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Those of you drawing sustenance and stimulation from the traditional acronym UFO best brace yourselves.  The less exciting and dull term accepted by the defence clerks – unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) – is renewing its march into the extra-terrestrial hinterland.   

On June 25, the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force will release a declassified report to Congress that will do little to shift ground or alter debate on the nature of such phenomena.  For those exercised about green creatures, ancient aliens and that roguish charlatan Erich von Däniken, nothing would have changed. For sceptics, it will be a case of tired yawn before returning to work.  There will be many “I told you so” moments and no one will be any wiser.

Since 2017, various eyewitness accounts and videos have been circulating in such measure as to worry members of Congress.  This came a decade after Senate majority leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) first began tooting the horn on the subject, a measure that led to the creation of the $22 million Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.  That program, along with the even lesser known Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program, saw the involvement of such proponents of extra-terrestrial life as billionaire Robert Bigelow.

Such programs were hardly the first.  From 1966 to 1968, the University of Colorado’s UFO Project, which lead to the publication of the tome heavy Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, was funded by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research.  Led by physicist Edward U. Condon, the report, totalling almost a thousand pages, covered 56 “cases” (UFO sightings), of which 33 were suitably explained as “normal phenomena”. 

The unexplained cases were not sufficient for Condon and his co-authors to encourage further government study or scientific investigation of UFO sightings.  The words of the report are unequivocally damning: “nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record … leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.”

Decades after, with interest rekindled, the Pentagon was duly pressed by US lawmakers into compiling a report examining UAP sightings.  Legislation passed in December stipulated that the resulting work should contain “detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence” gathered by the FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.  The latter was created in August 2020 on the direction of Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist.  It was done so with a view to improving “understanding of” and to “gain insight into the nature and origins of UAPs.  The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalogue UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to US national security.”

The focus of the report is bound to be workmanlike, given the DOD’s concern about “the safety of our personnel and the security of our operations”.  Emphasis is placed on the potential risks posed by “any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace”.  “This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing.”

So far, news outlets have veered between panting anticipation and bemused interest.  The BBC suggested that, “The review of 120 incidents is expected to conclude that US technology was not involved in most cases.”  The Hill, not quite grasping the meaning of secrecy, concluded that this fact “effectively rules out any secret government operations conducted by the American government”.

Both the New York Times and Washington Post went for common ground.  The Times reported that senior administration officials briefed about the report found no evidence that the sighted objects seen over the past decade by Navy pilots were not of this planet.  But these same officials “still cannot explain the unusual movements that have mystified scientists and the military.”  US technology, it was confirmed, was not involved in the sightings.  The report, according to the Post, “finds no proof of extraterrestrial activity, but cannot provide a definitive explanation for scores of incidents in which strange objects have been spotted in the sky”.    

The Post goes on to make some broad claims, detecting a shift from “fringe conspiracy theory” to the “mainstream”.  To justify the assertion, they cite such figures as Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence official who told reporters on an April roundtable call that many objects recorded in the videos under review had “baffled pilots, military and intelligence officials for their apparent defiance of known laws of flight and gravity”. 

Fox News, for its part, can call upon the observations of former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe. Those interested in the report would read of “objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots or have been picked up by satellite imagery that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain.”

The minds of former presidents are also being tickled with interest. “[W]hat is true, and I’m actually being serious here,” Barack Obama claimed in May on the Late Late Show With James Corden, “is that there are, there’s footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are.  We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory.”

A good number in the scientific and sceptical fraternity have been much cooler to this excitement.  “Recently,” a reproachful Andrew Franknoi, astronomer at the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco observes, “there has been a flurry of misleading publicity about UFOs [based on military reports].  A sober examination of these claims reveals there is a lot less to them than first meets the eye.”

Science writer Mick West, who has viewed much UAP footage released by the US military, affords a good perspective for debunkers.  Most sightings can be put down to distortions in the image or problems in the instruments themselves.  For all that, he admitted that unidentified objects appearing “in restricted airspace” presents “a real problem that needs solving.” 

UFO sceptic Robert Sheaffer sees no reason for a Damascene conversion.  “There are no aliens here on Earth, and so the government cannot ‘disclose’ what it does not have.”  With a measure of unflagging confidence, he suggested that government sources knew “less on the subject than our best civilian UFO investigators, not more.”

Another good reason for dampening any excitement around the UAP Report is the motivation of the Pentagon.  Instances of costly bungles are many, from the vast expenditure in such failed conflicts as Afghanistan to the $1.6 trillion debacle over the F-35.  Perhaps, writes Matt Stieb, the DOD “simply wants a flashy reason to demand more money.”

Reid, for his part, expects little but urges continued interest in funding ventures in UAP investigations.  “I don’t think the report is going to tell us too much.  I think they need to study it more and not just have one shot at it.”  Condon and his research team might have set him straight.

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

Featured image: In an undated handout image taken from a video released by the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a 2004 encounter near San Diego between two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets and an unknown object. UFOs have been repeatedly investigated over the decades in the United States, including by the American military. (U.S. Department of Defense via The New York Times)

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

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The fact that the very department that trains high state officials and agents of secretive three letter agencies is also the place that produces many of the journalists we rely on to stand up to those officials and keep them in check is seriously problematic.

In a previous investigation, MintPress News explored how one university department, the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, functions as a school for spooks. Its teaching posts are filled with current or former NATO officials, army officers and intelligence operatives to churn out the next generation of spies and intelligence officers. However, we can now reveal an even more troubling product the department produces: journalists. An inordinate number of the world’s most influential reporters, producers and presenters, representing many of the most well-known and respected outlets — including The New York Times, CNN and the BBC — learned their craft in the classrooms of this London department, raising serious questions about the links between the fourth estate and the national security state.

National security school

Increasingly, it appears, intelligence agencies the world over are beginning to appreciate agents with a strong academic background. A 2009 study published by the CIA described how beneficial it is to “use universities as a means of intelligence training,” writing that, “exposure to an academic environment, such as the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, can add several elements that may be harder to provide within the government system.”

The paper, written by two King’s College staffers, boasted that the department’s faculty has “extensive and well-rounded intelligence experience.” This was no exaggeration. Current Department of War Studies educators include the former Secretary General of NATO, former U.K. Minister of Defense, and military officers from the U.K, U.S. and other NATO countries. “I deeply appreciate the work that you do to train and to educate our future national security leaders, many of whom are in this audience,” said then-U.S. Secretary of Defense (and former CIA Director) Leon Panetta in a speech at the department in 2013.

King’s College London also admits to having a number of ongoing contracts with the British state, including with the Ministry of Defence (MoD), but refuses to divulge the details of those agreements.

American connections

Although a British university, King’s College markets itself heavily to American students. There are currently 1,265 Americans enrolled, making up about 4% of the student body. Many graduates of the Department of War Studies go on to attain powerful positions in major American media outlets. Andrew Carey, CNN’s Bureau Chief in Jerusalem, for example, completed a master’s there in 2012. Carey’s coverage of the latest Israeli attack on Gaza has presented the apartheid state as “responding” to Hamas rocket attacks, rather than being the instigator of violence. A leaked internal memo Carey sent to his staff last month at the height of the bombardment instructed them to always include the fact that the Gazan Ministry of Health is overseen by Hamas, lest readers begin to believe the well-documented Palestinian casualty figures brought on by days of bombing. “We need to be transparent about the fact that the Ministry of Health in Gaza is run by Hamas. Consequently, when we cite latest casualty numbers and attribute to the health ministry in Gaza, we need to include the fact that it is Hamas run,” read his instructions.

King’s College alumnus turned CNN Jerusalem bureau chief Andrew Carey instructed reporters on how to cover Israel’s latest assault on Gaza

Once publicized, his comments elicited considerable pushback. “This is a page straight out of Israel’s playbook. It serves to justify the attack on civilians and medical facilities,” commented Al-Jazeera Senior Presenter and Producer Dena Takruri.

The New York Times, the United States’ most influential newspaper, has also employed Department of War Studies alumni. Christiaan Triebert (M.A., 2016), for example, is a journalist on their visual investigations team. He even won a Pulitzer Prize for “Revelations about Russia and Vladimir Putin’s aggressive actions in countries including Syria and Europe.” Hiring students from the school for spooks to bash Russia appears to be a common Times tactic, as it also employed Lincoln Pigman between 2016 and 2018 at its Moscow bureau.

Josh Smith, senior correspondent for influential news agency Reuters and formerly its correspondent in Afghanistan, also graduated from the department in question, as did The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Ford.

Arguably the most influential media figure from the university, however, is Ruaridh Arrow. Arrow was a producer at many of the U.K.’s largest news channels, including Channel 4, Sky News and the BBC, where he was world duty editor and senior producer on Newsnight, the network’s flagship political show. In 2019, Arrow left the BBC to become an executive producer at NBC News.

The British invasion

Unsurprisingly for a university based in London, the primary journalistic destination for Department of War Studies graduates is the United Kingdom. Indeed, the BBC, the country’s powerful state broadcaster, is full of War Studies alumni. Arif Ansari, head of news at the BBC Asian Network, completed a masters analyzing the Syrian Civil War in 2017 and was soon selected for a leadership development scheme, placing him in charge of a team of 25 journalists who curate news primarily geared toward the substantial Middle Eastern and South Asian communities in Great Britain.

Many BBC employees begin studying at King’s years after their careers have already taken off, and balance their professional lives with pursuing new qualifications. Ahmed Zaki, Senior Broadcast Journalist at BBC Global News, began his master’s six years after he started at the BBC. Meanwhile, Ian MacWilliam — who spent ten years at BBC World Service, the country’s official news broadcast worldwide, specializing in sensitive regions like Russia, Afghanistan and Central Asia — decided to study at King’s more than 30 years after completing his first degree.

Another influential War Studies alumnus at the World Service is Aliaume Leroy, producer for its Africa Eye program. Well-known BBC News presenter Sophie Long also graduated from the department, working for Reuters and ITN before joining the state broadcaster.

“It’s an open secret that King’s College London Department of War Studies operates as the finishing school for Anglo-American securocrats. So it’s maybe not a surprise that graduates of its various military and intelligence courses also enter into a world of corporate journalism that exists to launder the messaging of these same ‘security’ agencies,” Matt Kennard — an investigative journalist for Declassified U.K. who has previously exposed the university’s connections to the British state — told MintPress. “It is, however, a real and present danger to democracy. The university imprimatur gives the department’s research the patina of independence while it works, in reality, as the unofficial research arm of the U.K. Ministry of Defence,” he added.

Israeli writer and King’s College alumnus Neri Zilber has bylines in many of the media’s most important outlets

The Department of War Studies also trains many international journalists and commentators, including Nicholas Stuart of the Canberra Times (Australia); Pakistani writer Ayesha Siddiqa, whose work can be found in The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, The Hindu and many other outlets; and Israeli writer Neri Zilber, a contributor to The Daily Beast, The Guardian, Foreign Policy and Politico.

What’s it all about?

Why are so many influential figures in our media being hothoused in a department well known for its connections to state power, for its faculty being active or former military or government officials, and for producing spies and operatives for various three-letter agencies? The point of this is not to allege that these journalists are all secretly card-carrying spooks: they are not. Rather, it is to highlight the alarmingly close links between the national security state and the fourth estate we rely on to be a check on their power and to hold them accountable.

Journalists trained in this sort of environment are far more likely to see the world in the same manner as their professors do. And perhaps they would be less likely to challenge state power when the officials they are scrutinizing were their classmates or teachers.

These sorts of questions abound when such a phenomenon exists: Why are so many journalists choosing to study at this particular department, and why do so many go on to be so influential? Are they being vetted by security agencies, with or without their knowledge? How independent are they? Will they just repeat British and American state talking points, as the Department of War Studies’ publications do?

On the question of vetting, the BBC admitted that, at least until the 1990s, it conspired with domestic spying agency MI5 to make sure that people with left-wing and/or anti-war leanings, or views critical of British foreign policy and empire were secretly blocked from being hired. When pressed on whether this policy is still ongoing, the broadcaster refused to comment, citing “security issues” — a response that is unlikely to reassure skeptics.

“While it strikes me as very interesting that a single academic institution could play such a major role in the recruitment of pro-establishment activist intellectuals and delivery of the same to the media, it is not so surprising,” Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Professor Emeritus at Bowling Green State’s School of Media and Communication and an expert in collusion between government and media, told MintPress, adding:

Elite institutions in the past and doubtless still today have been major playgrounds for intelligence services. The history of the modern nation-state generally, not just the USA, seems to suggest that national unity — and therefore elite safety — is regarded by elites as achievable only through careful management and often suppression or diversion of dissent. Far more resources are typically committed to this than many citizens, drilled in the propaganda of democracy, realize or care to concede.

The Bellingcat Boys

While the journalists cataloged above are not spooks, some other Department of War Studies figures working in journalism could possibly be described as such, particularly those around the influential and increasingly notorious investigative website Bellingcat.

Cameron Colquhoun, for instance, spent almost a decade at GCHQ, Britain’s version of the NSA, where he was a senior analyst running cyber and counter-terrorism operations. He holds qualifications from both King’s College London and the State Department. This background is not disclosed in his Bellingcat profile, which merely describes him as the managing director of a private intelligence company that “conduct[s] ethical investigations” for clients around the world.

Bellingcat’s senior investigator Nick Waters spent four years as an officer in the British Army, including a tour in Afghanistan, where he furthered the British state’s objectives in the region. After that, he joined the Department of War Studies and Bellingcat.

For the longest time, Bellingcat’s founder Eliot Higgings dismissed charges that his organization was funded by the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — a CIA cutout organization — as a ridiculous “conspiracy.” Yet by 2017, he was admitting that it was true. A year later, Higgins joined the Department of War Studies as a visiting research associate. Between 2016 and 2019 he was also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the brains behind the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Bellingcat has received money from the following:
OSF
Meedan
NED
Google
Adessium
Crowdfunding

— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) February 6, 2017

Higgins appears to have used the university department as a recruiting ground, commissioning other War Studies graduates, such as Jacob Beeders and the aforementioned Christiaan Triebert and Aliaume Leroy, to write for his site.

Bellingcat is held in very high regard by the CIA. “I don’t want to be too dramatic, but we love [Bellingcat],” said Marc Polymeropoulos, the agency’s former deputy chief of operations for Europe and Eurasia. Other officers explained that Bellingcat could be used to outsource and legitimize anti-Russia talking points. “The greatest value of Bellingcat is that we can then go to the Russians and say ‘there you go’ [when they ask for evidence],” added former CIA Chief of Station Daniel Hoffman.

Bellingcaught

A recent MintPress investigation explored how Bellingcat acts to launder national security state talking points into the mainstream under the guise of being neutral investigative journalists themselves.

Newly leaked documents show how Bellingcat, Reuters and the BBC were covertly cooperating with the U.K.’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to undermine the Kremlin and promote regime change in Moscow. This included training journalists and promoting explicitly anti-Russian media across Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, the FCO noted, Bellingcat had been “somewhat discredited,” as it constantly spread disinformation and was willing to produce reports for anyone with money.

Nevertheless, a new European Parliament proposal published last month recommends hiring Bellingcat to assist in producing reports that would lay the groundwork for sanctioning Russia, for throwing it out of international bodies, and to “assist Russia’s transformation into a democracy.” In other words, to overthrow the government of Vladimir Putin.

An academic journalistic nexus

The Department of War Studies is also part of this pro-NATO, anti-Russia group. Quite apart from being staffed by soldiers, spooks and government officials, it puts out influential reports advising Western governments on foreign and defense policy. For instance, a study entitled “The future strategic direction of NATO” advises that member states must increase their military budgets and allow American nuclear weapons to be stored in their countries, thereby “shar[ing] the burden.” It also recommended that NATO must redouble its commitment to opposing Russia while warning that it needed urgently to form a “coherent policy” on the Chinese threat.

Other War Studies reports claim that Russia is carrying out “information-psychological warfare” through its state channels RT and Sputnik, and counsel that the West must use its technical means to prevent its citizens from consuming this foreign propaganda.

King’s College London academics have also proven crucial in keeping dissident publisher Julian Assange imprisoned. A psychiatrist who has worked with the War Studies department testified in court that the Australian was suffering only “moderate” depression and that his suicide risk was “manageable,” concluding that extraditing him to the United States “would not be unjust.” As Matt Kennard’s investigation found, the U.K. Ministry of Defence had provided £2.2 million ($3.1 million) in funding to the institute where he worked (although the psychiatrist in question claimed his work was not directly funded by the MoD).

King’s College London markets the War Studies department to both graduates and undergraduates as a stepping stone towards a career in journalism. In its “career prospects” section for its master’s course in war studies, it tells interested students that “graduates go on to work for NGOs, the FCO, the MoD, the Home Office, NATO, the UN or pursue careers in journalism, finance, academia, the diplomatic services, the armed forces and more.”

Likewise, undergraduates are told that:

You will gain an in-depth and sophisticated understanding of war and international relations, both as subjects worthy of study and as intellectual preparation for the widest possible range of career choices, including in government, journalism, research, and humanitarian and international organisations.

Courses such as “New Wars, New Media, New Journalism” fuse together journalism and intelligence and are overseen by War Studies academics.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the department has taught many influential politicians, including foreign heads of state and members of the British parliament. But at least there is considerable overlap between the fields of defense policy and politics. The fact that the very department that trains high state officials and agents of secretive three letter agencies is also the place that produces many of the journalists we rely on to stand up to those officials and keep them in check is seriously problematic.

An unhealthy respect for authority

Unfortunately, rather than challenging power, many modern media outlets amplify its message uncritically. State officials and intelligence officers are among the least trustworthy sources, journalistically speaking. Yet many of the biggest stories in recent years have been based on nothing except the hearsay of officials who would not even put their names to their claims.

The level of credulity modern journalists have for the powerful was summed up by former CNNWhite House Correspondent Michelle Kosinski, who last month stated that:

As an American journalist, you never expect:

1. Your own govt to lie to you, repeatedly
2. Your own govt to hide information the public has a right to know
3. Your own govt to spy on your communications

Unfortunately, credulity stretches into outright collaboration with intelligence in some cases. Leaked emails show that the Los Angeles Times’ national security reporter Ken Dilanian sent his articles directly to the CIA to be edited before they were published. Far from hurting his career, however, Dilanian is now a correspondent covering national security issues for NBC News.

Boyd-Barrett said that governments are dependent on “the assistance of a penetrated, colluding and docile mainstream media which of late — and in the context of massive confusion over Internet disinformation campaigns, real and alleged — appear ever more problematic guardians of the public right to know.”

In recent years, the national security state has increased its influence over social media giants as well. In 2018, Facebook and the Atlantic Council entered a partnership whereby the Silicon Valley giant partially outsourced curation of its 2.8 billion users’ news feeds to the Council’s Digital Forensics Lab, supposedly to help stop the spread of fake news online. The result, however, has been the promotion of “trustworthy” corporate media outlets like Fox News and CNN and the penalization of independent and alternative sources, which have seen their traffic decrease precipitously. Earlier this year, Facebook also hired former NATO press officer and current Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council Ben Nimmo to be its chief of intelligence. Reddit’s Director of Policy is also a former Atlantic Council official.

Meanwhile, in 2019, a senior Twitter executive for the Middle East region was unmasked as an active duty officer in the British Army’s 77th Brigade, its unit dedicated to psychological operations and online warfare. The most notable thing about this event was the almost complete lack of attention it received from the mainstream press. Coming at a time when foreign interference online was perhaps the number one story dominating the news cycle, only one major outlet, Newsweek, even mentioned it. Furthermore, the reporter who covered the story left his job just weeks later, citing stifling top-down censorship and a culture of deference to national security interests.

The purpose of this article is not to accuse any of those mentioned of being intelligence agency plants (although at least one person did actually work as an intel officer). The point is rather to highlight that we now have a media landscape where many of the West’s most influential journalists are being trained by exactly the same people in the same department as the next generation of national security operatives.

It is hardly a good look for a healthy, open democracy that so many spies, government officials, and journalists trusted to hold them accountable on our behalf are all being shot out of the very same cannon. Learning side by side has helped to create a situation where the fourth estate has become overwhelmingly deferential to the so-called deep state, where anonymous official’s words are taken as gospel. The Department of War Studies is just one part of this wider phenomenon.

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

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

Featured image: The Maughan Library Gate at Kings College London, UK. David JC | Alamy

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

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U.S. foreign policy is increasingly promoted by billionaire-funded foundations. The neoliberal era has created individuals with incredible wealth who, through “philanthropy,” flex their influence and feel good at the same time. While these philanthropists can be liberal on some issues, they almost universally support U.S. foreign policy and the “free market.” Because many of these super-rich individuals made their wealth through investments and speculation, most do not like a planned economy, socialized services beyond the private sector, or greater government control.

These mega-wealthy individuals, and the people who run their foundations, are often intimately connected to the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Grants are given to projects, campaigns and organizations which align with their long-term goals. In this direct way, supposedly independent think tanks and NGOs are influenced if not controlled. There is much truth in the old saying, “He who pays the piper, calls the tune.”

Independent Nicaragua

Nicaragua is a good example. For historical and contemporary reasons, Washington is hostile to the Nicaraguan government. The socialist Sandinista Front ousted the U.S.-supported dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979 and governed until 1990. Then, following a decade of U.S.-sponsored “Contra” war and economic sanctions, the Sandinistas were voted out of office. Next, after 16 years of neoliberal governments, the Nicaraguan people voted to return the Sandinistas to power in 2006. Since then, the Sandinista Front (FSLN) has won two subsequent elections, with more support, 62%, in 2011 and more still, 73%, in 2016.

Nicaragua under the Sandinistas has sustained a capitalist economy, but the government provides many social services, including health care and education, along with community-based policing and an impressive 90% food self-sufficiency. Nicaragua maintains an independent foreign policy which sometimes aligns with Cuba, Venezuela and other independent movements in Latin America.

Nicaragua has made plans for a trans-oceanic canal. Because this would compete with the Panama Canal and be independent of heavy U.S. influence, the United States does not approve. With the financial collapse of the canal’s Chinese investor, the plans have been suspended if not cancelled. Regardless of whether the plan is implemented, the U.S. foreign policy establishment and associated media are hostile to the Nicaraguan government for daring to plan this project.

U.S. Targets Nicaragua

U.S. meddling in Nicaragua is thinly veiled behind the U.S.-funded “civil society,” a “new generation of democratic leaders” and an “ecosystem of independent media.” In September 2016, a high USAID official, Marcela X. Escobari, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that 2,200 youth had received “leadership training.”

U.S. governmental hypocrisy is quite astounding. Imagine if Nicaragua (or Russia or any other country) trained thousands of U.S. activists to “promote democracy” in the USA.

In December 2018, the U.S. ratified the “Nicaragua Human Rights and Anticorruption Act” which imposes sanctions and commits the U.S. to preventing Nicaragua from receiving loans, financial or technical assistance from U.S.-dominated financial institutions.

In August 2020, journalist Ben Norton at The Grayzone reported details of a new USAID “task order” called Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN). The document “outlines plans for a U.S. regime-change scheme against Nicaragua’s elected leftist government.” In short, Washington is not just hostile but actively trying to undermine, destabilize and replace the Sandinista administration.

[Source: thegrayzone.com]

The Foreign Policy Establishment, Nicaragua and Elliott Abrams

A key institution of the foreign policy establishment is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Its role and importance are analyzed in a two-volume history, “Imperial Brain Trust,”and “Wall Street’s Think Tank,” by Laurence N. Shoup, whose titles convey the main thesis. CFR events and publications, including Foreign Affairs magazine, give a good picture of key foreign policy priorities and debates.

[Source: amazon.com]

[Source: amazon.com]

Hostility to the Nicaragua government is reflected in CFR reports and publications. One important example is an article by Elliott Abrams, who has been a major foreign policy official for 40 years. He was convicted of lying to Congress, yet he is a Senior Fellow at CFR. In September 2015 he wrote an article published at CFR titled “The Sandinistas Attack the Miskito Indians – Again.” He ends the article with an appeal to environmental and human rights groups:

“The open question is whether anyone – groups defending the environment, or defending Indian rights or human rights more generally, or fighting against Sandinista repression—will help them.”

Source: therealnews.com

Seemingly in response to Elliott Abrams’s suggestion, several major foundations have financed reporting on Nicaragua that emphasize conflict and tensions in the indigenous Miskito zone.

In March 2017 a Guardian article based on research funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation described “Lush heartlands of Nicaragua’s Miskito people spark deadly land disputes.”

Image on the right: Melinda Gates [Source: wikipedia.org]

In the fall of 2018, the Oakland Institute received a grant of $237,294 for “Land Dispute Project – Nicaragua” from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. This year the Oakland Institute published “Nicaragua’s Failed Revolution.” The subtitle of the report is “The Indigenous Struggle for Saneamiento,” with “saneamiento” being the final step of the process toward regaining indigenous rights.

The funding for these reports came from foundations where the key players are interconnected with the foreign policy establishment. For example, Howard G. Buffett, the former Executive Director at the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and son of Warren Buffett, the multi-billionaire CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, is a member of CFR. Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), is a writer for CFR publications and speaker at CFR events.

We do not know if they were influenced by Elliott Abrams’s appeal, but the anti-Sandinista message was likely heard one way or another. Land disputes involving indigenous groups are widespread in the Americas, including North America. Research and reports could be done regarding almost every country. But instead of researching and reporting on indigenous land conflicts in Colombia or Honduras or British Columbia, the billionaire foundations chose to fund reports on Nicaragua.

The Miskito indigenous in Nicaragua are not new to conflict. During the 1980s the CIA manipulated them to advance their proxy Contra army. Many Nicaraguans died as a result. Now, 35 years later, people such as Elliott Abrams are trying to use the Miskito all over again. The Miskito may have legitimate grievances against the Nicaraguan government. But are their supposed champions in the U.S. seeking a solution or are they seeking to use them for their own purposes? There is a big difference.

Contra fighters in the 1980s included Miskito Indians. [Source: legacyofgena.medium.com]

Economic Warfare and “Conflict Beef”

The United States is increasingly using sanctions and economic warfare to hurt those governments deemed to be “adversaries.” Some right-wing foreign policy advisers would like to amplify the economic damage to Nicaragua. Some would like to prevent the U.S. from importing beef from Nicaragua.

Cattle ranching is a major part of the economy in Nicaragua. Previously Nicaragua exported large amounts of beef to Venezuela. But with the extreme economic hardships, exports have declined. Nicaragua has helped fill the gap by exporting larger quantities of high-quality beef to the U.S.

Cattle farm in Indio Maíz Biological Reserve in Nicaragua. [Source: news.mongabay.com]

On the October 20, 2020, broadcast of the PBS Newshour, a nine-minute video about “Conflict Beef” was shown. The documentary said the increase in Nicaraguan exports is “coming at a high cost for indigenous communities that are being run off their land to make way for cattle ranches.” This accusation, and the suggestion that perhaps Nicaraguan beef should not be imported, was a core message of the video which merged journalism with activism.

Subsequent research, including interviews with indigenous leaders from the area, reveal that the PBS Newshour report is fundamentally inaccurate. Journalist John Perry, based in Nicaragua, gives details in the article Progressive Media Promoted a False Story of Conflict Beef from Nicaragua, published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Some of the reported violence was made up; some was exaggerated. The claims of “genocide” are not credible.

The exaggerated and untrue accusations in the PBS report are based on four sources. Lottie Cunningham is an indigenous attorney who heads the Center for Justice and Human Rights on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (CEJUDHCAN). Her organization is a USAID recipient and she is close to the U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua. The United Nations Human Rights Commission has issued press releases based solely on her accusations. Judging by this “Conflict Beef” report, her accusations are sometimes exaggerated and sometimes untrue.

Another source for this report is Anuradha Mittal, founder and Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. The Institute received a grant of nearly $250,000 for its research on Nicaraguan “land conflict.”

Much of the information came from the Oakland Institute report and the claims of Lottie Cunningham, who in addition to being a USAID grant recipient, received the Lush Spring Prize, sponsored by Lush Cosmetics. Recently published interviews with numerous elected indigenous leaders from Nicaragua’s autonomous zones indicate that Lottie Cunningham is viewed with skepticism if not hostility. The leaders believe that her organization, CEJUDHCAN, does not represent the interests of indigenous communities and is actually promoting violence and publicity for personal gain.

The lead journalist for the PBS report “Conflict Beef,” was Nate Halverson at the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR). CIR is well funded, with a budget around $10M, and has received large grants from dozens of individual foundations: Hearst ($625K), Soros ($325K), Gates ($247K), Ford ($250K), Pierre Omidyar ($900K).

Another journalist, Camilo de Castro Belli, appeared in the video. He is the son of author and Sandinista critic Giacondo Belli and a “Central America Fellow” at the neoliberal Aspen Institute. The Aspen Institute is funded by grants from the Rockefeller, Ford, Gates and other U.S. philanthropic foundations. Its chairman, James S. Crown, is the Lead Director of the General Dynamics Corporation, one of the world’s top arms manufacturers, and was appointed by Barack Obama to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.^[1]

Key allegations in the “Conflict Beef” story are untrue. The beef for export comes from cattle that are NOT from the indigenous zones. The cattle are individually tagged and regulated by the national IPSA (Institute for Agricultural Protection and Health) which is in turn audited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Nicaraguans are currently in discussion with European regulators in preparation for export there. This video, from one of the Nicaraguan beef producers, gives a sense of their professionalism.

Even the introduction to the PBS report is untrue. They sensationally claim that a young Miskito girl was shot in the face by someone “sending a message” to the community. The girl was accidentally shot while playing with another youth who had his father’s gun. This version is confirmed by the president of the local indigenous community who knows the family of the victim. The girl survived the incident, and the family accepted a bribe to fabricate the story.

Another claim—that “dozens of armed men attacked another Indigenous village in northeast Nicaragua, killing four people in the Mayangna community”—is false. A version of this same story was repeated twice in the Oakland Institute report and sent by Lottie Cunningham (CEJUDHCAN) to the United Nations Human Rights Council which dutifully issued a press release. This despite the fact the claims had been quickly exposed as false by the president of the Mayangna indigenous community. The media quickly jumped on the story, reportedly after two phone calls but no verification.

When a government is targeted by Washington, as the Sandinista government clearly is, the media attitude seems to be “guilty until proven innocent.”

This story about “Conflict Beef” reveals how big foundations influence reports which promote the U.S. foreign policy goals on Nicaragua: to defame and economically punish those who are too independent.

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Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is active with the Taskforce on the Americas and other organizations including Syrian Solidarity Movement and  the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research

Notes

[1] A leading donor to Obama, Crown was the subject of a criminal probe while chairman of JPMorgan Chase & Company after losing $6.2 billion through high-risk credit derivative trades that were unknown to regulators. See Jeremy Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019).

Featured image is from The Grayzone

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“When you upload your DNA, you’re potentially becoming a genetic informant on the rest of your family.”— Law professor Elizabeth Joh

“Guilt by association” has taken on new connotations in the technological age.

All of those fascinating, genealogical searches that allow you to trace your family tree by way of a DNA sample can now be used against you and those you love.

As of 2019, more than 26 million people had added their DNA to ancestry databases. It’s estimated those databases could top 100 million profiles within the year, thanks to the aggressive marketing of companies such as Ancestry and 23andMe.

It’s a tempting proposition: provide some mega-corporation with a spit sample or a cheek swab, and in return, you get to learn everything about who you are, where you came from, and who is part of your extended your family.

The possibilities are endless.

You could be the fourth cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II of England. Or the illegitimate grandchild of an oil tycoon. Or the sibling of a serial killer.

Without even realizing it, by submitting your DNA to an ancestry database, you’re giving the police access to the genetic makeup, relationships and health profiles of every relative—past, present and future—in your family, whether or not they ever agreed to be part of such a database.

After all, a DNA print reveals everything about “who we are, where we come from, and who we will be.”

It’s what police like to refer to a “modern fingerprint.”

Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in their ability to “crack” a case, DNA technology is now being hailed by law enforcement agencies as the magic bullet in crime solving.

Indeed, police have begun using ancestry databases to solve cold cases that have remained unsolved for decades.

For instance, in 2018, former police officer Joseph DeAngelo was flagged as the notorious “Golden State Killer” through the use of genetic genealogy, which allows police to match up an unknown suspect’s crime scene DNA with that of any family members in a genealogy database. Police were able to identify DeAngelo using the DNA of a distant cousin found in a public DNA database. Once police narrowed the suspect list to DeAngelo, they tracked him—snatched up a tissue he had tossed in a trash can—and used his DNA on the tissue to connect him to a rash of rapes and murders from the 1970s and ‘80s.

Although DeAngelo was the first public arrest made using forensic genealogy, police have identified more than 150 suspects since then. Most recently, police relied on genetic genealogy to nab the killer of a 15-year-old girl who was stabbed to death nearly 50 years ago.

Who wouldn’t want to get psychopaths and serial rapists off the streets and safely behind bars, right? At least, that’s the argument being used by law enforcement to support their unrestricted access to these genealogy databases.

“In the interest of public safety, don’t you want to make it easy for people to be caught? Police really want to do their job. They’re not after you. They just want to make you safe,” insists Colleen Fitzpatrick, a co-founder of the DNA Doe Project, which identifies unknown bodies and helps find suspects in old crimes.

Except it’s not just psychopaths and serial rapists who get caught up in the investigative dragnet.

Anyone who comes up as a possible DNA match—including distant family members—suddenly becomes part of a circle of suspects that must be tracked, investigated and ruled out.

Although a number of states had forbidden police from using government databases to track family members of suspects, the genealogy websites provided a loophole that proved irresistible to law enforcement.

Hoping to close that loophole, a few states have started introducing legislation to restrict when and how police use these genealogical databases, with Maryland requiring that they can only be used for serious violent crimes such as murder and rape, only after they exhaust other investigatory methods, and only under the supervision of a judge.

Yet the debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—is really only beginning.

Certainly, it’s just a matter of time before the government gets hold of our DNA, either through mandatory programs carried out in connection with law enforcement and corporate America, by warrantlessly accessing our familial DNA shared with genealogical services such as Ancestry and 23andMe, or through the collection of our “shed” or “touch” DNA.

According to research published in the journal Science, more than 60 percent of Americans who have some European ancestry can be identified using DNA databases, even if they have not submitted their own DNA. According to law professor Natalie Ram, one genealogy profile can lead to as many as 300 other people.

That’s just on the commercial side.

All 50 states now maintain their own DNA databases, although the protocols for collection differ from state to state. Increasingly, many of the data from local databanks are being uploaded to CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), the FBI’s massive DNA database, which has become a de facto way to identify and track the American people from birth to death.

Even hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies’ DNA, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent. It’s part of the government’s mandatory genetic screening of newborns. In many states, the DNA is stored indefinitely.

What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers, leaders or troublemakers.

Get ready, folks, because the government— helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), President Trump (who signed the Rapid DNA Act into law), the courts (which have ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget)—has embarked on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.

Referred to as “magic boxes,” Rapid DNA machines—portable, about the size of a desktop printer, highly unregulated, far from fool-proof, and so fast that they can produce DNA profiles in less than two hours—allow police to go on fishing expeditions for any hint of possible misconduct using DNA samples.

Journalist Heather Murphy explains: “As police agencies build out their local DNA databases, they are collecting DNA not only from people who have been charged with major crimes but also, increasingly, from people who are merely deemed suspicious, permanently linking their genetic identities to criminal databases.”

The ramifications of these DNA databases are far-reaching.

At a minimum, they will do away with any semblance of privacy or anonymity. The lucrative possibilities for hackers and commercial entities looking to profit off one’s biological record are endless.

Moreover, while much of the public debate, legislative efforts and legal challenges in recent years have focused on the protocols surrounding when police can legally collect a suspect’s DNA (with or without a search warrant and whether upon arrest or conviction), the question of how to handle “shed” or “touch” DNA has largely slipped through without much debate or opposition.

As scientist Leslie A. Pray notes:

We all shed DNA, leaving traces of our identity practically everywhere we go. Forensic scientists use DNA left behind on cigarette butts, phones, handles, keyboards, cups, and numerous other objects, not to mention the genetic content found in drops of bodily fluid, like blood and semen. In fact, the garbage you leave for curbside pickup is a potential gold mine of this sort of material. All of this shed or so-called abandoned DNA is free for the taking by local police investigators hoping to crack unsolvable cases. Or, if the future scenario depicted at the beginning of this article is any indication, shed DNA is also free for inclusion in a secret universal DNA databank.

What this means is that if you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you’ve already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database—albeit it may be a file without a name. As Heather Murphy warns in the New York Times: “The science-fiction future, in which police can swiftly identify robbers and murderers from discarded soda cans and cigarette butts, has arrived…  Genetic fingerprinting is set to become as routine as the old-fashioned kind.”

Even old samples taken from crime scenes and “cold” cases are being unearthed and mined for their DNA profiles.

Today, helped along by robotics and automation, DNA processing, analysis and reporting takes far less time and can bring forth all manner of information, right down to a person’s eye color and relatives. Incredibly, one company specializes in creating “mug shots” for police based on DNA samples from unknown “suspects” which are then compared to individuals with similar genetic profiles.

If you haven’t yet connected the dots, let me point the way.

Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be matched up with a crime.

No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty.

Now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup until circumstances and science say otherwise.

Suspect Society, meet the American police state.

Every dystopian sci-fi film we’ve ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science, technology and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.

By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the government knows what you say. By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and text messages, the government knows what you write. By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the government knows where you go.

By churning through all of the detritus of your life—what you read, where you go, what you say—the government can predict what you will do. By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists—and in turn, the government—will soon know what you remember.

