The Guardian, the world nations, bound by treaty in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), agree to “avoid dangerous climate change” by reducing greenhouse gas emissions established as the principal component of our distorted weather conditions. The conditions of the Paris Agreement to reduce or curb existing emissions by 2030 with a target of net zero by 2050 will simply not be acceptable as a way of keeping the global temperature below 2C, let alone the more ambitious 1.5C. [3]

So, with the UN Secretary-General saying the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group’s recent report was a “code red for humanity,” pressure from both the high level organizers at the top to the legions if environmental activists at the bottom will definitely collude in their efforts to ratchet up our commitments to our planet while our narrow margin of meaningful climate action has been spent![4]

The problem with every eager steward of the planet is that ultimately they are not truly directing the world’s governments. Voices from the margins of the environmental and social justice movements are trying to accentuate the fact that major economic interests not only play a massive role in greenhouse gas production (for example, 100 companies produce 1 trillion tons, or nearly 71 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions) but are directing the ‘remedies’ that largely transfer the responsibilities onto the masses.

Worse, the final result is not even expected to slow down the assault on Earth. Just take us to a re-opening of a brand new capitalist future adorned, no doubt, on a suitable, sustainable and ‘green’ path.

The passion to bring awareness to this kind of swindle has been the passion of the special guest of the program. Cory Morningstar has been outlining these realities for more than a decade. This week, she appears on the Global Research News Hour to expand more on her research into not only the environmental movement’s ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’, but also the aims of the so-called ‘Sustainability’ goals, the realities of racialized ‘development’ policies, and the ways in which COVID vaccines and COVID passports also play a disguised role in being ‘ecologically correct.’

Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation, and Counterpunch. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Pluri-national State of Bolivia. Her series, The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – For Consent is posted at Wrong Kind of Green and at her site The Art of Annihilation. She lives in London, Ontario, Canada

(Global Research News Hour Episode 330)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Other stations airing the show:

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.

CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am. 

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

1. https://www.theartofannihilation.com/testimonials/
2. https://ukcop26.org/
3. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/11/what-is-cop26-and-why-does-it-matter-the-complete-guide
4. https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/secretary-generals-statement-the-ipcc-working-group-1-report-the-physical-science-basis-of-the-sixth-assessment

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***

Verehrte Leserin, lieber Leser: Am 8. Oktober veröffentliche das renommierte Fachmagazin „The Lancet“ eine Studie zur Häufigkeit und Belastung der COVID19-Pandemie-Maßnahmen im Jahr 2020 weltweit. Nach Angaben der Forscher und Mitarbeiter der australischen Universität von Queensland und der Universität von Washington führten die psychischen Wechselwirkungen von Lockdowns, Warnungen, „social distancing“ und immer neuen „Varianten“ zu einem drastischen Anstieg von Depressionen, Angststörungen und permanenter Sorge. Am stärksten betroffen waren Frauen und jüngere Menschen (1). Nach Erhebungen der UNESCO in dieser Studie habe „COVID-19“ zudem zur „schwerwiegendsten Zerrüttung des weltweiten Bildungswesens in der Geschichte geführt“ (2). Zu diesen Forschungsergebnissen – wie auch zu den Todesfällen durch den sogenannten COVID-„Impfstoff“ – kann und darf kein Mensch schweigen. Wenn man als Erziehungswissenschaftler und Psychologe auch noch in Betracht zieht, dass sich eine in der Kindheit zugefügte psychische und soziale Verletzung über das Erwachsenenleben hinaus auch auf die kommenden Generationen auswirken kann, dann stellt sich die dringende Frage, wann wir Bürger dieser Welt diesen Circulus vitiosus (Teufelskreis) endlich unterbrechen beziehungsweise beenden werden.

Read it here.

Ergänzung der Studie in „The Lancet“ durch Veröffentlichung in „Save the Children“

Dringend möchte ich jedem Leser die gesamte Lancet-Studie zur Lektüre empfehlen. Sie erschien im Original unter dem Titel: „Global prevalence und burden of depressive and anxiety disorder in 204 countries and territories in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic“ (3). „RT.DE“ machte unter dem Titel „Studie bestätigt: COVID-Maßnahmen führten zu massiver Zunahme von Depressionen und Angststörungen“ am 10. Oktober auf die Studie aufmerksam. Eingeführt wird der Artikel mit folgenden Worten:

„Seit eineinhalb Jahren hat die Corona-Krise Menschen fest im Griff. Den psychischen Kollateralschäden wurde bislang offiziell wenig Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Nun erschien eine Studie, die sich dieses Themas annahm und brisante Zahlen liefert.“ (3)

Eine qualifizierte Ergänzung zu dieser Studie veröffentlichte „RT.DE“ am 11. Oktober mit dem Hinweis auf einen Artikel der Hilfsorganisation „Save the Children“, die sich auf Daten des „Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Trackers“ bezieht. Titel: “Lockdown-Folgen: Zahl der psychischen Erkrankungen bei Kindern stark gestiegen“. Im Vorspann des RT.DE-Artikels heißt es:

„Einer Studie zufolge haben die in der Corona-Krise staatlich verordneten Einschränkungen zu einem deutlichen Zuwachs an psychischen Erkrankungen bei Kindern geführt – insbesondere bei Fällen von Depressionen, Angstzuständen, Einsamkeit und auch Selbstgefährdung.“ (4)

Der Hilfsorganisation zufolge berichteten mehr als 83 Prozent der Kinder über einen Anstieg von negativen Gefühlen. Werde hier nicht reagiert, heißt es anschließend, könne es zu Langzeitschäden kommen – auch wenn die Beschränkungen aufgehoben würden.

Welche Schlüsse wollen wir aus diesen Studien-Ergebnissen ziehen?

Die Autoren der Lancet-Studie forderten die Regierenden und politischen Entscheidungsträger laut RT-DE-Artikel dazu auf, „dringend Maßnahmen zu ergreifen, um die psychosozialen Gesundheitssysteme weltweit zu stärken und der gestiegenen Nachfrage gerecht zu werden“ (5) Die Hilfsorganisation „Save the Children“ forderte die Regierungen auf, „der psychischen Gesundheit und dem geregelten Lernen von Kindern während und nach der Covid-Krise Priorität einzuräumen“ (6).

Doch sind diese Maßnahmen wirklich ausreichend? Ginge es nicht vielmehr darum, sowohl die am meisten betroffenen Frauen als auch alle anderen Menschen und insbesondere die junge Generation auf diesem Erdball vor Tod und Verzweiflung zu bewahren.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe.

Noten

1. https://dol.org/10.1018/50140-6736)21)021-43-7; https://de.rt.com/international/125511-erste-studie-ihrer-art-covid-massnahmen-depression/

2. a. O.

3. https://de.rt.com/international/125511-erste-studie-ihrer-art-covid-massnahmen-depression/

4. https://de.rt.com/international/125460-lockdown-folgen-zahl-psychischen-erkrankungen/

5. https://de.rt.com/international/125511-erste-studie-ihrer-art-covid-massnahmen-depression/

6. https://de.rt.com/international/125460-lockdown-folgen-zahl-psychischen-erkrankungen/

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

“A student who developed blood clots after getting her second Covid-19 vaccine shot and her left leg was amputated has since died of a haemorrhagic stroke after brain surgery”.

Developing blood clots requiring amputation following the Covid-19 vaccine jab is not an isolated event, as reported by the Bangkok Post. This is happening all over the World.

Our thoughts are with Ketsiree and the victims of Big Pharma’s killer vaccine.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, October 29, 2021

***

Ketsiree Kongkaew, 20, a student at Phangnga Community College, died on Monday morning at Songklanagarind Hospital, Thai  media reported on Tuesday.

She had been inoculated first with the Sinovac vaccine, and then given AstraZeneca as her second dose.

Her grandmother Harlia Kongkaew, 85, of Ban Thadan village in  Muang district of Phangnga, took the young woman’s body from Songkhlanagarind Hospital on Monday afternoon for  Islamic funeral rites in Ao Luk district of Krabi prvonce.

They travelled by a rescue foundation vehicle.

The old woman has a small grocery shop in Ban Thadan and her granddaughter lived with her there.

Adul Chuthong, chief of Muang Phangnga district led local officials and teachers in offering  moral support to the old woman and other relatives. Ketsiree’s body was to be interred at Ban Bagan burial ground in Au Luk district.

After the ceremony, the grandmother was to return to her house on Koh Panyee in Phangnga province.

Anupong Thammarong, 25, a classmate of Ketsiree from the same village, said a doctor from Songklanagarind Hospital had phoned the grandmother late on Friday night, asking for permission to perform surgery. The doctor said Ketsiree had bleeding in her brain.

The grandmother and relatives gave their permission. After the operation, the young woman  remained unconscious. She was reliant on a ventilator and was pronounced dead on Monday morning after a haemorrhagic stroke.

The doctors said the brain haemorrhage was a side effect of the thrombolytic drugs used to treat blood clots, Mr Anupong said.

Ketsiree was reported to have earlier suffered an acute arterial occlusion, or blockage of a limb artery, after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine as her second shot.

According to Jamras Khanadpol, director of Phangnga Community College, she began feeling unwell after her second shot on Aug 13.

She complained of a fever and chest pains about three days later, her classmate Anupong said. She went to see a doctor at Phangnga Hospital, who diagnosed her with a bladder infection.

Ketsiree was later rushed back to the hospital after she experienced severe pain in her left leg. She was referred to Surat Thani Hospital, where an X-ray revealed blood clots that required urgent surgery.

As her condition continued to worsen, the hospital transferred her to the better-equipped Krabi Hospital, then to Songklanagarind Hospital in Hat Yai, where doctors decided to amputate her leg, Mr Anupong said.

The National Health Security Office has given Ketsiree’s  family financial assitance of 400,000 baht.

To read the original Bangkok Post article click here

Our thanks to the Bangkok Post

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Featured image: Rescue volunteers take the body of 20-year-old student Ketsiree Kongkaew to Ao Luk district of Krabi province on Monday night for funeral rites and burial. (Capture from @nbtpng-Radio Thailand Facebook page)

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***

One of the biggest and most costly construction projects on Samos in recent years is now open. I cycled around the completed site this past week. It is awesome in its scale (over 6 hectares) and is a dramatic addition to the island’s infrastructure. The new camp for refugees at Zervou comes with a 43 million price tag and can accommodate up to 3,000 refugees. Currently there are around 400 men , women and children inside. It is a closed camp with entrance and exit scrutinised between 8am and 8pm. A mini bus shuttle will take them into Samos Town for 1.6 euro one way. The camp has invested heavily in surveillance and security systems including magnetic identity cards, high security gates, cameras and drones all of which allows for close monitoring of the refugees.

Being familiar from my work in the UK with prison design and function I can assure you with confidence that the Zervou camp has been designed along modern prison lines. But this is no low security prison. Enclosing the site behind double high meshed fences topped with razor wire is but one obvious sign of its intent. Just as the site itself, on the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere (10km to the nearest village) with not a shred of shade from the summer heat or the winter cold holds no comfort. It stands in stark contrast with the army barracks that cover the island where there are trees or gardens amongst the barracks which house the soldiers. At Zervou, all is grey, brutal and uniform – the cabins, the concrete roads and open areas and the endless wire. This is a deliberate design common to prisons where the physical lay-out is intended to convey clear messages as to its purpose to all those detained inside and those outside.

But Zervou is not a prison. It is a camp for refugees who have arrived in Samos to be cared for while they make their applications for asylum. They are not criminals but a wide range of vulnerable people from many societies seeking refuge and a future. “Zervou will be the first of the [new] planned hotspot camps on the Aegean islands. They all share a common characteristics: Due to their geographical location, they cut the camp residents off from access to the cities and their supply structures. And thus also from everyday life: from the light-heartedness of the cafés, from the liveliness of the marketplaces. But it is these places that enable people to forget, at least for a short time, that they are – or are supposed to be – refugees. “ (Samos: A place in the middle of nowhere Medico International, 21 Sept 2021).

The evidence is now overwhelming of the negative and inhumane consequences of detention in places such as Zervou. The impact of the camp’s isolated and remote location alone can be expected to have a severe impact on the mental health of already stressed and vulnerable people. We don’t need to waste time debating the evidence except to note that these truths are widely known but have little or no impact in shifting the practices of those in charge of such prisons.

For those of us who live on Samos the presence of Zervou is certain to pose challenges and problems. At the very least our biggest construction project in recent times will do little to enhance Samos’ reputation as a holiday destination. It is hard to see tourist buses stopping by. And there are certain to be those who will now think twice before visiting our beautiful island because of the cruelties experienced by refugees in places such as Zervou.

In that context, our silence is hardly an option. It will be interpreted by many as signalling consent to Zervou.

Places like Zervou illustrate the extent to which the EU policy of deterrence remains as a guiding principle in the treatment of refugees arriving on our shores. On no account make their arrival welcoming so that a clear message is sent of not being wanted. This has been a consistent feature of EU and Greece’s approach to the refugee challenge for many years now and shows no sign of shifting.

But as we are seeing with climate change things can and do begin to shift when the truth can no longer be ignored. As with EU refugee policies there is now mounting evidence that they fail on so many levels. The testimony of refugees, the reports of the NGOs working in the camps and countless academic and scientific accounts without exception all highlight the damage done to refugees who are incarcerated in such places. In a powerful critique of Zervou by MSF Samos they cite the experiences of their psychologists:

“As psychologists working with the people who are at the frontline of Europe’s tightening migration policies, we witness on a daily basis the deterioration of these people’s mental and physical well-being. The opening of the new prison camp is changing the collective identity of the refugees, their self-esteem and image: their dignity. Europe is breaking them.

What do you want us to say to a young boy who, even though has not committed a crime, is forced to remain locked up in a prison-like centre?” (MSF September 2021)

There is now growing evidence of the acute trauma and stress inflicted on refugees as they wait often for years in Greece whilst their asylum claims are processed. Isolated, cut off from Samos Town and incarcerated in a prison on a barren hillside is not going to make it any better. It is amazing that one of those responsible Manos Logothetis, from the General Secretariat for Reception of Asylum Seekers can claim that the new prison marks a decisive step in humanitarian care for refugees in that they now get a cabin with a kitchen and air conditioning (Euro News 23 Sept 2021) ? And he continued, “for the first time in the history of migration, a beneficiary will be able to sit in a restaurant that is air-conditioned and safe.” (Guardian 19 Sept 2021)

This is what Djina from Mali, who is now in the new camp had to say:

“We are here in the new camp, the containers are cosy but we didn’t come here to sleep. Some of us left their home two years ago. We haven’t any good food nor good health. We are prisoners, and nothing can replace freedom, so here it’s total traumatism.Also, the place is very isolated. They cut the financial aid, for them we are merchandise. The European Union is aware of everything. We can have 4 or 5 rejections. It’s weird here, don’t ask me any more.”

Ahmed from Iraq says:“I feel like I’m in prison. I feel lonely, lazy, and like I’m in another world. The new camp is definitely better than the tent, there is a bathroom, kitchen, water, electricity, refrigerator and air conditioners. But I stayed in the tent for three years, then now what, I moved to another camp? I ask myself these questions: how long will I be called a refugee? When will I become a human? A human who works, goes out, travels, does what any other person would do?(Both cited by Europe Must Act, October 11, 2021)

We on Samos cannot pretend that we don’t have a big prison now in our midst. A prison built for refugees and not convicted criminals brings shame to Samos even if there was little we could do to stop it. But at least we can speak up and express our concerns and demand a change. It does not have to be like this. On the Canary Islands empty hotels were turned over to arriving refugees with great success.

These are early days for Zervou. It is not at all clear how this prison is to be developed or deployed. But what we can be clear about is the threat it poses for the future of Samos if it comes to be closely identified by its relationship to a prison. There are many in the world now who know the truth of this and their numbers will grow. Can we remain silent?

“The new camp is not a good thing for Europe. I think it is criminal to criminalise us. It is a shame to keep people in such a situation. When they tell me, ‘Oh, we have a nice bed, we have a nice kitchen for you,’ I’m not concerned with a nice bed or a nice place to sleep. It’s about having the freedom to move around and live with others. I am not just speaking for myself, but for all those who live with me in the camp on Samos. “

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This article was originally published on Samos Chronicles.

Featured image is from Samos Chronicles

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***

Dr. Peter McCullough gave a talk about vaccine safety and efficacy and the importance of early COVID-19 treatment in Phoenix, Arizona.

In the video below, Dr. McCullough answered questions regarding the subject.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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The second day of appellate proceedings by the United States against Julian Assange saw the defence make their case against the overturning of District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s January ruling.  Any extradition to the US, she concluded, would be so oppressive to the publisher as to render it unjust under UK extradition law.  Before the UK High Court, both Edward Fitzgerald QC and Mark Summers QC sought to preserve the status quo.

The morning session was focused on defending the action of the defence witness Michael Kopelman, whose initial psychiatric assessment of Assange’s wellbeing omitted reference to Stella Moris and the existence of their two children.  The prosecution had contended that this impaired Kopelman’s partiality before the court, notwithstanding his correction to the account in the final court submission.  The omission, Fitzgerald contended, was justified given fears of the surveillance operation in the Ecuadorian embassy mounted by the Central Intelligence Agency, and concerns about potential abduction and assassination.  This point had been confirmed in the now famous Yahoo! News report.

A day prior to the submission of the initial report, Kopelman had sought legal advice from the head of the solicitor’s firm acting for Assange, Gareth Peirce.  But as Peirce was facing an avalanche of documents to be served at the time – surveillance, allegations of kidnapping and poisoning, among other things – she was unable to furnish him with timely advice.  Baraitser duly found that Kopelman’s conduct, while misleading, was not that of a dishonest individual but “a very human response”.  The judge also knew about the identity of Moris prior to reading the initial report.

To bolster Kopelman before the attacks of the prosecution, the defence adduced the opinion of consultant forensic psychiatrist Keith Rix, a noted authority on the ethical duties of psychiatric experts.  Kopelman had, in Rix’s view “acted ‘professionally’; responsibly’ and he ‘exercised appropriate and reasonable caution’” in omitting reference to Moris and the children in his initial report.

The defence also suggested that the US government could not have been surprised by the relationship between Moris and Assange and their children.  Nigel Blackwood, one of prosecution’s doctors of choice, was informed of the children’s existence in March 2020.

Fitzgerald, mindful of addressing Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett, reminded him about the parallels between the Assange case and the hacktivist Lauri Love, whose extradition was overturned in 2018.  Love’s extradition to the US was initially approved by the Westminster Magistrate’s Court but was overturned in the High Court with Burnett presiding. Love had also been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a contributing factor to his suicide risk in a US prison facility.  The court there had accepted a “predictive function” so frowned upon by James Lewis QC, whose submission the previous day insisted that current medical valuations – and notably those of the prosecution – were the only ones that counted.

Burnett took issue with the characterisation.  “It’s a completely different case,” he interjected, citing the fact that the district judge in Love’s case had found that preventive measures were adequate and would prevent suicide.  District Judge Baraitser had found the opposite with regards to Assange.  Fitzgerald contended the mental disorders in question were the same in both cases and that these would have a role in depriving intelligent individuals of volition in being at risk of suicide.

The defence submission to the High Court also makes the point that District Judge Baraitser “found that the cause of both the urge to commit suicide and the determined circumvention of suicide measures would be Mr Assange’s mental disorder itself.”  This was based on the evidence from consultant neuropsychiatrist Quinton Deeley about the effects of Assange’s Autism Spectrum Disorder and Kopelman’s submission on the effects of Assange’s depression.

After lunch, Summers took aim at the prosecution’s package of “assurances” regarding Assange’s fate in the pre-trial and post-trial phase. These included an undertaking that Assange would not be subject to oppressive Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), face solitary confinement or even end up in the ADX Florence supermax prison facility if convicted.  They also include a promise that Assange would receive appropriate “clinical and psychological treatment” as “recommended” by the relevant prison clinician.  If convicted, the US government would permit him to apply for a prisoner transfer to serve his sentence in Australia subject, of course, to Australian approval.

In the view of the defence, the entire package was unreliable.  Even assuming they would be acted upon, they would be inadequate.  They were also oddly timed and untestable, being given only after Baraitser’s ruling.  They only addressed two of the seven grounds for finding that Assange faced a substantial risk of suicide, and even then, inadequately addressed those limited issues.  And how could you trust such pledges from a power whose officials had considered abducting and killing Assange?

The previous day, Lewis had argued that the onus was on the judge to seek those assurances on how Assange would be treated in the first place.  This rather odd interpretation was given a deserved shredding by Summers.  Through the extradition hearing, the discussion about SAMs, ADX Florence and solitary confinement was frequent.  The prosecution might well have taken these conditions off the table but as Baraitser herself observed, “Mr Kromberg acknowledged that their imposition is possible.”

Furthermore, these new “conditional assurances do not in fact remove the real risk of detention on SAMs or on ADX.  They certainly do not remove the very real risk of detention or administrative segregation.”  The US authorities still reserved, according to the filed submission, “the power to impose SAMs on Mr Assange ‘in the event that, after entry of this assurance, he was to commit any future act that met the test for the imposition of a SAM’.”  Even leaving the matter of SAMs and ADX Florence, Assange would still risk facing “other severely isolating prison regimes or other notorious prisons in the US about which the [District Judge] heard copious evidence.”

Lewis, for the prosecution, suggested that such regimes as Administrative Segregation (AdSeg) could not be equated to solitary confinement.  But the US prison system is replete with terminology designed to conceal what amounts to the same thing. “Prisons often hide behind these rhetorical labels [the hole, AdSeg, protective custody, SMU, SHU] to avoid scrutiny under legal sanctions that prohibit indefinite placement in solitary confinement and require due process for those who are sentenced,” claims the US-based human rights body, the National Immigrant Justice Center.

The defence’s High Court submission also notes the crude reality that, “One agency with power to recommend SAMs to the attorney general (on the basis of some unspecified ‘act’ they perceive Mr Assange to have committed) is the CIA – the very same agency whose criminal acts Mr Assange has sought to expose and who are under active investigation in Spain for plotting to kill him.”

Continuing the focus on the role of the CIA, Summers reminded the judges that this was the “first time the US had sought the assistance of a UK court in obtaining jurisdiction” over an individual a US government entity had considered poisoning or assassinating.  “That is worthy of an investigation in relation to the assurances.”  The CIA had shown an “obsession for vengeance”; there was “credible evidence of US government plans at some length to do serious harm to Mr Assange”.

Drawing from the Yahoo! News report, Summers noted “discussions in the Oval Office about killing [Assange]” and “sketches drawn in the summer of 2017 as matters escalated to render him back to America from the UK.  But the UK refused to go along with this.”  The then CIA director Mike Pompeo was “on the record that some things are true and it’s under Congressional investigation.”

The assurance that Assange could be transferred to an Australian prison also deserved some measure of scorn.  “Mr Assange will most likely be dead before [this assurance] can have any purchase, if it ever could.”  Precedent also showed that the US could not be trusted to keep the undertaking.

The case of Spanish drug trafficker David Mendoza Herrarte was cited by Summers.  In that instance, a Spanish court was given an assurance that Mendoza, if extradited to the US to face trial, could serve any prison sentence in Spain.  The US Department of Justice had something else in mind, initially refusing the transfer application when it was made.  The pledge, it was subsequently claimed, had been to secure Mendoza the liberty to apply for a transfer; the DOJ retained the right to reject it.  It took six years of diplomatic tussling between Madrid and Washington, with the encouragement of the Spanish Supreme Court, to eventually secure the prisoner release.

In his rebuttal, Lewis, who omitted any reference to the role of the CIA, having previously dismissed such claims as “palpable nonsense”, made light of the tardiness of the US offer of assurances.  “It is proper to deal with assurances at any stage.  This is not a sea change.  Assurances are not evidence.  The fact is it is common sense that an assurance will be reactive in nature.”  Conditions might change. Even if a person was released, Lewis proposed, citing precedent, the extradition process might well be restarted on the basis of assurances given by the requesting state.  “We could start again with Assange.”  A promise of perennial legal purgatory.

This second and concluding day was illuminating in casting light on the barbarously defective nature of the entire effort against Assange.  The fact that it had reached the appeal stage is itself a grotesque reflection on British justice.  The fact that these proceedings could even assume that Assange might either get a fair trial or be treated fairly in a US prison after officials had chewed over the possibility of abducting or killing him can only be described as disturbed lunacy.  The US government, Fitzgerald remarked at one point, was happy to submit such declarations as those of Assistant US Attorney Gordon Kromberg, but not “subject themselves to cross-examination.  They cross-examine till the cows come home the defence experts.”

The High Court justices will now consider whether to continue this lamentable, sadistic enterprise.  The defence team are considering cross-appealing parts of the original decision on the grounds that it constitutes a grave threat to press liberties.  Whatever the outcome, an appeal to the Supreme Court is likely.  In the meantime, the torture of Assange by process will continue.

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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: Julian Assange court sketch, October 21, 2019, supplied by Julia Quenzler.

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***

While the fight against fake news becomes one of the main agendas in the Western world, the hegemonic media continues to disseminate unproven information with the aim of attacking non-aligned governments. In October, several Western media agencies published a report about an alleged launch of a Chinese hypersonic missile, whose technology would be able to evade the entire apparatus of the current American anti-missile system. The news quickly spread, even without any plausible proof of what had really happened, which generated hostile and worrying comments from major US military authorities in response. Now, a new scenario of tensions is formed due to a possible media mistake.

Earlier this month, an important media outlet published an article reporting an alleged Chinese test of a hypersonic glide vehicle launched from a low-Earth orbit rocket that could theoretically be able to evade US missile defense systems. The sources mentioned in the article are anonymous. Immediately, the news went viral and was republished by many agencies around the world. The speed with which the Chinese supposedly developed this new weapon surprised US national security officials. The main fear is that Beijing has developed a modern space weapon with no equivalent in the world and that it could launch missiles at any country from space, not being detected by the current US anti-missile system. In the same sense, the apparent Chinese ability to hide the possession of such technology from the world is also a cause of great surprise.

However, Beijing denies any involvement in this type of operation. Commenting on the case, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian claimed that the event described by the media was related to the launch of a spacecraft, not a hypersonic missile. These were his words:

“This test was a routine spacecraft experiment to verify the reusable technology of spacecraft, which is of great significance for reducing the cost of spacecraft use. It can provide a convenient and cheap way for humans to use space peacefully. in the world have carried out similar experiments”.

However, regardless of the discussion if it occurred or not, the repercussion of the episode was absolutely negative, boosting global tensions. Washington interpreted the case as a sign of threat in the modern space and military race. During an interview, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, compared the launch of the missile to the Soviet Union’s launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, in the 1950s. The general emphasized that Beijing has shown itself to be winning the contemporary space race and that the US is currently at a similar disadvantage to that when the Soviets launched Sputnik.

These were some of his words:

“What we saw was a very significant event of a test of a hypersonic weapon system. And it is very concerning. I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it’s very close to that. It has all of our attention (…) They have gone from a peasant-based infantry that was very large in 1979 to a very capable military that covers all the domains and has global ambitions (…) The Chinese military capabilities are much greater than that single test (…) They’re expanding in space, in cyber and then in the traditional domains of land, sea and air (…) China is very significant on our horizon”.

The comparison pointed out by the general is quite suggestive: if the US sees the current Chinese test as it saw Sputnik in 1957 (or in a “very close” way), then surely Washington’s reaction will also be analogous to that taken earlier. At that time, the American government made massive investments in the space race with the aim of overcoming Soviet technological power. Currently, something in this direction is to be expected, but in a fully militarized direction, with a race to build new hypersonic missiles and other space weapons. In practice, this would be the beginning of a process of militarization and nuclearization of outer space – something that is already a trend in the contemporary world, but which can reach even higher levels.

As we can see, the repercussion of a dubious article with of unproven allegations can be catastrophic, generating much more than a scandal, but a real military race. Beijing continues to fully deny the military nature of the launch, claiming it is an experimental spacecraft. Obviously, claims made by nation states must be respected and taken as true when confronted with claims made by media agencies. In addition, there is a matter of principle of justice: the burden of proof must lie with the agencies that released this information, as it is up to the accuser to prove their allegations are right and not the accused to prove them wrong. It remains to be seen whether there will be time for this.

