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As if we didn’t have enough weird things going on, now birds are suddenly dropping dead in large numbers all across the eastern half of the country. Before they die, a lot of these birds are exhibiting very strange symptoms. Experts are telling us that in many cases birds are developing “crusty or puffy eyes”, and often they appear to go completely blind. In addition, quite a few of these dying birds lose their ability to stay balanced, and we are being told that some even seem to be having “seizures”. If scientists understood what was causing this to happen, that would be one thing. But at this point they have no idea why this is taking place, and that is quite alarming.
So far, confirmed incidents of this strange phenomenon have been documented in Washington D.C., Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana.
Could it be possible that we are dealing with a “mystery disease” that started in one state and that has now spread to other surrounding states?
Or is something else going on here?
We are being told that “blue jays, common grackles and European starlings” are the most common birds that are being affected.
But whatever is happening is not just limited to one species of birds, and I think that should be a red flag.
If our best experts even had a decent working theory about why so many birds are dying, I probably would not have written this article. But at this point they are openly admitting that they have absolutely no idea why so many birds are suddenly dropping dead…
“We’re experiencing an unusual amount of bird mortality this year,” said Kate Slankard, an avian biologist with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “We have yet to figure out what the problem is. The condition seems to be pretty deadly.”
In Kentucky, the bird deaths seem to have begun in late May. The following comes directly from the official website of the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources…
In late May, the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources began receiving reports of sick and dying birds with eye swelling and crusty discharge, as well as neurological signs. Wildlife agencies in Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia, Washington, D.C. and West Virginia have reported similar problems.
State wildlife agencies are working with diagnostic laboratories to investigate the cause of mortality. Kentucky Fish and Wildlife has sent more than 20 samples for lab testing to the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia. More results are pending, but no definitive cause of death has been identified at this time.
After testing 20 samples, they still have no idea what is going on.
According to Slankard, “hundreds of birds” in her state have now become victims…
“They’ll just sit still, often kind of shaking,” Slankard said. “It’s pretty safe to say that hundreds of birds in the state have had this problem.”
But of course the truth is that we have no way of knowing how many birds have actually been affected.
It could be thousands of birds in the state.
It could be hundreds of thousands.
We just don’t know, and Kentucky is just one of the states that has been hit.
In Indiana, authorities tested for avian flu and West Nile virus, but those tests came back negative…
Indiana wildlife officials said there have been suspicious deaths of blue jays, robins, northern cardinals and brown-headed cowbirds in five counties. James Brindle, spokesman for the state’s Department of Natural Resources, said birds there have tested negative for avian influenza and West Nile virus.
One theory that is floating around is that these birds are ingesting large amounts of pesticides because of all the cicadas that they are eating.
But how can they be so sure that it is a disease if they have absolutely no idea why this is happening?
I don’t think that we should jump to any conclusions that are not backed up by science.
Obviously a lot more testing needs to be done. If it does turn out to be a disease that is causing this, is it a disease that can also spread to humans? Moving forward, that could be one of the most important questions that needs to be answered.
Hopefully we can get some solid answers, because this is not the first time something like this has happened. Back in September, one expert said that it appeared that “hundreds of thousands” of birds were dropping dead in New Mexico…
Wildlife experts in New Mexico say birds in the region are dropping dead in alarming numbers, potentially in the “hundreds of thousands.”
“It appears to be an unprecedented and a very large number,” Martha Desmond, a professor at New Mexico State University’s department of fish, wildlife, and conservation ecology, told NBC’s Albuquerque affiliate KOB.
But whatever was causing those deaths to happen in New Mexico seems to have stopped.
Is there any connection between that event and the deaths that are happening in the eastern half of the country now?
I wish that I had the answer to that question.
We live at a time when pesticides, high technology and other forms of human activity are having a greater impact on birds and animals than ever before. But we have also entered an era when I believe that great pestilences are going to become very common.
Obviously something is killing all those birds, and hopefully scientists will have something solid to tell us very soon.
With each passing day, our world is getting crazier, and so much is going wrong all around us.
Many are hoping that 2020 and 2021 will just turn out to be anomalies, but I am entirely convinced that they are just the very small tip of a very large iceberg.
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The pre-positioning of the BBC correspondent on HMS Defender shatters the pretence that the BBC is something different to a state propaganda broadcaster. It also makes plain that this propaganda exercise to provoke the Russian military was calculated and deliberate. Indeed that was confirmed by that BBC correspondent’s TV news report last night when he broadcast that the Defender’s route “had been approved at the very highest levels of the British government.”
The Prime Minister does not normally look at the precise positions of British ships. This was a deliberate act of dangerous belligerence.
The presence of a BBC correspondent is more than a political point. In fact it has important legal consequences. One thing that is plain is that the Defender cannot possible claim it was engaged in “innocent passage” through territorial waters, between Odessa and Georgia. Let me for now leave aside the fact that there is absolutely no necessity to pass within 12 miles of Cape Fiolent on such passage, and the designated sea lane (originally designated by Ukraine) stays just out of the territorial sea. Look at the definition of innocent passage in Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea:
Very plainly this was not innocent passage. It was certainly 2 (d) an act of propaganda, and equally certainly 2 (c), an exercise in collecting information on military defences. I would argue it is also 2 (a), a threat of force.
So far as I can establish, the British are not claiming they were engaged in innocent passage, which is plainly nonsense, but that they were entering territorial waters off Crimea at the invitation of the government of Ukraine, and that they regard Crimea as the territory of Ukraine and Crimean territorial waters as Ukrainian territorial waters.
I want to impress on you how mad this is. The whole point of “territorial sea” is that, legally, it is an integral part of the state and that the state’s full domestic law applies within the territorial sea. That is not the case with the much larger 200 mile exclusive economic zone or sometimes even larger continental shelf, where the coastal state’s legal jurisdiction only applies to specific marine or mineral resources rights.
Let me put it this way. If somebody is murdered on a ship within twelve nautical miles of the coast, the coastal state has jurisdiction and its law applies. If somebody is murdered on a ship more than twelve miles off the coast, the jurisdiction and law of the flag state of the ship applies, not the law of any coastal state in whose exclusive economic zone the ship is.
In international law, the twelve mile territorial sea is as much part of the state as its land. So to sail a warship into Crimean territorial seas is exactly the same act as to land a regiment of paratroops in the Crimea and declare you are doing so at the invitation of the Government of Ukraine.
There is no dispute that Russia is in de facto control of the Crimea, irrespective of British support for the government of Ukraine’s claim to the region. It is also true that Russian annexation of the Crimea was not carried out in an accordance with international law. However, it is not, in practice, likely to be reversed and the situation needs to be resolved by treaty or by the International Court of Justice. In the interim, the UK government legal position can only be that Russia is an “occupying power”. It is impossible that the UK government legal position is that Ukraine is in “effective control” of the territory.
We need to see the legal advice provided by FCO legal advisers. It is simply not the practice in international law to ignore the existence of an occupying power which is a recognised state, and act with armed forces on the authority of a government not in effective control. The difference in British attitude towards Russia as an occupying power and towards Israel is tellingly different.
The legality of the British action is, at very best, moot. In realpolitik, it is an act of brinkmanship with a nuclear power and further effort to ramp up the new Cold War with Russia, to the benefit of the military, security services and armaments companies and the disbenefit of those who need more socially useful government spending. It is further an act of jingoist populism for the neo-liberal elite to distract the masses, as the billionaires’ incredible wealth continues to boom.
NATO will shortly commence a naval exercise in the Black Sea. As not all the member states of NATO are quite as unhinged as Johnson, it is to be hoped it will refrain from this kind of extra layer of provocation. There is a large part of me that says they cannot possibly be mad enough to attempt to intervene in Ukraine with military force, or at least its threat. But then I look at Johnson and Biden, and worry. This can all go horribly wrong.
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The formulation of policy in the United States takes place in a sticky and rancid black box. The low-intensity evil perpetrated there, in slow motion so that citizens cannot perceive the shifts taking place, is not the result of a particular politician, or a specific political party.
What is considered common sense, standard practice, in the Capitol, is, in reality, insanity and depravity. It has boiled over, spilling its lurid juices on the marble floor.
“Politics” was not originally a criminal activity, but rather implementing in the real world of moral imperatives that can be traced back to ancient times. Sadly, the decay of institutions over the last three decades have reduced “politics” to a Punch and Judy show wherein politicians work day and night to convince us that policies exclusively serving the rich are formulated for our good.
The politician is not a public servant—although he or she is funded with tax dollars. He or she does not ask what our nation needs for the long term. No, the politician is up late at night finding ways to distract and to confuse us, to overwhelm our senses with images and associations—to anything that will keep us from thinking rationally.
The fundamental questions of politics, of governance, will never, never, be addressed by today’s politicians:
What is the role of government?
What is money and who controls it?
What is security and how can we best maintain it?
How can we create an environment in which citizens are educated properly so that they can serve their role as citizens, and provided with the time, and the inclination, to play their constitutional role as citizen?
Instead of asking citizens what our country should be, what our government can, or cannot, do, politicians join up with the false gods of the commercial media to promote the idea that growth, consumption, the stock market, exports and imports are somehow measures of prosperity and well-being that are dictated by God, that are natural like the law of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics.
These criminal practices in government have been around for decades, but they have slipped into the final stage of exponential decay recently.
However, no matter how many times lies are repeated, they do not become truth.
Congressmen, governors and judges, department heads and mayors, know that their primary job is pleasing their true masters, taking the orders given to them by lobbyists representing the billionaires. They are not public servants; they are simply criminals. These politicians have only two priorities: getting elected and getting reelected. They will offer up human sacrifices to any false god that aids them in that task.
Other issues are boring, even irritating, for the politician.
But politicians do get pleasure from attacking other politicians, the men and women with whom they cavort in private at the offices of investment bankers. They attack each other on cue from PR firms for odd behavior at trivial events, for supposedly improper comments about insignificant policy. These plastic, single-use, political attacks are a saccharine grand guignol for our consumption.
What policy formulation should be
The process by which policy is formulated in the Congress, planned in the Executive branch, and then implemented in the Federal government, should reflect priorities based on a long-term scientific understanding, and should respond to the actual needs of citizens.
The formulation of policy involves assessing the effectiveness of the standards by which we assess the health of the nation, determining the most effective tools for realizing meaningful change, and formulating policies that respond to current problems based on an accurate understanding of long term developments. The formulation of policy must also grapple with the critical issue of what government cannot, and should not, do, and what powers must be denied to other institutions that are wont to pray on citizens.
The process must be democratic, must reflect the opinions of the people in an accurate manner, but it also must be based on the truth, on science. If the vast majority of people vote for a candidate, or support a law, because they have been subject to misinformation pushed on them by the rich, then this process cannot be considered democracy. Our nation has wandered out into a wasteland of tyranny, corruption and cruel feudalism. The billions stolen from the citizens by banks and corporations are rolled back into paying authorities and celebrities to pretend that everything is just fine.
We have passed the inflection point. Some form of massive social unrest is guaranteed. We must not fool ourselves.
Rather, we must step back to consider how the policy making process ought to work according to the Constitution and set a goal for what we wish to achieve.
The powerful who determine policy today do not want us to have any goal. They want us to just get mad at a politician, at a celebrity, and blow off steam in the pointless manner they have decided for us in advance.
Even if our goal is the establishment of a constitutional democracy for the people, by the people and of the people, there will be different visions and conflicting interests. The process will not be smooth, but if we have even just a handful of citizens, intellectuals and practitioners who are dedicated to the pursuit of truth and to moral governance, we can minimalize the disagreements and focus on our future.
The Ideal for a Constitutional Democracy
The formulation of policy should take place within the Congress and it should be undertaken by representatives from each district and each state of the nation who are elected in a fair and transparent manner. Fair means that influence cannot be bought by multinational corporations and banks using dark money and that public officials are accountable only to the citizens. Transparent means that the information offered by journalists is scientific and accurate and there is no opportunity to distort it through the use of money.
The congressmen are paid a salary by the Federal Government and they serve the needs of the people for the short term and the long term. They have a moral and legal responsibility to reject the influence of the rich and powerful.
All citizens must be protected from a self-indulgent and narcissistic culture created by multinational corporations for the purpose of dumbing them down and degrading their capacity to make the judgements they must to be citizens in accord with the Constitution. Elections are meaningless if citizens are forced to rely on a corrupting consumption culture of waste and sexual suggestion, or on misleading, intellectually degrading, sources of information.
The elections must be a process wherein citizens are allowed to, and encouraged to, understand the issues and to engage the candidates in a frank and science-based, discussion about long-term interests of the nation.
Once elected, congressmen must work to understand the true state of affairs in the district, the state, and the nation. They must make decisions based on accurate information. They must balance their duty to represent their constituents’ immediate concerns with a moral duty to uphold the true interests of the nation, based on a scientific evaluation.
There will be moments when they must make decisions for the greater good that go against the perceived short-term interests of the region, or of the nation. It is essential that citizens be encouraged to think in a rational, long-term, manner so they will understand how such decisions are made. That critical part of governance, however, is impossible in the current consumption culture promoted by multinational corporations that encourages immediate gratification and discourages deeper understanding.
Congressmen cannot possibly have the specialized understanding necessary to make accurate and appropriate decisions regarding all policy. That means that he or she must be briefed constantly by experts, and that he or she must be given the time, and the incentive, to develop his or her expertise. That search for knowledge, and for wisdom, is critical to governance.
Those briefing and informing the congressmen must be experts with a high level competence and objectivity. Objectivity means that they are not beholden to the rich and powerful and they do not have a personal stake in the issue regarding which they brief the congressmen.
The experts are professors, or technical experts, who work for institutions that are funded by the government for the long-term so as to assure that experts remain objective and they have no incentive to distort their analysis so as to please funders, or other powerful figures. Experts at institutions that depend on funding from the wealthy, from corporations and banks or from foreign interests, have no role in the briefing of congressmen.
There must be opportunities for citizens, who often have valuable firsthand understanding of problems, to offer their opinions and insights to congressmen. Extra care must be taken to assure that citizens approach congressmen in good faith, and no individuals paid in secret to represent the powerful.
This vision for what the United States could be, how to “Make America great for the first time,” draws on the philosophy of Frederick Douglass. Douglass led a fight against slavery similar to the fight that we are engaged in today. He recognized that the drafting of the Constitution in 1787 was undertaken by the privileged and that parts of it were biased towards the protection of property and the defense of slavery and indentured labor. Yet Douglass held that the words of the Constitution, and the spirit of that unique gathering of 1787, offered the potential to realize better government. He stressed that although Thomas Jefferson was a defender of slavery, his insights on freedom could be separated from his personal weaknesses. He argued that we must realize the potential in the words of the Constitution, which say nothing of race or class, and not on the manner in which it was interpreted to suit the barbaric habits of that age.
How is policy made today?
Sadly, policy making in Washington does not resemble the process I have described above and has virtually nothing to do with the mandate of the Constitution, or with the needs of citizens. Congressmen spend their time begging for money and pushing gimmicks in the commercial media. The actual discussion of policy takes place far away from the Capitol, in secret. Policy is formulated by those who do the bidding of multinational corporations and investment banks on Wall Street, or in Hong Kong, or London. The entire process, from beginning to end, is illegal and immoral.
Although the Russell Senate Building and the Rayburn House Building still stand, although staff members still shuffle around to arrange meetings and to answer phone calls, government, in the true sense of the word, is nowhere to be found. The final blow was delivered in the 2020 election, but it was but the exponential acceleration of a trend leading back to the Kennedy assassination.
Small consulting firms that represent the super-rich, directly, or through private equity firms, set the priorities for the country in secret and feed it to the Congress. Moreover, for the last twenty years, power has shifted to a shadow government run according to secret law. Secret laws are passed by Congress and have have profound impact on policy. But it is illegal to disclose them to the public. Although the full range of the abuse of secret law and classified orders on policy in Congress and in the Executive branch is known only to God, we know that it is possible now to block the qualified from running for office, to give billions of dollars to corporations in secret, and to prohibit the discussion, under pain of prison, of the rampant corruption in our nation.
The general assumptions about what is good for the nation are set by corporations through the media sources that they control.
It is assumed to be a scientific truth that growth, in terms of production and consumption, is a positive for the nation and that the value of stocks (owned primarily by the rich), the manufacture and consumption of unnecessary things, and the export of agricultural goods and manufactured goods must be the primary concern of government.
The corporations force-feed us lies about the value of the global trade that they control, paying experts to convince us that the trade between multinationals in the United States, China, Japan, Germany and France has any relationship to the economic interests of ordinary people.
It is also presented as a given that the Federal Reserve, now controlled by international investment banks like BlackRock, can make monetary and fiscal policy with no accountability to the citizen, and that the citizen has no right to suggest how money should be defined, employed, or loaned out to corporations. Journalism is a subdomain of corporate advertising that hides from us how the inflation, produced when corporations use the Federal Reserve to print up money and buy their own stock, eats away at the paltry savings of ordinary people.
Although no one who is permitted to speak to the people mentions the dark empire of global finance, the facts are now so obvious that even those drenched in sugary food, marinated in pornography and action films, and drowned in fashion and seductive pop music, notice that something is wrong.
There is an assumption in our society, a patently false assumption, that corporations have the right to place suggestive and misleading images and messages anywhere they want, on billboards and in buses, in commercials, or embedded in movies, that justify a criminal economic and social system that benefits them.
Internet, commercial television and movies, and social media have as their primary goal the reprogramming of the brains of citizens so as to render them up to corporations as docile consumers incapable of action. This agenda is unconstitutional and criminal yet few resist it. Powerful, but invisible, totalitarian structures that have been erected across our nation.
The foreign wars that destroy the Earth, and cripple our sons and daughters, driving the militarization of our government, and of the corporations that occupy it, cannot be kept secret any longer.
The forced use of throwaway GMO seeds, and plants modified to be poisonous and innutritious, the criminal purchase of farmland by corporations using phony money that created for them by banks, the sprinkling of deadly pesticides and fertilizers on fields that not only poison our water but also destroy the precious soil that took hundreds of years to develop, are opening the Gates of Hell for future famines that the blind baby boomers never imagined possible.
The assumption in policy is that the only way to solve problems is tax the people (not to tax corporations or the super-rich) and then to use that tax money to magically resolve all issues. Although government has played a helpful role in the past, and could in the future, the institutions that call themselves “government” are no longer capable of playing that role. The money for those programs will come out of our pockets in terms of taxes, inflation, and additional costs for the products we must buy since we are prohibited from growing our own food or making our own furniture and tools.
Citizens are blocked from obtaining good educations, and teachers are treated with contempt. That policy is implemented because educated citizens can oppose corporate greed. But the corporations also want to define what a good education is, and make that specific form of education that they define the requirement for the high paying jobs they control.
Citizens who try to assert their constitutional right to “secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” or who just try to get buy, find nothing but unemployment, underemployment, exploitation and crippling debt. They are brainwashed, or simply tricked, into spending what little money they have on non-essential products.
The final step in this process is to deprive the citizen of the right to support himself or herself economically. Small businesses, small farms, every aspect of economic activity for the citizen has been destroyed by operation COVID19, the “controlled demolition of the economy.” We are forced take COVID19 payments, established without any democratic process. In the next year, most will be made dependent on these pathetic corporate payouts; we will be slaves in every sense of the word.
The great majority of government money for “COVID19” goes to corporations. The criminal media tell us that the money will create jobs, but in most cases it will be used for automation that will destroy jobs, or to hire private intelligence firms to spy on, and to infiltrate, workers so that they cannot offer resistance.
The time for action has come, fellow citizens. We cannot allow the rich and powerful to play on our human weaknesses any more. We must realize our capacity to think for ourselves, to create our own free economy, to think scientifically and to organize ourselves in opposition to this criminal takeover of our society.
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Featured image is from Emanuel for President
Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.
I Shall Fear No Evil
Why we need a truly independent candidate for president
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For weeks I’ve been predicting Biden would capitulate to the Republican-McConnell proposals on infrastructure, including funding it without taxing corps-investors-wealthy. Today, June 24, he did just that, after paring down his original $2.3T proposal for Infrastructure spending step by step. Biden reportedly now agrees to only $579B in new infrastructure spending. What’s not revealed, however, is how much of this total is being earmarked in separate bills that have been moving toward passage that subsidize manufacturing, tech corps, and chip-auto companies. The latter, already agreed to is $52B. Another $110B is in the so-called ‘Endless Frontier Act’, subsidizing US tech development in competition with China. Another unknown amount will no doubt come from Biden’s original $400B targeting manufacturing in his original Infrastructure (aka American Jobs Act) proposal of $2.3T when initially announced months ago.
We now have the latest Corporate Wing of the Democrat Party (Biden, Shumer, Manchin, et. al.) completing their charade negotiations with the Republicans. Step by step the spending was cut, from $2.3T, to the current $579B. Behind the scenes over the past weeks, segments of Biden’s $2.3T were ‘broken out’ of the original $2.3T and moved on separate tracks toward passage. Both Dems and Repubs were in agreement on these elements: i.e. $52B for US semiconductor and auto companies, R&D for US manufacturers in the so-called ‘Endless Frontier Act’, and other provisions of Biden’s $400B proposed spending on manufacturing and US multinational corp subsidization in his original $2.3T Infrastructure proposal.
As we await the final version of the stripped down $579B in next few days, the only question is how much of it will be paid by consumers in the form of gas taxes, fees, and government borrowing (raising the national debt) vs. how much by tax hikes on the wealthy originally proposed by Biden and the Dems during the election. Having already dropped his proposal to raise taxes on corporations back to 28% from the 21% level under Trump (who cut it from 35%), thus raising $850B in revenue, Biden will likely now drop remaining tax hikes on wealthy individuals he originally proposed as well.
Make no mistake, this was all nicely ‘engineered’ by the corporate wing of the Democrat party, firmly in control since 1992 of policy, in cooperation with McConnell and the Republicans. Blue Dog Democrat Senator, Joe Manchin, served nicely as the ‘point man’ to take the heat off the Democrat leadership, as all parties danced toward a pre-arranged ‘compromise’ that leaves Trump’s corporate-Investor-Wealthy tax cuts under Trump ($4T) intact.
Biden and Dems will now try to spin the result, claiming it will provide millions of jobs, when it won’t. It will likely encourage more offshoring of jobs, subsidizing US tech and multinational corp manufacturers instead. With Biden having separately agreed to a minimal 15% corporate tax rate with European capitalists, the Trump 21% vs. the 15% will certainly encourage the continued offshoring of US jobs. In addition, the new subsidies to US multinational tech and manufacturing corps in the $52B chip bill, the ‘Endless Frontier’ bill, and the elements of the $579B now agreed infrastructure bill, will all further exacerbate the loss of US jobs mostly to offshore.
For the US economy recovery, it is clear the $579B will be too little and likely too late. The Covid 19 relief act passed earlier this year will dissipate in terms of its economic impact by late summer 2021–just as the 2020 minimal stimulus acts dissipated within months. The US economy is getting a ‘bump’ from reopening this spring and summer, just like it did from the aborted reopening last summer 2020. That temporary rebound relapsed by fourth quarter 2020. It will be interesting to watch as the current insufficient stimulus of $579B has the same temporary rebound and results in another fading economic recovery by early 2022!
(The following are my ‘running tweets’ since early June predicting the course of events with regard to infrastructure spending, now culminating in Biden’s capitulation. It’s all beginning to look a lot like Obama’s in 2009-10):
June 24
#Infrastructure Next question: how much of Biden’s $579B capitulation includes prior agreed to $52B subsidy to US chip corps, $110B ‘Endless Frontier Act’ subsidy for US corps R&D, & Biden’s $400B proposal for US manuf subsidies in his initial $2.3T proposed infrastructure bill?
June 24
#BIdenomics If Biden & Dems can only pass a McConnell-Repub infrastructure bill, Biden’s Family Plan stimulus supposed to follow infrastructure is clearly DOA! Ditto any Biden promises to take back Trump’s $4T 2017 tax cuts for investors, business, wealthiest 1%. Deja vu 2009-11
June 24
#Inrastructure Biden capitulates. Agrees to $579B (down from $2.3T) Repub-Dem ‘Blue Dog’ proposal. Details also likely to show Trump tax cuts untouched & consumers to pay with gas tax hike, fees, etc. = Insufficient stimulus as Covid relief spending dissipates by late summer.
Jun 23
#Infrastructure Senate group, with 10 Dems, proposing $973B package (with $394B already authorized in prior transport & other spending–only $579B new). Biden at $1.2T. Watch around $1.1T (as predicted here). Paid for by fees, leaving Trump’s $4T wealthy tax cuts untouched.
Jun 14
#infrastructure It’s now clear: Biden & Dem party corp wing will never do budget reconciliation. Biden dropped corp tax ($850B) proposal. Watch him now cut back personal tax proposals (on $1M individuals, inheritance, etc.) & agree to $1T spending (w/o climate, elderly measures)
Jun 11
#Infrastructure Romney & blue dog Dem Senema propose $587B ‘new money’ (+add $394B from hiway budget+$350B from budget for local govts in Covid bill, both already authorized) and there’s your $1.2T! Biden signals he’s ok with it. Now fight over paring down individual income tax.
Jun 10
#Infrastructure New Biden strategy: break out parts of proposed $1T bill (down from $2.2T) and pass laws separately: $250B for manuf, R&D, chips; $303B for road-rail transport; Prior $174B proposed for govt buying electric busses & building charging stations, now down to $8.1B.
Jun 9
#Infrastructure Deja vu 2020: $1.3T mitigation spending March 2020 Cares Act, followed by McConnell blocking June 2020 Heroes Act stimulus; $1.8T March 2021 Covid Relief Act, followed by blocking of Infrastructure bill (except for $250B subsidy for manufacturing-tech-chip corps)
Jun 9
#Infrastructure negotiations break down between Dems and Republicans. In the process, Biden cuts his proposal from $2.25T to $1T with no Republican counter except to ‘move money around’ already authorized to be spent. (McConnell, with Manchin help, out-maneuvering Dems again)
Jun 7
#Infrastructure: prediction: watch Biden cut total new spending to $700B (over 10 yrs) but claim it’s still $1T by adopting Manchin’s proposal to include $308B already authorized in highway spending + most of $700B will be subsidies to manufacturing & tech corps already agreed to
#Infrastructure negotiations update: Biden now at $1T. Republicans propose: use $394B already authorized for transport + transfer $350B already authorized for local govt spending + add about $250B new (over 10 yrs). Manchin-McConnell want more cuts. Watch Biden cut to $700B total
May 28
#Infrastructure Why did Biden reportedly ‘signal’ to Republican Senators when he last met with them that he’d accept a $1 trillion package? If he did, he’s either incompetent as a negotiator, or else negotiations are just a game being played for public consumption by both parties
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When the so-called war on domestic terrorism was declared quite early on in the Joe Biden Administration it provoked a wave of dissent from those who recognized that it would inevitably be used to stifle free speech and target constituencies that do not agree with the White House’s plans for sweeping changes in how the country is governed. Some rightly pointed out that every time the Federal government declares war on anyone or anything, to include drugs, poverty, or even Afghanistan, the results are generally counter-productive. But others noted that once fundamental liberties are taken away they will likely never return.
At first there were reports that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were increasing their investigations, many centered on the so-called U.S. Capitol “insurrection” of January 6th, which it now appears might have been in part incited by the FBI itself. The scope of the inquiries into how perfectly legal opposition groups operate and proliferate in the U.S. soon broadened to include opponents of much of the social engineering that the Democrats have brought with them to change the face of America. “Hate” or “extremist” groups and individuals became the targets with “hate” and “extremism” liberally defined as anyone whose identity or agenda did not coincide with that of the Democratic Party.
This effort to root out “domestic terrorism” needed a focus and that came with what was claimed to be an intelligence community joint assessment in March which labeled “white supremacists” and “anti-government extremists” as “the two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat.” The White House echoed that judgement, claiming that the report’s conclusions had identified “the most urgent terrorism threat the United States faces today.”
The report’s conclusions were somewhat odd and it would be interesting to know who wrote it and whether there was any dissent over what it included. Presumably, no one was empowered to suggest that surging black violence over the past year is a major “domestic terror” issue. The conclusion therefore was skewed – while no one would deny that there have been violent incidents involving white racist group and individuals, they are far outnumbered by the deaths that have taken place due to the black lives matter movement, which both government and corporate America have embraced. Given that, the targeting of “white” groups must be considered to be essentially political, particularly insofar as the White House and Attorney General Merrick Garland have made every effort to link the “racist-extremists” to the Republican Party and more particularly to Donald Trump.
All of this came together last Tuesday when Garland released the first-ever “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” which had been a work in progress ordered by President Biden on his very first day in office. The plan is a curious mixture of enhancement of traditional law enforcement measures, to include calls for increased information-sharing between governments and technology sectors, as well as an infusion of over $100 million to hire more focused prosecutors, investigators, and intelligence specialists. Ominously, it also supports setting up mechanisms for screening government employees for ties to “extremist” and hate groups, meaning that anyone belonging to a group that praises the virtues of European nations or the white race will quickly become unemployed. Such screening is already taking place in the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department. The overall strategic objective is to attempt to prevent recruitment by extremist groups by, inter alia, increasing the law enforcement penetration and investigation of such entities while also marginalizing and punishing those individuals who do become members.
Biden’s war on domestic terrorism is so far lacking new legislation that will enable the authorities “to successfully hunt down, prosecute, and imprison homegrown extremists” just because they have been generically labeled extreme, but presumably that is coming. Interestingly, one would expect a Justice Department document to be race and gender neutral, but it is anything but that, again reenforcing that it is a political statement. It sees as a major objective for the government to directly confront “racism and bigotry as drivers of domestic terrorism.”
Merrick Garland spoke briefly to the media when he was releasing the document. He claimed that the robust government approach would not infringe on First and Fourth Amendment Constitutional rights, the rights of free speech and assembly and freedom from searches without due process. But then he oddly enough added that “The only way to find sustainable solutions is not only to disrupt and deter, but also to address the root causes of violence.” If one follows that line of reasoning and accepts that white supremacists are the major problem, then the assumption is that available resources will go to where the problem is: white people who oppose government policies, which might presumably include anyone who voted for Donald Trump.
Garland then added that the new strategy would be “focused on violence, not on ideology,” as “We do not prosecute people for their beliefs.” One might argue with that assertion as the policy clearly targets individuals for their beliefs, including that they have a constitutional right to be left alone by a meddling federal government. Ironically, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) responded to the document by complaining that its tactics employ “abusive counterterrorism tools that result in unfair and unjustified surveillance and targeting of Black and Brown people, particularly Muslims.” ACLU has it wrong and should have read the document more carefully: it actually targets white people.
Inevitably such a report that is seeking to pursue and transform most of the U.S. population produced a reaction. One of the most ridiculous came from Cynthia Miller-Idriss, who heads the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, writing for The Atlantic, who believes it is a “public health problem, not a security issue.” She wrote “The extremism we’re now seeing in the U.S. is ‘post-organizational,’ characterized by fluid online boundaries and a breakdown of formal groups and movements …. To fight this amorphous kind of radicalization, the federal government needs to see the problem as a whole-of-society, public-health issue.”
So if it is a public health issue the government will no doubt order development of a vaccine at great expense that will be mandatory for all Americans above the age of twelve. As Biden has identified the threat in racial terms, even though it is being claimed that no one’s rights will be violated, how will a law enforcement let off the leash to pursue the target of choice respond? What to do about the numerous white ethnic societies that exist in the United States to celebrate their heritage? Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans and German-Americans watch out! And wait a minute, aren’t organizations like black lives matter already supporting a certain level of violence to bring about change? But presumably only “whites” will be surveilled because the government has identified them as the problem. Looking at the issues being raised and the solutions being suggested one might conclude that the real problem in America is not necessarily extremism among the people but rather extremism in the government. We have been taught undesired and quite frankly hypocritical lessons by four presidents in a row and perhaps it is now time that we be left alone!
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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]
Featured image: Outside during the US Capitol during the January 6, 2021 attack on the building (Flickr/Creative Commons)
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An exchange between the United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, and several Republican Congressmen in Washington, D.C. on June 23, illustrates the level of hysteria prevalent among ruling circles as it relates to what can and cannot be taught within educational institutions including the military.
Gen. Milley was questioned about a “diversity training” program within the military which utilized reading materials that some members of Congress strongly object.
This questioning of Milley took place within the context of attempts by the Pentagon to supposedly uncover “extremists” within its ranks who are harboring racist right-wing views. Some members of Congress are even calling for a cutback in funding to the Pentagon claiming that conservatives are being targeted and accused of racism and neo-fascism.
The top U.S. military general said in response to the questioning, that:
“I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. What is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend? And I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned, our noncommissioned officers, of being ‘woke.'” (See this)
Of course, Gen. Milley is by no means a proponent of anti-racist education. The reasoning of the Pentagon is related to the need for some form of cohesion within the ranks of the various divisions of the military forces. Events in recent months, particularly the right-wing mob attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, could easily prefigure a split within the security apparatus of the U.S. Such divisions which undoubtedly exist between white soldiers and their counterparts from the oppressed communities, would hamper the operational capacity of the Pentagon to engage in combat internationally as well as domestically.
Among the ranks of those involved in the Capitol Hill attack on January 6 were veterans of the military. Milley also said before Congress: “I want to understand white rage, and I’m white. And I want to understand it.”
Earlier Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who is an African American career military officer, was questioned on the same topic by conservative lawmakers. Austin disassociated the Pentagon and its training academies from what is being referred to as “critical race theory.”
Austin emphasized before Congress:
“We do not teach critical race theory. We don’t embrace critical race theory and I think that’s a spurious conversation. We are focused on extremist behaviors, and not ideology.”
These discussions are taking place across the length and breath of the U.S. In several states, legislative bodies are debating and approving bills which ostensibly ban the teaching of “critical race theory.” In Oklahoma, the governor was asked to leave a state commission on the Tulsa Race Massacre of a century ago after he signed into law a bill which prohibits teaching about the realities of the U.S. being a racist society, born in the forced removal and genocide of Native Americans, and the centuries-long enslavement and national oppression of African Americans.
The U.S. military are the guardians of this racist, capitalist and imperialist system which has extended its tentacles around the globe. Their ability to function as a fighting force necessitates a common viewpoint about who their adversaries are and what needs to be done from an imperialist perspective.
This holds true for U.S. society as a whole in regard to the nature and character of the educational system. To demonize the study and analysis of the actual history and social development of the country can only foster more tensions between the races.
Defining “Critical Race Theory” and Its Origins
What is interesting in the discourse about “Critical Race Theory” is the inability of the right-wing critics to define what they are against. Judging from their public pronouncements and legislative actions, it becomes quite obvious that it does not matter what “Critical Race Theory” is and why it came about in the U.S.
As a field of academic study, the plight of African people in the U.S. and around the world has always been controversial as far as the ruling class is concerned. The fact that education itself was systematically denied to enslaved Africans is a strong indication of the politics of knowledge acquisition and production.
“[Critical race theory (CRT), [is an] intellectual movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color. Critical race theorists hold that the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans.”
If this definition is accepted in part or in its entirety, then the dominant approach of most African world scholars since the 18th and 19th centuries would fall under this category. The early narratives written by enslaved Africans such as Frederick Douglass were sharp indictments against racist exploitation and its social consequences.
African American women writers and public figures such as Maria Stewart, Mary Ann Shadd, Francis Watkins Harper, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Anna Julia Cooper, among others, during the 19th and 20th centuries, published books, newspapers, pamphlets and speeches which served to raise the consciousness of African people. A censorship regime in denial about institutional racism and national oppression, would not allow the works of these pioneers in Africana Studies and mass organizing to be read within the public school system.
During the 20th century, books by scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois, William Leo Hansberry and Drusilla Dunjee Houston laid the foundations for the African and Black Studies programs which emerged during and after the 1960s. Similarly, as in the 21st century, these scholars were subjected to political attacks by the ruling interests of the time period.
Du Bois, a Harvard graduate with a doctoral degree in History awarded in 1896, was never invited to teach or lecture at the private institution. After being labelled a troublemaker and later communist, his name and works were generally ignored within higher education.
Hansberry, also a Harvard graduate, was unable to acquire a Ph.D in African Studies in the 1920s and 1930s due to the fact that not one university in the U.S. had anyone that could supervise his dissertation. Efforts were made to have him removed from the same African Studies program he created at Howard University, the first in the U.S. Later in life, Hansberry’s contributions were recognized when a former student of his, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, invited him to establish an African Studies program at a leading institution in that West African state.
Houston worked as a journalist and publisher in Oklahoma and other states during the early 20th century. Her prodigious research on African history in the eastern region and West Asia remains a source of discussion today.
Education as an Arena of Struggle
Almost all of the Black, Latinx, Asian and Gender Studies programs at universities and colleges around the U.S. emerged as a result of mass demonstrations during the 1960s, 1970s and beyond. These programs and hiring of staff and faculty from African American and other oppressed communities were the products of political pressure exerted by student and community organizations.
African Americans in several former Confederate states created the framework for public education during the 1860s and 1870s. One source on the history of Georgia noted:
“Before the Civil War (1861-65), Georgia had no system of public education. Its school tax assisted poor white children with tuition at private schools. In 1870 the state made its first effort to create public schools and found that, in the Black community at least, the rudiments of such a system were already in place. Reconstruction-era legislation required segregated schools and allowed discrimination in the distribution of school funds to white and Black schools.” (See this)
Therefore, recent and long past events suggest that the attempts to outlaw the teaching of African American, Latinx, Asian, Native Indigenous and working class histories which are rooted in the experiences of these peoples, will prompt the continuation of the struggle against racism in all its forms.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Georgia African Americans obtain education during the 1890s (Georgia Historical Society)
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Recent remarks by UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, make clear she now openly supports organized crime in Nicaragua financed by the United States and European Union governments. That she does so comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed her earlier record of bad faith reporting on Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Her latest remarks derive directly from false reports on Nicaragua produced by the team of officials from her office that visited the country in 2018. Those officials failed to comply with the formally agreed terms of their visit, never interviewed victims of the coup activists’ wholesale terrorist violence, but still falsely claimed the violence in Nicaragua in 2018 resulted from disproportionate police repression of peaceful protests. Among the great majority of people in Nicaragua and Venezuela, UN High Commissioner Bachelet and her colleagues responsible for the dishonest reports on which she has based her repeated attacks on those country’s governments, have zero credibility.
In Nicaragua’s case, in 2018 the country suffered a vicious, violent failed coup attempt, lasting from April 18th to July 17th of that year, aimed at overthrowing the country’s elected government. The coup attempt was planned, organized and financed by the United States government and its European allies. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights purposefully dissembled the human rights consequences of the coup attempt, covering up the widespread terrorist violence it involved. Their representatives told the Nicaraguan authorities that they classed opposition violence as common crime falling outside their remit. When the Nicaraguan authorities then prosecuted those crimes, Bachelet’s office and the IACHR immediately cynically claimed the prosecutions were political, as they continue to do.
Few observers expect impartial reporting from the Organization of American States and its component institutions, like the IACHR, because they have been permanently co-opted by the US government since the founding of the OAS in 1948. Of more concern is that the office of the UN High Comissioner for Human Rights is now self-evidently as corrupted as other international bodies that have been similarly co-opted by the United States and European Union governments, of which the most egregious recent example has been the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and its false reporting on Syria. Michelle Bachelet’s remarks in her declaration to the 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council, apart from being mostly factually false, in effect seek impunity for crimes committed by US and EU funded individuals and organizations in Nicaragua in violation of both domestic and international law.
In terms of domestic law, Nicaragua’s Constitution explicitly obliges its citizens in Article One:
“Independence, sovereignty and national self-determination are inalienable rights of the people and foundations of the Nicaraguan nation. Any foreign interference in the internal affairs of Nicaragua or any attempt to undermine these rights is an attempt against the life of the people. It is the duty of all Nicaraguans to preserve and defend these rights.”
Likewise, the Constitution’s Article 24 establishes the duty of all citizens to respect not only their obligations to the nation but the rights of others in Nicaragua and among humanity in general:
“Every person has duties to the family, the community, the nation and humanity. The rights of each person are limited by the rights of others, by the security of all, and by just demands for the common good.”
The UN Convention Against Financing Terrorism dates from 1999, President Enrique Bolaños (qepd) decreed Nicaragua’s ratification in 2002 via Decree 3287, thus committing the country to adopting the recommendations generated by the operation of that convention. As explained by Javier Morazán, then Director of the Special Unit against Organized Crime of Nicaragua’s Public Prosecutor’s Office in a 2018 interview, Law 977 was passed in July 2018 precisely so as to enable Nicaragua to comply with the demands under the convention of international organizations like the Latin American Financial Action Group (GAFILAT) to control money laundering and associated criminal activities.
In her latest declaration on Nicaragua to the UN Human Rights Council, Michelle Bachelet referred, in the very selective and dishonest way typical of her office, to just part of this broad and deep legal basis for the arrest of the individuals currently under investigation by the Nicaraguan authorities. She falsely claimed the arrests were related to to the electoral process currently under way leading up to Nicaragua’s general elections scheduled for November of this year. Among her many completely false accusations, she claimed incorrectly that two political parties were arbitrarily denied permission to participate in the elections, when in fact those two parties had explicitly and flagrantly violated long standing electoral law.
Bachelet used that egregious falsehood as context to be able to claim, also falsely, that the recent arrests of people involved in money laundering, collusion with foreign powers to destabilize Nicaragua’s economic and social well being and breach of regulations relating to non profits, are an unlawful abuse related to the electoral process. In fact, a glance at the provisions of both the relevant Nicaraguan domestic law and the international instruments to which it is a signatory show that her claim is at once grossly misleading and ultimately extremely sinister.
Five of the various people recently arrested, Cristiana Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Felix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastian Chamorro and Miguel Mora had expressed their aspirations to run as presidential candidates but none of them are members of any of the seventeen political parties eligible to take part in the elections. Among those detained only two minor figures are members of legitimate political parties. Some of the five individuals mentioned represent marginal opposition movements in Nicaragua like the National White and Blue Unity movement or the Civic Alliance movement both of which are funded and supported by foreign governments, agencies and foundations. All of them are individuals with a long record of collaboration with US and European governments and agencies funded by those governments and by foreign corporations. Their relationship with foreign governments and agencies de facto rendered their aspirations to be presidential candidates moot, as Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council explained in a communiqué on the issue on June 3rd this year.
This means very explicitly that Michelle Bachelet’s claim that the arrests were meant to stop the individuals concerned running as election candidates is egregiously false, like practically everything else she affirmed in her remarks. Even if they had not been arrested no political party could have presented them as candidates either for the presidency or for the legislature. It should also be noted in the case of Nicaragua, that Michelle Bachelet is defending several individuals responsible for promoting the following actions in 2018 which the UN office on Drugs and Organized Crime define as terrorism and organized crime:
the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
the conduct of premeditated violent acts or the threat of violence perpetrated by members of an organized group, designed to create fear in an adversary or specific segment of society
the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change
the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion or intimidation.
illegitimate use of force to achieve a political objective by targeting innocent people
Furthermore, the 2018 coup activists, organized and financed by several of the individuals whom Michelle Bachelet is supporting, routinely took hostages in violation of 1979 International Convention against the Taking of Hostages which is a terrorist act. The convention defines a hostage taker as “any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or group of persons, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage”.
Similarly, in relation to the organization and financing of the 2018 coup, the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime defines organized crime as “A structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences established in accordance with this Convention, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit.” Among the Convention’s definitions of transnational organized crime is any offence committed in one State but when a substantial part of its preparation, planning, direction or control takes place in another State. All these definitions apply to the violent crimes of the US funded Nicaraguan opposition in 2018, which Javier Morazán also described in the interview he gave in 2018.
Likewise, within the framework of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, a person commits a criminal offence if they: [B]y any means, directly or indirectly, unlawfully and wilfully, provide or collect funds with the intention that they should be used or in the knowledge that they are to be used, in full or in part, in order to carry out: […] (b) Any other act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.”
Michelle Bachelet not only gave false witness to the UN Human Rights Council by falsely linking the recent arrests in Nicaragua to the country’s electoral process, she also carefully omitted the highly relevant Amnesty Law 996. Article 3 of that law states “The persons benefited by this Law must refrain from perpetrating any new action that may result in repetitive behavior generating the crimes contemplated herein. The non-observance of the principle of Non Repetition will result in the revocation of the benefit established by this Law.” Several of the people currently arrested and being investigated by Nicaragua’s authorities benefited from that Amnesty Law and may be found to have violated the law’s condition of non-repetition.
Overall the various people under arrest are accused of different charges. Some have to do with breaking the law regulating the activities of non profits, some over collaborating with foreign powers to damage Nicaragua’s economic and social stability, some in relation to money laundering and other financial malfeasance, and some have to do with violating the terms of the 2018 Amnesty law. The complete formal criminal indictments will be known as and when the current investigations are completed.
Michelle Bachelet’s recent remarks confirm that she not only denies Nicaragua’s right to defend its sovereignty, independence and self-determination against foreign intervention. She also supports individuals and organizations demonstrably involved in organized crime and terrorism financed by governments, agencies and foundations of the United States and the European Union. Bachelet has once again made very clear that a principal function of her office is to subvert the sovereignty of nation states at the behest of Western governments and corporate elites determined to suppress genuine popular movements and destroy revolutionary governments in Latin America and the Caribbean and elsewhere.
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Case in point is Belarus. On 23 May 2021 President Lukashenko ordered the Ryanair plane, flying from Athens to Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, carrying his “Nazi-schooled” threatening opponent and activist Protasevich and his girlfriend, to be diverted to Minsk. He did so after having received a message of a bomb threat on board the plane from the Swiss e-mail provider Proton Mail. Proton later said the message was sent after the plane was already diverted. Whom to believe? – If Proton Mail is right, why then send a message in the first place? – Neutral Switzerland is again caught red-handed – and red-faced.