And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc.

Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof.

Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias.

Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.

What this amounts to is a scenario in which we have little to no defense of against charges of wrongdoing, especially when “convicted” by technology, and even less protection against the government sweeping up our DNA in much the same way it sweeps up our phone calls, emails and text messages.

With the entire governmental system shifting into a pre-crime mode aimed at detecting and pursuing those who “might” commit a crime before they have an inkling, let alone an opportunity, to do so, it’s not so far-fetched to imagine a scenario in which government agents (FBI, local police, etc.) target potential criminals based on their genetic disposition to be a “troublemaker” or their relationship to past dissenters.

Equally disconcerting: if scientists can, using DNA, track salmon across hundreds of square miles of streams and rivers, how easy will it be for government agents to not only know everywhere we’ve been and how long we were at each place but collect our easily shed DNA and add it to the government’s already burgeoning database?

Not to be overlooked, DNA evidence is not infallible: it can be wrong, either through human error, tampering, or even outright fabrication, and it happens more often than we are told. The danger, warns scientist Dan Frumkin, is that crime scenes can be engineered with fabricated DNA.

Now if you happen to be the kind of person who trusts the government implicitly and refuses to believe it would ever do anything illegal or immoral, then the prospect of government officials—police, especially—using fake DNA samples to influence the outcome of a case might seem outlandish.

Yet as history shows, the probability of our government acting in a way that is not only illegal but immoral becomes less a question of “if” and more a question of “when.”

With technology, the courts, the corporations and Congress conspiring to invade our privacy on a cellular level, suddenly the landscape becomes that much more dystopian.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is the slippery slope toward a dystopian world in which there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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

Featured image is from GMWatch

The US Army’s “African Lion”: Hunting for A New Prey

By Manlio Dinucci, June 08, 2021

The African Lion, the largest military exercise on the African Continent planned and led by the US Army, has begun. It includes land, air, and naval maneuvers in Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, and adjacent seas – from North Africa to West Africa, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

Israel Wins Big in Washington

By Philip Giraldi, June 08, 2021

Now let me get this straight. A nation bullies and harasses a much smaller neighbor which eventually leads that neighbor to strike back with largely home-made weapons. The larger and more powerful country, armed with state of the art killing machines, attacks its basically unarmed opponent and kills hundreds of civilians, including a large number of children.

Worldwide Genocide Continues: 13,867 Dead and 1,354,336 Injuries in European Database of Adverse Drug Reactions for COVID-19 Shots

By Brian Shilhavy, June 08, 2021

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

The COVID-19 Attack on the Integrity of Knowledge

By Emanuel Pastreich, June 08, 2021

New predators like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Viacom and Amazon roam this vast information wasteland, using unaccountable parties to confirm the “accuracy” of information that is provided to unwitting citizens, parties who have no other compass to guide them but short-term profit.

Mass Protests Can End Vaccine Passports

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, June 08, 2021

March 20, 2021, on the 1-year anniversary of the first COVID-19 lockdown, people in more than 40 countries took to the streets to peacefully demonstrate against COVID-19 lies and tyrannical measures under the banner of “Worldwide Freedom Day.” While synchronized around the world that particular day, demonstrations are more or less ongoing in various areas.

Targeting Iran, Strengthening NATO: U.S., British, Israeli, Italian F-35s in Unprecedented Air Combat Exercise

By Rick Rozoff, June 08, 2021

The twelve-day Falcon Strike 21 aerial war games commenced in earnest today out of the Amendola Air Base in Italy. The exercise is led by the Italian Air Force and is described by U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa as designed for the integration of 4th and 5th generation fighter capabilities; all four participating countries – Britain, Israeli, Italy and the U.S. – have provided variants of the fifth-generation F-35 fighter jet for the drills.

The Supply Chain Linking Beef to Amazon Deforestation, with Banks’ Backing

By Global Witness, June 08, 2021

Here we’ve focussed on beef production in Brazil, the subject of our December 2020 investigation Beef, Banks and the Brazilian Amazon. Cattle grazing is the leading driver of deforestation emissions in Latin America. We see a similar dynamic – of global companies sending a clear message to other suppliers that profit can be made from clearing trees – with other products like palm oil and soy.

The Coronavirus Vaccine: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”. Vaccination as a Platform for “Digital Identity”

By Peter Koenig, June 08, 2021

It seems, the more there is written about the causes of the Coronavirus – the more the written analyses are overshadowed by a propaganda and fear-mongering hype. Questions for the truth and arguments for where to look for the origins and how the virus may have spread and how to combat it, are lost in the noise of wanton chaos.

COVID Hospitalizations, Deaths for the Vaccinated More Than Triple in One Month, CDC Reports

By Celeste McGovern, June 08, 2021

A total of 10,262 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine “breakthrough infections” – defined as coronavirus infections in fully vaccinated people – were reported to the CDC from 46 U.S. states and territories between January 1 and April 30, 2021, according to a report released by the CDC May 28.

Este artigo tem o propósito de divulgar e popularizar o debate sobre temas marxistas; trata-se de uma versão reduzida do ensaio teórico “No sentido do fascismo”, capítulo do livro “Brasil e América Latina na Segunda Guerra Mundial” (Editora CRV, 2017).

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A implantação do fascismo, se de um lado representa a garantia da estabilidade social, pelo menos para um futuro imediato, traz doutro inconvenientes consideráveis para as próprias classes interessadas na conservação social. Aceitando a ditadura fascista, elas abdicam de boa parte de seus direitos e sua liberdade de ação. 

(Caio Prado, “1937”, ensaio de seus “Diários Políticos”)

Vivemos uma época de valorização da ignorância e de resgate das políticas fascistas, tratadas pela mídia corporativa e outras instituições sólidas (que deveriam ser também sérias) como se fossem uma autêntica “teoria conservadora”, digna de espaço, e não um mero disparate irracional e desumano. Por toda parte, em todos os aspectos da sociedade, o que se vê é a ascensão de crendices  anticientíficas – absurdas e perigosas. 

Tempos parecidos com os de agora – de grave crise econômica, seguida de desvalorização da razão em nome da conservação da ordem capitalista e das altas taxas de lucro – foram experimentados no século passado em diversas ocasiões, sobretudo no período do entreguerras (dos anos 1920 aos 1940). 

Este período foi vivido com intensidade pelo então jovem pensador marxista, Caio Prado Júnior, historiador e filósofo que nos deixou há três décadas, e que se tornaria ainda em vida um dos maiores nomes da história do nosso marxismo. 

Para melhor tentar compreender a desgraça do capitalismo-fascista, que eternamente se repete (enquanto dure), vejamos algumas reflexões de Caio acerca do fascismo que viveu na pele. 

Preâmbulo: “o golpe de 2016” (como a própria Folha aprendeu a grafar!)

A consolidação de nosso caótico presente tem como marco os idos de 2004/2005, quando a imprensa conservadora brasileira estabeleceu como sendo uma “verdade absoluta” (ainda que sem provas) o fenômeno do “mensalão”, em meados do primeiro governo Lula. 

A partir deste fato – que já é bastante conhecido desde nossa atual perspectiva histórica (que passa dos 15 anos) –, a oposição da grande mídia conservadora operaria sistematicamente a construção do discurso de que o PT teria “modernizado” e até “inventado” a corrupção nacional, o que, ao lado da crise econômica internacional e dos interesses e participação de outras frentes golpistas (Congresso, Judiciário, Exército, financistas, interesses estrangeiros), afundariam a nação no golpe de estado de 2016, que somente agora dá mostras de poder ser superado.

Contudo, se à época o “golpe” de 2016 foi tratado como um legal “impeachment” pelos manuais de redação da palavra-do-mercado – a tríade Folha, Estadão, O Globo –, o que se nota agora é que estes (e outros) jornais corporativos de visão neoliberal começaram recentemente a abrir espaço para artigos que nomeiam corretamente o golpe de 2016 como: “golpe de 2016”! 

Na avaliação da presidenta Dilma, em entrevista concedida à imprensa independente no último 31 de março (quando o golpe militar de 1964 completou 57 anos): “estamos vendo hoje pessoas tentando recontar seus próprios atos diante de toda a conspiração golpista; a começar pelos nossos ‘companheiros’ da imprensa; principalmente quando se vê a [dita jornalista] Miriam Leitão, como pessoa, e a Folha de S. Paulo, como instituição, tentando refazer a história para seu lado, como fez o senador Agripino Maia” (que no Senado tentou “recontar” a história, colocando os torturadores como vítimas). “Eles sistematicamente tentam acusar as vítimas; [mas] esse momento nós não podemos esquecer: não podemos deixar que a imprensa manipule os fatos, manipule a história”, completou a ex-mandatária deposta por um Congresso então liderado pelo bandido comum Eduardo Cunha.

Como se sabe, esses grandes e influentes jornais, vozes e cúmplices do mercado, apoiaram o golpe contra Dilma e as mínimas reformas sociais petistas, sempre em prol dos “ajustes estruturais” neoliberais – que é como a oligarquia chama suas contrarreformas de desmonte das políticas sociais (teto de gastos pra educação e saúde, precarização de direitos trabalhistas e aposentadoria, etc). Na sua ingenuidade – ou aposta temerária –, esses grupos corporativos, que moldam o discurso mediano das classes médias e abastadas, acreditavam poder, mais tarde, domesticar figuras bestiais como Temer e seus comparsas do MDB, e depois a milícia familiar de Bolsonaro. 

Curiosa aposta? Ou seria antes a própria lógica dos que jogam com a vida dos outros?

Efetivamente, a história mostra que em muitos casos, algumas bestas não podem ou não querem ser domesticadas, nem mesmo quando sua falta de “racionalidade” afeta os seus próprios negócios e os de seus aliados.

Dessa maneira, com a economia declinando perigosamente – com famílias inteiras dormindo nas ruas das metrópoles no inverno que chega, com a Amazônia pegando fogo e os investidores fugindo qual gazelas, com a prática do genocídio sendo usada como campanha eleitoral –, não surpreende que meios do nível parcial de uma Folha S.P. venha permitir em suas manchetes falas que não só permitem o termo “golpe de 2016”, como sugerem a “derrota” desta tramoia; ou que um Estadão, voz da Fiesp, venha colocar em pauta e mesmo questionar a “destruição” (maior do que desejavam) dos direitos sociais.

A ascensão do fascismo segundo Caio Prado

Autor de obra interdisciplinar e abrangente, a partir dos anos 1930 Caio Prado se consolida como um dos expoentes do pensamento marxista brasileiro e latino-americano. Seu marxismo se caracteriza por uma análise crítica e radical da sociedade: atento à realidade nacional concreta e avesso às “teorias” eurocêntricas, muitas vezes copiadas artificialmente de contextos distintos do nosso (como se fossem “cartilhas”). 

 Por tal “pecado dialético”, Caio entraria em diversos embates e polêmicas, chocando-se com a corrente que então predominava na Internacional Comunista e em seu partido, o PCB, segundo a qual a Revolução Brasileira deveria seguir etapas semelhantes àquelas das nações europeias.

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Desde o entreguerras até o início da segunda metade do século XX, o pensador brasileiro analisou diversos aspectos relativos à ascensão fascista, buscando entender as particularidades históricas, geopolíticas e filosóficas deste fenômeno anti-humano que foi – e é – um problema internacional. 

Esses ensaios podem ser lidos em manuscritos pertencentes ao Arquivo do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros da USP; são compostos de cadernos de estudos e de diários políticos (que incluem  resenhas, artigos, análises, apontamentos e recortes de periódicos com anotações pessoais), além de correspondências diversas. São textos em grande parte ainda inéditos em português, embora alguns tenham sido publicados em recente edição argentina dedicada ao marxista brasileiro, intitulada “Caio Prado: Historia y Filosofía” (Edit. Último Recurso/Rosário, em parceria com o Núcleo Práxis da USP), que traz tradução castelhana inédita de uma seleção dos principais escritos do autor ao longo de décadas – publicação que em breve será tema de evento e ciclo de debates em São Paulo.

Caio Prado, nestes estudos, dedica-se a interpretar vários acontecimentos da história do país: desde a formação de um movimento reacionário extremista (o integralismo, versão do fascismo no Brasil), até a tendência “fascistizante” que a partir do meio dos anos 1930 acomete o governo de Getúlio Vargas (desembocando na ditadura do Estado Novo, que perseguiu os comunistas). 

Mais tarde, nos anos 1960 e 1970 (e portanto desde uma distância histórica já razoável), o pensador comunista irá tratar das consequências socioeconômicas e políticas que a Segunda Guerra legou ao “sentido” de nossa história – ou seja, à direção, aos rumos tomados por nossa nação em seu processo histórico. Veja-se sobre o tema o capítulo tardio “A crise em marcha” (de 1962, atualizado em 1970) e o posfácio “Post scriptum” (de 1976), incluídos em edições mais recentes de seu livro “História Econômica do Brasil”.

Contexto de crise: o anúncio do fascismo no entreguerras

Em meados dos anos 1930, no período de crise social e econômica chamado “entreguerras” – que culminaria com a Segunda Guerra – Caio Prado escreve em suas crônicas políticas de viagem “URSS: um novo mundo” que a Europa Ocidental não rumava para uma forma social superior, mas sua sociedade estava sim regredindo. Para ele, o “projeto social-democrata” – que havia predominado em nações mais industrializadas (Inglaterra, Alemanha) – não tinha trazido um progresso social, mas pelo contrário, atrasara os planos de construção de uma sociedade menos desigual, “socialista”. 

Por estes tempos, diz Caio, somente os “bolcheviques” – referência ao partido que liderou a revolução na Rússia e fundou a União Soviética – mantiveram em guarda a luta pela “igualdade entre os homens”, este lema sobre o qual as “democracias burguesas” muito falaram, mas que na realidade nunca lhes foi mais do que um vazio discurso “pomposo”. 

Partindo de tais reflexões, o marxista brasileiro conclui que é preciso recusar a teoria do “evolucionismo social” ou “etapismo”: dogma que acreditava que a evolução histórica seria um processo rígido com etapas fixas, passando do feudalismo necessariamente ao capitalismo, antes de poder atingir o socialismo. Como mencionado, esta teoria buscava transplantar forçadamente a países periféricos, como o Brasil, os modelos revolucionários europeus (países com realidades tão diferentes das nossas). 

Por conseguinte, ao recusar a ideia do “etapismo”, Caio Prado recusa também a ideia do “aliancismo”, segundo a qual a Revolução Brasileira deveria se pautar em uma estratégia política de aliança entre classes sociais supostamente “nacionalistas” (trabalhadores e uma facção dos patrões/burgueses). Tal tese política acreditava que haveria, dentre as elites brasileiras, uma parcela que seria progressista: a suposta “burguesia nacional”. 

Contudo, dada a correlação de forças – demasiado adversa às classes baixas –, a tese aliancista colocava os trabalhadores, ainda que temporariamente, como aliados submissos dos “burgueses nacionais” (a quem os proletários deveriam submeter-se, enquanto não se completasse a idealizada “revolução burguesa”). 

O fenômeno das burguesias nacionais (burguesias que se aliaram com seu povo diante da ameaça estrangeira) tinha de fato existido em certas nações europeias e asiáticas. Porém, na nossa realidade brasileira isso era – e ainda é – um engodo –, como bem observa Caio Prado: a burguesia do Brasil se acredita branca, venera os valores do estrangeiro e não se identifica com seu povo, não tem projeto de país, é sócia-menor do imperialismo.

Segundo Caio, é crucial que cada nação construa sua própria – e cuidadosa – leitura do marxismo, conforme as peculiaridades de sua história. E neste caminho, ele passa a se dedicar a entender o fascismo – um fenômeno que percebe como tendo sido gerado na longa crise europeia que vai da Primeira à Segunda Guerra, passando pela quebra da bolsa de 1929. 

Na concepção caiopradiana, o fascismo é uma nova roupagem da extrema-direita, um desvio não-liberal do capitalismo – fruto da situação socialmente instável do período entreguerras. 

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Neste ponto, é interessante citar a semelhança de suas ideias com as de um importante historiador marxista europeu, um pouco mais jovem que Caio, cujas conclusões sobre o fenômeno fascista são próximas. Para Eric Hobsbawm (quem escreve décadas depois, já com um mais amplo panorama histórico), a extrema-direita fascista deriva do “colapso” das “velhas classes dominantes”: onde as antigas elites se mantiveram organizadas, não houve “necessidade de fascismo”, afirma. 

Além disso, para o marxista inglês – como para o brasileiro –, o regime fascista se funda nos interesses econômicos das classes dominantes, caracterizando-se por uma gestão da economia de modelo “capitalista não-liberal”, e ainda, tendo a particularidade de ser um movimento de massas, um populismo de direita que se usa da alienação social para, mediante espetáculos populistas, mobilizar a população.

Este aspecto do fascismo como uma “escolha” das elites é algo que deve ser sempre reiterado e detalhado historicamente, pois vem sendo sub-repticiamente questionado por vozes pseudo-imparciais (de acadêmicos que comercializam suas ideias sob medida para a amplificação da imprensa corporativa).

Yuri Martins-Fontes

Um marxista da América ao mundo: Mariátegui vivo a 90 anos de sua morte (II)

Caio Prado e o fascismo como estratégia do capitalismo em crise (Parte III)

Caio Prado e o fascismo como estratégia do capitalismo em crise (Parte IV)

Yuri Martins-Fontes : Filósofo e escritor, com doutorado em história; pesquisa o socialismo, os saberes originários e a literatura contemporânea. Coordena projetos de educação popular do Núcleo Práxis-USP e colabora com a imprensa independente. Autor dos livros “Marx na América” e “Cantos dos Infernos”, entre outras obras.

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***

The African Lion, the largest military exercise on the African Continent planned and led by the US Army, has begun. It includes land, air, and naval maneuvers in Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, and adjacent seas – from North Africa to West Africa, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. 8,000 soldiers are taking part in it, half of them are American, with about 200 tanks, self-propelled guns, planes, and warships. African Lion 21 is expected to cost $ 24 million, and has implications that make it particularly important.

This political move was fundamentally decided in Washington: the African exercise is taking place this year for the first time in Western Sahara, i.e. in the territory of the Sahrawi Republic, recognized by over 80 UN States, whose existence Morocco denied and fought by any means. Rabat declared that in this way “Washington recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara” and invites Algeria and Spain to abandon “their hostility towards the territorial integrity of Morocco“. Spain, who was  accused by Morocco of supporting the Polisario (Western Sahara Liberation Front), is not participating in the African Lion this year. Washington reaffirmed its full support to Morocco, calling it “major non-NATO ally and partner of the United States”.

The African exercise takes place this year for the first time within the framework of a new US Command structure. Last November, the US Army Europe and the US Army Africa were consolidated into a single command: the US Army Europe and Africa. General Chris Cavoli, who heads it, explained the reason for this decision:

“The regional security issues of Europe and Africa are inextricably linked and can quickly spread from one area to another if left unchecked.”

Hence the decision of the US Army to consolidate the European Command and the African Command, so as to “dynamically move forces from one theater to another, from one continent to another, improving our regional contingency response times”.

In this context, African Lion 21 was consolidated with Defender-Europe 21, which employs 28,000 soldiers and over 2,000 heavy vehicles. It basically is a single series of coordinated military maneuvers that are taking place from Northern Europe to West Africa, planned and commanded by the US Army Europe and Africa. The official purpose is to counter an unspecified “malign activity in North Africa and Southern Europe and to defend the theater from adversary military aggression“, with clear reference to Russia and China.

Italy participates in African Lion 21, as well as in Defender-Europe 21, not only with its own forces but as a strategic base. The exercise in Africa is directed from Vicenza by the US Army Southern Europe Task Force and the participating forces are supplied through the Port of Livorno with war materials  coming from Camp Darby, the neighboring US Army logistics base. The participation in African Lion 21 is part of the growing Italian military commitment in Africa.

The mission in Niger is emblematic, formally “as part of a joint European and US effort to stabilize the area and to combat illegal trafficking and threats to security“, actually for the control of one of the richest areas in strategic raw materials (oil, uranium, coltan, and others) exploited by US and European multinationals, whose oligopoly is endangered by the Chinese economic presence and other factors.

Hence the recourse to the traditional colonial strategy: guaranteeing one’s interests by military means, including support for local elites who base their power on their armed forces, behind the  contrasting jihadist militias smokescreen. In reality, military interventions aggravate the living conditions of populations, reinforcing the mechanisms of exploitation and subjugation, with the result that forced migrations and consequent human tragedies increase.

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Manlio Dinucci is an award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Article in Italian:

Leone Africano a caccia di nuove prede

È iniziata ieri la African Lion (Leone Africano), la più grande esercitazione militare nel continente, pianificata e guidata dallo US Army. Essa comprende manovre terrestri, aeree e navali in Marocco, Tunisia, Senegal e nei mari adiacenti – dal Nord Africa all’Africa Occidentale, dal Mediterraneo all’Atlantico. Vi partecipano 8.000 militari, per la metà statunitensi, con circa 200 carrarmati, cannoni semoventi, aerei e navi da guerra. La African Lion 21, il cui costo è previsto in 24 milioni di dollari, ha implicazioni che la rendono particolarmente importante.

Con una mossa politica decisa fondamentalmente a Washington, l’esercitazione si svolge quest’anno per la prima volta nel Sahara Occidentale, ossia nel territorio della Repubblica Sahrawi, riconosciuta da oltre 80 Stati dell’Onu, la cui esistenza è negata e combattuta con ogni mezzo dal Marocco. Rabat dichiara che in tal modo «Washington riconosce la sovranità marocchina sul Sahara Occidentale» e invita Algeria e Spagna ad abbandonare «la loro ostilità nei confronti dell’integrità territoriale del Marocco». La Spagna, accusata dal Marocco di sostenere il Polisario (fronte di liberazione del Sahara Occidentale), non partecipa quest’anno alla African Lion. Washington ribadisce il suo pieno appoggio al Marocco, definendolo «maggiore alleato non-Nato e partner degli Stati uniti».

L’esercitazione si svolge quest’anno, per la prima volta, nel quadro di una nuova struttura Usa di comando. Lo scorso novembre, lo US Army Europe e lo US Army Africa sono stati accorpati in un unico comando: lo US Army Europe and Africa. Il generale Chris Cavoli, che ne è a capo, spiega il motivo di tale decisione: «I problemi di sicurezza regionale di Europa e Africa sono inestricabilmente collegati e, se lasciati incontrollati, possono rapidamente diffondersi da una zona all’altra». Da qui la decisione dell’Esercito Usa di accorpare il Comando dell’Europa e il Comando dell’Africa, così da «muovere dinamicamente le forze da un teatro all’altro, da un continente all’altro, migliorando i nostri tempi di risposta alle emergenze regionali». In tale quadro, la African Lion 21 è accorpata alla Defender-Europe 21, in cui sono impegnati 28 mila militari e oltre 2 mila mezzi pesanti. Praticamente è un’unica serie di manovre militari coordinate che si sta svolgendo dal Nord Europa all’Africa Occidentale, pianificata e comandata dallo US Army Europe and Africa. Scopo ufficiale: contrastare una non precisata «malefica attività in Nord Africa ed Europa Meridionale e aggressione militare avversaria», con evidente riferimento a Russia e Cina.

L’Italia partecipa alla African Lion 21, come alla Defender-Europe 21, non solo con proprie forze ma quale base strategica. L’esercitazione in Africa è diretta da Vicenza, dalla Task Force dell’Europa Meridionale dello US Army, e le forze partecipanti sono rifornite, attraverso il porto di Livorno, con materiali bellici provenienti da Camp Darby, la limitrofa base logistica dello US Army. La partecipazione alla African Lion 21 rientra nel crescente impegno militare italiano in Africa.

Emblematica la missione in Niger, formalmente «nell’ambito di uno sforzo congiunto europeo e statunitense per la stabilizzazione dell’area e per il contrasto ai traffici illegali e alle minacce alla sicurezza», in realtà per il controllo di una delle aree più ricche di materie prime strategiche (petrolio, uranio, coltan e altre) sfruttate da multinazionali statunitensi ed europee, il cui oligopolio è messo a rischio dalla presenza economica cinese e da altri fattori.

Da qui il ricorso alla tradizionale strategia coloniale: garantire i propri interessi con mezzi militari, compreso il sostegno a élite locali che basano il loro potere sulle forze armate, dietro la cortina fumogena del contrasto alle milizie jihadiste. In realtà gli interventi militari aggravano le condizioni di vita delle popolazioni, rafforzando i meccanismi di sfruttamento e assoggettamento, col risultato che aumentano le migrazioni forzate e le conseguenti tragedie umane.

Manlio Dinucci

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***

With his wide-brimmed peasant hat and oversized teacher’s pencil held high, Peru’s Pedro Castillo has been traveling the country exhorting voters to get behind a call that has been particularly urgent during this devastating pandemic: “No más pobres en un país rico” – No more poor people in a rich country. In a cliffhanger of an election with a huge urban-rural and class divide, it appears that the rural teacher, farmer and union leader is about to make history by defeating–by less than one percent–powerful far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori, scion of the country’s political “Fujimori dynasty.”

Fujimori is challenging the election’s results, alleging widespread fraud. Her campaign has only presented evidence of isolated irregularities, and so far there is nothing to suggest a tainted vote. However, she can challenge some of the votes to delay the final results, and much like in the U.S., even an allegation of fraud by the losing candidate will cause uncertainty and raise tensions in the country.

Castillo’s victory will be remarkable not only because he is a leftist teacher who is the son of illiterate peasants and his campaign was grossly outspent by Fujimori, but there was a relentless propaganda attack against him that touched on historical fears of Peru’s middle class and elites.

It was similar to what happened recently to progressive candidate Andrés Arauz who narrowly lost Ecuador’s elections, but even more intense. Grupo El Comercio, a media conglomerate that controls 80% of Peru’s newspapers, led the charge against Castillo.

They accused him of being a terrorist with links to the Shining Path, a guerrilla group whose conflict with the state between 1980 and 2002 led to tens of thousands of deaths and left the population traumatized. Castillo’s link to the Shining Path link is flimsy: While a leader with Sutep, an education worker’s union, Castillo is said to have been friendly with Movadef, the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights, a group alleged to have been the political wing of the Shining Path. In reality, Castillo himself was a rondero when the insurgency was most active. Ronderos were peasant self-defense groups that protected their communities from the guerrillas and continue to provide security against crime and violence.

Two weeks before the elections, on May 23, 18 people were massacred in the rural Peruvian town of San Miguel del Ene. The government immediately attributed the attack to the remnants of the Shining Path involved in drug trafficking, although no group has taken responsibility yet. The media linked the attack to Castillo and his campaign, whipping up fear of more violence should he win the presidency. Castillo denounced the attack and reminded Peruvians that similar massacres had occurred in the run-up to the 2011 and 2016 elections. For her part, Fujimori suggested Castillo was linked to the killing.

Peruvian newspapers spreading fear about Castillo. Photos by Marco Teruggi, @Marco_Teruggi

On the economic front, Castillo has been accused of being a communist who wants to nationalize key industries, and would turn Peru into a “cruel dictatorship” like Venezuela. Billboards along Lima’s main highway asked the population: “Would you like to live in Cuba or Venezuela?” referring to a Castillo win. As seen in the photos above, newspapers linked Castillo’s campaign to the devaluation of the Peruvian currency and warned that a Castillo victory would hurt low-income Peruvians the most because businesses would shutter or move overseas. Time and time again, the Castillo campaign has clarified that he is not a communist and that his aim is not to nationalize industries but to renegotiate contracts with multinationals so that more of the profits stay with the local communities.

Meanwhile, Fujimori was treated with kid gloves by the media during the campaign, with one of the newspapers in the above pictures claiming that “Keiko guarantees work, food, health and an immediate reactivation of the economy.” Her past as a first lady during her father Alberto Fujimori’s brutal rule is largely ignored by corporate media. She is able to claim that “fujimorismo defeated terrorism” without being challenged on the horrors that fujimorismo inflicted on the country, including the forced sterilization of over 270,000 women and 22,000 men for which her father is on trial. He is currently in jail over other human rights abuses and corruption, though Keiko promised to free him if she won. Also ignored was the fact that Keiko herself is out on bail as of last year, pending a money-laundering investigation, and without presidential immunity, she will probably end up in prison.

The international media was no different in its unbalanced coverage of Castillo and Fujimori, with Bloomberg warning that “elites tremble” at the thought of Castillo as president and The Financial Times headline screaming “Peru’s elite in panic at prospect of hard-left victory in presidential election.”

Peru’s economy has grown impressively over the past 20 years, but that growth did not raise all boats.  Millions of Peruvians in the countryside have been left abandoned by the state. On top of that, like many of its neighbors (including Colombia, Chile and Ecuador), Peru has underinvested in health care, education and other social programs. Such choices so decimated the health care system that Peru now has the shameful distinction of leading the entire world in per capita Covid-19 deaths.

In addition to the public health disaster, Peruvians have been living through political turmoil marked by an extraordinary number of high-profile cases of corruption and four presidents in three years. Five of its last seven presidents faced corruption accusations. In 2020, President Martín Vizcarra (himself accused of corruption) was impeached, unseated and replaced by Manuel Merino. The maneuver was denounced as a parliamentary coup, leading to several days of massive street protests. Just five days into his tenure, Merino resigned and was replaced by current President Francisco Sagasti.

One of Castillo’s key campaign platforms is to convoke a constitutional referendum to let the people decide whether they want a new constitution or wish to keep the current one written in 1993 under the regime of Alberto Fujimori, which entrenched neoliberalism into its framework.

“The current constitution prioritizes private interests over public interests, profit over life and dignity,” reads his plan of government. Castillo proposes that a new constitution include the following: recognition and guarantees for the rights to health, education, food, housing and internet access; recognition for indigenous peoples and Peru’s cultural diversity; recognition of the rights of nature; redesign of the State to focus on transparency and citizens’ participation; and a key role for the state in strategic planning to ensure that the public interest takes precedence.

On the foreign policy front, Castillo’s victory will represent a huge blow to U.S. interests in the region and an important step towards reactivating Latin American integration. He has promised to withdraw Peru from the Lima Group, an ad hoc committee of countries dedicated to regime change in Venezuela.

In addition, the Peru Libre party has called for expelling USAID and for the closure of U.S. military bases in the country. Castillo has also expressed support for countering the OAS and strengthening both the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). The victory is also a good omen for the left in Chile, Colombia and Brazil, each of which will have presidential elections over the next year and a half.

Castillo will face a daunting task, with a hostile congress, a hostile business class, a hostile press and most likely, a hostile Biden administration. The support of millions of angry and mobilized Peruvians demanding change, along with international solidarity, will be key to fulfilling his campaign promise of addressing the needs of the most poor and abandoned sectors of Peruvian society.

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Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK and author of books on the Middle East and Latin America, is in Peru with an election observer delegation organized by Progressive International.

Leonardo Flores is a Latin American policy expert and campaigner with CODEPINK.

Featured image: Ballot paper for the second round between Castillo and Fujimori. (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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***

Now let me get this straight. A nation bullies and harasses a much smaller neighbor which eventually leads that neighbor to strike back with largely home-made weapons. The larger and more powerful country, armed with state of the art killing machines, attacks its basically unarmed opponent and kills hundreds of civilians, including a large number of children. It also destroys billions of dollars of infrastructure in the poorer and weaker neighbor. Almost immediately after the fighting stops, senior legislators from a third nation that had nothing to do with the war apart from supplying the larger nation with weapons appeared on the scene and promoted the lie that the larger nation had actually been the victim of an unprovoked attack by the “terrorists” running the small nation. They did so publicly while meeting with and endorsing the actions of the government officials from the large nation, which, it would seem, is about to be investigated by an international body for war crimes. They were joined by an ex-officio former foreign minister of the third nation who likewise echoed the propaganda being put out by the large nation. Several of them also promised to provide military assistance worth $1 billion so the large nation could rearm itself.

Of course, I am writing about how Republican Senators Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Bill Hagerty traveled to Israel over the Memorial Day weekend and bowed and scraped before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and company. During his meeting with Bibi, Graham even held up a sign reading “More for Israel.” They were joined in Jerusalem by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who was in town visiting with his old friend Yossi Cohen, head of the Israeli Intelligence service Mossad, who is retiring soon.

I sometimes wonder what the Founding Fathers would think about senior legislators ignoring their constituent duties so they could instead travel overseas to pander to the corrupt rulers of a foreign nation that exhibits none of the civic virtues that the Constitution of the United States once embraced in establishing a new republic? Cruz, for example, is a particularly ambitious slimeball who clearly sees his future in the tight embrace of the Israel Lobby. He was recently on the receiving end of some bad press when he abandoned his home in Houston, at the time suffering from a prolonged electricity crisis due to storm damage, to take his family to Cancun. Cruz is a senator whose main job is promoting himself.

Cruz used the opportunity provided by his presence besides the exalted Netanyahu to denounce President Joe Biden for his Administration’s failure to help Israel while it was under attack by the terrorist hordes. Before he left for Israel he stated that he intended “to hear and see firsthand what our Israeli allies need to defend themselves, and to show the international community that we stand unequivocally with Israel. Far too many Democrats morally equivocated between Israel and the terrorists attacking them, and fringe progressive Democrats went even further with wild accusations and conspiracy theories.”

After a day spent touring Israel’s Iron Dome rocket-defense system before viewing damage in Ashkelon in Israel from the Gazan rockets, which he commemorated with a weepy self-video demonstrating his empathy for the Israeli dead, he said that Biden’s calls for Israel to seek a cease fire had “emboldened” the “Hamas terrorists.” He elaborated that “The longer Joe Biden shows weakness to Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran, the more you’re going to see terrorist attacks escalating.”

But it was Lindsey Graham who has to be awarded the prize for being completely oleaginous in the presence of Netanyahu, holding up a sign reading “More for Israel” while practically swooning in the presence of the great leader. He said, with a grin, “The eyes and ears of America is Israel. Nobody does more to protect America from radical Islam than our friends in Israel.”

Flattery will apparently get you everywhere you want to be as Graham is surely aware that Israel is a strategic liability for the United States and its brutality is in fact a recruiting tool for radical groups. Holding up his sign, Graham then asked, “So what can you expect, my friends in Israel, in the next coming days and weeks from Washington? More.” For the home audience he then elaborated on a tweet what “More” would mean. “Great meeting this morning in Jerusalem with Israeli PM Netanyahu. ‘More for Israel’ to help protect and defend from Hamas rocket attacks.” Graham later reported to Fox News that Israel would be sending Defense Minister Benny Gantz to Washington to negotiate the request for the $1 billion increase in military aid to restore its “deterrent” after the savage bottle rocket attack by Hamas. He elaborated “It will be a good investment for the American people. I will make sure in the Senate that they get the money.”

Since the Senate Committee is packed full of Democratic Party Zionists, Graham knows for sure that his support for giving Israel the money will be approved in committee to go to the House for a final vote where it will be also be approved. And the White House is actually signaling that the Treasury check will be somewhat bigger, to the tune of $1.2 billion. A smiling Netanyahu demonstrated that he knows how to say thanks for the freebee, telling Graham “No one has done more for Israel than you, Senator Lindsey Graham, stalwart champion of our alliance and we have no better friend. You’ve been a tremendous friend and a tremendous ally.”

The third Republican Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, a former Trump Ambassador to Japan, is a bit of a non-entity compared to his superstar traveling companions, though he, like Cruz, is unfortunately on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has taken the lead on authorizing immediate resupply of Israel’s weapons. And he too got into the game of kissing Israel’s posterior, posting a media release on his Senate website saying “Cruz and Hagerty Land in Israel to Assess Damage from Hamas War: Americans watched in horror when Hamas and other Iran-backed terrorists in Gaza recently launched thousands of rockets at innocent men, women, and children in Israel. I’m joining Senator Cruz, my colleague on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to visit Israel and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies after they endured the worst terrorist attacks in recent years because I want to see firsthand what more the U.S. can do to strengthen our vital alliance with Israel at a time when terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah and terror-sponsoring regimes in Iran and Syria are making the Middle East more dangerous…”

Pompeo also did his bit, enthusing over his attendance at the retirement party for Cohen. He tweeted how it was “Great to be with good friends in Tel Aviv!” He clearly has acquired the presidential pretensions disease and knows which button has to be pressed first.

One notices immediately the complete lack of any expression of sympathy for the hundreds of Palestinians who were killed by Israel in what was a war that was provoked by the home seizures, armed mobs of settlers in remaining Arab neighborhoods and attacks by soldiers and police on the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. After that, one notes that these clowns pretending to be senators are people who were elected and generously paid by American citizens, not by Israel, yet they seem to believe it is completely appropriate to be spend time in that country meddling in someone else’s war on behalf of a rogue state. If anyone is worthy of impeachment, it is they, but never mind, neither the Zionist dominated US national media nor the Establishment will make any such demand, quite the contrary. Be that as it may, their behavior is despicable and is symptomatic of type of corruption that is preceding the decline and fall of what was once a great nation.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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]

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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The European database of suspected drug reaction reports is EudraVigilance, which also tracks reports of injuries and deaths following the experimental COVID-19 “vaccines.”

Here is what EudraVigilance states about their database:

This website was launched by the European Medicines Agency in 2012 to provide public access to reports of suspected side effects (also known as suspected adverse drug reactions). These reports are submitted electronically to EudraVigilance by national medicines regulatory authorities and by pharmaceutical companies that hold marketing authorisations (licences) for the medicines.