Since the creation of Space Force, Washington has been progressively more aggressive in developing projects for the militarization of outer space. And maybe the current “Sputnik moment” is the perfect excuse for that. Creating more advanced protection systems and missiles with greater destructive power will be the American agenda to increase its defense potential against supposed Chinese weapons.

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Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

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***

People around the globe are protesting the loss of liberty, illegal mandates and tyrannical government overreach. Over the last eighteen months we’ve witnessed a removal of the liberties we hold dear. Every man, woman and childs’ basic human rights are under attack and we believe the power is with the people.  

We know the impact of organized, coordinated acts of peaceful civil disobedience. Beginning on November 3, Children’s Health Defense joins citizens from around the globe for ‘Worldwide Walkouts’ to demand a return to freedom and democratic principles.

People Everywhere are Joining the Fight for Freedom

We’re witnessing a Great Awakening unfold in the citizenry as ignorant government leaders and corrupt politicians continue to implement mandates that threaten jobs, livelihoods, children’s education, and our way of life…

Americans and citizens around the world need to take back their power, stand up, walk out and just say NO. We will unify for freedom and commit acts of peaceful civil disobedience to make our point: no masks, no vaccines, no testing, no green passes. No coercion. No mandates.

Kickoff is November 3rd!

In his short video, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. CHD Board Chair and Lead Counsel called for everyone to participate in Worldwide Walkouts that kick off on November 3rd.

He shared that

“No government in history has ever surrendered power in the absence of a demand. We need to tell these governments and their friends in the technocracy, the Silicon Valley billionaire boys club, the mainstream media, and the pharmaceutical industry that we will no longer tolerate their trampling of citizens’ rights.”

The WORLDWIDE WALKOUTS are a call for a global shutdown to stop business as usual, protesting these unlawful mandates and to celebrate human rights.

“Coercive mandates of shoddily tested medical products and segregationist passports violate international human rights law,” said CHD President and General Counsel Mary Holland. “We need brave citizens to peacefully refuse to comply with unlawful and unethical edicts that for the past year and a half have been allowed to trump individual rights and freedoms. Those days are over. There will be no business as usual until segregationist and coercive medical policies advanced by government authorities end once and for all.”

Standing in Solidarity for Freedom

Our vision is to see thousands of towns in America and around the world come to a standstill while doctors, nurses, educators, businessmen, first responders, police officers, firemen, travel engineers and more demand their freedom. We are millions. Let’s show ourselves and stand in solidarity against tyrannical mandates.

CHD chapters, coalition partners, and local community organizers are planning mass gatherings of people in peaceful noncompliance to take place in high-exposure areas in many cities and states. Check WorldWideWalkOuts.org for locations and details. If you’re not seeing one for your area, reach out to others in your community to plan an event. Pick a place that is easy to get to and can be seen by many. Once your date, location and time are in place, tell us your plans so we can help amplify your message.

Courage is contagious so be willing to step up as a leader in your community. Encourage everyone you know to walkout and stand in solidarity against mandates. Tell them to refuse to show up for work, take a sick day and pull their kids from school. The only way we win is united.

Freedom transcends party lines and unites us all as one human race. We must ban together with concerned citizens from all walks of life with one goal in mind, to preserve freedom and the right to choose what goes on and in our bodies.

Get the Message Out by Sharing

Share this video message and more details from the Chairman of Children’s Health Defense, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to encourage everyone you know to participate.

Never has there been a more important time to fight back and protect our rights to stop this tyranny and government overreach.

Be a defender of truth, freedom and health. Help us kick off Worldwide WalkOuts beginning on November 3rd.

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***

The latest trade data shows that the American business community doesn’t agree with continuing former US President Trump’s counterproductive trade war, nor are they boycotting Chinese products due to the tensions that incumbent US President Biden has provoked with the People’s Republic.

China released its latest trade data in early October showing that trade surged 35.4% from January to September compared to the same period last year to reach $543 billion. This should be celebrated by both sides despite the administration of former US President Donald Trump and his successor Joe Biden regarding it as a sensitive issue. The reason for this is that such data is a sign of mutually beneficial relations considering the economic and geopolitical context.

Regarding the first, this proves that China is playing a major role in helping American retailers refill bare shelves, according to unnamed economists quoted by the Associated Press. The US’ ongoing supply chain crunch is beyond China’s control to fix because it’s due to domestic issues related to the American labor market and other such factors, but it nevertheless shows that Chinese imports are beneficial for that country’s consumers. Without them, their economic crisis would be much more challenging.

Concerning the geopolitical context, the latest trade data shows that the American business community doesn’t agree with continuing former US President Trump’s counterproductive trade war, nor are they boycotting Chinese products due to the tensions that incumbent US President Biden has provoked with the People’s Republic. This community is the epitome of pragmatism and their reasonable interests should be listened to in Washington. Policymakers must realize that trade can de-escalate tensions, not exacerbate them.

These two observations combine to inspire a new path forward for Chinese-American relations. Quite clearly, the US government’s anti-Chinese hostility has had no negative affect on bilateral trade. To the contrary, as the latest data confirms, trade remains surprisingly strong. The latest trade data demonstrates the complex economic interdependence between China and the US, which has been made all the more important as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Imagining for a moment that former US President Trump had succeeded in “decoupling” their economies or that the business community boycotted Chinese products out of solidarity with incumbent US President Biden, the economic situation for ordinary Americans would have been much worse than it presently is. It’s precisely because those two leaders’ anti-Chinese policies have failed in the economic sense that American living standards haven’t plummeted even more. China is therefore responsible for helping the American people.

Some might deny this “politically incorrect” claim for self-interested ideological reasons, but it’s undeniable considering the two contexts that were earlier examined. Although American policymakers might be loath to admit it, they nevertheless acknowledge the positive role that China is playing in helping their people, even if they hadn’t ever intended for it to do so. This gives cautious optimism that they might not further escalate the hitherto static trade war between them for pragmatism’s sake, at least not in the near future, hopefully.

Of course, the influential military-industrial complex’s congressional lobbies and the neoconservative ideologues in the US government have selfish reasons to hope that relations comprehensively worsen between China and the US, but policymakers must realize how counterproductive this would be. The ruling Democrats cannot afford for the American economy to suffer any more than it already is by curtailing trade ties with China if they hope to retain control of Congress during next year’s midterm elections.

The ideal scenario would be for the Biden Administration to seriously consider a meaningful rapprochement with China. The continuance of former US President Trump’s anti-Chinese policies has failed to “decouple” their economies, which are more intertwined than ever before and at such a crucial moment in world history at that. Trade should form the basis upon which bilateral ties can improve. Selfish forces mustn’t be allowed to sabotage this promising possibility. Hopefully common sense, pragmatism, and mutual interests will prevail.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

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***

Dr. McCullough speaks about vaccine safety, efficacy, and the continued need for early treatment.

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***

On the latest episode of “Doctors and Scientists,” host Brian Hooker interviewed Jessica Rose, Ph.D., a computational biologist and Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) analyst. Rose discussed the problematic flaws in the VAERS system.

On the latest episode of “Doctors and Scientists” on CHD.TV, host Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., interviewed Canadian Jessica Rose, Ph.D., a Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) analyst and computational biologist who specializes in biomathematics and molecular research.

Rose and Hooker discussed the results of Rose’s work studying VAERS, and what she believes are the systematic flaws that prevent the passive reporting system from working as it was intended.

Beginning in December 2020, Rose anticipated the number of vaccine adverse events would increase. She analyzed the death count and missing data and found the number of fatalities after COVID vaccines was higher than the number of reports to VAERS of deaths after COVID vaccines.

In September, Rose testified at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting that underreporting was not considered in the VAERS data.

“I wasn’t wrong,” she said. “There was this missing data issue — that’s what sparked this.”

Rose published her findings in “Science, Public Health Policy and the Law.” The title of the study explains its purpose: “Critical Appraisal of VAERS Pharmacovigilance: Is the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) a Functioning Pharmacovigilance System?”

Her results found VAERS does not accurately track adverse reactions due to several flaws, including a “huge” backlog of data waiting to be entered into the system — she  put the number at “hundreds of thousands.”

Rose said health professionals were missing safety signals, and the system was not being applied properly. Additionally, she found data were getting lost during updates.

“The most important thing I found in my determination is whether or not this tool — which can be a pharmacovigilance tool — is being used as such,” Rose said.

“All of this data is being entered by human beings,” Rose said. “Probably nice people who aren’t being paid enough, who have too many things to do, so everything isn’t necessarily nefarious.”

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***

What’s happening is that foreign forces aim to instrumentalize this issue so as to manufacture doubts among the international community about Ethiopia’s commitment to ensuring food security for its people, especially those in Tigray. This is intended to advance the ‘genocide’ narrative that’s meant to maximize foreign pressure on its government in an attempt to coerce it into unilateral political concessions.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed‘s pragmatic remarks in late October about reducing his country’s wheat imports were maliciously misreported by some foreign media. The UK’s Telegraph falsely headlined an article at the time titled “Ethiopian PM Threatens To Stop Food Aid Entering The Country”, which propagated the weaponized information warfare narrative that he’s personally carrying out a so-called “genocide” in the terrorist-controlled northern Tigray Region that’s presently occupied by the TPLF.

To their credit, the BBC was more balanced in their piece about this at the end of the month titled “Ethiopia Food Crisis: Why Does PM Have A Problem With Wheat Aid?”. That outlet accurately reported on his words warning about the risk of importing agricultural diseases from such aid as well as his spokeswoman’s clarification about him “talking more generally about the need to move away from wheat and towards healthier local produce.” Nevertheless, their dramatic description of this as a “crisis” contributes to fearmongering.

What’s happening is that foreign forces aim to instrumentalize this issue so as to manufacture doubts among the international community about Ethiopia’s commitment to ensuring food security for its people, especially those in Tigray. This is intended to advance the “genocide” narrative that’s meant to maximize foreign pressure on its government in an attempt to coerce it into unilateral political concessions. Particularly, the plan seems to be comprehensively erode the country’s sovereignty by making it more dependent on others in all respects.

To elaborate, even the comparatively more balanced BBC tried to sow the seeds of doubt in their piece by writing that PM Abiy’s spokeswoman’s response “doesn’t explain why the government only has an issue with imported wheat and not the locally produced crop, which provides three-quarters of the country’s overall supply.” According to the outlet, locally produced crops might also spread certain diseases, so they’re implying that Ethiopia has ulterior motives in sharing its explanation. This might fuel the “genocide” conspiracy theory.

In reality, not only is no so-called “genocide” occurring in the Tigray Region – and if anything, ethnic cleansing and disturbing signs of a genuine genocide are evidenced through the TPLF’s indiscriminate killings of non-ethnic-Tigrayans in the Afar and Amhara Regions that they invaded over the summer – but Ethiopia isn’t weaponizing its wheat. To the contrary, it ambitiously aspires to become more agriculturally self-sufficient in order to reduce its dependence on such imports that hostile foreign forces could weaponize against it.

Despite its representatives’ regular rhetoric to the contrary, the West is actually opposed to Global South nations like Ethiopia ever sustainably ensuring food security. One underdiscussed aspect of the American Hybrid War on Ethiopia is how it politicizes agricultural issues – in this case food aid – as part of its increasingly intensifying information war against that country. Not only does it understand how emotive this issue is for the international audience in terms of shaping their perceptions, but it also knows its importance inside Ethiopia.

The BBC’s report notes that the country imports a quarter of its wheat, approximately a quarter of which (so around 6% of its total) it receives as food aid, mostly from the US. Although this ratio might not seem too significant, it can still have a powerful impact on domestic stability during the ongoing conflict if it’s instrumentalized to put further pressure on the government. This agricultural aspect of the American Hybrid War on Ethiopia is also inextricably connected to the economic war against it.

As Ethiopia attempts to reduce its dependence on foreign food aid, it must first seriously consider switching suppliers in order to not remain as vulnerable to the West’s possible weaponization of this aid during the interim. Russia has become an agricultural superpower in recent years, ironically enough largely due to its response to Western sanctions according to President Putin during his remarks at the latest Valdai Club plenary session. It should therefore have more than enough supply to meet Ethiopia’s needs.

The Eurasian Great Power is incomparably more politically reliable than the West as evidenced by its support of Ethiopia during its ongoing anti-terrorist campaign in Tigray. The two countries even signed a military agreement over the summer which aims to revive their Soviet-era strategic partnership. From the Ethiopian perspective, it would be wise to rely more on Russian wheat imports – including through possible food aid – than on Western ones while it transitions towards sustainably ensuring its food security, which will take time.

Altogether, PM Abiy’s comments about wheat shouldn’t be politicized, but praised. He deserves to be applauded for his ambitious vision of reducing Ethiopia’s dependence on foreign imports. Precisely because this is against Western interests, especially in the context of the American Hybrid War on Ethiopia, the issue is being politicized so as to manipulate foreign perceptions of him and his government. Be that as it may, the reality is that Ethiopia is becoming more sovereign under his leadership, which can inspire other African countries.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

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***

During the past two years, I’ve made comments about what goes on in research labs. The lunatic “science,” the cruelty visited on humans and animals, who are the test subjects.

My work on this goes back to the 1980s, when I was writing my first book, AIDS INC. After reading renegade and leaked literature at that time, I made the following assessment:

To prove their hypotheses about germs causing diseases, researchers will first do anything to weaken animals, so it then seems injecting them with (purported) germs is infecting them and making them sick.

This “prep work” to weaken animals includes:

• Destructive genetic modification;
• The injection of toxic chemicals and drugs;
• The removal of the animals’ immune systems;
• The injection of toxic serums composed of material taken from other animal species;
• Exposing the animals to high doses of radiation;
• The grafting of material on to the animals from other species;
• The caging and isolation of the animals for long periods, which produces great stress and immune-system suppression;
• Drilling holes in animals and attaching restraints and sensors to them and inside them;
• Berating the animals, treating them as objects;
• Conducting research in unsanitary and unclean facilities.

And then, finally—issuing falsified records to support lies about outcomes, in order to prove pre-destined conclusions.

The entire catalog of torture is couched and concealed in dry technical language and euphemism. Medical journals describe NOTHING about the animals’ reactions to this brutal savagery. If they did, the researchers would be exposed as rank sadists, their work would be discredited, and eventually there would be a public uproar.

As for human test subjects, perhaps you’ve heard of the radiation experiments performed on patients in US hospitals during World War 2.

Bottom line: Scientists and government officials decided they needed to know how much radiation would kill a human. After all, workers at The Manhattan Project were trying to build an atomic bomb. They were being exposed to radiation.

So “terminally ill” patients were selected. Informed consent was out of the question. The unknowing patients were secretly injected with high doses of radioactive elements. Tissue samples were taken and analyzed. As it turned out, some of the patients were not terminal. They had been misdiagnosed, or doctors knew up front that they were relatively healthy. The whole study was highly classified, and few people knew of its existence.

From the Atomic Heritage Foundation’s 2017 report, Human Radiation Experiments, here are descriptions of two of the patients:

“Ebb Cade was the first test subject. Cade was a 53-year-old African American male who worked for an Oak Ridge construction company as a cement mixer. On March 24, 1945, he was involved in an auto accident, which caused fractures in his arm and leg. Documents from the time show that he was otherwise healthy. Over the next two weeks, he was given the codename HP-12, with HP standing for Human Product [!]. Dr. Friedell wrote to Dr. Hempelmann at Los Alamos that he had found a primary subject for the plutonium experiment.”

“On April 10, 1945, Dr. Joseph Howland administered a plutonium dose of 4.7 micrograms to Cade, who was awaiting a procedure to set his bones. From 1943-1945, the maximum possible body burden (MPBB) for plutonium had been 5 micrograms, based on limits adopted for radium. Based on animal experimentation, Langham and Friedell had recently concluded that because plutonium remained in the bone for longer than radium, the MPBB should actually be set at 1 microgram. Cade’s dose was nearly five times that limit.”

“Cade was not treated for his arm and leg injuries until April 15, five days after the injection, so that the doctors would be able to biopsy his bone samples. This included extracting 15 of his teeth, which were subsequently shipped to Wright Langham at Los Alamos. It is unclear if Cade suffered from legitimate tooth decay. Shortly after his bones had been set, Cade suddenly discharged himself from the hospital. He moved out of Tennessee and died of heart failure on April 13, 1953, 8 years after the Oak Ridge injection.”

“Another questionable case was CAL-2, a four-year old boy named Simeon Shaw suffering from terminal bone cancer. He was flown with his mother to the UCSF hospital in a US military plane from Australia, apparently under the advisement of a physician in Australia. He arrived in California in April 1946 and was admitted to the hospital. For some time, he was separated [from] his mother, who was only allowed visits periodically. Simeon received a plutonium injection at UCSF under the oversight of Joseph Hamilton and was discharged from the hospital within a month. The Shaws returned to Australia and no follow-ups were ever conducted. Simeon died eight months later.”

“The physicians involved [in the entire project] knew that the procedures had no therapeutic benefits and would be detrimental in the long run if the patients lived. Human experimentation was justified by the claim that the patients were terminally ill; however, this was not true in all cases. Repeated errors in diagnosis, procedure, documentation, and research were made, ultimately calling into question the efficacy of the experiments themselves.”

The doctors and bureaucrats didn’t even have the ethics or common sense to make their reports usable.

Nothing has changed. The COVID vaccines are injuring and killing huge numbers of people all over the world—and governments and media insist on covering up and twisting the facts about the largest grand experiment in human history.

From government leaders in scores of countries, down to decrepit pundits like Noam Chomsky, the word is out: the unvaccinated are lepers and must be isolated from the rest of society.

But sometimes the test subjects rebel and break out of their cages. When they do, they aren’t good little boys and girls.

Then they’re called insurrectionists and terrorists. But the truth is much simpler.

Living beings don’t like to be tortured.

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The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

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***

For the past two days, I have been watching the extradition hearing for Julian Assange via video link from London. The United States is appealing a lower court ruling that denied the US request to extradite Assange not, unfortunately, because in the eyes of the court he is innocent of a crime, but because, as Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January concluded, Assange’s precarious psychological state would deteriorate given the “harsh conditions” of the inhumane US prison system, “causing him to commit suicide.” The United States has charged Assange with 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of trying to hack into a government computer, charges that could see him imprisoned for 175 years. 

Assange, with long white hair, appeared on screen the first day from the video conference room in HM Prison Belmarsh. He was wearing a white shirt with an untied tie around his neck. He looked gaunt and tired. He did not appear in court, the judges explained, because he was receiving a “high dose of medication.” On the second day he was apparently not present in the prison’s video conference room.

If Assange is extradited and found guilty of publishing classified material, it will set a legal precedent that will effectively end national security reporting, allowing the government to use the Espionage Act to charge any reporter who possesses classified documents, and any whistleblower who leaks classified information, under the Espionage Act.

Assange is being extradited because his organization WikiLeaks released the Iraq War Logs in October 2010, which documented numerous US war crimes — including video images of the gunning down of two Reuters journalists and 10 other unarmed civilians in the Collateral murder video, the routine torture of Iraqi prisoners, the covering up of thousands of civilian deaths and the killing of nearly 700 civilians that had approached too closely to US checkpoints. He is also being targeted by US authorities for other leaks, especially those that exposed  the hacking tools used by the CIA known as Vault 7, which enables the spy agency to compromise cars, smart TVs, web browsers and the operating systems of most smart phones, as well as operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux.

If Assange is extradited and found guilty of publishing classified material, it will set a legal precedent that will effectively end national security reporting, allowing the government to use the Espionage Act to charge any reporter who possesses classified documents, and any whistleblower who leaks classified information.

If the appeal by the United States is accepted Assange will be retried in London. The ruling on the appeal is not expected until at least January.

Assange’s September 2020 trial painfully exposed how vulnerable he has become after 12 years of detention, including seven in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He has in the past attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. He suffers from hallucinations and depression, takes antidepressant medication and the antipsychotic quetiapine. After he was observed pacing his cell until he collapsed, punching himself in the face and banging his head against the wall he was transferred for several months to the medical wing of the Belmarsh prison. Prison authorities found “half of a razor blade” hidden under his socks. He has repeatedly called the suicide hotline run by the Samaritans because he thought about killing himself “hundreds of times a day.”

James Lewis, the lawyer for the United States, attempted to discredit the detailed and disturbing medical and psychological reports on Assange presented to the court in September 2020, painting him instead as a liar and malingerer. He excoriated the decision of Judge Baraitser to bar extradition, questioned her competence, and breezily dismissed the mountains of evidence that high-security prisoners in the United Sates, like Assange, subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), and held in virtual isolation in supermax prisons, suffer psychological distress. He charged Dr. Michael Kopelman, emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, who examined Assange and testified for the defense, with deception for “concealing” that Assange fathered two children with his fiancée Stella Morris while in refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He said that, should the Australian government request Assange, he could serve his prison time in Australia, his home country, after his appeals had been exhausted, but stopped short of promising that Assange would not be held in isolation or subject to SAMs.

The authority repeatedly cited by Lewis to describe the conditions under which Assange will be held and tried in the United States was Gordon Kromberg, the Assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Kromberg is the government’s grand inquisitor in cases of terrorism and national security. He has expressed open contempt for Muslims and Islam and decried what he calls “the Islamization of the American justice system.” He oversaw the 9-year persecution of the Palestinian activist and academic Dr. Sami Al-Arian and at one point refused his request to postpone a court date during the religious holiday of Ramadan. “They can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. All they can’t do is eat before sunset,” Kromberg said in a 2006 conversation, according to an affidavit filed by one of Arian’s attorneys, Jack Fernandez.

Kromberg criticized Daniel Hale, the former Air Force analyst who recently was sentenced to 45 months in a supermax prison for leaking information about the indiscriminate killings of civilians by drones, saying Hale had not contributed to public debate, but had “endanger[ed] the people doing the fight.” He ordered Chelsea Manning jailed after she refused to testify in front of a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. Manning attempted to commit suicide in March 2020 while being held in the Virginia jail.

Having covered the case of Syed Fahad Hashmi, who was arrested in London in 2006, I have a good idea of what waits Assange if he is extradited. Hashmi also was held in Belmarsh and extradited in 2007 to the United States where he spent three years in solitary confinement under SAMs. His “crime” was that an acquaintance who stayed in his apartment with him while he was a graduate student in London had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks in luggage at the apartment. The acquaintance planned to deliver the items to al-Qaida. But I doubt the government was concerned with waterproof socks being shipped to Pakistan. The reason, I suspect, Hashmi was targeted was because, like the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Al-Arian, and like Assange, he was fearless and zealous in his defense of those being bombed, shot, terrorized and killed throughout the Muslim world while he was a student at Brooklyn College.

Hashmi was deeply religious, and some of his views, including his praise of the Afghan resistance, were controversial, but he had a right to express these sentiments. More important, he had a right to expect freedom from persecution and imprisonment because of his opinions, just as Assange should have the freedom, like any publisher, to inform the public about the inner workings of power. Facing the possibility of a 70-year sentence in prison and having already spent four years in jail, much of it in solitary confinement, Hashmi accepted a plea bargain on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism. Judge Loretta Preska, who sentenced the hacker Jeremy Hammond and human rights attorney Steven Donziger, gave him the maximum 15-year sentence. Hashmi was held for nine years in Guantanamo-like conditions in the supermax ADX [Administrative Maximum] facility in Florence, Colorado, where Assange, if found guilty in an American court, will almost certainly be imprisoned. Hashmi was released in 2019.

If the government will go to this length to persecute someone who was alleged to have been involved in sending waterproof socks to al-Qaida, what can we expect the government to do to Assange?

The pre-trial detention conditions Hashmi endured were designed to break him. He was electronically monitored 24-hours a day. He could only receive or send mail with his immediate family. He was prohibited from speaking with other prisoners through the walls. He was forbidden from taking part in group prayer. He was permitted one hour of exercise a day, in a solitary cage without fresh air. He has unable to see most of the evidence used to indict him which was classified under the Classified Information Procedures Act, enacted to prevent US intelligence officers under prosecution from threatening to reveal state secrets to manipulate the legal proceedings. The harsh conditions eroded his physical and psychological health. When he appeared in the final court proceeding to accept a guilty plea he was in a near catatonic state, clearly unable to follow the proceedings around him.

If the government will go to this length to persecute someone who was alleged to have been involved in sending waterproof socks to al-Qaida, what can we expect the government to do to Assange?

A society that prohibits the capacity to speak in truth extinguishes the capacity to live in justice. The battle for Assange’s liberty has always been much more than the persecution of a publisher. It is the most important battle for press freedom of our era. And if we lose this battle, it will be devastating, not only for Assange and his family, but for us.

There is no legal basis to hold Assange in prison. There is no legal basis to try him, an Australian citizen, under the US Espionage Act.

Tyrannies invert the rule of law. They turn the law into an instrument of injustice. They cloak their crimes in a faux legality. They use the decorum of the courts and trials, to mask their criminality. Those, such as Assange, who expose that criminality to the public are dangerous, for without the pretext of legitimacy the tyranny loses credibility and has nothing left in its arsenal but fear, coercion and violence. The long campaign against Assange and WikiLeaks is a window into the collapse of the rule of law, the rise of what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of inverted totalitarianism, a form of totalitarianism that maintains the fictions of the old capitalist democracy, including its institutions, iconography, patriotic symbols and rhetoric, but internally has surrendered total control to the dictates of global corporations and the security and surveillance state.

There is no legal basis to hold Assange in prison. There is no legal basis to try him, an Australian citizen, under the US Espionage Act. The CIA spied on Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy through a Spanish company, UC Global, contracted to provide embassy security. This spying included recording the privileged conversations between Assange and his lawyers as they discussed his defense. This fact alone invalidated the trial. Assange is being held in a high security prison so the state can, as Nils Melzer, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, has testified, continue the degrading abuse and torture it hopes will lead to his psychological if not physical disintegration.The architects of imperialism, the masters of war, the corporate-controlled legislative, judicial and executive branches of government and their obsequious courtiers in the media, are guilty of egregious crimes. Say this simple truth and you are banished, as many of us have been, to the margins of the media landscape. Prove this truth, as Assange, Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond and Edward Snowden have by allowing us to peer into the inner workings of power, and you are hunted down and persecuted.

Assange’s “crime” is that he exposed the more than 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians. He exposed the torture and abuse of some 800 men and boys, aged between 14 and 89, at Guantánamo. He exposed that Hillary Clinton in 2009 ordered US diplomats to spy on U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and other U.N. representatives from China, France, Russia, and the UK, spying that included obtaining DNA, iris scans, fingerprints, and personal passwords, part of the long pattern of illegal surveillance that included the eavesdropping on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. He exposed that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the CIA orchestrated the June 2009 military coup in Honduras that overthrew the democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya, replacing it with a murderous and corrupt military regime. He exposed that George W. Bush, Barack Obama and General David Petraeus prosecuted a war in Iraq that under post-Nuremberg laws is defined as a criminal war of aggression, a war crime, which authorized hundreds of targeted assassinations, including those of US citizens in Yemen. He exposed that the United States secretly launched missile, bomb, and drone attacks on Yemen, killing scores of civilians. He exposed that Goldman Sachs paid Hillary Clinton $657,000 to give talks, a sum so large it can only be considered a bribe, and that she privately assured corporate leaders she would do their bidding while promising the public financial regulation and reform. He exposed the internal campaign to discredit and destroy British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by members of his own party. He exposed how the hacking tools used by the CIA and the National Security Agency permits the wholesale government surveillance of our televisions, computers, smartphones and anti-virus software, allowing the government to record and store our conversations, images and private text messages, even from encrypted apps.

He exposed the truth. He exposed it over and over and over until there was no question of the endemic illegality, corruption and mendacity that defines the global ruling elite. And for these truths alone he is guilty.

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact. 

Featured image is from Lawyers for Assange

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***

On 8 October, the renowned scientific journal “The Lancet” published a study on the frequency and burden of COVID19 pandemic measures worldwide in 2020.

According to the researchers and collaborators from the Australian University of Queensland and the University of Washington, the psychological interactions of lockdowns, warnings, “social distancing” and ever new “variants” led to a drastic increase in depression, anxiety disorders and permanent worry.

Women and younger people were most affected (1). According to UNESCO’s findings in this study, “COVID-19” also led to the “most serious disruption of global education in history” (2).

Read it here.

No one can or should remain silent about these research results – as well as about the deaths caused by the so-called COVID “vaccine”. If, as an educationalist and psychologist, one also takes into account that psychological and social injury inflicted in childhood can have an effect on future generations beyond adulthood, then the urgent question arises as to when we citizens of this world will finally break or end this vicious circle.