The opposition activist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, were immediately arrested upon landing in Minsk and are now jailed, awaiting judgement and / or extradition to Ukraine, where Protasevich is accused of having participated fighting in Kiev’s neo-Nazi battalion against Donbass.
As reported by RT, authorities of the self-proclaimed Lugansk Republic (LNR) have accused Roman Protasevich, of being part of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. The LNR is an unrecognized state located in Ukraine, and has existed since the 2014 western prompted “civil war” in Donbass, when separatists unilaterally declared independence from Kiev. The Azov Battalion is an ultra-right-wing military unit now incorporated into the National Guard of Kiev-Ukraine.
RT states that Azov fought during the height of the Donbass war, first seeing action at the Battle of Mariupol. The group is heavily linked to neo-Nazi ideology, with the regiment’s logo featuring the Wolfsangel, a symbol of many divisions of the Nazi German Army during World War II. Joining the Azov Battalion is illegal in Donbass, as well as in Belarus.
An LNR Prosecutor says, there is evidence that Protasevich has fought in the Donbass war on the side of Kiev. See this and this.
Given the tense circumstances, call them western aggressions, after President Lukashenko’s landslide reelection, there may be good justification for Lukashenko to arrest his archenemy, Protasevich, who’s unpredictability – and especially, his most likely following orders from the west, predominantly the US and its EU “compradores” – might be a threat to Lukashenko’s life.
The arrest of Protasevich is the official reason for predominantly the US, followed by the vassalic Europeans, to initiate a series of “sanctions” against the Lukashenko Government and Belarus. Sanctions include travel bans for prominent people, the freezing of Belarusian state assets and Belarusian private assets in the US and EU and in the west in general. For those who don’t know, this is only possible because the western dollar-based economy, is totally controlled by US / Wall Street banks. Any western currency transaction flows automatically through a US bank – mostly through the SWIFT system – thus, can be interrupted and confiscated at any time by Washington orders.
The point is, the west – again especially the US – wants to get rid of Lukashenko, a close Kreml ally. They want to replace Lukashenko by a friend of the west, so as to be free to advance with NATO into Belarus, as step closer to Moscow’s doorstep. Belarus is extremely important for Russia, not only as buffer zone, but mores o because of Russa’s two key military bases in Belarus. The importance of Belarus to Russia is about equivalent to the importance of Crimea and particularly Sebastopol, for Moscow.
NATO aggression; that’s the key reason. The west couldn’t care less about human rights, the reason they bring forward for the sanctions. The west has never cared – and under the current constellation will never care – for human rights. In fact, the west is the world’s biggest and most brutal offender of both civil and human rights. And this doesn’t even take into account the western instigated worldwide covid drama – decimating world population, as well as the world economy.
Just imagine the reverse, a ferocious eastern enemy of the Biden Administration, on a plane approaching the US, but destined to a neighboring country, say Nicaragua or Mexico, or, god-forbid, Cuba – with threats to harm President Biden or people of his entourage. The US would just let it go? I don’t think so. If Washington had a chance to bringing the threatening eastern enemy onto US soil and arrest him, they would do so.
Would the east, and I mean the entire eastern alliance of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) – about the equivalent of the western alliance – start sanctioning the US, foremost the US President and his close support group; the European Union, putting up travel bans for political leaders and high officials of the US / EU Administrations – plus a myriad of economic sanctions, i.e. interrupting the eastern supply chain for western consumer goods, but foremost, for eastern (mostly Chinese) produced pharmaceuticals on which the west heavily depends?
Have eastern countries ever sanctioned the west? Never, as far as my history books say, and they were all edited and printed in the west. It’s not part of the eastern cultural and ethical standards punishing other countries – even their western self-proclaimed enemies – to punish them for their autonomous and sovereign independent behavior. China, Russia, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea – to name just a few – might not like what is done to them by the west, but “sanctioning” an autonomous sovereign nation, for example, by cutting off their energy supply, is not in the cards for the east.
Is it surprising that the east is increasingly going its own way – a way offering incorporation for those who want a peaceful social and economic development, but no longer a way of dependence and obedience to Washington and western puppets. Sorry to call the European “puppets” of the Washington empire. They may be the “parents” – the parent empire – of today’s US-empire, but that they follow in their offspring’s criminal footstep is not a feast of honor, or of inspiring respect.
Back to Belarus. Lukashenko has done what he had to do to protect the integrity of his country and government – and viewing ahead with a looking glass – to protect their ally Russia from another NATO step closer to Moscow. And so did President Putin, when he had his arch-enemy and traitor, Alexei Navalny, arrested; Navalny, who claimed the nonsensical, having been poisoned by Russia – when the very Russian authorities let him go to the west, Berlin as it were, to receive medical treatment against his “poison”. A huge western anti-Russia propaganda ensued.
Did Russia sanction Germany, the EU or the US for these abject lies?
There seems to be no limit – on any subject, on any issue – to western lies and manipulation of the truth. At least until now. This may change as more people are waking up, seeing ever clearer through the thinning sham of vail. It also seems that the west doesn’t realize that their very empire is committing suicide by this eternal regime of “sanctioning” whomever doesn’t dance according to their flute. Former or potential allies are driven away into the more peaceful camp of eastern respect for the sovereignty of their allies.
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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.
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).
184 Countries Vote in the United Nations to Condemn U.S. Blockade of Cuba—But As Usual, Only Two Countries Vote Against the Resolution: the U.S. and Israel
While Conditions in Cuba Under the Blockade are Worsening—Potentially Worse than the Special Period—Cuba’s Biotechnological and Pharmaceutical Industry May Help Them Out of the Pandemic
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On June 23rd, 184 countries at the United Nations voted yet again to condemn the U.S. blockade of Cuba, with 3 countries abstaining and 4 not voting. Every year since 1992—2020 being an exception when the vote was not held given COVID restrictions—Cuba has introduced a resolution to end the blockade. And every year, only two countries vote against it: the U.S. and Israel, with Bolsonaro’s Brazil joining them in 2019. Notwithstanding the ongoing nightmare Cubans continue to suffer under the blockade, the focus on health care and their advanced biotechnological and pharmaceutical industry may help them out of the pandemic.
Photo taken during the last United Nations General Assembly vote on the necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba. (November 7, 2019) [Source: un.org]
For over 60 years, the U.S. blockade of Cuba has not stopped the island-nation from pursuing its goals of living independently from neocolonial and neoliberal control, using its own national resources for the benefit of the Cuban people and instituting social programs like free universal health care and education.
Yet the blockade continues to stifle the Cuban economy and harm the Cuban people. But further, the policy quashes all the productive potential normal relations with Cuba would foster, even for Americans.
With Cuba now facing the worst phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, lifting the blockade—not to mention easening it with the stroke of a pen—would clearly be the most rational and humanitarian act.
The dire situation in Cuba is in great part the result of U.S. policy: isolate nations like Cuba who rid themselves of U.S.-backed dictators and foreign control of their assets. This serves not only to punish those who go their own way and reject neoliberal policies but also serves to showcase struggling, blockaded economies while misleading the public on the causes. The policy is aggressively pursued for fear that successful examples will inspire others to rid themselves of the shackles of the U.S. empire and plutocratic interests.
While Obama’s policy of engagement, among other remedies, renewed diplomatic relations and eased restrictions on travel and remittances to the island, Trump reversed that trend and issued unprecedented aggressive policies against Cuba culminating in its inclusion on the unilateral State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
It is no surprise to seasoned CAM readers that Biden’s position seems to have evaporated under the pressures of U.S. electoral politics, particularly from the Cuban-American lobby that has kept Cuba locked in isolation for decades. While Biden has rescinded dozens of Trump’s policies, on Cuba he has remained silent. Of the 240-plus measures adopted by Trump to toughen the blockade against Cuba, Biden has not rescinded even one.
Indeed, Biden’s finite political capital and razor-thin margin in the Senate leaves him wary of upsetting even one Democrat, including anti-Castro hawks like Cuban-American Bob Menendez (D-NJ), not to mention Republican hawks like Cuban-American Marco Rubio (R-FL).
Mounting Pressures
Pressures to get Biden to fulfill his promise are mounting in the U.S. and include Cuban-Americans. Organizations like Bridges of Love and other solidarity groups have staged rallies, protests and caravans nationwide in hopes of pushing the Biden administration to soften its strategy.
Dozens of nonprofit groups, from Oxfam to the DC Metro Coalition, have asked the U.S. to “…act as soon as possible to normalize relations with Cuba…” and lift the blockade on humanitarian grounds. Various leading think tanks, including the Council for Democracy in the Americas (CDA), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Cuba Study Group (CSG) have asked the new administration to restore Obama’s policy of rapprochement and critical engagement. The National Network on Cuba has produced a Hands Off Cuba Map! that can be clicked on to see the particular organizations around the U.S. working to end the blockade.
To see the organizations, click the Hands Off Cuba Map! [Source: nnoc.info]
To defend the ongoing illegal and cruel blockade, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken ratcheted up the rhetoric at the 51st Conference of the Council of the Americas stating that Washington “…will defend the human rights of the Cuban people…” to which the Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez responded: “If Secretary Blinken was interested in the human rights of the Cuban people, he would lift the embargo and the 243 measures adopted by the previous government…”
Cuban Permanent Representative to the United Nations Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta added: “All those measures remain in force today, and are a reflection of the unprecedented levels that the economic war against Cuba has reached, bringing about hardships of all kinds and material shortages in the daily lives of every Cuban.”
Pedroso continued: “Our challenges in terms of human rights, like those of any other country, are known to our people and our government and we will continue to work on their solution on the basis of our Constitution,” he said. “But Cuba is equally concerned about the human rights situation in the United States. Flagrant violations are committed here [in the U.S.] on a daily basis, which arouse concern within the international community.”
Pedroso issued an additional statement on Tuesday, June 22, before the vote:
“The entire world knows that the US blockade against Cuba is a genocidal and criminal policy, which really harms the Cuban people especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic…”
It is “…an act of genocide under the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide, due to its declared purpose and the political, legal and administrative framework it is based on.”
Cuba’s Health Care, Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industry
The Cubans, however, are in a unique situation. Since the 1959 revolution, Cuba has focused on health care, among other social programs. They send more doctors around the world than the World Health Organization and have implemented programs like Doctor de la Familia which house doctors in communities around the island-nation in two-floor homes.
Typically, the doctor de la familia lives with his/her family on the second floor, and the practice resides on the ground floor. In addition to receiving patients at the local clinic, doctors and healthcare workers visit community neighbors in their homes and provide an overall more holistic service.
The Cuban government has made the obvious choice not to rely on foreign vaccines. In spite of the blockade, they are advancing their own vaccine development, testing, and delivery with their own advanced pharmaceutical industry which has exported vaccines for decades.
On Monday, BioCubaFarma announced that its three-shot Abdala vaccine had proved 92.28% effective against the coronavirus in last-stage clinical trials. Soberana 2, announced days earlier, has proven to be 62% effective with just two of its three doses. Both vaccines are expected to be granted emergency approval.
Get involved in the solidarity campaigns with Cuba listed above. There are many. One organization I worked with in the 1990s was Global Health Partners (GHP): They are particularly efficient and have been sending medicines and medical supplies to Cuba since the 1990s.
The Cuban government is planning to produce 100 million vaccines for its population and to share with developing countries around the world. As GHP notes: “Over the past year alone, Cuba has sent 3,700 health workers, in 52 international medical brigades, to 39 countries overwhelmed by the pandemic. Cuba’s international medical brigades have treated patients and saved lives for the past 15 years in 53 countries confronting natural disasters and serious epidemics, such as the Ebola crisis in West Africa.”
In spite of Cuban advances in health care, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, the blockade is a daily nightmare for most of the 11.3 million people on the largest Caribbean island-nation. While the pandemic is a deadly layer added to the suffering, the promise of change comes at a crucial moment for Cubans. Will Biden fulfill his promise to relax the blockade and join the rest of the world, or will he carry on with the old Cold War rhetoric against Cuba that has only harmed the Cuban people and exacerbated the anti-humanitarian U.S. image worldwide?
The Ironic Curtain, still relevant and still deadly. [Source: gregasclutoo.com]
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Chris Agee is Executive Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He teaches at the City University of New York, the State University of New York and is the author of numerous articles in various publications. He can be reached at: [email protected].
Mr. Sloan invited Prof. Bryam Bridle (Guelph University), Dr. Patrick Philips and Dr. Dan Welsh to speak on the attacks taking place against them. The analysis of these fully accredited researchers, academics and medical practitioners on COVID-19, lockdowns, vaccines and such is not in line with the narrow doctrinaire orthodoxy pushed uniformly by the CBC and by many other commercial media venues.
The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext and a justification to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.
While the ordinary person knows that all is not well with the economy and society, the wealthy elite that run the Federal Reserve, which is a private entity, continue to make miscalculations and poor judgements about the economy and then nonchalantly plead ignorance when reality slaps them in the face.
The world is currently in the midst of the biggest economic and social experiment of its entire history, with big tech trying to completely digitize our entire lives. Under the pretext of preventing the spread of a disease, we are being pushed to work from home, learn via homeschooling, shop only online, communicate via internet conference platforms, and to have our movement and contact profile recorded via tracking apps.
A team of Israeli researchers said they began studying the possible link between Pfizer’s vaccine and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura after reports of a sudden increase in cases across Israel — four cases in one month compared to two or three cases per year. Israeli researchers on Monday said they discovered a link between Pfizer’s COVID vaccine and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), a rare blood disease.
The CDC is getting more reports than expected of heart inflammation cases after the COVID-19 vaccinations, according to Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office.
The following article is a joint collaboration between Michelle Perro, MD (Executive Director) and Stephanie Seneff, PhD (MIT Research Scientist). In 2017, Dr. Perro and Dr. Adams produced the highly acclaimed book, What’s Making our Children Sick? with a focus on the effects of industrial food on children’s health, highlighting patients’ stories and victories.
Unknown for decades, declassified documents show that FDR’s mail was deliberately diverted and falsified to prevent a historic meeting with Mao Zedong that might have shortened the war, changed history, and reshaped the modern world.
The Washington Post’s glaring conflicts of interest have of late once again been the subject of scrutiny online, thanks to a new article denouncing a supposed attempt to “soak” billionaires in taxes. Written by star columnist Megan McArdle — who previously argued that Walmart’s wages are too high, that there is nothing wrong with Google’s monopoly, and that the Grenfell Fire was a price worth paying for cheaper buildings — the article claimed that Americans have such class envy that the government would “destroy [billionaires’] fortunes so that the rest of us don’t have to look at them.”
The landslide election of Ebrahim Raisi as 8th president of Iran could be a turning point for the Islamic Republic. The landslide victory for the ultra-conservative former chief justice and protege of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could lead to an overhaul of the framework put in place when the two-tier regime was established in 1979. This structure imposed powerful clerical institutions on elected presidents and parliaments.
Sometimes it is worth stating the obvious. The United Kingdom does not have a coast in the Black Sea. British warships are not infesting the Black Sea out of a peaceful intent, and there is no cause for them to be entering disputed waters close to anybody’s coast. This is not a question of freedom of navigation under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.
A newly published analysis in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science argues that a toxic soup of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides is causing havoc beneath fields covered in corn, soybeans, wheat and other monoculture crops. The research is the most comprehensive review ever conducted on how pesticides affect soil health.
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).
The British Navy’s violation of Russia’s Black Sea maritime border on Wednesday was a dangerous attempt to sabotage Russia’s rapprochement with the West by provoking an international security incident between these nuclear-armed Great Powers.
The world was shocked on Wednesday after reports came streaming in that Russian fighter jets and ships fired off warning shots at the British Navy after the latter violated the Eurasian Great Power’s maritime border in the Black Sea.
For its part, London denied that any such warning shots were fired and insisted that it behaved within international norms. Moscow immediately countered by accusing the UK of lying, which seems to be the most accurate interpretation of reality after a BBC journalist’s account conforms with Russia’s. The UK doesn’t recognize Crimea’s democratic reunification with Russia though, hence its claim that everything it did was “legal”. This observation very strongly suggests that the UK was deliberately trying to provoke an international security incident with Russia, which raises the question of why it would do so.
While it can’t be known for sure, it might very well be the case that the UK wanted to sabotage Russia’s rapprochement with the West after last week’s Geneva Summit.
That event brought together Presidents Putin and Biden, who both agreed that it’s time to de-escalate tensions between their countries and more responsibly manage their comprehensive competition with one another. The outcome of that scenario successfully unfolding could increase the UK’s post-Brexit strategic isolation, especially if it results in a complementary Russian-EU rapprochement as well.
Speaking of which, it might be more than a coincidence that the UK’s dangerous provocation against Russia occurred just hours before reports came in that French President Macron and German Chancellor Merkel are considering inviting President Putin to a European leaders summit sometime in the coming future. The UK might have been tipped off and sought to sabotage it.
Readers should remember that the UK has been waging a fierce HybridWar against Russia for the past couple of years. I hyperlinked to six of my relevant analyses in a piece two months ago asking “Are The British Behind Czechia’s Surprise Decision To Expel Russian Diplomats?”, which should at the very least be skimmed by anyone who’s interested in this topic. My argument is that empirical evidence very strongly suggests that the UK is acting as the US’ anti-Russian attack dog in continental Europe after Brexit, but considering the recent geopolitical twist of the publicly expressed desire from both Washington and Moscow to repair their immensely damaged relations after last week’s Geneva Summit, it’s entirely possible that London is “going rogue” to an extent. Either that, or it’s more powerfully under the influence of the remaining anti-Russian faction of the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”).
The UK, just like Poland, mistakenly bet everything on the US continuing its anti-Russian grand strategic course. London invested heavily in expanding its hybrid capabilities in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), in particular Latvia, from where it runs a regional disinformation network. It therefore might have understandably felt left in the lurch in light of recent developments. Not only that, but former MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s leading role in the factually debunked Russiagate conspiracy theory’s origins hints at the close working relationship between British intelligence and the anti-Russian faction of the US “deep state”. It therefore wouldn’t be too surprising if the UK is continuing to act as the US’ anti-Russian attack dog in Europe, albeit at the orders of an increasingly less influential “deep state” faction as opposed to the American state itself. This would explain why it just dangerously attempted to provoke a security incident between two nuclear-armed Great Powers.
Keeping in mind the recent fast-moving developments in Russian-American relations and Russian-Western ones more broadly, it doesn’t seem all that likely that the UK will succeed unless the US’ anti-Russian “deep state” faction somehow surprisingly regains its influence at this decisive moment in time, whether due to this particular provocation or perhaps following subsequent ones that might soon be attempted by other disgruntled states like the Baltic ones, Poland, and/or Ukraine. Should this gambit fail like some expect it to, then the UK will only find itself more isolated than ever before from both the US and EU. It could also potentially serve as a deterrent to others like the ones that were mentioned in the preceding sentence unless they become even more desperate to attempt their own provocations. In any case, the Biden Administration must urgently regain control of its allies lest the most Russophobic among them ruin relations with Russia.
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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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Thank you for your speedy reply to my complaint where I elaborated a specific illustration to elucidate a larger allegation that CBC’s news and public affairs divisions are not doing honest, ethical, and evidence-based journalism. In my view CBC journalists are instead presenting Canadians with a fraudulent, censored and impoverished picture of what is going on with the COVID crisis.
I am aware of a growing body of citizens’ opinion, written interventions and even pending court cases advancing the argument that, since 2020, CBC journalists have become boosters and cheerleaders for an interpretation of public health which is not born out by the findings of evidence-based science. In fact CBC journalists seem inexplicably to have taken on the assignment to hide relevant facts and information from the Canadian public. Our lives are thereby being put in jeopardy and sometimes snuffed out because of the withholding of relevant information concerning the real nature of the predominant threats in this pandemic. Many voices have been raised to emphasize that media disinformation figures significantly among those threats.
The suppression of Prof Bridle‘s commentary at a Parliamentary press conference is an excellent example of the suppression of evidence by a whistleblower in a sound position to know how seriously the rushed emergency measures COVID jabs are threatening the very lives of Canadians. As Prof. Bridle sees it from his own independent research as a fully accredited and well published authority in the area of immuno-vaccinology at the University of Guelph, the COVID jabs are causing the proliferation of toxic spike proteins throughout the vascular systems of injection recipients.
Prof. Bridle was very clear in stating in the Canadian Parliament at the invitation of Independent MP Derek Sloan that, in his professional opinion, the mass dissemination COVID jabs is currently creating the conditions for untold numbers of unnecessary blood clots, infertility cases, myocarditis, heart attacks and death. This list is far from complete.
Dr. Bridle also explained his dismay that the Ontario College of Physicians has coercively imposed improper pressure on the professional independence of doctors and, by implication, on Canadian university professors whose expertise lies in professional fields pertinent to public health. As Prof. Bridle and Dr. Patrick Philips asserted in the Parliamentary press conference, the College is instructing its members to refrain from stating any position that might be considered “anti-vaccine.”
click to access video. MP Derek Sloan
Prof. Bridle indicated he was receiving many SOS interventions from professionals, including from journalists, experiencing the pinch of executive silencing from above. It seems to me entirely possible that CBC is part of this pattern. You, Mr. Nagler, are in a position to look into this possible problem at the CBC. Could you please do so. I can’t imagine that the morale of some CBC employees is very good these days given the kinds of repression being reported by all kinds of professional personnel these days.
Is the CBC doing the same as the College of Physicians in applying coercion on the independent judgments of its own journalistic professionals in order to muzzle them when they arrive at evidence-based conclusions inconsistent with the political policies of the minority government in Ottawa. Only recently Prime Minister Justin Trudeau boasted publicly that he is skilled in controlling what does and does not appear in the media through his liberal application of financial bribes.
Over the years I have looked at various times for statements outlining CBC’s missions, mandates, duties, and responsibilities. For the most part these functions have been assigned to the CBC through Parliament by its primary funders, namely us, the Canadian people. I have been especially concerned with the public broadcaster’s responsibilities concerning its broadcasting of news and public affairs. Part of this concern stems from my suspicion that the CBC engages in blacklisting to prevent our national community from receiving a wide sampling of our own voices representing a wide array of arbitrarily excluded perspectives and opinions. Is Prof. Bridle being blacklisted because his professional findings and opinions are inconsistent with the biases and prejudices of the CBC’s chain of command?
When I have looked into what you call CBC’s “journalism policies,” I have been surprised by the number of changes and revisions in the missions, duties, responsibilities and mandates assigned to the CBC by Parliament and sometimes by the federal Executive branch. Could you please send me a text giving the precise wording in all significant documents describing the current version of the “journalism policy” meant to govern the production of news and public affairs at the CBC.
It seems to me very unlikely that CBC’s journalism policy includes provisions sanctioning inaccuracy in CBC journalism, including through the crime of omission. I can’t envisage that there would be provisions in CBC’s journalism policy allowing for the public broadcaster to withhold news whose effect in this instance is to deprive Canadians of information that would help us avoid unnecessary deaths, injuries and permanent disabilities. I can’t believe that the CBC’s journalism policy makes provision to encourage ignorance in Canadians by excluding vital coverage (even in Parliament) by accredited experts in the public health arena with significant strategic insights into the true nature of the COVID crisis.
Let’s scrutinize together the “journalism policy” that our public broadcaster is mandated to deliver to its owners and its audience. It would obviously help to include some history of how this policy came to be, how it has changed over time and why it has changed over time. Furthermore, it seems clear to me that CBC’s journalistic policy would have to be understood within a host of policies and statements of a more general nature about the character of the CBC’s mandate to serve Canadians as a public broadcaster rather than as a government broadcaster.
As I see it, the larger context of our exchange here, Mr. Nagler, arises because the CBC is supposed to be a public broadcaster accountable to the citizens it is meant to serve. Could we please help raise the quality of our exchange in order to give expression to the higher ideals of public broadcasting. Or has the CBC already become effectively a government broadcaster.
Until we clarify the nature of the criteria you were going by Mr. Nagler, I don’t think you are in a sound position to have immediately declared without any supporting evidence or discussion that the “information content the CBC has produced fully respects CBC’s journalism policy.” That statement seems to me like a prefabricated throwaway phrase manifesting a lack of due diligence on the part of its author. The effect of such a glib dismissal of a serious intervention might be to discourage and sideline the good-faith intervention of conscientious citizens including me. Of course my interest in criticizing the CBC is to find out if it is possible to improve the institution at this stage.
The CBC is playing with fire by suppressing a serious and credible warning from an important independent whistleblower, Dr. Bridle, who makes a credible case that a concerted campaign is underway to destroy the messenger in order to kill his message. Is Dr. Bridle that messenger being set up for professional assassination and obscurity in order to prevent his warning from being widely heard by a wide array of Canadians?
Dr. Bridle is far from alone in raising his voice to point out that the obscenity of politically-driven censorship and career wrecking is destroying the foundations of our supposedly free and democratic society.
The censored researcher makes it clear that the CBC has plenty of accomplices in preventing the public from becoming familiar with Dr. Bridle’s cutting edge work developed meticulously over a long period of time on an important platform of publicly-funded independent science in Canada. The long and short of it is that the lives of Canadians are being put at risk by the mass, unscreened delivery of COVID jabs while other remedies are being wrongfully repressed in a misguided effort to meet the legal requirements for an emergency measure utilization of an insufficiently tested medical product.
Why isn’t CBC diligently following the science including the science behind Dr. Bridle’s warning? Why isn’t the CBC educating Canadians on the law of medical experimentation on human subjects as outlined in the Nuremberg Code? The condition for experimentation on human subjects is that authorities must meet high standards of public education in order to achieve informed consent from the human subjects participating in the huge medical experiment presently underway. The capacity in Canada to provide a firm basis of informed consent from the human subjects in this unfolding medical experiment is being undermined by the censorious coverage of the COVID-19 crisis by our national public broadcaster.
Unfortunately the CBC seems to be mired these days in a lack of respect not only for science but also for due diligence as well as for getting to the bottom of the whole story, not just the aspects of the story that support the political policies of the government. I would be gratified, sir, if you were to prove me wrong in this accusation through your conduct of a genuine independent investigation of the CBC’s flawed and biased COVID coverage.
The Bridle case embodies a convergence of many controversies that should be rocking the CBC to its very foundation. The credibility of the entire Crown Corporation is presently at issue as is the credibility of the Office you now fill Mr. Nagler. From what I can see from my Internet search, Radio Canada is also suppressing the story outlined on June 17 in Canada’s Parliamentary press conference facility.
So, in conclusion, let me return to my main theme. I very much doubt that the journalism policy of CBC/Radio Canada allows for the suppression of information touching not only on the state of knowledge of Canadians but also on our ability to make independent decisions with informed consent about matters that have major life or death implications for our entire citizenry.
I write to acknowledge receipt of your email. Mr. Guy Gendron is the Ombudsman for French Services at Radio-Canada, and I am the Ombudsman for English Services at CBC. You sent your email to me, so I am taking the liberty of replying, and copying Mr. Gendron.
The answer would be the same from both of us. The two Ombudsman offices are independent of CBC News management and thus have no say in day-to-day decision-making about which stories are covered. Our mandate is to determine whether information content the CBC has produced fully respects CBC’s journalism policy. Establishing editorial priorities is, appropriately, the prerogative of programmers.
However, I have shared your email directly with Brodie Fenlon, Editor in Chief of CBC News, so that he will be aware of your concerns.
I am asking you, Mr. Gendron, to please investigate the failure of CBC/Radio Canada to report on the substance of an important Parliamentary Press Conference hosted by Independent MP Derek Sloan on June 17.
Mr. Sloan invited Prof. Bryam Bridle (Guelph University), Dr. Patrick Philips and Dr. Dan Welsh to speak on the attacks taking place against them. The analysis of these fully accredited researchers, academics and medical practitioners on COVID-19, lockdowns, vaccines and such is not in line with the narrow doctrinaire orthodoxy pushed uniformly by the CBC and by many other commercial media venues. The guests of MP Sloan explained how they have been persecuted and pressured to conform with dictatorially imposed positions on the COVID crisis with which they do not agree.
Please view the video of the press conference. MP Sloan’s invitees make especially serious accusations against the Ontario College of Surgeons, the Ontario College of Nurses, and the Canadian Armed Forces. Mr Sloan comments himself on the force of the authoritarian push to silence and censor even top experts in their fields, experts with commentaries that do not fit within the narrow uniformity of permitted discourse.
The failure of CBC/Radio Canada to cover this very significant event in the unfolding history of the COVID crisis is consistent with the limited, biased, one-sided coverage offered by the CBC on the event labelled a pandemic by the WHO. The media censorship during this pandemic of voices as well as of diverse perspectives and professional opinions is, in my view, appalling. CBC/Radio Canada ranks highly among the worst offenders. The failure to even report on the Bridle case, let alone to report fairly and accurately, is especially worthy of criticism and analysis.
Please look into this matter and share with me the journalistic rationale used by the CBC/Radio Canada for depriving Canadians of proper reporting of the Parliamentary press conference hosted by Mr. Sloan on June 17. Prof. Bridle mentioned he has been contacted by many muzzled professionals including within the Canadian media. The clampdown on open discourse and debate is extremely obvious and it is serious enough that I am beginning to wonder if the CBC/Radio should be abolished so that it can be replaced by a genuine public broadcaster willing to seek balance, accuracy and fairness in the content of its programs.
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June 24th, 2021 by Center For Biological Diversity
First published on May 5, 2021
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A new study published today by the academic journal Frontiers in Environmental Science finds that pesticides widely used in American agriculture pose a grave threat to organisms that are critical to healthy soil, biodiversity and soil carbon sequestration to fight climate change. Yet those harms are not considered by U.S. regulators.
The study, by researchers at the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth U.S. and the University of Maryland, is the largest, most comprehensive review of the impacts of agricultural pesticides on soil organisms ever conducted.
The researchers compiled data from nearly 400 studies, finding that pesticides harmed beneficial, soil-dwelling invertebrates including earthworms, ants, beetles and ground nesting bees in 71% of cases reviewed.
“It’s extremely concerning that 71% of cases show pesticides significantly harm soil invertebrates,” said Dr. Tara Cornelisse, an entomologist at the Center and co-author of the study. “Our results add to the evidence that pesticides are contributing to widespread declines of insects, like beneficial predaceous beetles and pollinating solitary bees. These troubling findings add to the urgency of reining in pesticide use.”
The findings come on the heels of a recent study published in the journal Science showing pesticide toxicity has more than doubled for many invertebrates since 2005. Despite reduced overall use of insecticides, the chemicals most commonly used today, including neonicotinoids, are increasingly toxic to beneficial insects and other invertebrates. Pesticides can linger in the soil for years or decades after they are applied, continuing to harm soil health.
The reviewed studies showed impacts on soil organisms that ranged from increased mortality to reduced reproduction, growth, cellular functions and even reduced overall species diversity. Despite these known harms, the Environmental Protection Agency does not require soil organisms to be considered in any risk analysis of pesticides. What’s more, the EPA gravely underestimates the risk of pesticides to soil health by using a species that spends its entire life aboveground — the European honeybee — to estimate harm to all soil invertebrates.
“Below the surface of fields covered with monoculture crops of corn and soybeans, pesticides are destroying the very foundations of the web of life,” said Dr. Nathan Donley, another co-author and scientist at the Center. “Study after study indicates the unchecked use of pesticides across hundreds of millions of acres each year is poisoning the organisms critical to maintaining healthy soils. But our regulators have been ignoring the harm to these important ecosystems for decades.”
Soil invertebrates provide a variety of essential ecosystem benefits such as cycling nutrients that plants need to grow, decomposing dead plants and animals so that they can nourish new life, and regulating pests and diseases. They’re also critical for the process of carbon conversion. As the idea of “regenerative agriculture” and using soil as a carbon sponge to help fight climate change gains momentum around the world, the findings of this study confirm that reducing pesticide use is a key factor in protecting the invertebrate ecosystem engineers that play a critical role in carbon sequestration in the soil.
“Pesticide companies are continually trying to greenwash their products, arguing for the use of pesticides in ‘regenerative’ or ‘climate-smart’ agriculture,” said Dr. Kendra Klein, a co-author who’s also a senior scientist at Friends of the Earth. “This research shatters that notion and demonstrates that pesticide reduction must be a key part of combatting climate change in agriculture.”
“We know that farming practices such as cover cropping and composting build healthy soil ecosystems and reduce the need for pesticides in the first place,” said co-author Dr. Aditi Dubey of the University of Maryland. “However, our farm policies continue to prop up a pesticide-intensive food system. Our results highlight the need for policies that support farmers to adopt ecological farming methods that help biodiversity flourish both in the soil and above ground.”
Background
The review paper looked at 394 published papers on the effects of pesticides on non-target invertebrates that have egg, larval or immature development in the soil. That review encompassed 275 unique species or groups of soil organisms and 284 different pesticide active ingredients or unique mixtures of pesticides.
The assessment analyzed how pesticides affected the following endpoints: mortality, abundance, richness and diversity, behavior, biochemical markers, impairment of reproduction and growth, and structural changes to the organism. This resulted in an analysis of more than 2,800 separate “cases” for analysis, measured as a change in a specific endpoint following exposure of a specific organism to a specific pesticide. It found that 71% of cases showed negative effects.
Negative effects were evident in both lab and field studies, across all studied pesticide classes, and in a wide variety of soil organisms and endpoints. Organophosphate, neonicotinoid, pyrethroid and carbamate insecticides, amide/anilide herbicides and benzimidazole and inorganic fungicides harmed soil organisms in more than 70% of cases reviewed.
Insecticides caused the most harm to nontarget invertebrates, with studies showing around 80% of tested endpoints negatively affected in ground beetles, ground nesting solitary bees, parasitic wasps, millipedes, centipedes, earthworms and springtails.
Herbicides and fungicides were especially detrimental to earthworms, nematodes and springtails.
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While the ordinary person knows that all is not well with the economy and society, the wealthy elite that run the Federal Reserve, which is a private entity, continue to make miscalculations and poor judgements about the economy and then nonchalantly plead ignorance when reality slaps them in the face.
Prices on dozens of products, including houses and gas, are soaring. So is debt of all kinds.
Thousands of capitalist firms at home and abroad are “zombie companies”—companies that generate revenue but have very little left over after paying off their debts. In other words, they don’t really make a profit. Millions have not returned to work.
The U.S. labor force participation rate remains flat and millions of people that do have jobs do not make much money at all. More than 1.5 million people are still losing jobs every month in the U.S. In addition, unemployment insurance for millions has ended or will be ending soon. Meanwhile income and wealth inequality have skyrocketed and generalized anxiety has increased throughout the globe. Worldwide, hundreds of millions of people have sunk into poverty as a result of the decisions and policies of the rich and their political and media representatives. Crisis never seems to end.
In remarks made on June 16, 2021, Jerome Powell, head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, admitted that, “the recovery is incomplete and risks to the economic outlook remain” (see this). Powell also said that, “the pace of improvement has been uneven” in the “labor market.”
He added that, “Employment in this [leisure & hospitality] sector and the economy as a whole remains well below [already-low] pre-pandemic levels” (emphasis added). Powell then repeated the nonsense that the economy would recover further as more people got vaccinated, as if to imply that horrible economic conditions are the result of an inadequate number of vaccinated people. Besides the fact that millions are already vaccinated, vaccines and viruses have nothing to do with economic “booms and busts” under capitalism. They may function as extenuating circumstances but they are not the root cause of constant economic instability, insecurity, and chaos. Many economies around the world were in decline well before the “Covid Pandemic” started. Many will not “recover” for at least a decade.
After listing a few more indicators of a continually failing economy and finally backing away a little from overly-rosy economic forecasts, Powell, like his predecessors, throws his hands up in the air and casually asserts:
I will also say though, the last thing I’ll say is this is an extraordinarily unusual time. And we really don’t have a template or, you know, any experience of a situation like this. And so I think we have to be humble about our ability to understand the data. It’s not a time to try to reach hard conclusions about the labor market, about inflation, about the path of policy. We need to see more data. We need to be a little bit patient. And I do think though, that we’ll be seeing some things coming up in coming months that will inform our thinking. (emphasis added)
This is neither inspiring nor scientific. Such assertions leave no one feeling confident or like we are in good hands.
Right around the time of the Wall-Street-engineered economic collapse of 2008, many prominent economic “experts” and leaders of finance repeated the nonsense that they did not know how such a major economic collapse could have happened and that they could not have predicted such a calamity and that everything they thought they knew about the economy did not apply to the catastrophe that was unfolding. Everyone apparently was caught off guard and no one presumably could have predicted what would unfold, despite the fact that capitalism is defined by recurring crises. In other words, “leaders” and “experts” took zero responsibility for one of the most devastating economic collapses of the last 100 years.
Back in 2008, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before Congress about the economic collapse. He casually stated that he was in a “state of shocked disbelief” over a so-called “once-in-a-century credit tsunami.” With no sense of irony he declared that, “We’re not smart enough as people, we can’t see events that far in advance. And it’s very difficult to say in retrospect why didn’t we catch something.”
He also said, “I still do not fully understand why it [the collapse] happened and obviously to the extent that I figure where it happened and why I will change my views. If the facts change I will change.” Even more embarrassing, he went on to declare that there was a “flaw in the model of how I perceived the world works.” Tens of millions continue to suffer from the “Great Recession” of 2008, and only 12 years later humanity finds itself besieged by the 2020 economic collapse.
For his part, Nobel Prize winning economist Eugene Fama openly and scandalously stated:
“We don’t know what causes recessions. I’m not a macroeconomist, so I don’t feel bad about that. We’ve never known. Debates go on to this day about what caused the Great Depression. Economics is not very good at explaining swings in economic activity… If I could have predicted the crisis, I would have. I don’t see it. I’d love to know more about what causes business cycles.”
Sadly, Greenspan and Fama were not the only ones declaring Know-Nothingism and promoting incoherence. Many other prominent economists and capital-centered ideologues repeated in unison that they had no idea how or why such an economic collapse could occur. Each of them made it sound like years of education, numerous awards, and multiple credentials did not prepare them to foresee such an economic calamity. Such is the miserable bankruptcy of capital-centered economics.
Society does not need incompetent and retrogressive forces leading society or managing the economy. It needs a real public authority committed to building a balanced, self-reliant, diverse, consciously organized economy that drives modern nation-building and uses human-centered science to make economic decisions. So long as the wealthy elite are in charge, the economy and society will continue to lurch from one crisis to another.
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Shawgi Tell, PhD, is author of the book “Charter School Report Card.” His main research interests include charter schools, neoliberal education policy, and privatization. He can be reached at [email protected].
Comments Off on Mounting Debts, Bankruptcies, Inflation, Mass Unemployment: The Financial Establishment Promotes “Economic Nonsense” and Incoherent Analysis
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The world is currently in the midst of the biggest economic and social experiment of its entire history, with big tech trying to completely digitize our entire lives.
Under the pretext of preventing the spread of a disease, we are being pushed to work from home, learn via homeschooling, shop only online, communicate via internet conference platforms, and to have our movement and contact profile recorded via tracking apps.
Digitization is also being forced upon us in the financial sector: Bank branches are being closed, cash is being pushed back, and central banks are working on what is by far the most important project of our time: the introduction of central bank digital currencies (CBDC’s).
At the same time, we are experiencing an ever-greater loss of our fundamental rights. Governments have restricted our freedom of travel and taken from us the right of assembly, while freedom of expression is being increasingly curtailed by social media.
There is a direct link between these developments: The future into which we are being led, cannot be reconciled with the principles of democracy. This is caused by the fact that we live in a society dominated by an extremely wealthy and extremely powerful, but at the same time tiny, minority. Their greatest interest is to maintain their own prosperity and power. Therefore, digitization is not for our benefit, but for the benefit of this minority.
However, since digitization itself offers tremendous opportunities for democratization and could thereby endanger the rule of the few, this tiny minority is forced to constantly resort to new mechanisms of oppression.
An example of this development is China, where the government monitors, controls its subjects like no other country on earth. The fact that this government, of all things, is provided by a communist party shows that the ideology of those, who sit at the levers of political power, is completely irrelevant.
This is because there is a force that stands high above all governments, pulling the strings in the background, a force that exists in China just as it does in the US or in any other country. It is the digital-financial complex, the symbiosis of the most powerful corporations in the digital and financial sectors.
This complex has managed to concentrate more money and more power in its hands than any force in human history. It has done so by controlling the two most important lifelines of our time: global data and financial flows. However, this complex has for some time been facing a huge problem: The monetary system, on which its power is based, broke down in March 2020. After being artificially maintained for more than 12 years by money creation and interest rate cuts, interest rates have reached zero, leaving only unconditional money creation. But this leads straight into the devaluation of money.
Now this devaluation of money is not at all inconvenient for the digital-financial complex, because it is currently facing the highest level of debt of all times – and inflation is a highly suitable means of getting rid of these debts. But what happens once inflation has eliminated much of the debt? There is a plan for that, too, namely the introduction of CBDC’s. But this will change our lives in a historically unique way, and certainly not for the better.
Money has two basic properties: It is a means of payment and an instrument of power. As such, it has always been used by those who issued it to consolidate and expand their grip on others. This has been done in a variety of ways: by charging interest, by sparking inflation, by tying credit to conditions, or by entangling people in a web of debt.
These undemocratic characteristics of money as an instrument of domination are now to be taken to extremes. In the case of the CBDC’S, which will almost certainly be introduced in the form of what is euphemistically called a ‘universal basic income’, entirely new dictatorial mechanisms will be added to the old ones:
It will be possible to control the recipients’ consumer behavior, making saving impossible for them and forcing them to spend the money for specific purposes within predefined time periods. It will also be possible to reward good behavior, punish criticism and even cut off individuals from all financial flows.
CBDC’s will be the core of a coercive social regime that will largely manage without overt violence because it can stifle any opposition without people noticing. CBDC’s will be an almost perfect means of controlling, manipulating, and conditioning the population, leading to a largely invisible exercise of power. When this new money is introduced, it will be nothing less than the most profoundly intrusive monetary reform of all time.
All of this sounds unsettling, and the prospects are indeed depressing, as this development has been dramatically accelerated in recent months by the lockdowns. So, will we no longer be able to escape this new monetary regime?
This depends on only one factor, namely: the awareness of the majority of the people. At present, only a tiny part of the population even knows about this project, because it is largely kept secret by politicians and the mainstream media. And even those who do know about it are mostly unaware of its dramatic consequences.
For this very reason, it is of utmost importance to make it clear to as many people as possible what CBDC’s herald: the end of all democracy and the final transition to a regime of authoritarian corporatism, also called fascism, based on the monetary system.
Henry Ford once said, ” “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
Such a revolution is urgently needed, not in the streets, but in the minds of people.
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While well over a million people died unnecessary deaths because effective non-patented treatments were deliberately systemically suppressed, behavioral scientists weaponized fear to control the global population.
According to behavioral scientists who were members of the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviors (SPI-B), we have all been strategically systematically “stunned by the weaponization of behavioral psychology” throughout the pandemic.
Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavior (SPI-B), a subcommittee that advises the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), admit the government is using fear to control and manipulate the population;
SPI-B, which advocated for the use of fear messaging, now says it was unethical, totalitarian and a regrettable mistake;
Aside from the barrage of bad-news-only data — which was heavily manipulated in a variety of ways — fear and anxiety are also generated by keeping you confused;
Giving out contradictory recommendations is being done on purpose, to keep you psychologically vulnerable;
By layering confusion and uncertainty on top of fear, you can bring an individual to a state in which they can no longer think rationally;
Once driven into an illogical state, you are easily manipulated;
Government’s reliance on behavioral psychology didn’t just happen as a result of the pandemic. These tactics have been used for years, and are increasing.
“Use of fear to control behavior in Covid crisis was ‘totalitarian,’ admit scientists
SAGE scientists admit to fear and control tactics
SAGE-SPI-B scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to control people’s behavior during the Covid pandemic have admitted its work was ‘unethical’ and ‘totalitarian.’…
Gavin Morgan, a psychologist on the team, said: ‘Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.’…
One SPI-B scientist told Ms Dodsworth… ‘There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear. The way we have used fear is dystopian.’
‘The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.’
Another SPI-B member said: ‘You could call psychology ‘mind control.’’
‘That’s what we do… it has been used nefariously in the past.’
One warned that ‘people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise…’
‘We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in.’
Another said: ‘Without a vaccine, psychology is your main weapon….’
As well as overt warnings about the danger of the virus, the Government has been accused of feeding the public a non-stop diet of bad news, such as deaths and hospitalizations, without ever putting the figures in context with news of how many people have recovered, or whether daily death tolls are above or below seasonal averages.
Another member of SPI-B said they were ‘stunned by the weaponization of behavioral psychology’ during the pandemic, and that ‘psychologists didn’t seem to notice when it stopped being altruistic and became manipulative.’
‘They have too much power and it intoxicates them.’
‘As SAGE SPI-B knows very well, fear is our most powerful emotion. It is rooted deep within the inner reaches of our minds.
When we’re afraid, we do dangerous and irrational things.’
‘Manipulating our most primitive instincts to change behavior is taken from the textbook of tyrants.’
‘Over the past year, we have seen the biggest Campaign of Fear the world has ever seen.’
We now face an unprecedented mental health crisis….’
Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the Covid Recovery Group of Tory MPs, said: ‘If it is true that the state took the decision to terrify the public to get compliance with rules, that raises extremely serious questions about the type of society we want to become.’
‘If we’re being really honest, do I fear that Government policy today is playing into the roots of totalitarianism? Yes, of course it is.’”
Here are some excerpts from a new article by Dr. Joseph Mercola on Laura’s book and the weaponization of fear throughout the media’s coverage of the pandemic:
“Information that would have balanced out the bad news — such as recovery rates and just how many so-called ‘cases’ actually weren’t, because they never had a single symptom — were censored and suppressed.
They also refused to put any of the data into context, such as reviewing whether the death toll actually differed significantly from previous years. Instead, each new case was treated as an emergency and a sign of catastrophic doom.