EudraVigilance is a system designed for collecting reports of suspected side effects. These reports are used for evaluating the benefits and risks of medicines during their development and monitoring their safety following their authorisation in the European Economic Area (EEA). EudraVigilance has been in use since December 2001.

This website was launched to comply with the EudraVigilance Access Policy, which was developed to improve public health by supporting the monitoring of the safety of medicines and to increase transparency for stakeholders, including the general public.

The Management Board of the European Medicines Agency first approved the EudraVigilance Access Policy in December 2010. A revision was adopted by the Board in December 2015 based on the 2010 pharmacovigilance legislation. The policy aims to provide stakeholders such as national medicines regulatory authorities in the EEA, the European Commission, healthcare professionals, patients and consumers, as well as the pharmaceutical industry and research organisations, with access to reports on suspected side effects.

Transparency is a key guiding principle of the Agency, and is pivotal to building trust and confidence in the regulatory process. By increasing transparency, the Agency is better able to address the growing need among stakeholders, including the general public, for access to information. (Source.)

Their report through June 5, 2021 lists 13,867 deaths and 1,354,336 injuries following injections of four experimental COVID-19 shots:

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

From the total of injuries recorded, there are 683,688 serious injuries which equals over 50%.

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

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

Since we have started publishing this, others from Europe have also calculated the numbers and confirmed the totals.[1]

Here is the summary data through June 5, 2021.

Total reactions for the experimental mRNA vaccine Tozinameran (code BNT162b2,Comirnaty) from BioNTech/ Pfizer: 6,732 deaths and 502,162 injuries to 05/06/2021

• 14,819   Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 74 deaths
• 11,018   Cardiac disorders incl. 843 deaths
• 90           Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 5 deaths
• 6,146     Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 216        Endocrine disorders
• 7,119     Eye disorders incl. 17 deaths
• 45,616   Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 332 deaths
• 140,516 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 2,079 deaths
• 387        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 28  deaths
• 5,436     Immune system disorders incl. 32 deaths
• 15,632   Infections and infestations incl. 711 deaths
• 5,552     Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 94   deaths
• 11,782   Investigations incl. 260   deaths
• 3,730     Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 129 deaths
• 71,816   Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 84 deaths
• 295        Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 21 deaths
• 90,427   Nervous system disorders incl. 692 deaths
• 330        Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 11 deaths
• 100        Product issues
• 8,902     Psychiatric disorders incl. 99 deaths
• 1,547     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 103 deaths
• 2,052     Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 21,055   Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 777 deaths
• 23,678   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 60  deaths
• 750        Social circumstances incl. 9 deaths
• 222        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 15 deaths
• 12,929   Vascular disorders incl. 251 deaths

Total reactions for the experimental mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273(CX-024414) from Moderna: 3,821 deaths and 101,767 injuries to 05/06/2021

• 1,826     Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 27 deaths
• 2,822     Cardiac disorders incl. 409 deaths
• 31           Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 1,171     Ear and labyrinth disorders
• 64           Endocrine disorders incl. 1 death
• 1,575     Eye disorders incl. 5 deaths
• 8,770     Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 124 deaths
• 28,047   General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 1,646 deaths
• 180        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 10  deaths
• 936        Immune system disorders incl. 5 deaths
• 3,333     Infections and infestations incl. 219 deaths
• 2,013     Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 71   deaths
• 2,292     Investigations incl. 85 deaths
• 1,137     Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 77 deaths
• 12,483   Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 69 deaths
• 113        Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 14 deaths
• 17,861   Nervous system disorders incl. 382 deaths
• 171        Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 1 death
• 18           Product issues
• 2,071     Psychiatric disorders incl. 61 deaths
• 670        Renal and urinary disorders incl. 46 deaths
• 352        Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 1 death
• 4,831     Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 365 deaths
• 5,412     Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 25  deaths
• 427        Social circumstances incl. 12 deaths
• 311        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 33 deaths
• 2,850     Vascular disorders incl. 131 deaths

Total reactions for the experimental vaccine AZD1222/VAXZEVRIA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford/ AstraZeneca: 2,848 deaths and 724,457 injuries to 05/06/2021

• 8,125     Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 117  deaths
• 10,935   Cardiac disorders incl. 351 deaths
• 97           Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 7,746     Ear and labyrinth disorders
• 263        Endocrine disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 11,998   Eye disorders incl. 10 deaths
• 75,897   Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 129 deaths
• 195,671 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 769 deaths
• 450        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 24 deaths
• 2,765     Immune system disorders incl. 11 deaths
• 15,657   Infections and infestations incl. 188 deaths
• 6,783     Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 57 deaths
• 15,030   Investigations incl. 62 deaths
• 9,083     Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 42 deaths
• 113,983 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 30 deaths
• 275        Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 8 deaths
• 155,571 Nervous system disorders incl. 438 deaths
• 190        Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 3 deaths
• 88           Product issues
• 13,563   Psychiatric disorders incl. 25 deaths
• 2,518     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 23 deaths
• 4,578     Reproductive system and breast disorders
• 23,942   Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 322 deaths
• 33,090   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 18 deaths
• 678        Social circumstances incl. 4 deaths
• 571        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 16 deaths
• 14,910   Vascular disorders incl. 197 deaths

Total reactions for the experimental COVID-19 vaccine JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S) from Johnson & Johnson: 466 deaths and 25,950 injuries to 05/06/2021

• 240        Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 13 deaths
• 392        Cardiac disorders incl. 48 deaths
• 12           Congenital, familial and genetic disorders
• 125        Ear and labyrinth disorders
• 6             Endocrine disorders incl. 1 death
• 305        Eye disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 2,389     Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 18 deaths
• 6,643     General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 120 deaths
• 44           Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 66           Immune system disorders
• 322        Infections and infestations incl. 11 deaths
• 267        Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 7 deaths
• 1,683     Investigations incl. 32 deaths
• 140        Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 10 deaths
• 4,429     Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 14 deaths
• 14           Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps)
• 5,457     Nervous system disorders incl. 57 deaths
• 9             Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 1 death
• 8             Product issues
• 275        Psychiatric disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 102        Renal and urinary disorders incl. 7 deaths
• 85           Reproductive system and breast disorders
• 907        Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 37 deaths
• 556        Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 1 death
• 62           Social circumstances incl. 3 deaths
• 293        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 23 deaths
• 1,119     Vascular disorders incl. 54 deaths

*

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Notes

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

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***

The promotion by the most famous newpapers, universities and public intellectuals of false and misleading information concerning a COVID19 “pandemic” which does not make sense when subject to even the simplest investigations is not the result of any particular politician or businessman, but rather the final deluge resulting from the gradual decay of intellectual integrity and the degradation of all information available to citizens around the world that has resulted because of multiple causes such as the exponential development of information technology that has degraded the value of the information circulated and the spread of a culture of commodification and commercialization that demands that information be interpreted as a source of wealth, and not as a means to pursue truth, to investigate the proper moral path for humanity going forward.

We are subject to so many fake news stories, that circulate through for-profit social media at a dizzying speed, that the political process for determining what is true and what is relevant has broken down in all nations and the standards for transparency and accountability that we took for granted have collapsed, even at famous institutions like Harvard and Stanford. All information is for sale. A pernicious Gresham’s Law of information has taken effect so that the super-rich hoard accurate information and the vast majority of citizens are drowned in specious information meant to deceive.

New predators like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Viacom and Amazon roam this vast information wasteland, using unaccountable parties to confirm the “accuracy” of information that is provided to unwitting citizens, parties who have no other compass to guide them but short-term profit.

The truth is dead and buried. And now as universities are dismantled, and intelligence agencies are hacked apart and sold at auction to Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon, the decay of information in the United States will hit a new low in the years ahead, going far beyond anything we have experienced, a new dark age on the scale of the loss of science and philosophy, governance and ethics, experienced during the fall of the Roman Empire.

The inevitable development of new technologies for reproduction and alteration of texts, images and videos has converged with the concentration of wealth around the world to create a new space in which a handful of ruthless players distribute false information, in increasingly realistic formats, to as to disrupt existing systems and create unprecedented chaos.

It is not clear to us, caught in the midst of massive transformation, what the relationship between technological evolution and moral decay may be, but we can take concrete steps to formulate long-term responses to both crises.

Let us start with the concrete and the scientific: how we will establish global systems to assure the accuracy of information and take the power to arbitrate truth away from the super-rich and multinational corporations like Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Oracle.

The exponential increase in our capability to gather, store, share, alter and fabricate information of every form, coupled with a sharp drop in the cost of doing so, has given these criminal institutions the tools for absolute domination, and the citizens of the world, dumbed down by years of commercial media, are incapable of responding to this frontal attack.

We need a platform, and ultimately and international charter or constitution, concerning how we determine what is true and what is real, who controls institutions and organizations, and what the priorities for intellectual and spiritual significance for the citizens of the Earth should be.

The emerging challenge in the United States cannot be solved simply by updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 to meet the demands of the present day.

We must rethink our society and culture and create new, unprecedented, institutions. A change in human life and priorities is demanded to respond to the threats of this information age.The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that digital data will rise to an astounding 175 zettabytes of data by 2025, up from 4.4 zettabytes (4.4 trillion gigabytes) in 2013.The explosion in the amount of information circulating in the world, and the increase in the ease with which that information can be obtained or altered, will change every aspect of human experience.

We need a comprehensive response to the information revolution that not only proposes innovative ways to employ new technologies in a positive manner, but that also addresses the risks concretely in an international manner free of the influence of corporations searching out profit. The ease with which information of every form can now be reproduced and altered is an epistemological, ontological and institutional challenge for us.

Let us start with the problem of governance, the core crisis that has emerged under the COVID19 regime. The manipulability of information is increasing in all aspects of life, but the constitutions — whether in the US or elsewhere — on which we base our laws and our government has little to say about information, and nothing to say about the transformative wave sweeping through society as a result. No wonder that the hijacking of commercial media, medical research institutions and global collaborative organizations by a handful of the superrich allowed them to push through dangerous and ridiculous policies around the world with so little opposition.

We have trouble grasping the seriousness of the information crisis because it alters the very lens through which we perceive the world. If we rely on the Internet to tell us how the world changes, for example, we are blind to how the Internet itself is evolving and how that evolution impacts human relations. For that matter, given that our very thought patterns are molded over time by the manner in which we receive information, we may come to see information that is presented online as more reliable than our direct perceptions of the physical world.

The information revolution has the potential to dramatically change human awareness of the world and inhibit our ability to make decisions if we are surrounded with convincing data whose reliability we cannot confirm. These challenges call out for a direct and systematic response. There are a range of piecemeal solutions to the crisis being undertaken around the world. The changes, however, are so fundamental that they call out for a systematic response.

We need to hold an international constitutional convention through which we can draft a legally binding global “constitution of information” that will address the fundamental problems created by the information revolution and set down clear guidelines for how we can control the terrible cultural and institutional fluidity created by this information revolution. The process of identifying the problems born of the massive shift in the nature of information, and suggesting workable solutions will be complex, but the issue calls out for an entirely new universe of administration and jurisprudence regarding the control, use and abuse of information.

As the American writer and novelist James Baldwin once wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

An information constitution

The changes cannot be dealt with through mere extensions of the US Constitution or the existing legal code, nor can it be left to intelligence agencies, communications companies, congressional committees or international organizations that were not designed to handle the convergence of issues related to increased computational power, but end up formulating information policy by default. We must bravely set out to build a consensus in the US, and around the world, about the basic definition of information, how information should be controlled and maintained, and what the long-term implications of the shifting nature of information will be for humanity.

We should then launch a constitutional convention and draft a document that sets forth a new set of laws and responsible agencies for assessing the accuracy of information and addressing its misuse. Those who may object to such a constitution of information as a dangerous form of centralized authority likely to encourage further abuse are not fully aware of the difficulty of the problems we face. The abuse of information has already reached epic proportions, and we are just at the beginning of an exponential increase. There should be no misunderstanding: I am not suggesting a totalitarian Ministry of Truth that undermines a world of free exchange between individuals.

Rather, I am proposing a system that will bring accountability, institutional order and transparency to the institutions and companies that already engage in the control, collection, and alteration of information. Failure to establish a constitution of information will not assure preservation of an Arcadian utopia, but rather encourage the emergence of even greater fields of information collection and manipulation entirely beyond the purview of any institution.

The result will be increasing manipulation of human society by dark and invisible forces for which no set of regulations has been established — that is already largely the case. The constitution of information, in whatever form it may take, is the only way to start addressing the hidden forces in our society that tug at our institutional chains. Drafting a constitution is not merely a matter of putting pen to paper. The process requires the animation of that document in the form of living institutions with budgets and mandates.

It is not my intention to spell out the full parameters of such a constitution of information and the institutions that it would support, because a constitution of information can only be successful if it engages living institutions and corporations in a complex and painful process of deal-making and compromises that, like the American Constitutional Convention of 1787, is guided at a higher level by certain idealistic principles. The ultimate form of such a constitution cannot be predicted or determined in advance, and to present a version in advance here would be counterproductive.

We can, however, identify some of the key challenges and the issues that would be involved in drafting such a constitution of information. Threats posed by the Information Revolution The ineluctable increase of computational power in recent years has simplified the transmission, modification, creation and destruction of massive amounts of information, rendering all information fluid, mutable and potentially unreliable. The rate at which information can be rapidly and effectively manipulated is enhanced by an exponential rise in the capacity of computers.

Following Moore’s Law, which suggests that the number of microprocessors that can be placed on a chip will double every 18 months, the capacity of computers continues to increase dramatically, whereas human institutions change only very slowly. That gap between technological change and the evolution of human civilization has reached an extreme, all the more dangerous because so many people have trouble grasping the nature of the challenge and blame the abuse of information on the dishonesty of individuals or groups rather than on the technological change itself.

The cost for surveillance of electronic communications, for keeping track of the whereabouts of people and for documenting every aspect of human and non-human interaction, is dropping so rapidly that what was the exclusive domain of supercomputers at the National Security Agency a decade ago is now entirely possible for developing countries, and will soon be in the hands of individuals. In the near future, advanced computational power will mean that a modified laptop computer can track billions of people with considerable resolution, and that capability is combined with autonomous drones, we will need a new legal framework to respond in a systematic manner to the use and abuse of information at all levels of society.

If we start to plan the institutions that we will need, we can avoid the greatest threat: the invisible manipulation of information without accountability. As the cost of collecting information becomes inexpensive, it is becoming easier to collect and sort massive amounts of data about individuals and groups and to extract from that information relevant detail about their lives and activities. Seemingly insignificant data taken from garbage, e-mails and photographs can now be easily combined and systematically analyzed to essentially give as much information about individuals as a government might obtain from wiretapping — although emerging technology makes the process easier to implement and harder to detect.

Increasingly smaller devices can take photographs of people and places over time with great ease, and that data can be combined and sorted so as to obtain extremely accurate descriptions of the daily lives of individuals — who they are and what they do. Such information can be combined with other information to provide complete profiles of people that go beyond what the individuals know about themselves. As cameras are combined with mini-drones in the years to come, the range of possible surveillance will increase dramatically. Global regulations will be an absolute must for the simple reason that it will be impossible to stop the gathering of this form of big data.

In the not-too-distant future, it will be possible to fabricate cheaply not only texts and data, but all forms of photographs, recordings and videos with such a level of verisimilitude that fictional artifacts indistinguishable from their historically accurate counterparts will compete for our attention. Currently, existing processing power can be combined with intermediate user-level computer skills to effectively alter information, whether still-frame images using programs like Photoshop or videos using Final Cut Pro. Digital information platforms for photographs and videos are extremely susceptible to alteration and the problem will get far worse.

It will be possible for individuals to create convincing documentation, photos or videos, in which any event involving any individual is vividly portrayed in an authentic manner. It will be increasingly easy for any number of factions and interest groups to make up materials that document their perspectives, creating political and systemic chaos. Rules stipulating what is true, and what is not, will no longer be an option when we reach that point. Of course, the authority of an organization to make a call as to what information is true brings with it incredible risks of abuse.

Nevertheless, although there will be great risk in enabling a group to make binding determinations concerning what is authentic (and there will clearly be a political element to truth as long as humans rule society), the danger posed by inaction is far worse. What is reality? When fabricated images and movies can no longer be distinguished from reality by the observer and computers can easily create new content, it will be possible to continue these fabrications over time, thereby creating convincing alternative realities with considerable mimetic depth. At that point, the ability to create convincing images and videos will merge with the next generation of virtual reality technologies to further confuse the issue of what is real.

We will see the emergence of virtual worlds that appear at least as real as the one that we inhabit. If some event becomes a consistent reality in those virtual worlds, it may be difficult, if not impossible, for people to comprehend that the event never actually “happened,” thereby opening the door for massive manipulation of politics and ultimately of history. Once we have complex virtual realities that present a physical landscape with almost as much depth as the real world, and the characters have elaborate histories and memories of events over decades and form populations of millions of anatomically distinct virtual people, the potential for confusion will be tremendous.

It will no longer be clear what reality has authority, and many political and legal issues will be irresolvable. But that is only half of the problem. These virtual worlds are already extending into social networks. An increasing number of people on Facebook are not actual people at all, but characters and avatars created by third parties. As computers grow more powerful, it will be possible to create thousands, then hundreds of thousands, of individuals on social networks who have complex personal histories and personalities. These virtual people will be able to engage human partners in compelling conversations that pass the Turing Test — the inability of humans to distinguish answers to the same question given to them by machines and people. And, because these virtual people can write messages and Skype 24 hours a day, and customize their messages to what the individual finds interesting, they can be more attractive than human “friends” and have the potential to seriously distort our very concept of society and reality.

There will be a concrete and practical need for a set of codes and laws to regulate such an environment. Long-term exposure to “fake truth” will make virtual reality seem much more real and more convincing to people who are accustomed to it than actual reality. That issue is particularly relevant when it comes to the next generation, who are being exposed to virtual reality from infancy.

Yet, virtual reality is fundamentally different from the real world. For example, virtual reality is not subject to the same laws of causality. The relations between events can be altered with ease in virtual reality, and epistemological assumptions from the concrete world do not hold. Virtual reality can muddle such basic concepts as responsibility and guilt, or the relationship of self and society. It will be possible in the not-too-distant future to convince people of something using faulty or irrational logic whose only basis is in virtual reality. This fact has profound implications for every aspect of law and institutional functionality. And if falsehoods are continued in virtual reality — which seems to represent reality accurately — over time in a systematic way, interpretations of even common-sense assumptions about life and society will diverge, bringing everything into question.

As virtual reality expands its influence, we will have to make sure that certain principles are upheld even in virtual space, to assure that it does not create chaos in our very conception of the public sphere. That process, I hold, cannot be governed in the legal system that we have at present. New institutions will have to be developed. The dangers of increasingly unverifiable information are perhaps a greater threat than even terrorism.

While the idea of individuals or groups setting off “dirty bombs” is certainly frightening, imagine a world in which the polity can never be sure whether anything they see/read/hear is true or not. This threat is at least as significant as surveillance operations, but has received far less attention. The time has come for us to formulate the institutional foundation that will define and maintain firm parameters for the use, alteration and retention of information on a global scale.

We live in a money-based economy, but the information revolution is altering the nature of money itself right before our eyes. Money has gone from an analog system that was once restricted to the amount of gold a government possessed to a digital system in which the only limitation on the amount of money represented in computers is the tolerance for risk on the part of the players involved and the ability of national and international institutions to monitor the system. In any case, the mechanisms are now in place to alter the amount of currency, or for that matter many other items such as commodities or stocks, without any effective global oversight.

The value of money and the quantity in circulation can be altered with increasing ease, and current safeguards are clearly insufficient. The problem will grow worse as computational power, and the number of players who can engage in complex manipulations of money, increases.

Then there is the explosion in the field of drones and robots, devices of increasingly small size that can conduct detailed surveillance and that increasingly are capable of military action and other forms of interference in human society. The US had no armed drones and no robots when it entered Afghanistan, but it has now more than 8,000 drones in the air and more than 12,000 robots on the ground. The number of drones and robots will continue to increase rapidly and they are increasingly being used in the US and around the world without regard for borders.

As the technology becomes cheaper, we will see more tiny drones and robots that can operate outside of any legal framework. They will be used to collect information, but they can also be hacked and serve as portals for the distortion and manipulation of information at every level. Moreover, drones and robots have the potential to carry out acts of destruction and other criminal activities whose source can be hidden because of ambiguities over control and agency. For this reason, the rapidly emerging world of drones and robots deserves to be treated at great length within the constitution of information.

Drafting the Constitution of Information

The constitution of information will be an internationally recognized, legally binding document that lays down rules for maintaining the accuracy of information and protecting it from abuse. It could also set down the parameters for institutions charged with maintaining long-term records of accurate information against which other data can be checked, thereby serving as the equivalent of an atomic clock for exact reference in an age of considerable confusion. The ability to certify the integrity of information is an issue that is of an order of magnitude more serious than the intellectual property issues on which most international lawyers focus today, and deserves to be identified as a field entirely in itself — with a constitution of its own that serves as the basis for all future debate and argument.

This challenge of drafting a constitution of information requires a new approach and a bottom-up design in order to sufficiently address the gamut of complex, interconnected issues found in transnational spaces like that in which digital information exists. The governance systems for information are simply not sufficient, and overhauling them to meet the standards necessary would be much more work and much less effective than designing and implementing an entirely new, functional system, which the constitution of information represents.

Moreover, the rate of technological change will require a system that can be updated and made relevant while at the same time safeguarding against it being captured by vested interests or made irrelevant. A possible model for the constitution of information can be found in the “Freedom of Information” section of the new Icelandic constitution drafted in 2011. The Constitutional Council engaged in a broad debate with citizens and organizations throughout the country about the content of the new constitution, which described in detail mechanisms required for government transparency and public accessibility that are far more aligned with the demands of today than other similar documents.

It would be meaningless, however, to merely put forth a model, international constitution of information without the process of drafting it because without the buy-in of institutions and individuals in its formulation, the constitution would not have the authority necessary for it to be accepted and to function. The process of debate and compromise that would determine the contours of that constitution would endow it with social and political significance, and, like the US Constitution of 1787, it would become the core for governance.

For that matter, the degree to which the content of the constitution of information would be legally enforceable would have to be part of the discussion held at the convention. Constitutional convention To respond to this global challenge, we should call a constitutional convention in which a series of basic principles and enforceable regulations would be put forward that are agreed upon by major institutions responsible for policy — including national governments and supranational organizations and multinational corporations, research institutions, intelligence agencies, NGOs, and a variety of representatives from other organizations.

Deciding who to invite and how will be difficult, but it should not be a stumbling block. The US Constitution has proven quite effective over the last few centuries even though it was drafted by a group that was not representative of the population of North America at the time. Although democratic process is essential to good government, there are moments in history in which we confront deeper ontological and epistemological questions that cannot be addressed by elections or referendums and require a select group of individuals like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

At the same time, the constitutional convention cannot be merely a gathering of wise individuals, but will have to involve those directly engaged in the information economy and information policy. That process of drafting a constitution will involve the definition of key concepts, the establishment of the legal and social limits of the constitution’s authority, the formulation of a system for evaluating the use and misuse of information and policy suggestions that respond to abuses of information on a global scale.

The text of this constitution of information should be carefully drafted with a literary sense of language so that it will outlive the specifics of the moment and with a clear historic vision and unmistakable idealism that will inspire future generations, just as the US Constitution continues to inspire Americans. This constitution cannot be a flat bureaucratic rehashing of existing policies on privacy and security. We must be aware of the dangers involved in trying to determine what is and is not reliable information as we draft the constitution of information.

It is essential to set up a workable system for assuring the integrity of information, but multiple safeguards, and checks and balances will be necessary. There should be no assumptions as to what the constitution of information would ultimately be, but only the requirement that it should be binding and that the process of drafting it should be cautious but honest.

Private versus public

Following David Brin’s argument in his book The Transparent Society, one essential assumption should be that privacy will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to protect in the current environment. We must accept, paradoxically, that much information must be made “public” in some sense in order to preserve its integrity and its privacy. That is to say that the process of rigorously protecting privacy is not sufficient, granted the overwhelming changes that will take place in the years to come. Brin draws heavily on Steve Mann’s concept of sousveillance, a process through which ordinary people could observe the actions of the rich and powerful so as to counter the power of the state or the corporation to observe the individual.

The basic assumption behind sousveillance is that there is no means of arresting the development of technologies for surveillance and that those with wealth and power will be able to deploy such technologies more effectively than ordinary citizens. Therefore, the only possible response to increased surveillance is to create a system of mutual monitoring to assure symmetry, if not privacy. Although the constitution of information does not assume that a system that allows the ordinary citizen to monitor the actions of those in power is necessary, the importance of creating information systems that monitor all information in a 360-degree manner should be seriously considered as part of a constitution of information.

The one motive for a constitution of information is to undo the destructive process of designating information as classified and blocking off reciprocity and accountability on a massive scale. We must assure that multiple parties are involved in that process of controlling information so as to assure its accuracy and limit its abuse. In order to achieve the goal of assuring accuracy, transparency and accountability on a global scale, but avoiding massive institutional abuse of the power over information that is granted, we must create a system for monitoring information with a balance of powers at the center. Brin suggests a rather primitive system in which the ruled balance out the power of rulers through an equivalent system for observing and monitoring that works from below.

I am skeptical that such a system will work unless we create large and powerful institutions within government (or the private sector) itself that have a functional need to check the power of other institutions. Perhaps it is possible to establish a complex balance of powers wherein information is monitored and abuses can be controlled, or punished, according to a meticulous, painfully negotiated agreement between stakeholders. It could be that ultimately information would be governed by three branches of government, something like the legislative, executive and judicial systems that has served well for many constitution-based governments.

Accuracy assurance

The COVID19 assault is the first massive attack using information warfare. Information about how many people are sick, how much money is worth, the value of the stock market, the counting of votes and an increasingly broad range of information critical to daily life is now altered and manipulated by the super-rich using unaccountable private consultants and IT firms that mascarade as “government.”

The need to assure accuracy may ultimately be more essential than the need to protect privacy. The general acceptance of inaccurate descriptions of a state of affairs, or of individuals, is profoundly damaging and cannot be easily rectified. For this reason, I suggest as part of the three branches of government, that a “three keys” system for the management of information be adopted. That is to say that sensitive information will be accessible — otherwise we cannot assure that information will be accurate — but that information can only be accessed when three keys representing the three branches of government are presented. That process would assure that accountability can be maintained, because three institutions whose interests are not necessarily aligned must be present to access that information. Systems for the gathering, analysis and control of information on a massive scale have already reached a high level of sophistication.

What is sadly lacking is a larger vision of how information should be treated for the sake of our society. Most responses to the information revolution have been extremely myopic, dwelling on the abuse of information by corporations or intelligence agencies without considering the structural and technological background of those abuses. To merely attribute the misuse of information to a lack of human virtue is to miss the profound shifts sweeping through society today.

The constitution of information will be fundamentally different than most constitutions in that it must contain both rigidity, in terms of holding all parties to the same standards, and also considerable flexibility, in that it can readily adapt to new situations resulting from rapid technological change. The rate at which information can be stored and manipulated will continue to increase and new horizons and issues will emerge, perhaps more quickly than expected. For this reason, the constitution of information cannot be overly static and must derive much of its power from its vision.

The representative system  

We can imagine a legislative body to represent all the elements of the information community engaged in the regulation of the traffic and the quality of information as well as individuals and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It would be a mistake to assume that the organizations represented in that “legislature” would necessarily be nation states according to the United Nations formulation of global governance. The limits of the nation state concept with regards to information policy are increasingly obvious, and this constitutional convention could serve as an opportunity to address the massive institutional changes that have taken place over the past 50 years.

It would be more meaningful, in my opinion, to make the members companies, organizations, networks, local governments — a broad range of organizations that make the actual decisions concerning the creation, distribution and reception of information. That part of the information security system would only be “legislative” in a conceptual sense. It would not necessarily have meetings or be composed of elected or appointed representatives. In fact, if we consider the fact that the actual physical meetings of government legislatures around the world are mostly rituals, we can sense that the whole concept of the legislative process requires much modification.

The executive branch of the new information accuracy system would be charged with administering the policies based on the legislative branch’s policies. It would implement rules concerning information to preserve its integrity and prevent its misuse. The details of how information policy is carried out would be determined at the constitutional convention. The executive would be checked not only by the legislative branch but also by a judicial branch. The judicial branch would be responsible for formulating interpretations of the constitution with regards to an ever-changing environment for information, and for assessing the appropriateness of actions taken by the executive and legislative branches.

The terms “executive,” “legislative” and “judicial” are meant more as placeholders in this initial discussion, not actual concrete descriptions of the institutions to be established. The functioning of these units would be profoundly different from branches of current local and national governments, or even international organizations like the United Nations. If anything, the constitution of information will be a step forward towards a new approach to governance in general. Vision needed It would be irresponsible and rash to draft an “off the shelf” constitution of information that could be readily applied around the world to respond to the complex situation of information today.

Although I accept that initial proposals for a constitution of information may be dismissed as irrelevant and wrong-headed, I assert that as we enter an unprecedented age of information and most of the assumptions that undergirded our previous governance systems based on physical geography and discrete domestic economies will be overturned, there will be a critical demand for new systems to address this crisis. This initial foray can help to formulate the problems to be addressed and the format in which to do so in advance.

In order to effectively govern a new space that exists outside of our current governance systems (or in the interstices between systems), we must make new rules that can effectively govern that space and work to defend transparency and accuracy in the perfect storm born of the circulation and alteration of information. If information exists in a transnational or global space and affects people at that scale, then the governing institutions responsible for its regulation need to be transnational or global. If unprecedented changes are required, then so be it.

If all records for hundreds of years exist online, then it will be entirely possible, as suggested in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, 7 to alter all information in a single moment if there is not a constitution of information. But the solution must involve designing the institutions that will be used to govern information, thus bringing an inspiring vision to what we are doing. We must give a philosophical foundation for the regulation of information and open up new horizons for human society while appealing to our better angels.

Oddly, many assume that the world of policy must consist of turgid and mind-numbing documents in the specialized terminology of economists. But history also has moments such as the drafting of the US Constitution during which a small group of visionary individuals managed create an inspiring new vision of what is possible. That is what we need today with regard to information. To propose such an approach is not a misguided modern version of Neo-Platonism, but a chance to seize the initiative and put forth a vision in the face of ineluctable change, rather than just a response.

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Peaceful protests work. In the U.K., following massive protests against vaccine passports, government may now scrap its plan for vaccine passports as a legal requirement for large events

In the U.S., 14 states have enacted laws that ban vaccine passport requirements in order to prevent the creation of a two-tier society. Only two have implemented vaccine passport requirements for certain activities

Vaccine passports or any other type of certification are part of a much larger plan to implement a global social credit system, which would rely on the interconnectivity of thousands of databases, which Oracle offered to do for the U.S. government in 2002, for free

Oracle manages databases for COVID-19 cases, vaccine data and clinical trial data, the U.S. national security database and databases for the CIA, Navy Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence and the National Security Agency, plus banking, and a host of commercial databases. Oracle Labs is also partnered with DARPA to create an interconnected supercomputer

Ultimately, the vaccine passport will expand to include not just vaccination status but also other medical data, basic identification records, financial data and just about anything else that can be digitized and tracked. The end goal is to end freedom as we know it, using a social credit system based on 24/7 electronic surveillance to ensure compliance

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Watch the video here.

March 20, 2021, on the 1-year anniversary of the first COVID-19 lockdown, people in more than 40 countries took to the streets to peacefully demonstrate against COVID-19 lies and tyrannical measures under the banner of “Worldwide Freedom Day.” While synchronized around the world that particular day, demonstrations are more or less ongoing in various areas.

Peaceful Protests Are Ending Vaccine Passport Requirements

In the U.K., Britons held a “Unite for Freedom” rally in London, Saturday May 29, 2021, as seen in the short video clip above. According to ITV.com,¹ hundreds of no-vaccine-passport protesters surged into the Westfield shopping mall in London, while another large crowd gathered in Parliament Square.

They were reportedly cleared from the mall after about 20 minutes by police, but no one was injured or arrested in this particular instance.

As reported by Reuters² May 30, 2021, it now looks like the U.K. will be scrapping its plan for vaccine passports as a legal requirement for large events, although a government spokesman told Reuters that a final decision has yet to be made and that the COVID-19 vaccine certification review is still ongoing. Why the sudden change? Undoubtedly, it’s because Britons have repeatedly taken to the streets in protest of the medical apartheid these passports create.

14 US States Have Banned Vaccine Passport Requirements

In the U.S., there’s also good news. A number of states have enacted laws that ban vaccine passport requirements in order to prevent the creation of a two-tier society of those with the freedom to live as they please, and others whose lives would be restricted based on vaccination status alone.

As of May 28, 2021, the following 14 states have banned vaccine passports from being required:³Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Wyoming.

Utah has issued a partial ban that applies to state government only. Only two states so far — Hawaii and New York — have actually implemented vaccine certification requirements for certain activities.

In Hawaii, only those with proof of vaccination are allowed to travel between counties without pretravel testing and quarantine restrictions, while New York requires you to be vaccinated or have a recent negative COVID-19 test to enter certain sports arenas and large performance venues.

Florida Fights to Make Cruise Lines Adhere to Law

In my home state of Florida, one of the best pro-freedom governors in the U.S., Ron DeSantis, is now fighting the cruise industry over its proposed vaccination passport requirement.⁴ The bill he signed into law May 3, 2021,⁵ prohibits state government from issuing vaccine passports and private businesses from requiring proof of vaccination status to enter or obtain services.

As such, cruise lines that do business in Florida and want to restrict travel to vaccinated-only are in violation of this new anti-medical apartheid law. As reported by NBC News:⁶

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the go-ahead Wednesday to begin work toward restarting cruises for the first time in over a year after the massive ships became some of the first superspreader locations for the coronavirus …

To comply with CDC guidance … several cruise liners want to require nearly everyone onboard to be fully vaccinated. But that could now be illegal in Florida, the center of the American cruise industry, under a law DeSantis signed … that prohibits businesses from discriminating against unvaccinated customers.

‘In Florida, your personal choice regarding vaccinations will be protected, and no business or government entity will be able to deny you services based on your decision,’ DeSantis said of the law, which codified executive orders he had already issued.

The dispute may end up in court, as the cruise industry argues that the state law doesn’t apply to it thanks to federal rules. In the meantime, companies may decide to move ahead with plans to require vaccinations, even if it means racking up violations in Florida.”

A Social Credit System Is the End Goal of Vaccine Passports

It’s important to realize that vaccine passports or any other type of certification in and of themselves are not the end goal here. They’re merely a part of a much larger plan to implement a social credit system, such as that already implemented in China. First, they’d be expanded to cover other required vaccinations.

Booster shots against COVID-19 variants would logically come first, followed by any number of other vaccinations. The sky’s the limit as far as that’s concerned, and many are likely to be gene-based and therefore dangerous in the extreme. Already, vaccine makers have announced they’re working on a combination COVID-flu/mRNA vaccine,⁷ a pneumococcal-COVID/mRNA booster shot for adults over 65,⁸ and mRNA/seasonal influenza vaccines.⁹

Ultimately, the vaccine passport will expand to include not just vaccination status but also other medical data, basic identification records, financial data and just about anything else that can be digitized and tracked. It may even extend to include real-time biological data.

The end goal is to end freedom as we know it, using a social credit system to ensure compliance. If you disobey or act “out of line” with a prevailing dictate, your freedom to travel, bank, shop, get a loan or even leave your home could be vastly restricted.

We can see how such a system could work by looking at the Chinese social credit system¹⁰ where behavior is electronically monitored to assess “trustworthiness” in real-time. Aside from failing to pay taxes on time, score-lowering actions can include such minutia as cheating in an online video game, jaywalking, not visiting your parents on a frequent-enough basis, smoking in a nonsmoking zone or walking your dog without a leash.

Momentary thoughtlessness can also land you on any one of hundreds of blacklists controlled by a variety of state agencies with their own jurisdictions, and if you end up on one, you’re typically subject to blacklisting across all of them, at which point you won’t be allowed to do much of anything except work to improve your score. On average, it takes two to five years to get off a blacklist, and that’s assuming you comply with all the recommendations put forth.¹¹

While the Chinese social credit score is still in its infancy, eventually, the plan is to use it to “search for signs of potentially harmful behavior before it occurs”¹² — in other words, a real-world pre-crime type of situation as illustrated in the movie “Minority Report.” This is what vaccine passports can lead to, and there’s every reason to believe that is the plan.

As noted by Naomi Wolf, a former adviser to the Clinton administration, in an interview with Fox News’ Steve Hilton:^13,14

“I’m [the] CEO of a tech company, I understand what these platforms can do. It is not about the vaccine, it’s not about the virus, it’s about your data … What people have to understand is that any other functionality can be loaded onto that platform with no problem at all. It can be merged with your Paypal account, with your digital currency.

Microsoft is already talking about merging it with payment plans. Your network can be sucked up. It geolocates you everywhere you go. Your credit history can be included. All of your medical and health history can be included …

It is absolutely so much more than a vaccine pass … I cannot stress enough that it has the power to turn off your life, or to turn on your life, to let you engage in society or be marginalized.”

It’s All Been Building to This Point

Indeed, recreating China’s social credit system here in the U.S. is likely easier at this point than anyone would like to think, and probably wouldn’t take long to implement. Silicon Valley titan Oracle nabbed the contract to be the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s central data repository for all COVID-19 vaccine data in the U.S. early on in the pandemic.