Supplement to the study in “The Lancet” by publication in “Save the Children”.

I would strongly recommend that every reader reads the entire Lancet study. It was originally published under the title: “Global prevalence and burden of depressive and anxiety disorder in 204 countries and territories in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic” (3). “RT.DE” made the same point under the title “Study confirms: COVID measures led to massive increase in depression and anxiety disorders” on 10 October, drew attention to the study. The article is introduced with the following words:

“For the past year and a half, the Corona crisis has had people firmly in its grip. So far, little official attention has been paid to the psychological collateral damage. Now a study has appeared that took on this topic and provides explosive figures.” (3)

A qualified supplement to this study was published by “RT.DE” on 11 October with a reference to an article by the aid organisation “Save the Children”, which refers to data from the “Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker”. Title: “Lockdown consequences: Number of mental illnesses in children rises sharply”. The lead of the RT.DE article states:

“According to one study, government-imposed restrictions in the Corona crisis have led to a significant increase in mental illness among children – particularly in cases of depression, anxiety, loneliness and also self-harm.” (4)

According to the charity, more than 83 percent of the children reported an increase in negative feelings. If this is not responded to, it is subsequently said, long-term damage can occur – even if the restrictions are lifted.

What conclusions do we want to draw from these study results?

According to the RT-DE article, the authors of the Lancet study called on governments and policymakers to “take urgent action to strengthen mental health systems around the world and meet the increased demand” (5). The charity Save the Children called on governments to “prioritise children’s mental health and regulated learning during and after the Covid crisis” (6).

But are these measures really enough? Wouldn’t it rather be about saving both the most affected women and all other people and especially the young generation on this globe from death and despair.

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Dr Rudolf Hänsel is an educationalist and a qualified psychologist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) https://dol.org/10.1018/50140-6736)21)021-43-7; https://de.rt.com/international/125511-erste-studie-ihrer-art-covid-massnahmen-depression/

(2) Op. cit.

(3) https://de.rt.com/international/125511-erste-studie-ihrer-art-covid-massnahmen-depression/

(4) https://de.rt.com/international/125460-lockdown-folgen-zahl-psychischen-erkrankungen/

(5) https://de.rt.com/international/125511-erste-studie-ihrer-art-covid-massnahmen-depression/

(6) https://de.rt.com/international/125460-lockdown-folgen-zahl-psychischen-erkrankungen/

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

The two-day U.S. appeal against the denial of extradition of Julian Assange has ended in London with the U.S. promising humane prison conditions and Assange’s lawyers saying the CIA tried to kill him.

Consortium News had remote video access to the courtroom for the two-day hearing.

The United States vowed that only a “moderately depressed” Julian Assange would serve time in a humane U.S. prison if he is extradited, while lawyers for Assange told the High Court that the Central Intelligence Agency plotted to assassinate him, as a two-day U.S. appeal hearing came to a close on Thursday in London.

The U.S. is seeking to overturn a lower court decision in January not to extradite the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher on the grounds that he is at high risk of suicide if he faced time isolated in a harsh American prison.

A prosecutor for the U.S. set out over the course of the hearing to convince the two High Court justices to reject that ruling, arguing that Assange is not seriously ill and would not be placed in solitary confinement should he be sent to the U.S.

Assange’s lawyers on the other hand defended the lower court finding of severe mental conditions and high likelihood of committing suicide and sought to dismiss American assurances to Britain that Assange would not be put under Special Administrative Measures (SAMS) or housed in the maximum security ADX Florence prison in Colorado.

They went further, telling the court that the foreign intelligence service of the government requesting Assange’s extradition had seriously considered murdering or kidnapping him.

CIA Plot

Assange lawyer Mark Summers QC essentially told the court that before the United States tried to legally extradite him from Britain it discussed concrete plans to extract Assange from Britain by kidnapping him and rendering him to the United States, possibly through a third country.

Summers began by pointing out that it would be the very Central Intelligence Agency, which plotted to harm him, that would ultimately determine whether Assange would be imprisoned in SAMS.  “The relationship between the CIA and Mr. Assange is vast and it’s not before this court,” said Summers.

Chief Justice Ian Burnett, one of the two High Court judges, interjected, “It’s not contested that the CIA is intensely interested in Mr. Assange.”

“Yes, but what they are prepared to do,” Summers said. “I invite my Lords to understand the lengths they went to against Mr. Assange.”  He then ran through the details of a Yahoo News! report in September about how the CIA plotted against Assange.

“It seems there were discussions in the Oval Office about killing him and sketches were sketches drawn in the summer of 2017 as matters escalated to render him back to America from the U.K.,” Summers said. “But the U.K. refused to go along with this.”

Former CIA director Mike Pompeo “is on the record that some things are true and it’s under Congressional investigation,” Summers said.  He referred to testimony in Assange’s September 2020 hearing when former employees of the Spanish security firm UC Global first talked about plans to kidnap or poison Assange.

James Lewis, QC, the prosecutor for the U.S. said nothing about this in his 30-minute rebuttal at the end of the hearing. During the September 2020 extradition hearing Lewis called talk of threats to assassinate Assange “palpable nonsense.”

Assurances Challenged

Lewis spent most of that time defending the assurances the U.S. has given Britain that Assange would not face harsh conditions in a U.S. prison. He first addressed the defense contention that because these assurances came after the lower court judgement that they are new evidence and should be rejected.

“All that has happened is that the requesting state had every opportunity to give assurances and chose otherwise, and then ran a case for two years and lost,” Summers for the defense had earlier said. “Nothing justifies the U.S. changing its case in this way.”

“it is absurd to say we had every opportunity” to provide the assurances before the judgement, Lewis responded. “It is proper to deal with assurances at any stage. This is not a sea change. Assurances are not evidence. The fact is it is common sense that an assurance will be reactive in nature. You can’t anticipate area a judge is focused on until the judge puts out a judgement.”

WikiLeaks Editor in Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson addressing supporters of Julian Assange outside the High Court where the U.S. appeal hearing was held. Oct. 28. (Don’t Extradite Assange Campaign)

Lewis cited a case when the High Court in an extradition case gave a government an additional 14 days to come up with assurances. He cited another case in which the requested person was freed but then the extradition process was restarted when assurances were provided. “We could start again with Assange,” Lewis said ominously.

Summers brought up several cases in which a requesting government had received assurances from the United States that were not fulfilled. He called U.S. assurances “conditional” and “aspirational” citing the language of the assurances that if Assange after imprisonment harmed U.S. national security he could be placed in harsh isolation. Summers said one must stick to the letter and not the spirit of U.S. assurances. He again referred to the CIA plot against Assange.

“Nothing about this is case normal,” he said. “This is a case of credible evidence of U.S. plans to do serious harm to Assange, contemplating assassination, rendering, kidnapping and poisoning and it is worthy an investigation of these assurances that this same government asks us to believe.”

But Lewis said,”The U.S. has never broken diplomatic assurance.”

And because of this, “Mr. Assange now knows he is not going to SAMS or ADX Florence so his suicidal ideology [sic -ideation] should subside,” Lewis said. “He now knows he will get adequate medical care.”

Then Lewis quoted three expert witness from the September hearing, including one from the defense, who each said Assange was only “moderately depressed” rather than beset with a combination of mental conditions that would drive him to suicide if extradited, as the lower court ruling said.

Lewis’ message to the judges was that both pillars of the lower court judgement were demolished:  Assange is not seriously ill and he won’t be going to a harsh U.S. prison.

“You have given us much to think about and we’ll take time to consider it,” Burnett told the lawyers as he closed the hearing.

He did not give a date when the High Court’s decision will be made.

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

Featured image: Stella Moris, Julian Assange’s partner, addressing his supporters outside the High Court on Thursday during the U.S. appeal hearing in London. (Don’t Extradite Assange Campaign)

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***

During the pandemic many deaths have occurred, approaching 2 million Americans.  Ponder this: Have large numbers of excess deaths over pre-pandemic years resulted from something other than COVID infections?

There have been increasing articles and studies about excess deaths during the pandemic.  Too many of these seem aimed at getting attention rather than being accurate and balanced.  The concept of excess deaths is simple: deaths above what was normally observed before the pandemic.  But why are more people dying even after accounting for COVID infection deaths?  Getting to the correct answer is the goal of this article.

The core issue in seeking truth is how to evaluate excess deaths during the pandemic and then explain them if they are not caused by COVID infections.  If there really are non-infection excess deaths, then the goal is to rise above often bad and uncertain data from government agencies to correctly figure out whether something especially concerning is happening.  Perhaps something that governments do not want to acknowledge and deal with, as we shall see.

Classification of deaths

To get to the truth about excess deaths it is important to make a critical distinction by defining two classes of deaths.

Class 1:  First, direct pandemic effects are twofold.

Most attention is needed to assess the magnitude of deaths from COVID infection.  These include breakthrough cases that are COVID infections despite full vaccination.

The other direct impact is deaths from COVID vaccines.

Class 2:  The second class is very different.  They are indirect health impacts resulting from actions other than from direct medical actions aimed at addressing COVID.

These are the many collateral deaths resulting from severe contagion controls used by federal and state governments, especially lockdowns, stay at home mandates, limited hospital and physician access, school closings, job losses, travel restrictions and widespread impacts on personal and medical freedom.

These many indirect impacts cause large numbers of deaths across the entire population.  They are the collateral damage caused by pandemic government authoritarian actions, but not infections nor COVID vaccines.  They are done, supposedly, in the name of public health.

The government does not collect comprehensive data on these indirect deaths.  Be clear about this category of deaths.  They are caused by all the public health systems to address the pandemic.

To be clear, deaths directly associated with COVID infections cover a range of situations.  Government agencies report COVID related deaths.  That word “related” is very important, because proving causality has proven contentious.  Most physicians see causality when deaths occur soon after COVID symptoms or a positive test result.

There are reasons why there are legitimate concerns and criticisms of official COVID death data.  It comes down to what criteria are used to declare a death as either caused by COVID or just, in some way, related to the infection.

US federal and state agencies have, for the most part, been very liberal in declaring deaths as COVID ones.  This has resulted from financial incentives, political motivations (maintaining public fear and acceptance of authoritarian government actions) and procedural government guidance.

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***

Summary for October 21 – 27, 2021

Israeli forces continued to commit crimes and multi-layered violations against Palestinian civilians and their properties, including raids into Palestinian cities that are characterized with excessive use of force, assault, abuse, and attacks on civilians, turning the West Bank into isolated blocks of land. This week, Israeli Defense Minister, Benny Gantz, designated six pioneering Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist organizations, allegedly for affiliations with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), aiming to free Palestine and abolish the State of Israel. This is an obvious ploy to silence and end these leading organizations, who expose the occupation’s crimes, aim to prosecute them before the international criminal court, and support Palestinian people’s resilience.

The Israeli settlement expansion works continued on Palestinian lands and properties. Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip enters its 15th year under closure, exacerbating the humanitarian hardships across the territory.

Persecution of Palestinian civil society organizations and human rights defenders:

Israeli occupation authorities designated six pioneering Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist organizations, allegedly for affiliations with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, aiming to free Palestine and abolish the State of Israel.

According to the Israeli decision the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International – Palestine, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees are all terrorist organizations based on information supplied by NGO Monitor, a right-wing organization known to be anti-Palestinian.

These organizations are well known, each pioneering in their field with significant achievements over the course of their decades long work in the occupied Palestinian territory. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights condemns in the strongest terms the Israeli decision and asserts that it is an obvious ploy to silence and end these leading organizations, who expose the occupation’s crimes, aim to prosecute them before international justice, and support Palestinian people’s resilience. PCHR warns that the Israeli decision is an attempt to provide legal coverage to persecuting these organizations, targeting their personnel, and liquidating them.

Army shooting and violation of right to bodily integrity:

Soldiers shot and wounded 7 civilians in excessive use of force in the West Bank: 3 wounded in an army assault on Kufur Qaddoum weekly protest, Qalqilia; 2 others as soldiers protected a group of settlers attacking farmers in Ramallah; 1 wounded in Bidu; and another during an army incursion into Ya’bad, Jenin.

In the Gaza Strip, the Navy confiscated 2 rowboats and destroyed the contents of a third at sea. PCHR documented 6 incidents of the Navy shooting at fishing boats in the Gaza Sea, and two incidents of the army on agricultural lands in eastern Gaza.

Army incursions and arrests of Palestinian civilians:

The army carried out 94 incursions into the occupied West Bank. Those incursions included raids of civilian houses and shootings, enticing fear among civilians, and attacking many of them. During this week’s incursions, 61 Palestinians were arrested, including 7 children.

In the Gaza Strip, the army conducted a limited incursion into eastern Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

Demolitions:

PCHR documented 9 incidents:

Occupied East Jerusalem: 2 Palestinians forced to demolish their homes; another family forced to destroy an entire floor of their house in Wadi Joz. Razing and demolitions continue in al-Shuhadaa graveyard in Bab al Asbat.

Hebron: cease-construction notice served against a house, water well and sheep barn. Sit-in tent demolished in eastern Yatta. Four houses receive cease-construction notices in western Ethna.

Tubas: classrooms dismantled in al-Maleh in the Jordan valleys.

Ramallah: 4 shops destroyed in Dayr Qadis.

Settler-attacks:

Ramallah: two farmers assaulted during olive harvest in Turmus Ayya; a vehicle set on fire and tires of three other vehicles punctured.

Salfit: shepherd assaulted and an attempt to steal his sheep in Jabel Natif.

Bethlehem: 25 olive tree seedlings uprooted in southern al-Masara.

Israeli closure policy and restrictions on freedom of movement:

The Israeli occupation authorities continued to ban the entry of dozens of goods, including construction materials, in collective punishment measures against the Gaza Strip as the Israeli closure imposed on the territory entered its 15th year, without an end in sight that would fulfil Palestinians’ right to enjoy their economic, social, and cultural rights.

Meanwhile, occupation authorities continued to divide the West Bank into separate cantons with key roads blocked by the Israeli occupation since the 2000 Second Intifada -still closed to this date- and with temporary and permanent checkpoints, where civilian movement is restricted, and they are subject to arrest, especially at al-Karama border crossing, alongside the Palestinian-Jordanian border.

Attacks on civil society organizations and human rights defenders

On Friday, 22 October 2021, Israeli Defense Minister, Benny Gantz, designated six pioneering Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist organizations. According to the Israeli decision the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International – Palestine, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees are all terrorist organizations, affiliated with the leadership of the PFLP which aims to destroy Israel and free Palestine. The decision also claimed that these organization are run and operated by PFLP leaders and activists.

According to Israeli allegations, the designation was the result of a collaboration between the Israeli Shin Bet and the National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing of Israel that started early this year.

Shooting and other Violations of the Right to Life and Bodily Integrity

• At approximately 12:30 on Friday, 22 October 2021, soldiers stationed on the northern entrance to Kufur Qaddoum village, northern Qalqilia, suppressed a peaceful protest led by dozens of Palestinians. Soldiers chased the protestors and clashed with them; the army fired live bullets, tear gas canisters and stun grenades. As a result, 2 Palestinians sustained bullet wounds in their extremities, and 1 in the back.
• At approximately 15:00 on Friday, dozens of Palestinians gathered near Bidu village, northwestern occupied East Jerusalem, and threw stones at the army and their military vehicles in protest to the detention of the bodies of three Palestinians from the village who were killed by the army a month ago. Immediately, soldiers fired rubber-coated bullets and tear gas canisters at the protestors, wounding Ahmed J. Abdulqaher (21) with a rubber bullet in the back. He was taken to Palestine Medical Complex for treatment.
• At approximately 17:00, soldiers assaulted the weekly march in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood against settlement expansion activities. Participants were physically assaulted, particularly after they attempted to raise the Palestinian flag. Mohammed Kh. Abulhomes (55), an activist, was pushed to the ground, kicked, and beaten, as well as Nafisa Khwaiseh, an elderly woman, and Iyad Sab-el-laban, who was summonsed to interrogation for refusing to turn in his cellphone and for allowing his son to hold the Palestinian flag.
• At approximately 18:00, a joint Israeli security and intelligence force backed by a helicopter raided Raed Syam’s house in Jabel Mukaber, southeastern occupied East Jerusalem. They ransacked through the house and assaulted all residents. They withdrew after arresting 4 members of the family.

Raed Syam stated that at approximately 17:30 a reconciliation meeting was scheduled between his family and neighbors in the area. As more than 20 persons were gathered in the house yard, they were shocked to see Israeli forces raid the area. Soldiers broke the front gate, and within moments, dozens of Israeli soldiers surrounded the house and assaulted all those inside, including women, children, and elderlies. Soldiers struck them with their rifle butts and sprayed pepper spray at them. They forced everybody to the ground in order to cover the Israeli intelligence forces as they broke into the house. They ransacked through the house, took down AC units to search them, and searched each of the vehicles parked in front of the house.

Syam pointed out that he requested the soldiers show him a search warrant, but they refused, assaulted him, and threatened to shoot him. They yelled at him, demanding that he present his Palestinian passport, but he denied having any identification documents issued by Palestinian authorities. They searched through his personal files. Syam said that soldiers assaulted his cousin, Alaa, who recently underwent a critical kidney surgery despite their pleads for them to stop; the soldiers did not care and continued to beat him more intensely as they said, “let him die.”

Syam mentioned that soldiers assaulted the women who were praying inside the house before pushing them out forcibly and putting them to the ground. Soldiers arrested Ibrahim M. Syam (72), Ibrahim R. Syam (26) Alaa A. Syam (42), Omar A. Syam (30). They were interrogated for several hours before release. All the arrestees suffered bruises and cuts in the face and entire bodies; no medical attention was provided.

• At approximately 20:00, soldiers moved into the road leading to al-Fawwar refugee camp in Hebron and stationed by its entrance. Dozens of young Palestinians gathered and threw rocks at the military vehicles. The soldiers deployed in the area, shot stun grenades, tear gas bombs and rubber-coated bullets at the stone-throwers, causing them to suffocate. The clashes continued until 23:00. No arrests were reported.
• At approximately 21:30, Israeli Navy gunboats in the northern Gaza sea chased Palestinian fishing boat sailing at 3 nautical miles, pumped water at them and opened heavy fire at them, stirring fear among the fishermen and forcing them to flee. No casualties were reported.
• At approximately 02:30 on Saturday, 23 October 2021, Navy gunboats in the northern Gaza sea chased Palestinian fishing boat sailing at 3 nautical miles, pumped water at them and opened heavy fire at them, stirring fear among the fishermen and forcing them to flee. No casualties were reported.
• At approximately 08:30, soldiers stationed along Gaza border area opened fire in eastern Khan Younis at nearby agricultural lands. No casualties were reported.
• At approximately 19:30, soldiers stationed along Gaza border area opened fire sporadically in northern Beit Lahia at nearby lands. No casualties were reported.
• At approximately 08:00 on Sunday, 24 October 2021, Israeli Navy gunboats in the northern Gaza sea chased Palestinian fishing boat sailing at 3 nautical miles and opened heavy fire at them. The attack recurred at 11:00, stirring fear among the fishermen and forcing them to flee. No casualties were reported.
• At approximately 05:30 on Monday, 25 October 2021, Navy gunboats in the northern Gaza sea chased Palestinian fishing boat sailing at 3 nautical miles and opened heavy fire at them. The attack continued on and off until 08:00, stirring fear among the fishermen and forcing them to flee. No casualties were reported.
• At approximately 21:00, soldiers moved into Yabad, southwestern Jenin; a group of Palestinians gathered and threw rocks at Israeli military vehicles. Soldiers fired tear gas canisters and sound bombs at them, as well as rubber-coated bullets. As a result, a Palestinian male sustained a bullet in the left thigh and was transferred to hospital for treatment.
• At approximately 08:00 on Wednesday, 27 October 2021, Navy gunboats in the southern Gaza sea confiscated a 2 rowboats and took them to an unknown destinations. The gunboats opened fire in the area at a 3rd rowboat and destroyed its contents.

The Fishermen Syndicate in Rafah stated that the Israeli naval forces confiscated two rowboats anchored at 7 nautical miles. The boats area used for lighting purposes as each holds a generators and at least 25 flashlights. The boats belong to Mohammed Omar al-Bardawyl (35) and Mohammed Adel al-Bardawyl (30). The Navy also fired at another rowboat, destroying two generators and 26 flashlights, property of Mohammed Adel al-Bardawyl.

Incursions and arrests

Thursday, 21 October 2021:

• At approximately 01:00, soldiers arrested Nour Ishaq Ghaith (20), after raiding and searching his house in Hebron.
• Around the same time, soldiers arrested Tayseer Azmi Manasra (25), after raiding and searching his house in al-Dawha village, west of Bethlehem.
• At approximately 02:00, soldiers arrested Hamza Mahmoud al-Wahsh (23) along with his brother, Mohannad (21), after raiding and searching their house in al-Khader, southwest of Bethlehem.
• At approximately 04:00, soldiers arrested (3) civilians, including a child, after raiding and searching their houses in Bayt Fajar village, south of Bethlehem. The arrestees are: Rabea’ Ahmed Taqateqa (17), Mohammed Wajeeh Thawabtah (18), and Yousef Mohammed Thawabtah (18).
• At approximately 15:00, soldiers arrested Omar Mo’amar Abu al-Hawa (24), from al-Tur neighborhood, east of the occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City, while present in Bab al-Amud area, in the city.
• At approximately 19:30, soldiers arrested (3) civilian from al-Isawiya village, northeast of the occupied East Jerusalem, while present near the entrance of al-Eizariya village, east of Jerusalem. The arrestees are: Omar Marwan Obaid (23), Mohammed Ayman Obaid (22), and Mohammed Fo’ad Abu Rajab (18).
• At approximately 22:30, soldiers arrested Abdullah Abu Romouz (23), after raiding and searching his house in al-Tur neighborhood, east of the occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City.
• The army carried out (2) incursions in Dura and Samu villages in Hebron. No arrests were reported.

Friday, 22 October 2021:

• At approximately 16:00, soldiers arrested No’man Naser and Saleem Ayed after raiding and searching their houses in Silwan, south of the occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City.

Saturday, 23 October 2021:

• At approximately 01:00, soldiers arrested Mo’tasem Faraj Obaido (20), after raiding and searching his house in Hebron.
• At approximately 02:30, soldiers arrested Na’el Riyad Omar (47) along with his son, Saher (20), after raiding and searching their house in Far’un village, east of Tulkarem.
• At approximately 16:00, soldiers arrested Naseer Ya’qoub Jaradat (26), after stopping him on a temporary military checkpoint established at the entrance of Beit Einun village, north of Hebron.
• The army carried out (4) incursions in Shuyukh, Yatta, Dayr Samet and Idhna villages in Hebron. No arrests were reported.

Sunday, 24 October 2021:

• At approximately 02:30, soldiers arrested Nader Ramzi Zahida (25), after raiding and searching his house in Hebron.
• At approximately 06:00, soldiers arrested (3) civilians after raiding and searching their houses in Husan, west of Bethlehem. The arrestees are: Qassam Ramzi ‘Amira (18), Qusai Adli Hamamera (22), and Mohammed Ra’ouf Abu Yabis (22).
• At approximately 17:30, soldiers arrested a child, Mohammed Mahmoud Owda (13), after raiding and searching his house in Silwan, south of the occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City.
• At approximately 20:00, soldiers arrested a child, Na’el Rebhi Taqateqa (15), after referring to “Gush Etzion” investigation center, south of Bethlehem, on a prior summons.
• At approximately 21:40, soldiers arrested two children, Yaser Arafat Shuqair (11) and Yazan Na’eem Qadous (10), after raiding and searching their houses in al-Zawiya village, west of Salfit.

Monday, 25 October 2021:

• At approximately 02:00, soldiers arrested (3) civilians after raiding and searching their houses in the occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City. The arrestees are: Amir Adnan al-Karaki (22), Yehya Ziyad Sharaf (20), and Saif Ibrahim Samrin (20).
• At approximately 02:15, soldiers arrested Abdul Baset Mohammed Mo’tan (48), after raiding and searching his house in al-Bireh, north of Ramallah governorate. It should be noted that Mo’tan is a cancer patient and former prisoner who is receiving cancer treatment and needs a medical follow-up.
• At approximately 04:00, soldiers arrested Anas Adnan Hamarsha (21) and Mus’ab Belal Hirzallah (22), after raiding and searching their houses in Ya’bad, southwest of Jenin governorate.
• At approximately 04:10, soldiers arrested (3) civilians after raiding and searching their houses in Beita, southeast of Nablus governorate. The arrestees are: Eyad Diab Shamsah (29), Salah Salama Shamsah (33), and Yehya Mohammed Diab (21).
• At approximately 07:00, soldiers reinforced with several military vehicles moved dozens of meters to the east of al-Fukhari village, southeast of Khan Younis. They levelled and combed lands adjacent to the border fence, heading to the south, before they deployed again inside the border fence.
• Around the same time, soldiers arrested Ahmed Salah Abu ‘Azab (26), after raiding and searching his house in al-’Am’ari refugee camp, southeast of al-Bireh, north of Ramallah governorate.
• At approximately 13:00, soldiers arrested Khaled Fawwaz Salah (30), after raiding and searching his house in al-Khader village, southwest of Bethlehem.
• At approximately 18:00, Israeli Intelligence Services arrested Abdul Rahman Bkairat, head of Zaid Bin Thabit School for Quran Memorization, after referring to al-Maskobiya investigation center in West Jerusalem, on a prior summons.
• At approximately 22:00, soldiers arrested Murad Sami Asakra, after stopping and searching his vehicle at a temporary military checkpoint established at the entrance of Teqoa village, east of Bethlehem.
• The army carried out an incursion in Azzun Atme village, south of Qalqilia. No arrests were reported.

Tuesday, 26 October 2021:

• At approximately 01:00, soldiers arrested Ibrahim Munir Arafa (29), after raiding and searching his house in Dheisha refugee camp, southwest of Bethlehem.
• Around the same time, Israeli soldiers arrested Suhaib Mohammed al-Qawasmah (23), after raiding and searching his house in Hebron.
• Around the same time, Israeli soldiers arrested Montaser Yousef Abu Ayyash (33), after raiding and searching his house in Beit Ummar, north of Hebron.
• At approximately 02:00, Israeli soldiers arrested Mohye Ayman al-Shirwana (24) and Hazem Husain al-Shirwana (25), after raiding and searching their houses in Dura, southwest of Hebron.
• At approximately 13:00, soldiers arrested Ehab Rakiz Huweity (27), from Tulkarem governorate, while passing through al-Container military checkpoint, east of Bethlehem. It should be noted that al-Huweity had a car accident 20 days ago, and he was heading to Beit Jala Governmental Hospital to complete his treatment.
• At approximately 18:00, soldiers raided and searched a supermarket belonging to Ghawadera family, in ‘Arraba, southwest of Jenin governorate, and arrested Alaa Hisham Ghawadera (20), from Mirka village.
• At approximately 21:40, soldiers arrested As’ad Ziyad Shadeed (34), after raiding and searching his house in Illar village, north of Tulkarem.
• At approximately 10:00, soldiers stormed the yard of Abouna Ibrahim Monastery in Ras al-’Amud neighborhood, east of the occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City. They banned organizing art or culture events for the students and their families in Jerusalem with a decision signed by the Israeli Minister of Interior, under the pretext that the event was sponsored by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Marwan al-Ghoul, director of Silwan Sports Club, confirmed that the events organized by Silwan sports club were in cooperation with the Palestinian National Theater (Hakawati), National Conservatory of Music and moving theater, with the sponsorship of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Al-Ghoul stated that he received a phone call from the Israeli Authorities to inform him to cancel the events which were scheduled to begin at approximately 10:00 on Tuesday, 26 October, and finish on Thursday evening. He added that the administrative board of the club refused to cancel the events because they did not receive any official decision. As soon as they started the first event in Abouna Ibrahim Monastery’s yard, they noticed soldiers stationing at the monastery’s gates without storming the place because the French consul participated in the event. Al-Ghoul stated that, as soon as the French consul left the monastery, the Israeli soldiers stormed the monastery’s yards wearing civilian clothes and handed him a summons to refer to al-Qishla investigation center. Furthermore, soldiers handed the director of the monastery a decision that bans any future events sponsored by the PA.