Don’t Be Confused — Contradiction Is a Warfare Tactic
Aside from the barrage of bad-news-only data — which, by the way, was heavily manipulated in a variety of ways — fear and anxiety are also generated by keeping you confused. According to Dodsworth, giving out contradictory recommendations and vague instructions is being done intentionally, to keep you psychologically vulnerable.
‘When you create a state of confusion, people become ever more reliant on the messaging. Instead of feeling confident about making decisions, they end up waiting for instructions from the Government,’ she said in a May 20, 2021, interview on the Planet Normal podcast.
An example provided by Dodsworth are the pandemic measures implemented over Christmas 2020:
‘Family Christmases were on, then off, then back on, then off again. You have got someone tightening the screw, then loosening the screw, then tightening it again. It’s like a torture scenario.’
But that’s not all. As explained by psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin, by layering confusion and uncertainty on top of fear, you can bring an individual to a state in which they can no longer think rationally.
Once driven into an illogical state, they are easily manipulated. I have no doubt driving people into a state where logic and reason no longer registers is the whole point behind much of the conflicting information we’re given….
The Fear Factory
In her book, Dodsworth details a number of branches of the British government that are using psychological warfare methods in their interaction with the public. In addition to the SPI-B, there’s the:
Behavioral Insights team, the so-called ‘nudge unit,’ a semi-independent government body that applies ‘behavioral insights to inform policy, improve public services and deliver positive results for people and communities.’ This team also advises foreign nations.
Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), which is part of the U.K.’s Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, advises front groups disguised as public ‘grassroots’ organizations on how to ‘covertly engineer the thoughts of people.’
Rapid Response Unit, launched in 2018, operates across the British Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s office (colloquially known as ‘Number 10’ as in the physical address, 10 Downing Street in London) to ‘counter misinformation and disinformation.’ They also work with the National Security Communications Team during crises to ensure ‘official information’ gets maximum visibility.
Counter Disinformation Cell, which is part of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Both monitor social media and combat ‘fake news’ about science in general and COVID-19 in particular, with ‘fake news’ being anything that contradicts the World Health Organization’s guidance.
Government Communications Headquarters (QCHQ), an intelligence and security organization that provides information to the U.K. government and the armed forces. According to Dodsworth, QCHQ personnel, and even members of the 77th Brigade, have been enlisted as so-called sockpuppets and trolls to combat anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown messaging on social media.
According to Dodsworth, there are many others.
In her book, she claims at least 10 different government departments in the U.K. are working with ‘behavioral insights teams’ to manipulate the public.
Importantly, government’s reliance on behavioral psychology didn’t just happen as a result of the pandemic. These tactics have been used for years, for myriad PR purposes, and while the pandemic may be winding down, Dodsworth warns that more and more behavioral scientists are being hired:
‘It’s growing and growing. Right now, I feel we are in a maelstrom of nudge,’ she says.
‘In the past, there have been calls to consult the public on the use of behavioral psychology, and those calls have come from the behavioral scientists themselves.
And yet it hasn’t happened.
We haven’t yet been consulted on the use of subconscious techniques which effectively strip away our choices…
I fervently hope this book [‘The State of Fear’] is actually going to inspire a much-needed conversation about the use of fear, not just in the epidemic, but the way we use behavioral psychology overall.
It’s not just a genie that has been let out the bottle. It’s like we’ve unleashed a Hydra and you can keep chopping its head off, but they keep employing more of these behavioral scientists throughout different government departments.
It’s very much how the Government now does business. It’s the business of fear….
I think ultimately people don’t want to be manipulated. People don’t enjoy being hoodwinked and they don’t want to live in a state of fear. We maybe need to be a bit bolder about standing up more quickly when something is not right.’”
For deeper overall context, here are excerpts from report I published on the weaponization of PSYOPS when the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal gave the general public a rare in-depth look into Psychological Operations (PSYOPS).
As Analytica’s CEO Alexander Nix summed it up back then:
“Your behavior is driven by your personality and actually the more you can understand about people’s personality as psychological drivers, the more you can actually start to really tap in to why and how they make their decisions.
We call this behavioral microtargeting and this is really our secret sauce, if you like.
“‘This is a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit them…. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen before.
They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional leash and never letting them go,’ said professor Jonathan Albright….
It was a piece of a much bigger and darker puzzle – a Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine being used to manipulate our opinions and behavior to advance specific political agendas.
By leveraging automated emotional manipulation alongside swarms of bots, Facebook dark posts, A/B testing, and fake news networks, a company called Cambridge Analytica has activated an invisible machine that preys on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in public opinion….
This new wave has brought the world something exponentially more insidious – personalized, adaptive, and ultimately addictive propaganda.
Silicon Valley spent the last ten years building platforms whose natural end state is digital addiction….
Welcome to the age of Weaponized AI Propaganda…. Big Data Surveillance Meets Computational Psychology….
Analytica’s personality model has allowed it to create a personality profile for every adult in the U.S. — 220 million of them, each with up to 5,000 data points.
And those profiles are being continually updated and improved the more data you spew out online.”
Think about all of this in context of COVID PSYOPS, which are significantly more evolved than Analytica’s 2016 behavioral micro-targeting:
“[Imagine an election campaign with] 250 million algorithmic versions of their political message all updating in real-time, personalized to precisely fit the worldview and attack the insecurities of their targets…
Instead of having to deal with misleading politicians, we may soon witness a cambrian explosion of pathologically-lying political and corporate bots that constantly improve at manipulating us.”
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” ~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
I cannot stress this enough: the weaponization of PSYOPS and behavioral psychology is the enslavement of humanity.
Everything we communicate on our phones and online is now weaponized against us.
A.I. machine-learned algorithmic manipulation of individual-specific confirmation biases is the psychological enslavement of humanity – such a devastating weapon!
Imperial mind snatchers will think for you. They are already thinking for a significant percentage of humanity.
Cogito, ergo sum.
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One remarkable aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic has been how often unpopular scientific ideas, from the lab-leak theory to the efficacy of masks, were initially dismissed, even ridiculed, only to resurface later in mainstream thinking. Differences of opinion have sometimes been rooted in disagreement over the underlying science. But the more common motivation has been political.
Another reversal in thinking may be imminent. Some scientists have raised concerns that the safety risks of Covid-19 vaccines have been underestimated. But the politics of vaccination has relegated their concerns to the outskirts of scientific thinking—for now.
Historically, the safety of medications—including vaccines—is often not fully understood until they are deployed in large populations. Examples include rofecoxib (Vioxx), a pain reliever that increased the risk of heart attack and stroke; antidepressants that appeared to increase suicide attempts among young adults; and an influenza vaccine used in the 2009-10 swine flu epidemic that was suspected of causing febrile convulsions and narcolepsy in children. Evidence from the real world is valuable, as clinical trials often enroll patients who aren’t representative of the general population. We learn more about drug safety from real-world evidence and can adjust clinical recommendations to balance risk and benefits.
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or Vaers, which is administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, is a database that allows Americans to document adverse events that happen after receiving a vaccine. The FDA and CDC state that the database isn’t designed to determine whether the events were caused by a vaccine. This is true. But the data can nonetheless be evaluated, accounting for its strengths and weaknesses, and that is what the CDC and FDA say they do.
The Vaers data for Covid-19 vaccines show an interesting pattern. Among the 310 million Covid-19 vaccines given, several adverse events are reported at high rates in the days immediately after vaccination, and then fall precipitously afterward. Some of these adverse events might have occurred anyway. The pattern may be partly attributable to the tendency to report more events that happen soon after vaccination.
The database can’t say what would have happened in the absence of vaccination. Nonetheless, the large clustering of certain adverse events immediately after vaccination is concerning, and the silence around these potential signals of harm reflects the politics surrounding Covid-19 vaccines. Stigmatizing such concerns is bad for scientific integrity and could harm patients.
Four serious adverse events follow this arc, according to data taken directly from Vaers: low platelets (thrombocytopenia); noninfectious myocarditis, or heart inflammation, especially for those under 30; deep-vein thrombosis; and death. Vaers records 321 cases of myocarditis within five days of receiving a vaccination, falling to almost zero by 10 days. Prior research has shown that only a fraction of adverse events are reported, so the true number of cases is almost certainly higher. This tendency of underreporting is consistent with our clinical experience.
Analyses to confirm or dismiss these findings should be performed using large data sets of health-insurance companies and healthcare organizations. The CDC and FDA are surely aware of these data patterns, yet neither agency has acknowledged the trend.
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A team of Israeli researchers said they began studying the possible link between Pfizer’s vaccine and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura after reports of a sudden increase in cases across Israel — four cases in one month compared to two or three cases per year.
Israeli researchers on Monday said they discovered a link between Pfizer’s COVID vaccine and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), a rare blood disease.
TTP is an autoimmune disorder that causes blood clots to form in small blood vessels throughout the body. According to the National Institutes of Health, these clots can cause serious health problems if they block vessels and restrict blood flow to organs, such as the brain, kidneys and heart.
According to the Jerusalem Post, the medical team said they found a “chronological connection” between vaccination and the onset of TTP symptoms. They stressed this occurred in both new patients and in patients with pre-existing TTP whose disease had been in remission but flared up soon after getting the vaccine.
The Health Ministry, which is evaluating the research, asked doctors not to provide interviews until the evaluation is complete.
Dr. Maya Koren-Michowitz, head of the Hematology and the Translational Hemato-Oncology Laboratory and lead author of the study, recommended people with a history of TTP get vaccinated only with special permission from their doctor — and if they do vaccinate, get a follow-up clinical evaluation.
Koren-Michowitz also called on “healthy people” who are vaccinated to be vigilant and seek medical help immediately if symptoms appear.
“Physicians and patients need to be alert to the clinical symptoms: weakness fatigue, neurological disorders, hemorrhage and chest pain,” the Israeli team said in a press release.
A spokesperson said the study is very small and “should not deter individuals from getting the COVID vaccine.”
Experts have long warned mRNA vaccines may cause blood clots
A search of the government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), using search criteria including reports of blood clots associated with blood coagulation disorders, produced a total of 6,352 events reported between Dec. 14, 2020 through June 11, 2021.
Of the 6,352 reported cases, 2,705 were attributed to Pfizer, 2,197 were attributed to Moderna and 1,408 were attributed to the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID vaccine.
On Dec. 8, 2020, before any COVID vaccines received Emergency Use Authorization in the U.S., J. Patrick Whelan, M.D., Ph.D., wrote the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about the potential for vaccines designed to create immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein “to cause microvascular injury and blood clots throughout the body including the brain, heart, liver and kidneys, in ways that were not assessed in the safety trials.”
As The Defender reported in February, Whelan, a Harvard-trained physician with a background in biochemistry, medicine and rheumatology, did not dispute the vaccines’ potential to quickly arrest the spread of the virus — assuming the vaccines prove to actually prevent transmission, which also was not assessed in the clinical trials.
But Whelan cautioned “it would be vastly worse if hundreds of millions of people were to suffer long-lasting or even permanent damage to their brain or heart microvasculature as a result of failing to appreciate in the short-term an unintended effect of full-length spike protein-based vaccines on other organs.”
In a study published by Oxford University, researchers found the number of people who developed cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) blood clots after COVID vaccines was about the same for Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.
According to the Oxford study, 4 in 1 million people experienced CVST during the two weeks following vaccination with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, versus 5 in 1 million people who developed the condition after getting the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Although researchers found a significantly higher incidence of blood clots in people who were infected with COVID, the incidence of blood clots following vaccines was still much higher than the background incidence of 0.41 — a strong signal the vaccines pose this specific risk.
“These findings are consistent with what we know about how vaccine-induced spike proteins can on their own cause cell signaling through interactions with the ACE-2 receptors,” said Lyn Redwood, RN, MSN, president emerita of Children’s Health Defense.
Redwood said:
“When this happens, it can result in inflammation and a host of other potentially pathological events in the epithelial lining of the blood vessels which can then trigger pro-inflammatory cytokines capable of activating coagulation systems and down-regulating anticoagulant pathways resulting in clot formation.”
A study published February in the Journal of Hematology examined thrombocytopenia following Pfizer and Moderna vaccination in response to the death of a 56-year-old Florida physician — the first identified patient who died from a brain hemorrhage after receiving Pfizer’s vaccine.
After examining 20 case reports of patients who suffered blood clots following vaccination — including 17 without pre-existing thrombocytopenia — and analyzing data from U.S. health agencies, VAERS and treatment providers, researchers behind the Journal of Hematology study could not exclude the possibility that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines had the potential to trigger ITP. They recommended additional surveillance.
In April, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) informed the FDA that mRNA products, through spike proteins, may have “the potential to cause microvascular injury [inflammation and small blood clots called microthrombi] to the brain, heart, liver and kidneys in ways that were not assessed in the safety trials.” The FDA did not respond.
On April 13, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, a physician-scientist and advocate for ethics who specializes in cardiothoracic surgery, joined Tucker Carlson on his show to discuss blood clots and vaccines.
Noorchashm, commenting on the FDA decision to temporarily pause J&J’s vaccine after reports of blood clots, said although it was a good sign the FDA was taking seriously blood clot complications with the J&J vaccine, the agency was missing similar thrombotic complications with Pfizer and Moderna.
Noorchashm said:
“I don’t know why this cluster is sort of affecting J&J. There are certainly other examples of thrombotic events with Pfizer and Moderna that have been entered into the VAERS system.”
According to Redwood, it’s “only logical to assume” that when the vaccine creates the identical spike protein that occurs in infection, and which has been identified as the culprit causing a myriad serious and life threatening injuries, “we are going to see these same injuries in individuals who receive the vaccines.”
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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 CDC is getting more reports than expected of heart inflammation cases after the COVID-19 vaccinations, according to Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office.
“Of the 1,226 reports of post-vaccination heart inflammation — a jump from under 800 — 827 were for myocarditis or pericarditis after dose 2. Another 267 were after dose 1. The rest were reports after an unknown dose,” The Epoch Times reported.
The Pfizer vaccine triggered most of the cases, although a few were reported after Moderna’s. The majority of the patients were male, with 40% of them age 29 or younger.
Shimabukuro revealed the news in a presentation Wednesday, June 23, 2021, to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
A pediatric cardiologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and the co-chair of the COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group also spoke, saying the data suggest that “mRNA vaccines may be a trigger for myocarditis” and there is a “likely association of myocarditis with mRNA vaccination in adolescents and young adults.”
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The following article is a joint collaboration between Michelle Perro, MD (Executive Director) and Stephanie Seneff, PhD (MIT Research Scientist). In 2017, Dr. Perro and Dr. Adams produced the highly acclaimed book, What’s Making our Children Sick? with a focus on the effects of industrial food on children’s health, highlighting patients’ stories and victories. Dr. Seneff is the author of the about-to-be released, Toxic Legacy, which discusses how glyphosate continues to destroy our children’s health and the environment.
From the GMOScience Team:
This editorial focuses on a different, but equally chilling assault on our children’s health and will further our understanding of what continues to make our children sick. Experimental gene therapy vaccines including both mRNA vaccines and genetically modified DNA vector vaccines are concerning to physicians and scientists.
In 1998, a vaccine was released for infants against rotavirus, a contagious virus that causes diarrhea. Albeit unpleasant, this infectious disease is manageable at home with extra fluids. However, soon after the introduction of the vaccine, it was reported that some infants developed intussusception, a type of bowel obstruction particular to infants where the bowel telescopes in on itself, commonly occurring at the intersection of the small and large intestine. While infants may be quite ill, prompt intervention is curative in all but a few cases.
The risk for development of this bowel obstruction following vaccination was 20-30 times higher than what would be expected in a normal population and occurred within two weeks of the administration of the vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as well as local agencies, quickly intervened and halted the usage of this vaccine. Two emergency investigations were instituted showing that the vaccine increased the risk for intussusception by one to two cases among 10,000 infants who received the vaccine. In response, the manufacturer voluntarily withdrew the rotavirus vaccine from usage in 1999.
The CDC claimed that the decision to remove the rotavirus vaccine was due to the fact that intussusception is a serious condition and that the complications from a rotavirus infection in the US can be prevented by oral rehydration. The CDC states:
It seems that, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, caution has been thrown to the wind. So much about 2020 and the pandemic related to SARS- CoV-2 is unprecedented. In addition to an unprecedented disease and its global response, COVID-19 has also initiated an unprecedented accelerated process of vaccine research, production, testing, and public distribution.
The sense of urgency around combatting this virus led to the creation, in March 2020, of Operation Warp Speed (OWS), then-President Donald Trump’s program to bring a vaccine against COVID-19 to market as quickly as possible, skipping several steps in the normal evaluation process. In response, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) collaborated with the biotechnology company Moderna in bringing an altogether new type of vaccine against infectious disease to market, one utilizing a technology based on messenger RNA (mRNA). Another mRNA vaccine was also developed in parallel by Pfizer in conjunction with a small biotech company in Europe called BioNTech.
Both of these vaccines have been approved for emergency use by the FDA in record time, with little regard for the fact that this technology is experimental and unproven. Now there is an aggressive campaign to get these vaccines into the arms of as many US citizens as possible, also in record time. This is true not only in the US, but also increasingly on a global scale. Essentially, the entire world’s population are serving as guinea pigs in a massive experimental study, and there is clear potential for a great deal of harm.
The global mass vaccination rollout on the world’s adults has now extended its hand into the arms of children. Initially, 16 year olds were encouraged and in some instances, ‘mandated’ to receive the experimental therapy. The age limit has now been decreased to 12 year olds, and imminently 5 year olds and younger are being targeted as the next ‘at risk’ populations. Children have almost zero risk of dying from COVID-19, and it is almost certain therefore that the risk/benefit ratio of these vaccines is too great to warrant their use on children.
Misnomer, Misstep and Myocarditis
Myocarditis is a condition caused by inflammation of the heart muscle, and it has been commonly attributed to viruses, drugs or other inflammatory agents. The heart can be mildly to severely affected, causing potential heart failure and arrhythmias. Additionally, it can be an autoimmune process and rogue antigens can precipitate its development. The innate immune system and specific cytokines (Th 17) can be drivers of further destruction. The incidence of myocarditis is uncertain, but it is uncommon and may affect only 1 per 100,000 children. Truly understanding this rare event in children can be difficult due to diagnostic challenges. It has been postulated that autoimmune myocarditis might be one of the reasons for sudden death reports following the mRNA vaccinations. Unlike other regenerative cells such as liver cells, heart muscle cells do not regenerate. Long term effects from cardiac inflammation have unpredictable consequences. Of significance, this type of information would have been revealed in a normal vaccine trial.
An awareness for a possible link between the mRNA vaccines and myocarditis started to appear on several fronts beginning in early May. In a statement issued on May 17, 2021, ACIP (the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) stated that there were relatively few reports of myocarditis, which were more common in males, following the second dose, and symptoms were generally mild. However, the following week on May 24, 2021, the same committee stated that there was a higher number of observed cases of myocarditis and pericarditis in 16-24 year olds. Two days later, an investigation was launched involving 18 hospitalized vaccinated teens in Connecticut with heart inflammation.
Furthermore, in a multi-organizational report from the journal Pediatrics, seven cases of acute myocarditis/myopericarditis were reported in healthy male teens, all within four days of having received the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Six of the 7 boys had no evidence of prior infection with COVID (negative SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid antibody assay). Of concern, all the teens had elevated troponin (evidence of ischemic or inflammatory myocardial injury). They are all reported to have recovered with treatments aimed at inflammation (steroidal and non-steroidal drugs and immune globulin). However, the paper states, “…No causal relationship between vaccine administration and myocarditis has been established. Continued monitoring and reporting to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is strongly recommended.”
As reported by Children’s Health Defense on June 15, 2021, The VAERS database contains 900 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis across all age groups, following COVID vaccines during the time window between Dec. 14, 2020 and June 4, 2021. All but 32 of these cases followed administration of an mRNA vaccine. Sadly, the CHD story showcased a 19-year-old woman who died from heart failure following vaccination.
Possible Mechanisms
While the paper cited above denied that a causal relationship between the rare cases of myocarditis and the vaccines had been found, there is considerable literature on both SARS- CoV-2 and on the mRNA vaccines that explains a very plausible causal mechanism.
The mRNA vaccines are made up of many lipid nanoparticles, each of which packages up messenger RNA coding for the spike protein that is normally produced by the virus. The mRNA in the vaccines has been engineered to resist degradation, and also to produce spike protein at a much greater rate than the original virus version does. Although this was unexpected, it has recently been demonstrated that spike protein can be detected in the blood of people vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine as early as one day after their first administered dose, and that it remains detectable for up to two weeks.
It had been known as early as 2005 that the original SARS-coronavirus binds to ACE2 receptors as a step towards gaining entry into cells, and that it is specifically the spike protein, which makes up the majority of its protein coat, that binds to the receptors. These same authors also showed that the spike protein by itself worsened acute lung failure in infected mice. They proposed that spike binding to the ACE2 receptors disabled their normal function in the renin-angiotensin pathway, resulting in damage due to an acute inflammatory response.
Like SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, also binds the ACE2 receptors, except that its binding affinity is ten to twenty-fold higher than that of its predecessor, and its binding to the receptor also disables the normal function of ACE2. Maruhashi and Higashi argued in a peer-reviewed paper that decreased ACE2 expres- sion in endothelial cells could be pivotal in the observed cardiovascular sequelae in patients suffering from COVID-19.
A study by Nuovo et al. demonstrated that, if the S1 subunit of the spike protein by itself was injected into the tail of mice, it induced endothelial cell damage in their blood vessels. These authors wrote: “It is concluded that ACE2 plus endothelial damage is a central part of SARS-CoV2 pathology and may be induced by the spike protein alone.” Endothelial dysfunction and endothelial damage are well established predictors of congestive heart failure.
Ominously, the version of the spike protein coded for by the vaccines is different from the one produced by the virus in a highly significant way: it has been engineered to be disabled in its ability to change its shape following attachment to the ACE2 receptors, a necessary step to allow it to fuse with the plasma membrane and gain entry into the cell. This was achieved by changing the code for a pair of adjacent amino acids in the fusion domain of the spike protein to two proline residues. Their logic in doing this was that it would allow this important part of the protein to be highly exposed to the immune cells to afford easier production of antibodies, the only goal of the vaccination procedure. However, this would also mean that the spike protein would remain attached to the ACE2 receptors. It has been shown that a complex consisting of the S1 component of the spike protein attached to ACE2 receptors gets detached from the membrane by enzymatic action, and this of course completely disables ACE2’s function in the membrane.
There is no compelling need for a vaccine to protect children from COVID-19, as the death rate among children is vanishingly small. However, children do rarely experience a serious condition such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome from COVID-19 infection, where the child may develop generalized organ inflammation. This is treatable, however with well-established safe medications. For example, there is excellent data showing how ivermectin (an antiparasitic drug made from a bacterium Streptomyces avermitilis) can dock in the region of two of the amino acids (leucine and histidine) of the ACE2 receptor and interfere with the attachment of the spike protein to the human cell membrane. Many other studies have shown that this drug has been used successfully in the prevention and treatment of SARS CoV-2 infections. There has been an exclusion and obfuscation of the various therapeutics available to be used against this viral infection. The suppression of information about the prevention and treatment with other modalities including pharmacologics that are safe for children and natural supplements is an equally criminal issue to be discussed at a future date.
Logic Lost
The CDC has now confirmed 226 cases of myocarditis after the COVID vaccine in people aged 30 and younger, with 250 more reports pending. Across all ages, 789 cases of heart inflammation have been reported after the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. An emergency meeting will be held June 18, 2021 to discuss this issue. However, Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases noted, “…there is no recommended change to vaccination of adolescents 12 and older.” Of note, in both original studies on the mRNA therapies from Pfizer and Modera, cardiac side effects were reported in their own research.
Planned Pediacide
In sum, we have imposed an experimental therapy on children for an illness to which they have essentially zero morbidity or mortality, have witnessed an explosion of disastrous health effects such as cardiac damage from this therapy, and are still proceeding with the vaccination march forward. Historically as evidenced by the rotavirus fiasco discussed earlier, just 8 cases of adverse health effects allowed an abrupt about face and halt of the usage of the vaccine. With the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine experiment, despite horrific consequences, there is an overt attack on children which can only be viewed as a planned pediacide. There is no rational reasoning for the continued assault on our children. Hence, there must be an immediate cessation of this genetic experiment on children and an investigation of those responsible for the global pediacide.
A View From the Front Line – Clinic Notes
Hyperbole? Rhetoric? Or real news from the front line? The true impact of our position can be witnessed in the clinic. Just this week, the majority of the patients I cared for involved managing effects from the CoV-2 vaccine. A 14 y/o who one week after the first Pfizer vaccine developed severe rhabdomyolysis, (characterized by the breakdown of skeletal muscle; which can be due to medications, viruses, trauma and exercise) was still symptomatic 3 weeks later. However, this patient had an unusual presentation with markers of autoimmunity and there is a role of autoimmune disease in children with this disorder. What is the role of the vaccine?
A 14 y/o male presented with a history of chest pain, severe myalgias (muscle pain), explosive diarrhea and vomiting the following day after the first Pfizer vaccine. The symptoms resolved and after the second dose of the vaccine, the symptoms returned, more aggressively, but resolved on their own. He has a history of childhood arrhythmias. His cardiologist felt that the vaccine had nothing to do with his symptoms and recommended no further evaluation. What is the role of the vaccine?
A 30 y/o dad received the J & J vaccine 1 month prior to his visit and developed a new onset of COVID 19 symptoms mostly involving loss of taste and smell. He tested positive for COVID on PCR testing. The mom was concerned about her nursing infant and toddler. She did not receive the vaccine due to her own history of cancer and was advised against it. What is the role of the vaccine?
These are real clinical situations. The formatted script is to deny vaccine culpability and offer no treatment other than supportive care. Those positions do not help the vulnerable populations we under oath have vowed to care for and protect.
(This clinical section is based on the personal experience of Dr. Perro.)
We are Not Alone in Our Concerns
Many medical professionals across the globe are sounding the alarm against a policy to vaccinate young children against COVID-19. In particular, members of a medical association called the Alliance for Portugal’s health have spoken out publicly against vaccinating Portuguese children against COVID 19, 100 Israeli doctors advise against vaccinating children, a letter signed by multiple doctors and scientists was written to the European Medicines Agency urging them to reexamine the safety issues of the COVID-19 vaccines, and the American Institute for Economic Research maintains the same position of vocal opposition to the injection of these unproven drugs into children’s arms.
Primum non nocere. The first rule of medicine: First do no harm.
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A navy counterterrorism training document obtained exclusively by The Intercept appears to conflate socialists with terrorists and lists the left-wing ideology alongside “neo-nazis.”
A section of the training document subtitled “Study Questions” includes the following: “Anarchists, socialists and neo-nazis represent which terrorist ideological category?”
The correct answer is “political terrorists,” a military source briefed on the training told me. The document, titled “Introduction to Terrorism/Terrorist Operations,” is part of a longer training manual recently disseminated by the Naval Education Training and Command’s Navy Tactical Training Center in conjunction with the Center for Security Forces. The training is designed for masters-at-arms, the Navy’s internal police, the military source said.
A reproduction of a Navy training document obtained by The Intercept. (Image: The Intercept)
“It’s just ineffective training because whoever is directing the Navy anti-terror curriculum would rather vilify the left than actually protect anything,” said the military official, who is not authorized to speak publicly. “Despite the fact that the most prominent threat is domestic, right-wing terror.”
Both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have identified white supremacists as the deadliest terror threat to the United States. In October 2020, the Department of Homeland Security issued its first annual “Homeland Threat Assessment” report, stating that white supremacists were “exceptionally lethal” and “will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland.” In September, FBI Director Christopher Wray, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that white supremacists “have been responsible for the most lethal attacks over the last decade” and that they comprise “the biggest chunk of our domestic terrorism portfolio.”
A spokesperson for the chief of naval personnel provided the following statement:
The “Training Guide / Assignment Sheet 2-1-2 / Introduction to Terrorism/Terrorist Operations” is a part of the approved curriculum for Anti-Terrorism Officer training courses. These courses have been delivered in the current format since 2019 but have existed in other forms with minor modifications since 2002. Each NETC course undergoes a formal course review every three years. This training is not connected with recent DOD or Navy Anti-Extremism Training and the course material is not meant to promote any opinion or judgment, and represents no policy statement.
Asked about the debate over how to respond to the domestic terror threat, Kevin Kline, a former FBI assistant special agent-in-charge at the bureau’s New Haven field office, agreed that the white supremacist threat was serious but warned that any response must respect constitutionally protected activity like speech. “No matter what we do in responding to the domestic terrorism problem, the constitution cannot be a casualty,” Kline said.
While the right has been vocal with its concerns about being unfairly targeted for political opinions, media coverage of the Biden administration’s focus on domestic extremism has paid considerably less attention to what it might mean for movements on the left, including Black Lives Matter, antifa (short for anti-fascists), and the environmental movement. In fact, internal FBI documents I reported on in 2019 specifically list anarchists and environmental extremists among its counterterrorism priorities.
Wray testified last year to Congress that antifa is an ideology rather than an organized group — a widely reported rebuttal of claims by President Donald Trump that antifa was a terrorist organization. In the same testimony, Wray also stressed that the bureau was pursuing “any number of properly predicated investigations into what we would describe as violent anarchist extremists.” And while he rebutted baseless claims that antifa had instigated the January 6 assault on the Capitol, Wray also said, “That doesn’t mean we’re not looking and we’ll continue to look.”
If you’re a military service member and have information about the domestic extremism training, text Ken Klippenstein via Signal at 202-510-1268.
As The Intercept reported in a recent series, the Justice Department’s handling of domestic extremism can often be arbitrary and disproportionate to any threat its targets may pose. One example of this is Black activist groups, which, as former FBI agent Mike German has pointed out, the FBI has been targeting for many years.
In 2019, I obtained internal documents revealing the FBI’s counterterrorism priorities in the fiscal years 2018-2020. While the bureau’s 2018 priorities included right-wing groups like “Militia Extremists,” “Sovereign Citizen Extremists,” and “White Supremacy Extremists,” it also included “Black Identity Extremists” and “Anarchist Extremists.” The FBI documents suggest without evidence that the term “Black Identity Extremist” grew out of the Black Lives Matter movement, which is not typically associated with violence.
“The FBI judges BIE [Black Identity Extremist] perceptions of police brutality against African Americans have likely motivated acts of pre-meditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement,” the documents stated. “The FBI first observed this activity following the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the subsequent acquittal of police officers involved in that incident.”
The document went on to describe a cryptic program code-named “Iron Fist,” in which the FBI would use undercover employees and recruit confidential informants among “Black Identity Extremist” groups. The documents even suggested that attempts to penetrate the groups had already been undertaken, describing the task as “challenging.” The FBI documents state: “It is challenging to get sources into BIE groups, due to security measures these groups employ. The vetting process and time investment to gain access to leadership in BIE groups is very lengthy. The use of undercover employees and online covert employees in BIE investigations would provide valuable intelligence to assist in mitigating the threat.”
The FBI’s Iron Fist program was concerning enough that then-Rep. Cedric Richmond, now a senior adviser to President Joe Biden, grilled the FBI director about it in 2019. It was far from the only time during the Trump administration that Democrats expressed concerns that the national security state was targeting groups on the political left. But those concerns have waned under the Biden administration, despite an intensified focus on domestic extremists that could include groups on the left, as the Navy document suggests.
According to the military source, the training materials also include a “black panthers fist symbol on a slide of terror orgs with al Qaeda.”
Echoing Kline’s concerns about constitutional rights, a senior Defense Department official familiar with the development of the military’s domestic extremism program said that defining “extremism” in a way that respects First Amendment rights was proving exceptionally difficult. An internal Pentagon draft document proposing language to define extremism, reviewed by The Intercept, is three pages long, the tortured language reflecting attempts not to violate First Amendment rights, according to the senior Defense Department official.
The Pentagon appears to be aware of the constitutional risks. A separate internal Pentagon document about the definition of extremism states: “As appealing as the concept of a one sentence definition may be, this would carry both practical and legal risks. A single sentence definition, crafted too narrowly, might fail to prohibit actions that threaten the Department’s ability to carry out its mission. A less specific definition, on the other hand, risks being so vague as to prohibit or chill Constitutionally protected conduct by servicemembers.”
Update: June 23, 2021
This article has been updated with a statement from the Navy that was received after publication.
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Unknown for decades, declassified documents show that FDR’s mail was deliberately diverted and falsified to prevent a historic meeting with Mao Zedong that might have shortened the war, changed history, and reshaped the modern world.
Historians cite the 1972 meeting between Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon as the original spark for U.S.-China Globalization in which the U.S. and China began cooperating to industrialize China and integrate the two countries’ economies.
But a much younger Mao Zedong had tried to interest President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on Globalization 27 years earlier, and history would have turned out differently if Roosevelt had agreed.
The Korean and Vietnam Wars—which resulted in millions of deaths—could have been avoided along with the Taiwan Straits crisis of 1958, which nearly resulted in a nuclear apocalypse, and Taiwan would not have been separated from Mother China.
On January 9, 1945, Mao Zedong reached out from his headquarter in Yan’an to President Roosevelt. U.S. Army Major Ray Cromley—acting chief of the U.S. mission in Yan’an— forwarded this message to U.S. Army headquarters in Chungking:
Mao and Zhou will be immediately available either singly or together for exploratory conference at Washington should President Roosevelt express desire to receive them at White House as leaders of a primary Chinese party.
At this time Mao Zedong was a vibrant 51-year-old at the height of his powers. Washington officials at this moment knew little about the twentieth century’s largest revolution as it developed from embryo to maturity. Mao had transformed Yan’an, which six years earlier most Chinese had never heard of, into a base which American tanks and airplanes could not threaten and also made it into one of China’s largest educational centers.
Mao founded the University of Resistance, which graduated more than 10,000 students a year. He built primary schools, middle schools, three colleges, the largest arts academy in China, and a vocational training school. A publishing house—hidden deep in the loess hills—printed books, magazines, and newspapers. A factory produced many types of medicines. Mao created the Women’s University, housed in a series of caves connected by internal walkways.
Zhou Enlai (left) and Mao Zedong (center) in Yan’an in the mid-1930s. [Source: alphahistory.com]
In contrast, Franklin Roosevelt was a sickly 62-year-old just weeks from death, struggling to comprehend events in his administration. Two months after Mao had reached out to him, a grey and worn FDR appeared before a joint session of Congress on March 1 to report the Yalta agreement. Observers were taken aback to see the diminished president seated in his wheelchair, the first time he had done so when addressing Congress.
Roosevelt explained, “I have just completed a fourteen-thousand-mile trip.” When FDR met with Vice President Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s hands shook so much that he could not drink a cup of coffee without spilling it.
General Albert Wedemeyer recorded his thoughts after a meeting in the White House:
“I had not seen the President for several months and was shocked at his physical appearance. His color was ashen, his face drawn, and his jaw drooping. I had difficulty in conveying information to him because he seemed in a daze. Several times I repeated the same idea because his mind did not seem to retain or register.”
Chiang Kai-shek, Mayling Soong, and General Joseph Stilwell. Off the record, General Stilwell said about Chiang: “The trouble in China is simple: We are allied to an ignorant, illiterate, superstitious, peasant son of a bitch.” [Source: commons.wikimedia.org]
Many American observers—like General Joseph Stilwell and the State Department China Hands—sensed the political reality in China and understood that Mao was much more than a “leader of a primary Chinese party.”
The truth was that Mao was about to claim the Mandate of Heaven and become China’s next Emperor. This was not only because of his revolutionary policies but also because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had played a central role in the defeat of the Japanese invaders, while Chiang had used U.S. aid to fight the communists.
But back in Washington, Roosevelt—like most Americans—was oblivious to the CCP’s political strength and believed in the China mirage.
America’s China mirage began in the early 1800s. American merchants and missionaries believed that poor China was collapsing like an old barn. And what better way for China to heal than to emulate up-and-coming America and embrace Capitalism and Christianity.
Nineteenth Century Twentieth Century
In the 1840s, President Roosevelt’s grandfather, Warren Delano, Jr., made a fortune as the American Opium King of China.
In a Washington press conference with Madame Chiang Kai-shek at his side, President Roosevelt told this whopper to the American people:
The people of China well over a century have been, in thought and in objective, closer to us Americans than almost any other peoples in the world—the same great ideals. China, in the last—less than half a century has become one of the great democracies of the world.
FDR was mouthing gibberish, but maybe the cause was “hopium.” The Soong family had bankrolled Chiang Kai-shek and had convinced FDR that Chiang yearned to be a democrat in Roosevelt’s image and that the Chinese people wished to be just like Americans.
American officials from the U.S. Army and the State Department stationed in China—many of them fluent in Chinese like General Stilwell—saw Mao’s rise as inevitable, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt followed Grandpa Warren Delano’s belief that America was destined to Christianize and democratize China.
The president’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, was fond of saying that Franklin was “a Delano, not a Roosevelt at all.” When Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau gave a recommendation regarding U.S.-China relations, FDR sniffed, “Please remember that I have a background of a little over a century in Chinese affairs.”
The Soong family’s China Lobby understood America’s China mirage, they had all been schooled in East Coast universities, including FDR’s Harvard. They cooed to FDR about the inevitable Americanization of China and presented their front man—Chiang Kai-shek—as FDR’s vehicle to inject trickle-down Christianity and Capitalism into China.
Roosevelt was convinced that he would make China America’s best friend in Asia. Others outside the glare of America’s China mirage were more realistic. Prime Minister Winston Churchill referred to FDR’s China dream as “the Great American illusion.”
In England, the British enjoyed a radio comedy program that featured a Chiang Kai-shek character named General Cash My Cheque. Yet FDR expended more taxpayer funds on his Chiang-China mirage than he did on the Atom Bomb.
The late David Halberstam described America’s China mirage of the 1930s and 1940s:
The China that existed in the minds of millions of Americans was the most illusory of countries, filled as it was with dutiful, obedient peasants who liked America and loved Americans, who longed for nothing so much as to be like them. It was a country where ordinary peasants allegedly hoped to be more Christian and were eager, despite the considerable obstacles in their way, to rise out of what Americans considered a heathen past. Millions of Americans believed not only that they loved (and understood) China and the Chinese, but also that it was their duty to Americanize the Chinese. “With God’s help, we will lift Shanghai up and up, ever up until it is just like Kansas City,” said Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska. . . .
There were two Chinas. There was the China in the American public mind, a China as Americans wanted it to be, and the other China, the real China…. The illusory China was a heroic ally, ruled by the brave, industrious, Christian, pro-American Chiang Kai-shek …
By 1945, Mao oversaw an empire of one hundred million, about twice the population of Britain, but FDR incorrectly judged that Chiang would be the Chinese people’s choice and Mao a disaffected party.
Mao Zedong had reached out to the American president through FDR’s representatives at Mao’s base, the U.S. Army. Unknown for decades was that confidential U.S. Navy operators commanded by Captain Milton “Mary” Miles of U.S. Navy Intelligence diverted the U.S. Army-generated cable and handed it over to the head of Chiang’s secret police, Mr. Dai Li. Captain Miles and Dai Li rewrote the memo to make it appear that Mao was attempting to discredit U.S. Ambassador Patrick Hurley in FDR’s eyes.
Mao Zedong, Ambassador Patrick Hurley, and Chiang Kai-shek. Hurley called Mao “Moose Dung. “ Mao called Hurley “The Clown.” [Source: wiki.china.org]
Neither Mao Zedong, Ambassador Hurley nor FDR ever realized that their relations had been manipulated by U.S. Naval Intelligence and Chiang’s Gestapo. FDR was soon dead, and millions would die in preventable conflicts—the Chinese Civil War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War—before the U.S. would embrace Mao’s vision.
We know the vision Mao would have presented to FDR because Mao had sketched his dream to a brilliant U.S. State Department representative just months earlier who spent hours with China’s presumptive leader and took copious notes.
Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, John Service, Mao Zedong, unknown. Later the U.S. State Department would fire all Americans who had spoken to Mao Zedong. [Source: twitter.com]
In August 1944, Mao Zedong and John Service met in Mao’s Yan’an cave home. For eight intense hours—with a break for dinner cooked by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing—John Service had more substantive conversations with Mao than any other American government official would have for the next quarter century.
John Service was an excellent choice to be America’s interlocutor with Mao Zedong. Born in China, the 35-year-old Service was fluent in a handful of Chinese dialects. Service had dealt often with Chiang and Mao. He had also traveled the country by public transport to plumb the attitudes of the ordinary Chinese.
Service and General Stilwell—along with many other Americans in China—understood that continued support of Chiang would put the U.S. on the wrong side of history, that whatever the U.S did in China, Mao was destined to claim the Mandate of Heaven.
In his cave home Mao told Service what was obvious to many American officials in China:
“Chiang Kai-shek was elected President by only ninety members of a single party … even Hitler has a better claim to democratic power … fundamentally he is a gangster…. Chiang holds the bayonets and the secret police … The fact is clear … that China’s political tendency is towards us….”
Mao told Service why he preferred Wall Street over Russian borscht:
The Russians have suffered greatly in the war and will have their hands full with their own job of rebuilding. We do not expect Russian help.
Mao then sketched a win-win relationship between the U.S. and China:
China must industrialize. This can be done—in China—only by free enterprise and with the aid of foreign capital…. Chinese and American interests are correlated and similar. They fit together, economically and politically. We can and must work together … we will be interested in the most rapid possible development of the country on constructive and productive lines.
America does not need to fear that we will not be cooperative. We must cooperate and we must have American help … we cannot risk crossing you—cannot risk any conflict with you.
Two months after his cable to FDR had been spiked, Mao Zedong met with John Service once more, again pleading for U.S.-China friendship:
Between the people of China and the people of the United States there are strong ties of sympathy, understanding and mutual interest…. China’s greatest postwar need is economic development. She lacks the capitalistic foundation necessary to carry this out alone…. America and China complement each other economically; they will not compete … America is not only the most suitable country to assist this economic development of China, she is also the only country fully able to participate. For all these reasons there must not and cannot be any conflict, estrangement or misunderstanding between the Chinese people and America …
Mao Zedong extended the hand of friendship to Roosevelt through the highest-ranking U.S. Army and State Department officials to whom he had access. The vision he described was what we now call Globalization: the U.S. and China cooperating to industrialize China, with Russia a far distant partner.
Historians can argue that Mao was insincere, that he was sweet-talking Moscow at this same time. But Mao was much more a realist in search of power than a political ideologue. Support from the richest country on earth, the most industrialized World War II power with the world’s deepest pools of capital—doesn’t it make sense that a practical and ambitious Mao would have deserted Joe Stalin for FDR any day?
Imagine if Mao Zedong had been able to break through FDR’s China mirage and convince him that American Army and State officials were trying to show him the reality in China? Roosevelt cooperated with Soviet Communists, why not Chinese? Imagine no Chinese Civil War, no Korean War, no Vietnam War, no vexing Taiwan problem still dogging the world today?
One Washington official warned John Service that writing the truth about China was dangerous: “Jesus, Service! I read that thing of yours, and I certainly agree with you, but it is going to get you in a lot of trouble.”
In 1949 Mao Zedong shattered America’s China mirage when he claimed the Mandate of Heaven.
Rather than admit they had been self-deluded by the idea that the Chinese wanted to be just like them, Americans asked in shock, “Who lost China?”
On February 9, 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy nailed John Service’s hide to the wall:
Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity…. As one of our outstanding historical figures once said, ‘When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be because of enemies from without, but rather because of enemies from within … This is glaringly true in the State Department … When Chiang Kai-shek was fighting our war, the State Department had in China a young man named John S. Service … [H]e sent official reports back to the State Department urging that we torpedo our ally Chiang Kai- shek—and stating, in effect, that communism was the best hope of China.
I have here in my hand 57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy.
John Service and others had accurately reported reality from WWII China, but they then ran head-on into the China mirage, an American belief system about China as old as the Republic. Soon the State Department fired all employees who spoke Chinese. Many years later, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara—the chief whiz-kid architect of the Vietnam War—observed:
Our government lacked experts for us to consult to compensate for our ignorance. When the Berlin crisis occurred in 1961 and during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, President Kennedy was able to turn to senior people … who knew the Soviets intimately. There were no senior officials in the Pentagon or State Department with comparable knowledge of Southeast Asia…. The irony of this gap was that it existed largely because the top East Asian and China experts in the State Department (such as John Service)—had been purged during the McCarthy hysteria of the 1950s.
Popular history credits the birth of U.S.-China cooperation and Globalization to President Richard Nixon. Lost in the mist of time was that the winning combination of American capital and technology and Chinese labor was an idea that Mao Zedong first suggested in 1944. A generation would pass before Nixon—motivated by the American quagmire in Vietnam and competition with Russia — came to a similar conclusion.
In 1971 Nixon announced his upcoming journey to the Middle Kingdom. Chinese leaders graciously remembered their American friends from the cave meetings in Yan’an. Premier Zhou Enlai welcomed John Service back to China.
After he returned from China, John Service testified to the Senate:
My recent visit to China convinces me that the root of the current Chinese reality may be found in what we reported from Yan’an in 1944…. I think that our involvement in Vietnam, our insistence on the need to contain China and to prevent what we thought was the spread of Communist influence in Southeast Asia, was based very largely on our misunderstanding and our lack of knowledge of the Chinese, the nature of the Chinese Communist movement, and the intention of their leaders. We assumed that they were an aggressive country, and I don’t believe that they really have been, and, therefore, I think that we got into Vietnam largely, as I say, through the misinterpretation and misfounded fear of China.
If the United States in 1945 had been able to … shed some of its illusions about China, to understand what was happening in that country, and to adopt a realistic policy in America’s own interests, Korea and Vietnam would probably never have happened … We would not still be confronted with an unsolvable Taiwan problem …
No Korean and Vietnam Wars. No conflict now over Taiwan. As I write this, I am 67 years old. Raised in America during the 1950s and 1960s, I was taught that Mao Zedong had an irrational hatred for America.