Oracle also manages the database for COVID-19 cases and the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) database for clinical research into COVID-19 vaccines and drugs, a program overseen by Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Now consider this: Oracle has for many years also managed the U.S. national security database, as well as databases for the CIA, Navy Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence and the National Security Agency, plus banking, and a host of commercial databases. As reported by The Defender:¹⁵

“’The information about your banks, your checking balances, your saving balance is stored in an Oracle database,’ Ellison was quoted in the 2004 book, ‘The Naked Crowd.’ ‘Your airline reservation is stored in an Oracle database. What books you bought on Amazon is stored in an Oracle database. Your profile on Yahoo! is stored in an Oracle database.’”

And, as Ellison admitted in 2002, thousands of databases can easily be integrated into a single national file — something he offered to do for free for the U.S. government all the way back then.

The Defender also recounts an old Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program called Total Information Awareness (TIA), which sought to collect the medical records, drug prescriptions, DNA, financial information, travel data and media consumption habits of all Americans.¹⁶

The justification for this vast data collection, according to DARPA, was that “the whole population needed surveillance to prevent not only future terrorist attacks, but bioterrorism and even naturally occurring disease outbreaks.” The program was defunded in 2003 after intense public backlash, “but TIA never really went away,” The Defender writes.¹⁷ “Various of its programs ended up divvied into a web of military and intelligence programs.”

Here are a few more connections to consider when trying to decide whether a social credit system is really in the works, and why a vaccine passport could serve a central function.

Oracle Labs, the research arm of Oracle, is partnered with DARPA to create an “optically interconnected supercomputer” — something that would come in handy if putting together a massive social credit system that demands interconnectivity between thousands of databases.

DARPA is also working on advanced pandemic surveillance and biological threat detection.¹⁸ In fact, it has an entire division specializing in biological technologies — the Biological Technologies Office (BTO) — which developed hydrogel, an implantable type of nanotechnology that transmits light-based digital signals through wireless networks.¹⁹

It’s basically a gel-like biosensor that can both record and share biological data. The hydrogel is manufactured by Profusa, which is partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation²⁰ and backed by Google, the largest data mining company in the world.

In 2020, there were rumors that this hydrogel would be part of Moderna’s mRNA delivery system.²¹DARPA, by the way, actually funded Moderna too.²² However, it is unclear whether hydrogel actually ended up being used in Moderna’s or any other COVID-19 vaccine. At any rate, it could be used, if not now, then in the future.

Now, ask yourself, considering all of these various data points that I’ve covered — which by no means includes everything — just how likely is it that a national social credit system based on digital surveillance, including medical and biological surveillance, is NOT in the works?

Vaccine Passports Spell the End of Freedom

I recently interviewed Wolf about her book “The End of America.” The book, published in 2007, was a prescient warning about the very time we now find ourselves in. In it, she laid out the 10 steps toward tyranny that have been followed by virtually every modern-day would-be tyrant.

“They all took the same 10 steps, and they always work. I warned people that when you start to see these 10 steps, you have to take action, because there is no way to recover once things go too far without a bloody revolution or a civil war. We are [now] at Step 10 … and once Step 10 locks in, there is no going back,” Wolf says.

The 10 steps toward tyranny start with the invocation of a terrifying internal and/or external threat. It may be a real threat or an imagined one, but in all cases, it’s a hyped-up threat. From 2001 onward, that threat was terrorism, which was used as the justification for stripping us of our liberties.

The last and final step in the implementation of tyranny, Step 10, involves the creation of a surveillance state where citizens are under constant surveillance and critique of the government is reclassified as dissent and subversive activity. Vaccine passports are clearly an integral part of that surveillance apparatus, and a precursor to a social credit system.

There simply can be no doubt of that, and if we don’t put a stop to it now, we’ll be locked into not just a national dictatorship but a global one, run by unelected, largely unknown individuals and Big Tech oligarchs. There will be no one to help anyone else, because all nations will be in the same boat.

Peaceful Protest and Legislative Action Are the Remedy

To avoid the fate that comes next, everyone everywhere needs to recognize the danger and take action. Such action includes peaceful protest and civil disobedience — simply not complying with mask mandates, social distancing, lockdowns, vaccination or anything else.

We must also fight through legislation. As mentioned earlier, 14 U.S. states have already passed laws banning requirements for vaccine passports, which protects the freedoms of everyone within those states. While that’s a good start, there are dozens more to go, and other countries need to enact such laws as well. As noted by Wolf in my interview with her:

“Once [vaccine passports] are launched … people like you and I, Dr. Mercola, will be switched off of society. ‘Oops, my vaccine passport is positive. I guess I can’t go food shopping for my family.’ ‘I said something critical of biofascism on Dr. Mercola’s show, so now my child can’t get into school.’

Just as in Israel, where people who are critics are being surveilled [and] marginalized from society, it has turned into a two-tier society. If you choose not to get vaccinated, then you’re really in a marginalized minority in an apartheid state.

The more we know about these vaccines, the scarier it is to have coercion that is social. It’s also illegal. In America, we have the Americans with Disabilities Act. It means it’s illegal to even ask me anything about my medical status. You can’t ask me if I’m pregnant. You can’t ask me if I’m disabled. You can’t ask me if I have diabetes or HIV. You cannot ask me anything. By definition, these intrusive measures are unlawful.

We have to use the law to save the law, basically … We have to fight before we are living in fascist regime where every move is tracked and we’re marginalized from society.”

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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Notes

¹ ITV.com May 30, 2021

² Reuters May 30, 2021

³ US News May 28, 2021

^4, 6 NBC News May 31, 2021

⁵ Emergency Management Bill, Florida Senate

⁷ World Pharma News May 10, 2021

⁸ Reuters May 24, 2021

⁹ Washington Post April 11, 2021

^10, 11, 12 New Horizons, An Introduction to the China Social Credit System

¹³ Real Clear Politics March 29, 2021

¹⁴ The Epoch Times March 29, 2021

^15, 16, 17 The Defender January 6, 2021

¹⁸ Signal April 14, 2020

¹⁹ Rambling in Pen May 31, 2021

^20, 21 OOM2.com September 11, 2020

²² Stat News August 28, 2020

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Deaths and hospitalizations for COVID-19 infection have tripled among the fully vaccinated in the U.S. in the past month. 

Deaths from COVID in those who have been fully vaccinated against the disease increased from 160 as of April 30 to 535 as of June 1, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A total of 10,262 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine “breakthrough infections” – defined as coronavirus infections in fully vaccinated people – were reported to the CDC from 46 U.S. states and territories between January 1 and April 30, 2021, according to a report released by the CDC May 28.

About 10% (995) of the patients who became ill after vaccination before April 30 were hospitalized and the agency said it had received reports of 160 fully vaccinated patients dying from the infection.

Just days later the CDC website reported that 3,016 patients fully vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine had developed a “breakthrough infection” and had been hospitalized or died. “Breakthrough” deaths climbed to 535 as of June 1 compared to 160 reported deaths a month earlier.

Increasing cases of people testing positive for COVID-19 have been reported in the media. Software developer Joel Kallman, 54, died May 25, after reportedly losing a battle against the virus that causes COVID-19, though he had been vaccinated against the disease on March 26.

Last month Comedian Bill Maher tested positive for COVID-19 despite having received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine weeks earlier, as did at least nine New York Yankees players.

CDC no longer counting post-vaccine cases

“Despite the high level of vaccine efficacy, a small percentage of fully vaccinated persons (i.e. received all recommended doses of an FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccine) will develop symptomatic or asymptomatic infections with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” the CDC said in May.

The health oversight agency added that it would only be counting COVID-19 cases and infections after vaccination that resulted in patients being hospitalized or dying from May 1 onward – discounting almost 90% of cases of vaccine failure.

The policy leaves a gaping hole in data collection on vaccine effectiveness. What’s more, since only 27% of the reported cases were asymptomatic, it also leaves a bulk of vaccinated people who are symptomatic – more than 60% of reported cases are actually ill with COVID symptoms – who are perhaps unwittingly spreading the disease because they do not suspect themselves of having a COVID infection because they have received their shots. But the CDC is no longer counting them.

The CDC did not respond to questions about how discounting the majority COVID breakthrough infections might affect analysis of data efficacy.

Given that the CDC definition of “breakthrough infection” is in “fully vaccinated” individuals, the agency is also discounting cases of COVID infection among those who have only received one dose of vaccine in its statistics.

Antibody-dependent enhancement?

It is not clear from the CDC data if the people who have become seriously ill, including those who have died of COVID infection following vaccination, are not experiencing a known side-effect of coronavirus vaccination that was warned about before the rollout began: antibody dependent enhancement, or ADE.

ADE is a response to the wild virus in which vaccinated people (or animals) experience a hyper-immune response which sets off dangerous inflammatory processes of disease – basically, and ironically, creating the worst outcome for the disease among those who have been vaccinated. At least 130 children died in the Philippines in 2017 when an experimental vaccine against Dengue fever resulted in an explosive immune ADE reaction killing the children when they were exposed to wild Dengue virus after vaccination, for example. The fiasco led to government health officers being indicted and the pharmaceutical giant, Sanofi, yanking its vaccine – but not before more than 800,000 children had already been given the shots and left in danger of an ADE response to the circulating virus.

Multiple studies had warned of the repeated failures and dangers of a coronavirus vaccine that created an ADE response when vaccinated individuals encountered a wild virus. Yet there is no evidence that the deaths from COVID-19 in the fully vaccinated have been investigated to determine if they suffered from an ADE response to a wild coronavirus.

Previous COVID infection?

Pennsylvania immunologist Hooman Noorchashm has been warning the CDC and the public for months about another possibility: the danger of being vaccinated while having a COVID infection or having been recently infected.  Having the vaccine react to lurking virus particles from infection could explain the illnesses and deaths of people from COVID post-vaccination.

“[C]ritically, in persons who have had recent infections, vaccination could re-ignite a critical inflammatory disease or blood clotting complications that have proven deadly to some patients,” Dr. Noorchashm warned in a May 30 blogpost.

The immunologist, who has been interviewed on the Tucker Carlson’s show on FOX News and has warned people to undergo antibody testing to make sure they have not been already infected by the virus that causes COVID-19 before they are vaccinated, slammed a recent announcement by the CDC discouraging testing for COVID antibodies.

“The presence of COVID-19 antibodies in unvaccinated persons considering vaccination indicates that they were previously or recently naturally infected. It is almost a certainty that many such persons are already well immune and either do not benefit, or only marginally benefit, from vaccination,” Dr. Noorchashm said. “In the absence of benefit, ANY medical procedure, including vaccines, can only impose harm.”

FDA’s ‘do not test’ policy

In the same month that the CDC announced it would no longer count most vaccine failures, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it is discouraging people from getting tested, before or after vaccination, for immunity.

“[A]ntibody tests should not be used at this time to determine immunity or protection against COVID-19 at any time, and especially after a person has received a COVID-19 vaccination,” the agency said, offering no explanation why it is opposed to testing. The agency has not warned the vaccinated that they may be especially vulnerable to a serious vaccine reaction if they have already had an infection with the virus or that their vaccine may not work.

Immunologist Noorchashm called the FDA announcement “shocking.”

“Why shouldn’t Americans check their blood after vaccination to make sure they’ve mounted a response? It’s shocking!” he wrote about the announcement.  “The COVID-19 vaccines, like any medical product are not perfect — and especially the mRNA vaccines, which we know are more unstable than traditional protein vaccines.”

 “As such, out of the millions of doses of these vaccines being administered daily across the world, a fraction, perhaps thousands, can reasonably be expected to be ineffective,” Dr. Noorchashm wrote.

“So, it is entirely conceivable that some individuals who think they are getting vaccinated, are in fact NOT getting an adequate dose of the vaccine and do not become immune. Performing an antibody test post-vaccination could reassure vaccinated Americans that they, in fact, have developed antibody immunity,” he said.

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Earlier this week, Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet called for a “gag order” on Bill C-10, which would limit debate on the bill using a process known as time allocation.

The irony of calling for a gag order on debate over a bill with profound implications for freedom of expression is likely not lost on many Canadians. But worse than a regional, separatist party with 32 MPs calling for a gag order is the Minister of Canadian Heritage doing so. That is precisely what happened last night, as Steven Guilbeault announced that the government would be introducing a motion to cut off debate on Bill C-10.

Guilbeault’s statement in support of the gag order is riddled with inaccuracies and omissions:

• He claims that lengthy bill study has been the product of “systematic obstruction”, but anyone following committee debate will fairly note the genuine questions and concerns about the proposed legislation, which Guilbeault himself has failed to coherently address in repeated media interviews.
• He argues that there has been many witnesses, yet does not acknowledge that digital-first Canadian creatorswere never asked to appear before committee.
• He makes no mention of the fact that the hearings over the past month have been focused on the implications of changes that the government itself made by moving to regulate user generated content, thereby opening the door to concerns about speech regulation and violations of net neutrality.
• He does not acknowledge the remarkable uncertainty in the bill with core terms not defined, thresholds not identified, and massive power delegated to the CRTC, which has proven itself unsuitable for such responsibility.
• He suggests that the bill means lost support of $70 million per month, when the reality is that foreign services are among the largest supporters of film production in Canada and any new revenues from the bill will ultimately be paid by Canadian consumers.
• His $70 million per month claim is particularly absurd given that the bill envisions months of hearings before the CRTC before anything is finalized. To suggest that debating dozens of amendments – many raised by the government or Liberal MPs – is delaying any payments is plainly false.
• He speaks of the opposition supporting web giants when Guilbeault’s own department has advised that the bill could regulate everything from podcast apps to home workout videos to audiobook platforms.

For the Minister of Canadian Heritage to respond to legitimate, widely held concerns about the freedom of expression impact of legislation by seeking to cut off debate makes a mockery of our Canadian heritage.

The appropriate response is for the creator lobby groups who claimed to be ardent supporters of free speech to speak out against a legislative gag order, for opposition parties to say no to a process unworthy of a government that proclaimed that better is always possible, and for the government to live up to those ideals by withdrawing the bill and hitting the reset button.

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New survey data released Wednesday shows that Americans prioritize getting out of Middle Eastern wars over confronting Middle Eastern adversaries.

The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, surveyed two thousand registered voters in late March on a range of issues. The poll showed that issues like jobs, immigration and climate change dominated voters’ foreign policy thinking, while establishment concerns like confronting enemies and spreading democracy were a low priority.

Asked what their top three priorities for foreign policy are, the largest number of respondents overall  — 47 percent — chose “protecting jobs for American workers,” followed by 42 percent of respondents who chose “reducing illegal immigration,” 28 percent who chose “combating global climate change,” and 28 percent who said “improving relationships with allies” was a top priority.

Respondents were split along party lines on a variety of issues. The top priority for Republican respondents was reducing illegal immigration, while the top priority for Democratic respondents was combatting global climate change.

But voters appear to be united on the need to stop intervening in Middle Eastern wars. A quarter of respondents — including a similar proportion of Democrats, Republicans, independents — chose “ending U.S. involvement in wars in the Middle East” as one of their top priorities.

Meanwhile, less than a quarter of respondents prioritized “protecting against terrorist threats from groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda,” “taking on China’s military and economic aggression,” “dealing with nuclear threats in Iran and North Korea” or “stopping Russian interference in U.S. government and politics.”

More Republicans than Democrats or independents prioritized confronting each of these enemies, except for Russia. In that case, the partisan split was reversed, with nearly a third of Democratic respondents, but only 11 percent of Republican respondents, choosing the fight against Russian interference as a top priority.

The result was consistent with a Pew poll released several months ago, which found that protecting American jobs was the single most popular foreign policy priority for Americans, while less than half of Americans prioritized limiting the influence of China, Russia, North Korea or Iran.

“The most striking finding on this measure is the decline of terrorism as a top foreign policy concern,” the authors of the Center for American Progress survey wrote, noting that terrorist threats had been the top concern of voters during a similar 2019 survey.

The least popular option with all groups of voters was “promoting democratic rights and freedoms abroad.” Only 9 percent of respondents — including 11 percent of Democrats and 7 percent of Republicans and independents — chose it.

Other surveys over the past few decades have found that the American public overall puts a low priority on promoting democracy, even though it continues to be a staple of foreign policy discussions by elites.

More than a quarter of Democratic respondents chose “fighting global poverty and promoting human rights” as one of their top priorities, but it was an unpopular option with Republicans and independents.

Respondents cared about events in other countries but did not necessarily want U.S. involvement in those countries’ domestic affairs.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents agreed that “[t]hings that happen in other parts of the world have a big impact on America’s economy, and we should do more to make sure our domestic and foreign policies work together to create more U.S. jobs and protect U.S. interests.”

However, 55 percent agreed that “America is stronger when we focus on our own problems instead of inserting ourselves into other countries’ problems,” as opposed to only 41 percent who wanted the United States to “take a leading role in the world to protect our national interests and advance common goals with other countries.”

The foreign policy results mirrored the domestic policy results. Respondents’ top domestic priorities were controlling the coronavirus pandemic, creating jobs, and raising wages.

“Americans are overwhelmingly united in their desire for government to pay more attention to the needs of voters and less attention to campaign donors, corporations, and the wealthiest few,” the authors wrote.

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The twelve-day Falcon Strike 21 aerial war games commenced in earnest today out of the Amendola Air Base in Italy. The exercise is led by the Italian Air Force and is described by U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa as designed for the integration of 4th and 5th generation fighter capabilities; all four participating countries – Britain, Israeli, Italy and the U.S. – have provided variants of the fifth-generation F-35 fighter jet for the drills.

Israel has deployed six F-35I Adir fighter jets in what the Israeli Air Force says is “part of its [the Adir F-35I Division’s] first-ever overseas deployment.”

The participants have supplied the following combat aircraft:

• U.S. – Air Force F-35A Lightning IIs, Marine Corps F-35B Lightning IIs and F-16C Fighting Falcons
• Britain – Royal Air Force F-35B Lightning IIs
• Israel: Air Force F-35I Adirs and Gulfstream G550 specialized surveillance aircraft
• Italy – Air Force F-35A and F-35B Lightning IIs, F-2000 Eurofighter Typhoons, Panavia Tornados, Alenia Aermacchi T-346s, AMX International ground attack aircraft, MQ-1 Predators and Gulfstream G550s

The newly-launched HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, flagship of the British Royal Navy, and its strike group will also participate, ahead of its deploying two guided-missile ships to the Black Sea to confront Russia.

A Times of Israel report with the title In first, Israeli F-35s train in Italy — with Iran in their sights, described the participation of Israeli F-35s as the largest and farthest drill they have participated in to date. The newspaper further revealed that, “Though the explicit goal of the exercise is to improve the overall capabilities of the F-35 jet…a senior Israeli Air Force officer acknowledged that in part, this drill…was meant to prepare Israeli pilots for using the fighter aircraft against Iranian forces.”

The above comment was ascribed to an unidentified senior Israeli military official, who also told reporters, “Iran is in our focus.”

The current exercise is the first one in which Israeli F-35s have engaged in joint maneuvers with F-35s from other nations.

Late last month a comparable exercise was held at the Amendola Air Base and Aviano Air Base in Italy. The latter was used extensively for the U.S.’s and NATO’s wars against the Bosnian Serb Republic, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and would likely be used against Iran should that nation become a U.S.-NATO-Israeli target.

Two Italian F-35 Lightning IIs, assigned to the 32nd Wing at the Amendola base, landed at the Aviano Air Base on May 20-21 in support of Astral Knight 2021, an air combat exercise that occurred at Aviano and in other locations in Albania, Croatia, Greece and Slovenia.

Described as an integrated air and missile defense exercise, military aircraft involved were U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles, F-16 Fighting Falcons, HH-60 Pave Hawks and C-130J Super Hercules aircraft; Italian Air Force F-35 Lightning IIs, Hellenic Air Force F-16s Fighting Falcons and Emb-145 Erieye aircraft, and Croatian MiG-21 BisD/UMDs.

A liaison with the Headquarters U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa 5th-generation integration team maintenance and logistics was quoted in a release as saying:

“The current program of record shows European nations’ F-35 inventories outnumbering US F-35s based in Europe by almost 10 to one. European nations would have 10 times as many F-35s as the U.S. does in Europe. That’s why we’re taking great steps now to learn how to interoperate with partners. That’s what this is all about.”

He was further cited disclosing the intended mission of qualitatively increasing European NATO member states’ arsenals of the fifth-generation warplane:

“The more exercises like [Astral Knight 2021] that are in place, the more partnerships will strengthen and the more we become a unified force ready to carry out the assigned tasks for the protection of NATO airspace.”

The integration of NATO air combat capabilities and a potential war against Iran are intricately related developments; as was the first with air wars and bombing campaigns in Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, with Syria narrowly avoiding the same fate.

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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.

Featured image: Astral Knight 2021 (Source: Anti-bellum)

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

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Click here to order.

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Northern Syria is in a state of renewed chaos, as both civilians are in the streets, and the Kurdish groups are clashing with Turkey and the factions it backs.

Late on June 5, fighters of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) attacked positions of the Turkish-backed militants near the town of Ras al-Ain in northeastern Syria.

SDF fighters passed the defenses in the area of al-Arish and engaged in heavy clashes with the militants.

The Syrian National Army (SNA) lost 4 militants, while the SDF lost 2 fighters, and at least a dozen more were injured.

Just days earlier, militants from the SNA clashed with each other in Ras al-Ain.

As a result, at least three militants were killed and seven others were injured.

Stray fire also wounded four civilians, including a woman.

The local civilians are also angered by the SDF’s recent actions and the bloody quelling of weeks of protests.

The Manbij Civil Council of the so-called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria issued a decision to end the curfew ban imposed on the city of Manbij in the province of Aleppo.

The curfew was imposed a day after massive civil protests erupted in the city against the “forced conscription” campaign carried out by the SDF’s Manbij Military Council and the arrest of dozens of young men, in order to force them to fight in the ranks of the SDF.

At least 7 protesters were killed.

The SDF is evidently struggling and it needs fresh fighters to both fight against Ankara’s forces, the factions it backs and to carry out various other operations in the area.

The destabilization in the region is being taken advantage of by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), as its units move to reactivate an air defense base in northern Aleppo.

The base is located in the town of Taanah near the frontline with Turkish forces who currently occupy the town of al-Bab to the east.

The base, which used to host a Soviet-made S-75 Dvina air-defense system, was captured by the rebels in 2012.

It was recaptured back in 2016, but it hasn’t been used since then.

Such an undertaking could prove invaluable in fighting against the Turkish occupation in Syria’s north.

Meanwhile, on the other front in central Syrian regions, ISIS continually bites back, despite the the SAA’s and Russia’s best efforts to contain the terrorists.

On June 3rd and 4th, at least 23 pro-government fighters were killed in Syria’s central region, while Russia rained hell on terrorist positions in response.

One of the victims of improvised explosive devices planted by the terrorists was an Iranian military advisor identified as Hassan Abdullahzadeh, killed on the Homs-Deir Ezzor highway on June 4th, alongside his guard.

In response to this ramped up activity, the Russian Aerospace Forces struck ISIS positions in Hama, Raqqa, Homs and Deir Ezzor.

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From all the crazy incentives and the air of desperation to get the job done, the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have been nothing but a thinly-disguised campaign to get a vaccine jab into every arm.

• Could it be that the whole COVID-19 pandemic was about the vaccine and getting a global mass vaccination campaign underway for population control purposes?
• Recent weeks have seen a significant rise in vaccination incentives in the U.S., from free doughnuts, cake, french fries, hot dogs and pizza, to arcade tokens, 10-cent beer, free state park season passes, free Uber and Lyft rides, free marijuana and Cincinnati Reds baseball tickets, a chance to win a full scholarship and even $1 million and $5 million giveaways
• Meanwhile, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System has logged more deaths following COVID-19 vaccination than all available vaccines combined over a 15.5-year period
• Former COVID-19 patients are even pushed to get the jab, even though they already have superior immunity and studies show they have a far higher risk of severe side effects from the vaccine, and North Carolina has passed legislation that allows children as young as 12 to get the COVID vaccine without parental consent
• COVID-19 vaccines might perform as a “depopulation weapon” by triggering antibody-dependent immune enhancement, making you more susceptible to severe COVID-19 if exposed to the virus. Antibodies against the spike proteins may also attack syncytin-homologous proteins essential for the formation of placenta, which could result in infertility. Overall, the shots may destroy your innate immunity and set you up for rapid onset of debilitating illness and premature death

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In my opinion Dr. Peter McCullough is one of the most courageous well credentialed academic physicians out there and I hope to interview him soon. He is vice chief of internal medicine at Baylor University Medical Center and despite his impeccable credentials, he has been vilified for stating during the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, that it was all about the vaccine and getting a global mass vaccination campaign underway.

“All roads lead to the vaccine,” McCullough said in a recent interview (video above1 2), with stakeholders banking on countries mandating the vaccine worldwide. The first video above is a 16-minute outtake from a much longer interview, which is the second video.3

McCullough points out that a number of countries are already talking about making the as-yet unlicensed COVID-19 vaccine compulsory, meaning anyone and everyone can be forced to take it against their will. “That’s how bad stakeholders want vaccination,” McCullough says. “They do want a needle in every arm. But why?” That’s the million-dollar question right there.

Unbelievable Incentives Offered

Recent weeks have seen a significant rise in all sorts of vaccination incentives in the U.S., from free doughnuts, cake,4 french fries, hot dogs and pizza,5 to arcade tokens,6 10-cent beer,7 free state park season passes,8 free Uber and Lyft rides,9 free marijuana10 and Cincinnati Reds baseball tickets,11 a chance to win a full scholarship12 and even $1 million13 and $5 million14 giveaways. Below is a more complete list of incentives, posted on vaccines.gov.15

To say the vaccine push has an air of desperation about it would be a profoundly serious understatement.

Considering the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) has logged more deaths following COVID-19 vaccination than all available vaccines combined from mid-1997 until the end of 201316 — a period of 15 1/2 years — one has to wonder why our leaders are so insistent on everyone getting these experimental gene therapies.

They’re even pushing for former COVID-19 patients to get the jab, even though they already have superior permanent immunity17 and studies show they have a far higher risk of severe side effects from the COVID jab.18

If it’s really about protecting the public against COVID-19, why aren’t recovered COVID patients — whose protection is far superior to vaccine-induced immunity — offered some sort of immunity passport or granted access to sporting events or education that is now only granted to those with vaccine certificates?

What’s more, North Carolina has now passed legislation that allows children as young as 12 to get the COVID vaccine without parental consent.19 Think about that. As of May 21, 2021, 4,406 Americans had died after the COVID vaccine,20 including three teenagers,21 22 23 24 and 12-year-olds are now being encouraged to make a life and death decision without their parents?

As noted by McCullough, historically, the threshold at which an experimental vaccine program is shut down is 25 to 50 deaths, yet here we are, with over 4,000 deaths being reported in the U.S. and many thousands more in Europe.25 26

In a recent report, the Israeli People Committee, a civilian body of health experts, similarly concluded that “there has never been a vaccine that has harmed as many people.”27

After vaccinating 45 million with the pandemic swine flu vaccine in 1976, the U.S. stopped the program after only 25 deaths.28 (The number of deaths reported after the 1976 inoculation program varies from three to 53, depending on the source.29 30 31 32) And let’s remember this too: If something goes wrong, the vaccine manufacturers are completely indemnified against lawsuits. You’re on your own.

Mass Vaccination Is a Beyond Terrible Strategy

As a physician, McCullough is no longer recommending this vaccine, and other prominent virologists and physicians are calling for a stop to the program. Sadly, many are complying simply because they’re desperate to get back to the “normal” they knew before, of sending their children to school, keeping their job and leading the life they had before the pandemic.

Don’t do it, McCullough says — don’t fall for this trap because it’s only going to make things worse. By vaccinating everyone against a very narrow spectrum of immunity — the original SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which has since mutated in any number of ways and no longer exists — “we are setting ourselves up for a superbug that’s going to wipe out populations,” he says.

As such, the COVID-19 vaccine is a bioweapon, McCullough warns, and the side effect concerns are “far beyond anything we have ever seen … Americans should be extraordinarily alarmed.”

What’s This Vaccine Program Really About?

Why is the vaccine pushed in this way? McCollough believes it’s a global goal to “mark” people, to get you into their vaccine database, which will eventually be turned into a tool for population control, courtesy of vaccine passports.

When we’re talking about population control, there are two distinct forms, and both may apply in this case. One form of population control is about controlling people through the ideology of utilitarianism, vaccine passports and a social credit system, all of which are tied together. Another form is actual depopulation.

Population Control Through Utilitarianism and Vaccination

Utilitarianism is based on a mathematical equation that some individuals can be sacrificed for the greater good of the majority. In other words, if some people are harmed by vaccines, it’s an acceptable loss because society as a whole may or will reap gains.

This discredited pseudo-ethic has repeatedly been used to justify horrific human rights abuses. The Third Reich, for example, employed the utilitarian rationale as an excuse to demonize and eliminate minorities judged to be a threat to the health, security and well-being of the State.33 Now, utilitarianism is being called upon yet again, under the false narrative that mankind as a whole is in peril unless everyone rolls the dice and gets vaccinated.

In the end, the idea is that vaccine refusers won’t be allowed to freely participate in society any longer. This is the disincentive or negative incentive, which is added on top of the positive incentives previously mentioned.

While U.S. government officials realize they cannot mandate vaccination on a national level, as it would be a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution, they are pushing for it nonetheless by encouraging private companies to mandate vaccination as a condition of employment or access to services. They’re also spending billions of dollars on advertising in conventional media, paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

In short, vaccine passports are a way to force compliance. But the vaccine database can also form the foundation for a much larger control structure, a social credit system, where you lose points any time you behave in a way that is deemed undesirable.

This quite literally could be anything, judging by the Chinese social credit system. People with low social credit scores can’t travel on certain kinds of public transportation, can’t travel overseas, hold certain jobs, go to school or even get a loan.

The point is, once you’re in this system, you’re under someone else’s control. If they say you have to get a booster shot, you have to comply — again and again — or risk losing basic human rights, such as the ability to buy and sell, travel or get an education.

The Depopulation Agenda

The other form of population control refers to actual depopulation. A primary problem the global elite have been trying to solve for a long time is that there are too many people consuming too much of the world’s perceived limited resources and polluting everything in the process. The answer, in their mind, is to reduce the global population.

While birth control and abortions are promoted to help with this, these strategies aren’t effective, or rapid, enough. They need a less fertile population and they need people to die sooner.

“I believe [COVID-19 booster shots] are going to be used to damage your health and possibly kill you. I can see no sensible interpretation other than a serious attempt at mass depopulation.” ~ Michael Yeadon Ph.D.

While many may not want to believe this could possibly be true, you have to remember that the intention is not to cause suffering per se. It’s a form of self-preservation, as their end goal is to concentrate all the world’s wealth into their own hands. Ultimately, that’s what the Great Reset is all about.

In the interview above, which is part of the full-length documentary “Planet Lockdown,”34 Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., a life science researcher and former vice-president and chief scientist of allergy and respiratory research at Pfizer, shares his views on the COVID-19 pandemic and his fears about the COVID-19 vaccines.

“Basically, everything your government has told you about this virus, everything you need to do to stay safe, is a lie,” Yeadon says. “And if they’re not telling the truth, that means there’s something else. And I’m here to tell you that there is something very, very bad happening. If you don’t pay attention, you will soon lose any chance to do anything about it.”

Will Booster Shots Be the Death Knell?

Of all the lies we’ve been told over the past year, the ones that worry and frighten Yeadon the most are the lies about virus variants and booster shots. In fact, he believes not buying into these lies may be key to your very survival.

“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,” Yeadon says.

“If they’re lying — and they are — why is the pharmaceutical industry making top-up [booster] vaccines? … There’s absolutely no possible justification for their manufacture. And the world’s medicines regulators have said, ‘Because they are quite similar to the original vaccines … we won’t be asking them to do any clinical safety studies’ …

There’s no possible benign interpretation of this. I believe they’re 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 [booster shots], 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 …

Given that this virus represents, at worst, a slightly bigger risk to the old and ill than influenza, and a smaller risk [than influenza] to almost everyone else … we didn’t need to do anything. [We didn’t need] lockdowns, masks, mass testing, vaccines.

There are multiple therapeutic drugs that are at least as effective as the vaccines are. They’re already available and cheap … An off-patent drug called ivermectin, one of the most widely-used drugs in the world, is able to reduce symptoms at any stage of the disease, including lethality by about 90%. So, you don’t need vaccines and you don’t need any of the measures that have been introduced at all.”

Why Have Effective Treatments Been Suppressed?

Like Yeadon, McCullough has raised serious questions about the need for a vaccine. Evidence clearly shows there are highly effective treatments,35 36 yet they’ve been near-universally suppressed in favor of these experimental shots. Why? If it’s about protecting public health and saving lives, why would effective treatments be vilified?

As noted by McCullough during a roundtable discussion in the first of several U.S.-based tribunals on COVID-19,37 something very unusual happened in 2020. For the first time, doctors around the world were actively discouraged and prevented from saving their patients. There was “an enormous, complete, pervasive, steadfast suppression of any attempts to help patients with COVID-19,” he said, adding:

“We seem to somehow have developed a uniform game plan … to passively allow as much suffering hospitalization and death as possible, create enormous amounts of fear in our society, and then be prepared for mass vaccination.”

Disturbingly, there’s evidence suggesting the COVID-19 vaccines might indeed perform as a “depopulation weapon” of sorts. For example, there’s the potential for formation of non-neutralizing antibodies that can trigger an exaggerated immune reaction (referred to as paradoxical immune enhancement or antibody-dependent immune enhancement or ADE) when the individual is exposed to the wild virus post-vaccination.38 39 40

I’ve detailed this issue in several articles, including “How COVID-19 Vaccine Can Destroy Your Immune System” and “Will Vaccinated People Be More Vulnerable to Variants?”

Put plainly, the vaccine may increase susceptibility to the virus and make people more likely to die from the infection, and data41 now show COVID-19 deaths are spiking around the world right along with rising vaccination rates, even though countries were trending toward herd immunity and deaths were at an all-time low right before the vaccines were released.

The mRNA vaccines also trigger your body to produce antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and the spike proteins in turn contain syncytin-homologous proteins that are essential for the formation of placenta.42 If a woman’s immune system starts reacting against syncytin-1, then there is the possibility she will miscarry if pregnant and ultimately become infertile.

Mass vaccinating children and women of childbearing age against COVID-19 is a profoundly bad idea that could cause mass infertility if the COVID jab triggers an immune reaction against syncytin-1.

We also now know that the worst symptoms of COVID-19 are created by the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and that is the very thing these gene-based vaccines are instructing your body to make. What’s worse, the spike protein your body creates is a genetically modified version that appears far more toxic than the spike protein found in the actual virus.

This was discussed in great detail in my interview with Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., and Judy Mikovits, Ph.D., featured in “The Many Ways in Which COVID Vaccines May Harm Your Health.”

Like McCullough and Yeadon, Mikovits believes the COVID-19 vaccine is a bioweapon designed to destroy your innate immunity and set you up for rapid onset of debilitating illness and premature death. She too suspects many will die rather rapidly. “It’s not going to be ‘live and suffer forever.’ It’s going to be suffer five years and die,” she says.

While the death toll from COVID-19 vaccines is already at a historical level, I fear it may shoot far higher as we move through fall and winter. The reason for this is ADE.

Fall and winter are the seasons in which most coronavirus infections occur, be it SARS-CoV2 or other coronaviruses responsible for the common cold, and if ADE does turn out to be a common problem, then vaccinated individuals may in fact turn out to be at significantly higher risk of severe COVID-19 and a potentially lethal immune reaction due to pathogenic priming.

Will You Gamble Your Life?

In my view, there are still so many potential avenues of harm and so many uncertainties, I would encourage everyone to do your homework, keep reading and learning, weigh the potential pros and cons, ignore all pressure tactics and take your time when deciding whether to get any of these COVID-19 gene therapies.

And, if you or someone you love has already received a COVID-19 vaccine and are experiencing side effects, be sure to report it, preferably to all three of these locations.43 While adverse effects and deaths have thus far been ignored, we need as much data as possible if we’re to have any chance of stopping this mass vaccination campaign and push toward population control.

1. If you live in the U.S., file a report on VAERS
2. Report the injury on VaxxTracker.com, which is a nongovernmental adverse event tracker (you can file anonymously if you like)
3. Report the injury on the Children’s Health Defense website

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While large polluting countries have refused to take necessary measures to slow the climate crisis, Nicaragua, one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, has taken impressive steps to shift to more sustainable energy

In a report published by the International Energy Agency in April this year, it was predicted that global energy emissions will see a significant increase in 2021. It will mark the second biggest annual rise in global emissions in history, predominantly caused by increased use and investment in coal by the USA and China. Countries like Nicaragua are set to suffer the most from the climate disaster that this will exacerbate. Nicaragua is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, despite only contributing 0.3% of global carbon emissions.

While international superpowers belatedly recognize the climate threat and simultaneously continue their reliance on dirty fossil fuels, Nicaragua is championing renewable energies. After the Sandinista government was elected to office in 2007, they pledged to switch the country from fossil fuels to renewable energies like wind, solar, and biomass. In 2007, only 25% of the energy produced and consumed in Nicaragua was renewable, but as of March 2021, this figure is now at 77.3%. This ‘green revolution’ has even been praised by the Inter-American Development Bank.

The green revolution has touched every part of the country. Solentiname, an environmentally fragile archipelago located among a lake in the south of Nicaragua, has been provided with solar energy for the first time. This means the locals can enjoy stable electricity while minimizing harm to the precious flora and fauna in their ecosystem. This project came as part of Nicaragua signing up to the International Solar Alliance, which pledges to maximize the use and access to solar energy, including improving on current technologies.