Al-Ghoul emphasized that when he referred to Moscovia Investigation Center, the Israeli Intelligence Services informed him that the Israeli Security Chief issued a decision that bans such events, claiming that they pose threat to the alleged Israeli sovereignty in occupied Jerusalem under the pretext that they were sponsored by the PA. Also, al-Ghoul highlighted that the events aimed to spread joy among children and students in the occupied Jerusalem, by performing music shows and theatre performances, in addition to evening shows special for families.

Wednesday, 27 October 2021:

• At approximately 02:30, soldiers arrested two children, Yazan Amer Sabbah (15) and Ibrahim Sameer Sabbah (15), after raiding and searching their houses in Teqoa, east of Bethlehem.
• At approximately 03:00, soldiers arrested (5) civilians after raiding and searching their houses in Bir village, southwest of Jenin governorate. The arrestees are: Mohammed Mahmoud Ghawadera (35), Marwan Mohammed Ghawadera (27), Ahmed Ali Ghawadera (25), Laith Hamza Ghawadera (24), and Ragheb Emad Ghawadera (20).

Settlement Expansion and settler violence in the West Bank

a. Land razing, Demolitions, and Notices

• On Saturday afternoon, 16 October 2021, Jaber family were forced to self-demolish their house in Wadi al-Joz neighborhood, east of occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City, pursuant to the Israeli Municipality’s demolition decision allegedly for unlicensed construction.

Nader Jaber said that his father built the house in 1991 on an area of 92 sqms in Wadi al-Joz neighborhood. Jaber said that the Israeli municipality has haunted the family since 1998 and imposed fines on his mother after his father passed away. His mother has paid fines for 14 years, and although the Israeli municipality decided to exempt her from paying the fines as she was over 90 years old, it notified the family of demolishing the house after she passed away. Jaber said that his mother died in 2019 and the house had become a reunion for the 100 family members. However, authorities again haunted them and the Israeli court issued a final decision to demolish the house, forcing the family to self-demolish their house to avoid paying the demolition costs for the municipality or arresting any of the family members in case the municipal crews implemented the decision. Jaber stressed that the Israeli municipality has not given a construction license for tens of years specifically in this area, which is of a strategic location and connects many areas with each other.

• At approximately 11:30 on Sunday, 24 October 2021, soldiers backed by military vehicles and accompanied with an Israeli Civil Administration vehicle moved into At-Tuwani village, east of Yatta, south of Hebron. The Civil Administration distributed notices to stop construction works in several facilities under the pretext of unlicensed construction in Area C.

The notices included the following:

1. A 3-storey house belonging to Ghanem Hussein al-Hreini;

2. A 70-cubic meter water well belonging to Fo’ad Fadel al-‘Amour; and

3. A sheep barn of shed cloth and a tinplate bathroom belonging to Ghandi Na’im al-‘Amour.

• At approximately 17:20 on Monday, 25 October 2021, soldiers accompanied with a bulldozer, a truck-mounted crane and a Civil Administration SUV moved into al-Maleh area in the Northern Jordan Valley in eastern Tubas.

Soldiers surrounded al-Tahadi School, levelled and a confiscated a 150-sqm metal shed. The workers brought by the Civil Administration from private companies dismantled and confiscated 2 barracks of 25 sqms; one was used as a classroom and the other as a clinic, under the pretext of their presence in Area C.

• In the same afternoon, Jaber family self-demolished a floor in Wadi al-Joz neighborhood, east of occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City only 2 days after demolishing the second floor, pursuant to the Israeli municipality’s decision under the pretext of unlicensed construction.

Nader Jaber said that 2 days ago, the family self-demolished their deceased mother’s house that was built in 1991; it was a 92-sqm second floor, pursuant to the Israeli municipality’s decision and to avoid paying tens of thousands of shekels for the municipality crews’ demolition costs. Jaber explained that the family sent photos of the demolished second floor to the municipality, which ordered the family to demolish the first floor as well, giving them only 48 hours to demolish the 40-sqm residential room and its facilities or it will send the bulldozers to do so. Jaber stressed that his family was forced to self-demolish the first and second floors with hand tools like thousands of other Palestinian families who self-demolished their houses for fear of Israeli municipality’s prosecution.

• In the same afternoon as well, Isma’il ‘Aramin self-demolished his house in Wadi al-Joz neighborhood, east of occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City, pursuant to the Israeli municipality’s decision under the pretext of unlicensed construction.

‘Aramin said that his house was built in 2010 replacing his old family house, which was demolished by the Israeli municipality under the pretext of unlicensed construction. ‘Aramin added he has lived in his 90-sqm house with his wife and two children for 8 years, and the municipality started pursuing him around a year ago. Only few months ago, the Israeli court issued a final decision to demolish the house, without the possibility of appealing the decision, giving him until last August and then postponed the demolition until the end of October. ‘Aramin said that he had to self-demolish his house, fearing that the occupation municipality would send its crews to implement the decision and fine him with tens of thousands of shekels.

• At approximately 10:30 on Monday, 25 October 2021, soldiers backed by military vehicles and accompanied with an Israeli Civil Administration vehicle and a bulldozer moved into at-Tuwani village in eastern Yatta, south of Hebron. The bulldozer demolished a tent of 50 sqms set up by activists in the area in solidarity with al-Mafqarah village, east of the city. The demolition came under the pretext of unlicensed construction.
• At approximately 07:00 on Tuesday, 26 October 2021, soldiers accompanied by military vehicles and a bulldozer moved into Deir Qaddis village, west of Ramallah and demolished an under-construction facility of 4 stores on an area of 300 sqms. The demolition was carried out without any prior warning under the pretext of its presence in Area C.

The facility’s owner, Ayman ‘Adnan Steih (44), said to PCHR’s fieldworker that,

“I was surprised in the morning with the army’s incursion into the village and closure of its streets. Soliders, accompanied with a military bulldozer surrounded my facility of four under-construction stores in the eastern side of the village and demolished it. I approached the soldiers trying to talk with them, but they shouted at me and fired sound bombs in the air to keep me away from the area. The Israeli authorities handed me a notice to demolish the facility last June, but I filed a complaint at the competent authorities, including Jerusalem Centre for Legal Aid. Although there was a lawful complaint, the army carried out the demolition without a prior warning, noting that the construction cost me around 170,000 shekels.”

• In the same morning, the Israeli municipality bulldozers and the Nature Authority continued excavation works in al-Shuhadaa’ Cemetery adjacent to al-Yousifiyah Cemetery in al-Asbat Gate area in central occupied East Jerusalem. The municipality intends to turn the cemetery into a biblical park and started building a metal wall around it as well as piling sand berms to bury its features, according to the Israeli court’s decision issued last week.

Tens of outraged men and woman gathered to confront the Nature Authority workers but soldiers pushed and beat them as well as arresting 3 of the protesters after severely beating them. The arrestees were identified as Laith al-Shalabi, Mousa Khalaf and Nawwaf al-Salaymah.

‘Alaa Nabatah, an eyewitness said that soldiers assaulted the protesters and banned them entry into the cemetery. the army also fired sound bombs at them after performing al-Maghrib (sunset) prayer near the cemetery. Nabatah added that an Israeli female soldier beat her more than once when she was near her son’s grave in the cemetery.

It should be noted that the Israeli Magistrate’s court refused last week, a request applied by Jerusalem Cemeteries Committee to obtain a decision that would ban the Israeli municipality and Nature Authority from continuing the excavation works in the graves at al-Shuhadaa’ Cemetery near al-Yousifiya Cemetery near al-Asbat Gate. It should be noted that the Israeli police banned Mustafa Abu Zahrah, Head of the Islamic Cemeteries Committee in Jerusalem, from entering al-Yousifyah Cemetery for 10 days and handed him a map showing the path he should take in order to reach al-Aqsa mosque.

It is noteworthy that the al-Shuhadaa’ and al-Yousifyah cemeteries have been under systematic attack over the past years. the Islamic Cemeteries Committee resorted to the Israeli court and submitted documents proving that the cemetery belongs to the Islamic Endowments. At the time, the court issued a decision to ban any works in the cemetery, but after a while, a person was buried there; as a result, the grave was taken as an excuse to abolish the decision. In late July, the court’s judge responded to the Israeli municipality and Nature Authority’s request to resume razing the cemetery land after seven months of issuing a precautionary order to stop it. Al-Yousifiyah cemetery is one of the most famous Islamic cemeteries in Jerusalem. It is located to the north of Al-Asbat Gate and houses the graves of Palestinian families who live in Jerusalem. It also includes to the north al-Shuhadaa’ Cemetery, where the Jordanian soldiers martyred in 1967 are buried.

An Israeli soldier assaults a grieving mother at her son’s gravesite in the al-Yousofiyya cemetery in occupied Jerusalem. Photo: Silwanic

• At approximately 10:00, soldiers backed by military vehicles and accompanied with an Israeli Civil Administration vehicle moved into Khelet Harb area, west of Ethna village, west of Ramallah. The Civil Administration officer handed 4 notices to stop construction works under the pretext of unlicensed construction.

The notices included the following:

1. A 100-sqm house belonging to ‘Adnan Ibrahim ‘Awad;

2. An 80-sqm house belonging to Sa’diyah Ibrahim ‘Awad;

3. An under-construction 270-sqm house belonging to ‘Abdel Fattah Ahmed ‘Awad; and

4. An under-construction 170-sqm house belonging to Jamal Ahmed Nofal.

• On Wednesday, 27 October 2021, the Israeli Civil Administration approved 3,144 new settlement units in the West Bank, noting that last Sunday the Israeli Land Authority opened tenders for marketing of 1,355 new settlement units in the West Bank.

Israeli Settlers’ attacks on civilians and their property

• At approximately 13:00 on Saturday, 23 October 2021, a group of illegal Israeli settlers from Adei Ad settlement, northeast of Ramallah, assaulted farmers while harvesting olives from their lands in eastern Turmous Ayya village, northeast of the city. The settlers pepper-sprayed ‘Abdel Naser (48) and Montaser (47) Naji Hizmah; as a result, they suffocated and sustained minor burns in the face. The settlers also pushed Nabihah Mahmoud Jbarah (80) and set fire to a vehicle as well as puncturing tires and breaking windows of three other vehicles belonging to Taysir Jbrarah, Montaser Naji Hizmah, Nabihah Mahmoud Jbarah and ‘Abdel Naser Naji Hizmah.
• At approximately 14:00 on Sunday, 24 October 2021, Israeli settlers assaulted sheep belonging to Fozan Rayan while shepherding in the pastoral area on al-Nweiteif Mountain in Qarawet Bani Hassan in Salfit. The settlers attempted to steal the sheep and take them to Havot Yair settlement, but the villagers managed to retrieve the sheep.
• On Tuesday morning, 26 October 2021, a group of settlers uprooted 25 olive tree seedlings in southern al-Masara, southwestern Bethlehem. According to Hassan Breijiyeh, Director of the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission in Bethlehem, settlers uprooted 25 olive tree seedlings belonging to Mohammed Ahmed Breijiyeh.

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Just like the Palestinians living in occupied East Jerusalem, the dead in al-Yusufiya cemetery are not left in peace in their graves. 

Israeli authorities have been desecrating Muslim cemeteries for decades, including through exhumations, excavation works that have uncovered bones, and construction projects where graves once stood. 

The latest plans to build a biblical-themed park atop al-Yusufiya cemetery have provoked Palestinians and led to confrontations with Israeli forces, the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem, and staff from Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority.

The latest round of exhumations began three weeks ago in the part of al-Yusufiya known as the Martyrs’ Cemetery, which lies adjacent to one of the historic walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, and is where Alaa Nababta is buried.

Ola Nababta, a 54-year-old Jerusalemite, spends her days guarding the grave of her son Alaa, who died four years ago.

Every day, she leaves her house in Shuafat refugee camp north of East Jerusalem, in case officials from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, or the Israeli municipality, come to exhume the grave or cover it with soil as a prelude to building the park.

Alaa’s younger brothers Ihab was shot dead in 2015 and Bahaa in 2016 by unknown assailants in Shuafat camp, where Bahaa ran youth groups and was well known for his social activism.

A widow who has lost three sons, Ola Nababta has already witnessed the devastation left behind by Israeli bulldozers in the area, most recently several weeks ago, when exhumation works uncovered bones, skulls and dentures.

“On that particular day I broke down and collapsed to the ground when I saw that the graves being exhumed neighboured that of my son Alaa, and I realised that his grave would undoubtedly be next,” she told Middle East Eye.

‘Pour the earth over me’

The mother’s intuition proved right, as on Monday officials returned with trucks full of steel and soil to cover the remaining graves, including Alaa’s.

As workers started pouring the soil, Nababta clung to the grave with all her might to prevent them from burying it.

WATCH: A Palestinian woman desperately tries to stop Israeli authorities from bulldozing her son’s grave.

Dozens of families fear their relatives’ graves will be exhumed from Al-Yusufiya Cemetery to make way for a Jewish national park. pic.twitter.com/ylT7jzsWni

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) October 27, 2021

All attempts by Israeli soldiers to move her failed, as she told them: “Pour the earth over me and bury me beside him, oh my son Alaa, I am here, I will not leave.”

Nababta told MEE that representatives of the Committee for the Care of Islamic Cemeteries in Jerusalem had confirmed she could bury her son in the cemetery, which has held the bodies of deceased Muslims for centuries.

However, neither Nababta – who has been subpoenaed repeatedly by Israeli intelligence for questioning – nor the remains of her son have been left alone.

“I used to visit the tomb of my son just like any mother would,” she said. “But Israeli intelligence subpoenaed and interrogated me about the identity of the person who gave us permission to bury in this place, saying that it is prohibited.

“Nine months after Alaa’s death, the Israeli Ministry of Health tried to persuade me to move his body to another cemetery, but I adamantly refused because I want Alaa’s body to rest in peace,” she added.

“What makes them think I will allow them to cover his tomb and deprive me of the opportunity of visiting him and watering the flowers I have planted above his grave?”

Israeli bulldozers uproot centuries-old trees in Martyrs’ Cemetery (MEE/Aseel Jundi)

Nababta isn’t just worried about Alaa’s tomb – her fears extend to the graves of his brothers Ihab and Bahaa who are buried in Bab al-Rahmeh Cemetery, adjacent to Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Whenever CCTV cameras show her visiting the graves of her two other sons, Nababta says Israeli police officers rush her out and claim that Ihab and Bahaa too were buried in a restricted zone.

So far, only the grave of her husband, who died in 2018 and is also buried in al-Yusufiya, has been spared from harassment.

“I feel so painful because my sons were harassed and imprisoned prior to their death,” she said.

“Now, they (Israeli authorities) don’t want their bodies to rest in peace in their graves, and they want to cover them and build public parks.

Bodies dug out

Jerusalem is home to several historic Muslim cemeteries, including al-Yusufiya, Bab al-Rahmeh, Mamilla and Prophet Daoud.

At present, Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem only have access to Bab al-Rahmeh and al-Yusufiya, after Israeli authorities took over control of the other two cemeteries.

Mamilla Cemetery, also known as Ma’man Allah, was partially demolished in order to build the controversial Museum of Tolerance.

Al-Yusufiya, which is located only a few metres from Al-Aqsa on the eastern side of the Old City wall, occupies a space of around 14 dunams (14,000 square metres).

Muslims have been burying their dead in the cemetery, whose construction was ordered by Salah al-Din ibn Ayyub, known in the West as Saladin, for 800 years.

After graves were exhumed in Martyrs’ Cemetery earlier this month by Israeli authorities, Jerusalemites reburied the remains in the same place and identified the grave with stones (MEE/Aseel Jundi)

Excavation and exhumation works by Israeli authorities have been taking place in the Martyrs’ Cemetery section of al-Yusufiya, an area of around four and a half dunams (4,500 square metres).

Jordanian, Iraqi and Palestinian soldiers killed while fighting against Israeli forces in Jerusalem during the 1967 war are buried there, as is Alaa.

In 2014, Israeli authorities banned Jerusalemites from burying their dead in Martyrs’ Cemetery, demolishing more than 20 tombs and covering the area with cement.

In December, bulldozers resumed further dredging and construction works at the cemetery – however a complaint brought before the Israeli courts temporarily succeeded in halting the works until September this year.

On 10 October, Jerusalemites came out to protest as Israeli police and bulldozers dug out bodies, and were able to rebury the remains in the cemetery on the following day.

Disinformation and forgeries

The Committee for the Care of Islamic Cemeteries in Jerusalem looks after the city’s Muslim cemeteries, laying tiles, removing weeds, and other general upkeep.

The committee has submitted objections to Israeli courts to stop the bulldozing at the Martyrs’ Cemetery.

Mustafa Abu Zahra, the head of the committee, told MEE that the introduction on Monday of large quantities of soil to fill in the remaining graves, as well as the erection of a steel fence to separate the Martyrs Cemetery from the rest of Al-Yusufiya, indicates that the conversion of the area into a theme park is imminent.

Zahra reiterated that an Israeli court had allowed workers to continue excavation works despite an appeal, after human remains were found in an area that the municipality claims was never a cemetery.

Hamza Quttaineh, a Jerusalemite lawyer advocating for the Martyrs Cemetery before the Israeli courts, told MEE that the municipality and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority have deployed various forms of disinformation and forgeries to deny the existence of the cemetery.

In attempting to convert the cemetery into a park, Quttaineh said authorities had also shown no respect whatsoever to the sanctity of the deceased.

“There are huge machinations undertaken by the occupation municipality, along with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the judicial system, that provide the legal coverage needed for the Judaisation project encompassing the historical wall of Jerusalem’s Old City,” he said.

The municipality is insisting on classifying the land as a green zone that must be turned into a park within the premises of the Sacred Dock Project, said the lawyer.

“So far this piece of land did not join the project and it should not be dislodged from it due to its importance.”

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Even patriotic Brits know that their hero Winston Churchill did not win World War 2 or fly a Spitfire. What they, and others, may not know is how his statements often shed a clear light on British imperialism. From Britain’s reliance on colonies, to the political rationale for giving the working class some welfare services, Churchill’s rhetorical flourishes in speeches, newspaper articles, and deliberations with his peers, illuminate things all too often absent from contemporary political consciousness.

The text cited below is in chronological order. Information is taken from many sources,[1] including articles previously on this blog and from other material I have put onto Twitter and Facebook. But it should not overtax the modern attention span. I do not claim or aim to cover everything, and will give a few lines of context where these might be helpful.

When all of these statements were made, except one, Churchill had a senior position in the British government of the day, or had even been Prime Minister. They are not just the musings of a random reactionary and empire enthusiast.

Social welfare and a stake in the country, 1909

Social welfare measures have often been introduced by the ruling class to boost loyalty to the state, apart from the need to have a reasonably healthy and educated workforce. It has worked in rich countries. Here is Winston Churchill backing unemployment benefits in a Daily Mail article from August 1909:

“The idea is to increase the stability of our institutions by giving the mass of industrial workers a direct interest in maintaining them.

With a ‘stake in the country’ in the form of insurances against evil days these workers will pay no attention to the vague promises of revolutionary socialism.”

Splendid colonial possessions, 1914

In a comment to his British Cabinet colleagues in January 1914, Churchill noted:

“We are not a young people with an innocent record and a scanty inheritance… We have engrossed to ourselves an altogether disproportionate share of the wealth and traffic of the world. We have got all we want in territory, and our claim to be left in the unmolested enjoyment of vast and splendid possessions, mainly acquired by violence, largely maintained by force, often seems less reasonable to others than to us.”

Colonial terror, 1919-1921

This is his support for the RAF’s request to use mustard gas in Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq):

“I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas … I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gases against uncivilised tribes. … Gases can be used which … would leave a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effect [!] on most of those affected.”

Unfortunately for the RAF, no gas bombs were available at that time (April 1919). Churchill had already used most of them against the Bolsheviks! But he did find some later for use in Mesopotamia, in 1920 to help put down a rebellion. I would add that the RAF was also seen as a good, inexpensive means of putting down colonial revolts and encouraging tax payments with machine guns and regular bombs, not just gas.

And here is his opinion on using gas to subdue Afghanistan, in May 1919:

“The objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable. Gas is a more merciful weapon than [a] high explosive shell … The moral effect is also very great. There can be no conceivable reason why it should not be resorted to.”

In line with his general view of the world, he only thought such gas was ‘hellish poison’ when used on white people, eg British soldiers in the First World War.

Gold Standard, Imperial status, 1925

Britain returned to the gold standard in 1925, in a move roundly condemned by JM Keynes. But Keynes, always wanting to be a helping hand for British imperialism, gave no indication that he understood the logic of the move. Churchill, by contrast, was very clear in his comments at the time:

“If we had not taken this action, the whole of the rest of the British Empire would have taken it without us, and it would have come to a gold standard, not on the basis of the pound sterling, but a gold standard of the dollar.”

And

“I have only one observation to make on the merits. In our policy of returning to the gold standard we do not move alone. Indeed, I think we could not have afforded to remain stationary while so many others moved. The two greatest manufacturing countries in the world on either side of us, the United States and Germany, are in different ways either on or related to an international gold exchange. Sweden is on the gold exchange. Austria and Hungary are already based on gold, or on sterling, which is now the equivalent of gold. I have reason to know that Holland and the Dutch East Indies – very important factors in world finance – will act simultaneously with us today. As far as the British Empire is concerned – the self-governing Dominions – there will be complete unity of action. The Dominion of Canada is already on the gold standard. The Dominion of South Africa has given notice of her intention to revert to the old standard as from 1st July. I am authorised to inform the Committee that the Commonwealth of Australia, synchronising its action with ours, proposes from today to abolish the existing restrictions on the free export of gold, and that the Dominion of New Zealand will from today adopt the same course as ourselves in freely licensing the export of gold.”

Pro-Italian fascism, against ‘beastly’ Leninism, 1927

Here is a page from Ponting’s book on Churchill’s trip to Italy in 1927:

So much for Churchill being the steadfast anti-fascist!

Britain’s imperial parasitism & the welfare payoff, 1929

On 15 April 1929, Churchill spoke in Parliament about the City’s revenues, and its role as a global broker, as well as the big returns on British foreign investments:

“The income which we derive each year from commissions and services rendered to foreign countries is over £65,000,000, and, in addition, we have a steady revenue from foreign investments of close on £300,000,000 a year, 90 per cent of which is expressed in sterling. Upon this great influx there is levied, as a rule, the highest rates of taxation. In this way we are helped to maintain our social services at a level incomparably higher than that of any European country, or indeed of any country.” (Hansard)

(Other related information here)

Note that both kinds of revenue noted in the quotation above do not all come from the colonies, at least not directly, and most will have derived from transactions with and investments in other major countries. Nevertheless, such revenues were important for social services even before the post-1945 ‘welfare state’. I give an updated, contemporary assessment of these in my book, The City.

Britain’s colonies and its status in the world, 1939

This is from Churchill’s address to West Indies sugar plantation owners! It is cited in Peter Fryer’s book, Black People in the British Empire, 1988, Pluto Press:

The ‘cradle to the grave’ welfare state, state ownership, NHS, etc, 1943

These are excerpts from a 1943 speech from Churchill as Prime Minister during World War 2. The measures introduced by the Labour Government from 1945 were largely prefigured in this address.

Thanks for the bomb, 1952

To finish with a bang, here is Churchill as Prime Minister again, thanking the Labour Party for its efforts in making the UK a nuclear weapons power:

“All those concerned in the production of the first British atomic bomb are to be warmly congratulated on the successful outcome of an historic episode and I should no doubt pay my compliments to the Leader of the [Labour] Opposition and the party opposite for initiating it.” Hansard, 24 October 1952

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Notes

1 Where not otherwise indicated, the quotations are taken from Clive Ponting’s excellent book, Churchill, 1994.

All images in this article are from Economics of Imperialism

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A handful of mega corporations — private investment companies — dominate every aspect of our lives; everything we eat, drink, wear or use in one way or another. These investment firms are so enormous, they control the money flow worldwide

While there appear to be hundreds of competing brands on the market, like Russian nesting dolls, larger parent companies own multiple smaller brands. In reality, all packaged food brands, for example, are owned by a dozen or so larger parent companies

These parent companies, in turn, are owned by shareholders, and the largest shareholders are the same in all of them: Vanguard and Blackrock

No matter what industry you look at, the top shareholders, and therefore decision makers, are the same: Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street and/or Berkshire Hathaway. In virtually every major company, you find these names among the top 10 institutional investors

These major investment firms are in turn owned by their own set of shareholders. One of the most amazing things about this scheme is that the institutional investors also own each other. They’re all shareholders in each other’s companies. At the very top are Vanguard and Blackrock. Blackrock’s largest shareholder is Vanguard, which does not disclose the identity of its shareholders due to its unique structure

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Until recently, it appeared economic competition had been driving the rise and fall of small and large companies across the U.S. Supposedly, PepsiCo is Coca Cola’s competitor, Apple and Android vie for your loyalty and drug companies battle for your health care dollars. However, all of that turns out to be an illusion.

Since the mid-1970s, two corporations — Vanguard and Blackrock — have gobbled up most companies in the world, effectively destroying the competitive market on which America’s strength has rested, leaving only false appearances behind.

Indeed, the global economy may be the greatest illusionary trick ever pulled over the eyes of people around the world. To understand what’s really going on, watch Tim Gielen’s hour-long documentary, “MONOPOLY: Who Owns the World?” above.

Corporate Domination

As noted by Gielen, who narrates the film, a handful of mega corporations — private investment companies — dominate every aspect of our lives; everything we eat, drink, wear or use in one way or another. These investment firms are so enormous, they control the money flow worldwide. So, how does this scheme work?

While there appear to be hundreds of competing brands on the market, like Russian nesting dolls, larger parent companies own multiple smaller brands. In reality, all packaged food brands, for example, are owned by a dozen or so larger parent companies.

Pepsi Co. owns a long list of food, beverage and snack brands, as does Coca-Cola, Nestle, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Unilever, Mars, Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Danone and Associated British Foods. Together, these parent companies monopolize the packaged food industry, as virtually every food brand available belongs to one of them.

These companies are publicly traded and are run by boards, where the largest shareholders have power over the decision making. This is where it gets interesting, because when you look up who the largest shareholders are, you find yet another monopoly.

While the topmost shareholders can change from time to time, based on shares bought and sold, two companies are consistently listed among the top institutional holders of these parent companies: The Vanguard Group Inc. and Blackrock Inc.

Pepsi and Coca-Cola — An Example

For example, while there are more than 3,000 shareholders in Pepsi Co., Vanguard and Blackrock’s holdings account for nearly one-third of all shares. Of the top 10 shareholders in Pepsi Co., the top three, Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street Corporation, own more shares than the remaining seven.

Now, let’s look at Coca-Cola Co., Pepsi’s top competitor. Who owns Coke? As with Pepsi, the majority of the company shares are held by institutional investors, which number 3,155 (as of the making of the documentary).

As shown in the film, three of the top four institutional shareholders of Coca-Cola are identical with that of Pepsi: Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street Corporation. The No. 1 shareholder of Coca-Cola is Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

These four — Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street and Berkshire Hathaway — are the four largest investment firms on the planet. “So, Pepsi and Coca-Cola are anything but competitors,” Gielen says. And the same goes for the other packaged food companies. All are owned by the same small group of institutional shareholders.

The monopoly of these investment firms isn’t relegated to the packaged food industry. You find them dominating virtually all other industries as well. Take Big Tech, for example. Among the top 10 largest tech companies we find Apple, Samsung, Alphabet (parent company of Google), Microsoft, Huawei, Dell, IBM and Sony.

Here, we find the same Russian nesting doll setup. For example, Facebook owns Whatsapp and Instagram. Alphabet owns Google and all Google-related businesses, including YouTube and Gmail. It’s also the biggest developer of Android, the main competitor to Apple. Microsoft owns Windows and Xbox. In all, four parent companies produce the software used by virtually all computers, tablets and smartphones in the world. Who, then, owns them? Here’s a sampling:

• Facebook — More than 80% of Facebook shares are held by institutional investors, and the top institutional holders are the same as those found in the food industry: Vanguard and Blackrock being the top two, as of the end of March 2021. State Street Corporation is the fifth biggest shareholder
• Apple — The top four institutional investors are Vanguard, Blackrock, Berkshire Hathaway and State Street Corporation
• Microsoft — The top three institutional shareholders are Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street Corporation

You can continue going through the list of tech brands — companies that build computers, smart phones, electronics and household appliances — and you’ll repeatedly find Vanguard, Blackrock, Berkshire Hathaway and State Street Corporation among the top shareholders.