It was only many years later that I learned that Mao Zedong had actually pitched U.S.-China cooperation and that it was America that harbored an irrational hatred. None of my teachers ever told me that Mao Zedong had once pleaded with the State Department’s John Service:
There must not and cannot be any conflict, estrangement or misunderstanding between the Chinese people and America.
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James Bradley hosts the podcast Untold Pacific, featuring stories from his decades of experience in Asia. James is the author of the New York Times #1 best-selling book, Flags of Our Fathers (2000) that was made into a movie by Stephen Spielberg and Clint Eastwood. Bradley wrote three other critically acclaimed books about the United States in Asia: Flyboys, The Imperial Cruise and The China Mirage.
Featured image: Mao Zedong in a U.S. army jeep with U.S. Ambassador to China, Patrick J. Hurley, behind him in hat. [Source: thinkchina.sg]
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).
In the Soviet Union, everybody was aware that the media was controlled by the state. But in a corporate state like the U.S., a veneer of independence is still maintained, although trust in the media has been plummeting for years.
The Washington Post’s glaring conflicts of interest have of late once again been the subject of scrutiny online, thanks to a new article denouncing a supposed attempt to “soak” billionaires in taxes. Written by star columnist Megan McArdle — who previously argued that Walmart’s wages are too high, that there is nothing wrong with Google’s monopoly, and that the Grenfell Fire was a price worth paying for cheaper buildings — the article claimed that Americans have such class envy that the government would “destroy [billionaires’] fortunes so that the rest of us don’t have to look at them.” Notably, the Post chose to illustrate it with a picture of its owner, Jeff Bezos, making it seem as if it was directly defending his power and wealth, something they have been accusedof onmorethanoneoccasion.
There was considerable speculation online as to whether Bezos himself wrote the piece, so blatantly in his interest it was. Unfortunately, this sort of speculation has raged ever since the Amazon CEO bought the newspaper in 2013 for $250 million.
Being owned by the world’s richest individual does not mean that TheWashington Post and its employees are rolling in dough themselves. Far from it: Bezos’ revolution at the newspaper, which has led to both increased pageviews and company value, has been largely based on simply squeezing workers harder than before. In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, management acknowledged that Post reporters are pushed to produce almost four times as many stories as their peers at The New York Times. Furthermore, the Post writes and rewrites the same story but from slightly different angles and with different headlines in order to generate more clicks, and thus more revenue. Thanks to new technology, reporters’ every keystroke is monitored and they are under constant pressure from management not to fall behind. The technique of constant surveillance is not unlike what hyper-exploited Amazon warehouse workers who wear GPS devices or Fitbit watches have to endure.
Bezos is currently worth a shade under $200 billion, with his wealth nearly doubling since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. With such a fortune to protect, the obvious solution is to acquire media outlets to control the narrative in the face of rising public disenchantment with rampaging inequality. Omar Ocampo, a researcher for the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, said that this is a common tactic among the super wealthy. “Billionaire ownership of major news outlets is but another tool the billionaire class deploys for the purpose of wealth defense. It gives them the power to set the terms of the agenda and influence public opinion in their favor,” Ocampo told MintPress.
But Bezos is far from the only senior figure with questionable connections. The company’s CEO, Frederick Ryan, was a senior member of the Reagan White House, rising to become the 40th president’s assistant and later the chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. He later became CEO of Politico. In the Post’s announcement of the hiring move, they themselves noted that among Ryan’s biggest achievements at their rival outlet was “helping the news organization win a lucrative advertising deal with Goldman Sachs and host presidential debates before the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries.”
Another neoconservative in a key position is Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt. Under Hiatt’s tenure, anti-establishment columnists like Dan Froomkin were let go and warmongers like the late Charles Krauthammer, Paul Wolfowitz, and David Ignatius moved in. “After being so wrong on such a huge story as the invasion of Iraq, hawkish ideologue Fred Hiatt should have been terminated as editorial page editor,” Jeff Cohen, former Professor of Journalism at Ithaca College and founder of media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, told MintPress, adding:
In a decent media system, someone who has been so inaccurate on so many issues as Hiatt would not be in a powerful media position two decades later. Powerful voices in U.S. media often argue that society should be a ‘meritocracy’ — with advancement based on ability or achievement. Hiatt proves that the U.S. corporate media system is just the opposite — a ‘kakistocracy’ — where the unqualified and unprincipled rise to the top.”
Other highly questionable hires include Jerusalem correspondent Ruth Eglash, who spent seven years putting out content that was often indistinguishable from Israeli government propaganda. At the time of her hire, activists highlighted the conflicts of interest she had, given her husband’s job as a PR rep for the country. In November 2020, Eglash quit the Post to become chief of communications for the Israeli ambassador to the United States and United Nations. “My experiences as a journalist have afforded me a great instinct of how to better tell Israel’s unique story,” she said, adding “a strong U.S.-Israel relationship and showcasing Israel’s successes to the world has [sic] always been a passion of mine.”
At the center of the news cosmos
The Washington Post is among the most powerful, influential, and widely-read media outlets in the United States. Its position as the dominant newspaper in the nation’s capital reinforces its place as a thought-leading, agenda-setting publication. Whatever appears in the Post will likely be in the rest of the nation’s media, so authoritative is its reputation.
There are no more important pages than its editorial section, where its board comes together to lay out the collective wisdom of its most senior journalists and editors. Through its editorial page, the senior staff lay out the newspaper’s line to others and broadcast what they see as the correct position on the most pressing issues of the day. Hence, editorials are essentially instructions to their well-heeled and influential readers in D.C. and around the country on what to think about any given subject.
This is particularly troublesome as, despite the fact the newspaper presents itself as a defender of liberty and a champion of the people (its tagline is “Democracy Dies in Darkness”), the editorial board has represented the interests of the powerful over ordinary Americans on issue after issue. The following editorials are examples of this in action.
Could we be any more pro-war?
The Post’s editorial board has generally been extremely supportive of whatever conflicts the U.S. has started, and has consistently warned against ending the violence. In a 2015 editorial entitled “Drone strikes are bad; no drone strikes would be worse,” it balked at the idea of stopping the highly controversial bombing campaigns throughout the Middle East and North Africa. By that time, President Barack Obama was bombing seven countries simultaneously. Nevertheless, the Post argued that drones had successfully defeated Al-Qaeda and that the use of drone strikes “shouldn’t be up for review.”
In recent times, the rising newspaper of record has also been a driver of increased hostilities with China, describing Beijing’s military’s moves in the South China Sea as “provocations” against the U.S., spreadingrumors about the COVID-19 virus’s origin, and demanding American companies like Apple “resist China’s tyranny” and begin to relocate their production facilities elsewhere to punish the Chinese government.
On Latin America too, the editorial board has proven to be extremely hawkish. It immediately endorsed a U.S.-backed far-right coup in Bolivia in 2019, insisting that “there could be little doubt who was ultimately responsible for the chaos: newly resigned President Evo Morales.” The Post condemned him for refusing to “cooperate” with “Bolivia’s more responsible leaders,” who were organizing his overthrow, and chastised him for using the word “coup” for what was going on. Morales, they concluded, was a victim of his own “insatiable appetite for power” and his inability to “accept that a majority of Bolivians wanted him to leave office.”
In 2002, the paper also supported a coup against Hugo Chavez, falsely claiming the Venezuelan president had ordered the shooting of thousands of demonstrators and absurdly asserting that “there’s been no suggestion that the United States had anything to do with [it].
The WaPo editorial board’s less than subtle take on drone warfare
In more recent times, it has demanded more action to unseat Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, including supporting U.S. sanctions that have now killed over 100,000 people, according to a United Nations rapporteur. The Post’s justification in 2017 was that Maduro was on the verge of carrying out his own “coup,” “abolish[ing] the opposition-controlled legislature, cancel[ing] future elections and establish[ing] a regime resembling that of Cuba’s” — none of which has happened. In its efforts to oust the democratically-elected leader, the Post even aligned itself with Donald Trump and endorsed far-right coup leader Juan Guaidó as “Venezuela’s legitimate president,” a position some polls have suggested as little as 3% of Venezuelans hold.
The editorial board has expressed its desire to see regime change in leftist-controlled Nicaragua, too. President Daniel Ortega, it claims, is “taking a sledgehammer” to opposition against him, while it also demands that the U.S., which has done nothing but offer “mild verbal opposition” to his rule, do more. What happened to the U.S. of the 1980s, “which spent so much money and political capital to promote democracy in Nicaragua?” they ask sadly.
In reality, of course, the U.S. is currently trying to strangle Nicaragua’s economy through sanctions. And in the 1980s, Washington’s “democracy promotion” agenda included the funding, training and arming of fascist death squads who wrought havoc across Central America, killing hundreds of thousands in genocides from which the area may never recover. The architects of the violence were found guilty in U.S. courts, while the Reagan administration was tried and convicted by the International Court of Justice on 15 counts that amount to international terrorism. That the Post’s editorial board remembers that history as “promoting democracy” is particularly worrisome.
Fake news, fake newspapers
The Washington Post was the key supporter of fake news detection system “PropOrNot,” which was almostimmediatelyexposed as a fake operation itself, forcing the newspaper to publicly distance itself from its own reporting. Yet it was the Post itself that perpetuated the most notorious and damaging fake news story of the 21st century: the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction hoax and Saddam Hussein’s fictional links to al-Qaeda.
In a highly influential editorial entitled “Irrefutable” the Post wrote that, after watching Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech at the United Nations, “it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction… And [Powell] offered a powerful new case that Saddam Hussein’s regime is cooperating with a branch of the al-Qaeda organization that is trying to acquire chemical weapons and stage attacks in Europe.”
“No page was more crucial in propelling the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq than the Post‘s editorial page — which beat the drums for war in a couple dozen editorials in the six months leading up to the invasion,” Cohen told MintPress, adding:
The Post’s op-ed page was almost as cartoonishly wrong on Iraq, offering little dissent or corrective to the editorial page’s jingoism — especially in that pivotal media moment following Colin Powell’s error-filled U.N. speech. While the editorial page offered up its ‘Irrefutable’ verdict, the op-ed page’s liberal voice offered an embarrassing column, headlined ‘I’m Persuaded’.”
The Post played a major role in manufacturing consent for the deadliest war since Vietnam, publishing 27 editorials in support of an invasion. As with PropOrNot, it backtracked long after the dust had settled, apologizing for its role in amping the public up to accept that war. Yet to this day it continues to push for others.
Surveillance state champion
Despite telling its readers that “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” The Washington Post certainly has a negative opinion about those individuals who work to shine a light on illegal government activities. In 2016, its editorial board demanded “no pardon for Edward Snowden,” condemning his backers like filmmaker Oliver Stone and expressing outrage that Snowden had revealed that the U.S. was spying on Russia and carrying out cyberattacks against China. In its long denunciation, it insisted that the NSA’s massive surveillance operation against the American public resulted in “no specific harm, actual or attempted.” As such, the editorial board made history by becoming the first newspaper ever to call for the imprisonment of its own source, on whose back and information it won a Pulitzer Prize.
If Snowden was not worthy of defending, then it is no surprise that the Post’s editorial team expressed their delight when Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, declaring it a “victory for the rule of law.” “Julian Assange is not a free-press hero. And he is long overdue for personal accountability,” they wrote, spreading baseless conspiracy theories that the Australian publisher worked with Russia to hack American democracy.
After relying on him as a source, the Post went after Snowden and any who dared to back him
The Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa, which offered asylum to the Western dissidents, also came under fire. In 2013, the Post (falsely) labeled Correa an “autocrat” and “the hemisphere’s preeminent anti-U.S. demagogue.” They also directly threatened him, writing that, “If Mr. Correa welcomes Mr. Snowden, there will be an easy way to demonstrate that Yanqui-baiting has its price.”
Of course, the Post is now intimately linked with the national security state after Amazon signed a number of deals to provide intelligence and computing services to several three-letter agencies. In 2020, the Bezos-owned Amazon Web Services signed a new deal with the CIA worth tens of billions of dollars.
The editorial board has also gone up to bat for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) multiple times, insisting that it is “the wrong target for outrage,” presenting the agency as key in the battle against art theft and nuclear proliferation. “Abolishing ICE is not a serious policy proposal,” the board wrote in 2018, despite the fact that the U.S. survived without the agency perfectly well until its creation in 2003.
Attacking any pro-people policy
The Washington Post has aggressively attempted to beat back any new political movements challenging the establishment. Chief among them has been the one around Bernie Sanders, for whom the newspaper has reserved a special ire. In 2016, it famously ran 16 negative stories on Sanders in the space of 16 hours and has used its fact-checking page to relentlessly undermine him, sometimes to bizarre effect.
“Bernie Sanders keeps saying his average donation is $27, but his own numbers contradict that,” read the headline of one article, which detailed how his average donation was actually $27.89, not $27. It also gave his statement that six men (one of whom is Bezos) hold as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population “three Pinocchios” — the designation just below the most egregious lie. This was because, they argued, billionaires’ wealth is tied up in stocks, not money itself, and most people own essentially nothing. Why this disproved his assertion they did not explain. Going undisclosed is that both Bezos and the Post’s chief fact-checker Glen Kessler, who is the scion of a fossil fuel baron, would stand to lose a fortune if Sanders were elected.
In 2020, the Post was no less hostile to Sanders, publishing an editorial headlined “We should pay more attention to the Democrats who pay attention to reality,” which stated that “Mr. Sanders promises unlimited free stuff to everyone; other candidates propose smarter, more targeted approaches.”
The Post’s higher-ups have been careful to oppose virtually every piece of progressive or pro-people policy proposals. Chief among them has been healthcare. The United States is alone in the developed world in not offering some kind of universal healthcare to its population. Its privatized system is multiple times more expensive than that of comparable countries and has the worst outcomes in the West. Yet the board has consistently scare-mongered its readers, claiming “Single-payer health care would have an astonishingly high price tag,” and attacking Medicare-For-All proponents running for office. “Why go to the trouble of running for president to promote ideas that can’t work?” it asked rhetorically, before going on to insist that moving towards a healthcare system like that of Canada, Japan or Western Europe does not meet a “baseline degree of factual plausibility.”
On education, it has been just as regressive. “There are consequences to making college free,” it warned readers. Chief among these would be that private universities would make less money, which, apparently should be a major concern. “Forgiving student loans the wrong way will only worsen inequality,” ran the headline of another editorial, in which the board pretended to be ultra-left elite-hating radicals, arguing that we should not make college free because Ivy League graduates would benefit the most (around one-third of the Post’s editorial team attended an Ivy League school). It also feigned a far-left position on charter schools, pretending that essentially privatizing schools and handing them over to businesses to run would solve racial inequality in America, and that anyone who opposed them (like teachers’ unions) was no progressive.
Perhaps the most blatant conflict of interest the Post has displayed is in their committed opposition to a wealth tax. “Elizabeth Warren wants a ‘wealth tax.’ It might backfire,” they wrote, making a series of bizarre and illogical arguments against the plan, such as immigrants will stop wanting to come to the U.S. if such a tax is imposed (the threshold for paying a wealth tax is $50 million). Five months later, the board reaffirmed their position: “A wealth tax isn’t the best way to tax the rich,” they wrote, claiming that rich people “can afford the best accountants and lawyers,” and so taxing them is presumably impossible.
Of course, the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, has every reason to go all out to prevent a wealth tax gaining traction. A CNBCstudy calculated that Bezos would be forced to pay $5.7 billion annually if Warren’s tax plans came to fruition.
The Post has also taken a firm stand against serious regulation of monopolies, decrying a supposed “antitrust onslaught” against Google, spearheaded by simplistic “break-them-up” rhetoric from dishonest actors. In 2016, it also lambasted Sanders for his “oversimplified,” “crowd-pleasing” demagoguery on Wall Street regulation, insisting that there has actually been widespread reform of the financial sector since 2008, making another crash unlikely.
Unsurprisingly for an outlet owned by a poverty-wage employer, the Post has also consistently opposed a national $15 minimum wage. In March, it categorically stated that “[a] $15 minimum wage won’t happen” and Democrats should stop trying to make it happen. Instead, they advised, they should “practice the art of the possible.” This, the board explained, meant falling in line behind Arkansas arch-Republican Senator Tom Cotton to support his proposals for a creeping state-by-state rise to $10.
On the climate, too, the Post has pushed extremely regressive positions, opposing a Green New Deal outright and suggesting the atmosphere be turned into a giant free market where polluters can trade credits and speculate. “The left’s opposition to a carbon tax shows there’s something deeply wrong with the left,” they wrote. They also endorsed the highly controversial process of fracking. Seeing as the Post’s editorial board is littered with former employees of the notorious climate-change denyingWall Street Journal, its stance is perhaps not surprising.
On COVID, the Post has consistentlyopposedteachers’ unions calls to keep schools closed, as well as standing against $2,000 checks. A universal payout is a “bad idea” they stated, but one “whose time has come because of politics, not economics.” So committed was the editorial team’s opposition to the idea of helping the poor that it presented Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a voice of sanity in Washington.
This does not mean that the Post was against direct payments to all people. In fact, all Postemployees received a $2,021 bonus from management in January as a gesture of appreciation for their work during the pandemic. Two grand for me, not for thee.
Junk-food news
The point of a fourth estate is that it is supposed to shine a light on the powerful and hold them to account. But when corporate media are largely owned and sponsored by the super wealthy themselves, the claim that this is what they do is increasingly hard to maintain. In the Soviet Union, everybody was aware that the media was controlled by the state. But in a corporate state like the U.S., a veneer of independence is still maintained, although trust in the media has been plummeting for years.
While The Washington Post presents itself as an adversarial publication standing up to power, the fact that its senior staff constantly comes to such a hardline neoliberal elitist consensus on so many issues shows how little ideological diversity there is among its staff. Democracy dies at The Washington Post editorial board.
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It is painful to read the US reports commenting on the result of Iran’s presidentialelection. The New York Times carried a blurb on Monday, “Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s ultraconservative president-elect, said that he would not meet with President Biden, and that Tehran’s position on its ballistic missile program was “nonnegotiable.”
The report estimated that “The comments appeared to signal a hardening of Iranian policies as the conservative faction takes control of all branches of the government: Parliament, the judiciary and soon, the presidency.”
The Times report would cast a pall of gloom over the prospects for the US-Iran relationship for the foreseeable future. To be sure, thorny shrubs clutter the Biden administration’s pathway.
However, the Biden administration has no dearth of sophisticated minds with discerning capacity to decode Iran’s ‘Shia’ politics. Indeed, in the tricky period of transition that lies ahead when the frozen relationship holds a tantalising potential to become deliquescent, a misreading can prove very costly.
Typically, thorny bushes can be a challenge, but if the shrubs and their locations are chosen carefully, they can also be highly valuable in the home landscape design.
Such characterisation — “ultraconservative” — conjures up misleading notions. If it means that Raisi is profoundly committed to Iran’s Velayat-e faqih, its Islamic jurist system of governance, yes, it is possibly so. But why should that perturb the White House — that is, assuming that the Biden administration is not aiming at a regime change in Iran?
Now, below that threshold comes a variety of concerns. In the economic sphere, does “ultraconservative” mean the North Korean or the erstwhile Soviet model of command economy? Certainly, that is not the case with Raisi who is an ardent votary of the market.
In fact, he kickstarted his election campaign at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. His agenda to rejuvenate Iran’s economy places high importance to the private sector’s role, participation and initiatives. Ironically, being “conservative” in Iran’s context actually means somewhat “leftish” in regard of allocation of resources and industrial policy.
All indications are that Raisi will pursue an economic model that would approximate to what President Biden himself is aiming at — the government stepping in to moderate capitalist principles through selective intervention and by resorting to public investments on infrastructure with a view to create and sustain a welfare programme and, importantly, to foster job creation.
Like Biden, Raisi is also under compulsion to woo the lower middle class and the working class, which is an imperative need to arrest further erosion in the social base of the Islamic Revolution.
Raisi is unhappy that the infamous bonyads which are supposedly charity organisations, render scanty services to the poor and have become conglomerates at the hands of interest groups and fuelled the black market and spawned corruption.
As chief justice, Raisi has had first hand knowledge of the cancerous growth of corruption in Iran and he took his gloves off to confront that malaise, with the full backing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He can be called an “ultraconservative” in the intolerance he has shown toward corrupt syndicates.
But why should the US resent it if Raisi pilots an anti-corruption campaign in Iran with renewed vigour as president? Arguably, it will only create better business climate for investors from abroad.
There is absolutely no doubt that Raisi is intensely conscious of the imperative need to improve the living standards of the common people. He is not alone here. The entire top leadership has reason to feel worried.
The voter apathy in the recent election (50%) gives a stunning message to the political elite that Hassan Rouhani is leaving office as a discredited “reformist”.
Of course, Rouhani’s tragedy was that Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo made a lethal duo who, with an eye on the utility of the Israeli lobby and the evangelicals to help advance their political career, decided to give Iran hell. Period. But Biden is not a prisoner of wealthy Jews, nor does he need evangelics for pillow talk.
At his very first press conference in Tehran on Monday, Raisi said,“The world should know that our government’s foreign policy does not start by the nuclear deal and it will not be limited to the nuclear deal. We will pursue interaction with the whole world and all the world states under broad and balanced interaction in foreign policy, and only those negotiations which ensure national interests are definitely supported, but we will not tie economic situation and people’s conditions to the negotiations…We will continue contacts if they yield results for the people in line with lifting restrictions…”
Raisi added: “European countries and the US should look at what they have done towards the nuclear deal; the US violated the nuclear deal and the Europeans did not fulfil their undertakings. We tell the US that it is duty-bound to lift all sanctions and that it should return and implement its undertakings. The Europeans should not be influenced by the US pressure and should act upon what they have promised. This is the Iranian nation’s demand from them.”
What does it add up to? Plainly put, Raisi’s message is that Iran will not remain entrapped in the bitterness of the JCPOA saga that Trump and Pompeo conspired to create in self-interest, but is instead keen to move on.
He has pledged to pursue “interaction with the whole world and all the world states under broad and balanced interaction in foreign policy” in the country’s national interests. It is crystal clear that Raisi will welcome western investments, trade, technology transfer and so on that will help ameliorate the “people’s conditions”.
Succinctly put, Raisi underscored that the European countries and the US would have an obligation toward his government by fulfilling, even if belatedly, their commitment to integrate Iran to the world economy.
The Biden administration should be well aware that the possibilities are almost seamless in economic cooperation with Iran. Iran is a fabulously rich country potentially and can generate an income level that can make it the last frontier for the post-pandemic economy recovery of the industrial world.
Wisdom and sagacity lies in leveraging the economic cooperation to enter into serious non-nuclear conversations with Iran’s leadership. “Footfalls echo in the memory/Down the passage which we did not take/Towards the door we never opened/Into the rose-garden.” TS Eliot’s words are most appropriate here.
This is not the moment to get frantic about Iran’s ballistic missiles programme, or its regional policies in general, which quintessentially relate to certain circumstances prevailing in that country’s external environment. The US played a big role in contriving to create those circumstances. And, herein lies the paradox: the US is also best placed to moderate those circumstances.
If the Biden administration does that, the regional states and the international community will only applaud it as its finest legacy in the politics of West Asia.
Successive administrations in the Beltway have experienced that unless the relations with Iran got normalised, the US’ policies wouldremain ineffectual and unproductive. Iran is one of those regional powers — such as India, for instance — that cannot be suppressed.
On the contrary, good relations with Iran would have positive fallouts on a number of fronts in the West Asian region as well as in surrounding regions — as far apart as Afghanistan and Yemen. That is why, a good beginning with Raisi becomes critically important.
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Featured image: Iran’s president-elect Ebrahim Raisi addresses his first press conference in Tehran, June 21, 2021 (Source: Indian Punchline)
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Sometimes it is worth stating the obvious. The United Kingdom does not have a coast in the Black Sea. British warships are not infesting the Black Sea out of a peaceful intent, and there is no cause for them to be entering disputed waters close to anybody’s coast. This is not a question of freedom of navigation under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. There is nowhere that a British warship can be heading from the UK under the right of innocent passage that would require it to pass through coastal waters by Crimea. The Black Sea is famously a cul-de-sac.
There is certainly a right to pass to the Ukrainian port of Odessa – but that in now way requires passing close to Crimea. This is therefore not “innocent passage”. There is a right of passage through the Kerch strait, which Russia has to date respected. Russia has not just a right but a duty to enforce sea lanes for safe navigation through the strait, exactly as the UK does off Dover.
I expect we will now be in for a mad frenzy of Russophobia, yet again. I shall comment further once I have more details of why and exactly where Russia was firing warning shots. But just remember this, it was not Russian warships near the British coast, it was British warships in an area where they had no business other than ludicrous, British nationalist, sabre-rattling.
The UK needs to lose its imperial delusions. Sending gunboats to the Crimea is as mad as – well, sailing an aircraft carrier expressly to threaten the Chinese. There are those who see this activity as evidence of the UK’s continued great power status. I see it as evidence of lunacy.
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Ukraine and Great Britain have agreed on the joint construction of warships and bases for the domestic Navy, the press service of the Defense Ministry of Ukraine announced.
On June 21 in Odesa aboard the HMS DEFENDER missile destroyer of the Royal Navy, Defence Procurement Minister of Great Britain Jeremy Quin and Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine Oleksandr Myroniuk signed “a memorandum on maritime partnership projects between the UK industry consortium and the Ukrainian Navy,” the ministry said.
In particular, the memorandum provides for the joint design and construction of warships in Ukraine and Great Britain, the reconstruction of Ukrainian shipbuilding enterprises and the construction of two bases of the Ukrainian Naval Forces.
The signing ceremony took place aboard one of the most modern ships of the Royal Navy, HMS Defender, and was witnessed by the Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine Oleksiy Danilov, the First Sea Lord Admiral Tony Radakin and the British Ambassador to Ukraine Melinda Simmons.
They also observed joint training activity of Ukrainian, UK and US Special forces.
HMS Defender arrived in Odesa on Friday. This magnificent warship is the second Royal Navy ship to visit Odesa in the last couple of weeks after HMS TRENT.
Joint naval projects and regular warships visits are important examples of the close ties between the UK and Ukraine, as partners and friendly nations.
The HMS DEFENDER destroyer arrived in Odesa last Friday, June 18. This is the second Royal Navy warship to visit Odesa in the last few weeks, after HMS TRENT.
“This is another step in the development of bilateral cooperation between Ukraine and the UK, which is aimed at strengthening the Ukrainian fleet as it continues to face danger in the Black and Azov seas,” the Ukrainian defense ministry said.
The UK will help Ukraine revive its shipbuilding industry, the Ukrainian defense ministry said. The two countries will design and build warships in Ukraine and in the UK and set up two bases for the Ukrainian navy.
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After the Biden-Putin meeting there was fanciful commentary about reduced tensions and avoidance of war. As I explained in my column and several interviews, as long as Washington has hegemonic aspirations and needs the “Russian threat” to justify its military/security complex budget and NATO, little can be done to reduce tensions.
The meeting succeeded in again portraying Putin as a tyrant who poisons and imprisons his political opponents (see this).
As for war tensions, Washington immediately raised war dangers by arranging a 32-country two-week war game from June 28 to July 10 held off Russia’s Black Sea Coast. According to Washington the war game will practice “multiple warfare areas including amphibious warfare, land maneuver warfare, diving operations, maritime interdiction operations, air defense, special operations integration, anti-submarine warfare, and search and rescue operations.”
Russia warned of the risk of deadly incidents and demanded the war game be scrapped. See this.
Sure enough even prior to the start of the war game a British warship inside Russian waters had to be driven out with warning shots and attack threat from Russian aircraft. See this.
Washington’s war game is irresponsible and juvenile. The 32 countries include Senegal, Morocco, Pakistan, South Korea, Poland. Does Washington really think that these countries have naval forces capable of combating Russian forces?
This is a mindless provocation by Washington. Idiocy of this sort is likely to result in the Russian Pacific Fleet conducting war games off the coast of Hawaii and, eventually, Russian/Chinese/Iranian naval exercises in the Gulf of Mexico.
While Washington plays tough guy in the Black Sea, the US military shows every sign of collapsing morale. At Nellis air base the US Air Force just put on a drag queen show in order, in the words of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to “enhance moral and cohesion and military readiness.”
“Ensuring our ranks reflect and are inclusive of the American people is essential to the morale, cohesion, and readiness of the military. Nellis Air Force Base is committed to providing and championing an environment that is characterized by equal opportunity, diversity, and inclusion.”
There you have it. Sexual perversion is essential to US military morale and readiness. What must Russia, China, and the Muslim world think? While the Pentagon panders to sexual perversion, Russia and China train men in actual combat.
How much longer will straight white men serve in the US military? They already suffer discrimination and humiliation by having to take sensitivity training. I cannot imagine Marines and paratroopers accepting drag-queen and transgendered officers.
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The landslide election of Ebrahim Raisi as 8th president of Iran could be a turning point for the Islamic Republic. The landslide victory for the ultra-conservative former chief justice and protege of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could lead to an overhaul of the framework put in place when the two-tier regime was established in 1979. This structure imposed powerful clerical institutions on elected presidents and parliaments.
The clerical institutions dominat3ed by the valayet-e-faqih, the “guardianship of the Islamic jurist”, i.e., the supreme leader, includes the 12-main appointed Guardian Council which vets all candidates for office, and the 88-member elected Assembly of experts which chooses the supreme leader. Vetted candidates of the latter body are popularly elected for eight-year terms.
While this body was originally empowered to debate and even reject candidates for the all-important post of supreme leader, the Assembly now rubber stamps whoever is chosen. Consequently, the rule of the clerics has been exercised by the appointed supreme leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Guardian Council.
Ahead of previous presidential elections, the Guardian Council permitted prominent political figures and moderates to stand, but for last Friday’s poll only seven of nearly 600 potential candidates were qualified: Five conservatives and two low profile moderate/reformists. Only Raisi was widely recognised because, at Khamenei’s instigation, he ran in the 2017 presidential race and was roundly defeated by Hassan Rouhani who was standing for his second term. He took 57 per cent of the votes in a turn-out of 73 per cent. Raisi only took 38 per cent.
He was guaranteed to win this time around. As many Iranians considered the outcome of the election predetermined, some boycotted while others did not bother to vote. Raisi secured 62 per cent of the vote far ahead of his challengers in a turn-out of 48 per cent, the lowest since the founding of the Islamic Republic. Twelve per cent, the second largest number of ballots were spoiled, twice that in any other previous election. If spoiled ballots are counted, the turn-out would be reduced to 36 per cent.
Iran’s clerical establishment is unphased by the lack of competitiveness and low turn-out which reduce the popular legitimacy of this presidential election because electing Raisi could set the stage for implementing a plan he suggested during his campaign when he called for a “fundamental change in the executive management of the country”.
With his election, the clerical regime, which now controls all the levers of power in Iran, set in train its plan to achieve this goal. The presidency will groom Raisi to succeed Khamenei, a fragile 82, in the post of supreme leader. He has a compelling personal reason for elevating Raisi, a trusted confidant. Khamenei is determined to protect and provide for his family. Once out of office Iranian politicians and members of their families have been muzzled, marginalised and confined under house arrest.
On the internal level, Iran experts predict Raisi could propose the transformation of the system of governance from a presidential system to a parliamentary system. This would reduce the already waning influence of the “republicans”, Iranians who seek to use elections to check the power of the clerics and make it easier for loyalist conservatives to win comfortable majorities in parliament and choose prime minsiters favoured by the clerical establishment.
Although an untra-conservative, Raisi is also a pragmatist. He has promised to tackle corruption. In this endeavour he has some experience. As chief justice he has accused and prosecuted a number of individuals for graft but, his detractors, argue that those targeted are critical of the regime. Therefore, if he is serious, he will have to be even handed and cite powerful members and supporters of the regime.
He has also pledged to provide a safety net for the poor and the stressed middle class hit hard by the collapsing economy. If he is to avoid large-scale protests like those of 2019, he will have to deliver on this promise.
In order to prevent protests by young Iranians who have benefitted relaxations instituted the moderates, he will have to resist pressure from his conservative base to reinstate social resstrictions and limitations on cultural activities.
On the external level, Raisi can be expected to adhere to the political line laid down by his mentor, Khamenei. Unlike many ultra-conservatives, Raisi supports the 2015 nuclear agreement for limiting Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for lifting sanctions and has pledged to carry on with negotiations until the deal is restored. Without Khamenei’s backing it would never have been reached or preserved after Donald Trump’s 2018 abandonment and imposition of 1,500 punitive sanctions. Until sanctions are lifted or seriously reduced, Iran’s economy cannot recover.
Raisi will pursue relations with China and Russia as well as to carry on with reconciliation talks with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia with the aim of regularising relations with regional powers. He will continue to back Iran’s allies, Hizbollah in Lebanon, Shia militias in Iraq, and the Syrian government. He will push for a deal to end to the war in Yemen which favours the Houthi rebels. Raisi will not pursue ties with the US.
The conservative clerics might not have made their power grab if US President Joe Biden had made good on his promise to return the US to the nuclear deal well before May 25 when the Guardian Council announced the names of the seven candidates it had approved to run for the presidency. If Biden had done this while President Hassan Rouhani was still in charge of the nuclear file and had begun to ease sanctions, the Council might have included high profile moderates among the candidates and one or other might have defeated Raisi. Biden procrastinated and prevaricated and will now have to face a hard-line Iranian president fronting for the supreme leader.
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Featured image: Raisi speaking at a presidential campaign rally in Tehran’s Shahid Shiroudi Stadium (CC BY 4.0)
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It was common knowledge that a U.S. failure to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal (known as the JCPOA) before Iran’s June presidential election would help conservative hard-liners to win the election. Indeed, on Saturday, June 19, the conservative Ebrahim Raisi was elected as the new President of Iran.
Raisi has a record of brutally cracking down on government opponents and his election is a severe blow to Iranians struggling for a more liberal, open society. He also has a history of anti-Western sentiment and says he would refuse to meet with President Biden. And while current President Rhouhani, considered a moderate, held out the possibility of broader talks after the U.S. returned to the nuclear deal, Raisi will almost certainly reject broader negotiations with the United States.
Could Raisi’s victory have been averted if President Biden had rejoined the Iran deal right after coming into the White House and enabled Rouhani and the moderates in Iran to take credit for the removal of U.S. sanctions before the election? Now we will never know.
Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement drew near-universal condemnation from Democrats and arguably violated international law. But Biden’s failure to quickly rejoin the deal has left Trump’s policy in place, including the cruel “maximum pressure” sanctions that are destroying Iran’s middle class, throwing millions of people into poverty, and preventing imports of medicine and other essentials, even during a pandemic.
U.S. sanctions have provoked retaliatory measures from Iran, including suspending limits on its uranium enrichment and reducing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Trump’s, and now Biden’s, policy has simply reconstructed the problems that preceded the JCPOA in 2015, displaying the widely recognized madness of repeating something that didn’t work and expecting a different result.
If actions speak louder than words, the U.S. seizure of 27 Iranian and Yemeni international news websites on June 22nd, based on the illegal, unilateral U.S. sanctions that are among the most contentious topics of the Vienna negotiations, suggests that the same madness still holds sway over U.S. policy.
Since Biden took office, the critical underlying question is whether he and his administration are really committed to the JCPOA or not. As a presidential candidate, Senator Sanders promised to simply rejoin the JCPOA on his first day as president, and Iran always said it was ready to comply with the agreement as soon as the United States rejoined it.
Biden has been in office for five months, but the negotiations in Vienna did not begin until April 6th. His failure to rejoin the agreement on taking office reflected a desire to appease hawkish advisers and politicians who claimed he could use Trump’s withdrawal and the threat of continued sanctions as “leverage” to extract more concessions from Iran over its ballistic missiles, regional activities and other questions.
Far from extracting more concessions, Biden’s foot-dragging only provoked further retaliatory action by Iran, especially after the assassination of an Iranian scientist and sabotage at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, both probably committed by Israel.
Without a great deal of help, and some pressure, from America’s European allies, it is unclear how long it would have taken Biden to get around to opening negotiations with Iran. The shuttle diplomacy taking place in Vienna is the result of painstaking negotiations with both sides by former European Parliament President Josep Borrell, who is now the European Union’s foreign policy chief.
The sixth round of shuttle diplomacy has now concluded in Vienna without an agreement. President-elect Raisi says he supports the negotiations in Vienna, but would not allow the United States to drag them out for a long time.
An unnamed U.S. official raised hopes for an agreement before Raisi takes office on August 3, noting that it would be more difficult to reach an agreement after that. But a State Department spokesman said talks would continue when the new government takes office, implying that an agreement was unlikely before then.
Even if Biden had rejoined the JCPOA, Iran’s moderates might still have lost this tightly managed election. But a restored JCPOA and the end of U.S. sanctions would have left the moderates in a stronger position, and set Iran’s relations with the United States and its allies on a path of normalization that would have helped to weather more difficult relations with Raisi and his government in the coming years.
If Biden fails to rejoin the JCPOA, and if the United States or Israel ends up at war with Iran, this lost opportunity to quickly rejoin the JCPOA during his first months in office will loom large over future events and Biden’s legacy as president.
If the United States does not rejoin the JCPOA before Raisi takes office, Iran’s hard-liners will point to Rouhani’s diplomacy with the West as a failed pipe-dream, and their own policies as pragmatic and realistic by contrast. In the United States and Israel, the hawks who have lured Biden into this slow-motion train-wreck will be popping champagne corks to celebrate Raisi’s inauguration, as they move in to kill the JCPOA for good, smearing it as a deal with a mass murderer.
If Biden rejoins the JCPOA after Raisi’s inauguration, Iran’s hard-liners will claim that they succeeded where Rouhani and the moderates failed, and take credit for the economic recovery that will follow the removal of U.S. sanctions.
On the other hand, if Biden follows hawkish advice and tries to play it tough, and Raisi then pulls the plug on the negotiations, both leaders will score points with their own hard-liners at the expense of majorities of their people who want peace, and the United States will be back on a path of confrontation with Iran.
While that would be the worst outcome of all, it would allow Biden to have it both ways domestically, appeasing the hawks while telling liberals that he was committed to the nuclear deal until Iran rejected it. Such a cynical path of least resistance would very likely be a path to war.
On all these counts, it is vital that Biden and the Democrats conclude an agreement with the Rouhani government and rejoin the JCPOA. Rejoining it after Raisi takes office would be better than letting the negotiations fail altogether, but this entire slow-motion train-wreck has been characterized by diminishing returns with every delay, from the day Biden took office.
Neither the people of Iran nor the people of the United States have been well served by Biden’s willingness to accept Trump’s Iran policy as an acceptable alternative to Obama’s, even as a temporary political expedient. To allow Trump’s abandonment of Obama’s agreement to stand as a long-term U.S. policy would be an even greater betrayal of the goodwill and good faith of people on all sides, Americans, allies and enemies alike.
Biden and his advisers must now confront the consequences of the position their wishful thinking and dithering has landed them in, and must make a genuine and serious political decision to rejoin the JCPOA within days or weeks.
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A newly published analysis in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science argues that a toxic soup of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides is causing havoc beneath fields covered in corn, soybeans, wheat and other monoculture crops. The research is the most comprehensive review ever conducted on how pesticides affect soil health.
The study is discussed by two of the report’s authors, Nathan Donley and Tari Gunstone, in a recent article appearing on the Scientific American website. The authors state that the findings should bring about immediate changes in how regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assess the risks posed by the nearly 850 pesticide ingredients approved for use in the USA.
Conducted by the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and the University of Maryland, the research looked at almost 400 published studies that together had carried out more than 2800 experiments on how pesticides affect soil organisms. The review encompassed 275 unique species or types of soil organisms and 284 different pesticides or pesticide mixtures.
Pesticides were found to harm organisms that are critical to maintaining healthy soils in over 70 per cent of cases. But Donley and Gunstone say this type of harm is not considered in the EPA’s safety reviews, which ignore pesticide harm to earthworms, springtails, beetles and thousands of other subterranean species. The EPA uses a single test species to estimate risk to all soil organisms, the European honeybee, which spends its entire life above ground in artificial boxes. But 50-100 per cent of all pesticides end up in soil.
The researchers conclude that the ongoing escalation of pesticide-intensive agriculture and pollution are major driving factors in the decline of soil organisms. By carrying out wholly inadequate reviews, the regulatory system serves to protect the pesticide industry.
The study comes in the wake of other recent findings that indicate high levels of the weedkiller chemical glyphosate and its toxic breakdown product AMPA have been found in topsoil samples from no-till fields in Brazil.
Writing on the GMWatch website, Claire Robinson and Jonathan Matthews note that, despite this, the agrochemical companies seeking the renewal of the authorisation of glyphosate by the European Union in 2022 are saying that one of the greatest benefits of glyphosate is its ability to foster healthier soils by reducing the need for tillage (or ploughing).
This in itself is misleading because farmers are resorting to ploughing given increasing weed resistance to glyphosate and organic agriculture also incorporates no till methods. At the same time, proponents of glyphosate conveniently ignore or deny its toxicity to soils, water, humans and wildlife. With that in mind, it is noteworthy that GMWatch also refers to another recent study which says that glyphosate is responsible for a five per cent increase in infant mortality in Brazil.
The new study, ‘Pesticides in a case study on no-tillage farming systems and surrounding forest patches in Brazil’ in the journal Scientific Reports, leads the researchers to conclude that glyphosate-contaminated soil can adversely impact food quality and human health and ecological processes for ecosystem services maintenance. They argue that glyphosate and AMPA presence in soil may promote toxicity to key species for biodiversity conservation, which are fundamental for maintaining functioning ecological systems.
These studies reiterate the need to shift away from increasingly discredited ‘green revolution’ ideology and practices. This chemical-intensive model has helped the drive towards greater monocropping and has resulted in less diverse diets and less nutritious foods. Its long-term impact has led to soil degradation and mineral imbalances, which in turn have adversely affected human health.
If we turn to India, for instance, that country is losing 5334 million tonnes of soil every year due to soil erosion and degradation, much of which is attributed to the indiscreet and excessive use of synthetic agrochemicals. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research reports that soil is becoming deficient in nutrients and fertility.
India is not unique in this respect. Maria-Helena Semedo of the Food and Agriculture Organization stated back in 2014 that if current rates of degradation continue all of the world’s topsoil could be gone within 60 years. She noted that about a third of the world’s soil had already been degraded. There is general agreement that chemical-heavy farming techniques are a major cause.
It can take 500 years to generate an inch of soil yet just a few generations to destroy. When you drench soil with proprietary synthetic agrochemicals as part of a model of chemical-dependent farming, you harm essential micro-organisms and end up feeding soil a limited doughnut diet of toxic inputs.
Armed with their multi-billion-dollar money-spinning synthetic biocides, this is what the agrochemical companies have been doing for decades. In their arrogance, these companies claim to have knowledge that they do not possess and then attempt to get the public and co-opted agencies and politicians to bow before the altar of corporate ‘science’ and its bought-and-paid-for scientific priesthood.
The damaging impacts of their products on health and the environment have been widely reported for decades, starting with Rachel Carson’s ground-breaking 1962 book Silent Spring.
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Colin Todhunter, renowned development studies author and analyst focussing on the food economy, GMO, the rights of farmers and the social, economic and environmental impacts of global agribusiness.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
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Peace and human rights advocates joined the United Nations General Assembly Wednesday in their annual condemnation of the United States’ disastrous economic embargo against Cuba.
For the 29th straight year, the members of the General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution demanding an end to the 60-year U.S. economic blockade on Cuba. This year, 184 nations voted in favor of the resolution, while the U.S. and Israel voted against it. Three nations—Brazil, Colombia, and Ukraine—abstained.
Critics this year noted the detrimental effects of the embargo on Cuba’s ability to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.
The UN vote re US blockade on Cuba was a chance for President Biden to show global leadership. He failed miserably. The US & Israel vs 184 nations—and 11 million Cubans who suffer from this wretched policy—DURING A PANDEMIC. Shame on Biden. #EndtheBlockade#EliminaElBloqueo
Cuba may not be able to widely administer Abdala, Cuba's highly successful COVID-19 vaccine, to the Cuban people because the US blockade has caused a shortage of 20 million syringes. 💉
This is the devastating reality of the US embargo on Cuba. #ElMundoDiceNo
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Padilla slammed the blockade as a “massive, flagrant, and unacceptable violation of the human rights of the Cuban people” and “an economic war of extraterritorial scope against a small country already affected in the recent period by the economic crisis derived from the pandemic.”
“Like the virus, the blockade suffocates and kills and must end,” Rodríguez told the General Assembly.
Spain’s U.N. delegation said that the U.S. embargo against Cuba “has a detrimental impact on the country’s economic situation and negatively affects the standard of living of the Cuban people.”
The US embargo on #Cuba has a damaging impact on the economic situation of the country and negatively affects the living standards of the Cuban people🇨🇺
Indonesia’s U.N. mission asserted that the blockade “violates norms and principles of international law and sovereign equality of states” and hinders Cuba’s “recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Sofiane Mimouni, Algeria’s ambassador to the U.N., reaffirmed his country’s “unwavering solidarity with the government and brotherly people of Cuba as well as its support for the lifting of the longstanding and unnecessary embargo imposed on Cuba.”
Mexico’s U.N. mission said it “reiterates its condemnation of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade against Cuba, and calls for its end.”
The United States and Israel would rather see people die than let the world see how Cuba can thrive without the embargo. These two countries are actively preventing world progress because capitalism and apartheid are more important to them. https://t.co/vlOSvQKLUi
— Left Flank Veterans (@LeftFlankVets) June 23, 2021
Rodney Hunter, political coordinator for the U.S. mission to the U.N., countered that sanctions are “one set of tools in Washington’s broader effort toward Cuba to advance democracy, promote respect for human rights, and help the Cuban people exercise fundamental freedoms.”
Although the Obama administration took steps to normalize relations with Cuba, the past 60 years have been characterized by varying degrees of U.S. hostility toward the socialist government and, by extension, the Cuban people.