Solentiname is just one example of the many parts of Nicaragua that are benefiting from increased, renewable electrical infrastructure. With recent investments from the likes of the Central-American Bank of Economic Integration, Nicaragua is set to expand its electrical grid and achieve 99.9% electrical coverage across the country by 2025. Named the ‘Electric Transmission System Expansion Program’, it will create clean, more efficient, and reliable electricity for 10,842 user families, while bringing regular electricity to 2,542 new users.  This will allow remote communities to better integrate into society, as well as provide hundreds of new jobs.

But solar is in reality just a small part of Nicaragua’s energy matrix. The government has instead innovatively responded to the country’s prominent geographic characteristics. The energy grid makes efficient use of the country’s windy coastlines (wind energy is 14% of the matrix), but even more impressively has harnessed the power of its volcanoes. The geothermal energy from Nicaragua’s dozen volcanoes provide more than 15% of the country’s renewable energy.

Meanwhile, the biomass sector sets an example for how biofuel energy should function globally. As highlighted by the likes of Dr. Arianne Shavishi, many countries that are transitioning to biofuels as an energy source are actually importing the biomass from abroad, invalidating its low-carbon footprint. Even worse, some historic forests are being intentionally cleared to create biomass, releasing tons of carbon with it. Professor Okbazghi Yohannes of the University of Louisville suggests this is a trend driven by the global grain-trading corporations. This was never supposed to be the point of biofuels. The point was to utilise the already-abundant waste products from agriculture and forestry management. Nicaragua’s biomass is a perfect example as it’s predominantly sourced locally and much of it comes from the leftover husks of sugar cane production.

As is evident from the above, the Central American country isn’t completely eco-friendly. Recently, the government signed a $700 million deal with US-based company New Fortress Energy, who will build an off-shore natural gas plant that will be connected to the national grid. This is the first of its kind in Central America and shows Nicaragua is not quite ready to commit to an entirely renewable energy matrix in the near future. However, the FSLN government’s rapid progress since the days of neoliberalism are still incredibly laudable and show a clear commitment to the planet.

Ahead of 2021’s COP26 conference, the world’s largest polluters are sending contradictory messages about the transition to renewable energy. While on one hand the G7 countries speak about keeping below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming—almost impossible at this point anyway—some of its major players like the UK are still proposing new coal mines. Conversely, Nicaragua’s transition to green energy has been well under way for over a decade. Despite being one the most impoverished countries in the Western Hemisphere, Nicaragua is an excellent illustration for the world of what can be achieved when a government actually commits to renewable energies. Sandinismo is truly a green revolution.

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This article was written in collaboration with the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign UK. In November 2021, Nicaraguans will vote in their national elections. The USA has already begun a campaign to try to oust the incumbent socialist FLSN government at the voting booth. This article is part of a year-long series that seeks to present the truth of Nicaragua under the Sandinista government.

Rohan Rice is a writer, photographer, and translator from London. You can find his work here.

Featured image is from ENATREL

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***

Last week right-wing Colombian President Ivan Duque deployed the military to Cali. The city of 2.3 million has been the epicenter of a month-long nationwide protest that forced the government to withdraw a regressive tax proposal that unleashed a general strike.

During the past month security forces have killed at least 50 and probably dozens more. Over 300 individuals are missing, according to Colombia’s National Movement of Victims of State Crimes, in a country with a history of political disappearances.

In a sign the politics of the protesters are radicalizing, ten days ago protesters burned massive US and Israeli flags. In response Dan Cohen tweeted, “This isn’t just a strike against austerity measures. It’s a full-on uprising against imperialism.”

Perhaps one could add, against Canadian policies.

Clearly, Canada has promoted the policies Colombians are rebelling against. Over the past three-decades Ottawa has been close diplomatically to Latin America’s most repressive state and has promoted capitalist policies that have contributed to Colombia’s extreme inequality.

The Justin Trudeau Liberals has promoted President Iván Duque who Le Soleil labeled “le champion du retour de la droite dure en Colombie” (champion of the return of the hard right in Colombia). After Duque won a close election marred by fraud allegations, foreign minister Chrystia Freeland “congratulated” him and said, “Canada and Colombia share a commitment to democracy and human rights.” In August 2018 Trudeau tweeted, “today, Colombia’s new President, Ivan Duque, took office and joins … others with a gender-equal cabinet. Iván, I look forward to working with you and your entire team.” A month later he added, “thanks to President Ivan Duque for a great first meeting at UNGA this afternoon, focused on growing our economies, addressing the crisis in Venezuela, and strengthening the friendship between Canada & Colombia.”

As Trudeau got chummy with Duque, the Colombian president undercut the peace accord the previous (right, but not far right) government signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to end Colombia’s 50-year civil war, which left over 200,000 dead. Duque’s policies increased violence towards the ex-rebels and social activists. More than 253 former FARC members have been killed in the past three years. Even more human rights defenders have been murdered.

Trudeau has yet to say anything about the massive repression of protesters in the past month. After numerous Canadian rallies were held in solidarity with protesters in Colombia Foreign Minister Marc Garneau released a statement ten days into the strike. But Garneau criticized the security forces’ deadly violence in equal measure to protestors’ purported vandalism. It also praised the Duque government, which had made all kinds of menacing statements.

This Canadian support for repressive Colombian governments is longstanding.

Stephen Harper had even closer diplomatic ties with Duque’s patron Alvaro Uribe. In 2009 the former PM referred to the far-right president as a valuable “ally” in a hemisphere full of “serious enemies and opponents.” A 2007 visit to Colombia by the Canadian PM was described by the Economist as giving Uribe “a vote of confidence at a time when he [was] being assailed both in Washington and at home.” At the time, Uribe’s government was plagued by a scandal tying numerous top officials to Colombia’s brutal paramilitaries. Dozens of Uribe-aligned congresspeople were implicatedand the president’s cousin was among those who had been jailed.

Uribe’s terrible human rights record did not stop Harper from signing a free-trade agreement with Colombia. Harper devoted a great deal of energy to backing the most repressive and right-wing government in Latin America. According to an April 2009 cable from the US embassy in Ottawa, in private the PM conceded that the Colombia trade accord was unpopular with Canadians. Released by Wikileaks the cable noted: “It was a painful but deliberate choice for the Prime Minister” to support president Alvaro Uribe in the face of stiff resistance to the free trade agreement, particularly from Canada’s labour movement. The Canada-Colombia trade agreement was also opposed by most of that country’s organized peasantry and labour.

The trade deal was part of a long-standing push to liberalize Colombia’s economy. In the late 1990s Canada’s aid agency supported petroleum legislation reform, which benefited Canadian firms. More significantly, Ottawa began an $11 million project to re-write Colombia’s mining code in 1997. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) worked on the project with a Colombian law firm, Martinez Córdoba and Associates, that represents multinational companies, and the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI), an industry think-tank based at the University of Calgary.

They spent a couple years canvassing mining companies to find out what the industry wanted from new mining regulations. A representative from Greystar Corp., which was involved in the effort for nearly two years, explained how they provided “input that reflected the mining industry’s point of view as to what was important in such legislation to encourage mining.”

Once completed the CERI/CIDA proposal was submitted to Colombia’s Department of Mines and Energy and became law in August 2001. “The new code flexibilised environmental regulations, diminished labour guarantees for workers and opened the property of afro-Colombian and indigenous people to exploitation,” explained Francisco Ramirez, president of SINTRAMINERCOL, Colombia’s State Mine Workers Union. “The CIDA-backed code also contains some articles that are simply unheard of in other countries,” added Ramirez. “If a mining company has to cut down trees before digging, they can now export that timber for 30 years with a total exemption on taxation.” The new code also reduced the royalty rate companies pay the government to 0.4 percent from 10 percent for mineral exports above 3 million tonnes per year and from 5 percent for exports below 3 million tonnes. In addition, the new code increased the length of mining concessions from 25 years to 30 years, with the possibility that concessions can be tripled to 90 years.

Canadian officials were happy with the results. According to CIDA’s summary of the project, “Canadian energy and mining sector companies with an interest in Colombia will benefit from the development of a stable, consistent and familiar operating environment in this resource-rich developing economy.”

Ottawa has continued to plow ‘aid’ dollars into supporting the mining sector in Colombia. The Skills for Employment in the Extractives Sector of the Pacific Alliance, Andean Regional Initiative and Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy for the Canadian International Extractive Sector have channeled millions of dollars into assisting mining interests there.

Canadian assistance was used to reform the country’s non-resource sector as well. In 1995 CIDA provided $4 million to “contribute to the liberalization process of the telecommunications sector in Colombia.” Ottawa-based Destrier Management Consultants used the money for training seminars, workshops and advisors. Within a few years Canadian companies operated Colombia’s leading cellular phone provider and installed a large proportion of the country’s phone lines. In 2003 Canada’s “Nortel Networks”, explained Asad Ismi, “helped bring about the liquidation of TELECOM, Colombia’s biggest telecommunications company, and the likely privatization of its successor. … With the privatization, however, 10,000 unionized telecommunications workers lost their jobs that year, and over 70 trade unionists were murdered by paramilitaries for demonstrating against the privatization.”

In the late 1990s and 2000s Crown corporation EDC was heavily invested in Colombia despite widespread state-sponsored human rights violations. They provided investment insurance to Canadian companies, which had significant investments in Colombia. Canadian companies, for instance, ran Colombia’s most important oil pipeline and its two largest natural gas pipelines.

Canadian investment in Colombia, especially in the resource sector, was intimately tied to human rights abuses. A study on “The Presence of Canadian Petroleum Companies in Colombia,” found that “an avalanche of new contracts and new Canadian companies” entered Colombia in 2000 “at a moment when the internal conflict has intensified particularly in traditional, indigenous-occupied areas, and where resistance to their projects is significant.”

In the late 1990s Calgary-based Enbridge operated the OCENSA pipeline jointly with Toronto-based TransCanada Pipelines. Both companies owned a 17.5 percent share of the pipeline along with shares held by British Petroleum, Total and The Strategic Transaction Company. Until 1997 the OCENSA consortium contracted Defence Systems Colombia (a British firm) for security purposes. According to Amnesty International:

“What is disturbing is that OCENSA/DSC’s security strategy reportedly relies heavily on paid informants whose purpose is to covertly gather intelligence information’ on the activities of the local population in the communities through which the pipeline passes and to identify possible ‘subversives’ within those communities. What is even more disturbing is that this intelligence information is then reportedly passed by OCENSA to the Colombian military who, together with their paramilitary allies, have frequently targeted those considered subversive for extrajudicial execution and disappearance. …The passing of intelligence information to the Colombian military may have contributed to subsequent human rights violations.”

Amnesty added that OCENSA and DSC purchased military equipment for the notoriously violent 14th Brigade of the Colombian army.

While Canadian investors contributed to Colombia’s dirty war, so did Canadian arms manufacturers. In the late 1990s DND sold 33 Huey helicopters to the US State Department, which added machine guns and sent them to the Colombian police and military as part of “Plan Colombia”. The Huey sale followed Bell Helicopter Textron Canada’s export of 12 helicopters directly to the Colombian air force and police. The helicopter was a type “widely used by the U.S. military in the 1970s in counter-insurgency operations in Vietnam.” Not only did Ottawa allow helicopter sales to Colombia’s military, the Canadian embassy in Bogota promoted them.

In 2013 the Harper government added Colombia to Canada’s Automatic Firearms Country Control List to facilitate the export of assault weapons. Since then, weapons sales to Colombia have usually totaled only a few hundred thousand dollars a year but in 2014 that number reached $45 million. The Crown-owned Canadian Commercial Corporation helped sell 24 light armoured vehicles to the Colombian army and four armoured personnel carriers to its police. Since 2011 Colombian military personnel have participated in Canada’s Military Training and Cooperation Program. Colombia’s police have also been instructed, reports Abram Lutes, “through exchanges with the RCMP and the ongoing Anti-Crime Capacity Building Program (ACCBP), which nominally trains the Colombian national police in combating drug trafficking. The ACCBP is Canada’s contribution to Colombia’s long drug war, which provides pretext for security forces and paramilitaries to target leftist guerillas and peasants who produce cocoa.”

As part of its “role in the fight against drug traffickers” Canada supplied intelligence gathering equipment to Colombia in the early 1990s. In 1990 Canada began a $2 million program to provide intelligence equipment and bomb detectors to the Colombian Departamento Adminitrativo De Securidad. At that time Colombia’s leading news magazine, Semana, suggested that Canada was working with the US in a hegemonic project in the region.

According to former JTF2 soldier Claude Morisset, Canada also sent soldiers to Colombia in the late 1990s. In We Were Invincible Morisset describes his mission to the Colombian jungle to rescue NGO and church workers “because FARC guerillas threatened the peace in the region.” The Canadian soldiers were unaware that they were transporting the son of a Colombian leader, which prompted the FARC to give chase for a couple days. On two different occasions the Canadian forces came under fire from FARC guerrillas. Ultimately the Canadians were saved by US helicopters, as the JTF2 mission was part of a US initiative.

While Colombian protesters didn’t burn the Canadian flag, maybe they should have. Canada has long promoted corporate and imperial interests in Colombia and continues to do so.

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Police in the Canadian province of Ontario said a man driving a pick-up truck slammed into a Muslim family in a “premeditated” attack, killing four and seriously injuring a nine-year-old boy.

Local news outlets said the victims were waiting to cross a street in the city of London, Ontario, about 200km southwest of Toronto, on Sunday evening, when the car mounted the curb.

The victims were two women aged 77 and 44, a 46-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl. The nine-year-old boy was seriously injured and is recovering in hospital. The authorities did not release the names of the victims.

“There is evidence that this was a planned, premeditated act, motivated by hate,” London Detective Superintendent Paul Waight told reporters on Monday.

“It is believed that these victims were targeted because they were Muslim.”

Canadian media reported that a 20-year-old man was arrested at a mall in London, near where it happened, and was charged with four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

CBC reported that the attacker was found wearing a vest that was similar to body armour in appearance.

“We grieve for the family, three generations of whom are now deceased,” London’s Mayor Ed Holder told reporters at Monday’s press conference.

“This was an act of mass murder, perpetrated against Muslims, against Londoners, and rooted in unspeakable hatred.”

‘This hate is insidious and despicable’

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “horrified” by what he described as an “act of hatred”, and said his thoughts were with the victims’ loved ones, including the young boy who survived.

“To the Muslim community in London and to Muslims across the country, know that we stand with you. Islamophobia has no place in any of our communities. This hate is insidious and despicable – and it must stop,” Trudeau tweeted.

To the Muslim community in London and to Muslims across the country, know that we stand with you. Islamophobia has no place in any of our communities. This hate is insidious and despicable – and it must stop.

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) June 7, 2021

Muslim communities in Canada are still reeling from a January 2017 mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec City that killed six Muslim men and injured several others.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims, a national advocacy group, said it was “beyond horrified” by the deadly attack.

“This is a terrorist attack on Canadian soil, and should be treated as such. We call on the government to prosecute the attacker to the fullest extent of the law, including considering terrorist charges,” the group’s CEO, Mustafa Farooq, said in a statement.

“Muslims in Canada have become all too familiar with the violence of Islamophobia, with attacks on Muslim women in Alberta, the IMO mosque killing, and the Quebec City mosque massacre.

“But this loss of a family, the loss of a child in our community because of Islamophobia – this is a sorrow that will run deep for a long time. But let that sorrow be the ground where we stand for justice, and stand for change.”

Jagmeet Singh, leader of the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP), also condemned what he described as “an act of Islamophobia & terror”.

“They were murdered because of their faith,” Singh wrote on Twitter. “More than ever we must stand w/ our Muslim family, friends & neighbours against such vile hate.”

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The UN said on Friday it was in talks with Iran over $16.3 million in overdue fees, which Tehran says have become impossible to pay due to US sanctions.

Iran and the Central African Republic have lost their voting rights in the 193-member UN General Assembly because they are in arrears on contributions to the world body’s operating budget.

“It’s not from lack of willingness of the Iranians to pay or no lack of willingness for us to engage with them in finding a solution to this issue,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Friday.

“Iran is a subject of bilateral sanctions, which impacts its ability for banking, and the UN’s accounts are in the United States, in New York.

“And so we have to find a way around the problem.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif used social media to condemn his country’s loss of voting rights, which came into effect in January.

Iran has been unable to pay the UN due to US sanctions that were imposed after former president Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018, said Mr Zarif.

“Iran’s inability to fulfil its financial obligation towards the United Nations is directly caused by unlawful unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States,” Mr Zarif wrote in a letter to the UN, which he posted on Twitter.

In “black is white” world, UN deprived Iran of its voting rights in the #UNGA as we’re in arrears.

Not considered: US #EconomicTerrorism prevents Iran paying for FOOD, let alone UN dues

My letter to @antonioguterres:

ps: UN can also collect from $110M US stole in recent piracy pic.twitter.com/xe30TsxP8f

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) June 3, 2021

US President Joe Biden has said he is willing to lift sanctions on Iran if it comes into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, but talks that began in early April in Vienna have yet to result in an agreement.

Three other African countries – Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe, and Somalia – also owe the UN money. But they can still vote in the current session, which ends in September, thanks to an assembly resolution.

UN members whose arrears equal or exceed the sum of their contributions for the preceding two full years lose their voting rights, according to the UN Charter.

Allowances can be made for situations beyond a UN member’s control.

According to a letter from UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the minimum payments needed to restore voting rights are $16,251,298 for Iran and $29,395 for the Central African Republic.

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Video: Covid-19 Criminality

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Ariel Noyola Rodriguez, June 07, 2021

Worldwide, people have been misled both by their governments and the media as to the causes and devastating consequences of the Covid-19 “pandemic”. SARS-2 is upheld as the “killer virus”.  And now the Covid vaccine is presented to public opinion as the “solution”, which will allow us to resume a “normal life”.

Fakery and Covid Insanity: Must Mankind Bow to “False Gods”?

By Julian Rose, June 07, 2021

We are living in the land of fake-believe.  Nothing is as it seems in this virtual world invented and monopolised by deceivers. A world in which warriors of truth are named ‘conspiracy theorists’ and masters of the lie are named ‘upholders of the truth’. And all the while, a largely hypnotized humanity bows down its head to this vainglorious game. This game of thrones.

Wuhan Lab Upheld as Source of COVID-19: China as a Target. Corrupt Political Circus on Behalf of Super-Rich

By Emanuel Pastreich, June 07, 2021

The commercial media is full of reports about the possibility that the COVID19 virus was released from a laboratory in Wuhan, China and the Republican Party is using this unfounded accusation as a means to further its anti-China agenda.

CPSO to Ontario Doctors: “Shut Up or Lose Your Licence”

By Karen Selick, June 07, 2021

CPSO commands Ontario’s doctors not to make any statements that might be considered anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing, or anti-lockdown. It forbids them to promote “unsupported, unproven” treatments for COVID-19. (Unproven by what standards? CPSO doesn’t say.) Doctors are further forbidden to make comments that might encourage people to act contrary to public health orders.

Video: Indian Bar Association Charges WHO Chief Scientist with Crimes Connected to Suppressing Ivermectin

By Dipali Ojha and Kristina Borjesson, June 07, 2021

Dipali Ojha, head of the Indian Bar Association’s team that crafted the Legal Notice, details the alleged criminal acts in which the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan engaged, some of which carry penalties up to life imprisonment or death.

Video: Syrian Presidential Elections, 2021

By Mark Taliano, June 07, 2021

Watch this video presentation on the 2021 Syrian Presidential elections.

Why Is There Such Reluctance to Discuss Natural Immunity?

By Jon Sanders, June 07, 2021

If you’re among those of us who aren’t tribally invested in Covid politics but would like good information about when life will resume as normal, chances are you’re interested in herd immunity. You’re likely not interested in having to rely on the Internet Archive for good information on herd immunity.

Biden-Moon Summit: A New Era of Washington-Seoul Alliance?

By Prof. Joseph H. Chung, June 07, 2021

President Moon Jae-in went to Washington with the invitation of President Joe Biden. The summit took place on May 21st. After a day of discussion in a friendly and relaxed environment, the two presidents announced a joint statement which went far beyond expectation of Koreans. In fact, it points to a new and much stronger Washington-Seoul Alliance. Indeed, it could be the new charter of the bilateral alliance.

Netanyahu’s Legacy of Hate Defines His Long Goodbye

By Richard Silverstein, June 07, 2021

On Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu was toppled from power after 12 consecutive years as Israel’s prime minister. He served an earlier three-year term as well, making him the longest serving leader in the country’s history.

How USAID Created Nicaragua’s Anti-Sandinista Media Apparatus, now Under Money Laundering Investigation

By Ben Norton, June 07, 2021

With tens of millions of dollars over years of work, CIA front USAID helped create and train Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista opposition. At the center of its operations is the elite Chamorro Foundation, which stands accused of money laundering.

Were “the Elderly… Being Killed in Hospitals, Care Homes, and Hospices” During the Pandemic?

By Mike Whitney, June 07, 2021

Jacqui Deevoy is an investigative journalist who has interviewed over 50 whistleblowers who believe their parents or partners were euthanized while in hospital. While I have no way to verify their claims, Deevoy’s presentation of the evidence is compelling to say the least.

More Than 10,000 Vaccinated People Catch Covid-19, Leading Many to Question if Vaccines Really Work

By Ramon Tomey, June 07, 2021

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it has recorded more than 10,000 cases of so-called breakthrough infections. These infections involve people who contract COVID-19 at least 14 days after their final COVID-19 vaccine dose. The public health agency still insisted that such instances are “relatively rare.”

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In this new illustration, we’ve broken down long, global supply chains to show you how the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and abuses against land rights activists and forest communities are linked to the food on our plates and the banks we use.

Here we’ve focussed on beef production in Brazil, the subject of our December 2020 investigation Beef, Banks and the Brazilian Amazon. Cattle grazing is the leading driver of deforestation emissions in Latin America. We see a similar dynamic – of global companies sending a clear message to other suppliers that profit can be made from clearing trees – with other products like palm oil and soy.

As we show in the illustration, a whole host of businesses, from cattle ranchers to fast food joints and supermarkets, are complicit in these abuses. Crucially, it’s those in the middle of the chain – the multinational beef traders and the global banks and investors who fund them – that incentivise those further up the chain to clear land for pasture, connecting consumers and bank customers further down the chain to these harms.

That’s why it’s vital that laws to curb deforestation tackle the players all along the supply chain – including the financial engine room that powers the whole system, international banks and investors.

It starts with biodiverse Amazon rainforest

STOPPING THE DESTRUCTION OF RAINFORESTS TO MAKE WAY FOR PASTURE FOR BEEF PRODUCTION COULD REDUCE BRAZIL’S AGRICULTURAL CARBON EMISSIONS BY 69%. NATHAN HACKETT / GLOBAL WITNESS

Home to an incredible 390 billion trees, the Amazon is one of the earth’s frontline defences against climate breakdown and home to 34 million forest peoples.

It absorbs vast amounts of emissions from the air, helping to reduce global heating, and it transpires water – creating huge rivers of moisture in the air, forming large clouds that keep temperatures down. The clouds drop rainfall thousands of miles away, used by millions as a source of water. It hosts unparalleled biodiversity and is home to communities who have managed the forest sustainably for generations.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND FOREST COMMUNITIES HAVE PROTECTED THEIR FORESTS FOR GENERATIONS AND GENERATIONS. NATHAN HACKETT / GLOBAL WITNESS

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The Covid vaccine business is a multibillion dollar endeavour. The mRNA vaccine is unapproved and experimental.

It has been authorized for so-called emergency use on behalf of Big Pharma. “Emergency Use” is not justified.

This article documents the process of unregulated enrichment of Big Pharma,  focussing on Moderna Inc’s mRNA Covid vaccine.

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Moderna is hard at work ramping up production of its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, which is projected to reap over $19 billion for the company by year’s end. But given that the pandemic is easing in parts of the world, what’s less certain is how 2022 will play out.

After a breakout year, Moderna sees strong reason to believe 2021 won’t be a one-off boom year. That’s thanks to the predicted need for booster shots and additional supply deals coupled with stronger pricing power, Jefferies analysts wrote to clients Thursday following a conversation with CEO Stéphane Bancel.

The Jefferies team thinks Moderna could drive $15 billion in 2022 revenues, with an upper limit of $30 billion. Where the company lands will depend on how the pandemic progresses, fear of infection and whether the company can produce future products, like a combo shot against COVID and the flu.

Plus, it’s possible that Moderna could start charging more per dose given its high efficacy, reliable manufacturing and absence of serious side effects that have plagued other vaccine developers, the analysts said.

Moderna has said it can churn out between 800 million to 1 billion doses this year, and about 3 billion by 2022. The company has been ramping up supply lines with CDMO heavyweights and is planning a massive expansion at its own U.S.-based facilities to meet its lofty supply expectations.

With more doses coming down the line, Moderna is already engaging with countries who weren’t able to secure supply this year, as well as with those that previously ordered adenovirus shots, Jefferies analysts wrote.

And discussions are ongoing with nations that already have supply deals, given that many have yet to begin inoculating children. The company’s shot has been used in people ages 18 and older, although the company is working to expand its use to those as young as 12, including in the U.S.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech is also developing three potential booster shots to target troublesome virus variants, including a lower dose of its original vaccine, one developed to target the variant first found in South Africa, and a combination of the two.

It’s thought that some countries will “want to ensure there are adequate orders” for booster shots as early as six months to a year after the first vaccines were administered, the Jefferies team said.

Pandemic shots aren’t the only sales prospects Moderna has in its back pocket, Jefferies said. The mRNA developer is also working on a shot for seasonal influenza, with initial results anticipated by the end of the year.

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The world watched aghast last month as Israeli forces during Ramadan stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, attacking and injuring hundreds of worshipers. The IDF proceeded to target schools, media centers and hospitals in Gaza—frequently described as the world’s largest open-air prison because of the state of siege it’s been under since 2007—killing hundreds, injuring thousands and forcing tens of thousands to flee.

Describing these events in The Hill (5/27/21), former high-ranking Republican Rep. Mike Rogers identified a different culprit: Iran. “Iran’s involvement in the current crisis is barely concealed,” he wrote, accusing the Islamic Republic of encouraging and “direct[ly] enabling” the violence. “Iran’s destabilizing influence is seen across the region,” the US official pontificated:

From Yemen with its support of the Houthis to Lebanon with its support of Hezbollah, its backing and support of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and its attempts to undermine democracy in Iraq. Tehran seeks not stability, growth, or peace, but chaos and instability in the region, and it is proving effective in this pursuit. Iran’s policies in the Middle East have done nothing but bring ruin to the region.

Other pundits laid the blame on Hamas. “Arab governments may criticize Israel for its actions in Jerusalem and the bombing, but they are very wary of Hamas’s desire to destabilize Israel/Arab relations,” wrote David Makovsky and Dennis Ross in the New York Daily News (5/14/21).

“The terrorist group [Hamas] will keep arguing that the only way to liberate Palestine is through armed resistance, not the more palatable tactics of its rival, Fatah,” wrote the Wall Street Journal (5/25/21), adding that “quashing radical Islamist movements that destabilize the Middle East and threaten US allies is a key aim of US regional policy.”

Dictionary vs. mediaspeak

Others might question whether the US, who just blocked multiple United Nations’ ceasefire attempts while greenlighting $735 million worth of arms sales to Israel, might be a more obvious “destabilizing” factor in the conflict and the region more generally.

Yet this appears not to have been considered for one moment. That is because, while the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “destabilize” as “to cause (something, such as a government) to be incapable of functioning or surviving,” in media and political speak, “stability” often simply means “under US control.” Therefore, by definition, the US cannot destabilize another government or region; only foreign actors can do such a thing.

To be fair to Rogers, he was merely echoing the statements of President Joe Biden, who said in February, “We must address Iran’s destabilizing activities across the Middle East,” and those of the most influential think tanks in Washington (e.g., Council on Foreign Relations, 7/16/14; Center for American Progress, 7/17/15; Heritage Foundation, 10/16/17; American Security Project, 3/5/21), who constantly accuse Iran—and not the US—of destabilizing the region.

Decoding ‘destabilizing’

Once we remember what “stability” and “destabilizing” mean, news from many of our most influential outlets makes much more sense. In 2014, the New York Times editorial board (6/18/14) condemned China for “threatening the stability and security” of nations in the South China Sea, but did not comment on its own government’s actions in the region, such as encircling China with military bases and conducting war games with nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the South China Sea.

More recently, it reported on Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s trip to Tokyo to try to build up a military alliance against the People’s Republic (New York Times, 3/16/21):

Mr. Austin noted Beijing’s “destabilizing actions” in the South and East China Seas, saying, “Our goal is to make sure that we maintain a competitive edge over China or anyone else that would want to threaten us or our alliance.

This passage makes far more sense if “destabilizing” is read to mean “US-challenging.”

Reserved for official enemies

Since the US and its allies can’t really be out of their own control, it is not surprising that the word is largely reserved for enemy states. Venezuela, for example, is commonly denounced as having a “destabilizing” effect on the region (e.g. Washington Post, 4/10/06; Reuters, 11/27/08, 6/28/09). Throughout the 2000s, President Hugo Chávez led a group of Latin American governments intent on pursuing a domestic and foreign policy independent from the US.

The New York Times (6/1/05), after lamenting that George W. Bush’s Free Trade Agreement for the Americas had been rejected; that the Organization of American States had ignored the US-backed candidate, instead electing a Chilean socialist as secretary general; and that Chávez was pioneering a new Latin American news network (TeleSUR) and signing oil deals with Argentina and Brazil, noted that for these reasons the Bush administration considered him a “destabilizing force.”

Later that year, the Times (12/19/05) told readers that the US saw Chávez, Bolivian President Evo Morales and Cuban leader Fidel Castro as part of a “destabilizing alliance.” This makes no sense whatsoever under the dictionary definition, as the new regional unity was actually helping Latin America prosper. But is perfectly understandable under the Washington-centric interpretation of the word. The US later helped overthrow Morales, and has attempted to do the same in Venezuela and Cuba, no doubt in an attempt to bring increased “stability” to those countries.

No ‘intent to destabilize’

This is far from a new concept. In the 1970s, the United States conducted a campaign of covert violence and economic warfare against the democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende, doing “everything we can to hurt him and bring him down,” in the words of Nixon-era Defense Secretary Melvin Laird.

Still, Nixon National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, the architect of Chile’s descent into a military dictatorship that killed or tortured tens of thousands of its own citizens, crashed the economy multiple times and drove hundreds of thousands into political exile, insisted that stability, not destabilization, was his goal. “The intent of the United States was not to destabilize or to subvert,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while privately assuring Nixon that they had “created the conditions as great as possible” for the coup (National Security Archive, 5/26/04).

Media follow Kissinger’s lead: US actions abroad, no matter how damaging, are often presented as bringing about stability. ABC World News (6/10/14) for instance, described the Iraq invasion as “America’s fight to bring peace and stability to this country” (FAIR.org, 6/11/14). This is still the official rationale for keeping troops in the area, one which is echoed by prominent think tanks (RAND, 4/24/18; Council on Foreign Relations, 5/28/18).

Imperial lexicon

An entire lexicon of terms has been built up  in corporate media to justify and launder violence. Enemy states are controlled by “regimes,” not “governments” (FAIR.org, 8/20/18); it is “aggression” when they do it, but “defense” when we do the same—or worse (FAIR.org, 4/30/21). It is not “torture,” it is merely “enhanced interrogation techniques” (FAIR.org, 4/2/14). We “stabilize” countries with our “muscular” foreign policy (FAIR.org, 8/28/20), while they destabilize regions merely by existing.

It is important to highlight these rhetorical tricks and call them out so that officials and hawkish pundits can less effectively sell the public more conflicts around the world. Hopefully your country will not be picked out as in need of stabilizing next.

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Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod is a member of the Glasgow University Media Group. His latest book, Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, was published by Routledge in May 2019.

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Russia’s National Welfare Fund (FNB) will no longer have U.S. dollars: within one-month, existing assets will be divided between the euro, the yuan and gold. In the U.S., they are already calling it a “political” decision.

All super profits from the sale of oil are put into the FNB, and it is part of Russia’s international reserves. According to data from the Central Bank on May 28, the FNB reached a historic high of $600.9 billion. The decision to exclude the U.S. Dollar from the FNB was announced by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov on June 3.

At present, dollar assets account for 35% ($40 billion) of the FNB, but will reach zero in a month. In addition, the share of the pound sterling will be reduced from 10% to five, the share of the euro will increase to 40%, and the yuan to 30%. Gold will be included in the fund for the first time and will account for 20%.

“In today’s structure, we have about 35% of investments in the FNB in ​​dollars and 35% in euros. Now we have to get rid of dollar assets completely,” said the Russian Finance Minister.

The news that Russia would get rid of the dollar in the FNB provoked a stormy reaction in the West. For example, London-based BlueBay Asset Management described the move as “very political.”

“The messaging is ’we don’t need the U.S., we don’t need to transact in dollars, and we are invulnerable to more U.S. sanctions,” said Timothy Ash, a senior emerging markets sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management. He added that it could be interpreted as a sign that Moscow is expecting more sanctions from the U.S.

In April, the Biden administration warned of further sanctions. The decision to exclude the U.S. dollar from the FNB was made ahead of the upcoming June 16 meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Joe Biden. Analysts point out that the sell-off of dollars is an obvious consequence of increasing geopolitical tensions and part of efforts to reduce the economy’s dependence on the U.S. currency. In Moscow, they want to minimize losses from U.S. sanctions against the banking sector, and therefore limit dollar operations.

The U.S. currency is also losing its value and thus its attractiveness to investors. For example, during 2020, the dollar depreciated against the euro from 0.8934 to 0.8149, i.e. by almost 9%. In 2021, a decrease of another five to seven percent is also possible due to the printing of more U.S. dollars that has accelerated inflation and reduced the value of the dollar.

Analysts also consider the investments of FNB funds in precious metals to be economically correct. For the first time, gold – with a share of 20% – will be involved in the fund’s structure.

A federal law allowing a similar allocation of funds was signed by Putin in December. The aim is to diversify investments, ensure their integrity and increase profitability. Gold is a universal monetary equivalent that does not lose value and is insurance against sanction risks. If relations between Washington and Moscow continue to deteriorate, Russia’s dollar accounts may be blocked – there is no similar threat to gold.

Investing in gold protects the global money market from inflationary processes necessary for stimulating monetary and credit policies, especially during a pandemic. It will also increase asset diversification and return, as well as reduce credit risk.

The FNB also has the advantage that it is still relatively unknown in the global financial system despite the fund having $185 billion in assets. Its entry into the precious metals market will be a significant event. Russia’s maneuvers to buy gold could have significant consequences for the West.

The Central Bank has aggressively bought precious metal over the past ten years, making Russia one of the largest holders of gold in the world. Virtually all gold mined by Russian companies passed to the regulatory authority. However, in April last year, the Central Bank suspended purchases and allowed exports abroad.

Since then, gold supplies abroad have increased significantly, with much of it being bought by Western countries, especially the United Kingdom.  With this strategic move by the FNB, Russia is not only more protected from any strengthened sanctions by the West, but is now setting itself up as a major precious metal dealer – thus further securing Russia’s monetary sovereignty by protecting its economy from future attacks.

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The commercial media is full of reports about the possibility that the COVID19 virus was released from a laboratory in Wuhan, China and the Republican Party is using this unfounded accusation as a means to further its anti-China agenda.

Donald Trump claimed credit recently for having identified China as the source of the virus and he demanded of 10 trillion dollars in compensation.

The Biden administration has demanded an investigation of the Wuhan labs so as to fend off this Republican assault, but since he has put opaque pay-to-play intelligence organizations in charge, and not established accountable international research teams, he guarantees that we will receive a politicized and meaningless report.

The entire circus is intended to distract the population as long as possible from the true origins of this crisis: the bid of a handful of the super-rich to employ a hyped up “virus” pandemic as a means to gut the government, the medical establishment, research institutes and the media permanently and to create a brave new world in which the “facts” that serve as the basis for policy decisions are decided in secret by them with no accountability to anyone. They now can make up figures for how many suffer from COVID19 at will and no one can prove them wrong in any media source that most citizens know about.

They dictate policy, whether lockdowns, quarantine, masks, or vaccines, in secret and then order the Congress, the White House, or research institutes and prestigious newspapers, to follow their mandate. This radical alteration of the landscape of decision making in the United States is the deadly outcome of the COVID19. It is a shift that, if citizens cannot apprehend its nature, will be fatal for the nation.

Although it is entirely possible that some of the deaths attributed to COVID19 were the result of the use of bioweapons (whether those of America, China or other countries). But the media is not trying to investigate that question at all. Rather the reporting about COVID19, and the Wuhan Lab, is deeply flawed and aimed primarily at creating hysteria and confusion, and at dumbing down the population as a whole.

The super-rich have been largely successful in this gambit and they currently they are paying off approved “experts” to stir up all sorts of pointless debates regarding the source of the outbreak, the nature of transmission and the proper treatment—anything that points away from the rich, and the investment banks they control, having played any role in this scam.

Although COVID19 is treated in many academic journals, this virus itself has never been subject to a rigorous scientific investigation and there is much doubt among scholars that the illnesses attributed to COVID19 are a result of that specific virus, or any number of other viruses, or even other diseases.

The confusion about COVID19 is real. It is not the result of a virus, but rather of deep corruption in the entire scientific community (globally) so much so that we cannot even determine the facts. Most all medical research today is funded by corporations tied into Wall Street at one level at another—whether direct funding of research, or support for the endowments of research institutions.