Same Small Group Owns Everything Else Too

The same ownership trend exists in all other industries. Gielen offers yet another example to prove this statement is not an exaggeration:

“Let’s say we want to plan a vacation. On our computer or smart phone, we look for a cheap flight to the sun through websites like Skyscanner and Expedia, both of which are owned by the same group of institutional investors [Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street Corporation].

We fly with one of the many airlines [American Airlines, Air France, KLM, United Airlines, Delta and Transavia] of which the majority of the shares are often owned by the same investors …

The airline we fly [on] is in most cases a Boeing or an Airbus. Again, we see the same [institutional shareholders]. We look for a hotel or an apartment through Bookings.com or AirBnB.com. Once we arrive at our destination, we go out to dinner and we write a review on Trip Advisor. The same investors are at the basis of every aspect of our journey.

And their power goes even much further, because even the kerosene that fuels the plane comes from one of their many oil companies and refineries. Just like the steel that the plane is made of comes from one of their many mining companies.

This small club of investment companies, banks and mutual funds, are also the largest shareholders in the primary industries, where our raw materials come from.”

The same goes for the agricultural industry that the global food industry depends on, and any other major industry. These institutional investors own Bayer, the world’s largest seed producer; they own the largest textile manufacturers and many of the largest clothing companies.

They own the oil refineries, the largest solar panel producers and the automobile, aircraft and arms industries. They own all the major tobacco companies, and all the major drug companies and scientific institutes too. They also own the big department stores and the online marketplaces like eBay, Amazon and AliExpress.

They even own the payment methods we use, from credit card companies to digital payment platforms, as well as insurance companies, banks, construction companies, telephone companies, restaurant chains, personal care brands and cosmetic brands.

No matter what industry you look at, the top shareholders, and therefore decision makers, are the same: Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street and/or Berkshire Hathaway. In virtually every major company, you find these names among the top 10 institutional investors.

Who Owns the Investment Firms of the World?

Diving deeper, we find that these major investment firms are in turn owned by their own set of shareholders. One of the most amazing things about this scheme is that the institutional investors — and there are many more than the primary four we’ve focused on here — also own each other. They’re all shareholders in each other’s companies.

“Together, they form an immense network that we can compare to a pyramid,” Gielen says. Smaller institutional investors, such as Citibank, ING and T. Rowe Price, are owned by larger investment firms such as Northern Trust, Capital Group, 3G Capital and KKR.

Those investors in turn are owned by even larger investment firms, like Goldman Sachs and Wellington Market, which are owned by larger firms yet, such as Berkshire Hathaway and State Street. At the top of the pyramid — the largest Russian doll of all — we find Vanguard and Blackrock.

“The power of these two companies is something we can barely imagine,” Gielen says. “Not only are they the largest institutional investors of every major company on earth, they also own the other institutional investors of those companies, giving them a complete monopoly.”

Gielen cites data from Bloomberg, showing that by 2028, Vanguard and BlackRock are expected to collectively manage $20 trillion-worth of investments. In the process, they will own almost everything on planet Earth.

BlackRock — The Fourth Branch of Government

Bloomberg has also referred to BlackRock as the “fourth branch of government,” due to its close relationship with the central banks. BlackRock actually lends money to the central bank, the federal reserve, and is their principal adviser.

Dozens of BlackRock employees have held senior positions in the White House under the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations. BlackRock also developed the computer system that the central banks use.

Who Owns BlackRock?

While Larry Fink is the figurehead of BlackRock, being its founder, chairman and chief executive officer, he’s not the sole decision maker, as BlackRock too is owned by shareholders. Here we find yet another curiosity, as the largest shareholder of BlackRock is Vanguard.

“This is where it gets dark,” Gielen says. Vanguard has a unique structure that blocks us from seeing who the actual shareholders are. “The elite who own Vanguard don’t want anyone to know they are the owners of the most powerful company on earth.” Still, if you dig deep enough, you can find clues as to who these owners are.

The owners of the wealthiest, most powerful company on Earth can be expected to be among the wealthiest individuals on earth. In 2016, Oxfam reported that the combined wealth of the richest 1% in the world was equal to the wealth of the remaining 99%. In 2018, it was reported that the world’s richest people get 82% of all the money earned around the world in 2017.

In reality, we can assume that the owners of Vanguard are among the 0.001% richest people on the planet. According to Forbes, there were 2,075 billionaires in the world as of March 2020. Gielen cites Oxfam data showing that two-thirds of billionaires obtained their fortunes via inheritance, monopoly and/or cronyism.

“This means that Vanguard is in the hands of the richest families on earth,” Gielen says. Among them we find the Rothschilds, the DuPont family, the Rockefellers, the Bush family and the Morgan family, just to name a few.

Many belong to royal bloodlines and are the founders of our central banking system, the United Nations and just about every industry on the planet. Gielen goes even further in his documentary, so I highly recommend watching it in its entirety. I’ve only summarized a small piece of the whole film here.

A Financial Coup D’etat

Speaking of the central bankers, I recently interviewed finance guru Catherine Austin Fitts, and she believes it’s the central bankers that are at the heart of the global takeover we’re currently seeing. She also believes they are the ones pressuring private companies to implement the clearly illegal COVID jab mandates. Their control is so great, few companies have the ability to take a stand against them.

“I think [the central bankers] are really depending on the smart grid and creepy technology to help them go to the last steps of financial control, which is what I think they’re pushing for,” she said.

“What we’ve seen is a tremendous effort to bankrupt the population and the governments so that it’s much easier for the central bankers to take control. That’s what I’ve been writing about since 1998, that this is a financial coup d’etat.

Now the financial coup d’etat is being consolidated, where the central bankers just serve jurisdiction over the treasury and the tax money. And if they can get the [vaccine] passports in with the CBDC [central bank digital currency], then it will be able to take taxes out of our accounts and take our assets. So, this is a real coup d’etat.”

The Spartacus Letter

Again, I urge you to watch the documentary at the top of this article, and keep an eye out for my interview with Austin Fitts, which will be published in the near future. In closing, I want to highlight a mysterious letter posted by an anonymous individual who goes by the name “Spartacus.”

“COVID-19 — The Spartacus Letter” was originally posted on docdroid.net, but has since been deleted. Another copy can be found on mega.nz.¹ The Automatic Earth² and ZeroHedge³ have also published the letter in full. The letter starts out saying, “My name is Spartacus, and I’ve had enough”:

“We are watching the medical establishment inject literal poison into millions of our fellow Americans without so much as a fight. We have been told that we will be fired and denied our livelihoods if we refuse to vaccinate. This was the last straw.”

What follows is a compilation of data showing the COVID pandemic was a biowarfare attack that has been kept going using sophisticated psychological warfare tactics. It also reviews the dangers of the COVID shots, noting that the virus and the “vaccines” were made by the same entities.

A summary of Spartacus’ findings is as follows. Each summary point is elaborated upon in later sections of the letter, which you can read in any of the three references provided.

A Criminal Conspiracy

It’s a long letter, so I won’t reproduce the whole thing here. However, the following sections are of particular interest, with regard to a criminal elite that is orchestrating the destruction of life as we know it, in an effort to usher in a technocracy-led system of global governance and control:⁴

“In November of 2019, three technicians at the Wuhan Institute of Virology developed symptoms consistent with a flu-like illness. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak, and Ralph Baric knew at once what had happened, because back channels exist between this laboratory and our scientists and officials.

December 12th, 2019, Ralph Baric signed a Material Transfer Agreement (essentially, an NDA) to receive Coronavirus mRNA vaccine-related materials co-owned by Moderna and NIH.

It wasn’t until a whole month later, on January 11th, 2020, that China allegedly sent us the sequence to what would become known as SARS-CoV-2. Moderna claims, rather absurdly, that they developed a working vaccine from this sequence in under 48 hours.

Stephane Bancel, the current CEO of Moderna, was formerly the CEO of bioMerieux, a French multinational corporation specializing in medical diagnostic tech, founded by one Alain Merieux. Alain Merieux was one of the individuals who was instrumental in the construction of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s P4 lab.

The sequence given as the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2, RaTG13, is not a real virus. It is a forgery. It was made by entering a gene sequence by hand into a database, to create a cover story for the existence of SARS-CoV-2, which is very likely a gain-of-function chimera produced at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and was either leaked by accident or intentionally released. The animal reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 has never been found.

This is not a conspiracy ‘theory.’ It is an actual criminal conspiracy, in which people connected to the development of Moderna’s mRNA-1273 are directly connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and their gain-of-function research by very few degrees of separation, if any. The paper trail is well- established.

The lab-leak theory has been suppressed because pulling that thread leads one to inevitably conclude that there is enough circumstantial evidence to link Moderna, the NIH, the WIV, and both the vaccine and the virus’s creation together.

In a sane country, this would have immediately led to the world’s biggest RICO and mass murder case. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric, Shi Zhengli, and Stephane Bancel, and their accomplices, would have been indicted and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Instead, billions of our tax dollars were awarded to the perpetrators.

The FBI raided Allure Medical in Shelby Township north of Detroit for billing insurance for ‘fraudulent COVID-19 cures.’ The treatment they were using? Intravenous Vitamin C. An antioxidant. Which, as described above, is an entirely valid treatment for COVID-19-induced sepsis, and indeed, is now part of the MATH+ protocol advanced by Dr. Paul E. Marik.

The FDA banned ranitidine (Zantac) due to supposed NDMA (N-nitrosodimethylamine) contamination. Ranitidine is not only an H2 blocker used as antacid, but also has a powerful antioxidant effect, scavenging hydroxyl radicals. This gives it utility in treating COVID-19.

The FDA also attempted to take N-acetylcysteine, a harmless amino acid supplement and antioxidant, off the shelves, compelling Amazon to remove it from their online storefront. This leaves us with a chilling question: did the FDA knowingly suppress antioxidants useful for treating COVID-19 sepsis as part of a criminal conspiracy against the American public?

The establishment is cooperating with, and facilitating, the worst criminals in human history, and are actively suppressing non-vaccine treatments and therapies in order to compel us to inject these criminals’ products into our bodies …

Conclusions: The current pandemic was produced and perpetuated by the establishment, through the use of a virus engineered in a PLA-connected Chinese biowarfare laboratory, with the aid of American taxpayer dollars and French expertise …

Either through a leak or an intentional release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a deadly SARS strain is now endemic across the globe, after the WHO and CDC and public officials first downplayed the risks, and then intentionally incited a panic and lockdowns that jeopardized people’s health and their livelihoods.

This was then used by the utterly depraved and psychopathic aristocratic class who rule over us as an excuse to coerce people into accepting an injected poison which may be a depopulation agent, a mind control/pacification agent in the form of injectable ‘smart dust,’ or both …

They believe they can get away with this by weaponizing the social stigma of vaccine refusal. They are incorrect. Their motives are clear and obvious to anyone who has been paying attention.

These megalomaniacs have raided the pension funds of the free world. Wall Street is insolvent and has had an ongoing liquidity crisis since the end of 2019. The aim now is to exert total, full-spectrum physical, mental, and financial control over humanity before we realize just how badly we’ve been extorted by these maniacs. The pandemic and its response served multiple purposes for the Elite:

… The Elites are trying to pull up the ladder, erase upward mobility for large segments of the population, cull political opponents and other ‘undesirables,’ and put the remainder of humanity on a tight leash, rationing our access to certain goods and services that they have deemed ‘high-impact,’ such as automobile use, tourism, meat consumption, and so on.

Naturally, they will continue to have their own luxuries, as part of a strict caste system akin to feudalism. Why are they doing this? Simple. The Elites are Neo-Malthusians and believe that we are overpopulated and that resource depletion will collapse civilization in a matter of a few short decades.

They are not necessarily incorrect in this belief. We are overpopulated, and we are consuming too many resources. However, orchestrating such a gruesome and murderous power grab in response to a looming crisis demonstrates that they have nothing but the utmost contempt for their fellow man.

To those who are participating in this disgusting farce without any understanding of what they are doing, we have one word for you. Stop. You are causing irreparable harm to your country and to your fellow citizens.

To those who may be reading this warning and have full knowledge and understanding of what they are doing and how it will unjustly harm millions of innocent people, we have a few more words. Damn you to hell. You will not destroy America and the Free World, and you will not have your New World Order. We will make certain of that.”

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Notes

^1, 4 Mega.nz The Spartacus Letter

² The Automatic Earth September 26, 2021

³ ZeroHedge September 27, 2021

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Rishi Sunak, the UK chancellor, has published a report announcing billions in road spending, cuts to taxes on polluting domestic flights and cancelled long-delayed fuel duty rises on the eve of crucial COP26 climate talks.

It is almost as if the financial wing of the UK Government is deliberately embarrassing its government colleagues hosting the climate conference. But that isn’t the only problem.

Having polluters as sponsors of climate talks is a bit like letting tobacco companies sponsor hospital cancer wards. It lets them pollute the process of curing the underlying problem.

Net-zero

Major polluters Air France, gas and electricity company Engie and carmakers BMW and Renault were among the sponsors of COP21 in Paris in 2015, when countries agreed to limit global temperature rises to “well below 2C” by the end of the century, with the added ambition of making 1.5C the maximum permitted upper limit.

Poland’s leading coal company Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa (JSW) sponsored COP 24 in Katowice, at the heart of the country’s coal-producing region, as recently as 2018. The Polish pavilion memorably advertised coal-shaped bars of soap.

Corporate accountability groups accused Spain of allowing its biggest polluters to use the climate summit in Madrid the following year to “wrap themselves in the green branding of the COP”.

COP26 in Glasgow announced that it will not accept sponsorship from companies without clear short-term plans to go towards net-zero emissions.

Even allowing for issues to do with framing of ‘net zero’ and how it typically relies on unproven carbon removal technologies, and flawed and misleading so-called carbon ‘offset’ schemes, advertising may turn out to be another matter.

Pledge

The advertising industry has been waking up to the scale of climate destabilisation by setting up different climate initiatives.

In the UK, for example, Purpose Disruptors, a network of advertising professionals, is calling for a reset of their industry in order to tackle the high carbon consumerism fuelled by advertising campaigns.

And, COP26 in Glasgow prompted the UK Advertising Association to release a five-step plan on how the sector can meet net zero emissions called Ad Net Zero.

These, though, are mostly broad, general pledges that companies in the industry can sign onto, which say nothing about the sector’s underlying responsibility in fuelling materialism and over-consumption, and promoting high-carbon lifestyles.

One recent exception is the Clean Creatives initiative that calls on agencies to refuse work on marketing campaigns for major polluters, and to drop specifically fossil fuel companies as clients. At the time of writing, 400 individual workers in the sector had signed the pledge alongside 132 agencies.

Aggressive

According to the UK government, COP26 would only accept sponsors that would help make “COP26 a success and help to deliver international action on climate change”. And who, “are making real contributions to the fight against climate change, and are aligned with the aims of COP26… (and) Have strong climate credentials.”

It appears to be a step forward, and is at least an acknowledgement that it matters to have sponsors who are, at least, aligned with the purpose of what they are sponsoring.

But for some reason, this did not prevent them from including the SUV-manufacturer, Jaguar Land Rover – which is currently under investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority for environmentally irresponsible advertising after it was the subject of multiple complaints.

In September, the UK government announced that among the sponsors Jaguar Land Rover would be providing transport for the conference site.

These would be electric vehicles, but the company is still very much responsible for promoting the massive car market shift towards heavily polluting, and very large, road hogging, sports utility vehicles (SUVs) – a phenomenon which has spread internationally. And they still aggressively market this highly polluting form of traffic.

Touchstone

Another COP26 sponsor is the Boston Consulting Group, or BCG, one of the big three management consultancies in the world, and currently trying to position itself as a global thought leader on sustainability.

And BCG is a major supplier of consultancy services to the oil and gas industry. And, whilst it says that one of its services is to help the industry ‘contribute to a path to decarbonisation’, such industry initiatives are repeatedly exposed as greenwash.

One of BCG’s services is to the so-called “upstream oil and gas industry” in which it promises to unlock “new opportunities for oil and gas companies around the world”.

For the uninitiated, the ‘upstream’ industry is to do with exploration for new fossil fuel sources and production. It has now become a touchstone of climate policy that only a small proportion of already known fossil fuel sources can be safely used.

That means that any new exploration and production is incompatible with climate targets – and therefore in direct contradiction to the purpose of COP26.

Gadget

A global campaign is now calling for a Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty to end new exploration and production. BCG also promises to work with oil and gas companies  “to stay competitive by helping them improve operational efficiency, (and) reduce costs.”

It boasts of its database of ‘unconventional assets’ meaning highly polluting shale oil and gas, and specifically of helping one Indian corporate client (unnamed) to “aggressively expand into the faster-growing petrochemicals market.”

Another COP26 sponsor is food company Reckitt Benckiser, formerly Reckitt & Colman. As manufacturers of brands from Dettol to Durex, the Scotsman asked the question: ‘Who is Reckitt?: The COP26 ‘greenwash’ firm behind everyday household products’.

The article points to its use of 134,414 tonnes of palm oil or palm oil products in 2019, for which it relies, “on a slew of mills based predominantly in Indonesia and Malaysia.” Palm oil production is associated with widespread problems including deforestation which is a major contributor to global heating.

Other sponsors include supermarket Sainsbury’s, gadget manufacturers Hitachi, and three UK power companies, SSE, Scottish Power and the National Grid.

Polluting

Hitachi’s purpose is to sell energy-hungry hi-tech gadgets to as many people as possible. Subsidiary Hitachi Metals has not even set any greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.

SSE and Scottish Power don’t appear on any lists of the greenest energy providers, and SSE recently ranked among Scotland’s top polluters with its gas station at Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, emitting 1.6m tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2019.

Sainsbury’s came last in a 2018 survey of supermarket plastic policies and was found to have made the least progress on plastics reduction since January 2018.

While Sainsbury’s may perform relatively well compared to other major supermarkets, in comparison to more localised and independent retail and supply chains, such supermarkets lock-in a model which is energy inefficient, encouraging car-based shopping, has centralised logistics vulnerable to disruption, and is poor in terms of spreading local economic benefits.

In one advert displaying its credentials as a sponsor of COP26, Sainsbury’s promoted a beef dish, and beef notoriously is one of the most polluting, high-carbon of foodstuffs.

Ambitious

Bankers NatWest are also a sponsor which – the company says – “builds on our commitments to make our operations carbon net zero by the end of 2020 and to at least halve the climate impact of our financing activity by 2030.”

The problem is that, while NatWest’s commitment may be real, it is still being listed by Banking on Climate Chaos as one of the top 50 polluting banks in the world – with investments in coal all around the planet.

They are also just a subsidiary company of one of the biggest retail banks in the world, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). Share Action put RBS, with its significant investments in polluters, at number 15 out of 20 where its approach to the climate challenge represented only a ‘business as usual’ no-change approach, not one of responding to the crisis.

“Worryingly,” wrote Share Action researchers, “our research found that only two of the thirty six companies reviewed clearly demonstrated effective plans to reduce their carbon impacts in time, with 94 per cent of retail banks failing to convince on climate strategy.”

NatWest’s commitment on measurement appeared one of the most ambitious, stating that it aimed “to quantify our climate impact and set sector-specific targets by 2022”.

Umbrella

Yet owners RBS provided $1.1 billion to the fossil fuel industry from 2015-17, which makes it one of the world’s largest financiers of fossil fuels, exemplifying the short-termism of the capital markets which prioritises profit maximisation over other concerns.

Fossil fuel infrastructure is normally planned to be operating for at least 40 years, ten years beyond the UK government’s own target of getting to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. In other words, any apparent commitment by NatWest is compromised and contradicted by simply being a brand name used by a major fossil fuel funder.

This is in 2021. But whole process of negotiating any kind of solution to global warming – starting with the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 – has involved fossil fuel companies lobbying heavily at various levels to secure their interests and slow or avoid the action necessary to reverse climate breakdown.

To achieve this, the corporates began by forming a number of umbrella groups, like the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) and the Climate Council which presented their interests as those of business in general.

Emissions

In fact, the core membership of these groups, particularly the GCC and those like it, were coal and oil companies, particularly from the USA – though chemical companies and car manufacturers were also well represented.

The GCC, which described itself as ‘the leading business voice on climate change’, included among its members a number of familiar names like the American Petroleum Institute, Du Pont, Dow, Ford, General Motors, Texaco, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Shell.

Such tactics were well tested by American tobacco companies when they fought against legislation to prevent them from advertising.

These included: emphasising remaining scientific uncertainties;  engaging in highly misleading campaigns in the mass media; arguing that the costs of action will be too high; and threatening nations to prevent the adoption of policies to limit emissions.

Industries

Part of the problem is that COPs have become like trade fairs, set up in such a way that they create lobbying opportunities for well-funded major energy companies who can afford large scale presences and displays, often more so than whole nations from the Global South.

At the height of the pandemic, a Swedish civil society initiative proposed ways to improve virtual access which could also better control corporate lobbying.

To make sure that sponsorships and advertising never undermine the purpose of the COPs, and to prevent corporate capture and greenwash attempts by big polluters within and outside COP events, conference hosts need to  carefully regulate sponsorship and advertising activities taking place within a reasonable distance of the conferences.

Like the regulations applied to tobacco companies by the World Health Organisation, hosts of COP events should apply the same principles to high-carbon companies and sectors including airlines, car manufacturers and fossil fuel industries.

Debate

More specifically, climate conference hosts need to:

1. Turn down any sponsorship deal by high-carbon companies, sectors and trade associations.

2. Regulate advertising and marketing activities by high-carbon companies within the conference centre. In addition, hosts should take steps to work with local authorities to prevent these same companies from advertising their products and services within a reasonable proximity of the conference centre. And, building upon these demands, the recommendations from Glasgow Calls Polluters Out could be used to:

3. Lock polluters out’ by adopting a conflict of interest policy that blocks high-carbon companies from access to accreditations, expert and advisory bodies and UNFCCC posts, and ends sponsorship deals.

Instead, greater participation should be prioritised for those communities in the Global South most affected by climate breakdown.

Measures could include equity based quotas for physical delegation sizes complemented with online participation and financial support for attendance.

Climate conferences, and the climate debate itself have to stop being billboards for the influence of the very interests who make the climate crisis worse.

*

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Andrew Simms is co-director of the New Weather Institute, coordinator of the Rapid Transition Alliance, author of several books on new and green economics and co-author of the original Green New Deal. He is on twitter at @AndrewSimms_uk. 

Featured image: Prime minister Boris Johnson visits Rolls Royce in Bristol on 15 October 2021. (Source: Flickr, Number 10)

Video: Nelson Mandela’s Wisdom and Commitment to Peace and Fundamental Human Rights

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The late Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was South Africa’s anti-apartheid revolutionary, who served as president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, after his release from prison for 27 years in 1990. His lifelong commitment to Peace, Fundamental Human Rights and his legacy will live for all humanity.

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The High Court hearing that will decide whether or not Julian Assange can be extradited opened with a mighty lie. The prosecutor, James Lewis QC, listed ‘assurances’ by the US (see below) which were ‘binding’. They are not binding and never will be.

Scientist Whose Wife Was Injured by COVID Vaccine Tells FDA: ‘Please Do Not Give this to Kids’

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Brian Dressen, Ph.D., who is a chemist with an extensive background in researching and assessing the degree of efficacy in new technologies, told the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Pfizer’s vaccine “failed any reasonable risk-benefit calculus in connection with children.”

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The people behind the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) have admitted that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported” in an early grant.

Indigenous Leaders in Nicaragua Speak Out Against Western Media and NGOs

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Nicaragua has an election to choose their president and national assembly on November 7. According to polls, the Sandinista Front (FSLN) currently in government is expected to win the presidency and a majority of seats in the assembly. At the same time, the Sandinista government is intensely disliked by Washington and there has been a steady stream of negative news and accusations.

America’s Frontline Doctor: Microscopic Data Shows ‘Clotting’ in Lungs, Vessels, Brains of Jabbed Patients

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He Exposed Colombia’s Vaccine Contracts with Big Pharma. Then the Right Came for Him.

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Enciso had gotten his hands on and publicly released Colombia’s confidential contracts with AstraZeneca and Pfizer for the Covid vaccine — an act that he believed was in the public interest but nonetheless let loose an avalanche of criticism, thousands of insults, and even threats on his personal safety.

Israel Calls the Fight for Palestinian Rights ‘Terror’ – And So Turns Reality on Its Head

By Jonathan Cook, October 28, 2021

Did someone forget to tell Benny Gantz that Donald Trump is no longer the United States president? It certainly looked that way last Friday as Israel’s defence minister – who has been presented as a force for moderation in an Israeli government led by the settler right – declared six leading Palestinian human rights groups to be “terrorist organisations”.

United States Workers Strike and Leave Jobs in the Millions in Response to the Economic Crisis

By Abayomi Azikiwe, October 28, 2021

Workers in the United States are reaching a boiling point with their bosses due to the impact of the pandemic and the failure of the government to provide adequate assistance to the majority proletarian population.

Crystal Ball Jurisprudence: The US Appeal Against Assange Opens

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, October 28, 2021

In a judgment poor on press liberties and publishing but sound on the issue of mental health and wellbeing, Baraitser held that Assange’s extradition to the US to face espionage and computer intrusion charges would exacerbate his suicide risk and be oppressive.

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National Security Alert: Thousands of U.S. Special Forces and Combat Troops Discharged as Total Force ‘Vaccination’ Decimates Military Readiness

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If You Take the COVID Vax, You Can Never Achieve Full Immunity Again – Government Stats Unveil the Horrifying Truth

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Stop the Covid Holocaust! Open Letter

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U.S Air Transportation in Crisis: Pilots Taking a Bold Stand against “Killer Vaccine”

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Elite’s Depopulation Agenda Is Now Irrefutable

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CDC Allows Hospitals to Classify Dead Vaxxed People as “Unvaccinated”

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Peter Koenig, October 22 , 2021

Dr. Carrie Madej: First U.S. Lab Examines “Vaccine” Vials, Horrific Findings Revealed

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Jesse Smith, September 30 , 2021

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

Chemical warfare is nothing new. As early as 428 BC the Spartans were burning wood soaked in resin and sulfur for use against their enemies. — Matt Novak, Tripping Through the Cold War: Drug Warfare in the Retrofuture

There is no America.  There is no democracy. . . . The world is a college of corporations inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. . . . [a] perfect world in which there is no war and famine, oppression and brutality — one vast and ecumenical holding company . . .  in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.  And I have chosen you to preach this evangel. — Network 

The pharmaceutical companies are an amoral bunch. They’re not a benevolent association. . . Once one is dancing with the devil, you don’t always get to call the steps of the dance.  —A psychiatrist, quoted in the Boston Globe, 2002. [1]

The main reason we take so many drugs is that drug companies don’t sell drugs, they sell lies about drugs. — Dr. Peter Gotzsche. [2]

A Marriage Made in Hell: Drug Companies and War

War has long been one of the best ways to make money.  But now Big Pharma may be superseding the arms industry in profitability. And with money comes power. The vast profits in drug dealing by the world’s pharmaceutical companies stagger the imagination.

According to Bill Sardis, ‘Big Pharma has the world by the tail.‘

The profits are only exceeded by even vaster political influence. Political clout. You need a lot of clout to coerce nations into kowtowing to your demands. And, indeed, the kingpin of the pharmaceutical firmament, Pfizer, was ‘accused of “bullying” governments in COVID vaccine negotiations.’ [3]

Drugs have long been used as weapons of war, so what could be more fitting than arms dealers joining forces with drug dealers? Not of course, merely in a sordid and clandestine manner befitting adventures with intelligence agencies and criminal pushers, funding ‘black ops,’ while the politicians prate about ‘the war on drugs.’ 

No, no, we are long past that sort of titillating under-the-table footsie. Now we have the glorious, ecumenical, and ubiquitous combination of war, bioweapons, and lucrative corporate skullduggery delivered in a planet-encompassing press kit of theatrical excitement. Fun for the whole military-intelligence-industrial-congressional complex extended family. 

Drugs as Weapons Against Enemy Populations 

States have a long history of making use of chemicals and disease agents to make war on their enemies. Wikipedia classifies drugs as an ‘incapacitating agent.’