Having lost effective economic control of the island in 1959 following the successful socialist revolution led by Fidel Castro, successive U.S. administrations waged a decadeslong campaign of state-sanctioned exile terror, attempted subversion, failed assassination attempts, economic warfare, and covert operations large and small in a fruitless policy of regime change. There have been 13 U.S. administrations since the triumph of the Cuban revolution.
Cuba is ready to vaccinate the world. The 60-year-old US embargo stands in the way. The embargo is not only illegal and inhumane. It is incredibly unpopular. pic.twitter.com/HDZ6YDjKbA
— Progressive International (@ProgIntl) June 22, 2021
According to the Cuban government, U.S.-backed terrorism has claimednearly 3,500 lives and cost the island’s economy at least hundreds of billions of dollars.
From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
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A leading light in the campaigns to overthrow white minority rule and to foster African unity, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, has died in Zambia at the age of 97.
Kaunda was born on April 28, 1924 in Lubwa Mission in Chinsali, an area then known as Northern Rhodesia and controlled by Britain.
This colony along with Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, were established by the capitalist colonizer Cecil Rhodes during the late decades of the 19th century. Rhodes created the British South African Company leading the economic and consequent political seizure of the land and resources of the indigenous African people.
After the land seizures by the settler-colonialists, Africans were forced to work in the mines and plantations of the British corporations. Africans revolted against the encroachment during a series of wars in 1896-1897. Eventually, through the force of superior armory, the British maintained control over Northern and Southern Rhodesia until the mid and late 20th century.
The young Kaunda was the eighth child of a minister father and school teacher mother. His father died while Kaunda was quite young leading to many hardships. Kaunda would continue his education becoming a teacher within the colonial educational system.
By 1949, at the age of 25, Kaunda had become involved in mass politics with the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress. He would later form other more militant organizations such as the Zambian African National Congress and eventually founding the United National Independent Party (UNIP), which played an essential role in the liberation struggle of the 1960s.
Kaunda was imprisoned by the British colonial authorities on several occasions in the 1950s and early 1960s. He would later come to dominate political life in the country under the leadership of UNIP. By 1964, the colony had gained independence and changed its name to Zambia.
Pioneering Stalwart of the Pan-African Movement of the Post World War II Era
Tributes to Kaunda have been articulated throughout the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) as a whole.
The co-founder and longtime president of the mineral-rich nation formerly known as Northern Rhodesia under colonialism, emerged from the national oppressive conditions imposed by British imperialism beginning in the late 19th century. Kaunda at a very early age began to understand the character of institutional racism and state tyranny.
During his tenure as president of Zambia, the country hosted numerous national liberation movements from throughout Southern Africa and other regions. Despite his stated commitment to nonviolent social change during the efforts to win independence in the 1950s and early 1960s, after attaining power Kaunda provided a base for liberation movement organizations which advanced armed struggle as an important means to break the chains of European domination.
Radio Freedom, the Voice of the African National Congress (ANC), was broadcast from Lusaka, the capital of the country. Radio Freedom relayed information to people inside South Africa under apartheid bringing a message of resistance and organizational culture to the masses of people seeking to unleash their fury against the racist system of colonial exploitation and social degradation.
“Leaders across Africa have paid tribute to Zambia’s founding president, Kenneth Kaunda, who died on Thursday at the age of 97, declaring several days of mourning in their respective countries.
While in power, Kaunda hosted many of the movements fighting for independence or Black equality in other countries around the continent, standing up to white minority rule in countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.”
The development policy of the UNIP was based upon the nationalization of key economic assets principally in the mining sector which were owned by foreign capital. Zambia under President Kaunda expanded access to primary and secondary education which had been denied in the colonial era.
At the time of independence in October 1964, very few Zambians had acquired secondary education and far less were able to attain post-secondary training. Consequently, in 1966, Kaunda founded the University of Zambia in Lusaka. The University contained numerous faculties along with a medical school. The country became a center for regional education throughout Southern Africa.
Zambia maintained close economic and political ties with the People’s Republic of China during the era of leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong. In addition, the UNIP government developed good relations with the Soviet Union and the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia.
When threatened by the military power of the former South African Defense Forces (SADF) under the apartheid regime, Kaunda had requested to purchase sophisticated military equipment from the U.S. The request was denied, while soon after Kaunda was supplied with MIG-25 fighter aircraft from the USSR. The Humanism of the UNIP in Zambia resembled other efforts aimed at non-capitalist reconstruction in the post-colonial independence period.
Modern Ghana, founded by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in the 1950s and 1960s, adopted policies aimed at industrialization and the mass education of the population. Nkrumaism, a term given to the thoughts, ideas and organizational work of the former prime minister and president of the First Republic, represented an attempt to apply socialist theory to the concrete conditions as they existed in Africa at the time.
Other post-independence African states such as Guinea-Conakry under President Ahmed Sekou Toure, Egypt (United Arab Republic) during the era of President Gamal Abdel Nassar, Tanzania as well, while former President Julius Nyerere was in power, among others, all advanced ideological and political policies designed to achieve genuine independence guided by internationalism in alliance with the struggle for world socialism.
The Significance of Kaunda and the Legacy of the Independence Struggle
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has paid tribute to Kaunda acknowledging publicly the Zambian leader’s role in the eradication of the racist apartheid system since 1994. Kaunda spoke at the funeral of former President Nelson Mandela in December 2013 conveying the importance of the alliance between the Frontline States and the liberation movements which clinched the defeat of white minority rule in Southern Africa.
Kaunda was a co-founder in 1980 along with the late President of Mozambique, Samora Machel, of the Southern African Development Coordinating Council (SADCC), the predecessor to SADC, founded in 1992. SADC convened a summit beginning on June 23 where tribute was paid to Kaunda.
An article appearing in the state-controlled Zimbabwe Herald on the visit of President Emmerson Mnangagwa to the SADC summit being held in the Mozambican capital of Maputo emphasizes:
“The summit is taking place at a time when the region is mourning the death of Zambian founding father Kenneth Kaunda who died last week at the age of 97. Flags are flying at half mast at this summit in reverence to the late Pan Africanist.” (See this)
President Kaunda was removed from office after the1991 election in Zambia. The UNIP government had been under pressure by global finance capital through the pressure exerted upon the country by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF and World Bank caused tremendous social dislocation during the early independence decades in Africa through the imposition of economic conditionalities which directly sought to remove nationalization policies, free public education and the growth in industrialization projects which sought to build economic independence from imperialism.
Kaunda eventually abandoned the one-party political system which guided the national development strategy based upon his theory of Humanism. After other political parties were allowed to contest national elections with the support of the western powers, UNIP fell from power.
Although the Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) led by Frederick Chiluba won the 1991 elections saying their grouping would end corruption and inefficiencies, Chiluba and subsequent administrations over the last three decades have faced the same contradictions as UNIP under Kaunda. In fact, corruption increased within Zambia during the 1990s while the country lost its leading role in African and international political arenas.
The historical trajectory of the post-independence African states should be studied by the current generation of activists and political organizers. Any serious review of the period extending from the late 1940s through the 1990s will clearly conclude that Kaunda earned an important place within the struggle for African emancipation.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda and President Nelson Mandela
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With the possible extradition of a Venezuelan diplomat to the US on bogus charges, an emergency human rights delegation organized by the International Campaign to Free Alex Saab was quickly dispatched to Cabo Verde, where he is imprisoned. This island archipelago nation off the west coast of Africa is one of the smallest, poorest, and geographically isolated countries in the world.
The international human rights delegation did not gain Alex Saab’s freedom. They were even denied a visit with him. But breakthroughs were made raising the visibility of the case, which involves enormous political, legal, and moral issues with long-term political consequences.
The case involves the abduction of a diplomat by the world’s sole superpower locked in an unequal struggle to destroy the formerly prosperous, oil rich country of Venezuela. The attack on Venezuela is not motivated on the US part by the imperfections in Venezuelan society, but on Venezuela’s past successes in fighting poverty, promoting regional integration, and acting like a sovereign nation. Otherwise, the US would be lavishing Venezuela with aid instead of the apartheid state of Israel, the narco-state of Colombia, and the absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia.
The kidnapping of Alex Saab is a dramatic and far-reaching effort to enforce the illegal US-decreed policy of economic sanctions. The US is attempting to impose its will on a country by deliberately attacking the civilian population. Illegal sanctions are a conscious policy of imposing economic havoc to “make the economy scream.”
Saab, a Venezuelan diplomat abducted by the US government a year ago, was held under torturous conditions. The illegal denial of diplomatic immunity by the US is a violation of international law.
International campaign to Free Alex Saab
The powerful corporate media, by omission, can render a news item invisible. The Saab case is virtually unknown in the US, even among progressive political journalists, left organizations, and solidarity activists. Washington’s demand for the extradition of Alex Saab is being covered more extensively in African and Latin American publications. In Venezuela, as expected, the case is well known.
Among some, who are aware of the case, there is an inordinate concentration on the Saab the individual, obscuring the larger issues of sovereignty and human rights.
Gathering information on what was involved was no easy task. The US charge of “money laundering” by a private businessman in a country wracked by extreme shortages hardly created sympathy for Mr. Saab’s case. It was only as the actual facts emerged that a support plan evolved for the international solidarity campaign.
The fact that Alex Saab has withstood a year-long arrest, torture, months of solitary confinement rather than comply with U.S. demands to cooperate indicates that he is not just a businessman willing to sell to the highest bidder.
The four-person human rights delegation in Cabo Verde, knocked on government doors, conducted interviews, and spoke with the media. They were supported by an activist movement and a strong legal team. The delegation was led by a Cabo Verde citizen, Bishop Filipe Teixeira, OFSCJ, a religious leader living in the Boston area with congregation of Cabo Verdeans and a history of participation in social justice campaigns. Tweets, Facebook links, and news reports helped penetrate the wall of silence.
An international petition campaign building momentum, collecting thousands of signatures which are being forwarded the president and prime minister of Cabo Verde and to the US president. Several webinars were held, including one with Saab’s lawyers speaking from Cabo Verde and Nigeria.
Role of solidarity activists
Solidarity and people’s movements working together can become a powerful material force, breaking through silence, fear, and repression. The focus for international solidarity work in this period is to strongly defend movements and even countries under relentless US imperialist attack and destabilization without placing unrealistic expectations or creating unrealistic images of how wonderful the internal situation in the targeted country is. Solidarity is not a pass for interference, second guessing, criticism, or for euphoric idealism.
It is essential to focus full attention on the source of the problem – US imperialism – and not get lost in the weeds of the criticizing the victim. US sabotage, imposed shortages, mercenary attacks, and fueling national antagonism are intended to create and intensify internal
divisions. Shortages are intended to increase corruption, side deals, privilege, and resentment. The targeted country may, thus, be wrongly blamed for the unfolding crisis created by the US actions.
Simply put, many progressive goals are thwarted under conditions of illegal sanctions, because that is the purpose of the sanctions. Self-defense by the victimized country is an obligation in the face of destabilization and constant sabotage.
At each step, keeping the focus on the crime of the US actions provides a grounding for progressive solidarity. This is true not only in defending attempts at revolutionary change, such as Cuba or Venezuela. But even in Cabo Verde, the focus on the role of the US was important. It was hardly a decision by the government of Cabo Verde to pull Alex Saab from his plane or to order him held. Cabo Verde’s isolation and strategic position simply made that country a convenient location for the long arm of US extraterritorial judicial overreach.
This case must become a global challenge to arrogant US lawlessness.
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Sara Flounders, International Action Center
Roger D. Harris, Task Force on the Americas, were in Cabo Verde June 3-10 on the emergency human rights delegation organized by the International Campaign to Free Alex Saab
Featured image: Picture of Alex Saab provided by the United States Department of the Treasury (Source: Public Domain)
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We remembered all the miseries, all the injustices, our people and the conditions they lived, the coldness with which world opinion looks at our cause, and so we felt that we will not permit them to crush us. We will defend ourselves and our revolution by every way and every means. – George Habash (1926-2008)
A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. – Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
In December 1982, following Israel’s devastating invasion of Lebanon six months earlier, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolution A/RES/37/43 concerning the ‘[i]mportance of the universal realization of the right of peoples to self-determination’. It endorsed, without qualification, ‘the inalienable right’ of the Palestinian people to ‘self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity and sovereignty without outside interference’, and reaffirmed the legitimacy of their struggle for those rights ‘by all available means, including armed struggle’. It also strongly condemned Israel’s ‘expansionist activities in the Middle East’ and ‘continual bombing of Palestinian civilians’, both said to ‘constitute a serious obstacle to the realization of the self-determination and independence of the Palestinian people’. In the four decades since then, Israel’s violence against the Palestinian people and its colonisation of their land has not ceased. Up to the present moment, all over historical Palestine, from the Gaza Strip to Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinians are still under that same occupation, subject to suffocating control over virtually every aspect of their lives – and the sadistic, unaccountable violence of the Zionist state.
In addition to its endorsement by the UN, the Palestinians’ right to resist their occupation is also guaranteed by international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to protect the ‘status quo, human rights and prospects for self-determination’ of occupied populations, and as Richard Falk – an expert in international law who later went on to be appointed the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories – has explained, Israel’s ‘pronounced, blatant and undisguised’ refusal to ever accept this framework of legal obligations constitutes a fundamental denial of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and engenders their legally-protected right of resistance. Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and its flagrant disregard for international law through the construction of illegal settlements and other daily violations has continued unabated since Falk’s assessment was made during the al-Aqsa Intifada. In fact, the occupation has only become further entrenched since then with the collaboration of the comprador Palestinian Authority.
Furthermore, regardless of what is mandated by international law, the Palestinians possess a fundamental moral right to resist their ongoing colonisation and oppression through armed resistance, and that right must be recognised and supported. The multi-generational suffering of the Palestinians, perhaps none more so than those who live in the besieged and bombarded Gaza strip, is unremittingly cruel and has one central cause: Israel and the perpetual belligerence, expansionism and racism that is inherent to its state ideology, Zionism. Moreover, contrary to the Western media’s narrative that, without fail, portrays Israel as acting in ‘retaliation’, it is the actions of the Palestinians which are fundamentally reactive in nature, because the violence that Israel inflicts upon them is both perpetual and structural, and therefore automatically precedes any resistance to it. ‘With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun’, said Paolo Freire; ‘[n]ever in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed’. In Palestine, as Ali Abunimah recently wrote, ‘the root cause of all political violence is Zionist colonisation’.
Given that the Palestinians’ legal and moral right to pursue armed resistance is clear, endorsement of this position should be uncontroversial and commonplace among supporters of their cause. Yet in the West, such a position is rarely expressed – even by those who loudly proclaim their solidarity with Palestine. On the contrary, acts of Palestinian armed resistance, such as the firing of missiles from Gaza, are condemned by these ostensible supporters as part of the problem, dismissed condescendingly as ‘futile’ and ‘counter-productive’, or even labelled ‘war crimes’ and ‘unthinkable atrocities’, said to be comparable to Israel’s routine collective punishment, torture, incarceration, bombardment and murder of Palestinians. This form of solidarity, as Bikrum Gill has argued, is essentially ‘premised upon re-inscribing Palestinians as inherently non-sovereign beings who can only be recognized as disempowered dependent objects to be acted upon, either by Israeli colonial violence, or white imperial protectors’.
To sit in the comfort and safety of the West and condemn acts of armed resistance that the Palestinians choose to carry out – always at great risk to their lives – is a deeply chauvinistic position. It must be stated plainly: it is not the place of those who choose to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians from afar to then try and dictate how they should wage the anti-colonial struggle that, as Frantz Fanon believed, is necessary to maintain their humanity and dignity, and ultimately to achieve their liberation. Those who are not under brutal military occupation or refugees from ethnic cleansing have no right to judge the manner in which those who are choose to confront their colonisers. Indeed, expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause is ultimately meaningless if that support dissipates the moment that the Palestinians resist their oppression with anything more than rocks and can no longer be portrayed as courageous, photogenic, but ultimately powerless, victims. ‘Does the world expect us to offer ourselves up as polite, willing and well-mannered sacrifices, who are murdered without raising a single objection?’ Yahya al-Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, recently asked rhetorically. ‘This is not possible. No, we have decided to defend our people with whatever strength we have been given.’
This phenomenon speaks to what Jones Manoel calls the Western left’s ‘fetish for defeat’ that predisposes it towards situations ‘of oppression, suffering and martyrdom’, as opposed to successful acts of resistance and revolution. Manoel continues:
People become ecstatic looking at those images – which I don’t think are very fantastic – of a [Palestinian] child or teenager using a sling to launch a rock at a tank. Look, this is a clear example of heroism but it is also a symbol of barbarism. This is a people who do not have the capacity to defend themselves facing an imperialist colonial power that is armed to the teeth. They do not have an equal capacity of resistance, but this is romanticized.
As a result, large swathes of the Western left express solidarity with the Palestinian cause in a generalised, abstract way, overstating the importance of their own role, and simultaneously rejecting the very groups who are currently fighting – and dying – for it. All too often, those who have refused to surrender and steadfastly resisted at great cost, are condemned by people who, in the same breath, declare solidarity with the cause. Similarly, it is common for these same people to either ignore or demonise those external forces that materially aid the Palestinian resistance more than any others – most notably Iran. If this assistance is acknowledged, which is rare, the Palestinian groups that accept it are typically infantilised as mere ‘dupes’ or ‘pawns’, for allowing themselves to be used cynically by the self-serving acts of others – a sentiment that directly contradicts Palestinian leaders’ own statements.
A specific criticism of Hamas that is frequently deployed in this context is the ‘indiscriminate’ nature of its missile launches from Gaza, actions which both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty Intentional regularly label ‘war crimes’. As observed by Perugini and Gordon, the false equivalence that this designation relies upon ‘essentially says that using homemade missiles – there isn’t much else available to people living under permanent siege – is a war crime. In other words, Palestinian armed groups are criminalised for their technological inferiority’. After the latest round of fighting in May 2021, al-Sinwar stated clearly that, unlike Israel, ‘which possesses a complete arsenal of weaponry, state-of-the-art equipment and aircraft’ and ‘bombs our children and women, on purpose’, if Hamas possessed ‘the capabilities to launch precision missiles that targeted military targets, we wouldn’t have used the rockets that we did. We are forced to defend our people with what we have, and this is what we have’.
This failure to support legitimate armed struggle is a part of a wider problem with the framing used by many supporters of the Palestinian cause in the West, that obscures its fundamental nature and how it must be resolved. Palestine is not simply a human rights issue, or even just a question of apartheid, but rather an anti-colonial fight for national liberation being waged by an indigenous resistance against the forces of an imperialist-backed settler colony. Decolonisation is a word now frequently used in the West in an abstract sense or in relation to curricula, institutions and public art, but rarely anymore in connection to what actually matters most: land. And that is the very crux of the issue: the land of Palestine must be decolonised, its Zionist colonisers deposed, their racist structures and barriers – both physical and political – dismantled, and all Palestinian refugees given the right of return.
It should be noted that emphasising the importance of supporting the Palestinians’ right to carry out armed struggle in pursuit of their freedom does not mean that their supporters in the West should recklessly call for violence or fetishize and celebrate it unnecessarily. Nor does it mean that non-violent efforts such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) are inconsequential or unimportant. Rather, BDS should be considered part and parcel of a broad spectrum of resistance activities, of which armed struggle is an integral component. Samah Idriss, founding member of the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel in Lebanon has stated: ‘[b]oth forms of resistance, civil and armed, are complementary and should not be viewed as mutually exclusive.’ Or, as Khaled Barakat has stressed: ‘Israel and its allies have never accepted any form of Palestinian resistance, and boycott campaigns and popular organizing are not alternatives to armed resistance but interdependent tactics of struggle’.
Nelson Mandela’s analysis is relevant in this context, when he wrote that, ‘[n]on-violent passive resistance is effective as long as your opposition adheres to the same rules as you do’, but if peaceful protest is met with violence, its efficacy is at an end’. For Mandela, ‘non-violence was not a moral principle but a strategy’, since ‘there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon’. Clarifying the rationale behind the African National Congress’ decision to adopt armed resistance, Mandela explained that it had no alternative course left available: ‘[o]ver and over again, we had used all the non-violent weapons in our arsenal – speeches, deputations, threats, marches, strikes, stay-aways, voluntary imprisonment – all to no avail, for whatever we did was met by an iron hand’. This standpoint is reflected in the words of al-Sinwar, who when referring to the Great March of Return protests in 2018-19, during which Israeli snipers shot dead hundreds of Gazan protestors and seriously wounded thousands more said: ‘we’ve tried peaceful resistance and popular resistance’, but rather than acting to stop Israel’s massacres, ‘the world stood by and watched as the occupation war machine killed our young people’.
Mandela’s reference to efficacy is crucial. Despite what many Western supporters seem intent on implying, although it comes at a huge cost, the Palestinian armed resistance in Gaza is not ‘futile’ and has grown enormously in effectiveness and deterrent capacity. This was already evident after Israel’s failure to win the 2014 war on Gaza and has been underlined by the recent success of the resistance in May 2021, during which it launched an unprecedented number of missiles that can now reach deep inside historical Palestine. In spite of its devastating aerial bombardment of Gaza, Israel was unable to stop the launch of these missiles and, after the losses it experienced in 2014, is now too fearful of launching another ground invasion of the strip – notably as the resistance is now equipped with greater numbers of Kornet missiles previously used to such deadly effect against Israeli tanks in Southern Lebanon. The ceasefire that was declared on May 21st was widely seen in Israel as a defeat, and was celebrated by Palestinians across historical Palestine as a victory. The military balance has changed, and although Israel is still vastly more powerful by every conventional measure, the resistance is in a stronger position now than it has been for years. It has built upon the successes of Hezbollah against Israel in 2000 and 2006 and with the support, training and further aid of the Lebanese group and others in the Resistance Axis, it has taken its capabilities to a higher level. This change is reflected in the fact that since 2014, Israeli arms sales have stagnated and its aggressions against Gaza no longer lead to an immediate rise in the stock price of its arms companies that use Gaza as a training ground and stage for its latest technologies. Shir Hever has noted that after Israel’s failures in Gaza beginning in 2014, customers of its arms companies began to ask ‘What is the point of all this technology? If you cannot pacify the Palestinians with these missiles, why should we buy them?’.
In addition to its practical impact, armed struggle has significant propaganda value. The reality is that Palestine would not have dominated global news headlines in May 2021 in the way that it did were it not for the armed resistance in Gaza that – contrary to the Western media’s singular focus on Hamas – is composed of a united front of various factions including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP is a case in point in this regard, for it was their actions throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, most notably a series of plane hijackings (in which passengers were released unharmed), that implanted the Palestinian cause in the consciousness of millions of people for the first time and marked a key turning point in raising awareness of the Palestinians’ plight globally. Indeed, the Palestinian writer and PFLP spokesman, Ghassan Kanafani, believed that armed struggle was the ‘best form of propaganda’ and that in spite of the ‘gigantic propaganda system of the United States’, it is through people who fight to liberate themselves in armed struggle ‘that things are ultimately decided’.
In 1970, after the Western-backed regime in Jordan had shelled Palestinian refugee camps in the country, the PFLP – under the leadership of Kanafani’s comrade (and recruiter) George Habash – took hostage a group of nationals from the US, West Germany and Britain (Israel’s primary supporters) at two hotels in Amman. In return for their safe release, the PFLP demanded that ‘all shelling of the camps be ended and all demands of the Palestinian resistance movement met’. Shortly before the hostages were eventually released, Habash addressed them apologetically and said:
I feel that it’s my duty to explain to you why we did what we did. Of course, from a liberal point of view of thinking, I feel sorry for what happened, and I am sorry that we caused you some trouble during the last 2 or 3 days. But leaving this aside, I hope that you will understand, or at least try to understand, why we did what we did.
Maybe it will be difficult for you to understand our point of view. People living different circumstances think on different lines. They can’t think in the same manner, and we, the Palestinian people, and the conditions we have been living for a good number of years, all these conditions have modelled our way of thinking. We can’t help it. You can understand our way of thinking, when you know a very basic fact. We, the Palestinians… for the last 22 years, have been living in camps and tents. We were driven out of our country, our houses, our homes and our lands, driven out like sheep and left here in refugee camps in very inhumane conditions.
For 22 years our people have been waiting in order to restore their rights, but nothing happened… After 22 years of injustice, inhumanity, living in camps with nobody caring for us, we feel that we have the very full right to protect our revolution. We have all the right to protect our revolution…
We don’t wake up in the morning to have a cup of milk with Nescafe and then spend half an hour before the mirror thinking of flying to Switzerland or having one month in this country or one month in that country… We live daily in camps… We can’t be calm as you can. We can’t think as you think. We have lived in this condition, not for one day, not for 2 days, not for 3 days. Not for one week, not for 2 weeks, not for 3 weeks. Not for one year, not for 2 years, but for 22 years. If any one of you comes to these camps and stays for one or two weeks, he will be affected.
You have to excuse my English. From the personal side, let me say, I apologize to you. I am sorry about your troubles for 3 or 4 days. But from a revolutionary point of view, we feel, we will continue to feel that we have the very, very full right to do what we did.
Habash’s words should be listened to carefully. The urgency that underlines his message is even more palpable half a century later, for the Palestinians – consistently refusing passive victimhood – have now lived in the wretched conditions Habash depicts for 73 long years, not 22.
Revolution, Mao Zedong once remarked, ‘is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle’. The same is true of decolonisation, in which although past struggles have been multi-faceted, armed resistance of some kind was almost invariably an integral component of the struggle. Palestine is no exception. Beyond endorsement of BDS and other civil society campaigns, the Palestinians’ unassailable right to pursue armed struggle must be supported by those who choose to stand in solidarity with them and their righteous cause.
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Louis Allday is a writer and historian based in London. He is the founding editor of Liberated Texts.
Featured image: Extract from a design by Ismail Shammout
It was early morning on Friday 4 October 2019 when calm finally prevailed in the streets near eastern Baghdad’s upscale Al-Nakheel Mall. Hours earlier, hundreds of protesters had filled the streets on the third day of mass anti-government demonstrations in the capital, as well as cities across the south, demanding the end of corruption, more jobs and improved public services.
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It was early morning on Friday 4 October 2019 when calm finally prevailed in the streets near eastern Baghdad’s upscale Al-Nakheel Mall.
Hours earlier, hundreds of protesters had filled the streets on the third day of mass anti-government demonstrations in the capital, as well as cities across the south, demanding the end of corruption, more jobs and improved public services.
Now dozens of protesters slept under the Mohammed al-Qassim Bridge, bedding down after security forces had prevented them from reaching Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the country-wide movement.
Tahrir Square, pictured in February 2020, was the epicentre of the protest movement in Baghdad (MEE/Murtaja Jasim)
At half-past six, a yellow tuk-tuk pulled up by a blast wall which security forces had erected near a gas station to block the main road to the square. Inside were three passengers. Two left the vehicle carrying small blue backpacks, then broke the chains surrounding segments of the cement blast wall.
Awoken by the activity, some of the protesters gathered, hoping they now had a chance to reach their friends – and the square – through the new opening.
What happened next caught them unaware.
Suddenly, the tuk-tuk passengers lobbed Molotov cocktails over the wall and onto the security forces, before making a quick exit. Most of the protesters, still asleep, had no idea what had happened until “the gates of hell”, as one eyewitness described it, opened onto them and bullets started flying.
“The firing was intense and continuous, and only stopped for a few seconds from time to time,” Talib Saad, 27, an activist who was at the scene, told Middle East Eye.
“We were facing inevitable death. When the shooting stopped for a few minutes, we ran to take shelter in the nearby Al-Nahdha car showrooms. Bullets were piercing their sandwich panel walls,” he said.
“The shooting lasted about half an hour. It was clear that they were shooting at us with automatic machine guns. Four of the protesters fell in front of me. There was no opportunity to evacuate them or even stop to see if they were still alive or dead.”
Rumours circulated among the protesters that unidentified snipers stationed above the mall had been picking off protesters during the mayhem.
In the hours and days that passed, Iraqi officials also told the public that unknown snipers on rooftops had targeted security forces and demonstrators “to incite sedition”. Four people, including two security personnel, had been killed in the area between Tayaran Square and the mall, according to official statements.
But the official narrative about the attack has never come close to explaining what actually happened.
The total number of victims, the manner of their deaths and the identification of the killers has never been disclosed – until now.
MEE has interviewed more than a dozen former and current civilian and military officials with direct knowledge of the investigation and examined official documents that have never been released to the public.
MEE has found that 32 protesters may have been killed in the attack near al-Nakheel Mall. Further, evidence seen by MEE has raised questions about whether the al-Nakheel attack was only a snapshot of systematic violence perpetrated by security forces in Baghdad over several days that October.
While government officials have continued to blame the al-Nakheel attack on unknown forces, sources tell MEE that investigators tasked by Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi knew within 11 days exactly who was responsible.
Behind closed doors, the perpetrators were admonished and sent to fight Islamic State militants in Kirkuk, where officials hoped they would die and “push the incident into oblivion”. The government quietly offered financial compensation to families of those killed in the attack, but never clarified who was behind the killings.
Meanwhile, officials who knew what happened remained silent and, at multiple junctures, obstructed human rights and UN investigators from discovering the truth. And the families of the protesters killed that day – and the wider Iraqi public who have now seen around 600 protesters killed since that week – have been left in the dark.
“They killed my son. They killed Muqtada with a bullet to the head. I don’t know until today who his killers are,” Abdul Razzaq Abdullah, whose 17-year-old son was shot on 4 October near the mall, told MEE this week.
“I want to know the killer so that I can rest.”
Blast walls and firebombs
Iraq was roiling in October 2019. Tens of thousands of people flooded the streets of Baghdad and eight southern governorates, raging against poor basic life services, widespread corruption in state institutions and high unemployment.
There had been protests across Iraq before – but these were different. After years of accumulated frustration without seeing improvement in their daily lives, the Shia community exploded onto the streets against the Shia-led government.
Demonstrators have repeatedly taken over the streets of Baghdad in protest, as pictured here in January 2020 (MEE/Murtaja Jasim)
The protests were hugely embarrassing to the government both because of how massive they were and also because of the anger of the Shia masses against Shia political forces.
The capital was the protest movement’s heartbeat and the greatest concern for the government of the prime minister and his allies. Youths swarmed in and around central Baghdad’s Tahrir and al-Khilani squares. Only the Tigris River separated the demonstrators from the fortified Green Zone, home to most Iraqi government departments and international diplomatic missions.
In response, the Baghdad Operations Command secured sensitive locations by dividing the city centre into several blocks. Each section was jointly run by local, anti-riot federal police, the Rapid Response forces, Iraqi army troops, the Commando Brigade of the Baghdad Operations Command and other supportive forces and security services.
The block extending from Tayaran Square to the al-Hamzah traffic intersection adjacent to al-Nakheel Mall, an area containing the ministries of interior, oil and transport, was one of the most sensitive.
Three days of bloody confrontations between security forces and demonstrators prompted authorities to cut off the main road leading to Tayaran Square – only about 300 metres from Tahrir Square – with concrete blocks that served as blast walls.
The security forces’ exact distribution was unknown, though the cordon they built was clear to all – and it was inevitable that troops and police would be stationed behind blast walls.
So when the tuk-tuk passengers lobbed firebombs over the wall, they had plenty of targets to hit. Two security personnel were killed and several military vehicles torched as a result, security officials told MEE.
And it’s from here that the official narrative and MEE’s findings diverge.
The official narrative
The Friday morning attack near al-Nakheel Mall was not the only protest that first week of October to turn fatal.
Hundreds of demonstrators were killed and wounded across Baghdad and the south, as the government oversaw a systematic crackdown that combined force with curfews, internet blockages and restricted access.
Most independent journalists and human rights observers were unable to get anywhere near the city squares, the focus for the protesters, which witnessed widespread killings, kidnappings and arrests.
Domestic and international pressure piled on Abdul Mahdi. On 12 October, he formed a supreme ministerial fact-finding committee and ordered an inquiry into the killings, including those near al-Nakheel Mall.
Ten days later, some of the committee’s findings were announced on the state-owned Iraqiya satellite channel.
One hundred and forty-nine civilians and eight security personnel had been killed in eight governorates due to the use of “excessive force and live ammunition” to quell the protests, the committee concluded.
Demonstrations in Baghdad alone accounted for 107 civilian deaths, most of them as a result of head wounds, the committee announced. However, it did not provide further details about what had happened in the capital – at least publicly.
Privately, however, ministerial investigators produced a 14-page report, which MEE has obtained, labelled “top secret” and dated 21 October 2019.
It noted that the largest number of deaths in Baghdad had happened in the area near al-Nakheel Mall.
The report also says that the committee found evidence “that sniper fire targeted protesters from the roof of a building in central Baghdad”.
There were indications, the report says, of “the existence of a sniper site in one of the structures of the buildings opposite a gas station in central Baghdad, and upon inspection of the site, several empty cartridges of a sniper weapon were found”.
No further details were provided about the building alleged, nor about the number or type of cartridges that its investigators found.
However, MEE saw an even earlier draft of the classified report. That version contains a paragraph making it clear that the building referenced in the final report was located near the area where the al-Nakheel attack occurred.
But what investigators avoided mentioning even in the early draft of the classified report was that their evidence only suggested a lone sniper.
“There was only one sniper. That’s what our investigation revealed,” a former Iraqi minister and a key member of the supreme ministerial fact-finding committee told MEE.
“The strange thing is that we don’t know yet who put him [the sniper] there and to which forces he belongs. All the field commanders denied having any connection with him or giving orders to him to be stationed there or to take part in the events.”
Despite this, sources informed about the attack tell MEE that Iraqi officials used the committee’s findings to push the idea that unknown snipers were behind the killings.
Lieutenant General Jalil al-Rubaie, the commander of Baghdad operations at the time, was among the first to officially promote the narrative of the unknown snipers.
The day after the attack, Rubaie told the leaders of the al-Karkh tribe that “a sniper was stationed in one of the capital’s areas and targeted the demonstrators who went out to demand their rights”.
“The intelligence tried to arrest him, but he managed to escape to an unknown destination,” he said.
He was not alone in his assertions.
The gas station, across from a building that was the focus of the authorities’ sniper narrative, in January 2020 (MEE/Murtaja Jasim)
In a television interview weeks later, Najah al-Shammari, a former defence minister, said that “a third party was involved in killing protesters”, alluding to the involvement of Iranian-backed armed factions.
A senior security official who saw footage of the al-Nakheel attack said the explanations were a convenient way to shut down further investigations.
“What was required was to cover up what happened. Blaming unknown snipers means hinting at the involvement of a party outside the equation [the demonstrators and the security forces],” he said.
“The atmosphere was fully prepared for the narration of the snipers and the protesters themselves, who were echoing it and confirming it in their testimonies.”
He added: “The aim was to blame the armed factions [supported by Iran], to shut out any demands that the real perpetrator be held accountable.”
What really happened?
The gunmen who killed the protesters early on 4 October were not unknown snipers, but the Iraqi security forces tasked with protecting the area, MEE has been told.
After the tuk-tuk passengers threw the Molotov cocktails over the blast wall, soldiers reacted with frantic shooting, according to the senior security official who watched footage of the attack recorded on a surveillance camera.
“When some of the soldiers saw their colleagues burning in their vehicles, they lost their nerve and started firing hysterically and indiscriminately from machine guns installed on their vehicles,” he said.
“It was a real massacre. There were no prior orders to use live ammunition, but an unqualified officer lost his nerve and started firing, so the others followed.”
The force deployed at the scene, he added, was trained to fight in wars and had no experience with domestic security.
“It was certainly not qualified to deal with the demonstrators,” he said.
Most of the protesters were hit by indirect fire coming from a soldier stationed on top of a military vehicle with a medium-range machine gun, he said.
The senior security official’s account was corroborated by several eyewitnesses, three officers and two officials familiar with the results of the investigations, who all told MEE that automatic-weapon fire was responsible for the majority of casualties.
But it wasn’t the soldiers’ frantic shooting alone that inflicted such high casualties – but also the angle at which they were firing.
Officers told MEE that the types of vehicle-mounted machine guns used by Iraqi forces would “tear the target apart” if shot directly into a crowd.
Fired upwards at an angle of between 60 and 90 degrees, the shooting would be loud enough to scare away crowds, but not fatal, they said.
But the soldiers on 4 October, according to the senior security official, were not shooting directly at protesters, but at an angle of 30 to 45 degrees “and with the time, the hands of some of them would get tired and go lower”.
“This is the ideal firing angle [30-45 degree],” a military armour officer told MEE, explaining that the force of the bullets, when they hit their target, would be the same force as when they left the barrel of the machine gun. “So it will be fatal.”
And that’s what the senior security official witnessed in the footage.
“Most of the casualties that day were caused by bullets that fell, not from direct fire,” the senior security official said.
The senior security official’s account is consistent with the findings detailed in the private report of the supreme ministerial fact-finding committee, which pointed out that about 70 percent of the murdered protesters in Baghdad were hit in the head and chest areas.
A commissioner with the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights (IHCHR) confirmed this detail based on the testimonies of physicians cooperating with them.
When the shooting ended, at least 18 protesters and two soldiers were dead, according to the senior security official who saw surveillance video of the attack. Dozens more were wounded.
Even at this stage, officials sought to cover up what had happened, victims’ relatives and physicians working in Baghdad emergency rooms told MEE.
The health ministry, they said, gave strict instructions to hospitals that victims should be denied forensic autopsies, meaning that details identifying the cause of death were forbidden from being included on death certificates.
The IHCHR commissioner told MEE that they were aware a massacre took place near al-Nakheel Mall but could not get any “concerted information” on what happened or the real number of casualties.
Protesters seek shelter under Mohammed al-Qassim Bridge. On 4 October 2019, many were asleep there when sudden gunfire broke out (MEE/Murtaj Fasim)
“The ministries of health and the interior refused to provide us with any statistics or details. They were not cooperative with us most of the time,” the commissioner said.
“While the official public position said that only four people were killed, including two security personnel, a physician working at Al-Kindi Hospital near the area called to tell us that they had received on that day 18 bodies, mostly killed by fatal injuries to the head and the upper parts of the body.”
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), the UN Security Council’s mission in Iraq set up in 2003 to support and advise the Iraqi government at its own request, investigated the incident but was also unable to establish more detail.
In May, UNAMI published its sixth report on human rights violations committed during demonstrations in Iraq, citing “an unidentified shooter, or shooters” behind the attack near the mall.
The exact number of casualties was unknown, UNAMI reported, but of the 107 protesters killed in Baghdad between the first and eighth of October 2019, the highest number of casualties occurred around the mall.
The mission noted without elaboration that it had encountered “significant challenges” in gathering information on the mall attack and several others “due to an environment of fear and secrecy surrounding the identity of the perpetrators”.
Explicit admission
While UN and human rights investigators strived in vain to identify the perpetrators, the government had already approved compensation packages for families of those killed during the attack, MEE was told.
In late October 2019, after the fact-finding committee finished its work, the prime minister’s cabinet passed Resolution 340, which classified the protesters killed near the mall among others killed that week as “victims of wrong military operations”, according to an official at the Foundation of Martyrs, a government department responsible for victims of banned Baath Party crimes, terrorism and military activity gone awry.
The foundation, for example, has compensated civilians who were killed and homeowners whose houses were damaged by Iraqi security forces or the US-led international coalition during the fight against IS.
To fulfil Resolution 340, the Ministry of Health’s forensic medicine department eventually gave the foundation lists of demonstrators killed during the protests in October and November 2019 “because they were included in the compensation and privileges of the martyrs”, the foundation official said.
MEE has obtained copies of the lists, which cover deaths in October and November 2019 in Baghdad. Their authenticity has been confirmed by several government sources, including the foundation and the prime minister’s office.
They are the only official documents that have appeared to date containing details about how many protesters were killed, where they were killed and on what dates, their cause of death and the serial numbers of their death certificates.
The documents show that on 4 October, 32 people were recorded killed in Baghdad in areas mostly near al-Nakheel, not two as the Iraqi authorities have claimed over the past two years – or 18 as MEE’s senior security source believed.
But the lists also raise further questions about the killing of demonstrators beyond the Al-Nakheel attack in Baghdad during that first week in October.
Protesters’ deaths classified as victims of wrong military operations, according to the lists seen by MEE, began on 1 October, the very first day of demonstrations.
The number of protesters who were killed and classified as victims of wrong military operations rises significantly from two on the first day to 24 on the third day then 32 on the fourth day and 18 on the fifth day.
Most of the victims were killed as a result of bullets to the head or the upper parts of the body, the lists record.
The majority of those killed were then handled by the Bab al-Sheikh and al-Saadoun police stations, which were responsible for the area extending from Tahrir Square to al-Ghilani gas station near al-Nakheel Mall.
The question that has emerged with urgency is whether the 4 October attack near al-Nakheel Mall was an isolated reaction to the killing of two soldiers or a snapshot of systematic violence that lasted for several days.
The senior security official who saw the footage of the attack near al-Nakheel says even he is not sure exactly when the killing started, or what set it off.
“My closest interpretation of what happened is that the soldiers were killed on the third of October, not the fourth as the military authorities announced at the time. That is, the massacre at al-Nakheel actually began on the third of October and lasted for three days,” he said.
“You can’t imagine how many governmental and non-state actors have colluded to cover up this incident,” the official said bitterly.
The government’s payments to the families of killed protesters were an explicit admission that they had been killed by Iraqi security forces. But what no one has been told, including the victims’ relatives, is which forces exactly.
Who did it?
The mishmash of police units and military divisions swirling around the streets of Baghdad on that day makes pinning down who opened fire in the area near the mall extremely difficult.
MEE sought official comment on the exact number of victims of the al-Nakheel incident. It also sought further details from the government’s perspective.
More than a dozen senior officials who were involved in the investigative committees set up by the governments of Abdul Mahdi and his successor, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, declined to answer questions or claimed they were not authorised to disclose any details.
But after interviews with more than a dozen former and current civilian and military officials with direct knowledge of the investigation, MEE has learned that the area between Tayaran Square and Al-Nakheel Mall was under the control of two main forces on the day of the attack.
They were the Commando Regiment of the Baghdad Operations Command and the 45th Infantry Brigade of the 11th Division – Iraqi Army, in addition to other security services.
According to these sources, soldiers in the Commando Regiment of the Baghdad Operations Command were wearing the uniforms of the Rapid Response Forces, who were not deployed in the area.
But witnesses, who had no idea about the uniform change, were convinced that the Rapid Response Forces had carried out the killings, a detail no one involved in the official investigations had disclosed until today.
Behind closed doors, however, the fact-finding committee formed by Abdul Mahdi was well aware of who was involved, MEE has learned.
After 11 days of investigation, it recommended on 22 October:
the removal of 87 officers from their posts and their involvement in the attack registered in their records
the dismissal of the Baghdad Operations Commander, his security assistant, the commander of the 11th Infantry Division – Iraqi Army, the commander of the 1st Division – Federal Police, and the commander of the 45th Infantry Brigade
the removal of the commander of the 2nd regiment of the 45th Infantry Brigade, the command of the Commando Regiment of the 1st division – Federal Police from their posts, while referring them to military investigation boards
The committee handed over information and CDs containing evidence to the Supreme Judicial Council clarifying exactly what happened in Baghdad that week, including at al-Nakheel Mall.
What none of the committee members announced or revealed – and what everyone sought to hide with “strange complicity”, according to a senior military official familiar with the investigation – is that the two soldiers who were killed were members of the 45th Brigade of the 11th Infantry Division – Iraqi army.
Also not revealed until now is that those involved in the al-Nakheel Mall massacre were their comrades from the brigade.
MEE was told this by officers who were briefed on the findings of an investigation into the reasons for the sudden increase in the number of protesters killed in Baghdad carried out by Lieutenant-General Abdul-Amir al-Shammari, the current deputy commander of joint operations and a former general inspector of the Ministry of Defence.
Their testimonies were corroborated by a senior officer in the Rapid Response Forces and a key member of the supreme ministerial fact-finding committee, who also spoke to MEE.
“Some things are better kept secret because revealing them would stir up sedition,” a former minister and a key member of the ministerial fact-finding committee told MEE. “Announcing such matters will not solve the problem, but will only make it worse.”
He added: “What happened [at al-Nakheel Mall] was a very natural and expected reaction. The soldier treats any target in front of him as an enemy, so what can we expect when two of his colleagues are burned in front of him?
“What do we expect from a soldier we brought from the fronts and fierce fighting with IS, and we put him face to face with a protester who was throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at him?”
Accountability
Beyond the dismissals and disciplinary notes added to files, there was one further measure taken, according to the security official who watched the surveillance footage of the massacre.
Lieutenant-General Abdul-Amir Yarallah, who was the deputy commander of joint operations at the time, ordered the transfer of the entire 45th Infantry Brigade to Kirkuk as a “punishment”, the source said.
“Yarallah decided to punish them and send them to the battlefronts in Kirkuk to face death there in the fight with IS,” the security official said.
The transfer decision, he said, caused a “sharp quarrel” between Yarallah and Lieutenant-General Othman al-Ghanimi, who was the army chief of staff at the time.
“Ghanimi refused to punish them, but Yarallah insisted on transferring them,” the source said.
MEE understands that the brigade was transferred to Kirkuk in November 2019. Neither Ghanimi nor Yarallah responded to requests for comment.
“The decision to transfer them was aimed at keeping them away and pushing the incident into oblivion, while they [members of the 45th Brigade] were pushed to death,” the source said.
He concluded sarcastically: “This is how we deal with our problems in this country, by recycling death and its causes.”
But relatives of those killed are demanding more. Several family members who spoke to MEE say they have filed cases against the government but their cases have been brushed aside.
Abdul Razzaq Abdullah, whose son Muqtada was killed on 4 October, is one of them.