The flagrant acceptance by law makers of deeply flawed science, and the criminal manner in which they facilitate, even encourage, the destruction of the precious lives of children by unwarranted lockdowns, mask wearing, and social distancing is more than enough reason to demand that every politician involved in pushing, or repeating, the tale of a COVID19 pandemic resign and face criminal prosecution.

I do not wish to suggest that China was not involved in this bogus pandemic. The Chinese government, like every other government, has bought into this entirely implausible tale from the start. Most likely Beijing did so because multinational investment banks and the super-rich have as great a stranglehold on China as they do on the United States, or France, or Russia or Japan.

We live in a world unlike what existed three years ago, and unprecedented in human history. Our first task is to wrap our minds around this fact. The corrupt media and political culture of the United States cannot possibly help us to understand how our world works.

The point of the recent media coverage in the United States is to set up China as a target, as the evil one, so as to make this conflict seem to be between nations.

For the super-rich leading this project, sometimes referred to as “the Great Reset” that is exactly what they want. For their plans, nation states are irrelevant. But they are a create way to inhibit global cooperation.

The primary conflict behind COVID19 is between classes: between a tiny handful of global elites and the rest of humanity.

Although the move to pin everything on China is a slight-of-hand trick intended to distract, and no doubt to secure big classified intelligence budgets, Chinese have also been intimately involved in the promotion of this COVID19 operation, what we refer to as “the controlled demolition of the global economy.” There are Chinese super-rich as well who support the “Great Reset” agenda. Moreover, China has grown its own corrupt military-industrial complex over the last twenty years that purposely distorts security issues to increase its budgets.

There is only one way out of the COVID19 hall of mirrors. We must recognize, as painful as it may be to do so, that the entire system of governance in the United States, and most countries in the world, is now so thoroughly corrupt that it is incapable of assessing the facts and pursuing a positive, scientific response.

We cannot address the disgusting willingness with which hundreds of medical experts (not just Bill Gates’ favorite acolyte Anthony Fauci) have stepped forward to back social distancing, lockdowns, masks and vaccines without the slightest scientific evidence, unless we confront another similar tragedy.

We must first go back to the original assault on science in America that took place twenty years ago and that made this COVID19 pandemic possible.

COVID19 would not have been possible if we had not been subject to an intensive anti-science campaign after the 9.11 incident.

After the September 11, 2001 “attacks” on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, hundreds of scientists stepped forward to assert that it was possible for two skyscrapers, constructed of steel and reinforced concrete, to collapse into dust simultaneously, after being hit by two planes.

That argument would not pass in a high school physics class, but Harvard professors, and the vast majority of public intellectuals, were happy to swallow that tale hook, line and sinker.

It was a moral bankruptcy in America, and a deep corruption of education and science, that made it possible for millions to accept a ridiculous conspiracy theory as the mainstream explanation for the 9.11 incident. Should it should surprise us, then, that, twenty years later, so many are ready to accept an even more ridiculous tale?

When will we start to make progress? When can we move beyond this COVID19 nightmare?

We will only do so when we recognize that the entire system is corrupt to the core and that we must engage in a revolutionary rebuilding of institutions, of culture and of habits that will make us ultimately more human, more intellectually rigorous, and also will lead us back to the values of our Constitution.

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On April 30, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) announced explicitly a controversial policy that many Ontario doctors had intuitively feared it would adopt. Its Twitter feed, @cpso_ca, contained the framed statement shown below.

CPSO commands Ontario’s doctors not to make any statements that might be considered anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing, or anti-lockdown. It forbids them to promote “unsupported, unproven” treatments for COVID-19. (Unproven by what standards? CPSO doesn’t say.) Doctors are further forbidden to make comments that might encourage people to act contrary to public health orders.

Finally, there’s a naked threat: say the wrong thing and you’ll face “disciplinary action”. This translates into, “We’ll suspend your licence, cut off your income stream and impoverish you.”

This is a horrifying statement from both a medical and a legal perspective.

A courageous group of doctors calling themselves Canadian Physicians for Science and Truth quickly pushed back with this online Declaration. As I write this, 548 doctors and 14,487 concerned citizens have already signed it.

The doctors make these three major objections. First, the CPSO is commanding them to abandon the scientific method, which requires vigorous, open debate in order to test existing theories and improve upon or replace them with more accurate ones. That’s how science advances.

Second, the CPSO is commanding doctors to breach their pledge to patients to seek out and apply evidence-based medicine in their care and treatment. Instead of a full range of current and emerging evidence from multiple sources, doctors are restricted to applying stagnant information from only one source: the government.

Third, doctors are being ordered to violate their patients’ right to be fully informed before receiving medical treatment. This implies that doctors will also have to violate their own duty to obtain fully informed consent, putting themselves at risk for eventual lawsuits. Full information about masks, social distancing and vaccinations is not something you can impart to a patient in a 5-minute office visit. Half the world has spent the past 15 months seeking out information about these subjects, and there’s still plenty of room for debate.

It’s therefore easy to see why doctors are outraged by the new CPSO policy. But as a lawyer, I can see two other problems.

First, the dictates of the CPSO violate the Ontario Human Rights Code. Section 6 of the code says: “Every person has a right to equal treatment with respect to membership in any trade union, trade or occupational association or self-governing professionwithout discrimination because of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex…” [emphasis added].

The CPSO’s threat is a clear statement of its intention to discriminate on the basis of creed. Although some people interpret “creed” as religion, it actually has a broader meaning. If ever anything qualified as a creed, a doctor’s Hippocratic oath would. It requires doctors to use their own judgment for the benefit of their patients and to “abstain from whatever is deleterious.” Doctors also pledge to “give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked.”

Any doctor who has extensively researched the scientific literature on mask-wearing, social distancing, lockdowns and COVID vaccinations will know that there is an increasing body of evidence that all of these practices can do more harm than good. More than 5,100 vaccination-related deaths have this been recorded in the US database called Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), where adverse events are notoriously under-reported. The number in Europe is over 10,000. Doctors can’t “un-see” this information. It forms an important part of the cost/benefit analysis in determining whether or not COVID vaccines are appropriate for their patients.

The CPSO, by threatening the licences of doctors who speak up about these issues, is forbidding them to exercise their creed and discriminating against those that do, contrary to the Human Rights Code.

Doctors also have rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: section 2 rights to freedom of conscience, belief, opinion and expression, as well as section 7 rights to liberty and security of the person. The CPSO statement, with its implicit threat to cut off doctors’ incomes, violates these rights. As the body exclusively empowered by the state to govern doctors’ conduct, there’s no question that the CPSO is an agent of the state and is therefore governed by the Charter.

Other professionals in the health care industry – chiropractors and naturopathic doctors – have told me privately that they too are being bullied into silence and forced to comply with inadvisable practices such as masking.

Eventually, this issue will come before the courts – possibly when a doctor disobeys the CPSO and is facing disciplinary action, or when doctors proactively hire lawyers to sue the CPSO for violating their rights. For me, the moment can’t come too soon.

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Karen Selick [send her mail] is a retired lawyer who now works as a freelance writer, editor, and video maker.

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Beijing is preparing its maritime strategy to respond to Western incursions into the South China Sea. The commanders of naval forces of China and Vietnam have agreed to establish a hotline as part of a larger effort to ease tensions in the South China Sea. The joint efforts in maritime security arise as a consequence of a broad process of rapprochement between the two countries, which are trying to improve their military, diplomatic and commercial relations.

According to a recent article in the South China Morning Post, Rear Admiral Tran Thanh Nghiem, commander of the Vietnam Navy, held online conversations with Admiral Shen Jinlong, commander of the Chinese Navy, to discuss military relations between the two countries. The outcome of the conversation was a common agreement to improve the exchange of information between the two navies regarding the South Sea and other topics of mutual strategic interest. It has also been decided that both military forces will work towards the creation of a joint maritime patrol system in the Gulf of Tonkin.

In his conversation with the Chinese leader, Nghiem praised the recent efforts that have been made to improve bilateral relations between China and Vietnam, particularly in matters of naval defense and security. Faced with so many tensions and threats posed by American and Philippine incursions in the South Sea, the partnership between China and Vietnam becomes a central point to prevent the emergence of maritime conflicts in the region.

It is important to note how this military cooperation points to a different future than many analysts previously predicted due to some tensions in relations between China and Vietnam. In recent years, both countries have gone through some difficult moments in their bilateral relations, especially with regard to disputes over the Mekong River and the Paracel Islands. The small diplomatic crisis was enough for many analysts to believe in a future of tensions and disruption of bilateral relations, which is evidently not materializing.

In late May, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc talked by telephone and pledged to increase bilateral cooperation on various issues. On the occasion, Xi said that both sides should follow a strategic perspective in their relations and that the Chinese government is willing to adhere to a policy of friendship with Hanoi. The Chinese president also highlighted the importance of resuming investments in the Two Corridors, One Belt project, which is a connectivity initiative between China and Vietnam that is part of the Belt and Road Initiative. On his part, the Vietnamese president called for more efforts in health cooperation in combating COVID-19, new economic and commercial investments, and mutual efforts to ensure stability and security at sea, respecting the UN rules on international maritime law.

Obviously, tensions between China and Vietnam still exist. Both countries have a number of disagreements and disputes that will not be resolved so quickly. On the issue of the South Sea itself, China faces demands from Vietnam, as well as from the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. However, regional tensions must be resolved regionally, without influence from foreign powers. As the Philippines allows American interference in regional affairs as a way to confront China, Vietnam comes to fear the emergence of conflicts in the region and seeks greater friendship with Beijing as a way to face the foreign presence. Although Hanoi and Beijing have several differences, their regional problems are secondary to the possibility of a conflict involving the US – which supports the Philippines.

Furthermore, the Vietnamese strategy consists of simultaneously becoming strong enough to guarantee its interests in relation to China and also friendly to seek cooperation that avoids conflicts. This is the opinion of Le Hong Hiep, senior fellow with the Vietnam Studies Program at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, who states: “While trying to upgrade its military and maritime law enforcement capabilities to deal with China’s assertiveness on the ground, Vietnam also wants to promote bilateral political, economic and military peaceful cooperation where it is possible to maintain a mutually beneficial relationship with China (…) Promoting bilateral naval cooperation is part of these efforts”. In other words, the Vietnamese national strategy in relation to China includes guaranteeing its interests and preventing Chinese incursions, but it does not include any aggressiveness or rivalry, being a point to be resolved diplomatically and simultaneously with several bilateral cooperation projects.

Indeed, China and Vietnam are likely to increase their bilateral military cooperation as tensions in the South Sea continue to involve foreign interests, which means they are likely to cooperate more and more in the coming months, considering Biden’s aggressive foreign policy towards the Chinese presence in the region. On the other hand, with less international intervention in regional affairs, it will be possible to resume multilateral negotiations for the creation of the “Code of Conduct for the South China Sea”, which would regulate the rights of each country in that sea. Negotiations for the agreement were interrupted by the pandemic but may resume as the rate of immunization with vaccines increases – but for that to happen, Washington will have to stop imposing its interests in the region.

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

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The United States Africa Command’s (AFRICOM) upcoming African Lion exercises from 7-18 June are embroiled in controversy as a result of the Western Sahara conflict. Recent reports indicate that Spain won’t participate in the drills like previously planned officially due to alleged budgetary reasons, but speculation about the possibly true reasons are swirling. Russia’s Sputnik cited Spain’s El Pais as claiming that Madrid pulled out in order to not legitimize Morocco’s contentious claims to the European country’s former colony of Western Sahara where some exercises will be held, while the Moscow-based outlet also referred to Maghreb Intelligence‘s report that Morocco and the US pressured Spain to do this out of opposition to its recent hosting of a separatist leader.

Brahim Ghalil, the founder of the Western Sahara’s Polisario Front and president of the partially recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) left Spain earlier this week for Algeria after receiving treatment there for over a month. During his stay in his region’s former colonizer, he also appeared before the court via video in response to allegations that his movement was responsible for war crimes against dissident Sahrawis. The judge ultimately decided not to detain him owing to lack of evidence. Morocco was furious with Spain for hosting him in the first place though, and some observers interpreted the unimpeded influx of approximately 9,000 migrants into the North African Spanish town of Ceuta a few weeks back as Rabat’s asymmetrical response.

The core of historical Spanish-Moroccan tensions, which are now spilling over to affect the US’ AFRICOM exercises, is clearly the unresolved status of Western Sahara. Morocco claims the former colonial territory as its own and exercises de facto control over most of it while the Polisario Front regards this as illegitimate because relevant UNSC Resolutions on determining the disputed region’s final political status haven’t yet been fulfilled despite several decades since their promulgation. In addition, former US President Trump recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over this region late last year in a contentious policy reversal regarded as a quid pro quo for Rabat’s normalization with Israel at the time.

Although Spain’s hosting of the Polisario Front leader was described by its government as an apolitical humanitarian gesture, it was interpreted by Morocco as a hostile move implicitly extending support to him and his movement. Rabat is concerned about Madrid’s post-colonial influence in Western Sahara, while Spain’s stance seems to be that it’s not actually meddling but is simply reminding Morocco about international law. While the real reasons why Spain pulled out of the African Lion exercises are presently unclear, provided of course that its official explanation wasn’t fully forthcoming, it’s evidently the case that this unresolved conflict is now affecting the US’ African policy.

The US clearly supports Morocco’s claims of sovereignty to Western Sahara despite the issue remaining unsettled in accordance with the relevant UNSC Resolutions, with Washington regarding Rabat as much more important of an African partner than Madrid if push came to shove. This isn’t just due to the fact that Morocco is entirely located in Africa and in a geostrategic corner of it at that unlike Spain which only has a two small exclaves along the continent’s northern coast, but might also be motivated by economic reasons considering the fact that copious phosphate reserves are thought to lie underneath Western Sahara’s soil. In fact, The Atlantic even wrote in 2016 that this disputed region has the world’s second-largest reserves of this resource.

This little-reported fact adds a new strategic dimension to the conflict, making one wonder whether the relevant players – which include not just Morocco and Spain, but also neighboring Algeria which backs the Polisario Front – are more interested in phosphate than territorial sovereignty and international law like they’ve claimed. It also makes one wonder whether the US recognized Morocco’s control over Western Sahara in order to exploit the economic opportunities under its soil. Observers also shouldn’t forget Spain’s speculation that Morocco recently weaponized the large-scale migrant influx to Ceuta by passively facilitating it at the very least, which if true would raise serious questions about Rabat’s ethics.

Altogether, it’s clear that the unresolved Western Sahara conflict is reshaping the US’ contemporary approach to Africa. In Washington’s mind, its unilateral recognition of Rabat’s sovereignty over the disputed territory settles the matter, though Madrid, Algiers, and others still regard it as an open issue. The deteriorating relations between Spain and Madrid over the former’s hosting of the Polisario Front’s leader for medical treatment and subsequent refusal to detain him in response to war crimes accusations will likely impede cooperation not only on a bilateral basis but also a multilateral one in the AFRICOM context. This could result in a worsening security situation with respect to terrorism and migration, thereby putting Europe at greater risk of these threats.

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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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This has been a fantasy of Danish governments for some time.  There have been gazes of admiration towards countries like Australia, where processing refugees and asylum-seekers is a task offloaded, with cash incentives, to third countries (Papua New Guinea and Nauru come to mind).  Danish politicians, notably a good number among the Social Democrats, have dreamed about doing the same to countries in Africa, returning to that customary pattern of making poorer states undertake onerous burdens best undertaken by more affluent states.  

The government of Mette Frederiksen has now secured amendments to the Danish Aliens Act that authorises the transfer of asylum seekers to other countries as their applications are being processed.  The measure was secured on June 3 by a vote of 70 to 24, though critics must surely look at the absence of 85 MPs as telling.  The measure is not automatic: the Danish government will have to secure (or bribe) the trust of third party states to assume their share.  

Government spokesman Rasmus Stoklund left few doubts as to what the new law entailed.  “If you apply for asylum in Denmark, you know that you will be sent back to a country outside Europe, and therefore we hope that people stop seeking asylum in Denmark.” 

Stoklund’s language of warning evokes parallels with Australia’s own campaign of discouragement, marked by a highly-budgeted effort featuring such savage products as No Way.  You Will Not Make Australia Home.  In the video, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, then chief of Australia’s effort to repel naval arrivals known as Operation Sovereign Borders, is stern in threatening that “if you travel by boat without a visa you will never make Australia home”.  Other delights involve a graphic novel, translated into 18 different languages, promising trauma and suffering to those who end up in a detention centre in the Pacific, and the feature film Journey, where an Iranian mother and her child seek sanctuary in Australia.  The Danish propaganda arm will have some catching up to do.

Who then, are the third country candidates?  Denmark already has a memorandum of understanding with the Rwandan government that covers migration, asylum, return and repatriation.  Its purpose is to target an asylum system which supposedly gives incentives to “children, women and women to embark on dangerous journeys along migratory routes, while human traffickers earn fortunes”.  When it was made, Amnesty International’s Europe Director, Nils Muižnieks could see the writing on the wall, calling it “unconscionable” and even “potentially unlawful”.  But for Rwanda, just as it is with Pacific island states such as Nauru, money is to be made.  Such countries effectively replace demonised people smugglers as approved traffickers and middlemen.

The response to the legislation from those in the business of advocating for refugees and the right to asylum has been uniform in curtness and distress.  Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, voiced strong opposition to “efforts that seek to externalise or outsource asylum and international protection obligations to other countries.”

UNHCR spokesman Babar Balloch could only make the relevant point that the legislation ran “counter to the letter and spirit of the 1951 Refugee Convention”.  Moves to externalise “asylum processing and protecting of refugees to a third country… seriously risk setting in motion a process of gradual erosion of the international protection system, which has withstood the test of time over the last 70 years”. 

Balloch is evidently not as attentive as he thinks: those wishing to externalise such obligations have well and truly set this train in motion.  The 2018 EU summit went so far as to debate the building of offshore processing centres in Morocco, Algeria and Libya to plug arrival routes via the Mediterranean.  The UK government is also toying with the idea of an offshore asylum system.

Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Division distils the relevant principle being sacrificed.  “By sending people to a third country, what you are essentially doing is taking what is a legal right and making it a discretionary political choice.”  It is an increasingly attractive, if grotesque policy, for wealthier countries with little appetite to share the burdens of sharing the processing claims under the UNHCR’s Global Compact on Refugees.

Unfortunately for Frelkick and their like, the Danish government is proving derivatively consistent.  It has been opting out of the European asylum system since the 2000s, doing its bit to fragment an already incoherent approach in the bloc.  The centre right government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, just by way of example, was proud to reduce the number of asylum seekers and those wishing to settle in Denmark.  In 2004, 1,607 people were granted asylum compared to 6,263 three years prior. 

The approach of the current government is to negate the very right to seeking asylum in Denmark, aided by third countries.  And there is not much left to do, given that the country received a mere 1,515 asylum applications in 2020, its lowest in two decades.  Of those, 601 were granted permits to stay.

Lurking, as it always does in these situations, is the Australian example.  The right to asylum is vanishing before the efforts of bureaucrats and border closing populists.  The UN Refugee Convention, like other documents speaking to freedoms and rights, is becoming a doomed relic.

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

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A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Making Peace with Nature (2021), highlights the ‘gravity of the Earth’s triple environmental emergencies: climate, biodiversity loss, and pollution’. These three ‘self-inflicted planetary crises’, the UNEP says, put ‘the well-being of current and future generations at unacceptable risk’. This Red Alert, released for World Environment Day (5 June), is produced with the International Week of Anti-Imperialist Struggle.

What is the scale of the destruction?

Ecosystems have degraded at an alarming rate. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report from 2019 provides stunning examples of the scale of the destruction:

• One million of the estimated eight million species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction.
• Human actions have driven at least 680 vertebrate species to extinction since 1500, with global vertebrate species populations dropping by 68% in around the last 50 years.
• The abundance of wild insects has fallen by 50%.
• Over 9% of all domesticated mammal breeds used for food and agriculture had become extinct by 2016, with another thousand breeds currently facing extinction.

Ecosystem degradation is accelerated by capitalism, which intensifies pollution and waste, deforestation, land-use change and exploitation, and carbon-driven energy systems. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report, Climate Change and Land (January 2020), notes that only 15% of known wetlands remain, most having been degraded beyond the possibility of recovery. In 2020, the UNEP documented that, from 2014 to 2017, coral reefs suffered from the longest severe bleaching event on record. Coral reefs are projected to decline dramatically as temperatures rise; if global warming rises to 1.5°C, only 10-30% of reefs will remain, and if global warming rises to 2°C, then less than 1% of reefs will remain.

As things stand, there is a good chance that the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free by 2035, which will disrupt both the Arctic ecosystem and the circulation of ocean currents, possibly transforming global and regional climate and weather. These changes in the Arctic ice cover have already triggered a race among major powers for military domination in the region and for control over valuable energy and mineral resources, opening the door even further for devastating ecological destruction; in January 2021, in a paper titled Regaining Arctic Dominance, the US military characterised the Arctic as ‘simultaneously an arena of competition, a line of attack in conflict, a vital area holding many of our nation’s natural resources, and a platform for global power projection’.

The warming of the ocean comes alongside the annual dumping of up to 400 million tonnes of heavy metals, solvents, and toxic sludge (among other industrial wastes) – not accounting for radioactive wastes. This is the most dangerous waste, but it is only a tiny proportion of the total waste thrown into the ocean, including millions of tonnes of plastic waste. One study from 2016 finds that, by 2050, it is likely that there will be more plastic by weight in the ocean than fish. In the ocean, plastic accumulates in swirling gyres, one of which is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an estimated mass of 79,000 tonnes of ocean plastic floating inside a concentrated area of 1.6 million km ²(roughly the size of Iran). Ultraviolet light from the sun degrades the debris into ‘microplastics’, which cannot be cleaned up, and which disrupts food chains and ruins habitats. The dumping of industrial waste into the waters, including in rivers and other freshwater bodies, generates at least 1.4 million deaths annually from preventable diseases that are associated with pathogen-polluted drinking water.

The waste in the waters is only a fraction of the waste produced by human beings, which is estimated to be 2.01 billion tonnes per year. Only 13.5% of this waste is recycled, while only 5.5% is composted; the remaining 81% is discarded in landfills, incinerated (which releases greenhouse and other toxic gases), or finds its way into the ocean. At the current rate of waste production, it is estimated that this figure will rise by 70% to 3.4 billion tonnes by 2050.

No study shows a decrease in pollution, including the generation of waste, or a slowing down of the rise in temperature. For instance, the UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report (December 2020) shows that the world at the present rate of emissions is on track for warming by at least 3.2°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. This is far above the limits set by the Paris Agreement of 1.5°-2.0°C. Planetary warming and environmental degradation feed into each other: between 2010 and 2019, land degradation and transformation – including deforestation and the loss of soil carbon in cultivated land – contributed a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, with climate change further worsening desertification and the disruption of soil nutrition cycles.

What are common and differentiated responsibilities?

In the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development declaration, the seventh principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ – agreed upon by the international community – establishes that all nations need to take on some ‘common’ responsibilities to reduce emissions, but that the developed countries bear the greater ‘differentiated’ responsibility due to the historical fact of their far greater contribution to cumulative global emissions causing climate change. A look at the data from Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre’s Global Carbon Project shows that the United States of America – by itself – has been the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions since 1750. The main historical carbon emitters were all industrial and colonial powers, mainly European states and the United States of America. From the 18^th century, these countries have not only emitted the bulk of the carbon into the atmosphere, but they also continue to exceed their fair share of the Global Carbon Budget in proportion to their populations. The countries with the least responsibility for creating the climate catastrophe – such as small island states – are the ones hardest hit by its disastrous consequences.

Cheap energy based on coal and hydrocarbons, along with the looting and plundering of natural resources by colonial powers, enabled the countries of Europe and North America to enhance the well-being of their populations at the expense of the colonised world. Today, the extreme inequality between the standard of living for the average European (747 million people) and the average Indian (1.38 billion people) is as stark as it was a century ago. The reliance by China, India, and other developing countries on carbon – particularly coal – is indeed high; but even this recent use of carbon by China and India is well below that of the United States. The 2019 figures for per capita carbon emissions of Australia (16.3 tonnes) and the US (16 tonnes) are more than twice that of China (7.1 tonnes) and India (1.9 tonnes).

Every country in the world has to make advances to transition from reliance upon carbon-based energy and to prevent the large-scale degradation of the environment, but the developed countries must be held accountable for two key urgent actions:

1. Reducing harmful emissions. Developed countries must urgently bring about drastic emission cuts of at least 70-80% of 1990 levels by 2030 and commit to a pathway to further deepen these cuts by 2050.
2. Capacitating mitigation and adaption. Developed countries must assist developing countries by transferring technology for renewable energy sources as well as by providing financing to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change recognised the importance of the geographical divide of industrial capitalism between the Global North and South and its impact on respective inequitable shares of the global carbon budget.

That is why all of the countries at the numerous Climate Conferences agreed to create a Green Climate Fund at the Cancun Conference in 2016. The current target is $100 billion annually by 2020. The United States under the new Biden administration has pledged to double its international finance contributions by 2024 and triple its contributions for adaptation, but, given the very low baseline, this is highly inadequate. The International Energy Agency suggests each year in its World Energy Outlook that the actual figure for international climate finance should be in the trillions. None of the Western powers have intimated anything like a commitment of that scale to the Fund.

What can be done?

1. Shift to zero carbon emissions. The world’s nations as a whole, led by the G20 (which accounts for 78% of all global carbon emissions), must enact realistic plans to shift to zero net carbon emissions. Practically speaking, this means zero carbon emissions by 2050.
2. Reduce the US military footprint. Currently, the US military is the single largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases. The reduction of the US military footprint would considerably reduce political and environmental problems.
3. Provide climate compensation for developing countries. Ensure that developed countries provide climate compensation for loss and damages caused by their climate emissions. Demand that the countries that polluted the waters, soil, and air with toxic and hazardous wastes – including nuclear waste – bear the costs of clean-up; demand the cessation of the production and use of toxic waste.
4. Provide finance and technology to developing countries for mitigation and adaption. Additionally, developed countries must provide $100 billion per year to address the needs of developing countries, including for adaptation and resilience to the real and disastrous impact of climate change. These impacts are already borne by developing countries (particularly the low-lying countries and small island states). Technology must also be transferred to developing countries for mitigation and adaptation.

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Dipali Ojha, head of the Indian Bar Association’s team that crafted the Legal Notice, details the alleged criminal acts in which the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan engaged, some of which carry penalties up to life imprisonment or death.

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Updated the video on July 19, 2022

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

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The Syrian elections have come and gone, but ISIS remains, with the necessity to contain the terrorist group.

On June 2, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that more than 110 airstrikes were carried out on ISIS hideouts in the central region.

Approximately 100 were attributed to the Russian aerospace forces, with the remainder on the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

There are no numbers of casualties, however as a result of May’s efforts, at least 27 ISIS terrorists were killed and 41 wounded.

Both the SAA and its Russian support are pushing to contain ISIS further in the central region, and that is happening with mixed success.

Russia suspended the salaries of former rebels in the southern Syrian governorate of Daraa because they refused to step up their efforts against ISIS.

Daraa’s former rebels joined the fight against ISIS in central Syria in February under the banner of the 8th Brigade, a unit of the army’s 5th Corps of the SAA.

In April, the 8th Brigade faced a major backlash from Syrian opposition supporters after sending reinforcements to the central region. Many in the opposition don’t see the battle against ISIS as theirs.

In May, the brigade members flat out refused to send any reinforcement, and as such their salaries were held back. Since the “moderate opposition” in these regions doesn’t view ISIS as a threat, and as such there is no need to fight against the terrorists.

Meanwhile, despite the pressure, ISIS continues its attacks.

On June 1, ISIS terrorists targeted a vehicle carrying supplies for the Syrian National Defense Forces near the town of al-Salamiyah in eastern Hama with an improvised explosive device.

ISIS main stronghold in central Syria is the Homs desert, which lays between eastern Homs and western Deir Ezzor.

Due to Syrian and Russian military pressure most of the terrorist group’s recent attacks took place in eastern Hama, southern Aleppo and southern Raqqa.

In the Homs countryside, weapons caches left by other militant factions are being steadily discovered and cleared out, which also limits ISIS’ reinforcement opportunities.

In al-Hawl camp, which hosts thousands of families of ISIS militants, many children are still being educated by their mothers by ISIS propaganda.

Some 50,000 Syrians and Iraqis are housed there. Nearly 20,000 of them are children.

A separate, heavily-guarded section of the camp known as the annex houses another 2,000 women from 57 other countries, considered the most die-hard ISIS supporters, along with their children, numbering 8,000.

This presents a significant threat of resurgence. UNICEF, as well as the Kurdish groups are attempting to avoid such a scenario, but there seems to be little progress.

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If you’re among those of us who aren’t tribally invested in Covid politics but would like good information about when life will resume as normal, chances are you’re interested in herd immunity. You’re likely not interested in having to rely on the Internet Archive for good information on herd immunity. Alas, it’s become a go-to place for retrieving, as it were, previously published information on herd immunity that became inconvenient post-vaccine and then virtually Memory-Holed.

Over the past 15 months, the litany of Experts’ True Facts and Science regarding various aspects of SARS-CoV-2 has changed more often than the starting lineup of a bad minor league ball club. Covid-19 is spread by droplets, especially from asymptomatic people, until one day it was airborne all along and people who weren’t sick in all likelihood weren’t even sick.

Stay at home, you’re safer indoors, even stay away from parks and beaches; well, actually, outdoors is the place to be. Masks don’t work against viruses and are actually unhealthy to wear if you’re not sick, then suddenly they did work and without one you might as well be shooting people. Everyone knows and PolitiFact verified that the virus couldn’t have been created in the prominent infectious disease lab doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in bats coincidentally at Covid Ground Zero until, one day, PolitiFact had to retract the entire “Pants on Fire!” article. And so forth.

Unfortunately, information about herd immunity has also not been immune to this kind of meddling. Until recent months, people readily understood that active immunity came about either by natural immunity or vaccine-induced immunity. Natural immunity comes from battling and defeating an actual infection, then having your immune system primed for the rest of your life to fight it off if it ever shows up again. This immunity is achieved at a sometimes very high personal price.

Vaccine-induced immunity is to prime your immune system with a weaker, non-threatening form of the invading infection, so that it’s ready to fight off the real thing should you ever encounter it, and without your having first to risk severe illness or death.

Those interested in herd immunity in itself likely don’t have a moral or political preference for one form of immunity to the exclusion of the other. Immunity is immunity, regardless of whether a particular person has it naturally or by a vaccine. All immunity contributes to herd immunity.

Others, however, are much less circumspect. They seem to have forgotten the ultimate goal of the public campaign for people to receive vaccination against Covid-19. It’s not to be vaccinated; it’s to have immunity. People with natural immunity — i.e., people whose immune systems have faced Covid-19 and won — don’t need a vaccine.

They do, however, need to be considered in any good-faith discussion of herd immunity. There are two prongs to herd immunity, as we used to all know, and those with natural immunity are the prong that’s being ignored. It’s not just mere oversight, however. Fostering such ignorance can lead to several bad outcomes:

• People with natural immunity could be kept from employment, education, travel, normal commerce, and who knows what other things if they don’t submit to a vaccine they don’t need in order to fulfill a head count that confuses a means with the end
• The nation could already be at herd immunity while governors and health bureaucrats continue to exert extreme emergency powers, harming people’s liberties and livelihoods
• People already terrified of Covid — including especially those who’ve already had it — would continue to live in fear, avoiding human interaction and worrying beyond all reason
• People could come to distrust even sound advice from experts about important matters, as they witness and grow to expect how what “the experts” counsel diverges from what they know to be wise counsel while it conforms to and amplifies the temporary needs of the political class

Those of us wanting good information certainly don’t want any of those outcomes. But others seem perfectly fine to risk them. They include not only elected officials, members of the media, political talking heads, self-important bureaucrats, and their wide-eyed acolytes harassing shoppers, but strangely also highly prominent health organizations.

For example, late last year Jeffrey Tucker showed that the World Health Organization (WHO) suddenly, and “for reasons unknown,” changed its definition of “herd immunity.”

Using screenshots from a cached version on the Internet Archive, Tucker showed how the WHO altered its definition in such a way as to erase completely the role of natural immunity. Before, the WHO rightly said it “happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.” The WHO’s change stated that it happens “if a threshold of vaccination is reached.” Not long after Tucker’s piece appeared, the WHO restored natural immunity to its definition.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), seemingly apropos of nothing, on May 19 issued a “safety communication” to warn that FDA-authorized SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests “should not be used to evaluate immunity or protection from COVID-19 at any time.” The FDA’s concern appears to be that taking an antibody test too soon after receiving a vaccination may fail to show vaccine-induced antibodies, but why preclude its use for “identifying people with an adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2 from a recent or prior infection?” Especially after stating outright that “Antibody tests can play an important role in identifying individuals who may have been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and may have developed an adaptive immune response.”

Then there is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, that ubiquitous font of fatuous guidance. He had told people that herd immunity would be at 60 to 70 percent immunity, and then he started publicly cinching those numbers up: 75 percent, 80 percent, 85 percent, even 90 percent (as if Covid-19 were as infectious as measles). He is quoted in the New York Times admitting to doing so deliberately to affect people’s behavior:

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.“

Now — or better put, as of this writing — Fauci has taken to arguing herd immunity is a “mystical elusive number,” a distracting “endgame,” and therefore not worth considering. Only vaccinations are worth counting. As he put it recently, “We don’t want to get too hung up on reaching this endgame of herd immunity because every day that you put 2 million to 3 million vaccinations into people [it] makes society be more and more protected.”

While composing an article about natural immunity and herd immunity for my home state of North Carolina, I happened to notice that the Mayo Clinic had removed a compelling factoid about natural immunity. It’s something I had quoted in an earlier discussion of the matter and wanted to revisit it.

Here’s what the Mayo Clinic once wanted people to know in its page on “Herd Immunity and COVID-19” with respect to natural immunity: “[T]hose who survived the 1918 flu (influenza) pandemic were later immune to infection with the H1N1 flu, a subtype of influenza A.” The Mayo Clinic pointed out that H1N1 was during the 2009-10 flu season, which would be 92 years later. That finding attested to just how powerful and long-lived natural immunity could be.

As can be seen from the Internet Archive, however, sometime after April 14 the Mayo Clinic removed that compelling historical aside:

The Mayo Clinic also reoriented its page to feature vaccination over “the natural infection method” (method?) and added a section on “the outlook for achieving herd immunity in the U.S.” This new section stated that “it’s not clear if or when the U.S. will achieve herd immunity” but encouraged people nonetheless that “the FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at protecting against severe illness requiring hospitalization and death … allowing people to better be able to live with the virus.”Why, from people who know better, is there so much interest in downplaying or erasing natural immunity?

Is it because it’s hard to quantify how many people have natural immunity? Is it out of a mix of good intentions and worry, that discussing natural immunity would somehow discourage (“nudge,” in Fauci’s term) people from getting vaccines who otherwise would? Is it simple oversight, being so focused on vaccinations that they just plain forgot about natural immunity? Or is something else at work?

Whatever the reason, it’s keeping Americans in the dark about how many people have active immunity from Covid-19. It’s keeping people needlessly fearful and suspicious of each other. It’s empowering executive overreach. Worst of all, it’s tempting people to consider government and business restrictions on the unvaccinated, regardless of their actual immunity.

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Jon Sanders is an economist and the senior fellow of regulatory studies and research editor at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina. Jon researches a broad range of areas, including energy and electricity policy, occupational licensing, red tape and overregulation, alcohol policy, executive orders and overreach, poverty and opportunity, cronyism and other public-choice problems, emerging ideas and economic growth, and other issues as they arise.

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President Moon Jae-in went to Washington with the invitation of President Joe Biden. The summit took place on May 21st. After a day of discussion in a friendly and relaxed environment, the two presidents announced a joint statement which went far beyond expectation of Koreans. In fact, it points to a new and much stronger Washington-Seoul Alliance. Indeed, it could be the new charter of the bilateral alliance.

The general observation is that the summit was a success. One of the reasons of the success was, probably, President Biden’s trust in the remarkable leadership of President Moon leading to outstanding achievements of Moon’s government in its management of the pandemic, the democratization of the economy, growing technological autonomy, affirmative diplomacy and its inter-Korea and Washington-Pyongyang peace dialogue initiatives. One thing was that President Moon also seemed to have confidence in President Biden’s ambitious projects of infrastructure investments and generous social welfare program.

The agreements in the joint declaration may be summarized in this way.

First, contrary to the expectations of many observers of Washington-Seoul relations, the Biden government respects both the Trump-Kim Summit of June 12, 2018 and the inter-Korea Summit of April 17, 2018.

This means three things of paramount importance. To begin with, the U.S. and the DPRK would seek for new bilateral relations. The DPRK will undertake complete denuclearization on the Korea peninsula. In addition as far as two Koreas are concerned, the Korea war is ended and the inter-Korea economic cooperation becomes feasible,

Second, the statements have promised a new Washington-Seoul alliance of vaccine production and its global diffusion. According to this alliance, Samsung Biologics will produce Moderna vaccines. In addition, Moderna has signed a few MOUs for joint vaccine-related research projects with Korean government and research institutes. In short, Korea will become the vaccine hub in the world. This shows Biden’s confidence in Korea’s capacity of vaccine production and Moon’s vision of making vaccine as global public good. This is, in fact, vaccine diplomacy competing with Chinese vaccine diplomacy.