States have also a long history of experimenting on their own populations with a callous disregard quite equal to the rapacity with which soulless corporate entities exploit their victims, a.k.a. customers, and lay waste to the environment, placing their faith in ‘externalities’ to pick up the slack. Why pay for damage to people and planet when you can get someone else to foot the bill? 

‘Ray Anderson . . . describes the corporation as a “present day instrument of destruction” because of its compulsion to “externalize any cost that its unwary or uncaring public will allow.”’ [4]

Peter Andreas notes: ‘We should recognize the many ways in which the centuries-old nexus between drugs and war has also been about statecraft and the pursuit of the state’s strategic objectives. . . In various ways and in various forms, drugs made war and war made drugs’. 

Now, many seemingly sovereign nations have taken it into their collective heads to march in lockstep to make war on the handiest enemy of all: their own people. And, as profiteers rub their hands with glee at the prospect of a new war, and arms dealers break out the champagne, so Big Pharma and their fellow biotechnology travellers have gotten into the act. 

They have gone the old-fashioned highwayman’s ‘Stand and deliver!’ one better. Not just your money or your life: they want both. Of course it may take a while to kill you, but in the meantime they will fleece you of all you possess.

Taking to heart the dictum of Thomas Hobbes that ‘the two cardinal virtues of war are force and fraud,’ drug companies are eager to help out state health bureaucrats, as they climb to new heights of mendacity and coercion.

From these breezy mountaintops, they can survey the world laid out before them, as a ten year old can gaze at his troops lined up in a video game. Heady indeed to play with the compliant, to perform experiments on them, to toy with them for their own pleasure and profit, making their victims pay for their own victimization—the cruelest cut of all.

‘As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.’ William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4, Scene 

Pacification for the Nation 

The conqueror, whether of the military or corporate variety, needs to have his idea of himself reinforced. He needs to recruit the people he controls in order to successfully suppress and oppress them. He needs, not only to control the body, but also the mind of his subjects. He needs, as an occupying army, to “pacify them.”

Snake oil has long been a lucrative business and the sale of opium has featured in the diabolical dance of drugs and war for several centuries, as any historian can tell you. And many have stated that the opioid epidemic is largely the result of sweetheart deals for doctors and drug companies, as Dr. Gary Kohls has pointed out. in America’s Hidden Iatrogenic Epidemic of Drug and Vaccine-induced Disorders. [5]

Joel Bakan’s The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power quotes from commodities broker Carlton Brown: “there is always “opportunity in devastation.” And Chris Hooper, an ad director says: “I’m sucking Satan’s pecker.”

If the natives get restless under the yoke of oppression and exploitation, sick from food that has no nourishment, drugs that do not cure, and vaccines that provide no immunity, drug companies are only too ready to seize the opportunity to provide surcease from pain, whether of the mind or the body. After all, relief is only a prescription away, as full page magazine ads and television commercials will seductively tell you.

Such power must be intoxicating, even a kind of addiction, for the providers of such aid. And surely that sort of power cannot be corrupting, as motivated by the desire to do good. The billions involved must be merely incidental.

How impossible to believe such as they could be corrupted, putrified and petrified into stone idols, with hearts as hard as obsidian.

*

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S.M. Smyth was a founding member of the 2006 World Peace Forum in Vancouver, and organized a debate about TILMA at the Maple Ridge City Council chambers between Ellen Gould and a representative of the Fraser Institute.

Notes 

[1] As quoted by Dr. Gary Kohls in Big Pharma: How They Manipulate American Medical Doctors, Global Research, June 24, 2015

[2] Dr. Peter Goetzsche, as quoted in Prescription Drugs Are Killing Us – Meet One Doctor (Out of Many) Who Published a Paper About It, by Arjun Walia of Collective Evolution. 

[3] Source: Madlen Davies, Rosa Furneaux , Iván Ruiz, Jill Langlois, ‘Held to Ransom’: Pfizer Demands Governments Gamble with State Assets to Secure Vaccine Deal, Bureau of Investigative Journalism (Feb 23 2021

[4] The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, by Joel Bakan, Viking Canada, 2004. 

[5] Drug-Induced “Iatrogenic” Disorders: The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US and Britain, By Dr. Gary G. Kohls, Global Research, January 17, 2018

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.

***

It isn’t merely the domains of cultural warfare and religious cults that Xi Jinping has to worry about, but additionally hives of foreign-directed agents operating on a multitude of domains within China’s government and business community.

The first two parts of this series can be found here and here.

While there have been many honest and good Jesuit missionaries in China with names like Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), Adam Schall (1591-1666), Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688), and Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766) something darker appears to lurk within the Byzantine structure of controls that manage the Society of Jesus founded by Spanish mercenary Ignatius Loyola in 1540. Anyone wishing to get a full grasp on the sorts of operations being conducted to destroy both China and the USA from within these days would do well to take the time to consider this secretive force of world history.

Prior to our current age, the subversive role of Jesuit operations were much more widely known by republican forces who understood the reality of conspiracies as a part of life and world history (1).

Penetrating Minds Shed Light on the Jesuits

The noted poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller took time to compose “The Jesuit Government of Paraguay” of 1788 where he documents the role of Jesuit missionaries whose arrest revealed a coded manual for training natives to kill European settlers “who are cursed by god”. The Jesuits in Schiller’s report had created a hybrid religion using Christian motifs and passed themselves off as angelic Kau. Describing their teachings (written in a native language) as “angels of God, who descended to the people, to teach them how one comes into heaven and the art to destroy the enemy of God.”

A century earlier, the famed scientist/priest Antoine Arnauld wrote:

“Do you wish to excite troubles, to provoke revolution, to produce the total ruin of your country? Call in the Jesuits… and build magnificent colleges for these hot-headed religionists; suffer those audacious priests, in their dictatorial and dogmatic tone, to decide on affairs of State.”

Describing Jesuit operations in Canada which had created quasi-synthetic cults blending native beliefs with the Bible and deployed to conduct terror operations on colonists, historian Graham Lowry wrote in his How the Nation Was Won (1987):

“Northern tribes converted by the Jesuits- the Hurons, Algonquins, Penobbscots, Pequawkets and especially the Abnakis- were repeatedly hurled against the northeastern and western frontier of New England. Led by Jesuit priests, with only an occasional French officer, the Indians attacked down the Kennebec, Connecticut and Merrimack Rivers, massacring and burning as they went… this threat to the northeastern colonies was not removed until the American Revolution”.

The American revolution did not only ensure a respite from Jesuit-run raids on colonists (provoking often brutal and unjust retaliations in response as part of a broader divide-to-conquer strategy), but the Pope Clement XIV passed a Papal Bull forcing the dissolution of this insurrectionary society in 1773 saying quite ominously:

“The suppression is accomplished, I do not repent of it, having only resolved on it after examining and weighing everything, and because I thought it necessary for the church. If it were not done, I would do it now. But this suppression will be my death.”

It was only a matter of months before the pope was to die of poisoning.

Although they got revenge on the belligerent Pope, the order took a major hit and removed their base of operations to safer terrain in Russia for a period of nearly 50 years. During this time, their intrigues never ceased, provoking French revolutionary Marquis de Lafayette to write during the heat of the American Revolution that:

“It is my opinion that if the liberties of this country – the United States of America – are destroyed, it will be by the subtlety of the Roman Catholic Jesuit priests, for they are the most crafty, dangerous enemies to civil and religious liberty. They have instigated MOST of the wars of Europe.”

The ban on the order was lifted by Pope Pius VII in 1814 amidst the early days of the Congress of Vienna. This was the Congress that Kissinger declared his most beloved period in history which re-instated an oligarchical iron fist onto all of Europe ravaged by 20 years of Napoleonic wars. Working closely with Austrian Prince Metternich and the new Holy Alliance, the Jesuits became instrumental in maintaining controls throughout Europe as a secret mercenary force.

American inventor and artist Samuel F.B. Morse exposed much of this in his 1835 Foreign Conspiracies Against the Liberties of the United States wrote:

“Let us examine the operations of this Austrian Society [the St. Leopold Foundation], for it is hard at work all around us, yes, here in this country… With its headquarters in Vienna, under the immediate direction and inspection of Metternich, …it makes itself already felt through the [American] Republic. Its emissaries are here. And who are these emissaries? They are Jesuits. This society of men, after exerting their tyranny for upwards of two hundred years, at length became so formidable to the world, threatening the entire subversion to all social order, that even the Pope [Clement XIV] was compelled to dissolve them [in 1773]. They had not been suppressed, however, for fifty years, before the waning influence of Popery and Despotism required their useful labors to resist the light of Democratic liberty, and the Pope (Pius VII) simultaneously with the formation of the Holy Alliance, revived the order of the Jesuits in all their power. And do Americans need to be told what Jesuits are? If any are ignorant, let them inform themselves of their history without delay; no time is to be lost; their workings are before you in every day’s events; they are a secret society, a sort of Masonic order with super added features of revolting odiousness, and a thousand times more dangerous. They are not merely priests, or priests of one religious creed; they are merchants, and lawyers, and editors, and men of any profession, having no outward badge (in this country) by which to be recognized; they are about in all your society. They can assume any character, that of angels of light, or ministers of darkness, to accomplish their one great end, the service upon which they are sent, whatever that service may be.”

Image on the right: Dostoevsky in 1872 (Source: Public Domain)

Even the Russian writer Dostoyevsky noted their evil ways stating:

“The Jesuits . . . are simply the Roman army for the earthly sovereignty of the world in the future, with the Pontiff of Rome for Emperor . . . that’s their ideal . . . It’s simple lust of power, of filthy earthly gain, of domination – something like a universal serfdom with them as masters – that’s all they stand for. They don’t even believe in God perhaps.”

Cecil Rhodes’ Jesuit Constitution

In his 1877 will even Cecil Rhodes called for modelling a new Church of the British Empire around “the Jesuit constitution”, and the Fabian Society directly modelled their techniques on this method of permeation theory in order to gain influence over all levers of culture, taste, and politics.

One of Cecil Rhodes’ leading Round Table controllers W.T. Stead wrote that

“Mr. Rhodes was more than the founder of a dynasty. He aspired to be the creator of one of those vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations which, like the Society of Jesus, have played so large a part in the history of the world. To be more strictly accurate, he wished to found an Order as the instrument of the will of the Dynasty, and while he lived he dreamed of being both its Caesar and its Loyola.”

During his time running much of South Africa and Zimbabwe, Rhodes ensured that the order was granted generous land upon which many churches were built soon becoming the largest land owners in South Africa

The Jesuit-run America magazine even bragged that

“In the early part of the 20th century, the Catholic Church, like many churches at the time, received land grants from the colonial administrators for missionary work. Cecil Rhodes, one of the entrepreneurial giants of the British colonial era, invited churches, the Catholic Church among them, into his newly acquired territories. Subsequently, the Catholic Church worked closely with colonial governments, particularly in British Africa.”

Snow Becomes Black: The Case of Tavistock

London Tavistock social engineers like William Sargent emersed himself in studies of Jesuit techniques for mind control in his influential Battle for the Mind (1955) which profoundly influenced cultural warfare for the next 70 years. Tavistock affiliated philosopher Bertrand Russell stated in his Scientific Outlook (1930) that:

“Psychology as pursued everywhere in the past was incapable of giving practical control over mental processes, and never aimed at this result. To this general statement there is, however, one important exception, namely psychology as studied by the Society of Jesus. Much that the rest of the world has only recently understood was apprehended by Ignatius Loyola, and impressed by him upon the Order which he founded. The two tendencies which divide progressive psychologists in our day, namely, psycho-analysis and behaviourism, arc both equally exemplified in Jesuit practice. I think one may say on the whole that the Jesuits relied mainly on behaviourism for their own training, and upon psycho-analysis for their power over penitents.”

Only eight years prior to writing this work, Russell had taught in Beijing where he brought his peculiar interpretation of “western philosophy and science” into the minds of young elites emerging into influential positions in the Bolshevik-inspired climate of republican China.

Just as Ignatius Loyola’s meditations featured a self-hypnotic mantra that induced the practitioner into believing white is black if god willed it be so believed (2), Russell’s extension of this same mantra was elaborated upon in his 1953 Science and Society where he called for teams of psychiatrists to see how much it would cost to convince young people that snow is black writing:

“It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment… This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.”

Some might believe that London’s Tavistock which directed much of the counterculture movement of the 1960 is a purely western problem of no concern to China.

While China has gone far to heal the spiritual wounds caused by the Cultural Revolution which turned an armada of youth into radical red guards antagonistic to all deeper Confucian traditions under a cultural great reset, it is important to remain awake to lurking dangers even now since the minds and souls of the youth are still the primary battlefield on which humanity’s destiny is being fought.

In this regard Xi Jinping’s crackdown on online gaming addictions, feminization of men and deification of celebrities is vital to protect the masses of youth whose souls have been long targeted for corruption by social engineers of the west in a form of modern opium war.

But what about the young elite who will emerge as leaders of the future? Is cracking down on videogame addiction and celebrity cultism adequate to protect them? What sort of additional dangers are being faced on this level?

The Foundation for the Eternal Feminine

Without going into great depth, I invite the reader to review the multi billion-dollar Foundation of the Eternal Feminine founded in 2015 by systems analysis guru David Hawk (protégé of Tavistock’s Eric Trist). This strange Beijing/US-based foundation professes to shape a new generation of Chinese Joan of Arcs among the billionaire heiresses of China who represent a surprisingly large quotient of China’s young elite due to the post 1979 one China policy undertaken by Malthusian followers of the Club of Rome associated with Zhao Ziyang.

Describing the organization’s origins to a group of students in 2020, Hawk said:

“In 2015 I feared Donald Trump would become our next president. So I started a foundation in China which was called the Foundation for the Eternal Feminine and got some people to help me with it. Those people convinced some of the richest men in China owning some of the largest companies but also which only had a daughter. No son. They contributed $650 million to this foundation… it was to prepare humans for climate change and particularly to prepare women to be in charge and to be leaders of organizations during this thing we’re gonna call climate change. So this was about climate change and how to find leadership in the next 30, 40, 50 years.”

Young Chinese women recruited to this operation, are given heavy doses of conditioning across the foundation’s several elite resorts in the USA, offering to re-connect the young ladies with the harmony of nature, Daoism and cure the world of the masculine toxicity of Confucianism and Platonism.

Describing a debate with leading members of China’s Executive Committee over which philosophical pathway was the best for China in the 21^st Century, Hawk stated:

“I argued China should get beyond Confucius. That Confucius was not serving them well. Too much orderliness. Too much stability. Too much obeying the rules. That in essence, China needed to go back to the wisdom of Lao Tzu and dump Confucian thinking.”

The Foundation describes that it’s purpose “is to tap into the feminine and the difference it allows for an end state. We wish to see if can make a difference to improving our relations to our various worlds via a wider perspective on who we are and what we shall become. We believe the female perspective on life offers a difference that can be very helpful and make a difference to living systems. Institutions are based in time and space, where the space of the Foundation is seen in the action in its two urban settings, Shanghai and New York, and its two rural retreats for reflection in the Eastern and Midwestern United States.  These give a sense of the basis of and futures to be discovered in the Foundation. All institutions need a symbol, an icon of what they protect as they eternally become.”

On the Foundation’s website, MK Ultra’s Gregory Bateson figures prominently, alongside imagery of children, Chinese poetry, Leonard Cohen music, butterflies and dominatrixes.

Anyone ignoring this cultural inroad attempting to penetrate the soul of China’s upper crust princess-lings should pause and consider what happened when the role of Tavistock’s multifaceted war on the western baby boomer generation was overlooked in the 1940s and 1950s. As I outlined in my previous article How China’s Gorbachev was flushed in 1989, the principal use of Zhao Ziyang by the western oligarchy was to force closed systems of static equilibrium onto the management of China premised upon the supposed universal law of entropy.

Following this trend of thinking, Hawk’s foundation states that the eternal feminine “is consistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, a rule of science virtually ignored in education.”

Luckily, it appears that Xi Jinping understands the dangers posed by Hawk’s foundation as the Chinese government intervened to block Hawk’s desires to lead the organization placing in his stead a young heiress to China’s largest beer company into its presidency leading Hawk to state that the current government likely wishes that he be arrested.

Pope Francis Tries to Cozy Up to China

On a more direct level of Jesuit influence currently pressing onto China’s future, Jesuit Pope Francis’ efforts to bring the Vatican back into the controlling position of the Chinese Catholic Church (whose bonds were severed by Mao in 1951) has resulted in a 2018 China-Vatican provisional agreement. This agreement demands that Beijing must submit all potential church officials to the Pope for approval before they can play a role in China’s catholic community. Considering the Pope’s efforts to green Christianity by uniting the faith with the deconstruction of civilization, Paris Accords, and Green New Deal, it is an alarm bell that should not be ignored.

When one takes these facts into consideration, even the most devoted reader of Epoch Times should understand why China has found the use of social credit systems, CCTV surveillance and regulating religious movements to be of high importance.

Purging the Traitors

It isn’t merely the domains of cultural warfare and religious cults that Xi Jinping has to worry about, but additionally hives of foreign-directed agents operating on a multitude of domains within China’s government and business community.

Many of these creepy figures were purged in 1989 with the ousting of Soros puppet Zhao Ziyang and the putting down of a regime change effort at Tiananmen Square. Other traitors left in a hurry in the months leading up to the 1997 return of Hong Kong to Beijing when many oligarchs loyal to the City of London decided to seek safer sanctuary in British Canada and the USA not knowing what fate would befall them by Beijing’s courts.

Still others have been purged during the sweeping anti-corruption program launched by President Xi since 2012 including the recent purge of ex-Minister of Security Sun Lijun and his conspiratorial entourage affiliated with the networks of former President Zhang Zemin.

In expelling Sun, the party’s disciplinary committee wrote that the ex-minister had “created and spread political rumors, taken actions against others, wove a web of deceit to obtain political capital and … used unscrupulous means … to form gangs, cliques, and interest groups within the party and build his personal power.”

This battle between opposing paradigms within China gives one a clear insight into the sort of danger posed by World Economic Forum Trustee Jack Ma (member of Jiang Zemin’s Shanghai faction of the CPC) when he arrogantly criticized the CPC’s economic paradigm until he was removed to his mansion in Hangzhou and forced to eat some heavy servings of humble pie.

Much like the USA in 1776, many “united empire loyalists” chose to remain behind while other loyalists left to safer ground in British Canada. Those who remained behind forming a new local oligarchy wearing a patriotic veneer while working covertly for their chance to strike and bring the renegade colony back into the imperial fold as outlined by Cecil Rhodes.

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Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation . Consider helping this process by making a donation to the RTF or becoming a Patreon supporter to the Canadian Patriot Review

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) Organized along masonic levels of initiation and penetrating psychological exercises, and constant examinations, talented Jesuits who are found to “pass” the many tests placed along their path and deemed to have the right stuff are brought to certain realizations. One of the most important realizations is that the acts of sin are not the fault of the person carrying out the sin. Rather than owning sin, arduous psychological conditioning outlined within Loyola’s Meditations persuades the devotee to give over the sin of their deeds to whichever commander passes down orders from on high, with the Supreme general at the top of the hierarchy being the ultimate source of sin.

(2) Loyola’s 13 Rule in his Spiritual Meditations reads: “To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it, believing that between Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and the Church, His Bride, there is the same Spirit which governs and directs us for the salvation of our souls.”

Featured image: Visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5)

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Jair Bolsonaro became Brazilian president by modelling himself as the “Tropical Trump” and securing support from the pro-US and formerly CIA funded Christian Evangelical churches. However, according to the latest Datafolha survey, only 29% of Evangelicals consider the Bolsonaro government to be excellent or good, the lowest recording since he took office.

When Bolsonaro was elected in 2018, Evangelicals were partly responsible for his success. This is a relatively new phenomenon for Brazil since Evangelicals were previously more involved in legislative campaigns by electing senators, councillors and federal deputies. They were traditionally never really involved in presidential candidacies.

Previously, some Evangelicals voted for class reasons rather than religious ones. This changed in 2016 due to the impeachment of leftist president Dilma Rousseff, a time when Brazil’s poorest were especially suffering from the economic situation. In the 2016 election, forces against Dilma and the ruling Workers’ Party (PT) cooperated, eventually culminating into an Evangelical wave around some candidates. It is in this wave that Bolsonaro emerged, especially in the lead up to the last presidential election. In the 2018 election, Bolsonaro had 70% of Evangelical votes.

The economic situation made PT-supporting Evangelicals, who are mostly poor and black, abandon the party in favor of Bolsonaro as he portrayed himself as a devout Christian with an economic solution. Bolsonaro has a great deal of dialogue and relations with key Evangelical figures, especially as his wife and all his children are Evangelicals too. Despite the unchristian rhetoric of Bolsonaro, such as calling for the murder of leftists, when an ensemble of Evangelical figures became more associated with him, his candidacy became more palatable.

Bolsonaro latched onto the economic crisis, knowing that this was a major election talking point, and found much popularity despite having no economic policy of his own other than allow Milton Friedman-taught Paolo Guedes run riot with neoliberal policies. The second point to his popularity in 2018 was his political manoeuvring, identifying that he needed the support of Evangelical Christians to secure the presidency, just as Donald Trump had done. He knew how to exploit a narrative that he is the protector of Christian values and Brazil’s natural conservatism, and an opposer of all progressivism and gender ideology. For most Evangelicals, they believed that Bolsonaro was fighting these so-called malign forces, causing them to support him.

However, after several years in charge, the economic situation in Brazil has not improved at all. 65% of Evangelicals earn only one minimum wage (about $200) and 57% of Evangelicals are black, i.e. living at the base of the Brazilian social pyramid and suffering the most from inflation and deteriorating working conditions.

The pandemic and the non-improved economic situation will emerge as major topics in the lead up to next year’s election. One thing is for sure though, it is nearly impossible to predict what will happen in the 2022 election as Brazilian politics is famously volatile. The fact is that people are concerned about the economic issue, including most Evangelicals.

Even with an 11-point drop in the approval of the Bolsonaro government among Evangelicals, his likely presidential rival, former leftist President Lula, is failing to attract votes from this electorate. Lula and Bolsonaro are on an equal footing among the Evangelical electorate now. Although most Evangelicals are poor, the ultra-rich and mega-influential preachers carry out a very strong anti-PT campaign.

In addition, there is difficulty for the left to have an open dialogue with Evangelicals as they are usually middle class, more intellectualized and from the central neighborhoods. Because of this, they are usually detached from understanding the importance of the church to poor populations in the slums or rural areas. Effectively, the church is the community center for the periphery of Brazilian society.

88% of Brazil is religious, indicating that religion has a lot of weight in Brazil. Although Bolsonaro used this to his advantage to come to power and implement economic and geopolitical policies that serve US interests rather than Brazil’s, neither Trump or current President Joe Biden have given the South American country any importance for its servitude.

Rather, under Bolsonaro, Brazil’s formerly non-aligned policy that brought it closer to China and Russia has been diminished. Latin America’s largest country is now mostly isolated with few real friends or partners. Although Bolsonaro ideologically aligned himself to Washington by utilising US-inspired Evangelical churches, it appears that they are now abandoning the president as the economy is still struggling and he catastrophically failed to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, contributing to the deaths of over 600,000 people.

Therefore, it appears that the Evangelical electorate will once again become a deciding bloc in the 2022 election. Although preachers of Evangelical churches will undoubtedly support Bolsonaro or another reactionary leader, the parishioners may once again favor a leftist candidate believing that their economic interests will be better protected after Bolsonaro not only failed to improve the economy, but actually made working conditioners more difficult.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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The late Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was South Africa’s anti-apartheid revolutionary, who served as president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, after his release from prison for 27 years in 1990.

His lifelong commitment to Peace, Fundamental Human Rights and his legacy will live for all humanity. 

.

Video

Video source: A Plus

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The High Court hearing that will decide whether or not Julian Assange can be extradited opened with a mighty lie.

The prosecutor, James Lewis QC, listed ‘assurances’ by the US (see below) which were ‘binding’. They are not binding and never will be.

The High Court hearing that will decide whether or not Julian #Assange can be extradited opened with a mighty lie. The prosecutor, James Lewis QC, listed 'assurances' by the US (see below) which were 'binding'. They are not binding and never will be. https://t.co/aTNArFgLPR

— John Pilger (@johnpilger) October 27, 2021

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Many British elected MPs are paid-up members of the CFI, Conservative Friends of Israel (the AIPAC-affiliated, London lobby) in the House of Commons, that has supported the Likud government of Israel for over 10 years. The head of that lobby sits openly as a Conservative peer in the House of Lords, in Westminster.

The ultra, Right-wing Likud party of the State of Israel is headed by a politician who is now on trial for corruption and bribery in office having been Prime Minister of Israel for over a decade.

His wife was indicted on fraud charges. But those facts did not stop him from standing for election again in a country where the electorate obviously admire his policies of harassment and containment of the Palestinian Arab minority by a 14-year illegal blockade of essential goods and the destruction of power supplies to nearly two million civilians in Gaza.

This is the politician whose manifesto includes the forced annexation of the Palestinian West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the strategic Golan Heights. Such a policy often includes ethnic cleansing: a frightening phrase that can include the mass killing of an indigenous people. The Holocaust was exactly that – ethnic cleansing on an international scale that was perpetrated in Nazi-occupied Europe during WW2.

The Israeli navy now has a fleet of nuclear-armed, state of the art, submarines, (built by a ThyssenKrupp shipyard in Germany and subsidised by the Merkel government), that has a second-strike capability, and which is assumed to be secretly patrolling the Mediterranean and the Gulf 24/7, with its lethal WMD that that have the ability to destroy major strategic targets, at the press of a button.

The State of Israel is the only undeclared nuclear-weaponised state in the world and as such is completely outside the IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency and its UN inspectorate. Israel refuses to ratify the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which a total of 191 States have joined, including the five nuclear-weapon states of US, Russia, France, Britain and China. More countries have ratified the NPT than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement, a testament to the Treaty’s significance. Iran, of course, has no nuclear weapons but signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1968 as a non-nuclear weapons state and it ratified the NPT in 1970. It is subject, of course, to IAEA inspection – which nuclear-weaponised Israel is, astonishingly, not.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention, which entered into force on 29 April 1997. The OPCW, with its 193 Member States, oversees the global endeavour to permanently and verifiably, eliminate chemical weapons. 193 States have committed to the Chemical Weapons Convention to date and 98% of the global population live under its protection. As of 2020, the majority of the chemical weapons stockpiles declared by possessor states have been verifiably destroyed. However, Israel is a signatory state that has not ratified the Convention, and Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan, have neither signed nor acceded to it.

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Being fully vaccinated is painted by the MSM (Mainstream Media) as a civic duty, a moral responsibility and ‘the right thing to do.’ Putting aside the outrageous propaganda involved in that claim for a minute, let’s focus for now on what that even means.

What is fully vaccinated? 1 shot? 2 shots? 3 shots (2 shots plus a booster)? 4 shots? The answer not only depends where you are but when you are.

Many Israelis protested when their government required a 4th COVID vax shot for them to keep their vaccine passport (called a Green Pass) valid. Perhaps it finally dawned on them that being fully vaccinated was going to be something whose definition their government, not they, decided. But it’s not just about location, it’s also about what point in time you’re occupying. Fully vaccinated means different things at different points in the scamdemic. That’s the whole point: the term fully vaccinated is designed to mean whatever the New World Order (NWO) controllers want it to mean at any given time.

Washington Post Spells out the NWO COVID Agenda: You Will Never Be Fully Vaccinated

In an article published on October 22nd 2021, the Jeff Bezos-owned MSM Washington Post tries to explain away the very basis for why it was telling people to get vaxxed in the first place. It’s one of countless contradictions in the official COVID narrative (see others here) which, if it were a high-school student, would have scored an F for internal coherency and logic. One of the dominant and prevailing mantras of the COVID plandemic has been “vaccination is the only way out of this” and “the vaccine is the path back to normalcy.” Truth be told, gene-modifying vaccines are the path to the New Normal, part of the WEF’s Great Reset (a rebranding of the NWO) through introducing nanotechnology into people’s bodies. The idea that COVID vaccines are the only way out relies on so many assumptions, such as that the virus exists, that Big Pharma vaccine manufacturers had a real specimen of it when they made the vaccine, that COVID is a new disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 and many more. Remember, even Big Pharma companies have admitted that the vaccine was never designed to stop COVID transmission or stop serious COVID infection.