“I filed a case against the government and the former prime minister [Adel Abdul Mahdi], [Faleh] al-Fayyad (the head of the Popular Mobilisation Authority), and all the gang members,” he said.
“Muqtada was a child and I don’t know what sin he committed to be killed in this hideous way.”
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“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” ― Frédéric Bastiat, French economist
If there is an absolute maxim by which the American government seems to operate, it is that the taxpayer always gets ripped off.
With every new tax, fine, fee and law adopted by our so-called representatives, the yoke around the neck of the average American seems to tighten just a little bit more.
Everywhere you go, everything you do, and every which way you look, we’re getting swindled, cheated, conned, robbed, raided, pickpocketed, mugged, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed and fleeced by governmental and corporate shareholders of the American police state out to make a profit at taxpayer expense.
The overt and costly signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government are all around us: warrantless surveillance of Americans’ private phone and email conversations by the FBI, NSA, etc.; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.
Meanwhile, the three branches of government (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) and the agencies under their command—Defense, Commerce, Education, Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, etc.—have switched their allegiance to the Corporate State with its unassailable pursuit of profit at all costs and by any means possible.
By the time you factor in the financial blowback from the COVID-19 pandemic with its politicized mandates, lockdowns, and payouts, it becomes quickly apparent that we are now ruled by a government consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population and seemingly unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.
As with most things, if you want to know the real motives behind any government program, follow the money trail.
When you dig down far enough, you quickly find that those who profit from Americans being surveilled, fined, scanned, searched, probed, tasered, arrested and imprisoned are none other than the police who arrest them, the courts which try them, the prisons which incarcerate them, and the corporations, which manufacture the weapons, equipment and prisons used by the American police state.
Examples of this legalized, profits-over-people, government-sanctioned extortion abound.
On the roads: Not satisfied with merely padding their budgets by issuing speeding tickets, police departments have turned to asset forfeiture and red light camera schemes as a means of growing their profits. Despite revelations of corruption, collusion and fraud, these money-making scams have been being inflicted on unsuspecting drivers by revenue-hungry municipalities. Now legislators are hoping to get in on the profit sharing by imposing a vehicle miles-traveled tax, which would charge drivers for each mile behind the wheel.
In the schools: The security industrial complex with its tracking, spying, and identification devices has set its sights on the schools as “a vast, rich market”—a $20 billion market, no less—just waiting to be conquered. In fact, the public schools have become a microcosm of the total surveillance state which currently dominates America, adopting a host of surveillance technologies, including video cameras, finger and palm scanners, iris scanners, as well as RFID and GPS tracking devices, to keep constant watch over their student bodies. Likewise, the military industrial complex with its military weapons, metal detectors, and weapons of compliance such as tasers has succeeded in transforming the schools—at great taxpayer expense and personal profit—into quasi-prisons. Rounding things out are school truancy laws, which come disguised as well-meaning attempts to resolve attendance issues in the schools but in truth are nothing less than stealth maneuvers aimed at enriching school districts and court systems alike through excessive fines and jail sentences for “unauthorized” absences. Curiously, none of these efforts seem to have succeeded in making the schools any safer.
In the endless wars abroad: Fueled by the profit-driven military industrial complex, the government’s endless wars are wreaking havoc on our communities, our budget and our police forces. Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour. Future wars and military exercises waged around the globe are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053. Talk about fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford. War spending is bankrupting America.
In the form of militarized police: The Department of Homeland Security routinely hands out six-figure grants to enable local municipalities to purchase military-style vehicles, as well as a veritable war chest of weaponry, ranging from tactical vests, bomb-disarming robots, assault weapons and combat uniforms. This rise in military equipment purchases funded by the DHS has, according to analysts Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz, “paralleled an apparent increase in local SWAT teams.” The end result? An explosive growth in the use of SWAT teams for otherwise routine police matters, an increased tendency on the part of police to shoot first and ask questions later, and an overall mindset within police forces that they are at war—and the citizenry are the enemy combatants. Over 80,000 SWAT team raids are conducted on American homes and businesses each year. Moreover, government-funded military-style training drills continue to take place in cities across the country.
In profit-driven schemes such as asset forfeiture: Under the guise of fighting the war on drugs, government agents (usually the police) have been given broad leeway to seize billions of dollars’ worth of private property (money, cars, TVs, etc.) they “suspect” may be connected to criminal activity. Then—and here’s the kicker—whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, the government keeps the citizen’s property, often divvying it up with the local police who did the initial seizure. The police are actually being trained in seminars on how to seize the “goodies” that are on police departments’ wish lists. According to the New York Times, seized monies have been used by police to “pay for sports tickets, office parties, a home security system and a $90,000 sports car.”
By the security industrial complex: We’re being spied on by a domestic army of government snitches, spies and techno-warriors. In the so-called name of “precrime,” this government of Peeping Toms is watching everything we do, reading everything we write, listening to everything we say, and monitoring everything we spend. Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it is all being recorded, stored, and catalogued, and will be used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing. This far-reaching surveillance, carried out with the complicity of the Corporate State, has paved the way for an omnipresent, militarized fourth branch of government—the Surveillance State—that came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum. That doesn’t even touch on the government’s bold forays into biometric surveillance as a means of identifying and tracking the American people from birth to death.
By a government addicted to power: It’s a given that you can always count on the government to take advantage of a crisis, legitimate or manufactured. Emboldened by the citizenry’s inattention and willingness to tolerate its abuses, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands. Now that the government has gotten a taste for flexing its police state powers by way of a bevy of COVID-19 lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc., “we the people” may well find ourselves burdened with a Nanny State inclined to use its draconian pandemic powers to protect us from ourselves.
These injustices, petty tyrannies and overt acts of hostility are being carried out in the name of the national good—against the interests of individuals, society and ultimately our freedoms—by an elite class of government officials working in partnership with megacorporations that are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.
This perverse mixture of government authoritarianism and corporate profits has increased the reach of the state into our private lives while also adding a profit motive into the mix. And, as always, it’s we the people, we the taxpayers, we the gullible voters who keep getting taken for a ride by politicians eager to promise us the world on a plate.
This is a far cry from how a representative government is supposed to operate.
Indeed, it has been a long time since we could claim to be the masters of our own lives. Rather, we are now the subjects of a militarized, corporate empire in which the vast majority of the citizenry work their hands to the bone for the benefit of a privileged few
Adding injury to the ongoing insult of having our tax dollars misused and our so-called representatives bought and paid for by the moneyed elite, the government then turns around and uses the money we earn with our blood, sweat and tears to target, imprison and entrap us, in the form of militarized police, surveillance cameras, private prisons, license plate readers, drones, and cell phone tracking technology.
All of those nefarious deeds by government officials that you hear about every day: those are your tax dollars at work.
It’s your money that allows for government agents to spy on your emails, your phone calls, your text messages, and your movements. It’s your money that allows out-of-control police officers to burst into innocent people’s homes, or probe and strip search motorists on the side of the road. And it’s your money that leads to Americans across the country being prosecuted for innocuous activities such as growing vegetable gardens in their front yards or daring to speak their truth to their elected officials.
Just remember the next time you see a news story that makes your blood boil, whether it’s a police officer arresting someone for filming them in public, or a child being kicked out of school for attending a virtual class while playing with a toy gun, remember that it is your tax dollars that are paying for these injustices.
There was a time in our history when our forebears said “enough is enough” and stopped paying their taxes to what they considered an illegitimate government. They stood their ground and refused to support a system that was slowly choking out any attempts at self-governance, and which refused to be held accountable for its crimes against the people.
Their resistance sowed the seeds for the revolution that would follow.
Unfortunately, in the 200-plus years since we established our own government, we’ve let bankers, turncoats and number-crunching bureaucrats muddy the waters and pilfer the accounts to such an extent that we’re back where we started.
Once again, we’ve got a despotic regime with an imperial ruler doing as they please.
Once again, we’ve got a judicial system insisting we have no rights under a government which demands that the people march in lockstep with its dictates.
And once again, we’ve got to decide whether we’ll keep marching or break stride and make a turn toward freedom.
But what if we didn’t just pull out our pocketbooks and pony up to the federal government’s outrageous demands for more money?
What if we didn’t just dutifully line up to drop our hard-earned dollars into the collection bucket, no questions asked about how it will be spent?
What if, instead of quietly sending in our checks, hoping vainly for some meager return, we did a little calculating of our own and started deducting from our taxes those programs that we refuse to support?
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if the government and its emissaries can just take from you what they want, when they want, and then use it however they want, you can’t claim to be anything more than a serf in a land they think of as theirs.
This is not freedom, America.
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We are a broad and diverse group of Canadian physicians from across Canada who are sending out this urgent declaration to the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons of our various Provinces and Territories and to the Public at large, whom we serve.
On April 30, 2021, Ontario’s physician licensing body, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), issued a statement forbidding physicians from questioning or debating any or all of the official measures imposed in response to COVID-19. 1
The CPSO then went on to threaten physicians with punishment – investigations and disciplinary action.
We regard this recent statement of the CPSO to be unethical, anti-science and deeply disturbing.
As physicians, our primary duty of care is not to the CPSO or any other authority, but to our patients.
When we became physicians, we pledged to put our patients first and that our ethical and professional duty is always first toward our patients. The CPSO statement orders us to violate our duty and pledge to our patients in the following ways:
1. Denial of the Scientific Method itself: The CPSO is ordering physicians to put aside the scientific method and to not debate the processes and conclusions of science.
We physicians know and continue to believe that throughout history, opposing views, vigorous debate and openness to new ideas have been the bedrock of scientific progress. Any major advance in science has been arrived at by practitioners vigorously questioning “official” narratives and following a different path in the pursuit of truth.
2. Violation of our Pledge to use Evidence-Based Medicine for our patients: By ordering us not to debate and not to question, the CPSO is also asking us to violate our pledge to our patients that we will always seek the best, evidence-based scientific methods for them and advocate vigorously on their behalf.
The CPSO statement orders physicians for example, not to discuss or communicate with the public about “lockdown” measures. Lockdown measures are the subject of lively debate by world-renown and widely respected experts and there are widely divergent views on this subject. The explicitly anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration (PDF ) was written by experts from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford Universities and more than 40,000 physicians from all over the world have signed this declaration. Several international experts including Martin Kuldorf (Harvard), David Katz (Yale), Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford) and Sunetra Gupta (Oxford) continue to strongly oppose lockdowns.
The CPSO is ordering physicians to express only pro-lockdown views, or else face investigation and discipline. This tyrannical, anti-science CPSO directive is regarded by thousands of Canadian physicians and scientists as unsupported by science and as violating the first duty of care to our patients.
3. Violation of Duty of Informed Consent: The CPSO is also ordering physicians to violate the sacred duty of informed consent – which is the process by which the patient/public is fully informed of the risks, benefits and any alternatives to the treatment or intervention, before consent is given.
The Nuremberg Code, drafted in the aftermath of the atrocities perpetrated within the Nazi concentration camps – where horrific medical experiments were performed on inmates without consent – expressly forbids the imposition of any kind of intervention without informed consent.
In the case of the lockdown intervention for example, physicians have a fiduciary duty to point out to the public that lockdowns impose their own costs on society, including in greatly increased depression and suicide rates, delayed investigation and treatment of cancer (including delayed surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy), ballooning surgical waiting lists (with attendant greatly increased patient suffering) and increased rates of child and domestic abuse.
We physicians believe that with the CPSO statement of 30 April 2021, a watershed moment in the assault on free speech and scientific inquiry has been reached.
By ordering physicians to be silent and follow only one narrative, or else face discipline and censure, the CPSO is asking us to violate our conscience, our professional ethics, the Nuremberg code and the scientific pursuit of truth.
We will never comply and will always put our patients first.
The CPSO must immediately withdraw and rescind its statement of 30 April 2021.
We also give notice to other Canadian and international licensing authorities for physicians and allied professions that the stifling of scientific inquiry and any order to violate our conscience and professional pledge to our patients, itself may constitute a crime against humanity.
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The College is aware and concerned about the increase of misinformation circulating on social media and other platforms regarding physicians who are publicly contradicting public health orders and recommendations. Physicians hold a unique position of trust with the public and have a professional responsibility to not communicate anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing and anti-lockdown statements and/or promoting unsupported, unproven treatments for COVID-19. Physicians must not make comments or provide advice that encourages the public to act contrary to public health orders and recommendations. Physicians who put the public at risk may face an investigation by the CPSO and disciplinary action, when warranted. When offering opinions, physicians must be guided by the law, regulatory standards, and the code of ethics and professional conduct. The information shared must not be misleading or deceptive and must be supported by available evidence and science.
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To the Devon Local Medical Committee, to the Medical Director of Torbay Hospital Mr Ian Currie,
to the Chief Medical Officer at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital Professor Adrian Harris,
and to Dr Paul Johnson Chairman of the Devon Clinical Commissioning Group,
Yesterday HMG was pleased to record that 27,000 young adults were logging on for the ‘jab’ in every hour.
I write as a citizen and well educated and experienced doctor against this activity promoted by NHS England and Public Health England with the necessary complicity of NHS doctors in general practice and in the hospitals.
I bear in mind the miniscule mortality rate in the healthy of all ages who have suffered clinically diagnosed Covid_19 illness without significant co-morbidity.
I have already alerted the GMC to the neglect of a friend of mine who suffered definite adverse effects of the AstraZeneca Vaccine on the 10th of March 2021, see this and this.
Previously I wrote to a general practice underlining the ethical and legal duty to ensure informed consent.
Late last year I wrote of grossly inadequate standards of care both at Torbay Hospital – 6 cases, and the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.
This anecdote prompts me to speak up again and to demand the cessation of all ‘vaccination’ of those under 30, and indeed in those older persons.
The index patient is an acquaintance whom I met yesterday in our local town and whom I have greeted in passing for many years. A 72 yr old, a happy man of humble origin. He knows me, and partly from my having replaced arthritic hips in two of his extended family.
March 2021 – drove to Westpoint ‘Vaccination’ Centre (normal function the Devon Annual Agricultural Show) No informed consent. Both ‘jabbed’ with the AS ‘shot’. No immediate adverse effects. 2 weeks later he noted sudden blindness of his left eye. Seen in the opthalmology department of Torbay Hospital. Not certain what diagnosis was made. But certainly told the blindness was not an adverse effect of the ‘jab’.
More recently, had the second one. 5 days afterwards he became deaf to a severe extent in the left ear. He has long standing deafness in the right and is thus disabled to an extent, and I had to speak loudly to him. His wife has suffered no ill effects.
He knew nothing of the Yellow Card system, going for decades in the UK, a passive system.
In the US, the reporting of adverse ‘events’ to the Centre for Disease Control was studied at Harvard University. Between 1 to 10% were actually received by the CDC. Humans receiving these inoculations of an experimental vaccine in the UK are not made aware of the Yellow Card nor of the importance of reporting adverse effects for those who are to follow.
Although there is absolute censorship in the UK of dissenting voices, of reports of adverse effects, and of the clear benefit of the readily available ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in the acute disease, there is now much information available in the US.
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These were received from Peter McCullough MD this am – a senior cardiologist and ‘internist’, and with a deep knowledge appropriately of epidemiology – Fox News.
I add this 15 minute video for wider context (usual ‘social’ platforms in the UK censor all dissenting views and experience):
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The centenary of the Northern Irish state comes amidst a deep crisis of unionism in the north and talk of a United Ireland growing across the island by the day. Ben Wray, Bella’s European Feature Writer, speaks to authors and campaigners for a United Ireland about the origins of partition and the prospects for re-unification.
On 3 May 1921, the UK passed the Government of Ireland Act, which was intended to divide Ireland into two governing entities: north and south Ireland. Both territories would remain British jurisdictions, and provisions were in place for their eventual reunification.
The British southern state never got off the ground, rejected by the vast majority of people in the 26 counties in favour of independence, but the smaller six-county Northern Irish state held an election on 24 May, with the Ulster Unionist Party winning 67% of the vote. On the 22 June, the Northern Irish parliament officially opened. Ireland had been partitioned.
100 years on, the Northern Irish state remains, but increasingly its hook to the UK state appears to be on a shoogly peg. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the biggest party in Stormont and the leading voice of unionism in Northern Ireland for almost two decades, is in a deep crisis, ditching two leaders in the space of a few weeks, and with collapsing support in the polls. Sinn Féin, the Irish nationalist party, is on course to win the NI Assembly elections next year and thus take the First Minister’s chair in Stormont for the first time. Whatever the architects of partition had in mind, it wasn’t this.
Partition: A “compromise solution”, or an imperialist ploy?
The BBC is running a series to mark the centenary of Northern Ireland and in a piece on how the Irish border was created, Eimear Flanagan states: “Partition was viewed by the British Government as a compromise solution.”
He adds:
“Nationalists had campaigned for ‘Home Rule’ for decades, seeking a devolved parliament in Dublin. But unionists, who were mainly Protestant, did not want to be ruled from Dublin.
“Unionists held a majority in the province of Ulster in the north-east, but in Ireland as a whole they were greatly outnumbered by nationalists, who were mainly Catholic.”
In this presentation, the British Government appears as the paternal, even-handed administrator, simply looking to keep the peace by negotiating a compromise, and with no intrinsic interests of its own. Kieran Allen, Sociology professor at the University of Dublin and author of the recently released ’32 counties: the failure of partition and the case for a United Ireland’, is unsurprised by the BBC’s depiction.
“That is traditionally how the British Empire is presented, that it’s a sort of neutral arbiter, between Hindus and Muslims in India, or being Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.”
Allen says that Irish partition was actually part of a broader Tory strategy towards Empire, which sought to deal with growing discontent in the colonies after WW1 by “whipping up chauvinism”. The creation of the six-county state in the north was specifically designed with this purpose in mind; as a bulwark against revolution.
“What they drew up was essentially an arbitrary division [of Ireland],” Allen tells Bella. “The original proposal for partition in 1912 was for four-counties, then there was a proposal in 1920 for a nine-county Ulster, and eventually they settled on a six-county Ulster, because, as James Craig, the first prime minister of Northern Ireland, said at the time, that was the largest amount of territory that would allow for ‘a decisive Protestant majority in which unionist power would be guaranteed, in perpetuity’. That’s why it happened.”
The violence against Catholics and nationalists who opposed the creation of the new state, especially in Belfast, provides further evidence of the sectarianism in the project from its birth. Ten per cent of the nationalist population were forced out of Belfast in the first years of the NI state. Those that remained were treated as second-class citizens. The fact that one party, the Ulster Unionist Party, was in power for over 50 years from 1921 to 1972, when Stormont was abolished, an unprecedented electoral domination in the western world, tells its own story.
The less talked about side of partition is the impact it had on the 26-counties on the other side of the border, which became a “mirror image” of the northern state in its conservatism, Allen argues.
“What you have in the south is a revolutionary wave after 1918,” he says, “but with the the help of British guns and the British cajoling a section of the republican movement into suppressing their former allies, a counter-revolution developed. That counter-revolution meant suppressing all the social grievances, but it also meant using Catholicism as a kind of spiritual anti-depressant: ‘we are the most Catholic country in the world, we want nothing to do with divorce, nothing to do with abortion and so on’.
“The proof that partition produced this mirror image of conservatism is that it was one of the few countries in western Europe where there was no left-right divide.”
Today, while much has changed on both sides of the border, much still stays the same. In the north, a census poll due later this year is likely to show that there are more Catholics than Protestants for the first time, but also the number of people who don’t identify as either has tripled since 1990 to 18%. Still, nearly a quarter of a century after the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Irish politics remains locked in a sectarian prism, evidenced over the past week by the DUP’s resistance to an Act for Irish language rights at Stormont.
In the South, a massive Yes vote in the 2015 and 2018 referendums on abortion rights and equal marriage has shown the Catholic Church no longer is the dominant institution it once was. Nonetheless, it still runs 94% of primary schools, and is still politically shielded by the two conservative establishment parties which have dominated Irish politics in the 26 counties since independence, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, which remain in power at the Dáil today, in a three-way coalition with the Greens. Ireland is still shaped by partition.
Brexit and the crisis of unionism: short-term, or existential?
Boris Johnson was cheered to the rooftops when he turned up at a 2018 DUP conference to say that “no British Conservative government could or should sign up to any such arrangement” which included border checks and customs controls down the Irish Sea. Two years later, after replacing Theresa May as Prime Minister on the back of such commitments and with the clear support of the DUP for his leadership, Johnson did exactly what he promised not to do, in the form of the Irish protocol in his Brexit agreement with the EU. The DUP had been duped.
What has followed is a deep crisis of unionism in Northern Ireland, with the DUP at the centre of the recriminations. The party got rid of Arlene Foster as First Minister for her part in the protocol, only to junk her replacement, Edwin Poots, weeks later. Poots’ close ally Paul Givan, who has just been installed as the new First Minister to replace Foster, has now been told by the party that he has to go too. Meltdown would be putting it lightly.
Profound questions have now been opened up for unionists: ‘If the protocol remains, are we really a full part of the UK anymore? And if the Tories are willing to betray us for a deal with the EU, what are we really worth to the British anyway?’
The rage and despair this existential crisis has brought on has been on full show as marching season has kicked in. One report in the Guardian of one such march heard from Joe, 63, terminally ill with cancer, who lit aflame a banner saying ‘United Ireland’ on it. Asked if the sort of violence seen in The Troubles could return within his lifetime, he said: “If that’s the way it has to be, then that’s how it’ll be.”
We have already seen rioting in April, and marching season has been described as a “tinderbox” with the ongoing ‘sausage war’ between the UK and the EU over the protocol looming in the background. It may be the case that Johnson can find another compromise with Brussels which can give the DUP an out, but Daniel Finn, features editor of Jacobin and author of ‘One Man’s Terrorist: A political history of the IRA’ (2019), tells Bella that the DUP now faces long-term electoral pressures which will not go away easily.
“The DUP has got this dilemma, because in the polls they are losing support in both directions – on one side to the Alliance party, which is a more liberal party, and on the other side to the Traditional Unionist Voice, which is a very-hard line unionist party. You can’t really win back both of those groups of people, so there is a re-alignment that is taking place which I think will continue.”
How likely is a border poll?
While the DUP is in crisis, Sinn Fèin is on the rise. The 2020 Republic of Ireland election gave the Irish nationalists the most votes in the 26-county state for the first time. In 1997, the year before the Good Friday Agreement, they had won just 2.5% of the vote and one seat in the south. Sinn Fèin were only kept out of power by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil agreeing a power-sharing deal, along with the Greens. Since then, polls show Sinn Fèin extending its lead to one-third of voters.
The party’s newly found support in the south has been built on focusing on social justice issues like housing and health, which has attracted young people in particular, but given Brexit and the crisis of unionism, Sinn Fèin’s growing support on both sides of the border is galvanising demands for a border poll. This is causing Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, which for years have paid lip service at best to the idea of a United Ireland at some point in the distant future, to have to adapt their rhetoric.
At the weekend, Leo Varadkar, the former Taoiseach and current leader of Fine Gael and deputy prime minister in the government, made waves after telling his party conference that it “should be part of our mission as a party to work towards” re-unification, and that “no one group can have a veto” on the issue.
Following criticism of his remarks, including from Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis, who told him to “dial down the rhetoric, particularly at this time of year”, Varadkar said that for many people, including in his own party, it was “always the wrong time” to talk about a united Ireland, adding that there was “no majority anymore” in NI for unionism or nationalism, and that a new middle-ground, particularly of young people, want to talk about it.
Allen says Varadkar’s comments highlight the “massive shift in consciousness in the south” on the national question.
“It’s a fact that about 70% of the southern population are for Irish unity, and not just are they for it, they believe it will happen in the coming decade. And therefore Fine Gael, being a clever bourgeois party, are re-positioning themselves to say ‘we are for Irish unity as well’.”
Gerry Carlile, CEO of Ireland’s Future, a civic organisation campaigning for Irish re-unification, welcomed Varadkar’s intervention, but said that “planning and preparing should be well underway” in Dublin, citing the Scottish example pre-2014 referendum – where a White Paper was published on independence – as the sort of work that should be taking place in the Dáil. Specifically, Ireland’s Future are calling on the RoI government to establish a Citizen’s Assembly on the constitutional future of Ireland.
Pressuring the RoI state into seriously pushing for Irish unity is just one hurdle to overcome in getting a border poll. The biggest one is the UK state. The Good Friday Agreement contains a clause which says that the Northern Ireland Secretary “shall exercise the power [to call a referendum] if at any time it appears likely…that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom”. This leaves the power over Ireland’s future in the hands of a British minister, and on conveniently vague terms as to how the Minister is to decide whether NI “appears likely” to vote for Irish unity.
Carlile tells Bella that they believe “the criteria has been met” for a border poll, highlighting that a majority of Northern Irish members of the UK Parliament are for the first time pro-Irish unity. Ireland’s Future have written to Brandon Lewis to clarify what is the criteria the UK Government uses to decide whether a referendum should be held.
Some have speculated that while the UK state may have had a material interest in holding onto NI in the past, today it may be quite happy to see it go, especially given that NI spending massively outstrips its tax revenues. Finn says that while he “wouldn’t dismiss that view out of hand”, there are good reasons to believe that they still have a “political interest”.
“A political interest doesn’t have to have a direct economic motive; there are questions about the general power and prestige of the British state in world affairs. The state relies to an extent on symbolic power – or soft power – as well as economic and military power, and its territory is part of the prestige of the state.
“And there is also the political factor of British nationalism. Even if you assume that Johnson’s government doesn’t have any particular interest in partition for its own sake and doesn’t really care about what happens in Northern Ireland, which is to some extent true when you see the way they reached their agreement on Brexit and the Irish Protocol, they also have to think about the knock on implications [of Irish unity], for instance in terms of what happens with Scotland.”
What kind of United Ireland?
If a border poll can be secured and a yes vote won, what would a United Ireland look like? As the possibilities of an end to partition have grown, an increasing number of thinkers on left and right have been putting their minds to this question.
Michael McDowell, a former leader of Ireland’s first openly neoliberal party, the Progressive Democrats, has made the case for Irish unity based on minimal change to the current state structures on both sides of the border via a confederal system.
“A confederal form of unity would leave both jurisdictions largely intact and in which…only limited powers [would be] devolved by each part of the confederation to its institutions,” he argues.
This limited change vision is an attempt to reassure elites in the north and south that Irish unity can be achieved without the interests of either being undermined and to convince unionists in the north that they will still have important representation following re-unification. However, for many who are coming round to the idea of a United Ireland, it’s surely the prospect for transformative change across the island which motivates them.
In Northern Ireland, chronic low wages and sluggish investment rates – well below other UK regions – has led to many questioning what Stormont and the UK state have actually delivered in terms of improving living standards since the Good Friday Agreement. In the Republic of Ireland, the country has carved out a unique position within the EU as a tax haven, attracting some of the world’s largest companies to headquarter in Dublin, but that model has brought with it astronomical private rents as wealth inequality surges, some of the most expensive childcare in the EU, large primary school class sizes and the longest hospital waiting times in Europe. A poll found one-quarter of the electorate in the North said the lack of an NHS in the south makes them more likely to vote for the Union in any referendum.
If constitutional change does not deliver social justice on both sides of the border, merely integrating the north to create a whole-island tax haven, then is that really progress?
For Carlile, emerging debates about what a United Ireland should look like is a healthy sign.
“The reality is the conversation is happening on the ground and right across this entire island,” he says.
Ireland’s Future are currently setting up public meetings across the country to facilitate that conversation, and Carlile is optimistic about the Irish unity movement’s prospects.
“Without a doubt this is a very promising period,” he tells Bella. “Coming out of the pandemic, this is the time for change, the time to start thinking about what would make the country better.”
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The annual U.S.-led multinational naval exercise in the Black Sea, Sea Breeze, will begin on June 28 and continue until July 10. As with previous iterations this year’s exercise will be co-hosted by the U.S. and Ukraine.
Though as the name indicates primarily a series of maritime drills, Sea Breeze also includes air and land components.
Currently there are three warships from NATO nations in the Black Sea: the U.S. interceptor missile/guided-missile destroyer USS Laboon, the British destroyer HMS Defender and Dutch frigate HNLMS Evertsen. The first is part of the carrier strike group attached to the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier and the latter two to the new HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier.
As the massive Defender Europe 21 war games wrapped up this week, several components of which were held in the Black Sea, the public relations bureau of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa and U.S. Sixth Fleet announced that this year’s Sea Breeze will include military personnel, ships, planes and equipment from the most nations ever: 32. From six continents. Participating countries are: Albania, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, France, Georgia, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Morocco, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Senegal, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. All are NATO members or partners except for Brazil and Senegal, but Brazil has been contributing to war games held by the U.S. in Africa and Europe lately and may well soon join its neighbor Colombia as a NATO partner; and Senegal, which is also now participating in the U.S./NATO African Lion military exercise, may join fellow African NATO partners Algeria, Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.
U.S. Navy graphic
The war games will include 5,000 troops, 32 ships, 40 aircraft and 18 special operations and diving teams.
The American chargé d’affaires to Ukraine, Kristina Kvien (a graduate of the U.S. Army War College), was quoted by U.S. Navy stating: “The United States is proud to partner with Ukraine in co-hosting the multinational maritime exercise Sea Breeze, which will help enhance interoperability and capabilities among participating nations. We are committed to maintaining the safety and security of the Black Sea.”
Interoperability is a NATO catchword for military integration. This year’s maneuvers will include amphibious warfare, land warfare, air defense, special operations and anti-submarine warfare facets.
Only one of the six (recognized) nations on the Black Sea is not a NATO member (Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey) or a NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner (Georgia and Ukraine): Russia. It is that country that troops, ships and military aircraft from 32 nations on six continents will be deployed against in a few days.
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Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
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A plan for a simultaneous Turkish invasion of both Greece and Armenia was prepared by Turkey, according to the secret documents of the Turkish General Staff.
According to these documents, the plan called “CERBE” was prepared in 2014 and updated in 2016.
According to the Nordic Monitor, “Turkey was inspired by the name of its secret war plans for the eastern Mediterranean, from a significant victory Ottoman naval machine against a fleet of Christian alliance that strengthened Turkish rule in the Mediterranean.”
According to a PowerPoint presentation prepared by the General Staff for a review of interior design, Turkey has drawn up a plan for a secret military operation called “TSK [Turkish Armed Forces] Cerbe Operation Planning Directive”.
The plan was dated January 7, 2014, which means that it was probably updated amid increased tension between Turkey and Greece / Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean, the report also states. Cerbe is the name of an island in southern Tunisia near the border with Libya.
It was there that the Battle of Djerba took place in May 1560 between the Ottoman forces and the fleet of the Christian Alliance, which consisted mainly of Spanish, Papal, Genoese, Maltese and Neapolitan forces.
“The Turks won the battle, which gave them dominance in the Mediterranean Sea,” the report said, adding that “the name of Turkey’s comprehensive war game plan in the eastern Mediterranean fits in with the narrative promoted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan” and his associates, who often place Turkey’s problems with its Western allies as part of a renewed conflict between Christian Europe and Muslim Turkey. A slide from the powerpoint from the secret document lists the military plans of Turkey against Greece, Armenia and Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean with corresponding dates that show when they were drawn up “.
“The existence of Turkey’s war plan for the east was discovered in a court file in the Turkish capital, with prosecutor Serdar Coşkun, loyal to the Turkish president, apparently forgetting to remove the classified documents before submitting them to the court,” the statement said, which continues: “
They were collected from the headquarters of the General Staff during an investigation into the failed coup on 15 July 2016. The documents, including the plan to invade Greece and Armenia, were found to have been sent among the top commanders to the General Staff through a secure internal email.
Koskun ordered the army to forward copies of all emails for the previous two months, including the encrypted ones, on August 1, 2016. Ten days later, on August 11, 2016, the prosecutor instructed his trusted assistant, a police officer named Yüksel Var, collect emails from the General Staff’s internal servers and report to him. A panel set up by military technicians under Var completed its work on 14 February 2017. Finally, the indictment filed by prosecutors Necip Cem İşçimen, Kemal Aksakal and İstiklal Akkaya in March 2017 at the 17th Supreme Criminal Court of the All of Ankara the e-mails collected from the computers of the General Staff “.
The Nordic Monitor concludes: “No communication was found in the e-mails indicating any coup attempt, which many believe was a disorientation operation organized by Erdogan and his intelligence and military leaders to trap the opposition to persecution and mass purges.
The document does not contain details about the specifics of the program other than its name and updated date. The details of the war plan must have been labeled “confidential” and therefore could not be communicated through the intranet system running on the Turkish army’s email exchange servers. A review of the documents also shows that the General Staff, which notified the emails at the outset, panicked eight months later about the possible impact of the disclosure of sensitive documents and began sounding the alarm. The first warning letter was written on March 8, 2017 by the Chief of General Staff Unur Tarçın, Head of the Communication, Electronic and Information Services System of the General Staff (Muhabere, Elektronik ve Bilgi Sistemleri, or MEBS).
He warned the General Staff Legal Service that the documents contained secret documents related to Turkey’s national security, classified intelligence reports and operations in Syria and the eastern Mediterranean. He said the documents should be kept secret and not disclosed to unauthorized persons. The Deputy Chief Legal Adviser of the General Staff, Colonel Aydın Seviş, then wrote to the 17th Ankara High Criminal Court on 24 August 2017, reiterating the same concerns about the secret documents and urging the establishment of a committee to review them. However, the Turkish prosecutors did not seem to pay attention to their concerns and included all the emails with the attached secret documents in the case file, revealing the highly classified information including the name of the invasion plan for Greece”.
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The emergence of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant from India, called “Delta,” may result in a new round of lockdowns around the world, including the U.K. and Chile
Chile has one of the highest COVID-jab rates in the world; 58% of the population have received two doses and 75% have received their first dose. Santiago locked down as of June 10, 2021, after the capital reported the highest COVID-19 case numbers since the beginning of the pandemic
Research by Public Health England (PHE) suggests two doses of Pfizer’s mRNA COVID shot is 88% effective against the Delta variant, while AstraZeneca’s DNA injection appears to be 60% effective. After a single dose, either of the shots was only 33% protective against symptomatic illness
PHE claims the Delta variant is 64% more likely to transmit within households than the Kent (Alpha) variant that had previously dominated, and that it’s 40% more transmissible outdoors and more likely to affect younger people
Variants are unlikely to pose significantly differing risk to people with natural immunity compared to the original, as resistance is primarily based on your T cells, which have been shown to recognize and attack variants that are up to 80% dissimilar. SARS-CoV-2 variants are at most 0.3% dissimilar from the original, which means T cell immunity will easily recognize and protect against them
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According to the regional director of the European office of the World Health Organization, Hans Henri Kluge, a new coronavirus variant called “Delta” (its scientific name being B.1.617.2 and originating in India) is “poised to take hold” in Europe, which may necessitate renewed lockdowns.1
In a June 10, 2021, article, The Hill reported that the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant “can spread quickly and infect those who have received one of two vaccine doses at higher rates than the fully vaccinated.”2
According to Kluge, Europe is facing the same situation as they did back in the winter of 2020, when cases rapidly rose, resulting in “a devastating resurgence, lockdowns and loss of life.” “Let’s not make that mistake again,” Kluge said during the press conference.
Indian Variant Refuels Fear
The Delta variant is now the dominant strain in the U.K., where a surge in cases, supposedly, has occurred predominantly among younger people between the ages of 12 and 20.3
Research by Public Health England (PHE) suggests two doses of Pfizer’s mRNA COVID shot is 88% effective against the Delta variant, while AstraZeneca’s DNA injection is “supposedly” 60% effective. After a single dose, either of the shots was only 33% protective against symptomatic illness.4,5
However, while single-dose recipients are said to be at greater risk than those having received two doses, more fully “vaccinated” people have actually died from this variant. According to the PHE, of the 42 Britons who had died with the Delta variant as of mid-June 2021, 12 had received two doses of gene therapy, compared to just seven single-dose recipients.6
More importantly, a June 11, 2021, PHE report7 shows that as a hospital patient, you are six times more likely to die of the COVID Delta variant if you are fully vaccinated, than if you are not vaccinated at all.
The information shows up in Table 6 of the 77-page document, which are labled as the attendance to emergency care and deaths by vaccination status and confirmed Delta cases from February 1, 2021, to June 7, 2021.
Of 33,206 Delta variant cases admitted to the hospital, 19,573 were not vaccinated. Of those, 23 (or 0.1175%) died. But, of the 13,633 patients who were vaccinated with either one or two doses, 19 (or 0.1393%) died, which is an 18.6% higher death rate than for the unvaccinated patients. Seven of the 5,393 patients who were partially vaccine with one dose died, or 0.1297%.
Of the 1,785 patients who had both vaccine doses 14 days or more before admission, 12 (or 0.6722%) died. This death rate is 5.72 times higher than that for unvaccinated patients. Put another way, if all 33,206 patients had been fully vaccinated, there would have been 223 deaths.
The PHE also claims the Delta variant is 64% more likely to transmit within households than the Kent (Alpha) variant that had previously dominated, and that it’s 40% more transmissible outdoors.8
Knowing what we now know about how science and statistics are being manipulated to give the appearance of a serious problem where there is none, I take these statements and data with a grain of salt. World leaders, however, are using the data to impose yet more restrictions. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is now considering keeping lockdown rules in place until spring of 2022.9
Similarly, Chile, which has one of the highest COVID-jab rates in the world, with 58% of the population having received two doses and 75% having received their first dose, authorities announced a blanket lockdown across the capital of Santiago, June 10, 2021. The lockdown came in response to the highest COVID-19 case numbers since the beginning of the pandemic.10
Why Was a Disgraced Disease Modeler Relied on Yet Again?
In the U.S., Delta accounts for about 10% of cases and is doubling every two weeks, according to the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who spoke about the variant on a “Face the Nation” broadcast June 13, 2021.11,12
According to Gottlieb, Delta is likely to “spike a new epidemic heading into the fall.”13 Showing just how crazy a repeat this is, Gottlieb is again citing data from Neil Ferguson. Yahoo! News calls Ferguson a “prominent British epidemiologist” but in fact, the man is beyond untrustworthy and has been thoroughly — and publicly — disgraced.
His only prominence is that of a failed statistician whose models have been repeatedly proven faulty to a ridiculous degree. The fact that Gottlieb is again using Ferguson’s models ought to set off warning bells that this is fear propaganda to justify even further COVID jabs and nothing else.
It was Ferguson’s Imperial College model14 that predicted the death of 2 million Americans and 500,000 Britons unless draconian lockdown and social distancing measures were implemented. A major flaw in his model was that he didn’t account for the fact that the susceptible population is only ever a small portion of people, never 100%.15
Ferguson was also the source of the December 2020 prediction that the Alpha variant B117 — the so-called “Kent” strain that became the predominant strain before Delta — would be 50% to 70% more contagious than previous variants circulating in the U.K., and would infect children and teens to a greater extent than previous variants.16
Well, what happened? PHE data reveal the rolling average of infections (i.e., positive tests, which may be symptomatic or asymptomatic) sharply declined starting in January 2021, from a high of 68,053 cases in early January to a low of 1,649 cases in early May 2021.17
Daily hospitalizations also dropped, as did the number of daily deaths, which plunged from a high of 1,610 in January 2021 to a low of eight on June 13, 2021.18 Apparently, the much-feared and “far more infectious” B117 strain didn’t unleash a mass-death cascade after all.
What’s more, the fact that mainstream media and health authorities have not highlighted the number of children infected or hospitalized is a clear hint that children really weren’t at great risk from B117 either. They just wanted you to fear the possibility of it being so.
In the U.S., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data19 show adolescent hospitalizations for COVID-19 peaked at a rate of 2.1 per 100,000 hospital admissions in early January 2021. By mid-March, that had declined to 0.6 per 100,000. In April, it rose a little again, to 1.3 per 100,000. In actual numbers, we’re talking about a total of 204 teens — aged 12 to 17 — being admitted to hospital for assessment between January 2021 and March 2021.
These statistics are indeed quite far from catastrophic. Fewer than one-third required intensive care and none died. Meanwhile, there are at least four reported deaths among 12- to 17-year-olds following COVID “vaccination,” along with several hundred adverse effect reports, including dozens of cases of heart inflammation.20
As Ferguson’s calamitous predictions for Alpha variant B117 having failed to come to fruition, it appears the same fearmongering narrative has now simply shifted over to the Delta variant.
Clearly, they want us to fear for our children, as this will improve compliance with freedom-robbing measures and boost vaccine uptake. Right now, they’re having a really hard time explaining why children, whose risk of serious complications or death from COVID-19, and who aren’t a primary disease vector, would need to participate in an uncontrolled gene therapy experiment.
COVID Measures Did Not Work and Should Never Be Repeated
After a year and a half of lies and disinformation, it seems clear the technocrats pushing for a Great Reset are more than willing to make things up as they go, simply to keep the pandemic going. According to Kluge, the way out of this new phase of the pandemic is “a combination of public health measures and vaccination, not one or the other.”21
This despite the fact that we already know that none of these strategies actually work. As noted by pathologist Dr. Roger Hodkinson22 in a May 27, 2021, Last American Vagabond interview,23 masks, social distancing and lockdowns did not work and never will, and the COVID jabs are too dangerous to pursue.
In the interview above, Hodkinson reviews the very real concerns surrounding vaccine-induced spike proteins and their potentially devastating effects on health and human reproduction,24 seeing how Pfizer’s own research demonstrates free spike proteins are disseminated throughout your body within hours of injection.25,26,27
In a June 11, 2021, Daily Beast article,28 Dr. Peter Hotez — a rabid anti-vax hater — is now saying that children living in conservative “red” states, where COVID jab refusal tends to be higher, face a dangerous “nightmare summer.”
Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, has in the past called for violent suppression of vaccine safety information, bullying parents of vaccine-injured children29 by calling them “anti-vaxxers” even though they’re discussing their children’s injuries that occurred as a result of vaccination, not because they didn’t vaccinate them.
In 2018, Hotez classified vaccine safety and pro-informed consent advocacy groups such as the National Vaccine Information Center as “hate groups” that “hate children,”30 and said we must “snuff out” (a term typically reserved for gangster style murder) the “anti-vaccine” movement.31,32 He’s also stated that vaccination “is not a choice; it’s a responsibility.”33 Not surprisingly, Hotez has very strong ties to the vaccine industry.
During a March 23, 2019, appearance on the Joe Rogan show, Hotez suggested Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit, Instagram and other online platforms should hire chief scientific officers to manage, filter and regulate content.34 Hotez has also called for the use of cyberwarfare tactics against people who dare discuss potential vaccine problems, including yours truly.
No doubt, he’s loving the current Dark Age of online censorship that arose with the COVID pandemic.
“The only way to prevent these variants from gaining a foothold is to step up the pace of vaccinating everyone over the age 12 (and hopefully children younger than that by the fall),”Hotez writes in his Daily Beast article.35
“But in these robust pockets of vaccine resistance, it’s hard to imagine getting anywhere close to full coverage of young people. For example, more than 50 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds are vaccinated (received at least one dose of vaccine) in Massachusetts and Vermont, whereas less than 10 percent of those in this same age group have been vaccinated in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Here’s what might happen if we don’t fully vaccinate the South. First, the number of cases could accelerate in July and August, just as they did last year … In addition, we might see the new variants rise in frequency and disproportionately affect children, adolescents, and young adults, possibly including a multisystem inflammatory syndrome of children or MIS-C.
Some children’s hospitals in the region may already be seeing an acceleration in hospitalizations and ICU admissions. In fact, the CDC just reported on rising hospitalization rates among adolescents this spring.”
Hotez Overstates Risk to Children and Teens
Here, Hotez cites the CDC data36 I discussed earlier, and the way he does it ends up misrepresenting the trend. To repeat, no teenagers have died from COVID-19. And the uptick in hospitalization he’s talking about is an uptick from the mid-March low. But the April 2021 hospitalization rate for teens is still only about half the January 2021 rate (1.3 per 100,000 hospitalizations compared to 2.1 per 100,000). We are not looking at a doomsday trend here.
“The nation has to be fully and evenly vaccinated if we are to have any hope of navigating our way out of this epidemic. It’s also the surest way to protect young people in this region,” Hotez writes.37
I disagree. Already last year, in 2020, data suggested the vast majority of the global population already had full or partial natural immunity. Initially, experts estimated that 70% of the population or more would need to be exposed and develop immunity before natural herd immunity would be achieved.38
By mid-October 2020, more than a dozen scientists claimed the herd immunity threshold is actually somewhere between 43% and 9%, which means a vast majority of the global population — by then — were already at very low risk of serious illness.39,40,41,42,43 Data from Stockholm, Sweden, which didn’t shut down during 2020, showed a herd immunity threshold of 17%.44
Contrast that to the COVID jabs, which do NOT actually make you immune. You can still contract the illness and spread the virus. The vaccine makers admit the design of the shots mean they will only lessen your symptoms if or when you get infected. Theoretically, this will prevent or lower your risk of hospitalization and death.
However, on the flipside, scientists have fervently warned that the COVID shots may trigger antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), making vaccinated individuals far more prone to serious complications and death when encountering the wild virus.
Children and teens also are not dying from COVID-19 in droves. In fact, they’re not dying from it at all, so the idea that they are in dire need of gene therapy is simply not true.
Is there cause to be concerned about the new Delta variant? Or any other variant for that matter? According to Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., a life science researcher and former vice-president and chief scientist of allergy and respiratory research at Pfizer, the answer is a firm “no.” In the interview above, which is part of the full-length documentary “Planet Lockdown,”45 Yeadon explains why.
“Basically, everything your government has told you about this virus, everything you need to do to stay safe, is a lie,” Yeadon says. “Every part of it … None of the key themes that you hear talked about — from asymptomatic transmission to top-up vaccines [i.e., booster shots] — not one of those things is supported by the science.
Every piece is cleverly chosen adjacently to something that probably is true, but is itself a lie, and has led people to where we are right now.”