Third, the joint statement means also the creation of a Washington-Seoul partnership in the creation of global value chain of semiconductors and batteries needed for electric automobiles. Samsung, LG and SK will invest in the U.S. as much as 40 billion USD for the production of chips and batteries needed for electric cars. This project is a part of the process of de-coupling of the value chain presently dominated by China. This could mean in fact the beginning of the de-coupling of the China-dominated value chain of automobiles

Fourth, the joint statement deals with some issues which are sensitive in the present context of Sino-American hegemonic rivalry in the Indo-Pacific region. The document says that both parties are concerned with the Taiwan crisis without mentioning China. The document mentions also the Quad with no reference to China.

However, in the document, Korea, along with the U.S., opposes all activities that undermine, destabilize and threaten the rule-based international order in the South China Sea and beyond. This is another part of the document which might invite China’s displeasure.

In relation to the DPRK, both sides agree for the improvement of human rights problem. This is a sensitive issue for Pyongyang. On the other hand, Biden’s nomination of Kim Sung as special North Korea envoy may be good news for Kim Jong-un.

Fifth, the Missile Guidelines was amended allowing South Korea to develop missiles which can 2,000 km long enough to attain China.

In the eyes of China, the joint statements mean Seoul’s active participation in Washington’s China containment policy. Therefore, South Korea finds itself in a delicate position in which it has to find a difficult balance between “security protection” by  Washington and trade interest with China.

This is, in fact, the repetition of Korea’s geopolitical dilemma. There is an old Korean saying that Korea is a shrimp squeezed between two whales. If the whales collide, the shrimp will die. Once again, Korea finds itself between two whales but, this time, not as a shrimp, but as a dolphin which is surely more intelligent and stronger than the shrimp.

Through his brilliant performance at the Summit with President Biden, President Moon might have succeeded in making Korea a super intelligent dolphin capable of preventing the whales from colliding.

If this is the case, President Moon will leave his office with the legacy of being one of the most capable diplomats in the history of Korea.

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Prof. Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co-director of the East Asia Observatory (OAE) of the Study Center of Integration and Globalization (CEIM), Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM)

He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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On today’s episode of The Backstory host Lee Stranahan and co-host John Kiriakou discussed current events, including eight protestors killed in Syria, and a Los Angeles County, California firefighter is suspected of shooting two of his colleagues.

GUEST

Frank Serpico – Whistleblower, Former NYPD Officer, and Activist | Corruption, The Knapp Commission, and Whistleblowers

Taylor Hudak – Journalist & Editor with AcTVism Munich | Update on Julian Assange Health, Craig Murray, Taylor’s Covid-19 Reporting

In the first hour, Lee and John spoke with Frank Serpico on Frank’s exposure of NYPD corruption, the code of silence in the police department, and political corruption in America. Frank spoke on his work assisting whistleblowers with legislative protection and how the term ‘whistleblower’ is viewed in other countries. Frank spoke on his travels around the world and his discussions with police departments in other countries.

In the second hour, Lee and John spoke with Taylor Hudak about Julian Assange’s father and brother on tour in America, Craig Murray going to prison, and doctors concerned with Covid-19 misinformation. Taylor spoke on the Craig Murray prison sentence for his reporting of the Alex Salmond trial and his preparations to enter prison. Taylor spoke on her discussions with doctors on the topic of Covid-19 and the media collusion with the US government on Covid-19.

Also, we touch upon news that autonomous killer drones might have attacked people in Libya, according to a report from the United Nations Security Council’s Panel of Experts on Libya.

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On Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu was toppled from power after 12 consecutive years as Israel’s prime minister. He served an earlier three-year term as well, making him the longest serving leader in the country’s history. 

There may well be twists and turns yet to come. The Knesset has not sworn in the new government and Netanyahu may be able to peel off right-wing members of Yair Lapid’s coalition. In recent years, it has sometimes felt like everything can be imagined except the end of the man who rules Israel. Even if he is removed, we know he will not be done. But at this point it is worth considering his reign, which has offered little in the way of achievements.

At home, he ruled by division. Not only did he demonise the usual suspects, such as the leftists and assorted activists, he even raged against human rights groups for testifying to UN tribunals about possible war crimes and passed legislation compelling them to reveal publicly their foreign donors. He demonised his political opponents and went far beyond mere disagreement. Netanyahu’s opponents were traitors to the nation. They would sell out the country by permitting a Palestinian state and would be soft on Hamas and let the rockets to fly once again, the prime minister said.

Even within his own Likud Party, Netanyahu tossed away former proteges like stale bread. His chiefs of staff were notorious for becoming his fiercest political rivals. In fact, the prime-minister designate, Naftali Bennett, once served in that very role, as did Avigdor Lieberman, who cut his political teeth under Netanyahu. Even his mentors, like former president Reuven Rivlin, who helped bring him to power, were viewed as threats. When Rivlin ran for president, the prime minister ran an ultimately failed campaign to sabotage his candidacy.

No coherent vision

Netanyahu hardly espouses a coherent political programme around which his supporters could rally. He relied mainly on an ultra-nationalist settler ideology that has permeated Israeli society and now dominates the levers of state power. He built tens of thousands of new homes in settlements. Under his rule, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians continued from their lands both in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

His goal became, along with his settler patrons, to destroy any possibility of a Palestinian state. In this he was wildly successful. Currently, no political party, even those purporting to be left-wing, has made Palestinian national rights a priority. Centrist and leftist politicians downplay such views. You hardly ever hear support for a two-state solution. The only figures advancing this argument are US Democrats and American Jewish liberal Zionists.

In 2018, Netanyahu shepherded the Nation State Law to its passage in the Knesset. It excluded Palestinian citizens of Israel from any official national status. Arabic was no longer an official state language. Henceforth, Israel was to be a state of – and for – Jews only. Palestinians, who became citizens of the state in 1948, felt deeply disrespected. Their rights, such as they were, have been trampled on. In fact, one can trace the riots which spread like wildfire throughout mixed Jewish-Palestinian towns in Israel last month to this hated legislation.

As part of his longstanding efforts to concentrate power in his hands, Netanyahu succeeded in controlling much of the nation’s media. Some of these efforts involved orchestrating deals in which corporate executives were rewarded financially for offering favourable political coverage. Currently, Netanyahu is on trial on three separate criminal counts. Had the new governing coalition not been formed, a guilty verdict would have forced him to resign.

External enemies

Regionally, the fear Netanyahu generated among Israelis over external enemies created an artificial sense of cohesion, permitting him to unite the country in the face of such hostile forces. He needed enemies like Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah in order to preserve his hold on the Israeli electorate. He launched a decade-long terror campaign against Tehran and what he claimed was its attempt to gain regional dominance.

He directed Mossad to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme by assassinating scientists and bombing missile bases and nuclear facilities. Netanyahu ordered air strikes against Iran’s military bases in Syria and mounted strikes on Hezbollah, one of Tehran’s major regional allies, which also fought alongside Syrian government forces.

In 2014, Netanyahu launched Operation Protective Edge by invading Gaza to stamp out rocket attacks against Israel. Over 2,300 Palestinianis died. The vast majority were civilians. The attack led to a ceasefire, but resolved none of the major outstanding issues dividing Hamas from Israel.

Last month, facing a new onslaught of Hamas missiles fired in response to Israeli police brutality at al-Aqsa Mosque and in solidarity with Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, Netanyahu again mounted an offensive against Gaza. This time, the military operation lasted only 11 days due to the intervention of US President Joe Biden. Hundreds of Palestinians died.

Unlike the previous assaults, neither Israelis nor the world were persuaded by Netanyahu’s claims that Israel was only defending itself from Hamas rockets. Instead, they viewed the merciless Israeli air strikes as acts of aggression against a civilian population. The war had no strategic objective other than helping to keep Netanyahu in power, since his political rivals did not dare to plot against him as long as the country was at war.

As the world turned against Israel, Israelis themselves had grown weary of his belligerence and bellicosity. In particular, they grew weary of the multiple charges of corruption filed against him by the attorney general.

A legacy of hate

Like former US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu has always had the support of a strong minority of Israelis who believe in him no matter what he does. But he never commanded a majority. Instead, like Trump, the majority of Israelis disliked and distrusted him, but never enough to create a unified opposition that could dislodge him from power.

He remained in power as long as he did not because he was loved, but because the opposition was fragmented, and no-one who could command enough support to topple him rose up. In part, this was due to Netanyahu’s success at smearing his rivals and turning them into damaged goods.

Netanyahu has left a legacy of hate, fear and betrayal in his wake. There is a massive wreckage strewn across the political landscape. Israel is more divided than it has ever been between rich and poor, secular and religious, Palestinian and Jew, right and left. This is a testament to Netanyahu and what he wrought. Even with the new government coming to power, it does not promise to undo the damage, because the coalition itself is an amalgam of political parties with conflicting ideologies and agendas.

The question facing Israel and its new leaders is whether they can repair the damage he inflicted; or whether his influence will linger, and the country will continue the downward slide toward the authoritarian rule he initiated.

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Richard Silverstein writes the Tikun Olam blog, devoted to exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state. His work has appeared in Haaretz, the Forward, the Seattle Times and the Los Angeles Times. He contributed to the essay collection devoted to the 2006 Lebanon war, A Time to Speak Out (Verso) and has another essay in the collection, Israel and Palestine: Alternate Perspectives on Statehood (Rowman & Littlefield) Photo of RS by: (Erika Schultz/Seattle Times)

Featured image is from Shutterstock

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***

Am 22. Mai 2021 erschien in der New York Times ein erstaunlicher Artikel: Ein langer Essay über eine bevorstehende Abnahme der Weltbevölkerung. Diese wird mit einer Reihe von (irreführenden) Argumenten begründet. Die massive Impfnötigung, der wir derzeit ausgesetzt sind, wird dabei natürlich mit keinem Wort erwähnt. Vielmehr soll der Artikel unsere Aufmerksamkeit gerade davon ablenken.

Der «vaccine deep state» hat eine klare Agenda: nämlich, dass bis 2022 mindestens 70% der Weltbevölkerung die mRNA-Stoffe verabreicht bekommen haben. Das Spike-Protein, dessen Produktion sie anregen, ist eigentlich eine Bio-Waffe: es greift in das Immunsystem ein und wird in vielen Fällen Blutgerinnungen, Lähmungen, eine Fülle von neurologischen Störungen sowie Thrombosen — und schliesslich den Tod verursachen. Wenn es einmal injiziert wurde, könnten die Auswirkungen irreversibel sein …

Offensichtlich werden «corona-skeptische» Websites von anonymen Akteuren enorm unter Druck gesetzt, damit sie ihren Widerstand gegen das «Impfen» aufgeben. Der tiefe Covid-Staat spricht eine deutliche Sprache und arbeitet auch mit direkten Drohungen. Das belegt beispielhaft dieser Beitrag von Natural News vom 28. Mai 2021.

Denken wir darüber nach — aber immer mit der Prämisse, dass diese Leute nicht damit durchkommen werden. Unser Sinn für Menschlichkeit und unsere Widerstandskräfte sind viel stärker als ihr teuflischer Plan. Wir müssen aufwachen und solidarisch zusammenstehen — und das wird auch geschehen. Und weil sie das wissen, sind sie so verzweifelt, so viele Menschen so schnell wie möglich zu «impfen», bevor das Ganze auffliegt. 70% der Weltbevölkerung ist ihr Ziel. Wer einmal die Spritze erhalten hat, für den gibt es womöglich kein Zurück.

Dies eine Zusammenfassung, die Peter Koenig zu seinem Artikel «Depopulation and the mRNA Vaccine» verfasst hat. Wir haben sie ins Deutsche übersetzt (Anm. d. Redaktion).

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

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). 

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

With tens of millions of dollars over years of work, CIA front USAID helped create and train Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista opposition. At the center of its operations is the elite Chamorro Foundation, which stands accused of money laundering.

The US government has spent years cultivating a ring of right-wing media outlets in Nicaragua that played a central role in a violent 2018 coup attempt. This network is now being investigated by the Nicaraguan government on allegations of money laundering.

These publications are an integral part of a political opposition that Washington has carefully managed, trained, and funded with millions of dollars over the past decade. While relentlessly accusing Nicaragua’s leftist government of corruption, they have been suspiciously obscure with their own finances and record-keeping.

The institution at the heart of the US-backed influence network is called the Fundación Violeta Barrios de Chamorro para la Reconciliación y la Democracia, or Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation for Reconciliation and Democracy – often referred to simply as the Chamorro Foundation.

Run by one of the richest and most powerful family dynasties in Nicaragua, the Chamorro Foundation is perhaps the most important domestic organization in coordinating the political opposition to the Central American nation’s socialist-oriented Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).

The Chamorro Foundation is a central vehicle for Washington’s massive financial, technical, and logistical support to the Nicaraguan opposition, acting as what the CIA refers to as a “pass-through” – a third-party organization that serves as a seemingly independent channel for US government funding to foreign political groups and media outlets.

Since the Sandinistas came to power in 2007, the United States has funneled tens of millions of dollars to opposition groups in Nicaragua through its soft-power arm the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a CIA front that has long been used as “humanitarian” cover for operations to destabilize independent left-wing governments, especially in Latin America.

Internal reports from USAID show that the agency does much more than just fund anti-Sandinista political organizations, NGOs, and media outlets in Nicaragua; it births them, nurtures them, and trains them in every aspect of politicking, from electoral strategies and public relations to outreach and social media messaging, branding and marketing to organizing and building broad alliances, developing technology skills and navigating legal issues to managing finances and accounting.

This Grayzone investigation illustrates how USAID has helped to create Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista opposition from the ground up. The right-wing political forces that comprise it are anything but organic; they are the product of an enormous campaign of foreign meddling by US government interference at every single level of Nicaraguan society.

The US astroturfing has been especially effective in forming Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista media apparatus. Publicly available records show that USAID has spent at least $10 million specifically on opposition media outlets in Nicaragua since 2009. Of that money, USAID sent more than $7 million to the Chamorro Foundation from 2014 to 2021.

Given that much of the information that USAID discloses about its support for the political opposition and media outlets in Nicaragua is redacted, these figures are likely conservative estimates.

A partial list of USAID grants for the Nicaraguan opposition’s Chamorro Foundation

Western European governments have supplemented Washington’s efforts in cultivating the anti-Sandinista opposition, with a special emphasis on the press.

European Union member states have handed out millions to the Chamorro Foundation, using the influential opposition group to fund right-wing news outlets. In 2020 alone, the foundation received €831,527 (more than $1 million USD) from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), an arm of Madrid’s soft power that is modeled after USAID.

The Western funding has been bolstered with millions of dollars from Washington’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – another CIA front that exists to push regime change across the globe. Between 2016 and 2019, the NED provided at least $4.4 million to Nicaraguan opposition groups, including media organizations, according to public records – although this is likely an underestimate as well.

€831,527 in funding for Nicaragua’s Chamorro Foundation in 2020 from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID)

These are exorbitant sums of money in Central America, one of the poorest regions of the world, where the minimum wage amounts to around $200 per month. Such foreign funding is the main force keeping Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition afloat – especially given that polling show it has mere single-digit support among the general population.

Many of the media outlets bankrolled by USAID in these programs traffic in blatant fake news and extremist content, while inciting violence against the Nicaraguan government and supporters of the Sandinista Front.

The prominent tabloid opposition network 100% Noticias, for instance, which is funded by USAID through the Chamorro Foundation, regularly transmitted calls for Nicaraguans to overthrow their elected government during the violent 2018 coup attempt.

The director and founder of that US-funded station, Miguel Mora, stated in an interview with Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal that he wanted the US military to invade Nicaragua, violently remove the elected Sandinista Front party from power, and capture President Daniel Ortega. He cited Washington’s 1989 invasion of Panama as a model.

The director and founder of the USAID-funded right-wing media outlet 100% Noticias, Miguel Mora, calls for the US to invade Nicaragua and overthrow its elected government, in an interview with The Grayzone

“What I see from the United States is it doing a Noriega-style operation, like in Panama,” Mora told Blumenthal in an interview in Managua, days after the putsch fizzled out in July 2018.

“They come, they grab the [Ortega-Murillo] family, they take them away, and the army is not involved. In two days, 24 hours, this is solved, if there were US intervention like that,” the US-funded 100% Noticias director said.

“So what I see, instead of the United States giving weapons, like what it did with the Contras, is that they come and do a Noriega-style operation,” Mora added.

While USAID bankrolled violent, far-right, coup-plotting elements like Mora, internal documents reviewed by The Grayzone show that it was simultaneously supporting liberal NGOs that exploited issues like LGBT equality, women’s empowerment, and Indigenous rights, to provide the rightist anti-Sandinista opposition with progressive cover.

USAID boasting, in an internal report on its Nicaragua operations, of exploiting sensitive issues like sexual violence against children and women, LGBT equality, and Indigenous rights as cover for its anti-Sandinista operations

The USAID-backed coordinator of many of these opposition groups, the Chamorro Foundation, was accused of fiscal improprieties this May, and the Nicaraguan government launched an official investigation on suspicion of money laundering, stating that it had found “serious financial inconsistencies in the reports presented to the government and the amounts received by the foundation.”

Serious questions about the Chamorro Foundation remain unanswered. This February, the organization announced that it had voluntarily suspended its operations in Nicaragua as a form of protest against a law passed in October 2020 by the nation’s democratically elected National Assembly that requires NGOs funded by foreign governments to register as foreign agents. (The legislation was harshly condemned by Washington, although it was modeled after an 83-year-old US law.)

However, while the foundation claimed to have legally shut down in Nicaragua, it still continued receiving large sums of money from foreign governments. In 2020, Washington gave the Chamorro Foundation at least $1.3 million, and as of this May, the US government sent the group at least $419,000 more for 2021.

Exactly where this money has gone is not clear, and what happened with the millions in its bank accounts when the foundation shut down is not known.

The Chamorro Foundation has denied the charges by pointing to a 2020 audit done by an accounting firm called Baker Tilly Nicaragua S.A. (a company that is closely linked to the country’s right-wing opposition). But the USAID inspector general’s office admitted in an internal memo that there was no external peer review of the audit, noting that it did not meet Washington’s own Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS) requirements.

A high-profile elected member of the National Assembly from a left-wing party allied with the Sandinista Front, Wilfredo Navarro, accused the Chamorros of using a money-laundering ring to fund the 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua.

“Between the Chamorro Foundation, the Grupo Cinco [another Western government-funded media organization run by the Chamorro family], and other NGOs, they laundered money and sent more than $30 million to pay the killers and torturers, the authors of the pain, destruction, and death in the failed 2018 coup,” Navarro alleged. “Neither justice in heaven or on Earth will forgive them. Their hands are full of blood.”

For its part, the Chamorro family has thus far stonewalled, refusing to publicly provide concrete answers to the lingering questions about its finances.

In a revealing response to the allegations of financial malpractice, the founder and director of the foundation, opposition politician Cristiana Chamorro – the elite daughter of the right-wing former president of Nicaragua after whom the foundation is named – rejected the investigation by immediately citing the authority of her patrons in the US government.

Cristiana Chamorro insisted in an official statement, “The US State Department rejected the charges of money laundering against the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation based on audits they conducted that did not find evidence of money laundering or diversion of funds.”

Managua’s Public Ministry replied by politely reminding Chamorro that Nicaragua is a sovereign country and the US government does not control its justice system. “The statement by the State Department is not relevant to the investigative process taking place in Nicaragua, which is being carried out according to the Constitution and laws of the Republic,” the ministry wrote.

Cristiana Chamorro appeared to have forgotten that she was a citizen of Nicaragua, not the United States. Her confusion was perhaps understandable, however, given that her foundation – and the Central American nation’s right-wing opposition as a whole – has been not only financially sustained by Washington, but created, cultivated, and propped up by the US government over the course of a decades-long foreign meddling operation.

Nicaragua’s oligarch family tries to retake control, with help from Washington
The Chamorro family has long been one of Uncle Sam’s most reliable assets in the region. An oligarchic clan descended from Spanish colonialists, the Chamorro dynasty boasts seven former presidents of Nicaragua, tracing back to the very first head of state of the republic in the 1850s.

The modern history of the Chamorro family clearly reflects Washington’s role as the guiding force behind Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition.

Cristiana Chamorro’s mother, and the namesake of her foundation, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, was the first opposition president to come to power after the 1979 Sandinista Revolution that toppled Nicaragua’s decades-long US-backed military dictatorship.

In the 1980s, Washington poured millions of dollars into violent far-right death squads, known as the Contras (short for “counterrevolutionaries” in Spanish), which resorted to terrorist tactics in a failed bid to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government.

One of the most important leaders of the Contras was Edgar Chamorro – another member of the same oligarchic family. He later turned against the murderous paramilitary groups, and published a revealing letter-to-the-editor in the New York Times in 1986 titled, “Terror Is the Most Effective Weapon of Nicaragua’s ‘Contras’.”

“The ‘contras’ were, and are, a proxy army controlled by the U.S. Government,” Edgar Chamorro wrote. “If U.S. support were terminated, they would not only be incapable of conducting any military activities against the Sandinistas, but would also immediately begin to disintegrate. I resigned rather than continue as a Central Intelligence Agency puppet.”

Edgar Chamorro’s description of the anti-Sandinista opposition in Nicaragua as a proxy of the US government that would collapse were it not for Washington’s enormous economic, political, and logistical support remains true today.

Violeta Barrios de Chamorro only came to power in 1990 thanks to a presidential campaign that was directed and financed by the US government. Her victory reflected the exhaustion of a population sapped by a decade of Washington-sponsored terrorist war – compounded by an economic crisis created by an illegal US blockade of their country, as well as an implicit US threat to levy even more sanctions on the impoverished nation if Ortega won.

Right-wing Nicaraguan President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro speaking before the US Congress in 1991

Violeta Chamorro’s presidential campaign was one of the first projects of the US government’s newly created National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA front that still bankrolls the anti-Sandinista opposition today.

Her presidential tenure was an unmitigated disaster, and the horrors that working-class Nicaraguans suffered through during that period, which they now call the “neoliberal era,” are seared into their collective sociocultural memory. Despite massive economic assistance from the United States and debt forgiveness by its financial organs the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Violeta’s Chicago Boy-style policies led to skyrocketing poverty and inequality, unleashing an epidemic of organized crime, drug-trafficking, and prostitution in Nicaragua, creating one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Violeta Chamorro’s departure in 1997 was followed by another decade of neoliberal rule that continued the trend of widespread poverty and inequality. To perpetuate her legacy, she founded the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation the year she left office.

When the leftist Sandinista Front won Nicaragua’s 2006 presidential election and returned to power a year later, the Chamorro Foundation became the central pass-through for US government funding to the opposition.

The foundation is run by Violeta’s daughter, Cristiana, who is the top opposition choice for Nicaragua’s November 2021 presidential election, and the preferred pick in Washington. Although she has no real political experience, Cristiana’s sponsors in Western governments and corporate media outlets frequently refer to her as an “opposition leader.”

Cristiana has been aggressively boosted by mainstream corporate media outlets, becoming a regular fixture on CNN en Español, which lavishes praise on her as the “woman who promises to save Nicaragua.”

The scion of a veritable aristocratic clan, Cristiana has marketed herself as the second-coming of her mother, making it clear that she hopes to inherit the presidency with her aristocratic last name – and a little help from her friends in the US government.

US government-funded Nicaraguan opposition figure Cristiana Chamorro, interviewed by Voice of America

USAID-funded Chamorro Foundation and NED sustain coup-mongering Nicaraguan right-wing media
In addition to their enormous political and economic influence, the Chamorro dynasty has significant control over Nicaragua’s media. The country’s two largest newspapers, La Prensa and Confidencial, are run by Chamorros – and funded by the US government. And the Washington-backed Chamorro Foundation is used to sustain other right-wing outlets in the country.

Western governments and corporate media outlets often accuse the Sandinista government of opposing freedom of the press and freedom of speech, but the reality is that the majority of Nicaraguan media outlets are neoliberal and viciously anti-Sandinista.

The opposition’s media apparatus in Nicaragua consists of newspapers such as La Prensa and Confidencial; TV channels Canal 10, Canal 11, Canal 12, and Vos TV; the outlet Radio Corporación and radio show Café con Voz; as well as online outlets 100% Noticias, Artículo 66, Nicaragua Investiga, Nicaragua Actual, BacanalNica, and Despacho 505, to name just a few. This is further supplemented by dozens of right-wing social media influencers.

These domestic outlets receive heavy amplification from foreign-based corporate media networks, which broadcast nonstop anti-Sandinista propaganda – and quite a bit of fake news – day in and day out.

Sustaining most of the Nicaraguan opposition outlets is a steady flow of US government money through the Chamorro Foundation.

These media platforms played a key role in the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018. The Washington-funded outlets spread fake news, openly incited violence against Sandinistas, and even called on opposition supporters to attack the government and kill President Ortega.

As mentioned above, the founding director of the influential right-wing network 100% Noticias, Miguel Mora, called for the US military to invade his country and overthrow President Daniel Ortega in a “Noriega-style operation,” in his July 2018 interview with The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal.

With the help of USAID funding through the Chamorro Foundation, 100% Noticias also sent its reporter Lucía Pineda Ubau to the violent barricades erected by armed coup-plotters, known as tranques, where she encouraged viewers to join them and take up arms against the elected government.

Right-wing media activist Lucía Pineda Ubau from US government-funded Nicaraguan outlet 100% Noticias promoting armed coup-plotters at a tranque barricade in 2018

Another fanatical right-wing Nicaraguan media personality who advocated for the coup attempt in 2018, host Jaime Arellano of Radio Corporación, openly broadcasted his support for former US President Donald Trump.

Arellano, known as “El Pingüino,” posted a photo on Facebook in 2020 of himself wearing a Trump hat, accompanied by the text “Nicas for Trump.”

Arellano and 100% Noticias staff were among the media figures who were called in for questioning by the Nicaraguan justice system in May 2021 as part of its investigation into alleged money laundering.

Right-wing Nicaraguan media personality Jaime Arellano “El Pingüino” expressing support for Donald Trump

Nicaragua’s top two newspapers, La Prensa and Confidencial, are slightly more measured in their messaging, but essentially espouse the same extremist viewpoints.

For her part, Cristiana Chamorro – who was educated in the United States and has never had a real job other than positions she inherited from her family – is not only director of the Chamorro Foundation; she is also vice president of La Prensa.Both institutions are funded largely by Washington, which effectively makes Cristiana an unofficial employee of the US government.

La Prensa is directed by Jaime Chamorro Cardenal, Cristiana’s uncle. Following the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, the newspaper served as Washington’s key propaganda weapon. During the US terror war in the 1980s, the NED used La Prensa to spread pro-Contra disinformation.

The Chamorro family also ran the leading newspaper El Nuevo Diario, which closed down in 2019. Meanwhile, the other major Nicaraguan opposition news outlet, Confidencial, is run by Cristiana’s brother, Carlos Fernando.

Carlos Fernando Chamorro is essentially the Rupert Murdoch of Nicaragua. Thanks to the many millions of dollars he has received from Western governments over years, Carlos Fernando has built a veritable media empire.

The most important weapon in Carlos Fernando’s information warfare arsenal is Confidencial. He uses it to churn out non-stop propaganda against the government of President Daniel Ortega, while pushing an aggressively neoliberal editorial line that makes Fox News look like a bastion of journalistic rigor.

Confidencial refers to Nicaragua’s elected government as a “dictatorship” and “regime,” and often pushes dubious stories and disinformation with little basis in fact.

This May, for instance, Carlos Fernando’s publication sought to distract from the government’s investigation into his family’s alleged money laundering by running an absurd story that claimed an attempt by the Managua mayor’s office to collect unpaid back taxes owed by Nicaraguan corporations was part of an “extortion scheme.” Confidencial has also accused the mayor’s office of “fiscal terrorism” for forcing wealthy elites to pay taxes.

The institution that bankrolls this disinformation factory is the US government. Confidencial is funded by the NED, through the companies Invermedia and Promedia, which Carlos Fernando owns.

US NED funding for Invermedia, owned by Carlos Fernando Chamorro, used to run Confidencial

Confidencial is also financed by the Swiss government, an appropriate patron given that Carlos Fernando has employed a Swiss bank-style strategy to create a panoply of de facto shell companies to rake in foreign funding for anti-Sandinista media outlets.

In addition to Confidencial, Invermedia, and Promedia, Carlos Fernando runs an influential group called the Centro de Investigaciones de la Comunicación (CINCO).

The Grupo CINCO, like his sister Cristiana’s Chamorro Foundation, is funded by another EU member state, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).

Spanish government funding to Carlos Fernando Chamorro’s Grupo CINCO

Carlos Fernando Chamorro helps run Grupo CINCO with the prominent opposition activist Sofía Montenegro. They are allied with the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista, or Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), an ostensible social-democratic opposition party founded by upper-class NGO activists and academics who claimed momentary loyalty to the Sandinista movement in the 1980s, but broke with it when it lost power in the 1990s.

When the Sandinista Front returned to power in 2007, wealthy liberal intellectuals like Carlos Fernando Chamorro and Montenegro emerged as some of the government’s most vehement opponents. They allied with Washington, reaping substantial paychecks from the United States’ regime-change entities.

Nicaragua-based journalists Nora McCurdy and Stephen Sefton uncovered photos showing Montegro holding friendly meetings with the US embassy, alongside MRS leaders.

US Ambassador Laura Farnsworth Dogu meeting with Sofia Montenegro and MRS leaders in Nicaragua in March 2016

The MRS has never been able to earn more than 6% in a presidential election, but its petit-bourgeois members dominate Nicaragua’s NGO sector, media, and academia. The MRS was a significant player in the violent US-backed coup attempt in 2018, helping to organize and supply the various elements vying to topple the elected government.

In January 2021, MRS leadership shed any pretense of loyalty to Sandinismo and renamed their party the Unión Democrática Renovadora (Democratic Renovation Union), or UNAMOS.

The website NicaLeaks published a leaked internal USAID document revealing that Montenegro and the Grupo CINCO that she helps run with Carlos Fernando Chamorro are funded by the US government.

In 2016, USAID gave Montenegro a one-year grant of $80,000 to fund her anti-Sandinista media work.

USAID funding for Nicaragua’s Grupo CINCO and MRS activist Sofia Montenegro

Other shell organizations run by Carlos Fernando Charmorro include the little-known Fondo de Apoyo al Periodismo Investigativo, as well as the Costa Rica-based Asociación Productora de Periodismo Independiente. Then there is his radio station Onda Local, and his TV shows, “Esta Semana” and “Esta Noche.”

The closeness that Carlos Fernando and Cristiana Chamorro enjoy to the US government was reflected in the fact that they were both invited to sign an open letter in 2020 organized by the NED, which accused “authoritarian regimes” of exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic to “tighten their grip on power.” They were joined by a slew of powerful right-wing political leaders from across Latin America.

US and EU baselessly accuse Nicaragua of money laundering while funding rich elites accused of money laundering
Among average working-class Nicaraguans, it is well-known that the Chamorro oligarchs control myriad shell companies, front groups, and political NGOs, and have many millions of dollars flowing into their multiple bank accounts from a variety of foreign sponsors. The family is notorious for its financial murkiness.

The government’s investigation into alleged money laundering by the Chamorro Foundation comes at a time when Nicaragua is trying to crack down on rampant tax evasion by local elites.

This May, Nicaragua’s National Assembly voted to strengthen the laws on money laundering, in order to better combat the crime, noting that new technologies like cryptocurrencies have made it easier for plutocrats to hide their wealth from taxation.

The increased enforcement of laws against money laundering and tax evasion is partly aimed at boosting Nicaragua’s tax base, which has been hard-hit by the 2018 coup attempt and the subsequent, aggressive US sanctions that effectively locked the country’s economy out of the Washington-controlled international financial system.

In February 2020, Nicaragua was placed on the “greylist” of the Financial Action Task Force, an instrument created by the G7 nations ostensibly to reduce money laundering, but which is, in fact, an economic arm of NATO designed to punish countries that refused to toe the neoliberal line demanded by Washington and Brussels.

That same year, the European Commission added Nicaragua to its short list of “high-risk third countries” – another economic attack on the Sandinista government disguised as a measure against money laundering.

While Western governments employ dubious accusations of money laundering to economically strangle Nicaragua, they continue funneling tens of millions of dollars to conservative Nicaraguan elites who are infamous for shady book-keeping.

USAID’s explicitly stated goal in Nicaragua: “political transition”
The main financial sponsor of Nicaragua’s political opposition has been the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Most grassroots Sandinistas are familiar with USAID’s dark history in the country, and the organization’s name has become synonymous with meddling and destabilization.

During the 1980s, USAID helped the CIA run covert operations to arm and fund the far-right Contra death squads. Then-Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams admitted that the Reagan administration sent weapons to the Contras on so-called “humanitarian aid” flights.

Today, USAID plays a similar role in Washington’s attempts to topple the democratically elected leftist government not only in Nicaragua, but also in Venezuela.

USAID was used to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to a parallel Venezuelan coup regime led by Juan Guaidó. The agency was also integral to a violent US coup attempt against Venezuela in February 2019. In 2021, the US government’s own inspector general’s office acknowledged that USAID committed fraud in order to fund regime-change efforts in Venezuela.

The fact that USAID wants regime change in Nicaragua as well is hardly hidden. The agency admits on its own website that USAID has run a program in Nicaragua sponsored by its Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI).

USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OIT) program pushing for regime change in Nicaragua

The OTI’s goal is simple: to overthrow governments that challenge Washington’s political and economic domination of the world. It states this quite clearly on its website, explaining that the office “supports U.S. foreign policy objectives” and “provides fast, flexible, short-term assistance targeted at key political transition.”

USAID/OTI boasts of supporting “Independent civil society, independent media, and human rights defenders” – or in other words, the right-wing opposition – in Nicaragua during and after the failed 2018 coup d’etat, pushing for an “exit from the current political crisis” and an end to the democratically elected government of President Daniel Ortega.

USAID/OTI was exposed for running a similarly putschist plot to overthrow Venezuela’s elected President Hugo Chávez. A secret 2006 US State Department cable published by WikiLeaks shows that the USAID/OTI regime-change strategy was aimed at “Penetrating Chavez’ Political Base, Dividing Chavismo, Protecting Vital US business, and Isolating Chavez internationally.”

In Nicaragua, USAID is advancing the same goals: penetrating the Sandinista Front’s base, dividing Sandinismo, isolating President Ortega internationally, and of course, advancing the interests of US corporations.

In 2020, The Grayzone exposed USAID’s latest regime-change scheme in Nicaragua by exposing a leaked internal document revealing the agency’s Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) program. This project calls openly for the overthrow of the Sandinista government, as well as imposing neoliberal reforms based on a “market economy” and the “protection of private property rights,” and purging the military, police, and all state institutions of any trace of Sandinismo.

USAID’s $9.4 million “Media Strengthening Program” bankrolls Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista outlets
As the recipient of at least $7 million from USAID from 2013 to today, the Chamorro Foundation is the central node in contemporary USAID operations in Nicaragua.

Much of the information surrounding USAID grants for Nicaragua is redacted from documents, citing the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2016 as justification. The redactions have become more comprehensive since the failed 2018 coup attempt exposed the extent of US penetration of Nicaraguan civil society.

In 2020, for instance, an organization in Nicaragua received $2.82 million from USAID, but the agency redacted the recipient’s name and the nature of its activities. In 2021, USAID again obscured the recipients of and reasons for a $1.6 million grant, as well as another $1.2 million grant.

This means that this $7 million figure given to the Chamorro Foundation is likely just a conservative estimate, and the actual sum of US financial support for the foundation and other anti-Sandinista opposition organizations could be significantly higher.

USAID redacts information about many of its largest grantees in Nicaragua-related funding

The public records that do exist show that USAID ran its programs supporting the opposition in Nicaragua through various contractors, including the following:

• National Democratic Institute (NDI), which also trained opposition forces against socialist President Rafael Correa in Ecuador
• International Republican Institute (IRI), which played a key role in US-backed coups against Haiti’s progressive elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
• Freedom House, a regime-change lobby group
• US Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS)
• World Bank’s International Finance Corporation
• International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX)
• RTI International
• Global Communities
• Creative Associates International
• FHI 360
• Chamorro Foundation

Internal USAID data reviewed by The Grayzone shows that USAID has a decade-long, multimillion-dollar program with the Chamorro Foundation to create, fund, and train right-wing media outlets in Nicaragua.

Titled the “Media Strengthening Program,” the initiative is highly secretive. However, USAID records show that, in 2014, the agency signed a $9.4 million agreement with the Chamorro Foundation to oversee the program, which was earmarked to run through 2023.

As of May 2021, more than $7 million of that allotted $9.4 million has been delivered to the foundation.

USAID Nicaragua data showing $9.4 million allotted to the Chamorro Foundation to run the Media Strengthening Program from 2014 to 2023

There are no internal reports exposing the scope of USAID’s Media Strengthening Program, and almost no mention of it on the internet, aside from two audit reports published by the agency’s Office of Inspector General.

USAID does, however, operate a similar “Media Strengthening Program” in Mozambique, another formerly colonized country that is governed by the revolutionary party that overthrow the colonial regime – in its case, FRELIMO, or the Liberation Front of Mozambique.

In Nicaragua, the website NicaLeaks published leaked internal documents showing that at least 12 opposition media outlets were “partners” of the Chamorro Foundation, and therefore received funding from USAID.