The Washington Post admits the definition of “fully vaccinated” is a moving target:

“All of this boils down to, essentially, an ongoing attempt to define “fully vaccinated.” Who is “fully vaccinated” against covid-19, and for how long? The honest answer is that the target is moving before our eyes. Until 2021, “fully vaccinated” was not a standard phrase, any more than “fully married” or “fully graduated from college.” Typically a person is considered “vaccinated” or “unvaccinated.” … Early this year, as coronavirus vaccines began to become available to the public, the term was useful … Ten months later, abundant new evidence has actually made it less clear whether our vaccine regimens should consist of one, two or three doses. Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people are fully vaccinated “2 weeks after their second dose” of Pfizer or Moderna, or “2 weeks after a single-dose vaccine” such as Johnson & Johnson. This definition is already obsolete; as of last month, the agency also recommends third doses of the Pfizer shot for high-risk groups after six months. Soon the recommendation is expected to extend to everyone over 40.”

Being a MSM rag, of course, it continues by trying to justify the unjustifiable, blaming those around the vaccinated person. Blaming the unvaccinated has become a significant COVID trend in the last few months:

“The answer is that [the vaccinated] can still die in the same way a person who is “fully seatbelted” still can. The degree to which any of us are protected by vaccination depends on more than simply how many shots we receive and how effectively our immune system responds. It also depends on those around us.”

What I’d like to focus on, however, is not the MSM’s constant blame of the unvaccinated, but rather its admission that you can never be fully vaccinated, which paves the way for an endless series of shots required to keep up your “immunity passport” or government-granted privileges. This enriches Big Pharma, provides more control to government (by giving them a way to shut out disobedient citizens from society if they fail to repeatedly comply) and provides the NWO controllers more access to people’s bloodstreams, and thus more opportunity to inject and nanotech and alien-like lifeforms into people’s bodies.

The CDC’s Definition Trickery: Changing the Meaning of Vaccination and Vaccine

Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), was recently reported to have said that her agency “may need to update” its definition of fully vaccinated against COVID. However, it’s important to note that the CDC has already been engaging in definition trickery and manipulation throughout the scamdemic. One example is that it insists on defining those who have taken the COVID vaccine as “unvaccinated” if it is only 14 days since they took it. This way, if those people get injured or die from complications or adverse effects, they are counted in official statistics as unvaccinated injuries or unvaccinated deaths.

Another example is the CDC’s role in changing the definition of the word ‘vaccine’ itself. Sharyl Attkisson reports on this discovery which was publicized by Congressman Thomas Massie:

“The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has carefully “evolved” the definition of vaccination to meet the declining ability of some of today’s “vaccines,” including the Covid-19 vaccines. The original definition, prior to 2015, stated that vaccines “prevent…disease.” Starting in 2015, the definition was altered to say that vaccines “produce immunity,” without necessarily preventing disease. After the Covid-19 vaccines were introduced, and it was discovered they do not necessarily “prevent disease” or “provide immunity,” CDC altered the definition of vaccines again to say that they merely “produce protection.”

The discovery was publicized by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) who tweeted the definitions.

Check out @CDCgov’s evolving definition of “vaccination.” They’ve been busy at the Ministry of Truth: pic.twitter.com/4k2xf8rvsL

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) September 8, 2021

Instead of requiring medicine to meet the definition of “vaccine,” it appears CDC has changed the definition of “vaccine” to accommodate what the medicine does.”

Another commentator noted the following in an article entitled The CDC Just Made an Orwellian Change to the Definition of ‘Vaccine’ and ‘Vaccination’:

“So in a week, a vaccine went from being something that “produces immunity to a specific disease” to something that merely “stimulates the body’s immune response against diseases,” and a vaccination no longer “produces immunity” to a disease, just “protection” from a disease.

Does anyone else find this disturbing? Why did the CDC suddenly redefine “vaccine” and “vaccination” to make them sound similar to your basic non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug or a prescription drug you have to keep taking regularly?”

All this word-obfuscation and chicanery comes on top of the fact that the so-called COVID ‘vaccine’ is not a vaccine anyway, by standard and long-held legal and medical definitions, because it does not contain an attenuated or weakened virus.

The WHO Also Changed the Defintions of Herd Immunity and Pandemic

There is also further background to all this on the international level: the Gates-funded WHO (World Health Organization) has changed its definitions of ‘herd immunity’ and ‘pandemic.’ As this article explains, the WHO changed the definition of herd immunity to mention vaccination and to avoid any mention of naturally acquired immunity gained from prior infection. The WHO definition used to be:

“Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.”

Now it is:

“‘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. Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it. Vaccines train our immune systems to create proteins that fight disease, known as ‘antibodies’, just as would happen when we are exposed to a disease but – crucially – vaccines work without making us sick. Vaccinated people are protected from getting the disease in question and passing it on, breaking any chains of transmission.”

It’s a war on human perception. The article’s author, Peter Gyel, writes:

“This perversion of science implies that the only way to achieve herd immunity is via vaccination, which is blatantly untrue. The startling implications for society, however, are that by putting out this false information, they’re attempting to change our perception of what’s true and not true, leaving people believing that they must artificially manipulate their immune systems as the only way to stay safe from infectious disease.”

Similarly, the WHO changed the definition of pandemic. Their original definition of a pandemic from May 1st 2009 specified simultaneous epidemics worldwide:

“An influenza pandemic occurs 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.”

Gyel writes:

“This definition was changed in the month leading up to the 2009 swine flu pandemic, removing the severity and high mortality criteria and leaving the definition of a pandemic as “a worldwide epidemic of a disease.” This switch in definition allowed WHO to declare swine flu a pandemic after a mere 144 people had died from the infection, worldwide, and it’s why COVID-19 is still promoted as a pandemic even though plenty of data suggest the lethality of COVID-19 is on par with the seasonal flu.”

What Does All This Definition Manipulation Mean?

The manipulation of the definition of words is firstly an attempt to confuse people and obstruct critical thinking and analysis. Many people are told to just blindly “trust the science” when they can’t figure out the truth among all these contradictions. It is secondly an attempt to fit whatever the scenario is (e.g. COVID or Operation Coronavirus) into the current definitions of certain terms (pandemic), whatever the pre-planned solution or toxic remedy is (e.g. gene-modifying nanotech devices) into the current definitions of certain terms (vaccine), and whatever the goal is (endless vaccination) into the current definitions of certain terms (fully vaccinated).

In short, it’s straight out of Orwell’s 1984. Words, pharses and terms mean whatever the ruling party wants them to mean at that time, period. We were always at war with Eastasia! Stop trying to make sense of all this, you dirty little prole. Just put your head down, shut up, mask up and vax up – but make sure you keep shopping. And, let your wise and beneficent leaders do all your thinking for you.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, the manipulation is designed to justify what the end goal already is: to inject as many people as possible as many times as possible to create a society where injection and ‘vaccination’ is standard, commonplace and the right of the government to inflict upon its citizens. To put it another way, to create a world where all inherent rights are eviscerated and only privileges exist, and that to earn those privileges, citizens must forgo bodily autonomy and medical sovereignty to allow the government to inject them whenever the government wants. This changes the power dynamic from a scenario where sovereign beings delegate others to represent them in a limited manner, to a scenario where citizens must beg for scraps (privileges) from an out-of-control centralized authority in a two-tiered society that some world leaders (like New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern) openly admit they are trying to construct.

A big part in turning the tide against the advancement of the NWO COVID op will be when a critical mass of people realize the horror of what being fully vaccinated really signifies – when enough people get that being fully vaccinated is an endless destination.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, The Freedom Articles.

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.

Makia Freeman is a frequent contributor to Global Research

Sources

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/immunocompromised-fourth-covid-vaccine-cdc-b1945989.html

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-10-03/israel-tightens-covid-green-pass-rules-sparking-protest

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/fully-vaccinated-coronavirus/2021/10/21/d0f9a2d4-321b-11ec-93e2-dba2c2c11851_story.html

https://thefreedomarticles.com/official-narrative-fake-covid-vaccine-gives-you-fake-covid-immunity/

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

https://thefreedomarticles.com/10-things-to-know-experimental-covid-vaccines/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/covid-trends-10-current-operation-coronavirus-october-2021/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/covid-vax-creatures-live-self-aware-critters-found-microscope/

https://www.axios.com/cdc-fully-covid-vaccinated-definition-update-5c2312d9-64f4-4bb7-a289-04c00889a573.html

https://sharylattkisson.com/2021/09/read-cdc-changes-definition-of-vaccines-to-fit-covid-19-vaccine-limitations/

https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1435606845926871041?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/09/08/the-cdc-just-made-an-orwellian-change-to-the-definition-of-vaccine-and-vaccination-n1476799

https://thefreedomarticles.com/not-a-vaccine-mrna-covid-vaccine-chemical-pathogen-device/

https://peterlegyel.wordpress.com/2021/01/15/who-changes-definition-of-herd-immunity/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/10/24/jacinda-ardern-admits-covid-plan-creating-two-tier-system-new/

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Brian Dressen, Ph.D., who is a chemist with an extensive background in researching and assessing the degree of efficacy in new technologies, told the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Pfizer’s vaccine “failed any reasonable risk-benefit calculus in connection with children.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) advisory committee on Tuesday endorsed Pfizer’s COVID vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, despite strong objections raised during the meeting by multiple scientists and physicians.

Brian Dressen, Ph.D., is one of the scientists who testified during the 8-hour hearing.

Dressen is also the husband of Brianne Dressen, who developed a severe neurological injury during the Utah-based portion of the U.S. AstraZeneca COVID vaccine trial in 2020. After being injured by the first dose, Brianne withdrew from the trial.

During his 3-minute testimony, Dressen, a chemist with an extensive background in researching and assessing the degree of efficacy in new technologies, told the FDA advisory panel Pfizer’s vaccine “failed any reasonable risk-benefit calculus in connection with children.”

Dressen said:

“Your decision is being rushed, based on incomplete data from underpowered trials, insufficient to predict rates of severe and long-lasting adverse reactions. I urge the committee to reject the EUA [Emergency Use Authorization] modification and direct Pfizer to perform trials that will decisively demonstrate that the benefits outweigh the risks for children. I understand firsthand the impact that you will or will not have with the decision you’re going to make today.”

Dressen told the FDA how his wife was severely injured last November by a single dose of a COVID vaccine administered during a clinical trial. He said:

“Because study protocol requires two doses, she was dropped from the trial, and her access to the study app deleted. Her reaction is not described in the recently released clinical trial report — 266 participants are described as having an adverse event leading to discontinuation, with 56 neurological reactions tallied.”

He said he and his wife have since met participants from other vaccination trials — including Pfizer’s trial for 12- to 15-year-olds — who suffered similar reactions and fate.

Dressen said:

“Injured support groups are growing. Memberships number into at least the tens of thousands. We must do better. Those injured in a trial are a critical piece of vaccine safety data. They are being tossed aside and forgotten. The FDA has known first-hand about her case and thousands of others. The FDA has also stated that their own systems are not identifying this issue and that VAERS is not designed to identify any multi-symptom signals. The system is broken.”

Dressen said his family’s lives have changed forever.

“The clinical trials are not appropriately evaluating the data,” he said. “The FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the drug companies continue to deflect the persistent and repeated cries for help and acknowledgment, leaving the injured as collateral damage.”

He added:

“Until we appropriately care for those already injured, acknowledge the full scope of injuries that are happening to adults, please do not give this to kids. You have a very clear responsibility to appropriately assess the risks and benefits to these vaccines. It is obvious that isn’t happening.

“The suffering of thousands continues to repeatedly fall on deaf ears at the FDA. Each of you hold a significant responsibility today and know that without a doubt, when you approve this for the 5-11-year old’s, you are signing innocent kids and uninformed parents to a fate that will undoubtedly rob some of them of their life.”

In an interview with 2News on Tuesday, Brianne said her kids will not receive a COVID-19 vaccine if approved.

“I will react to the vaccine regardless of the brand, and so if my kids have this same genetic makeup, there is the high potential now that the same thing could happen to them,” she said.

Since his wife’s injury — diagnosed by doctors at the National Institutes of Health — the Dressens have met with other trial participants and families with children who also believe they were injured by the COVID vaccines. They formed a support group and website called, C19 Vax Reactions, to share their stories of vaccine injuries.

On June 26, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) held a news conference to discuss adverse reactions related to the COVID vaccines — giving individuals, including Brianne, who have been “repeatedly ignored” by the medical community a platform to share their stories.

According to KUTV, the group continues to push the FDA and CDC for answers and help. Largely ignored, they reached out to Utah Senator Mike Lee, who wrote a letter to the CDC and FDA on their behalf.

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

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The people behind the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) have admitted that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported” in an early grant:

“Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but underreported. Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. Low reporting rates preclude or slow the identification of “problem” drugs and vaccines that endanger public health.”

VAERS published their later numbers, and perhaps we should consider this data representative of fewer than 1% of vaccinated individuals:

• 818,042 Adverse Events
• 127,641 Doctor Visits
• 83,412 Hospitalizations
• 92,017 Urgent Care
• 26,199 Disabled
• 10,179 Bell’s Palsy
• 10,304 Myocarditis
• 8,408 Heart Attacks
• 2,631 Miscarriages
• 17,128 Deaths

Yet, according to Fauci, the vaccine is 100% safe and effective!

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Nicaragua has an election to choose their president and national assembly on November 7. According to polls, the Sandinista Front (FSLN) currently in government is expected to win the presidency and a majority of seats in the assembly.

At the same time, the Sandinista government is intensely disliked by Washington and there has been a steady stream of negative news and accusations.

One theme of accusations concerns the indigenous peoples. In October 2020, PBS Newshour broadcast an episode claiming the US is importing “conflict beef” from the indigenous regions of Nicaragua. This story relied on an Oakland Institute report which alleges rampant violence against indigenous communities and a complicit Nicaraguan government.

The PBS story and Oakland Institute accusations were criticized at the time, but there was no retraction or serious response.

One month later, in November 2020,  Stephen Sefton travelled to eastern Nicaragua to interview indigenous community leaders and determine the facts.  He asked the elected indigenous leaders about the situation, the challenges and whether the PBS story and Oakland Institute reports were accurate.

Sefton,  a community worker who has lived in Nicaragua for 25 years, has published the interviews in a 79-page PDF booklet titled “Nicaragua’s Indigenous Peoples: the Reality and the Neocolonial Lies”.

Sefton interviewed an impressive set of indigenous leaders. With photos at bottom they are:

Arisio Genaro Selso (President  Mayangan Indigenous Territorial Government) ; Eloy Frank Gomez (Secretary Mayangna Indigenous Territorial Government); Fresly Janes Zamora (President of the Miskito Indigenous Territorial Government Twi Yabra);  Ronald Whittingham Dennis (President of the Indigenous and Afro Descendant Territorial Government Karata); Rose Cunningham Kain (Mayor of Waspam and President of the Indigenous Territorial Government of Wanghi Awala Kupia); Dr. Loyda del Carmen Martinez Rodriguez (District Judge of Waspam, Rio Coco); Lejan Mora (President of Indigenous Territorial Government of Wangki Twi / Tasba Raya).

Arisio Genaro Selso (President Mayangna Indigenous Territorial Government) Eloy Frank Gomez (Secretary Mayangna Indigenous Territorial Government)

Rose Cunningham Kain (Mayor of Waspam and President of the Indigenous Territorial Government of Wanghi Awala Kupia).

Lejan Mora (President of Indigenous Territorial Government of Wangki Twi / Tasba Raya)

Fresly Janes Zamora (President of the Miskito Indigenous Territorial Government Twi Yabra).

Ronald Whittingham Dennis (President of the Indigenous and Afro Descendant Territorial Government Karata)

Dr. Loyda del Carmen Martinez Rodriguez (District Judge of Waspam, Rio Coco)

Nicaragua’s Autonomous Zones

In 1987, the Sandinista government passed Law 28 which gave legal support to indigenous land claims. After the Sandinistas lost a hotly contested election in 1990,  neoliberal policies took over and progress on indigenous claims was stopped and reversed.  In 2005, the FSLN was still in opposition but secured passage of Law 445.

As a result of these laws, approximately 31% of Nicaragua’s territory is considered communal property owned by the indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples of the country.

Key Questions and Answers

Question: Are cattle being raised for export in the autonomous zones?

Rose Cunningham Kain: Cattle here have been like pets in other countries. And little by little we have been making a shift to having more cattle. But here there has been no certification process to permit meat exports.

The people here supply the local market and, as often as not with some difficulty, we manage to find someone who wants to butcher their cattle for the local market. Of course, in the last few years we have been encouraging people to improve their cattle stock, so that IPSA (Institute of Agricultural Protection and Health) can do its work teaching us how to improve our cattle rearing.

But we keep animals on a very small scale. So, this report saying that settlers are killing us for land to raise cattle on is not true either. That is not true. Not one cattle rancher has died here, not one Miskito involved in any kind of cattle related killing. It’s a Disney World story, maybe, a Mickey Mouse story, who knows. But it is not a real story of this municipality Waspam or any of these municipalities where there are indigenous peoples.

Question: What about media claims that a little girl was shot in the face by a land invader?

Lejan Mora: In that case, a 13-year-old boy was handling his father’s handgun inside the house. The gun went off and the bullet pierced through here and came out here on a nearby girl.  What did they do when that accident happened? The creators of fake news took charge of spreading the word through the media, through Facebook, claiming that a lot of men appeared, 200 men and attacked the community. And we showed that was false. We went to the house and to the community.

We interviewed people. We even visited the site where it happened. Everything was false. But that information spread internationally as if it was something real, which is untrue. Today even we could go… if we go to the community, we can go and talk also to the mother of the girl about what happened, and she can tell us the truth.

Question: Some mestizo farmers purchased land in the indigenous regions.  How did this happen?

Eloy Frank Gomez: Yatama (indigenous opposition political party) mayors and deputies of Yatama were involved in the sale of indigenous lands. The community members didn’t know. The mestizos came in big numbers, families after families entering indigenous territories, for example in the area of the Rio Coco.

In certain areas of our communities in the Bosawas Reserve, which borders with Miskito land, many mestizo settlers came to enter our Mayangna lands. But how? Through these sales authorized by politicians from Yatama.

It’s no secret that Liberal mayors and municipalities with mayors opposed to the government also promoted land trafficking, even financed organized groups, armed groups to invade indigenous lands and to dispossess the indigenous people of their lands. There is evidence of that. 

Lejan Mora: YATAMA leaders were the ones who started selling land. We have documents showing they were the vendors. Who were the buyers? People from the Pacific, who don’t have land. So, they began selling, they began doing business, and that is where the problem of land invasion arose. 

Question: How are relations between indigenous and mestizo settlers?

Fresly Janes Zamora: From the 1980s to date, if that person lives in that area, in that community, they already know the language, the culture, they already live with the same culture. The children, for example, are already over 30 years old. So, all these things give them that right.

But what happened? The problem of the invasions started after the year 2000.It was difficult for the communities… they didn’t even have the authority to make decisions. So, what happens then? From 2013 onwards, we do have that dominion.

We have that dominion, and we do still have that conflict, not with the government, not with the State of Nicaragua, but the people, the mestizos themselves are invading properties. Because as I told you, we conserve areas. Our ancestors, that is our culture. We are few but we have large tracts of land, because they are the areas where we go out to hunt animals, to sow our crops, to fish. So, these are areas where we as indigenous peoples abide. That is our culture.

So, we now have the title. We have … dominion, we do have now, and the government, the State recognizes it. The only problem we have is that sometimes outsiders want to invade us or are invading our property. So, something that we must teach them is to recognize that they are our lands, and that this land is not empty and unclaimed.

It has an owner. And the owner is the indigenous peoples. Therefore, although they do need land, they must coordinate, to reach an arrangement, to engage in dialogue, a negotiation with the owners

Sometimes we have a conflict. With two or three of the ten mestizos that are within our lands, not all of them agree to recognize us. Always, in everything, there are two or three families that do not agree, that do not want to recognize us. So, what do we do?

When this is the case, we visit the place, because it is our land, and we go in a commission to explain to them the internal regulations of our communities, or the internal regulations of the territory. If they agree, we can reach an understanding.

We can sit down and start a dialogue, negotiate. Because the lands cannot be sold, even if I want to sell, I cannot, even if I want to give them away, I cannot. Because that’s a crime. But yes, the land can be leased.

So, what we are doing is, as Twi Yabra, we are leasing land. We are leasing land, after several lawsuits, there was even bloodshed.  But what good is that?

Rose Cunningham Kain: Here in Waspam we are practicing coexistence with those who have come to settle in Waspam. So, in this municipality we have different models of relations with non-indigenous peoples, with non-indigenous settlers. At this moment in the context of the hurricane, we have also had news of agricultural losses these non-indigenous people have suffered too. And as the mayor’s office we have to listen to them because they are Nicaraguan citizens. They have human rights. They are human too.

What is true is that we always call on them to reach agreement with the indigenous peoples. Either they leave or they come to an agreement with the owners of the land. The last violent activity must have been in about 2013/14. We have not had violent activities in this part of our territory. Here we have seen meetings where people speak their minds. We have documented meetings that have taken place in the mountains between non-indigenous settlers and indigenous settlers where 17 communities, leaders of 17 communities, come together and walk to meet at a certain point. 

Question: The last stage of the transition in the autonomous zones is remediation (‘saneamiento’). What is the status of this?

Lejan Mora: We’re in the last phase of the remediation, which is clearing the boundaries, the inter-territorial limits and so on. So, we are at that stage right now. I remember very well indeed that in 2015 there were clashes between Miskitos and those who were invading the land.

The political opposition are insisting on self-remediation. So, the people in the communities rise up, get involved in confrontations, and then they persist, and that’s how it happened that, I think there have been four or three deaths, something like that.

We invited the settlers and we sat there under a tree. We started to make a presentation of the real situation there because they know very well they are on land that does not belong to them, we presented this to them. And we have shown them what and how might be the most appropriate way forward. It is a negotiated way, not through confrontations or anything like that.

We talked and reached an agreement that… because there are people who have been on that land for several years. And that land where they are located, they got it because another territory sold it. One territory agreed the sale, but it is a piece of land that belongs to a different territory.

So, it is a bit of a complicated situation. So, we talked with them, and precisely this coming Wednesday we have planned to go and prepare the ground for to another type of approach, namely leasing. We as the territory of Wangki Twi have not yet taken that approach but seeing the situation and to alleviate it a little, we must take that step. To what end? To a point we regard as feasible for creating a calmer and more durable situation, so that there are no conflicts.

Question: What about “self-remediation”?

Fresly Janes Zamora: The opposition is promoting violence between indigenous and mestizos… Self-remediation means promoting violence between indigenous against mestizos.

So, when they throw a stone, someone else will throw stones.

Why do they send NGOs and programs for this? … On paper it says one thing, but on the ground it’s something else. That’s it. So that’s what they are promoting. When there is no fire, there is no money. As I told you, things are calm, things are resolved, but that’s what they do.

So, we as Twi Yabra territory are against those people. That is why we are not involved with any organization. Because at the beginning we thought they entered in good faith to support us. But during the execution of these projects, of these visits, which they did in my absence, they were already doing other things. We immediately prohibited their visits to our communities because they were trying to destabilize the structure of the territorial government, the structure of the communal authorities and at the same time to bring violence between the Miskito peoples and outsiders, so we are against it.

Question: When do you negotiate with non-indigenous people?

Ronald Whittingham Dennis: There are people who say remediation is to clear out, to get everyone out …. But some people say no, remediation is to seek an understanding, to remediate is to reach an understanding. And part of that understanding is the well-known term of reordering. That is the concept.

So, what does it mean to reorder? It is not that the mestizos or the outsiders that are within your territory, within your area, that they are going to decide where they are going to be. You will tell them where they are going to be. That is reordering. And how much you can give in the portion of land. That is the zoning.

It is a component for solving problems. Now in that reordering you also have to see who will go and who can stay. That is reordering.

The State provides that through the Army and the Army’s Ecological Battalion, and no territory can say that’s not the case. They have indeed provided accompaniment. They have provided accompaniment.

If a member of the community sold a certain portion of land for whatever reason, you are forced to sit down and negotiate. To see what can be done. And to negotiate you have to do so in a spirit of wanting to solve the problem. But if there is no will to resolve the problem rather than to create more problem, then you will never solve the problem.

So, you have to look for strategies on how you are going to resolve it. Because these people who have already, imagine, who have already come to live here for fourteen years, fifteen years, they came to plant their crops, they have their own livestock, they have their animals, they are already well established.

And that is what we in the territories have to understand. The damage is already done. What we have to look for is how to resolve the problem.

Question: What happens to settlers who are violent or refuse to leave the indigenous areas?

Dr. Loyda del Carmen Martinez Rodriguez: The State has vindicated the indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples’ right to the land, and the State is also a guarantor in the efforts to secure social peace in our country and in our region. It is a process in which the State has guaranteed and has given those peoples this right, but the political opposition always does not see this. They also say that the cases we have prosecuted are of little importance. But no. The indigenous peoples are being protected and the rights the indigenous peoples are being vindicated. And the State has contributed a great deal to this because no other government had ever recognized the indigenous peoples, giving them a title to what before was only private property, where only the oligarchy and the bourgeoisie had the right to own land.

Also, I have participated in dialogue between mestizos and Miskitos in which there are territories that want to resolve the remediation process by means of a leasing agreement with the territory. They make the proposal, then the territory, its president will decide if they are going to lease or not. So, we have carried out these procedures as a judicial authority… by way of accompaniment, then. So, you see, we have participated listening to both parties, the mayor of the municipality has invited me to participate and listen to proposals made by the non-indigenous party.

Likewise, we have made progress in this aspect of property remediation, and we are not trying to drag it out, although the opposition always sees it like that. But there has been a lot of progress, because there is a dialogue between mestizos and Miskitos in which the State guarantees as established in Law 445 that those communities, that now have their legal title, can lease their land and that is allowed by law. But this is something that as regards the State and the territories, each territory president is able say whether they want to lease or not.

Lejan Mora: We’ve stopped the invasion that was taking place.  By applying that law, we are able to get people imprisoned via a judicial process. We get them imprisoned and they end up with three-year prison terms.

And that is how we are trying to calm the situation. And later, we seek to reach a peaceful solution, without confrontations or anything else. The issue of territorial rights here in Nicaragua is something new for us. What the current government has done for us is a very good thing.

Question: What is the role of foreign funded NGOs?

Arisio Genaro Selso: There are organizations, NGOs that use the name of the indigenous peoples and indigenous organizations to make accusations against the government, to denigrate the government, to try to destroy the government’s image and that of the work it does within the protected areas, for example, in the case of the Río San Juan, for example, or in the case of the Indio Maíz Reserve, and here in the case of the Bosawas Reserve.

Rose Cunningham Kain: I think that, like this person, there are many who take advantage of the poverty and conflict of others. That is not and never has been the spirit of the creation of non-governmental organizations. For me, non-governmental organizations should not want to profit from poverty or people’s conflicts. And when I say poverty, it’s not that we are poor.

We have been impoverished by the same people who have funded the people who say that we live in conflict.

It is a big lie. We have not had that kind of conflict for many years. We are building peace. Peace is not just words. Peace is a process. And the social reinsertion after the eighties, when the counterrevolution was also financed from the north, that peace process that led us to Autonomy, we continue to weave it, we continue to build it, and we continue to strengthen it. And today, after 33 years of Autonomy, we feel, and I feel proud to see how our community leaders are able to give you an interview and tell you the reality. And they know where the bad is and where the good is. 

Question: What is the role of the Center for Justice and Human Rights in the Atlantic District of Nicaragua (CEJUDHCAN) and its leader Lottie Cunningham?

Arisio Genaro Selso: CEJUDHCAN is not the institution she claims or projects at the international level, as an organization or institution defending indigenous rights.

Why doesn’t she ever consult us? Why doesn’t she come to the communities to consult us? Why not our national leadership, which is who we are, leading the national government of the Mayangna Nation, or else to the presidents in our territorial governments…? She is not present. She speaks from afar. She uses the indigenous name. She uses it without having been there when the events are taking place. For example, when the Alal case occurred, up there in the Reserve, she said that the government was not defending the indigenous people.

In practice, Lottie works with opposition activists. They are people who live as we Nicaraguans say, making accusations against the government, talking badly about the government. So, she takes that and exploits it to say that the government does such and such, but really if it were the organization, she says it is, she should be open to consultation. But she is not. She just turns up for a short while. And sometimes she exaggerates things. And she makes use of the indigenous peoples.