When it comes to your susceptibility to variants, mutated versions of SARS-CoV-2, your resilience is not dependent on antibodies as much as it’s dependent on your T-cell immunity, also known as cellular immunity. Yeadon explains:
“You’ve got four or five different arms of the immune system: innate immunity, mucosal, antibody, T-cells and compliment[ary systems]. There are all of these different wonderful systems that have integrated, one with another, because it needs to defend you against all sorts of different threats in the environment.
What I’m telling you is that the emphasis on antibodies in respect of respiratory viral infections is wrong, and you can establish that quite easily by doing some searching …
I’m not saying antibodies have no role, but they’re really not very important. This has been proven. There are some people in whom a natural experiment has occurred. They have a defect and they actually don’t make antibodies, but they’re able to fight off COVID-19, the virus SARS-CoV-2, quite well.
The way they do that is, they have T-cell immunity, cellular immunity. [T-cells] are cells that are trained to detect virus-infected cells and to kill those cells.
That’s how you defend yourself against a virus. So, all of these mentions of antibody levels, it’s just bunk. It is not a good measure of whether or not you’re immune. It does give evidence that you’ve been infected, but their persistence is not important as to whether you’ve got immunity …
We’ve known this for decades. We’ve known about T-cells for decades. They were clearly in my undergraduate textbooks. And we’ve known about their importance in defending you against respiratory viruses since probably the 1970s, certainly the 1980s …
It’s quite normal for RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2, when it replicates, to make typographical errors. It’s got a very good error detection, error correction system so it doesn’t make too many typos, but it does make some, and those are called ‘variants.’
It’s really important to know that if you find the variant that’s most different from the sequence identified in Wuhan, that variance … is only 0.3% different from the original sequence.
I’ll say it another way. If you find the most different variance, it’s 99.7% identical to the original one, and I can assure you … that amount of difference is absolutely NOT possibly able to represent itself to you as a different virus. [So] when your government scientists tell you that a variant that’s 0.3% different from SARS-CoV-2 could masquerade as a new virus and be a threat to your health, you should know, and I’m telling you, they are lying.”
To recap, what Yeadon is saying is that a virus cannot mutate into a version that is so dissimilar from the original that your body cannot identify it. If you have T cell immunity, your immune system will recognize the mutated virus and take care of it, just as it would with the original version of the virus.
He explains how, earlier in the pandemic, scientists obtained blood from patients who had been sickened with the SARS virus 17 or 18 years ago. SARS-CoV-1, responsible for that SARS outbreak, is only 80% similar to SARS-CoV-2. They wanted to know if the immune systems of these patients would be able to recognize SARS-CoV-2 — which they did. They still had memory T-cells against SARS-CoV-1, and those cells also recognized SARS-CoV-2, despite being only 80% similar.
Now, if a 20% difference was not enough to circumvent the immune system of these patients, why should you be concerned with a variant that is at most 0.3% different from the original SARS-CoV-2? And why would we need booster shots for these near-identical variants?
Booster Shots, a Trojan Horse?
Yeadon is extremely suspicious of the intentions behind booster shots for different variants, saying:
“You should be terrified at this point, as I am, because there’s absolutely no possible justification for their manufacture. There’s no possible benign interpretation of this. I believe they [the booster shots] are going to be used to damage your health and possibly kill you. Seriously. I can see no sensible interpretation other than a serious attempt at mass depopulation.
This will provide the tools to do it, and plausible deniability. They’ll create another story about some sort of biological threat and you’ll line up and get your top-up vaccines, and a few months or a year or so later, you’ll die of some peculiar inexplicable syndrome. And they won’t be able to associate it with the vaccines.
That’s my belief — that they’re lying to you about variants so they can make damaging top-up vaccines that you don’t need at all. I think they will be used for malign purposes …”
Reject the ‘New Normal’ and Reclaim Your Life
Until or unless someone in the know steps up to the plate with a confession, we have no way of knowing whether depopulation is actually an intended outcome of these shots. Still, even if there’s no ill intent behind them, the real-world outcome may still be a mass-casualty event.
What seems clearer is that world leaders are sowing fear that is wildly disproportionate to the actual health threat of this virus and its variants, and the most logical reason for this is because they need this pandemic to continue in order to usher in the Great Reset.
The Great Reset, in turn, is part of a parallel agenda built around transhumanist ideologies, ideas and ideals, where man is merged with machine and biologically controlled through the use of nanotechnology and digital surveillance.
If I’m correct, then the COVID pandemic narrative will continue to be spun, not for the next several months but years. The fearmongering will persist until permanent tracking has been implemented, getting regular gene therapy injections have become the norm and no one does anything unless government says it’s OK. In other words, until life has been permanently turned into a hell fit for robots alone.
In the video below, talkRADIO host Julia Hartley-Brewer shares her opinion on the matter, saying that if the U.K. does not open on “Freedom Day,” June 21, 2021, as planned, then lockdowns are likely to continue forever.
She points out that the “vaccines” are working better than anyone dared hope, and a far larger portion of the population than expected have willingly taken them. People are as safe as they’re ever going to get, yet government is still vacillating, saying it’s not enough. It’s time to go back to the old normal where people are free to live their own lives, Hartley-Brewer says, and she’s absolutely right.
Boris Johnson will announce a four week delay to lockdown lifting. But Julia says: "We have to get out of this and if it's not now, it may be never. We need to get back to the old normal where we have our freedom."@JuliaHB1pic.twitter.com/slAnzM5xVx
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) recently posted more than 50 video presentations from the pay-for-view Fifth International Public Conference on Vaccination held online October 16 to 18, 2020, and made them available to everyone for free.
The conference’s theme was “Protecting Health and Autonomy in the 21st Century” and it featured physicians, scientists and other health professionals, human rights activists, faith community leaders, constitutional and civil rights attorneys, authors and parents of vaccine injured children talking about vaccine science, policy, law and ethics and infectious diseases, including coronavirus and COVID-19 vaccines.
In December 2020, a U.K. company published false and misleading information about NVIC and its conference, which prompted NVIC to open up the whole conference for free viewing. The conference has everything you need to educate yourself and protect your personal freedoms and liberties with respect to your health.
Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity. I was a speaker at this empowering conference and urge you to watch these video presentations before they’re censored and taken away by the technocratic elite.
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Netanyahu’s 15 years as prime minister have come to an end, but his legacy lives on. If there were questions about what exactly that legacy might be, the never-shy Bibi was quick to list his accomplishments in a “valedictory speech” before the Knesset.
In Trump-like fashion, he boasted that he, and he alone: made Israel a “global power” — able to stand up to enemies; resisted pressure from allies to stop building settlements; ended Israel’s “socialist economy” transforming the country into a free-market haven; challenged the old doctrine of “land for peace” and replaced it with “peace for peace” without surrendering an inch of land or “uprooting a single Jew from his home”; gave Israel uncontested military might able to operate anywhere in the region; “transformed Israel into a cyber power”; and paved the way for Donald Trump to end the “Iran deal” and recognise Israeli control over all of Jerusalem.
What interested me most about Netanyahu’s presentation was the way it revealed the extent to which he has operated according to the same playbook throughout his entire career and, although he’ll never acknowledge it, he has had accomplices both writing the playbook and implementing it.
Netanyahu is sometimes viewed as a maneuvrer with no goal other than personal power. That is simply not true. He is, and has always been, an ideologue, a neo-conservative ideologue.
The Netanyahu family ties with American neo-conservatives go back to BenZion’s (Benjamin’s father) role in helping to launch the movement in the late 1970s. In Bibi’s writings and public speaking, he has always adhered to the neocon’s Manichean apocalyptic world view: that there is absolute good (Israel and the West) and absolute evil (the rest); that good must fight evil with unrelenting overwhelming force; that weakness or compromise is unacceptable; and that victory is assured.
Shortly after the 1993 White House signing of the Oslo Accords, Netanyahu and a few Israeli colleagues, launched an initiative to sabotage the agreements which they identified as a sign of weakness and compromise with evil. They lobbied members of Congress sending regular faxes making the case that the PLO wasn’t to be trusted and that steps must be taken to abort the agreement because of the dangers it posed to Israel and America.
One of Netanyahu’s main allies in Congress was Newt Gingrich. When Republicans gained control of Congress and Gingrich became speaker of the House in 1995, the matchup in Washington became Clinton/Rabin supporting the Oslo Accords versus Gingrich/Netanyahu opposing them. Never before had an Israeli opposition party challenged its own government in Washington. Rabin was incensed and angrily condemned this effort.
Back in Israel, Rabin was so demonised by opponents of Oslo, that he was eventually assassinated in 1995 for what they called “his act of treason”, a murder that Rabin’s widow always maintained was the result of Netanyahu’s incitement against her husband.
When Netanyahu was elected prime minister in 1996 on a platform committed to ending the peace process, Gingrich invited him to address a joint session of Congress. In preparation for his speech, Netanyahu’s American neocon advisers wrote a position paper for him devoted to “Making a Clean Break” from weaknesses that characterised the former Israeli government. It emphasised the need to project power to affirm the moral superiority of Israel and the West and the resolve to resist pressure from those who sought compromise.
They stressed undoing the “peace process” with the Palestinians, weakening the PLO, creating alternatives to its leadership, and blocking any official Palestinian presence in Jerusalem. They also called for building regional alliances based on strength to confront enemies, singling out Syria and removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Additionally, they called for eliminating US economic aid to reduce any possible future source of pressure, while maintaining US military aid, enabling Israel to continue to fight the West’s and its enemies.
That was 1996. In 15 of the next 25 years, Netanyahu has done what he set out to do, at enormous cost. But he didn’t do it alone. He had enablers, in Congress and in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations. First and foremost were his neo-conservative allies, who helped develop his plan and aided and abetted him along the way. Playing a supporting role were weak-kneed Democrats who refused to see the game that was afoot and hesitated to block this insidious design.
Here’s what they did to enable Netanyahu’s “accomplishments”, making it ludicrous for him to claim that he and he alone is responsible for Israel’s “successes”.
It is hard to make the case that Israel became economically and militarily powerful on its own and is a model capitalist society, when the US annually gives an unrestricted $3.8 billion in military aid some of which goes to Israel’s own weapons industry allowing it to become a major arms exporter. For years the US has contributed additional billions to jump-start Israel’s high-tech sector and underwrites billions of dollars in unrestricted loan guarantees. And it allows tax-exempt donations from US groups to provide everything from support for social services to illegal land purchases and development in the occupied lands.
It is also hard for Netanyahu to claim that he stands up to the US when he is only able to do so because Israel has the support of Republicans who have thrice invited him to address joint sessions of Congress to “stand up” against Democratic presidents. If it were not for the US turning a blind eye and/or providing protective cover and sanctions against international bodies, Israel would be penalised for its illegal behaviours.
Claiming, therefore, that it was his leadership that made Israel strong and able to resist pressure takes chutzpah to say the least.
It is patently false for Netanyahu to claim that Israel and the West are more secure and the “forces of good” have prevailed because of his leadership and his neocon allies. Today, the Middle East is a mess, still reeling from the disastrous Iraq war which did remove Saddam, but unleashed and emboldened Iran and caused extremist movements to grow and metastasize, leaving the US to face a multipolar region in turmoil. As we have recently witnessed, despite the boasts and bravado, Israel while militarily strong is internally fractured and most definitely not at peace because Palestinians, despite decades of oppression, continue to rise in fierce opposition to the denial of their rights.
This is Netanyahu’s legacy. Not his boasts of success, but chaos so great and a hole so deep that it will take decades before we can see real peace and stability based on justice and rights, not on false claims of strength.
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“Not since the conquistadores plundered Latin America has the world experienced a flow (of wealth from poor countries to rich) in the direction we see today” (Morris Miller(1))
Advanced nations have tried to force poor countries to participate in what is called free trade. This is a propaganda term to mislead people into being uncritical of what actually happens. This post explains what free trade really means.
The Opposite of Free Trade is Properly Regulated Trade
Most countries have to trade with other countries so that they can buy things that they cannot produce. Lots of countries do not have their own oil or gas deposits to provide energy, and many do not have the facilities to produce advanced goods. In order to have foreign currency to make these purchases, they need to sell something themselves. Free trade means that there should be as few obstacles as possible to trade between countries. However, many of the rules that exist to regulate trade exist for good reasons: to protect the health of workers and customers; to stop the use of poisonous chemicals in products; or to enable the development of new industries. If trade is not properly regulated, it can have disastrous consequences. If trade is properly regulated, it can provide jobs and technologies that will help poor countries to rapidly become wealthier, and solve their poverty issues.
There are no level playing fields
As with ‘free markets’, the term ‘free trade’ (sometimes called liberalisation) sounds like a wonderful theory in a textbook. Every business from every country competes with as few rules as possible, and with no assistance from government, so no business has any unfair advantages. This is supposed to create what is called a level playing field.
In the real world, we start from a position of extreme inequality. Big corporations have huge marketing budgets, they can easily borrow large amounts of money and they employ armies of lawyers, accountants and tax specialists to give them every possible advantage. They have connections with other businesses, they can hide money offshore, they pay bigger bribes, and for short periods they can offer prices so low that they can put local competitors out of business. They also receive help from their own government. Small companies in poor countries do not have these advantages. What we get in the real world has been compared to a match between a team of professional footballers (the biggest corporations) and children who are still learning to walk (the small businesses of the developing world). The big companies almost always win, and the small companies go out of business.
Forced Trade – End Subsidies and Tariffs in Poor Countries
Businesses and industries often make little profit when they are new or developing and are therefore vulnerable to going bankrupt. For this reason it is important for governments to be able to assist them in the early stages. The idea of protecting developing industries has been compared to protecting and educating a child as it grows up.(2) We do not expect children to compete for jobs, because they require many years of learning, experimenting and making mistakes before they are ready to look after themselves. The same is true of businesses in developing countries. They have to be allowed to protect themselves against competition. This is known as infant industry protection and can be achieved using tariffs. Tariffs are where goods from foreign producers are taxed more than goods from local producers. This not only protects local industries, it also raises money for governments.
Over the years, almost all advanced nations have protected their industries against the downsides of competition. From 1790-1914, tariffs were the biggest source of income for the US government, before income taxes became more important.(3) Recently developed countries, like Taiwan and South Korea, were very careful to make sure that only some of their markets were opened up to foreign competitors, and then only gradually. If Japan had adopted free trade after World War 2, it would have been “unable to break away from the Asian pattern of stagnation and poverty.”(4) The car company Toyota provides one of the shining examples of what can be achieved if a country protects its developing industries. A few decades ago, Toyota cars were badly made and inefficient in comparison to those from Europe and the US. Toyota would have gone out of business if it had been forced to compete against Western rivals. By protecting it, Japan now has the most advanced car company in the world.(5)
The downside of tariffs is that they make goods more expensive for the buyer. The point here is not to suggest that tariffs are ideal, merely to state that poor countries must be allowed to protect industries if they want to. The US, Britain and many other rich nations still have tariffs on some good,(6) but as with so many other double standards throughout the world, they try to force poor countries to remove theirs.
De-industrialisation
We saw in an earlier post that advanced nations subsidise their businesses. When big, subsidised corporations from rich countries compete against unprotected, smaller businesses in poor countries, the end result is that the smaller businesses go bust. When Jamaica was forced to open up its trade to big overseas corporations, subsidised, powdered milk from the US was cheaper than fresh milk from local cows. Many milk sellers in Jamaica went out of business, almost overnight.(7) When Haiti was forced to open up its markets, rice growers and poultry farmers went out of business. After local producers have been eliminated, those countries become dependent on food exports from advanced nations. This is known as ‘food dependency’ and is a deliberate goal of US policy.(8)
In the Ivory Coast, the chemical, textile, automobile and shoe industries collapsed. In Kenya, the sugar, tobacco, beverages and textiles industries have struggled to survive. When Nigeria opened up to foreign competition, 35 textile mills closed and 200,000 workers lost their jobs.(9) This is not limited to a handful of examples. This process has led to the de-industrialisation of many countries – the opposite of what they need to do to become advanced nations.
Propaganda distorts our understanding of subsidies and protection
The rules on subsidies, tariffs and trade are one of the more obvious areas of double standards and outright deceit by business leaders, politicians and trade negotiators from rich countries. This is what some writers(10) call ‘really existing capitalism’. It has nothing to do with competition or market forces. The rules are wrong twice over. Rich countries provide unnecessary subsidies to big corporations, but at the same time, poor countries are forced to remove necessary protection for their industries. The media does occasionally discuss this, but the debate is misleading. It tends to focus only on rich-country subsidies to farmers, without explaining all of the other subsidies that businesses in rich countries receive, and without discussing the need for protection in poor countries.
It is important to stress that even without the rich-country subsidies, most big corporations from rich countries would still be likely to dominate in the developing world, so poor countries must be able to protect their developing industries if they choose. Traders in poor countries will never be successful if they have to compete against big corporations before they are ready.
Rich people love free trade
When a poor country opens up its borders to products from advanced nations, there is an influx of higher end consumer goods such as tv’s and fridges made in rich countries. They are widely purchased by rich and upper middle class people in the poor country. Their standard of living goes up – how could anyone object? But there is a bigger picture. What happens to the white goods industry in the poor country? Either it doesn’t already exist, in which case it will never exist at all, or it is in the early stages of development, in which case it is unable to compete with better products from overseas, and will tend to be destroyed. The long-term problem is that poor countries will find it difficult to ever develop advanced industries.
Rich people in poor countries are unaware, or do not care, that their own domestic industries are being destroyed. They also do not care that they are surrounded by poverty. For most of them, they have always been surrounded by poverty. They like having large numbers of extremely poor people to work for them as domestic servants at extremely low pay. Rich people prefer not to discuss the idea that many policies which work for them are disastrous for others.
When the mainstream media are discussing trade, they mostly focus on the improvements for the rich, and sometimes the middle class, and generally overlook the downsides for the poor, and the long-term downsides for the country.
Free Trade is Propaganda to Conceal Corporate Exploitation
Free trade and the free movement of money have the following real purposes(11):
They allow investors to move money freely.
They allow investors and companies to set up complex international structures to manipulate prices and profits.
They enable companies from advanced nations to extract raw materials in other countries on unfair terms.
They enable companies from advanced nations to sell in other countries, eliminating local production.
They enable companies from advanced nations to access cheap labour in poor countries.
When discussing a trade agreement between the US and Columbia, one commentator summarized it as follows:
“what actually happens is that jobs leave the richer nation and go to the country where workers are paid a pittance, while goods from the richer country flood the poorer, pushing out indigenous production”(12)
Negotiators often use the term ‘trade agreements’, when what they really mean is ‘agreements that give investors more power than governments.’ The combination of trade policies and the integration of poor countries into a global system of trade is sometimes called globalisation. One critical commentator said:
“globalization is what we in the third world have for several centuries called colonization.”(13)
Properly Regulated Trade Works Really Well
It is certainly true that some countries have used unnecessary regulations to enrich people with government connections. The former British Ambassador, Craig Murray, has written about his experiences in Uzbekistan, where the dictator enriched himself and his friends by controlling many industries.(14) Other countries have unnecessary bureaucracy, which creates opportunities for bribery and corruption. However, these are not arguments for free trade. They are arguments for properly regulated trade.
A small group of countries have made spectacular progress in the last 75 years, since 1945. South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Israel were actively assisted by the US because they were useful to the US for political purposes.(15) They are often held up as examples of rapid development using free trade, but this is propaganda. Representatives from those governments, together with numerous academic studies, have shown that these countries did not follow free-market policies. They did what other advanced nations did to become successful. They protected developing industries against competition from overseas, and they provided government assistance to key industries and exporters. The same is now true of China.
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Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda, and explaining war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media. This article was first posted at medium.com/elephantsintheroom
10) Noam Chomsky, ‘Can civilization survive really existing capitalism’, 2013 University College Dublin Philosophy Society, 3 April 2013, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uuYjUxf6Uk
11) Matt Kennard, The Racket: A Rogue reporter vs the Master of the Universe, p.61-78
12) Matt Kennard, The Racket: A rogue reporter vs the masters of the universe, p.72
13) Martin Khor, cited in Matt Kennard, The Racket, p.57
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In an incident, a 22-year-old girl died of severe neurological complications after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine jab. Read to find out the symptoms you need to look out for post-vaccination.
In yet another shocking incident, a 22-year-old girl from Delhi suffered deadly neurological complications after receiving the COVID-19 vaccination and was declared brain dead at a hospital in the national capital. According to the primary reports, the girl has no history of any serious illness. “An autopsy report is awaited to confirm the cause of the death,” officials were quoted as saying.
The deceased girl’s family told a national newspaper that she was administered with the Covishield vaccine on June 2. Soon after she started developing chronic headache accompanied with high body temperature. The girl was rushed to the hospital where some of the reports suggested that she has blood clots in the brain’s venus sinuses due to which was platelet count was decreasing rapidly. According to the reports, the girl was admitted to a private hospital in Delhi’s Saket on June 14, and all the necessary arrangements were made to keep her safe. “On June 18, the girl was declared brain dead by the doctors at around 5am,” an official was quoted as saying.
The sources in NOTTO said that they since the girl died due to complications post-COVID vaccination, a postmortem report will be required to confirm whether the death was due to adverse effects of the vaccination or some other health abnormalities. “Postmortem is necessary in cases of suspected or confirmed Adverse Events Following Immunisation (AEFI) to know how vaccine related side-effects affect organs,” TOIquoted an official of NOTTO as saying.
Blood Clot Symptoms To Watch Out For After Taking Covishield
The Union health ministry had earlier listed a few symptoms of blood clot which everyone should look out for after taking the Covishield COVID-19 vaccine jab. “AEFI (Adverse Event Following Immunisation) data in India showed that there is a very miniscule but definitive risk of thromboembolic events,” the health ministry said in a statement, citing a report by the National AEFI Committee. What are these thromboembolic events? According to the experts, these refer to the formation of a clot in a blood vessel that might also break loose and be carried by the bloodstream to plug another vessel. The list of symptoms mentioned in the ministry’s advisory are:
Difficulty in breathing
Chronic chest pain
Pain or unexplained swelling in limbs
Persistent abdominal pain
Severe and persistent headache
Blurred vision or pain in eyes
Brain fog
Persistent vomiting without any reason
(Note: These symptoms, the ministry said, occur within 20 days of taking a shot — particularly Covishield)
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Editor’s Note:
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The article is informative but the last three paragraphs below are contradictory: the authors refute their own analysis.
India’s Covishield “vaccine” is mRNA produced in partnership with AstraZeneca It is an experimental and dangerous drug.
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Are COVID-19 Vaccine Safe?
The recent incident has again raised questions about the safety issues of COVID-19 vaccines. Although, the real cause of the death of the girl is yet to be confirmed, questions like whether vaccines can lead to serious health complications and eventually cause death or not is lingering in everyones mind. So, when it comes to the safety part of the vaccines — yes, they are safe and some post-vaccination symptoms are common and not at all life threatening. However, make sure to consult a doctor immediately in case you develop any persistent symptoms or the ones listed above.
What Do We Know So Far?
According to the guidelines by the health officials, everybody is safe to take the vaccine jab as the trial reports have proven the efficacies of each of the doses. Are vaccines safe? Yes, based on the research reports, the vaccines for COVID-19 have a very good safety profile. COVID-19 vaccines can help your body make antibodies to fight off the virus and keep you protected and safe. To go further into this topic, here are some guidelines for all those who must avoid taking the vaccine jab.
Who Should Not Take The COVID-19 Vaccine Jab?
India is currently administering two vaccines for the COVID-19 infections — Covishield and Covaxin. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you want to get the jab: Anyone who is allergic to the ingredients of the vaccine — must avoid taking it (or consult your physician before administering). Other than this anyone who is above 18 can get the jab.
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In updated guidance, the World Health Organization said children have milder disease compared to adults and there is not enough evidence to recommend vaccinating children against COVID.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) latest guidance clarifying who should get the COVID vaccine states, “Children should not be vaccinated for the moment.”
According to the WHO website:
“There is not yet enough evidence on the use of vaccines against COVID-19 in children to make recommendations for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults.”
The WHO had previously said vaccinating children against COVID was not a priority given the limited global supply of doses, Fox News reported.
During a social media session June 3, Dr. Kate O’Brien, a pediatrician and director of the WHO’s vaccines department, said children should not be a focus of COVID immunization programs, even as increasing numbers of wealthy countries authorize the shots for teens and children.
“Children are at [a] very, very low risk of actually getting COVID disease,” said O’Brien. She said the rationale for immunizing children was to stop transmission rather than to protect them from getting sick or dying.
O’Brien added it wasn’t necessary to vaccinate children before sending them back to school safely.
“Immunization of children in order to send them back to school is not the predominant requirement for them to go back to school safely,” O’Brien said. “They can go back to school safely if what we’re doing is immunizing those who are around them who are at risk.”
The U.S., Canada and European Union have all given the green light to some COVID vaccines for children 12 to 15 years old. In the UK, a decision to vaccinate all 12- to 17-year-olds is unlikely to be recommended by experts anytime soon, BBC NEWS reported.
One argument for not vaccinating children against COVID is they get relatively little benefit from it.
“Fortunately one of the few good things about this pandemic is children are very rarely seriously affected by this infection,” said Adam Finn, who sits on the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.
Infections in children are nearly always mild or asymptomatic, which is in sharp contrast to older age groups who have been prioritized by vaccination campaigns.
A study across seven countries — including the U.S. — published in the Lancet, found that fewer than two out of every 1 million children died with COVID during the pandemic.
Even children with medical conditions that would raise the risks of COVID infection in adults are not being vaccinated in the UK. Only those at “very high risk of exposure and serious outcomes” are recommended to be vaccinated.
For kids, benefits of COVID vaccines don’t outweigh risks
As The Defender reported, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on June 10 held a meeting to discuss granting Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for COVID vaccines for children under 12. Numerous experts spoke out against the plan saying the benefits don’t outweigh the risks for young children.
Peter Doshi, Ph.D., associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and senior editor of The BMJ, said during the open public hearing session there is no emergency that would warrant using EUA to authorize COVID vaccines for children.
Pointing to Pfizer’s trial of 12- to15-year-olds which supported the recent EUA, Doshi said the harms outweighed the benefits, and those who had the placebo were “better off” than those who received the vaccine.
In terms of the benefits, Doshi said
“the reported 100% efficacy in Pfizer’s trial was based on 16 COVID cases in the placebo group versus none in the fully vaccinated group. But there were about 1,000 placebo recipients so just 2% got COVID. Put another way, 2% of the fully vaccinated avoided COVID, whereas 98% of the vaccinated wouldn’t have gotten COVID anyway.”
On the other side of the ledger, Doshi said, side effects were common:
“Three in 4 kids had fatigue and headaches, around half had chills and muscle pain, around 1 in 4 to 5 had fever and joint pain. The list goes on. In sum, all the fully vaccinated 12- to 15-year-olds avoided symptomatic COVID but most wouldn’t have gotten COVID even without the vaccine. So, the benefit is small but it came at the price of side effects that were mild to moderate in severity and lasted a few days.”
Doshi pointed to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showing 23% of 0- to 4-year-olds and 42% of 5- to17-year-olds have already had COVID and have robust natural immunity.
Kim Witczak, an FDA consumer representative, expressed great concerns over the premature approval of COVID vaccines for children. Witczak said data shows children are neither in danger or dangerous, and the growing evidence of harm caused by COVID vaccines should not be ignored.
Witczak and Doshi were two of 27 researchers and clinicians around the world who launched a citizen’s petition demanding the FDA withhold full approval of COVID vaccines until efficacy and safety measures are met.
Dr. Sidney Wolf, founder and senior advisor of Health Research Group, also pointed out during the FDA meeting that CDC data from Jan. 1 to March 31 showed only 204 hospitalizations and 0 deaths in the 12- to17-year-old age group due to COVID.
As The Defender reported May 26, two papers recently published in the journal of Hospital Pediatrics, found pediatric hospitalizations for COVID were overcounted by at least 40%, carrying potential implications for nationwide figures used to justify vaccinating children.
COVID vaccine causing heart inflammation in teens
Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, said during the June 10 FDA meeting, “there are ‘very few’ reports of myocarditis or pericarditis in 12- to 15-year-olds who have been given coronavirus vaccines.”
However, the CDC data Shimabukuro presented showed a higher-than-expected number of cases of heart inflammation among young people recently vaccinated with their second doses of mRNA vaccine. The agency identified 226 reports that might meet the agency’s “working case definition” of myocarditis and pericarditis following the shots.
Among 16- to 17-year-olds through May 31, 79 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis were reported. The expected rate among people in this age group is between two and 19 cases, Shimabukuro said during his presentation.
CDC data also showed that among 18- to 24-year-olds, there were 196 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis. The expected rate is between eight and 83 cases.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) scheduled an emergency meeting for June 18 to update data and further evaluate myocarditis following vaccination with Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. However, the CDC delayed the meeting until the June 23-25 ACIP meeting in observation of the Juneteenth National Independence Day holiday. Register here to watch Wednesday’s meeting.
According to the latest data from VAERS, there have been 1,117 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation) in all age groups reported in the U.S. following COVID vaccination between Dec.14, 2020 and June 11, 2021. Of those, 109 reports occurred in children 12-to-17-years-old with 108 attributed to Pfizer.
Another horrifying story! OSU student, elite athlete + member of ROTC developed severe heart complications following his second dose of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 21, 2021
Currently, Pfizer’s COVID vaccine is authorized for emergency use in people as young as age 12. Moderna is authorized for people 18 and older, although the company has asked the FDA to authorize its use in children as young as 12. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is authorized in people 18 and older.
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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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Dr. Kelly Sutton risks losing her medical license for not strictly following CDC guidelines for writing vaccine medical exemptions. Attorney Greg Glaser, who represents Sutton, provided this eyewitness account.
A California physician could lose her medical license for not strictly following the guidelines for writing vaccine medical exemptions as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
Earlier this month, the Medical Board of California conducted a trial during which they heard testimony from witnesses in support of and those opposed to Dr. Kelly Sutton’s approach to writing vaccine medical exemptions for her patients.
The three-day trial, which ended June 16, took place in an administrative court with a single judge and no right to a jury. The judge is expected to issue a decision sometime in the fall of 2021 on whether or not to rescind Sutton’s medical license.
Sutton, an integrative physician, argued that her clinical observations confirm her unvaccinated patients are healthier than those who are vaccinated.
During her trial, Sutton was represented by health freedom attorney Rick Jaffe, who marshaled evidence from three top experts in defense of Sutton’s methods to protect patients from vaccine injury.
The state produced one expert, who lacked basic knowledge of vaccine risk, and who stated that all doctors should follow whatever the CDC’s one-size-fits-all vaccine schedule recommends at any given time.
Below are highlights from testimony provided during Sutton’s trial.
Sutton’s testimony on her behalf:
Sutton provided thoughtful discussion of how she helps and heals patients. She is a doctor member of Physicians for Informed Consent (PIC), which puts patients first. She was humble throughout the trial, going out of her way to be kind to everyone involved in the proceeding — including the state expert testifying against her. Her kindness and credibility were so strong that even the prosecuting attorney was forced to change his tone of voice to lessen the blameful nature of his scripted words.
Sutton did not need a script. She showcased her detailed scientific knowledge by explaining the biological mechanisms of disease and vaccine risk. At times the court reporter could not keep up with Sutton’s fluent use of scientific terminology.
Sutton described how California’s Senate Bill 277 removed parental rights to medical decision-making and made the doctor’s discretion the standard for medical exemptions.
Sutton discussed the process of meeting with integrative colleagues at PIC to arrive at best practices for medical exemptions.
Sutton discussed the benefit of a physical exam for patient intake, and when it is needed (i.e., diagnosing an ear infection) versus when it is not needed (i.e., taking a family history). She also discussed the reality that certain patients cannot afford the time and/or money to conduct unnecessary physical exams.
Sutton reviewed each of the relevant patient records cited by the medical board as evidence of Sutton’s non-compliance with CDC recommendations, focusing on vaccine risk based on the individual patients’ complex medical histories.
Sutton emphasized her proactive approach to protect patient privacy when writing medical exemptions.
Sutton discussed the extensive scientific citations she provided to the medical board to support her medical decisions, including Dr. Chris Exley’s findings on aluminum. The board tried to use a technical objection to prevent Sutton from introducing the science behind her decisions. However, during Jaffe’s questioning of Sutton, she was able to explain the science of vaccine risk.
Sutton testified that doctors make a lot of money by giving vaccinations, but not a lot from writing medical exemptions. Indeed, there is no profit in writing medical exemptions, only prosecution — so the doctors who write them truly care for the patient’s best interest rather than pharma’s.
Sutton testified that it is neither intelligent nor humane to force a family to continue to vaccinate after one of their children has already died or been injured by a vaccine.
Sutton said the government’s failure to compare vaccinated persons to fully unvaccinated persons is a systematic and intentional blind spot in science designed to wrongfully promote vaccines.
State’s expert witness, Dr. Deborah Lehman, infectious disease physician at the University of California, Los Angeles:
Lehman repeatedly claimed that, as a physician, her one-size-fits-all vaccine opinion was medical fact and should not be challenged.
During cross examination, Lehman was asked to quantify the risk of all vaccine injuries. Lehman responded, “I don’t think I need a number … I can’t give you a number.” She stated, “I don’t need to cite articles in my report, because the science has been decided … If you want answers to these questions, I would refer you to the CDC.” Lehman ignored that the only way to obtain the vaccine injury rate is to compare vaccinated people to fully unvaccinated people. She did not appear to know that the government refuses to study the fully unvaccinated, but instead only compares vaccinated patients to other vaccinated patients.
Lehman testified she had never heard of Dr. Peter Aaby, one of the world’s foremost vaccine experts who has published more than 400 articles on PubMed. Lehman, who has published about 15 articles on PubMed, tried to dismiss Aaby’s publications on vaccine danger by falsely claiming Aaby published in a low-impact journal. Lehman stated she would never read this type of research by Aaby, and that it is the same kind of “anti-vax” information found through a Google search.
Lehman testified she is not aware of any pertussis vaccine deaths. She claimed if there were any deaths caused by the pertussis vaccine she would have heard about them. Her callous admission proves her ignorance of even basic information from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System or any other source.
Lehman admitted she has never personally written a medical exemption. At most she communicated with other doctors that all medical exemptions should adhere to the one-size-fits-all per the ACIP’s contraindications.
Lehman at one point angrily blurted out, “We’re being saved by COVID vaccines.”
Lehman repeatedly used nebulous phrases such “greater risk” and “lower risk,” yet never cited any risk value numbers with the exception of a handful of false numbers. For example, in one instance she falsely cited a 1/1,000 death rate for measles cases. This is a false number because it is based only on reported cases and ignores the fact that only about 1/10 cases are reported.
Lehman criticized Sutton’s already vaccinated patients for having some infections. Lehman did not see the self-contradicting nature of her own testimony. In other words, Lehman overlooked that vaccines are causing increased risk of infection in already vaccinated patients. She ignored published studies and Sutton’s observation that patients experience less infection over time as they stop vaccinating, and fully unvaccinated patients are the healthiest of all.
Lehman testified the standard of care is whether another physician would treat the medical issue the same or similarly. But she intentionally omitted the phrase “in the same community,” meaning that the standard of care is not simply “another physician” but “another physician in the same community.” Sutton is in the integrative medicine community, of which Lehman is not a member. It is common for conventional physicians to use one-size-fits-all thinking.
Lehman testified that before the meningococcal vaccine, she performed several lumbar punctures to treat meningitis. However, Lehman never stated how many of the meningitis patients were already vaccinated with meningococcal and other vaccines (i.e., polio vaccine).
Lehman testified that children with asthma have a higher rate of morbidity and mortality. But Lehman failed to provide any numerical risk value for her testimony. For example, she cited no studies showing health outcomes of children with asthma when vaccines are stopped versus when vaccines are continued. In fact, no such studies exist to support Lehman’s position. Moreover, Lehman didn’t cite any of the studies linking asthma to increased risk from vaccination. It is common for conventional doctors to lack knowledge that common chronic illnesses are proven to be immune-mediated and caused by vaccination.
Lehman testified “febrile seizures have no long-lasting effect.” Her testimony directly contradicts even government-accepted scientific evidence that approximately 5% of febrile seizures develop into full-blown epilepsy.
Defense expert Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, pediatric neurologist:
Zimmerman is a highly published pediatric neurology expert, with expertise in diagnosing and treating autism, mitochondrial dysfunction and many other conditions.
Zimmerman testified that Sutton followed the community standard of care to protect her patients outside the narrow CDC/ACIP guidelines. With expert attention to detail about neurodevelopmental disorders, Zimmerman agreed with Sutton’s risk assessments to protect her patients. He discussed the interaction between the immune system and the brain.
Defense expert Dr. James Neuenschwander, family physician with vaccine expertise:
Neuenschwander treats chronic illness, including autism. He attends ACIP meetings and has offered public comment. He does not administer vaccines.
Neuenschwander cited a bell curve phenomenon, which represents an inverse relationship: 10% of people who fail to respond to a vaccine compared to 10% of people who overreact to a vaccine. His example illustrates a point often overlooked by mainstream scientists.
Neuenschwander explained that vaccines cause the immune system to remain in hyperactivation, creating vaccine injuries like brain inflammation.
Neuenschwander said autoimmune conditions result when the vaccine creates antibodies against the human body itself through the mechanism of chronic immune activation. Neuenschwander cited scientific evidence to support the fact that it is logical for Sutton to ask patients about their personal and family history risk factors, such as recurring infections, asthma and autism.
Neuenschwander discussed vaccines one by one to show how conventional physicians exaggerate infection risk. Neuenschwander confirmed conventional physicians are vaccinating for rare diseases on the CDC schedule while failing to ask about vaccine injury. Neuenschwander emphasized that even common diseases have questionably effective vaccines, such as flu which has a high vaccine failure rate.
Neuenschwander said the CDC/ACIP system categorically fails to properly study vaccine injury, by comparing vaccinated individuals to unvaccinated individuals, despite the CDC’s admission in a 2016 white paper showing such a study could be done.
Neuenschwander cited numbers throughout his testimony. For example, he exposed Lehman’s above-referenced lie about 1/1000 measles deaths (where Lehman falsely only included reported measles cases rather than all measles cases). Neuenschwander cited the correct numbers.
Neuenschwander highlighted the three recent published peer-reviewed studies, Mawson 2017, Hooker 2020 and Thomas 2020, showing the unvaccinated are exponentially healthier than the vaccinated. He also explained Aaby’s findings showing a five-fold increased death rate from diphtheria vaccines in Africa.
Neuenschwander cited government admissions, for example Institute of Medicine (IOM) publications, revealing a lack of data on vaccine safety and absence of government studies on vaccinated v. fully unvaccinated patients.
Defense expert Dr. LeTrinh Hoang, pediatrician:
Hoang is an experienced integrative pediatrician in California with a busy and successful clinic.
Hoang emphasized integrative medicine’s role to protect patients in ways conventional medicine systemically fails. Hoang criticized one-size-fits-all vaccination, and the specific ways ACIP/CDC creates a ridiculously limited vaccine contraindication list that ignores entire areas of independent research and clinical findings.
Hoang criticized Lehman’s casual approach to vaccine injury.
Hoang emphasized her clinical experience that unvaccinated patients are exceptionally healthy, by contrast to vaccine-injured patients whom she must heal regularly and on an ongoing basis because of their chronic illnesses.
Society is learning valuable lessons from this trial about vaccine injury, including about the consequences of allowing biotechnology to disrupt natural human immune systems.
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Greg Glaser, J.D. is a vaccine rights attorney with a litigation and transactional law background.
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The US pullout from Afghanistan is moving according to plan, while the Taliban are capturing district after district.
On June 21st, Taliban fighters took control of a key district in Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province, encircling the capital of the same name.
Fighting around the Imam Sahib district began late on June 20th and by midday the next day, the Taliban had overrun the district headquarters and were in control of the police headquarters.
Imam Sahib is strategically located near Afghanistan’s northern border with Tajikistan, a key supply route from Central Asia.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed confirmed that the Imam Sahib district was in Taliban hands.
Dozens of districts have fallen to the Taliban since May 1, when U.S. and NATO troops began their final departure from Afghanistan.
The Taliban have taken several regions across the three northern provinces of Kunduz, Baghlan and Balkh.
Significantly, witnesses said the Doshi district in Baghlan province was in Taliban hands.
This means the Taliban have assumed control of the one road that links five northern provinces to the capital Kabul.
Government forces later claimed the recapture of the Doshi area, but the Taliban is still active in the district, capturing more areas and seizing more military equipment in bases left by national forces.
Similarly, to the Imam Sahib district in northern Kunduz, the significance of the captured districts often lies in their proximity to roads and major cities.
The Maywand district in Kandahar province fell to the Taliban after a tunnel bombing targeting the main Afghanistan Armed Forces base in the area.
The Taliban have circulated videos on their website and to WhatsApp groups in which they claim show government soldiers who have surrendered being promised to return to their homes and receiving money from the Taliban.
On June 20th, Taliban leader Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhunzada issued a statement ordering his soldiers to “treat those who surrender well and display good behavior with them.”
The Afghan Armed Forces, in response, continue their operations, but they have had limited success, despite reports of heavy casualties on the Taliban side.
147 Taliban militants were killed and 53 others were wounded as a result of Afghan Army operations in Nangarhar, Laghman, Uruzgan, Kandahar, Zabul, Faryab, Balkh, Helmand, Nimruz and Kunduz provinces just on June 20, according to the Afghan Defense Ministry.
Instead of gains in these provinces, the Afghan Armed Forces are losing ground.
US President Joe Biden will meet Afghan President Ashraf Ghani soon, the White House said.
Biden’s talks with Ghani will be their first face-to-face meeting.
The US leader is set to pledge diplomatic, economic and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan to prevent it from becoming a haven for militants.
Meanwhile, Turkey is attempting to implement itself into the solution in Afghanistan, and assume control of Kabul International Airport, how it will potentially fare against the Taliban remains a mystery.
Any significant success is mostly unexpected.
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This article has been revised as of 8:05 PM EST after the World Health Organization literally sanitized their website to erase any mention of a guidance that they issued on June 3rd (this is WHO’s achieved page that contains the version they deleted) concerning the “vaccination” of children and adolescents for Covid-19. Up until an hour ago, WHO’s position was that children should not get “vaccinated” because, in their words, “there is not yet enough evidence on the use of vaccines against COVID-19 in children to make recommendations for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19”.
It is beyond breathtaking that a renowned global institution with the status and name recognition of WHO would stoop so low as to rescind a guidance that was made by public health officials within the organization in an effort to protect children from a “vaccine” that is clearly unsafe given the rash of children and young adults who are developing debilitating and potentially life long ailments like myocarditis, blood clots and even death.
What WHO did today by issuing a warning that children should not get “vaccinated” and then expunging it is even worse than not acknowledging the perils of these experimental boosters that are being pumped into the arms of billions of people around the world. Beyond the fact that they proved the point I raised yesterday, which is that unelected and unaccountable billionaires like Bill and Melinda Gates have a veto power over global institutions that are dedicated to public health policies, WHO is now endangering the lives of tens of millions of children around the world by encouraging them to get jabbed with “vaccines” that are not yet proven safe according to their own guidance.
This is an issue that hits close to home for me not only for me but for billions of people around the world. As a father of a two year old and someone who lost his mother to Covid-19 last year, I am beyond enraged that WHO, at the prodding of their corporate masters, are playing politics with something as serious and grave as this dreaded pandemic. They have confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that their concern is not about public safety nor the wellness of society, this is all about money and protecting the interests of powerful entities that stand to lose billions of dollars if people don’t continue to get jabbed.
The rest of this article, after this paragraph, is preserved as it was published two hours before WHO deleted their guidance. I had to use a screen shot of their original statement because it is no longer available on their website. You can compare for yourself what they are now saying compared to the screenshot you see below. This type of censorship is the stuff of Joseph Stalin who used to execute his enemies and delete any evidence of their existence. Today, WHO joined Stalin in the hall of shameful conduct as they executed truth and then deleted it from their website.
In a shocking development that caught the establishment by complete surprise, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued an alarm urging children and adolescents to avoid getting “vaccinated” for Covid-19. The following statement is lifted directly from WHO’s website:
This guidance that was issued by WHO on June 3rd was just deleted in an effort to keep the public in the dark and keep encouraging parents to place their children in harms way by getting them “vaccinated”. Click on picture above to see a clearer version of WHO’s original guidance
Though their revised guidance vis- à-vis kids and young adults getting jabbed was buried at the bottom of their bulletin, it nonetheless marked a fundamental break from the conventional and deranged logic of “vaccinating” everyone irrespective of their age, health status or risk profile. This vaxxsanity reached peak level when doctors like Leana Wen pressed parents to have their children injected with an experimental nostrum that has yet to gain FDA approval.
To the surprise of no one, mainstream media has completely ignored this development. Instead of WHO’s about face being treated as the breaking news it is, the supposed “free-press” have willfully and maliciously omitted this story that all parents should know about. At this exact moment, there are children being taken to clinics to be injected with a “vaccine” that is causing debilitating and potentially life long ailments like myocarditis (heart inflammation), blood clots or worse. Last week, a thirteen year old boy died three days after receiving a second shot of the Covid-19 “vaccine”. When will this madness stop!
Heartbroken that a child has died & send the family my condolences. But that his Aunty is on twitter to announce it was due to vaccine induced myocarditis but she would still give it to her child & 'monitor their heart rate' is evidence that we have gone mad. Kids don't need it. pic.twitter.com/OQMS9jRNVf
By refusing to broadcast WHO’s revised guidance, mainstream media and the establishment writ large will have the blood of every child who dies from Covid-19 “vaccinates “going forward. I can’t even imagine what it must be like as a parent knowing that they allowed their sons or daughters to get jabbed because they trusted opinion leaders who preached how safe and effective these “vaccines” were only to find out that WHO is now saying they are anything but. My blood boils at the thought of cities like Toronto that set up injection pop up sites where they jabbed children without their parent’s notification, presence nor consent.
As livid as I am about the suppression of this critical development that is literally a matter of life and death, I am heartened by the glimmer of hope that WHO just provided with their decision to reverse their “vaccination” guidance. Though they buried the lead, the fact that they issued this alarm is a significant shift from the status quo. As I’ve noted in previous articles, within every organization the vast majority are good and decent people who sadly allow an unhinged minority—mostly in positions of leadership—to dictate policies that lead to untold human suffering.
The political class and the establishment as a whole, who have a vested interest in these experimental “vaccines”, are intent on cheering us on as billions of people self-harm by way of jabs
Though we don’t know the backstory yet in terms of how the World Health Organization defied their patron devils Bill and Melinda Gates, I am certain that the decision was reached after a critical mass of employees made noise and potentially threatened to resign. If you work at WHO and have information on that front, email us at [email protected] and everything you convey to us will be off the record. I just hope that the CDC, who are currently sleeping at the wheel while children are developing severe heart complications after getting jabbed, follows in the footsteps of WHO and puts a halt to the “vaccination” of children instead of offering our sons and daughters as sacrificial lambs for biotech corporations.
WHO belatedly arrived at a position that many staked out only to be vilified as “anti-vaxxers” and dismissed as “conspiracy theorists”. The same way dissenters like Hans Blix and Chris Hedges were castigated by the establishment for rightly pointing out that Iraq did not have WMDs only to be vindicated by history, people who have been tarred and feathered for questioning the safety and efficacy of these “vaccines” will eventually be proven right. Sadly, our exculpation might very well come with unbearable cost. I pray for the safety of every man, woman and child—including my own family members—who got jabbed.
What has become abundantly clear is that governments, mainstream media and almost every major institution of note have zero interest in looking out for the health and wellness of the very people they are supposed to protect. If you had any doubt about the criminal nature of the debased (I refuse to call them elites), the fact that they are literally saying nothing as more and more children are being injured or killed by mRNA and adenovirus “vaccines” should dispel all doubt. Facebook has gone one step further on the malevolence scale and are actually censoring news about WHO’s decision. You can’t make this stuff up!
It is imperative that this story reaches a broader audience; I implore everyone who is reading this article to share it on social media and go one step further. Given how much Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and LinkedIn are censoring independent journalists like me, I ask you to go low-tech where they are silencing speech using high-tech algorithms. What I mean by that is to share this link via email, text and the most low-tech but most effective means of communication which is voice conversation. We cannot depend on politicians, pundits and opinion leaders living in gated chalets and sipping expensive Chablisto save us, we must get this message out ourselves.
Lastly, if you are a parent, for God’s sake, please do not let your child or children get jabbed with these experimental gene therapy “vaccines”! The overall mortality rate of Covid-19 is 0.66%, this number drops to 0.02% for people who are younger than 21. The risk of developing severe sickness or death from Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sinopharm and Sputnik’s “vaccines” is higher than the risk of Covid-19 itself. Do not allow your kids to take part in an ongoing clinical trial and risk harming them irreparably. Children have their whole lives ahead of them, don’t cripple them with biotech snake oils that do not prevent contraction nor transmission of Covid-19.
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Teodrose Fikremariam is the co-founder and editor of the Ghion Journal. Prior to launching the Ghion Journal, he was a political organizer who once wrote a speech idea in 2008 that was incorporated into Barack Obama’s South Carolina primary victory speech. He is originally from Ethiopia and a direct descendent, seven generations removed, of one of Ethiopia’s greatest Emperors Tewodros II.
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The 2008 financial collapse still impacts the world and many call it a Great Depression. Rescuing big corporations -rather than saving the real economy, made the scams and pillaging seem almost acceptable. The concentration of money and politics, and the power either generates, it is a global challenge that pushes a particular agenda of privatization of commons and of making money out of everything -prisoners, immigrants, women, children, addictions, sexual abuse and that has no limits.
Michael Hudson identifies financial capitalism as the challenge; environmental degradation emerged from consumerism but “debt pollution” he says results from spending while financed by debt. Debt is not wealth, interest and amortization payments absorb future earnings –and earnings are not increasing. Industrial capitalism results in class war (workers v employers) but financial capitalism is parasitic raiding and carving up industrial corporations, downsizing and out-sourcing their labor force while creating unemployment, a war against workers too. The debt-overhead of the economy grows faster than the real economy increasing personal, national and global debt. (1a, 1b)
Only a growth economy (a real economy) creates value. Parasitic economy focus is on not paying any form of tax while seeking capital gains through ensuring higher land prices for real estate. It exploits us by mobilizing pension funds, social security and other retirement savings to increase the stock market, bonds and real estate prices. Finances manage real estate, oil and gas, mining and forestry, insurance and banking. The savings of workers, via pension funds, have increased but are invested in finances so we never know if workers’ savings will ever be used to their benefit or to further enrich the rentier class. (1a, 1b)
Confusion Inside: Monopolists’ take over
Hundreds of Lehman employees abandoning their Manhattan building in 2008 seemed confused trying to explain the shocking collapse of their investment bank. Lehman, a Wall Street institution, more than 150 years old, had no support from the US government while Merrill Lynch, American International Group and Bear Stearns were rescued. Hank Paulson explained that they had to preserve the US financial system, saving those who were “too big to fail.” The crisis of 2008 was the most severe since the Great Depression, but not the only crisis since then. There were signs before: the Savings and Loans crisis (1980s) resulted in a bailout of U$S 500 billion; the unraveling of Enron (2000-2004), the bankruptcy of World.com (U$S 104 billion), and the looting of Tyco International and Adelphia Communications by their own CEOs were all signs. (2)
The 2008 meltdown is rooted in federal policies expanded post WW2 through the G. I. Bill offering low-cost home loans to war veterans. (3) For the US government new houses meant consumption, production and jobs. But the US had changed: if in 1978 the financial sector debt was U$S 3 trillion, by 2007 it soared to U$S 36 trillion. Ideology had changed too: there was increasing blind faith in the “self-correcting nature” of the markets and in their ability to “police themselves.” As mortgage debt rose (2001-07) and home prices double, institutions and people indebted themselves borrowing extensively without proof of capacity to pay, jobs, income or assets. (4, 5)
The Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis of the US identified factors connected to the crisis but selected massive borrowing as key. The Federal Reserve System imposed low interest rates since 2001 to control inflation but it translated in low returns for investments. The U.S. financial sector developed securities backed by mortgage payments offering high returns and these securities, rated high by agencies (Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s), were acceptable to financiers. Lenders sold mortgages (bundled by banks into securities) to institutional investors who trusted them because they were high-rated by top ratings agencies. (4, 5)
Monopoly: Money power in Politics
In the US, and since the Great Depression, government use stringent regulation for banks, insuring commercial banks and savers through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and separating commercial from investment banks, generally riskier, through the Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall Act). This system was in place until late 1970s but since then, politicians pushed for de-regulation eroding the Glass-Steagall Act over two decades, and eventually repealing what was left of it in Congress in 1999. Big commercial banks were now free to enter (with deposits from savers) areas of the financial business until then limited to investment banks, which pushed investment banks into yet riskier ventures. Political changes to US policies were not by chance but the work of money; the financial sector spent U$S 2.7 billion in lobbying and additional U$S 1 billion in campaign contributions to this end between 1999 and 2008. (4, 5)
In 2000, the US Congress approved the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, deregulating over-the-counter derivatives -securities that in essence are bets made privately by two parties on the future price of an asset. Investment banks could now reap huge profits by betting on the ongoing rise of real-estate values. Banks added billions of illusory money to their balance sheets, but American borrowers, overextended, will end in default and bankruptcy. In the US most states were affected by loans with negative equity (the value of homes, below the value of mortgages). Nevada had the highest share of such loans (more than 50%) but most states were affected. The collapse of the housing bubble led to a financial meltdown at home and abroad. In the US it left 26 million people unemployed, 4 million families without homes, large and small business in deep recession while 17 trillion of U$S evaporated in 21 months (including retirement accounts and life savings). The collateral damage was global via the securitization of toxic mortgages valued in trillions of US dollars and affecting an entire generation of people and communities. (4, 5)
Ten years after the crisis Chris Hedges tours the US showing in his book the level of decay, addictions and despair of working people; the pornography, prostitution and sadism promoted as “business;” and the hate and gambling prevalent in American society. Marx, he says, was aware of the dynamics of capitalism and the power of ideologies serving the interests of elites, ensuring their rule over us. Marx could foresee that in later stages of global capitalism, corporations would exercise a monopoly on the world’s markets and that these corporations, whether in banking, fossil fuels, agriculture and food, arms or communication, would use their power through the mechanisms of the state to prevent others from challenging their global monopolies. Marx knew that capitalist expansion was not eternally sustainable and that, unable to expand, the system will consume the structures that sustained it. All empires collapse showing commonalities; the American empire will not be an exception and Hedges shows us the complexity of decline from inside. (6)
Corporations fix prices to maximize profit, push through trade deals that weaken nation-states so they cannot control exploitation, impose environmental regulations or monitor working conditions. Corporations talk about free market competition but their monopolies end any competition. In the US, corporate capitalism pushed for de-industrialization and financial deregulation so that a weakened state will be forced to privatize public assets and impose austerity leading to cuts of public social services but welfare for corporations and the very rich is very much in place. Corporations feast on taxpayer money: the US government will spend U$S 348 billion between 2015-2025 in modernizing nuclear weapons and submarines but nobody has ever challenged (or audited) the Pentagon’s budget. The US spends U$S 100 billion a year on surveillance -70% of these monies going to private contractors. The fossil fuel industry takes U$S 5.3 trillion a year worldwide in hidden costs and additional U$S 492 billion in direct subsidies, as reported by the International Monetary Fund. US taxpayers give big banks U$S 83 billion a year in subsidies. (6)
In Latin America people have fought the neoliberal agenda of corporations. It was imposed in Chile during the dictatorship of Pinochet, and, soon after the military coup (1973) Chicago trained economists were promoted to ministerial positions –some studied under Friedman in Chicago. The Chicago Boys applied privatization of public assets (state controlled companies went from 300 to 24) and cut budgets for infrastructure, for housing, for education and for social security causing huge inequality and increased poverty. In Peru similar policies were applied (1990) during the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori, in jail today, throwing almost overnight millions of Peruvians into despairing poverty. Popular pots, a labor unions tradition during strikes, emerged everywhere to deal with hunger. Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko, was allowed to run for 2020-21 presidential elections, despite public knowledge of charges for money laundering that will take her to jail unless she becomes president. Most Latin American countries fought neoliberalism, some successfully, many not; the oligarchic dream of total control, abject poverty and national subordination to external powers was imposed mainly by force or by deceit.
In Canada neoliberals emerged with the coming together of Reagan and Mulroney, and their trade agreement pushing for “tough-love” capitalism. Neo-liberal monetary policy was implemented very soon. The Bank of Canada, first under Governor Gerald Bouey (1980s) and then under Governor John Crow (1990s), favoured aggressive disinflation -a neoliberal monetary policy ignoring unemployment rates, quality of employment and social needs. A new “normal” was imposed on Canadians. With the signing of the Canada US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) the new normal was cemented through Canada’s increasing reliance on resource extraction and exports. The CUSFTA agreement was sold as a way to ensure “special access” to the US market but resulted in the US gaining strategic access to Canadian energy while Canada’s share of US imports decreased. The North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) moved Canada into further harmonizing, now with Mexico in addition to the US. Global and continental strategies became dominant but national strategies were not even developed. Harmonizing pushed wages down in Canada, attacked the welfare state and limited advances towards a “just society.” Due to Canadian deindustrialization public debt grew: it stands today as CAN$ 2.434 trillion, surpassing the Canadian Gross Domestic Product of CAN$ 2.311 trillion. (9)
The improbable death of neoliberalism…
Some believe the neoliberal push towards the 19th century has stalled, hopefully dead after the 2008 collapse or the covid-19 pandemic. The neoliberal political project attacked and blocked alternative models effectively, but since, the meltdown and the pandemic have made explicit its human costs in the US and everywhere. While the human costs of the financial collapse have been discussed, the connection of pandemic costs to the liberal project remained mostly in the dark. Worldwide numbers point to almost 3.9 million deaths by corona-virus and the neoliberal machine has been responsible for dismantling existing public health care systems, research and lab-capacity for vaccines, seriously limiting countries in their response to the pandemic. It is quite telling that the highest total of deaths per country is in the US, with more than six hundred thousands people dead because of covid-19; Brazil follows with half a million dead and India with 385 thousands. But it is also interesting to look at death per million population as Peru emerges as the country with the highest rate: almost 5.700 death/per million, followed by Hungary with 3.110, Bosnia Herzegovina with 2.953 and Czechia (Czech Republic) with 2.822 which point that Eastern Europe has performed badly. These are countries devastated by neoliberalism or war; and, their rates are above the rates per million of the US, Brazil, India, Russia, UK and even France. (8)
Upon reflection, the neoliberal project has made it almost a sin to advocate for people and towards the provision of public health care, low cost medications, good quality public education and fair wages everywhere. It has also been responsible for limiting citizens’ impact on politics all over the world and for turning politics into dust by destroying any emerging alternative project. We are severely limited in shaping our societies towards equity, sustainability and fairness because of neoliberalism. Importantly, this criminal project attacks the “collective” –insulating policy makers from popular demands and eliminating state capacity for intervention in favor of the collective; still, state support for financial elites and their corporations and interests is allowed. Socialism for the rich is not a problem but socialism for the rest of us is not possible. The assault on collective actors, labor unions, anti-neoliberal political parties and collective negotiation and agreements has been effective. (10) Domesticated governments, from “trickster” politicians like Mulroney or Lenin Moreno, or from “tough-love ones” like Thatcher, Trump or Bolsonaro, all endorse the “oligarchic dream” and ensure that no anti-neoliberal politician gets into power or keeps it.
Financial capitalism grows in illicit wealth and power while ruling politicians are either allies or pawns. Eventually it became difficult for regular people to believe or participate in politics that are meaningless to them and turned into a show to fool, distract and betray the public interest and the common good. Around the world, with few exceptions, “politics” becomes a bad word. Monopolists win, shaping their image as deserving, intelligent, sophisticated, even visionary benefactors and philanthropists. The poor and vulnerable -women, men, children, ignored, blamed, shamed; their very survival undermined, eventually increasingly invisible. The talk is not about them but about the “middle class” Those urban subjects from Hallmark movies, enjoying their jobs with benefits, living in romantic settings of “small town USA” as successful “writers” or “chefs,” walking their dogs through cute shopping streets and squares, having supportive families, facing mainly the challenge of unfulfilled “love.” While Hollywood remains focused on making money through shocking us with violence and meanness, scaring us into accepting that we humans are not better than the vicious caricatures they present, nor more real than their violent superheroes; but, where is Superman when greedy capitalism threatens us and the planet?
A compliant Media, says Hedges, shifts its focus from the common good to race, and to crime and law and order, while trying to convince us that the problem we face is not emerging from corporate greed but from a threat to national integrity (6). In Canada the Media also ignores the growing inequality, low wages, addictions, and personal and national debt. It focuses away from our reality to either sustain a vision of “technological bliss and middle-class fancy” or an illusory “enemy,” yesterday Russia today China tomorrow who knows? While created visions and threats are both illusory, threats increase attacks on real Asian people in Canada; and often, aboriginal Canadians looking “Asian,” like the Inuit, are attacked too.
In the US, increased poverty leads to increased homelessness. In Canada you can also see men in sleeping bags in downtown Toronto and Vancouver and many asking for money in the streets of every city. In the US people live in “tent cities” and campgrounds weather allowing. A book (and a movie) points to the US phenomenon of the “houseless,” people who live in their vehicles (adapted or not) and move like nomads around the US. Many of the nomads are seniors with small pensions who cannot afford to pay rent; most are white -it maybe too dangerous for people of color to do this. Jessica Bruder raises awareness in her book about the consequences of the 2008 financial meltdown. But Nomadland (the movie) is a fiction much less clear about financial connections and tempted to present (as most movies) a quasi romantic view of nomads as finding “freedom.” But, nomads work tough jobs for seniors with minimum wages that can endanger them mainly to cover living expenses. They are survivors of US crises presenting us with poverty after a life of work; while most are women, the majority lonely, it is difficult to believe they are not forced into this “option.” Individualism prevalent until the very end: our perception of the need to survive on “our own” no matter what. (12)
A wish for Implosion…
American capitalism has become very savvy at exploiting its own people; to this end it sustains corporations making money from citizens jailed in privatized prisons funded by the state; made to work for wages of 24 cents/hour; these are true “maquilas” at home. Undocumented immigrants face a similar fate when captured in the US; government pays private corporations for their keeping too and the conditions are terrible. It proves to us that there is nothing corporations are not willing to do for money–war, jail, addictions, prostitution, exploitation of any kind, denigration and deviance, is all on the table, and nothing and nobody is safe anywhere. (6, 7)
For Hudson monopolists believe debt can grow for ever. It cannot. Debt caused many to fall before even in antiquity. Wealth and power addiction is hubris, he says, when you become so successful it goes to your head and you believe you can do absolutely anything. After WW2 the US expanded and nobody pushed back so it believed it would be like this forever. “And now there is a pushback and it thinks it is not natural. America is exceptional. Don’t countries get it?” But other countries do not believe it; China, Russia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization nations are going their way, de-dollarization and creation of their own economy on non-neoliberal lines, opposed to the US. We can expect increased homelessness and cost of living in the US. During Obama times there were 10 million evictions; Trump did a moratorium during the pandemic but numbers are accumulating so Biden may evict again -about 5 million more this time. The economy painted itself into a debt corner. Subways and transport systems, more schools and public services are probably going to be privatized. Many people are going to lose their status and become impoverished. The US is becoming a breeding ground for fascism. (1)
Hedges can see the implosion of the empire bringing more chaos too. To protect us from it, he argues, “intentional communities” with a focus on acts of kindness and caring for each other can help. Parallel institutions, able to challenge corporate hegemony, are needed and we need to favor leaders capable of building trust and true to their calling. We need to move the country away from the Democrat-Republican duopoly, he says. There is resistance, like in the water protectors of Bismarck (North Dakota); there is disruption, as in the Earth Quaker Action Team throwing wrenches into the “corporate machine;” and there is a need to work at making alliances with people and groups. (6)
In Latin America Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, maybe even Peru, Argentina and Mexico stand facing ongoing attacks. The people of Colombia, Chile, Brazil take to the streets at high personal costs. In Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) brought to the forefront the poor, at a time when most want to believe Mexico “more prosperous and egalitarian than ever.” AMLO walked Mexico; he knows this is a lie and ending poverty is crucial; in the political arena his discourse forced elites to public policies that acknowledge the need for increased public spending in education; a minimum wage and unionizing. (11) Together with his par in Argentina, AMLO saved Evo Morales’ life during the coup in Bolivia. It was crucial and Bolivia may very well be the first country in our continent bringing to justice the organizers and implementers of a “coup d’etat.” It shows, I think, that at the core of any chance for success in confronting Monopolists there is solidarity with each other and respect for the diversity of actions that Latin America may take to ensure its liberation.
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On June 16 in Geneva the US-Russia Summit was defined by President Biden “good, positive” and by President Putin “quite constructive”. Should we, therefore, feel a little reassured in a situation where Europe is at the forefront of what NATO called “the lowest point in our relationship with Russia since the end of the Cold War”? The facts tell us otherwise. At the same time when the US-Russia Summit was underway in Switzerland, theBaltops 50was underway in the Baltic, one of the 20 major US-NATO military exercises in Europe in 2021.
TheBaltops 50was organized and directed by the US-African naval forces commander with headquarters in Naples-Capodichino, Admiral Robert Burke, who at the same time is head of the NATO Command in Lago Patria (JFC-Naples). From June 6 to 18, over 4,000 soldiers with 40 ships and 60 aircraft – belonging to 18 NATO member and partner countries, including Italy – practiced the air-naval war in the Baltic and surrounding regions”, close to the Russian territory. Warships and bombers with nuclear capability took also part in the maneuver, and for the first time, the new NATO Space Center was integrated into the exercise.
While this big war exercise was underway, clearly directed against Russia, President Putin declared in the press conference after the Summit: “We conduct military exercises within our territory, we do not bring our equipment and personnel close to the borders of the United States of America, as the USA and its partners are now doing near our borders”.
The geographic location of the military forces, especially nuclear ones, is of primary importance: a tactical missile deployed 10,000 km away cannot hit the target but, if deployed at 1,000 km. has the same destructive effect as an ICBM. The two presidents’ declaration on “strategic stability“, including the extension of the New Start Treaty for the control of nuclear weapons, will be nullified if the US installs new “tactical” nuclear weapons in Europe as it has planned.
This and other key issues have been ignored by the media who according to Washington’s direction used the Summit as a kind of trial with Putin in the dock. The President of the United States is a public minister who did not just answer the questions like Putin, after refusing to hold the traditional joint press conference, but presented his own report on the Summit. According to Biden, he told Putin how he reacts anytime he sees violations of human rights in Russia and elsewhere: «How could I be the President of the United States of America and not speak out against human rights violations? Defending fundamental freedoms is part of the DNA of our country».
This is solemnly declared by the current President of the United States, the Democrat Joseph Biden who in 2001 supported the war of Republican President Bush in Afghanistan and, in 2002 promoted a bipartisan resolution that authorized President Bush to invade Iraq on charges (later proved false) that it possessed weapons of mass destruction.
This was solemnly declared by Joseph Biden who was one of the architects of the US-NATO wars against Libya and Syria as vice president of the Obama Administration, he supported Islamic fundamentalist groups to undermine these countries from within, he favored the use of neo-Nazis in Ukraine for the putsch that opened the new confrontation with Russia. He was one of the architects of the “kill list”, including people from all over the world who were secretly killed because they were judged harmful for the United States (The New York Times, President Obama’s Kill List, May 29, 2012). These wars and covert operations have caused directly and indirectly millions of deaths and the worst human rights violations. However, good feelings are not lacking: in a long official obituary on Twitter (reported in full by Ansa), President Biden announced: “Our hearts are heavy today as we let you know that our beloved German shepherd Champ died peacefully at home”.
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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.
Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
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Since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, governments around the world, along with a handful of unelected medical experts, have been behaving as though they are the social engineers of totalitarian regimes.
To be more precise, this select group of political leaders and medical experts have upended economies, as well as the lives of billions of ordinary people, by implementing extremely coercive and restrictive lockdowns and physical distancing measures for the stated purpose of bringing the pandemic under control and preventing future outbreaks.
Specific measures have included curfews; police patrols on the streets; the compulsory closure of businesses deemed nonessential, as well as workplaces, schools, and institutions of higher education; the banning of social gatherings; the cancelation of sporting and cultural events; the suspension of religious services; and restrictions on personal movement and interactions at the local, national, and international levels.
In many parts of the world, people have been subjected to mandatory stay-at-home orders, requiring them to spend most of the day confined and isolated in their homes. Lockdown measures have also been used to prohibit people from engaging in public protests and freely expressing their opinions, as failure to comply with limits on social gatherings has led to people being arrested, detained, and fined. It has also not been uncommon to see excessive police force being used to enforce lockdowns and curfews, and to disperse protests against unreasonable restrictions. Some governments have also set up detention centers for international travelers entering into their countries, where they are forced to quarantine at their own expense while they wait for the results of their covid-19 tests. Shockingly, in early June 2021, the provincial government in Ontario, Canada, went so far as to announce that residents in long-term care homes would soon be permitted to engage in “close physical contact, including handholding” and “brief hugs” with visitors when both parties are fully immunized.
Unfortunately, instead of criticizing this state of affairs, the mainstream media and major social media platforms are fully on board. They have turned out to be willing collaborators of the governments in these matters by glorifying their oppressive and punitive measures, censuring critical viewpoints, and fostering a culture of surveillance, all while spreading fear. They have also been ceaselessly promoting the injection of experimental vaccines as the only solution that will bring totalitarian lockdown measures to an end.
If Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek had witnessed the type of central planning that has taken place since the beginning of the pandemic, they would have called it “holistic social engineering.” They were convinced that supporters of the concept of a social engineer sought to extend “the power of the State” in controlling and reshaping society as a whole in accordance with their own ideals, goals, and wills.1 According to Popper, social engineers believe that they can diagnose the goals and needs of society, and then implement a strategy to achieve them through large-scale planning.2 However, such an undertaking would require social engineers to centrally coordinate the activities of millions of people by replacing the wills and ends of those individuals with their own. Meanwhile, Hayek stated that the best way to make everybody serve the ends of the social engineers is
to make everybody believe in those ends. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends. It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends. Although the beliefs must be chosen for the people and imposed upon them, they must become their beliefs, a generally accepted creed which makes the individuals as far as possible act spontaneously in the way the planner wants. If the feeling of oppression in totalitarian countries is in general much less acute than most people in liberal countries imagine, this is because the totalitarian governments succeed to a high degree in making people think as they want them to.3
Social engineers of the pandemic have been largely successful in convincing the masses that the oppressive lockdown measures that they are being forced to endure are ultimately in the best interests of society as a whole. In many instances, they have managed to make many people believe that the goals of the lockdowns are in fact their own goals. At the same time, social engineers have been discouraging “criticism,” as they do not “easily hear of complaints concerning the measures” that they have instituted.4 Accordingly, the critical views put forth by some journalists, activists, dissenters, legal experts, medical professionals, and anybody else who cares about freedom, human rights violations, and the common good have been systematically silenced. Popper explained that the social engineer:
will have to be deaf to many complaints; in fact, it will be part of his business to suppress unreasonable objections. (He will say, like Lenin, “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”) But with it, he must invariably suppress reasonable criticism also.5
After nearly a year and a half of antiliberal, undemocratic, unethical, antiscientific, ahistorical, and oppressive governmental measures, while denying billions of people their basic human rights, freedom, and sovereignty, social and economic life has essentially been completely crippled in many countries and regions. Nonetheless, social engineers of the pandemic period have treated critics and complaints as “a blemish,” proof of irrationality, and violations of the common good.6
Hayek and Popper incessantly warned about the form of central planning that we are currently being subjected to, which has been used by numerous dictators and tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. They specifically argued that it would not only lead societies down “the road to serfdom,” but also cause irreversible, large-scale social and economic damage.
In fact, since the lockdowns began, general freedom (e.g., freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and intellectual freedom), negative freedom (i.e., freedom from coercion), positive freedom (i.e., freedom of self-development), subjective freedom (i.e., freedom to act based on one’s own will and views), objective freedom (i.e., freedom of “being with other”), and economic freedom (e.g., freedom to earn one’s living, to produce, to buy, to sell, etc.) have been all violated to some extent. Furthermore, hundreds of millions of people have lost their jobs or endured income reductions, many small and medium-sized companies have gone bankrupt, unemployment rates have increased across major economies, and most countries have gone into recession.
Moreover, the lockdowns have also had a number of unintended social and health consequences, including increases in domestic violence to unprecedented levels, in the form of both physical and emotional abuse; a significant rise in substance abuse and related deaths (i.e., overdoses); worsening mental health problems leading to depression and suicides; isolation and antisocial lifestyles and behavior, particularly in children; physical inactivity and weight gain; and, the cancellation or delay of medical procedures, surgeries, and consultations. The unexpected destructive consequences of the totalitarian lockdown measures will undoubtedly be felt for decades to come.
Hayek and Popper would not have been surprised that the lockdown measures generated so many adverse impacts on people, the economy, and society. In fact, they warned that social engineering could never successfully achieve its predetermined goals and ends in the real world for two main reasons: the limited and dispersed nature of human knowledge and the spontaneous forces of society. Based on the concept of dispersed knowledge, “we know little of the particular facts to which the whole of social activity continuously adjusts itself in order to provide what we have learned to expect. We know even less of the forces which bring about this adjustment by appropriately coordinating individual activity.”7
Hayek and Popper would have argued that social engineers of the pandemic could not realistically possess the type and the abundance of knowledge needed to plan such large-scale oppressive lockdowns. According to them, by ignoring the dispersed nature of human knowledge, social engineers falsely believed that they could possess all of the knowledge required to redesign an entire society while also having complete control over all efforts directed toward the achievement of teleologically evaluated goals. In fact, Hayek and Popper concluded that it was impossible to exercise complete control over society via social engineering because the limitations of human knowledge meant that nobody could foresee all of the possible consequences of human actions, which is necessary if common goals are to be achieved. These sentiments apply to contemporary social engineers of the pandemic, and could explain why they were unable to accurately predict the consequences of many of the oppressive policies and measures that were intended to mitigate the spread and impacts of covid-19.
Popper and Hayek argued that even if it were hypothetically possible for a social engineer to possess all the knowledge needed to centrally plan and organize an entire society, they would still be unable to attain their teleologically evaluated goals in the manner they envisioned on account of the spontaneous forces of society, which represent the second main obstacle to the success of large-scale central planning. The spontaneous forces of society would make it impossible to effectively collect detailed information about the constantly changing activities, private interests, particular circumstances, complex relationships, and preferences of millions of people. The unexpected and unplanned outcomes associated with the spontaneous forces of society mean that the original plans of any social engineer will end in failure, because “the real outcome will always be very different from the rational construction” of the social engineer. In order to realize their predetermined goals, social engineers would be forced to continuously modify and change their plans, while using their exclusive power to coerce individuals for the purpose of imposing increasingly restrictive measures. That is to say, they would need to constantly interfere in the choices that individuals make without having to obtain any input from them.
Hayek warned that the coercive measures employed by social engineers could “destroy those spontaneous forces which have made advance” and progress possible across history, and inevitably result in “a stagnation of thought and a decline of reason.”8 He wanted people to understand that while “it may not be difficult to destroy the spontaneous formations which are the indispensable bases of a free civilization, it may be beyond our power deliberately to reconstruct such a civilization once these foundations are destroyed.”9 This is why Popper called social engineering the “greatest and most urgent evil of society.”10 According to him, “even with the best intentions of making heaven on earth it only succeeds in making it hell—that hell which man alone prepares for his fellow-men.”11
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This article was originally published on Mises Wire.
Birsen Filip holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and master’s degrees in economics and philosophy. She has published numerous articles and chapters on a range of topics, including political philosophy, geo-politics, and the history of economic thought, with a focus on the Austrian School of Economics and the German Historical School of Economics. She is also the author of The Rise of Neo-liberalism and the Decline of Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
Notes
1. Birsen Filip, “Hayek and Popper on Piecemeal Engineering and Ordo-liberalism,” in Robert Leeson, ed., Hayek: A Collaborative Biography: Part XIV: Liberalism in the Classical Tradition: Orwell, Popper, Humboldt and Polanyi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p. 244.
2. K.R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960).
3. F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom:Texts and Documents, ed. Bruce Caldwell, vol. 2 of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, ed. Bruce Caldwell (1944; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 157.
4. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945; repr., London: Routledge, 2011), p. 149.
5. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, p. 150.
6. F.A. Hayek, The Counter Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason (1952; repr., Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1979), p. 153.
7. F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, ed. Ronald Hamowy, vol. 17 of The Complete Works of F.A. Hayek (1960; repr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 76.
8. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 90.
9. F.A. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order (1948; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 25.
10. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, p. 84.
11. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, p. 157.
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The Rise of Neo-liberalism and the Decline of Freedom
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Peter McCullough, MD, MPH appears on the Ingraham Angle on June 21, 2021 to explain why we don’t need to panic about the “Delta variant” and what younger individuals should know about the mRNA vaccines.
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Collusion by the White House, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media resulted in disparagement, denial, and suppression of eyewitness testimony confirming that most POWs were actually well-treated by their North Vietnamese captors (in contrast to the brutal torture and death often meted out to North Vietnamese POWs by U.S. forces).
When numerous U.S. POWs began to understand the truth about the war they had been fighting, they spoke out against it—voluntarily—as an act of conscience. But they were cynically portrayed as traitors, turncoats and “camp rats,” their reputations and lives destroyed, driving many to despair and even suicide.
Among the few memories that most Americans still retain of the Vietnam War—now nearly 60 years in the past—one of the most vivid centers around the torture suffered by Senator John McCain at the hands of his brutal Vietnamese captors while a prisoner of war in Hanoi’s Hoa Lo prison (AKA The Hanoi Hilton).
This story has been told, retold, and continually burnished countless times by admiring media interviews and a flood of books and memoirs, including several by McCain himself.
Another memory of the war, still believed by millions of Americans, is that hundreds or even thousands of American soldiers classified as MIA (Missing in Action) are actually being held and tortured in secret North Vietnamese POW camps, callously abandoned by our government and desperately praying to be rescued—preferably in a Hollywood-style rescue by Chuck Norris or Sylvester Stallone, who starred in the spate of Commie-hating blockbuster movies inspired by their plight.
This belief is continually reinforced by POW/MIA flags which fly at every post office, and a ready supply of new books and movies, such as the 2018 release of the film M.I.A. A Greater Evil.
But both memories of the Vietnam War are false memories. However passionately believed, they were cynically manufactured fantasies implanted in all-too-willing American minds for political purposes.
How and why these counter-factual beliefs were so successfully foisted on the American public is the subject of the new myth-shattering book by Tom Wilber and Jerry Lembcke, Dissenting POWs: From Vietnam’s Hoa Lo Prison to America Today (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2021).
Wilber is the son of a dissenting POW, Walter “Gene” Wilber, who is featured in the book, and has contributed to the award-winning documentary film The Flower Pot Story by Ngọc Dũng. Lembcke is a distinguished sociologist from College of the Holy Cross who has written a number of books debunking popular myths about the Vietnam War.
The two start their book by noting that the dominant war hero image of the POW—who endured torture and resisted service to enemy propaganda—was to a large extent created by high-ranking men like McCain who were captured early in the conflict.
McCain’s oft-told story of ill-treatment and torture is contradicted by Nguyen Tien Tran, the chief prison guard of the jail in which McCain was held. In a report by The Guardian, “[Tran] acknowledged that conditions in the prison were ‘tough, though not inhuman’. But, he added: ‘We never tortured McCain. On the contrary, we saved his life, curing him with extremely valuable medicines that at times were not available to our own wounded’. . . . [H]e denied torturing him, saying it was his mission to ensure that McCain survived. As the son of the US naval commander in Vietnam, he offered a potential valuable propaganda weapon.”
John McCain fit well with this group because he was also academically privileged and his family included high-ranking military officers like his father, Jack, who was an admiral and the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command.
James Stockdale while in captivity. [Source: military.com]
With post-war military careers at stake, these high-ranking officers played up the alleged barbarity of the North Vietnamese, demanded resistance to interrogations from other captives, and threatened so-called deviants with disciplinary charges after release to the U.S.
The Nixon administration advanced their credibility and status in a desperate ploy to stir up support at home for an unpopular conflict abroad; and further concocted a story—announced in a press conference by Defense Secretary Melvin Laird on May 19, 1969—that 1,300 American soldiers deemed “missing in action” were believed to be prisoners of war.
Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird gives the opening statement of a press conference on May 19, 1969, to publicize the plight of U.S. POWs and MIAs in North Vietnam. [Source: courant.com]
The unaccounted for would now publicly be described as “POW/MIA,” implying that any serviceperson missing in Vietnam could also be a prisoner of war. This transformed the war from a political issue into a humanitarian one, trading public support for sympathy. It didn’t matter why we were there in the first place: Our boys were there, and by God were we going to do anything to get them home.
Suddenly, the public image of Vietnam looked very different. The very real footage of brutalized Vietnamese bodies, wailing children, and napalmed villages was traded for a fantasy—all of the violence that had been done in Uncle Sam’s name was now being done to him.
Images like this famous one of a Vietnamese girl, Phan Thi Kim Phúc, running from a U.S. napalm strike, were supplanted by the fixation with the plight of American POW/MIAs. This was a brilliant public relations maneuver by the Nixon administration in collusion with the media. [Source: irishtimes.com]
The POW issue soon became a cause célèbre. In the early 1970s, millions of “POW bracelets” were sold by a student group called VIVA (Voices in Vital America), each branded with the name of a missing American serviceman.
These shiny nickel bracelets were spotted on the wrists of celebrities like Sonny and Cher—who had often before dressed like hippies—and Sammy Davis, Jr, and allegedly Princess Grace of Monaco put in an order for two bracelets.
The silver bracelets could even be spotted on the fashion runway, where models with an interest in political activism took to wearing them. A New York Times profile from the day quotes a model named Astrida Woods, who said she was “dissatisfied” with her life as a model and felt the urge to give back. “I began to do some work with Ralph Nader, and now [wearing the bracelets]. It’s a way to contribute something.”
Wilber and Lembcke conclude that “instances of brutal treatment” were “less common than [has been] purported” and that evidence of systematic torture drawn from visitor reports, POW statements, and oral histories was scant.
Those POWs who questioned the war were dismissed by the military for their supposedly “weak personal character” and “lack of education and backgrounds in broken and poor families,” a typical case of “psychologizing the political.”
These men were in turn stigmatized and then forgotten by the public amidst the manufactured concern about POW/MIAs who were supposedly brutalized and then kept in captivity and abandoned by their government.
Camp Rats?
The ranks of the POW dissenters included Lt. Col. Edison Miller, a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross and Purple Heart from California who spent six years in captivity after his fighter plane was shot down over North Vietnamese skies on October 13, 1967.
A contemporary described Miller, a Californian who flew previously over Korea, as a “first-rate pilot with a zeal for combat but an independent sort.”
John McCain falsely accused Miller of being a turncoat because he appeared in North Vietnamese propaganda.
McCain said both “had lost their faith completely.”
“They not only stopped resisting but apparently crossed a line no other prisoner I knew had even approached,” McCain wrote. “They were collaborators, actively aiding the enemy.”
Miller’s anti-war views had been sharpened in conversation with Navy Commander Robert Schweitzer, a captive from 1968 to 1973 who died a year after his release while still on active duty in San Francisco.
Schweitzer felt that, because the U.S. had never declared war, there could not legally be any North Vietnamese prisoners of war, only “Americans detained by a foreign power,” Miller said.
A tape of a conversation between Miller and Schweitzer was played for other prisoners, who heard not only an anti-war message but a challenge to the legality of the U.S. military action in Vietnam.
In 1970, when Miller and Gene Wilber were interviewed on national television, Wilber called for an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal “so that the Vietnamese can solve their own problems.”
U.S. journalists at the time, however, did not take their interview seriously, regarding it rather as a North Vietnamese propaganda show.
The two men along with Schweitzer continued to write protest statements and together with fellow dissenters met with American peace activists visiting North Vietnam, including actress Jane Fonda and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
Jane Fonda (center) during trip to North Vietnam in 1972. [Source: flickr.com]
Empathy for the War’s Victims
Most dissenting POWs came from a working-class background.
James A. Daly, an African-American infantryman from the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, for example, was raised in poverty by a single mother.
His 1975 book, Black Prisoner of War, describes his three years of jungle confinement after his capture by North Vietnamese soldiers and the South Vietnam-based National Liberation Front (NLF), followed by a two-month trek north to Hanoi on the Ho Chi Minh trail where he experienced what it was like to be on the receiving end of U.S. ordnance.
Bob Chenoweth, from a white working-class family in Oregon, similarly developed an empathy for the Vietnamese people and a distaste for the racist views of most Americans toward the Vietnamese.
A helicopter crew member, before he was shot down and captured, Chenoweth said he “couldn’t see how U.S. forces could possibly be helping the Vietnamese given the attitude that GIs had, viewing them as ‘subhuman’ and disparaging them as ‘gooks and dinks.’”
Chenoweth and other of his contemporaries authored anti-war statements, wrote messages to GIs asking them to follow their consciences, sent letters to politicians, and recorded tapes to be aired via Radio Hanoi.
Higher ranking POWs responded by trying to isolate the dissenters from other American prisoners while charging them with participating in a conspiracy against the United States.
One of the dissidents, Abel Kavanaugh, committed suicide as a result of the intense pressure and prospective stigma of a dishonorable discharge only a few months after coming home from Vietnam.
Charges against the POW dissidents were eventually dropped, Wilber and Lembcke believe, so as to not jeopardize the hero-prisoner story with too much attention on dissent and through a possible exposure of inconsistencies in the accusers’ own prison biographies.
Fear of Communist Infiltration
A critical trope in Cold War America was the fear of communist infiltration and internal subversion through brainwashing and mind control.
This trope was fortified by a CIA propaganda effort that depicted Korean War POWs who defected to the North Korean and Chinese side as having been brainwashed in interrogation.
CIA propaganda tract accusing Communist China of brainwashing U.S. POWs. The stereotype of cunning and evil Oriental communists endured through the Vietnam War and beyond and impacted how Americans viewed the dissenting POWs in Vietnam. [Source: goodreads.com]
Most of these defectors were in fact African-Americans who did not want to return to the Jim Crow South, while others were attracted by communist ideals or saw the U.S. war as immoral.[1]
Clarence Adams with Korean POWs and Communist captors in 1954. Adams lived in China for 12 years. He said he was well treated in captivity and stayed on in China because he was offered the chance at education there. Later he made propaganda broadcasts for Radio Hanoi, eventually returning to his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, where he ran a chain of successful Chinese restaurants. [Source: u.osu.edu]
The stereotype of the brainwashed POW of the Korean War turned collaborator and traitor because of his weak character would become the backdrop for the discrediting of the dissident POWs of the Vietnam War.
In an appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Gene Wilber was grilled on whether he had given in to the enemy to make antiwar statements. That he had acted on his own “conscience and morality” was drowned out by host Mike Wallace’s implications of collaboration and opportunism.
When he was subsequently invited to the White House POW reception, Wilber found his hotel room broken into and marked with accusations of treason when he returned from the reception.
In the summer of 1973, James Stockdale charged Wilber and Edison Miller with collaborating with the enemy, mutiny, and inciting personnel to insubordination. However, military judges found insufficient evidence to prosecute the case, and Wilber and Miller instead received letters of censure for their failure to meet the standard expected of officers.
Hollywood Revisionism
POW films starting from this time focused on returnees’ estrangement with their families and society and were told as stories of spousal infidelity, representing both individual drama as well as a sense of “home-front betrayal.”
These films were part of a post-war revisionism, which included a spate of films that contributed to the legend of American servicemen left behind in Vietnam.
In the 1980s, a new subgenre emerged focused on Vietnam veterans heroically taking on the task of returning to Indochina and liberating the left-behind POWs, who had been betrayed on the home front and abandoned by the U.S. government.
The POWs were depicted as victimized and emasculated captives who needed to be rescued by individualist heroes and whose honor as Americans was to be restored.
This image, Wilber and Lembcke argue, fits the post-war efforts to psychologize the once political conflicts of the Vietnam War and to depict the veteran as a victim and loser.
More of a heroized image and the POWs’ endurance of torture was revived with the 1987 film, The Hanoi Hilton, which starred Michael Moriarty, Ken Wright and Paul Le Mat as U.S. POWs who defy their captors while enduring brutal treatment at Hanoi’s Hoa Lo prison (aka The Hanoi Hilton).
This film meshed particularly well President’s Ronald Reagan’s characterization of the Vietnam War as a “noble cause,” fought by noble men, with the POW dissenters by implication being ignoble.
Persistence of the Hero-Prisoner Story
In their quest to comprehend the persistence of the hero-prisoner story, Wilber and Lembcke take their readers back to American colonial history and the captivity narratives emerging during that time.
These stories are about a complex mix of violence against captives, temptations to stay with their captors, the ideal to remain loyal with their fellow colonists, and their Christian beliefs.
Such tensions and correlations between the Self and the Other were critical in the making of an American identity. The wars in Korea and Vietnam and the POW experiences there can be understood as a new chapter of this identity-making process. Here, too, Americans must prove their will and ability to endure the brutality of a racialized Other.
A wrench in the story, however, is revealed in the autobiographical accounts of POW-heroes like Stockdale, Denton, and Risner. They wrote about fasting as a way of enforcing self-discipline and self-assurance, sometimes with a religious subtext.
More bizarrely, they also wrote about self-mutilation—the deliberate infliction of physical wounds on themselves that would be visible during filmed interviews.
The aim was to make it appear to other POWs (and to the U.S. public) that they had been tortured. One officer wrote of how he purposely damaged his vocal apparatus so he could not be forced to make propaganda statements.
In addition to some high-ranking officers attempting to portray themselves as heroes by means of self-mutilation, Wilber and Lembcke also noted that they tried to keep political literature and news of dissent back home away from other POWs, fearing that these would enhance critical positions on the war and against their authority within the prison population.
Moreover, these ranking officers often despised the more humane view of the Vietnamese displayed by other prisoners, including an interest in their language and culture, and an understanding of why they were fighting back against an invasion of their country by the most powerful military force in the world.
Bringing Back Forgotten Dissenters
Wilber and Lembcke’s book helps restore these forgotten POW dissenters to their rightful—and honored—place among the large and diverse Vietnam generation of dissidents, draft resisters, oppositional GIs, veteran activists, deserters, and all those who supported them.
The book also shows that, despite all destruction and death brought by the invaders from the sky, North Vietnam maintained a moral superiority through oftentimes fair treatment of the captured Americans. This was in stark contrast to the more systematic adoption of torture methods by USAID and CIA-trained police under the Operation Phoenix and like-minded programs.
Vietnam War protesters create mock Tiger Cage, replicating one in the USAID-run Con Son prison where Vietnamese inmates were tortured in a way American POWs claimed they had been tortured. [Source: easyyolktoofiles.wordpress.com]
The POW/MIA flag that flies today over the White House is intended to honor the men who endured captivity; however, it continues to perpetuate a distorted understanding of a war that was as abominable as it was unjust, and helps to advance a dangerous nationalist ideology that will lead to future Vietnams.
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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].
Steve Brown is a member of the Editorial Board of CovertAction Magazine.
Notes
1. See Clarence Adams, An American Dream: The Life of an African American Soldier and POW Who Spent Twelve Years in Communist China (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007).
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Pillaging the World
The Rise of Neo-liberalism and the Decline of Freedom