Fresly Janes Zamora: CEJUDHCAN does training on the rights of indigenous peoples. But at the same time, they have another interest. Two programs came to my territory, that they are going to help me, that are going to help me with remediation, this, and that… We said, look, these are our conditions and priorities. So, help me on such and such a matter.

For example, when in my second year as president, they saw things were going to improve, change, become more formalized, they did not like that. Why? Well, as long as there are incidents, then there are conflicts, so for them that means there is always funding. So, what did I do? I told them, I sent two letters, saying that we want nothing to do with them. We no longer want to have a relationship with them.

Lejan Mora: I have seen the video that Lottie released. She says every pound of meat that sold to the United States is a drop of blood of the Miskito. Which is totally false. I don’t know what her objective is in spreading so many lies. Because it has nothing to do with anything real, nothing at all. These are not right. I mean, a lie of such magnitude.

Question: How are relations between the indigenous leaders and the Nicaragua government?

Arisio Genaro Selso: Before there was this great project for Bosawas it was worse. There was no consultation, the decisions weren’t taken by the indigenous communities.

Now things are different. This is an opportunity for the indigenous peoples, this recognition, this respect of the government towards indigenous institutions, towards indigenous peoples.  This also allows indigenous peoples to participate directly and broadly in the decisions that are being taken.

Progress has been made. Why? Because the government authorized the creation of a body within the courts, namely the figure of Defenders of Indigenous Peoples was created, wherever there is the presence of indigenous population. What is the function of these Defenders? It is the direct accompaniment these Defenders provide to the indigenous organizations for the judicial process of settlers, those who are destroying the environment, all these types of cases. So, there is greater accompaniment.

And the other important element is that we have also achieved within the judiciary, our indigenous officials also hold positions in the courts. So now the recent appointments of the Defenders of Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples are also indigenous people who speak the indigenous languages. That is the other element, which for us is vital.

The government has guaranteed that in all the municipalities where indigenous peoples are present, there will also be functionaries who speak indigenous languages.

Summary

Readers who are interested to learn more facts and perspectives on the situation in Nicaragua’s autonomous regions are encouraged to read Sefton’s entire book.  While there is much in common, the indigenous leaders have different experiences and perspectives on certain issues. There are many rich insights and subtleties in the full text. What comes through very clearly is that the news and analysis of the situation in Nicaragua is being hugely distorted.

In the last month (October 2021) a violent attack took place in the Bosawas indigenous territory.  Again, Stephen Sefton travelled to the remote area by car and horse to ascertain the facts about what really happened. It turns out that the conflict was over a mining operation and both the victims and perpetrators were indigenous. This is documented in Sefton’s article The Truth about Recent Violence in Bosawas. From the misinformation about “conflict beef” and other accusations last year, to the recent events in Bosawas, the common thread is that information about Nicaragua is being manipulated for geopolitical ends. That is why these first person interviews and statements from indigenous leaders are so crucial to hear.

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A board-certified pathologist who runs a diagnostics lab said he’s been seeing “clotting” in the “lungs,” “vessels,” and “brain” in patients due to the COVID-19 jabs.

In an October 20 video posted by America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS), the group’s medical director Dr. Ryan Cole said,

“Under the microscope, we see clotting in the lungs, we see clotting in the vessels, we see clotting in the brain, not from the virus, but from the spike [protein] from the vaccine itself.”

“In our data around the world, from the United States, from the U.K., from the EudraVigilance in Europe, we have seen more death and damage from this one medical product than all other vaccines combined in the last several decades, in just a short 8-month window of time.”

Corroborating Cole’s statements, the recent data from America’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), co-managed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), shows that there have been over 16,000 reports of COVID-19 vaccine deaths since the rollout in 2020, which is 5,000 more deaths than have been recorded since 1990 from all other vaccines combined.

According to American attorney Thomas Renz, who has analyzed the VAERS data with the help of a government whistleblower, VAERS underreports adverse effects “by a conservative factor of at least 5” and the real death total is at least 45,000 in the U.S. alone.

Cole said the COVID vaccines have done “more damage than any other medical product, therapy, shot, modality, of anything we’ve ever allowed to stay on the market to this point.”

“Do I mean to sound alarmist? No, I’m being factual. And when I look at it under the microscope, and I see the parts of people, or people that are no longer with us, the damage and the disease is caused by that spike protein,” he emphasized.

In a video produced by the Idaho state government in March, Cole said that since the rollout of the vaccines, he has seen a staggering increase in cancers among those who have received the abortion-tainted jabs.

“Since January 1, in the laboratory, I’m seeing a 20-times increase of endometrial cancers over what I see on an annual basis,” reported Cole in the video clip. “I’m not exaggerating at all because I look at my numbers year over year, I’m like ‘Gosh, I’ve never seen this many endometrial cancers before.’”

This doctor trained at the Mayo Clinic and runs the largest independent testing laboratory in Idaho.

Listen to what his lab testing is showing: pic.twitter.com/VtdjQMluzF

— ToTheLifeboats (@ToTheLifeboats) August 25, 2021

Cole explained that the COVID-19 vaccines seem to impact the immune system function responsible for combatting the growth of cancer cells and other viruses, referring to the phenomenon as a “reverse HIV response.”

Cole explained that the vaccines cause a suppression of a person’s “killer T-cells” similar to how HIV suppresses a person’s “helper T-cells”, and how both types of cells are integral to fighting off cancer cells and other damaging viruses.

In addition to endometrial cancer, Cole reported an “uptick” in melanomas, herpes, shingles, mono, and a “huge uptick” in HPV, which he attributes to the damage done to the immune system by the experimental shots.

Despite FDA approval, the COVID-19 vaccines have not completed clinical testing, with the earliest date for clinical trial completion set well into 2023.

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On August 25, Camilo Enciso, a 41-year-old anti-corruption advocate and attorney, says he was walking inside the Walled City of Cartagena, Colombia, a popular tourist destination known for its colonial architecture and spacious plazas. He had traveled there from his home in Bogotá for a wedding, and was taking a nighttime stroll. Suddenly, he recalls, a group of men nearby started menacing him — he says they reminded him of hooligans you’d see ​“in a street of any random European city after a soccer game.”

“At first the group simply stared aggressively at me,” Enciso says, ​“but after some seconds they began to shout and try to call my attention.” He recalls, ​“they started whistling, and kind of shouting.” He says he took a closer look. ​“The guys were very well dressed. You could tell they were part of Cartagena’s elite.” The men weren’t targeting him randomly, he realized. ​“They knew who I was. Their aggressive demeanor had to do with me.”

The group, he believes, was a ​“collection of right-wing, pro-government radicals” that had recognized him. Such an assumption is certainly understandable. Just 15 days earlier, Enciso had gotten his hands on and publicly released Colombia’s confidential contracts with AstraZeneca and Pfizer for the Covid vaccine — an act that he believed was in the public interest but nonetheless let loose an avalanche of criticism, thousands of insults, and even threats on his personal safety. His name was trotted out by right-wing media, and he was denounced by high-ranking Colombian officials, all the way up to conservative President Iván Duque. Press outlets and politicians declared that by releasing the contracts, which detail the prices and conditions the government agreed to for the vaccines, Enciso had angered pharmaceutical companies and very well could have jeopardized the entire country’s vaccine supply. Seemingly overnight, he had become national enemy number one, all for the crime of, as he puts it, pushing for the most basic transparency around high-dollar agreements between the Colombian government and powerful multinational pharmaceutical companies.

The firestorm itself, which haunts Enciso far beyond the streets of Cartagena, reveals a great deal about the upper hand the pharmaceutical industry has over the South American country, which is being ravaged by coronavirus, with just 38 percent of its population is fully vaccinated (above the global average, but still well below the vaccination rates of wealthy countries). The media and government narrative ​“was driven by fear of pharmaceutical companies and the power they have to impose conditions or not sell vaccines to the Colombian government,” says Daniela Rojas Molina, legal advisor for Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa, a press freedom organization.

Image on the right: Camilo Enciso (Source: baselgovernance.org)

Before publishing the documents, Enciso had tried the official route. He is the director of Colombia’s Anti-Corruption Institute, a non-profit organization that was created in 2018 to combat corruption and promote access to public information. At the time Enciso publicly shared the contracts, the organization was in the midst of its own legal effort to compel their disclosure — an effort that, to that point, had been unsuccessful. ​“We’d been trying to get clarity on the prices of purchases of vaccines and the full text on contracts signed by the Colombian government since at least December of last year,” he says. His organization has invoked Colombia’s transparency laws that were enacted in 2014 and similar to America’s Freedom of Information Act, which requires release of documents deemed public.

The Colombian government fought vigorously against the effort, one of its main arguments being that it had agreed to confidentiality as a condition of the contracts. Yet, the Anti-Corruption Institute won a significant victory when a key legal body, Colombia’s Tribunal Administrativo de Cundinamarca, ruled in May 2021 in the organization’s favor, arguing that details of vaccine information should be public. But the government then used a series of tactics to delay and obstruct the release, including by saying the ruling had not been precise enough in its directive.

Johnson & Johnson, meanwhile, petitioned another court, Colombia’s Consejo de Estado
, to force the Tribunal to withdraw the decision, arguing that the company’s due process had been violated. ​“The Consejo de Estado
 asked the Tribunal to send it the contracts,” Enciso explains. ​“They wanted to see them.”

What happened next was a colossal government blunder—or gift, depending on how you look at it. Someone in the State Council, the top tribunal for administrative matters, accidentally, and very briefly, made Colombia’s contracts with Pfizer and AstraZeneca public.

Enciso remembers being stunned. ​

“A journalist called me and said, ​‘I’m confused. I’m looking at this document that’s a contract with the vaccines,’” explains Enciso. The journalist sent the PDF to Enciso, who realized that the document had been accidentally released from another case (the Anti-Corruption Institute wasn’t the only entity pursuing litigation). ​“Because I was not a party to that case, I did not have access to those documents in my role as an attorney, I was okay with publishing it,” says Enciso.

Concerned that the litigation process was only going to bring more delay, he decided to take things into his own hands: He published the contracts on the website of the Anti-Corruption Institute and on Twitter. (Notably, he was not the first to publish. Before Enciso released the documents: El Tiempo newspaper published a piece that included information about the contracts, according to the source code of the webpage, while Caracol Radio published the full documents.)

Burcu Kılıç, the research director for Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program, a U.S.-based watchdog effort, says the public sharing of vaccine contracts is vitally important — not only for Colombia, but for the world.

​“Every country on this planet is negotiating contracts with companies, and every official who’s been part of these discussions needs guidance and assistance and information,” she says. ​“Unfortunately there isn’t much out there.”

She adds, ​“Colombians have a right to know what’s in their contracts.”

But when Enciso shared this information, all hell broke loose.

Enciso is no stranger to the nastiness of political fighting in Colombia, and he himself has been a part of government. He was employed from 2014 to 2017as secretary of transparency for the administration of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, more liberal than the right-wing Duque.

Enciso says that were he someone with less ​“thick skin,” the resultant condemnation and pile on for the release of the contracts would be ​“a psychological struggle.”

The government’s rebuke of Enciso was swift. Less than half an hour after the contracts were published on August 10, Víctor Muñoz, director of the administrative department for the president, published a tweet proclaiming that, ​“Irresponsibility in handling vaccine information puts the national vaccination plan at risk and, as such, the life and health of Colombians.”

High-ranking officials repeated this charge. In a press release, Fernando Ruiz Gómez, Colombia’s health minister, said that the disclosure constituted a breach of the contracts. He asserted that Pfizer brought the issue to their lawyers. ​“We are waiting for their response,” he added forebodingly.

On August 11, President Duque said, ​

“of course there is concern. I spoke yesterday with the president of the State Council; she is also very worried, first because it is about confidential information to guarantee compliance with the contracts for the supply of vaccines.”

A government narrative quickly emerged: By releasing the contracts, Enciso had violated the conditions of their agreement and, as a result, the pharmaceutical companies may choose to withhold supply. The release, therefore, threatened the public health of Colombians, the argument went. This was an incredible charge: Enciso may be responsible for some unknown amount of future deaths.

Enciso rejected this narrative whole-heartedly, and took to the media to defend his actions. ​“If the pharmaceutical companies do not sell vaccines to Colombia, they are solely responsible for this immorality,” he said in an August 12 interview. He argued that he did not breach any agreements since the contracts were made publicly available by the State Council: ​“After that, we published the contracts that were already in the public domain as they were in an open access place.”

The same day as that interview, Enciso’s organization released a statement arguing that, in no way did the release of the contracts give the companies the green light to withhold supply — this was a misreading: ​“Under the terms of the contracts, it is NOT appropriate for the pharmaceutical companies to unilaterally cancel the contracts in the event of this information being published by third parties.”

But there was little Enciso could do to stop the narrative — the wheels were already in motion.

The contracts instantly became a major national media story, promptly covered by prominent papers. Semana, whose new owners seek to emulate Fox News, ran a media offensive repeating the government’s narrative that Enciso may have blood on his hands.

On August 11, Semana ran an article suggesting Enciso had a political agenda as a former official of the Santos government. In that piece, the publication said that it was ​“irresponsible” to have disclosed the contracts because the release could jeopardize the country’s vaccination plan. Carlos Hernández from the University of the Andes was quoted as saying that Enciso’s decision to publish the contracts ​“risks the health of Colombians in exchange for likes and media presence. The Anti-Corruption Institute is acting in a corrupt, irresponsible and political manner.” Santiago Tobón, from Eafit University, said that Enciso’s publication put current and future purchases at risk, which ​“implies the possible death and illness of many Colombians.”

In a segment published August 11, a commentator for Semana also criticized the release of the contracts, claiming that ​“accepting prices, clauses and confidentiality made the difference between whether Colombia had vaccines or not.”

Enciso has done his own media sparring with the right. In January, he published an op-ed criticizing the fact that a defeated mayoral candidate for Bogotá, Miguel Uribe Turbay, was put in charge of the account (subcuenta) that administers the resources to combat the pandemic in the country. Uribe Turbay is a protégé of former President Alvaro Uribe — a right-winger who opposed the country’s peace accords with the FARC, a guerrilla group. (They are not family related). Iván Duque, the current president of Colombia, also belongs to this political group.

But Enciso’s colleagues say the media discourse around the publication of the documents is particularly unhinged. Rojas of Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa, which supported the Anti-Corruption Institute’s litigation to release the contracts, says that any scrutiny of the companies was largely missing from the conversation — let alone concern that the contracts would be secret in the first place. ​“The whole public discussion about this should have been completely different,” she says. ​“There’s a huge misunderstanding of how access to information should be applied to these cases, even if pharmaceutical companies impose a lot of contractual conditions. This whole discussion didn’t take into account that the contracts are public information and have always been public information.”

Enciso describes this as a frenzied time during which he was tracking a right-wing media response while doing his own press appearances. The day after the documents went public, he says, ​“I went to the media all day — I must have had 30 interviews that day.”

By then, the media and government attention had touched off a different kind of reaction. ​

“The day we published the contract, I received 1,800 messages saying, ​‘You are the worst person on the planet.’ ​‘I would like to see you in the street.’ ​‘You are a traitor of Colombia.’ ​‘I hope your mother dies,’” says Enciso.

One message he received on August 12 said,

​“Damn politician of the worst kind, creep, trash, if the vaccination plan is at risk, you will be the culprit of thousands of deaths, which we will remind you in case you happen to campaign for any public office, you will pay for that ​‘mistake.’”

The message appeared to take aim at any future plans Enciso might have to be involved in politics. (Enciso says he has no plans to run for a political office.)

​​One only has to look on Twitter to confirm this pile-on. Tweets generally fall into two categories: that Enciso had been ​“irresponsible” for releasing the contracts and he would be to blame for the deaths of Colombians, or that he is an idiot (pendejo) and a son of a bitch (hijueputa) — common insults in Colombia. Many of the accounts appear to be loyal to Duque and Uribe, and criticize Enciso for his affiliation with the Santos administration.

That anger, according to Enciso’s recollection, spilled over into the streets of Cartagena. Enciso says he emerged from the incident unharmed.

​“I kept walking straight and didn’t bite the bait,” he says. ​“If I had, things could have evolved really badly for me.”

But then Enciso’s mother says she was targeted with verbal intimidation. After Enciso left Caragena, she says she stayed there for a few weeks. About 20 days ago, she says she received a call while there from an unidentified number. A man insulted her, told her that her son is corrupt, and called him a ​“hijueputa.”

The pharmaceutical companies themselves steered clear of public remarks about the release of contracts. But in a statement to In These Times, Pfizer denied that it did anything to encourage the condemnations of Enciso’s actions.

“The agreements we have signed with the Colombian government have rigorously followed all required legal, regulatory and ethical procedures,” said the company. ​“The negotiation process for the distribution of Covid-19vaccines with governments of different countries is the same, both in Latin America and worldwide. This is the result of a joint work between local, regional and global teams, which follow the same policies, guidelines and directives established by Pfizer and BioNTech. To date, Pfizer has complied with all its contractual obligations and maintains the firm commitment to complete the delivery of all the doses that correspond to Colombia.”

Asked whether it had threatened to withhold vaccine supply, the company said ​“no.” The company said the release of the contracts will not affect vaccine delivery.

AstraZeneca did not respond to a request for comment sent over email.

But according to Kılıç, ​

“They don’t even need to say anything. When there is a limited supply, the seller becomes the king. Even if they don’t say much, they are creating pressure. They can say they haven’t done anything. They don’t really need to. No one can take the risk of making Pfizer unhappy. They have so much power.”

She added that she’s not sure she believes their account.

Muñoz did tell the press that pharmaceutical companies had expressed their concern and annoyance with the leak. Duque added that he was in dialogue with the pharmaceutical companies and had confidence that ​“there will not be any kind of sanction that affects the development of the national vaccination plan.”

According to Enciso, ​

“The reality is the government has done what I would think is the dirty job: try to hold the contracts confidential while the companies present themselves as committed to saving human lives, period.”

In addition to the uproar itself, the contracts themselves are revealing — evidence, Enciso’s supporters say, that the revelations were in the public interest.

In particular, Kılıç says the contract with Pfizer is ​“very one-sided. It is obvious Pfizer calls the shots.” The Pfizer contract states that ​“under no circumstances will Pfizer be subject to or liable for any late delivery penalties.” Even if Pfizer fails to deliver in accordance with the delivery schedule, there will be no implications for the company.” Colombia ​“waives all rights and remedies that it may have at law” concerning ​“any failure by Pfizer to deliver the contracted doses in time,” the contract states. Colombia also waives its ​“sovereign immunity” from liability claims arising from the vaccine or its use.

“I’ve seen a few government purchase contracts before but never seen such a seller-takes-it-all one,” says Kılıç.

The AstraZeneca contract showed that Colombia was being charged $6 per dose, well above the $2 per dose the European Union was paying for the vaccine. Pfizer, meanwhile, charged $12 per dose, the contract shows — compared to $19.50 per dose in the United States.

This is in keeping with other actions the company has taken in Latin America. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found in a February 2021 report that ​“Pfizer has been accused of ​‘bullying’ Latin American governments in Covid vaccine negotiations and has asked some countries to put up sovereign assets, such as embassy buildings and military bases, as a guarantee against the cost of any future legal cases.”

Meanwhile, there are other signs that the country has been reluctant to ruffle the feathers of the pharmaceutical industry: It has steered clear of supporting an effort at the World Trade Organization, led by India and South Africa, to suspend global patent rules in order to expand international access to cheaper, generic versions of the Covid vaccine. The proposal is fiercely opposed by the pharmaceutical industry.

Enciso says he’s motivated to do the work he does because ​“at some point I realized corruption and lack of transparency are at the heart of many of our biggest problems. They enable all sorts of crimes, human rights violations, abuse of power, depletion of natural resources, unfair trade.”

He is not the only person in Colombia concerned about transparency. This spring and summer saw massive protests against the Duque government, which were touched off by a proposal for regressive tax reform in Colombia, but expanded to encompass outrage over inequality, the killing of social movement leaders, police violence, corruption, and lack of government transparency. The protess were met with tremendous violence on the part of the Duque administration.

When discussing his own ordeal, Enciso strikes a tone that is remarkably unflappable. The Colombian government has threatened to take legal action against him for releasing the contracts, but he says he is ​“not really” concerned. ​“I am a criminal lawyer myself and I am quite sure I didn’t commit any illegal conduct,” he says. ​“Even more, it would be great to defeat such stupid prosecution in court.”

Some in his orbit, however, are a bit more troubled.

​“If I were in the position of Camilo, I would be concerned about my future and also my personal safety,” says Juan Carlos Upegui, the director of the human rights and technology research team at Dejusticia, a research and advocacy organization. ​“The release of information could put you at risk.”

Enciso has his supporters, like Rojas, who says that the documents belong in the public domain, and their release is justified.

But amid the frenzy of denunciations, such perspectives are drowned out by a government narrative that leaves no room for the possibility that pharmaceutical companies, and not the man who released the agreements, would be responsible if Colombians were deprived of a life-saving vaccine.

According to Kılıç, the uproar in Colombia is an indictment on the whole system of vaccine distribution.

​“This is a power thing,” she says. ​“They [pharmaceutical companies] have the intellectual property, they have the exclusivity, they have the power. Take away their intellectual property, and they won’t behave like this. We must change this whole system.”

As Upegui of Dejusticia puts it, ​“the government is kind of working as a lawyer for pharmaceuticals.”

To date, the only Colombian vaccine contracts that have been revealed to the public are those shared by Enciso and some media outlets. There is no immediate sign, at this point, that the release of the contracts will impact Colombia’s vaccine supply. Yet, the mark on Enciso’s name isn’t so easily washed away.

“The impact of the media and public,” says Enciso, ​“is that I did engage in some form of wrongdoing.”

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Ambi Colón Nuñez contributed research to this article.

Sarah Lazare is web editor and reporter for In These Times. She tweets at @sarahlazare.

Maurizio Guerrero is a journalist based in New York City. He covers migration, social justice movements and Latin America.

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.

***

Today the UK High Court begins a two-day hearing of a United States government appeal aimed at securing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition to the US.

The hearing is the culmination of a campaign of rampant criminality by American imperialism and its allies, stretching over a decade. Its character is summed up in revelations during the last two years that Assange has been the subject of CIA plots for his surveillance, kidnap, and assassination.

Last month, Yahoo News reported that the Trump administration tasked the CIA with drafting “options” for Assange’s murder. “Sketches” were drawn up and conversations held on “whether killing Assange was possible and whether it was legal”. In the event of Assange’s attempted escape from the embassy, possibly aided by Russian agents, the UK government had agreed “to do the shooting if gunfire was required.”

In 2019, it emerged that UC Global, the security firm at Ecuador’s embassy in London where Assange claimed asylum for nearly seven years, had been working with American intelligence to spy on the WikiLeaks founder and his associates. Last year, during Assange’s extradition hearing, evidence was given by a former employee of UC Global that plans were discussed to kidnap or poison him in the embassy.

Such relentless state persecution is payback for Assange’s courageous role in exposing the war crimes by the US, British and Australian governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. WikiLeaks’ collateral murder video, Afghan War Diaries, Iraq War Logs and Cablegate releases galvanised mass popular opposition to war, torture, and state repression worldwide.

The imperialist powers’ murderous agenda has been backed by a pseudo-legal witch-hunt against Assange, including the impanelling of a secret Grand Jury that indicted him in 2019, and Sweden’s manufactured sexual assault investigation into the WikiLeaks founder. The Australian government refused any defence of its citizen.

Assange has suffered arbitrary detention, psychological torture, revocation of his Ecuadorian asylum and citizenship, and vindictive sentencing and imprisonment in Belmarsh maximum-security prison. He has been detained on remand without charge, repeatedly and unjustifiably denied bail and subject to relentless attacks on his right to legal representation. The case against him has trampled due process and the factual record and made use of the admitted fabrications, given in exchange for US immunity, of hacker, convicted fraudster and sex offender Sigurdur Thordarson.

By every conceivable legal standard Assange should not only win his case, but have it thrown out of court. The US is appealing a decision that Assange cannot be extradited due to his risk of suicide in America. Now the extradition is openly exposed as a plot to put him in the hands of his would-be murderers.

However, the UK court is not considering matters of law or human rights in this case. The decision before the judges is whether Britain can be seen to rubber stamp what amounts to the extraordinary rendition of the most significant journalist of the 21st century.

The path for Assange’s extradition has been laid by Britain’s judiciary. In January, amid open preparations for a fascist coup by Trump, District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser delivered a ruling designed to leave Assange’s fate hanging by a single thread. Accepting every rotten plank of the US government’s extradition request, she objected solely on medical grounds, finding that Assange is likely to suicide if extradited.

Baraitser’s intentions were clear. She refused to release Assange from prison, keeping him in Belmarsh until the American government made its appeal. The US has since taken the highly unusual step of offering worthless assurances on Assange’s treatment and been granted grounds to appeal the legitimacy of medical evidence provided to the court by an experienced and respected psychiatric expert.

Baraitser’s original ruling also set the tone for the High Court’s response to Yahoo’s CIA revelations, which will form a major element of the defence case this week. Responding to arguments concerning UC Global-CIA spying on privileged legal conversations, Baraitser stated that she could not reach a judgement on whether US surveillance had taken place. She then added that even if it had occurred, “there is no reason to assume this related to these proceedings” and that the “fruits of any surveillance would not be seen by prosecutors assigned to the case.”

Whichever decision the High Court arrives at on this occasion, Assange faces continued prolonged imprisonment. A ruling is not expected for several months and would be followed either way by legal challenges. His partner Stella Moris has warned that Assange could face years more incarceration if he is not swiftly extradited, possibly as soon as next summer. “Both prospects,” she said, “are terrifying”. Either outcome will see Assange silenced, his life placed in jeopardy. Moris explained that he was “looking very unwell” during her prison visit last weekend.

The Assange case rides roughshod over legal and democratic principles because his persecution is a matter of fundamental political and strategic interest to the world’s leading imperialist power. From the beginning, the US and its allies have sought to destroy Assange both as a warning and a precedent to prevent any serious reporting of imperialist war crimes, human rights abuses, diplomatic intrigues and mass state surveillance—to cover up past crimes and to prepare new ones.

These motivations have only strengthened. The danger of war, on a scale which would dwarf the atrocities carried out in the imperialist invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, continues to grow as the US ramps up its aggression against China in Taiwan and the South China Sea. Provocations abroad are coupled with “big lie” propaganda at home, including baseless accusations of a Wuhan Lab origin of COVID-19, and of “genocide” against the Uyghur population of Xinjiang.

Meanwhile, the world’s governments are engaged in unprecedented criminality and corruption in their handling of the pandemic, which reasonable estimates suggest has claimed between 10 and 19 million lives.

A freely functioning WikiLeaks, described by Assange as an “intelligence agency of the people”, or anything like it cannot be allowed by the imperialist powers to exist in such a world. Their biggest fear is that future exposures could help ignite the enormous oppositional sentiment that exists in the working class in every country. If Assange is to be freed and defended, it is this social force which must be mobilised.

Immense resources have been deployed in the Assange manhunt, which has proceeded with the blessing of every imperialist government and major political party in the world. The corporate media have either actively backed his persecution or attempted to smother knowledge of the case while formally opposing Assange’s extradition. The explosive Yahoo and Thordarson revelations went practically unreported.

Moral appeals to these forces, or fond hopes in the eventual wisdom of the UK judiciary, of the kind promoted by the official Don’t Extradite Assange campaign, are worse than useless. Attempts to put forward handfuls of tame parliamentary representatives and “activists” as an opposition to this vast conspiracy are a cruel farce. These figures are epitomised by Jeremy Corbyn, who as Labour leader did nothing to defend Assange and will mobilise no one now.

A mass campaign to free Assange must be based on an appeal to the international working class, for whom the struggle against imperialism, its wars and social inequality, is a life-and-death question. The cost of the pandemic and the ruling class’s murderous response in human lives, wages and conditions is driving a global wave of working-class struggle, with the US at its centre.

More legal appeals are open to both sides following today and tomorrow’s hearing, but all require the agreement of the courts and would almost certainly mean lengthy additional imprisonment for Assange if granted. Averting a railroaded extradition process and ending the continued isolation of Assange and destruction of his health in Belmarsh requires the urgent, organised intervention of workers all over the world.

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