Among the USAID/Chamorro Foundation’s key partners is the right-wing network 100% Noticias, which played a key role in the failed 2018 coup attempt, spreading fake news, inciting violence against Sandinistas, and encouraging viewers to take up arms against the elected government.

USAID funding for Nicaragua’s right-wing media outlet 100% Noticias through the Chamorro Foundation

The head of 100% Noticias, Miguel Mora, who called for the Panama-style US military invasion of Nicaragua in 2018, personally received $43,100 from USAID through the Chamorro Foundation in 2015. And this grant is from just one year in a decade-long program.

USAID funding to Miguel Mora, the head of Nicaragua’s right-wing media outlet 100% Noticias, through the Chamorro Foundation

Another recipient of USAID money through the Chamorro Foundation is La Prensa – the same newspaper where foundation director Cristiana Chamorro serves as vice president.

This means that Cristiana has double-dipped USAID money, using it not only to fund her Chamorro Foundation, but also to pay her family and herself.

USAID funding for Nicaraguan right-wing newspaper La Prensa, through the Chamorro Foundation

This is a clear conflict of interest; as head of the Chamorro Foundation, Cristiana controlled how much money would be sent to the newspaper she helped run.

NicaLeaks obtained another USAID document showing the agency approving the foundation’s disbursement of USAID money to La Prensa. This meant that the US government knew Cristiana was using its citizens’ tax dollars to enrich herself and her family members, and took no measures to impede her corruption.

Given its shady financial dealings, it should be no surprise that the Chamorro Foundation is being investigated on suspicions of money laundering.

USAID approving funding for the Chamorro-run newspaper La Prensa through the Chamorro Foundation

Washington claims its support for media outlets in Nicaragua is a means of supporting “independent journalism” and the freedom of the press. In reality, the records clearly show that the United States seeks to destabilize the Sandinista government by propping up and promoting the country’s leading right-wing political operatives.

USAID trained and funded Nicaraguan opposition leaders, holding in-person meetings to coordinate with media
While precise details about USAID’s $9.4 million Media Strengthening Program through the Chamorro Foundation are redacted, a look at an array of USAID operations supporting opposition groups in Nicaragua can shed critical light on the foundation’s activities.

Between 2013 and 2018, USAID simultaneously oversaw a separate operation to support anti-Sandinista groups in Nicaragua, earmarking more than $6 million in funding for Capacity Building for Civil Society Advocacy (CBCSA). USAID’s partner for this program was the Dexis Consulting Group, which in turn subcontracted the work out to Chemonics.

Chemonics is a for-profit company that contracts with US government agencies in sensitive areas around the globe, specializing in destabilization and intelligence operations. The founder of the firm openly admitted he created it to “have my own CIA.”

The Grayzone documented how Chemonics was used to provide millions of dollars in US government funding to the White Helmets in Syria, while also helping to destabilize the government of Ecuador’s democratically elected socialist President Rafael Correa.

Publicly available data show that USAID gave Dexis/Chemonics at least $6,117,000 to run the Capacity Building for Civil Society Advocacy initiative.

USAID funding to contractor Dexis/Chemonics for its Capacity Building for Civil Society Advocacy (CBCSA) program in Nicaragua

When the CBCSA program concluded in 2018, Dexis/Chemonics prepared an internal report summarizing the successes of the initiative. The publicly available document shows how USAID not only funded opposition leaders in Nicaragua, but drilled them in methods to undermine the Sandinista government.

USAID said one of the program’s principal objectives was to “Improve the capacity of CSOs and individuals to increasingly coordinate and network with one another, the private sector, and media outlets to promote awareness, advocacy, and activism.” In other words, CBCSA aimed to cultivate opposition leaders and build an anti-Sandinista alliance uniting US-funded NGOs, powerful business interests, and the press.

USAID took credit for creating 126 “alliances and partnerships” and supporting 224 civil society organizations as part of the five-year CBCSA program.

Using an acronym to refer to anti-Sandinista civil society organizations (CSOs), USAID said “CBCSA worked with CSOs to establish partnerships with the private sector.”

One of the main so-called civil society organizations that USAID’s CBCSA program utilized was the Chamorro Foundation. Using another acronym to refer to the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBCH), USAID boasted that it “worked with FVBCH … to ensure increased dissemination of the CSOs’ activities through independent media outlets.”

CBCSA even organized quarterly “in-person networking and outreach” meetings in Nicaragua, bringing together US-funded NGOs and opposition media outlets for sessions on improving anti-Sandinista messaging.

USAID boasted, “These meetings provided CSOs the opportunity to coordinate with one another and with media outlets.” It added that a majority of attendees had “increased press coverage because of the meetings.”

The report singled out the Chamorro Foundation specifically as a group that helped “ensure increased dissemination of the CSOs’ activities through independent media outlets.”

The USAID report published a photo showing Nicaraguan opposition figures meeting to share tactics under US tutelage.

An in-person USAID meeting bringing together Nicaraguan opposition civil society groups (CSOs) and media outlets to train them to better destabilize the Sandinista government

In addition to training opposition activists and connecting them with businesses and the media, USAID boasted that “CBCSA designed digital and media campaign materials, including posters, Twitter messages, and Facebook pages” for the anti-Sandinista groups.

In other words, a noted CIA front helped create and run social media accounts for Nicaraguan opposition organizations.

As cover for these anti-Sandinista operations, USAID cynically exploited issues like sexual violence against women, LGBT equality, and Indigenous rights. It even helped launch a campaign called “Let’s raise voices against child sexual abuse” as cover for opposition activities.

USAID boasting of exploiting sensitive issues like sexual violence against children and women, LGBT equality, and Indigenous rights as cover for its anti-Sandinista operations

USAID highlighted in its report that CBCSA’s work creating, cultivating, training, and funding the anti-Sandinista opposition was complemented with help from the Central American branch of the Kellogg corporation, as well as the Catholic Church.

In an unintentionally comical section demonstrating the total subservience of Nicaragua’s opposition to Washington, the report noted that “CBCSA provided guidance and training to RED LOCAL and FVBCH to purchase air tickets for consultants and staff to ensure compliance with the Fly America Act, including how to document an exemption for individual travel. RED LOCAL and FVBCH now have the knowledge to compliantly purchase U.S.-funded travel in the future.”

Cristiana and her Chamorro Foundation can now sleep comfortably with the assurance that, whenever they want to fly to Miami or Washington, Uncle Sam has it covered.

USAID’s $2.8 million “Nicaragua Media Program” designed “to advance U.S. interests”

USAID’s Media Strengthening Program and Capacity Building for Civil Society Advocacy initiative were just two of the agency’s many operations aimed at attacking Nicaragua’s leftist government.

From 2010 to 2013, USAID ran a very similar project called the Nicaragua Media Program, with $2.8 million in funding.

While the 10-year Media Strengthening Program was run out of the Chamorro Foundation, the three-year Nicaragua Media Program was run by a contractor called Family Health International (FHI) 360.

At the end of the project in 2013, USAID produced a final performance evaluation report, which stated clearly, using an acronym for the Nicaragua Media Program, that the “NMP sought to advance U.S. interests.”

The document noted that the USAID program was actively promoted by then-US Ambassador Robert J. Callahan, and added, “The broad dissemination of USAID messages served to promote the United States Government (USG) presence [in Nicaragua].”

USAID’s Nicaragua Media Program to support anti-Sandinista outlets and “advance U.S. interests”

The report revealed that the Nicaragua Media Program ultimately awarded 45 grants ranging from $10,000 to $15,000 each year to anti-Sandinista media outlets, for a total of $2.8 million over the three years.

This is a substantial sum of money in a region where the minimum wage is around $200 per month.

USAID’s Nicaragua Media Program carried out operations in 12 cities and two autonomous regions across Nicaragua.

Among the main goals of the program, USAID admitted in the report, was “promoting economic growth, with equity to private sector-led growth and market-led agriculture” – in other words, advocating for neoliberal economic reforms.

Another openly stated USAID goal was “implementing the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR).” This placed the program directly at odds with the Bolivarian Alliance, or ALBA, that President Daniel Ortega joined when he returned to power in 2007, an economic bloc unifying Nicaragua with fellow leftist governments in Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

One of the cornerstones of US foreign policy in Latin America since the ALBA was created in 2004 has been to force countries to leave the alliance. Honduras’ democratically elected left-wing former President Manuel Zelaya explained to The Grayzone that the US government threatened him, warning Honduras could not join the ALBA; and when he did so, he was soon overthrown in a Washington-sponsored military coup.

Many of the opposition outlets funded by the Nicaragua Media Program received multiple grants, and the report boasted that “NMP funding helped several media outlets remain in business.”

The report surveyed recipients and found “75% of the interviewed grantees believe that NMP support was essential for them to stay in business.”

One of the striking features of the evaluation is that USAID compiled a list of influential Twitter users in Nicaragua. Many of those named are recipients of US government funding, and almost all are opposition supporters.

The list is a bit dated, given the report was published in 2013, but it is proof that the US government is watching influential foreign voices on social media.

A list of Twitter influencers in Nicaragua compiled by USAID in 2013

USAID also compiled a list of Nicaraguan general media influencers, demonstrating the agency’s careful monitoring of the country’s press and identification of those who best serve US interests.

Noticeable in both of these lists was that nearly all of the influencers identified at that time were supporters of the political opposition. USAID is clearly not interested in pro-Sandinista influencers, only in amplifying anti-Sandinista voices.

A list of Nicaraguan media influencers, compiled by USAID in 2013

The contractor that ran the Nicaragua Media Program for USAID, FHI 360, boasts on its website that it was not the only project it was running for the agency.

FHI 360 had another USAID contract for a neoliberal initiative called “Market-Based Opportunities for Conservation and Sustainable Tourism in Nicaragua.” One of the prominent young Nicaraguan “entreprenuers” who was trained in this USAID program and publicly promoted by the firm, Nestor Bonilla, is a die-hard anti-Sandinista opposition figure who now lives in Panama.

USAID, Chamorro Foundation, and Nicaraguan corporations exploit women to boost anti-Sandinista opposition

Before it launched the Media Strengthening Program in 2013, USAID ran another operation in Nicaragua through the Chamorro Foundation, exploiting the issue of women’s rights to strengthen the anti-Sandinista opposition.

In 2009, USAID incorporated the Central American nation into a larger international soft-power project, launching what it called Voces Vitales Nicaragua, or Vital Voices Nicaragua.

Voces Vitales Nicaragua was the local manifestation of the Vital Voices program that emerged out of the US government under the Bill Clinton administration. Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright used the initiative to support female opposition leaders in countries targeted for regime change, and to push neoliberal economic policies that benefited US corporations behind the guise of women’s empowerment.

In Nicaragua, the project was run by the Chamorro Foundation – the obvious choice for any neoliberal US initiative – with Cristiana Chamorro as one of its leaders.

In addition to the funding the Chamorro Foundation received from USAID for this program, it raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from large corporations like CitiBank.

The Clinton-led Vital Voices program states clearly on its official website that its goal is “to promote the advancement of women as a U.S. foreign policy goal.”

The USAID “Vital Voices Nicaragua” program run in the Chamorro Foundation

USAID wages multi-million dollar hybrid war on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government

The programs described above represent just the surface level of the unconventional war that Washington has waged on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

The minute details of most of these USAID programs are not known because the specifics are redacted. However, data on the agency’s website show tens of millions of dollars more have been poured into supporting opposition groups.

One of the largest projects run by the US government in Nicaragua is its Municipal Governance Program, which received a whopping $29,999,763 from USAID between 2010 and 2020.

USAID’s Municipal Governance Program in Nicaragua was run by the US-based NGO Global Communities, which notes on its website that, in addition to functioning as a government contractor, it “partners” with corporations like Chevron, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, IBM, and Walmart.

Internal USAID data shows $30 million in funding for opposition groups in Nicaragua through its Municipal Governance Program

USAID says this program “promotes the effective engagement of citizens with municipal governments to influence decision making, demand accountability and transparency, and improve management of public resources,” by “strengthening networks of key civil society organizations (CSOs)” and helping them “conduct better oversight of the government-funded projects.”

In other words, USAID’s Municipal Governance Program is a massive, $30 million, decade-long project to support and develop anti-Sandinista forces in local governments in Nicaragua, in order to weaken the authority of the central government.

USAID’s description also hints that its Municipal Governance Program was aimed at bolstering opposition NGOs in their activism against the Sandinista government’s infrastructure projects. And at the top of the list of Nicaraguan infrastructure projects that Washington has worked to sabotage is the long-awaited construction of an inter-oceanic canal that could challenge the monopoly of the US-created Panama Canal.

Nicaraguan government officials have said they believe the canal project – which was being built with help from Chinese companies – was a major reason for the violent US-backed coup attempt in 2018. The project is currently on hold.

Another enormous, decade-long operation run by the US government in Nicaragua is called the Democratic Leadership Development Program. This initiative is technically not run by USAID, but rather by another US regime-change arm, the National Democratic Institute (NDI).

The NDI is one of the main branches of CIA front the National Endowment for Democracy. Overseeing both of these outfits is USAID, which ultimately funds the NED through the State Department budget approved by Congress.

USAID’s public records include figures spent by NDI projects. They show that in the 10 years from 2010 through the end of 2019, the NDI spent more than $21 million on its Democratic Leadership Development Program (DLDP) in Nicaragua.

Funding for the US National Democratic Institute (NDI) Democratic Leadership Development Program in Nicaragua

There is almost no information publicly available about the Democratic Leadership Development Program. USAID’s website has a brief summary that says it “brings together respected Nicaraguan and international institutions and experts to support democratic political processes by strengthening democratic leadership of youth,” and “supports the development of a core group of young political leaders that fosters a more transparent, participatory and democratic society.”

This description makes it clear that the program was aimed to create, train, and cultivate anti-Sandinista opposition leaders in Nicaragua. Such an interpretation is reinforced by one of the only other places on the internet that mentions the Democratic Leadership Development Program: the LinkedIn profile of the former NDI country director for Nicaragua, Julian Quibell.

His page shows that Quibell, in his words, “Oversaw the design and implementation of a 10 year $22.9 million dollar USAID democracy and governance project focused on youth leadership and citizen participation in a challenging environment with increasingly closed political space.” That reads as a fairly clear implication that NDI was training young anti-Sandinista leaders to undermine the leftist government.

In case it wasn’t clear that NDI’s work in Nicaragua was explicitly partisan, Quibell revealed that he managed “relations with media, civil society and political party leaders, private sector, international cooperation and diplomatic corps.”

The LinkedIn profile for the Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Mexico country director for the US National Democratic Institute (NDI)

This enormous NDI program helped set the stage for the attempted 2018 coup d’etat. And soon after the failure of the violent regime-change operation in Nicaragua, Quibell moved to Ecuador, where he become country director for NDI’s operation there.

The Grayzone has documented how the NDI was used to train and fund opposition parties and leaders in Ecuador to oppose the leftist Correísta movement founded by former President Rafael Correa. The fact that Quibell transferred to Ecuador in 2020 is significant, because these NDI-cultivated forces were integral in handing the 2021 presidential election to right-wing banker Guillermo Lasso.

Before he worked in Nicaragua, Quibell was also NDI country director for Mexico, where he admits on LinkedIn that he “cultivated and maintained relationships with Mexican government officials at the federal, state, and municipal levels, as well as key civic and political leaders.”

Another US regime-change front and NED subsidiary, the International Republican Institute (IRI), has also been active in Nicaragua.

USAID data show that the IRI has spent at least $8 million to fund Nicaragua-based projects since 2013, although what exactly these programs are is not known because the information is redacted.

As The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal has documented, the IRI played a significant role in a 2004 US-backed military coup against Haiti’s first democratically elected president, left-wing liberation theology advocate Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

International Republican Institute (IRI) funding for programs in Nicaragua

USAID’s own website transparently illustrates its role as arm of US political power that aims to advance neoliberal governance and shatter any political movement or party that presents an alternative economic model.

In 2019, the year after the failed coup, for instance, more than 90% of USAID grants for Nicaragua-related programs were classified under its “Government and Civil Society” sector, whereas spending on public health, agriculture, and the environment was almost non-existent.

USAID’s Nicaragua-related spending in 2019

Of the $34 million that USAID allotted for Nicaragua-related programs in 2020, $22 million – nearly two-thirds – were classified as “Government and Civil Society” spending. Another $5.2 million, or 15%, went to USAID’s own operating expenses.

The fact that USAID uses its supposed “aid” money to support right-wing opposition forces in Nicaragua is reflected most explicitly by the record-breaking surge in its budget in 2006.

That year, the neoliberal President Enrique Bolaños was very unpopular, and opinion polls showed that Daniel Ortega and his socialist Sandinista Front were on the verge of returning to power after 16 years in the opposition.

Washington was desperate to beat back the so-called Pink Tide, or wave of progressive movements that were winning elections across Latin America at the time. So the US government returned to a strategy it had used with President Violeta Chamorro: attempt to bribe the Nicaraguan people with enormous offers of aid.

In 2006, USAID poured a staggering $260 million into projects in Nicaragua. Most of that funding went into an infrastructure, rural development, and transportation project run through Washington’s Millennium Challenge Corporation.

But the windfall spending failed, Ortega won the 2006 election, and Nicaragua shifted back to the left. By 2009, USAID spending had shrunken from $260 million down to $45 million, and by 2012 to just $34 million.

A record-breaking $260 million in USAID funding for Nicaragua’s right-wing government in 2006, the year before the Sandinistas returned to power

USAID’s own data make it clear without a doubt: it not a humanitarian entity, but a mechanism for political infiltration and destabilization that cultivates and funds right-wing opposition to the Sandinista government.

It is therefore not hyperbole to say that the US government in essence created Nicaragua’s political opposition, and directs its activities today.

As a product of foreign meddling, Nicaragua’s opposition reflects an extraordinary case study of Washington’s toxic legacy in the region and across the globe.

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Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it has recorded more than 10,000 cases of so-called breakthrough infections. These infections involve people who contract COVID-19 at least 14 days after their final COVID-19 vaccine dose. The public health agency still insisted that such instances are “relatively rare.”

According to a Russia Today (RT) article, the CDC reported 10,262 instances of fully vaccinated people becoming infected with COVID-19. The figures published in the May 28 edition of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report came from 46 U.S. states and territories. Less than seven percent of those who suffered breakthrough infections were hospitalized with COVID-19 symptoms. Meanwhile, a total of 1.6 percent – or around 160 people – died as a result of these breakthrough infections.

The same RT report said it was “likely” that the number of breakthrough infections is much higher than reported. According to the CDC, this is because reporting of such breakthrough cases is voluntary. It also does not include asymptomatic COVID-19 patients who were never tested.

Despite the more than 10,000 cases of breakthrough infections reported, the CDC has insisted that these cases are “relatively rare.” The public health agency said: “The number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths that will be prevented among vaccinated persons will far exceed the number of vaccine breakthrough cases.”

The CDC announced early this month that it would limit monitoring of breakthrough cases. The public health agency said it would only report patients with COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infection that were hospitalized or died. It explained that the move aimed to “help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance.”

CDC official Dr. Thomas Clark said in an interview that “few worrying patterns” in their collected data prompted the shift in reporting strategy. “I don’t think we’re missing out on this data. It’s just sort of a package of how we’re looking at these questions [regarding breakthrough infection,” he said. The CDC official added that other studies looking at the severity of COVID-19 infections in vaccinated and unvaccinated people are being planned.

COVID-19 tests also have a role to play in the increased number of breakthrough infections

The reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test is the gold standard for COVID-19 testing. However, even its inventor Kary Mullis said that the test should not be used as a diagnostic tool. But a May 18 Off-Guardian report elaborated on how the CDC makes use of RT-PCR test data to paint COVID-19 vaccines as effective. (Related: Evidence emerges that COVID tests are faulty. FDA and CDC admit as much.)

According to the report, the CDC used two main factors to justify the purported effectiveness of vaccines. First, it altered the cycle threshold (CT) values of the PCR test for COVID-19 – which was unreliable to begin with. These tests were then manipulated to reflect a high number of false positive results.

Second, the agency made use of the broad definition of COVID-19 cases. According to the current definition, anyone who shows a positive test result even though they have no symptoms at all is automatically considered a COVID-19 case.

The article also alleged that the public health agency made two new rules for vaccinated and unvaccinated cases. First, it removed asymptomatic or mild infections from the definition of a COVID-19 case – which the agency announced early this month. This meant that vaccinated people who experience COVID-19 with little to no symptoms will no longer be considered COVID-19 cases.

Second, the CDC lowered the CT value of RT-PCR tests from suspected breakthrough infections. A late April 2021 update on the agency’s website instructed state health authorities to “submit only specimens with a CT value of [less than] 28 … for sequencing.” It continued that sequencing is not feasible with specimens that have a higher CT value. This essentially meant that the CDC suggested laboratories to lower CT values to 28 cycles or less for potential breakthrough infections. (Related: Vaccinated people now being tested at 28 PCR cycles, which almost guarantees a “negative” covid result.)

The Off-Guardian article ultimately remarked that the CDC’s new policies “effectively created a tiered system of diagnosis.” It said: “From now on, unvaccinated people will find it much easier to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than vaccinated people. If the new rules are applied, the only possible result is that the official records will show that COVID-19 is much more prevalent among the unvaccinated. This is a policy designed to continuously inflate one number and systematically minimize the other.”

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Featured image is from Vaccine Injury News

The WHO Confirms that the Covid-19 PCR Test is Flawed: Estimates of “Positive Cases” are Meaningless. The Lockdown Has No Scientific Basis

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 06, 2021

The Real Time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (rRT-PCR) test was adopted by the WHO on January 23, 2020 as a means to detecting the  SARS-COV-2 virus, following the recommendations of  a Virology research group (based at Charité University Hospital, Berlin), supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

US Actively Prepares for War with Russia

By Valery Kulikov, June 06, 2021

It is quite apparent to everyone that, at present, the socio-economic and political situation in the United States is far from stable and society increasingly polarized. In fact, even members of the current US military and political elite admit this in their public speeches. Hence, President Joe Biden and his team have been trying hard to unite the nation and guide it in a less divisive direction.

Unthinkable Thoughts. The Spike Protein

By Josh Mitteldorf, June 06, 2021

The spike protein is the part of the virus structure that interfaces with the host cell. SARS 1 and SARS 2 viruses both have spike proteins that bind to a human cell receptor called ACE-2, common in lung cells but also present in other parts of the body.

How the Media Hides the Record of Vaccine Deaths. Deceives Americans

By Dr. Michael Thau, June 06, 2021

Europe Without Neutrals: NATO Lures Ireland into Global Military Network

By Rick Rozoff, June 06, 2021

On June 1 the Irish Times disclosed that Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs recently recommended to the nation’s Commission on Defence that Ireland expand military integration with NATO and the European Union. In the first case with the military bloc’s Partnership for Peace program which the country joined in 1999.

Israel Reports Link Between Rare Cases of Heart Inflammation and COVID-19 Vaccination in Young Men

By Gretchen Vogel and Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, June 06, 2021

The COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech appears to put young men at elevated risk of developing a heart muscle inflammation called myocarditis, researchers in Israel say.

Video: Pfizer’s Criminal Record. Largest Medical “Fraudulent Marketing” Case in US History

By US Department of Justice, June 06, 2021

“Fraudulent marketing” is an understatement: The mRNA vaccine announced by Pfizer – BioNTech is based on an experimental gene editing mRNA technology which has a bearing on the human genome.  The standard animal lab tests using mice or ferrets were not conducted.  Pfizer “went straight to human “guinea pigs.”

Inherit the Hypocrisy? ”Inherit the Wind”(1960) of the McCarthy Era

By Philip A Farruggio, June 06, 2021

A must see movie for all Americans is ”Inherit the Wind” (1960, Stanley Kramer, Director). To those who never saw this film, it accurately portrays the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee. The trial of substitute high school teacher John Scopes was for breaking Tennessee’s Butler Act, which forbade the teaching of evolution in state funded schools.

A Timeline of “The Great Reset” Agenda

By Tim Hinchliffe, June 06, 2021

Say it’s 2014 and you’ve had this idea for a technocratic Great Reset of the world economy for some time now, but it only works if the entire planet is rocked by a pandemic. How do you go about selling your idea?

Doctors vs Health Authorities. Clinically Proven Drugs vs the Jab. Who will Prevail?

By Michael Welch, Dr. Stephen Malthouse, and Dr. Peter McCullough, June 05, 2021

Whether or not you consider the virus be considered real, the world has seen a crushing blow to our liberties, our economies and even our way of life due to the lockdown and restrictions initiated in March of last year. Witness the shops, bars, and restaurants going bankrupt. Witness the museums, operas, concert halls and symphonies denied audiences.

More than 5,000 Covid Vaccine Deaths in America, 25,359 “Serious Injuries” and Almost 300,000 Reported “Adverse Events”

By Megan Redshaw, June 05, 2021

This week’s number of reported deaths among all age groups following COVID vaccines passed the 5,000 mark, up 759 from last week, according to data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The data comes directly from reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

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Phoenix Express 2021, the AFRICOM-sponsored military exercise involving 13 countries in the Mediterranean Sea region, concluded last week. While its stated aim was to combat “irregular migration” and trafficking, the US record in the region indicates more nefarious interests

Phoenix Express 2021 (PE21), a 12-day US-Africa Command (AFRICOM)-sponsored military exercise involving 13 states in the Mediterranean Sea, concluded on Friday, May 28. It had kicked off from the naval base in Tunis, Tunisia, on May 16. The drills in this exercise covered naval maneuvers across the stretch of the Mediterranean Sea, including on the territorial waters of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania.

The regimes in these countries, which cover the entire northern and northwestern coastline of Africa, participated in the drill – one of the three regional maritime exercises conducted by the US Naval Forces Africa (NAVAF). Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain were the European states that participated in the drill.

Among the heavyweights deployed in the exercises was the US navy’s USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB 4). The 784-feet-long warship is a mobile military base which “provides for accommodations for up to 250 personnel, a 52,000-square-foot flight deck.. and supports MH-53 and MH-60 helicopters with an option to support MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft,” according to the Woody Williams Foundation. “The platform has an aviation hangar and flight deck that include four operating spots capable of landing MV-22 and MH-53E equivalent helicopters.”

When the warship entered into its maiden service with the US navy in 2017, Capt. Scot Searles, strategic and theater sealift program manager at the Program Executive Office (PEO) Ships, said, “The delivery of this ship marks an enhancement in the Navy’s forward presence and ability to execute a variety of expeditionary warfare missions.

The Algerian National Navy frigate El Moudamir (F911), Egyptian Navy frigate Toushka (F906) and Royal Moroccan Navy multi-mission frigate Sultan Moulay Ismail (FF 614) were also part of PE21, bringing with them a range weapon systems including surface-to-surface and surface to air missiles, torpedo launchers, heavy naval guns and naval radars.

According to a press release by the US navy, the purpose of this exercise was to test the ability of the participants “to respond to irregular migration and combat illicit trafficking and the movement of illegal goods and materials.”

Smugglers moving goods across the border also illicitly traffic migrants fleeing war or economic crisis in their home countries. AFRICOM has on multiple occasions acknowledged that instability in Libya is the driving force behind the migration crisis.

Who is destabilizing the region?

While ‘Russian intervention’ is blamed for the instability in Libya, AFRICOM played a key military role in the Libyan war in 2012, deposing Muammar Gaddafi, who was a staunch opponent of expanding US military footprint in the region, with the help of radical Islamist organizations. With the exception of Algeria, all the other north African states which participated in PE21 had supported this war in Libya, which has led to mass distress migration.

Many Islamist organizations which emerged amid the anarchy caused by the war were also used by the US and its allies in the Syrian war in a bid to overthrow president Bashar al-Assad, triggering another major wave of destabilization and migration.

Noting that “Syrians.. have (also) entered Libya from neighboring Arab states seeking onward transit to refuge in Europe and beyond,” a US Congressional Research Service report states: “The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reports that nearly 654,000 migrants are in Libya, alongside more than 401,000 internally displaced persons and more than 48,000 refugees and asylum seekers from other countries identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).”

The report in 2020 acknowledged that with “human trafficking and migrant smuggling.. trade has all but collapsed compared with the pre-2018 period.”

This migration wave, caused in no small part by AFRICOM-coordinated military interventions in Libya, has since been purported as a reason for further militarization of the region through such exercises as PE21 sponsored by AFRICOM.

The hysteria surrounding migration whipped up by right-wing parties has provided politically fertile ground for the US to mobilize state militaries for such drills. This is despite a fall in undocumented migration.

The need to respond to ‘irregular migration’ with warships is one of the official pretexts which, like the ‘war on terror’, has been used to further the militarization of Africa through AFRICOM since it was established in 2007.

Meanwhile, notwithstanding the fact that the main cause behind the explosion of terrorist organizations in the region was the 2011 Libyan war in which AFRICOM itself was an aggressor, it continues to be portrayed as a bulwark against terrorist organizations. Its operations in Africa over the last decade, including hundreds of drone strikes, correlate with a 500% spike in incidents of violence attributed to Islamist terrorist organizations.

Credit: Africa Center for Strategic Studies, US Department of Defense.

The Chinese boogeyman

Another justification given by the US for AFRICOM is the perception of a growing Chinese influence. “Chinese are outmaneuvering the U.S. in select countries in Africa,” General Stephen Townsend, commander of AFRICOM, told Associated Press late in April, less than three weeks before the start of PE21.

He went on to claim that the Chinese are “looking for a place where they can rearm and repair warships. That becomes militarily useful in conflict. They’re a long way toward establishing that in Djibouti. Now they’re casting their gaze to the Atlantic coast and wanting to get such a base there.”

Calling out the lack of credibility of this claim, Eric Olander, a veteran journalist and co-founder of The China-Africa Project, wrote: “The Chinese are looking for a base but he doesn’t provide any specifics or any evidence to back up the claim. Again, we’ve heard this before… for years in fact. For all we know the general doesn’t have any more refined intelligence than the same speculation that’s been floating around African social media all these years about a new Chinese base in Namibia or was it Kenya or maybe Angola?”

Townsend also pointed to the Chinese investments in several development projects in Africa. “Port projects, economic endeavors, infrastructure and their agreements and contracts will lead to greater access in the future. They are hedging their bets and making big bets on Africa,” he claimed.

This has been disputed by Deborah Bräutigam, director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, who concluded that China’s economic engagements in Africa are not of a predatory nature.

Bräutigam argues that Chinese economic engagements on the continent are very much in line with the economic interests of these African states, providing jobs to locals and improving public infrastructure.

Neither the concocted threat of Chinese domination of Africa, nor terrorism and irregular migration add up to the raison d’etre of AFRICOM. As former AFRICOM commander Thomas Waldhauser explained to the House Armed Services Committee in 2018, the purpose of AFRICOM is to enable military intervention to propagate “US interests” across the continent, “without creating the optic that U. S. Africa Command is militarizing Africa.” However, the 5,000 US military personnel and 1,000 odd Pentagon employees deployed across a network of 29 bases of AFRICOM in north, east, west and central Africa present a different picture.

AFRICOM has its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, which sponsored PE21. While this exercise was still underway, preparations for African Lion 21, Africa’s largest military exercise, had already begun.

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Featured image: Tunisian navy personnels aboard USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB 4) on May 23 when the Phoenix Express 2021 was underway. Photo: AFRICOM

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A heart wrenching video of a Palestinian teen searching for his memories from under the rubble of his home razed to ground in the recent Israeli bombing has gone viral.

“What are these?” the boy is asked.

“Flower”, the boy replies even as tears roll down his cheek.

“From home”, he says when asked from where he got them.

This little child is searching for his memories from under the rubble of his house destroyed in the recent Israeli onslaught on Gaza.
[r] pic.twitter.com/ZaoZeGB7FV

— TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) June 3, 2021

The boy says he was at his grandparent’s home when it was bombed by the Israelis.

“Gaza damage cost”

Giving estimate of Gaza damage cost, Housing Ministry said 16,800 housing units had been damaged. Of those, 1,800 had become unfit for living and 1,000 were destroyed completely.

The Hamas media office estimated the bombardments had caused $40 million in damage to factories and the strip’s industrial zone and other industrial facilities, in addition to $22 million in damage to the energy sector.

Israeli air strikes and artillery fire on Gaza killed 254 Palestinians, including 66 children, and wounded more than 1,900 people in 11 days of conflict, the health ministry in Gaza says.

A barrage of thousands of rockets and other fire from Gaza claimed 12 lives in Israel, including one child and an Arab-Israeli teenager, medics say. Some 357 people in Israel were wounded before the two sides agreed for a ceasefire on May 21, 2021.

Many independent analysts have claimed that the latest Hamas-Israel was another attempt by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remain in power.

However, as per the latest update, even the bloody war has not saved Netanyahu and all indications are that his days in officer are numbered.

Latest news from Israel said, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid have agreed to form a coalition to oust Netanyahu.

“Palestinians on new Israeli government”

Many Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza have dismissed a change in the Israeli government, saying Bennett, the nationalist leader and former defence minister due to replace Netanyahu, would likely pursue the same right-wing agenda.

Bassem al-Salhi, a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), said the prime minister-designate was no less extreme than Netanyahu.

“He will make sure to express how extreme he is in the government,” he said.

“Hamas, Israel tension far from over”

On Thursday, the Hamas-run Ministry of Agriculture in Gaza announced that it has stopped importing Israeli fruits after the Jewish state banned the export of vegetables from the besieged enclave to the West Bank and abroad.

“Israel banned the export of 15 different kinds of agricultural products, mainly tomatoes and cucumbers from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank and abroad,” the Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Israel had closed the Kerem Shalom crossing with Gaza for four weeks, allowing only medical equipment and humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave, Xinhua news agency reported.

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Featured image: A Palestinian child, Omar Alhadeede, the sole survivor of his family, looks at a photo of his brothers, killed by the recent Israeli bombing on Gaza. (Image tweeted by Aya Isleem)

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Late Tuesday night, 500 unaccompanied children in immigration custody were brought to Fort Bliss, a highly contaminated and potentially hazardous military base in El Paso, TX. Fort Bliss was among several military sites under consideration by the Biden administration to process and house unaccompanied children who have migrated to the United States, some of whom had been forcibly separated from their families under the previous administration. Fort Bliss has the capacity to hold up to 7,500 children, with up to another 4,000 beds for people in custody at a family residential center.

Many military bases in the United States are known to be riddled with toxic hazards from past military operations, spills, storage of toxic chemicals, unexploded ordnances, and firing ranges. Currently, 130 military bases and installations are considered priority Superfund sites by the Environmental Protection Agency. There are currently 651 Department of Defense and National Guard sites potentially contaminated by toxic chemicals known as PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. PFAS don’t easily break down, and they can persist in your body and in the environment for decades.

“We are extremely concerned to hear of plans to detain immigrant children in Fort Bliss. Military bases filled with contaminated sites are no place for the healthy development of any child,” said Melissa Legge, an attorney at Earthjustice. “We recognize that the humanitarian situation at the border needs to be addressed in humanity, compassion, and expediency. Part of that requires keeping children away from toxic military sites. While we are hopeful that the Biden administration will keep children safe, we remain vigilant and ready to continue protecting detained minors in toxic facilities. Immigrant children under the care of the federal government should not be in cages, let alone toxic sites in military bases.”

Several of the military sites under consideration are contaminated with potentially hazardous pollutants and some are even located on or near Superfund sites. Superfund sites under consideration for housing children in immigration custody include the Homestead Detention Facility in Homestead, FL, Moffett Field in Mountain View, CA, and Joint Base San Antonio in Texas. Many of the sites remain inadequately remediated and still contaminated. Without proper environmental reviews, there is no way to guarantee these sites are safe for children, potentially exposing them to toxic chemicals that could have lifelong health impacts.

Fort Bliss is no exception. Earthjustice, along with partners including Alianza Nacional de Campesinas and the National Hispanic Medical Association, released hundreds of searchable documents and an expert analysis of previous plans for construction of a temporary detention center for children and families at Fort Bliss. These records document several problems with the project, including that the Army did not adequately investigate to determine what types of waste had been disposed of at the site, that the methods used for testing the soil samples were inadequate or never completed, and that samples taken after the supposed clean-up still had concerning levels of pollution. Additionally, illegal dumping on the site may continue to this day. As a result, there is now even greater uncertainty about the environmental hazards at the site and a greater need for thorough testing, analysis, and cleanup.

“We are deeply concerned about the decision to open temporary detention facilities for minors at Fort Bliss and the potential health risks to the minors detained in tents there,” said Elena Rios, MD, President & CEO of the National Hispanic Medical Association, a client in Earthjustice’s 2018 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit regarding the base. “Based on what we found in our Fort Bliss investigation in 2018, there are still present toxins from past landfills, which means children could be forcibly exposed to toxicity linked to cancer and development defects.”

The Biden administration has the opportunity to change course after decades of failed immigration policies. The United States government has shown flagrant disregard for the health of those in custody, most recently including forced sterilization, the use of industrial chemical disinfectants at other migrant detention facilities, and uncontrolled outbreaks of COVID-19. These ongoing failures have created conditions that make it impossible to keep those in custody safe, and we are therefore calling for the immediate halt of any plans to place children in such unsafe facilities, the securing of safe and suitable housing for children while they are required to remain in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the development of solutions that do not involve placing children on or near toxic sites, military sites, or in detention-like settings.

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Featured image: Building 500 area of Fort Bliss, 2007 (Source: CC BY-SA 3.0)

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The FDA will meet on June 10 to discuss the possible licensure of the Pfizer COVID vaccine for children, despite the fact that COVID poses a statistically insignificant risk to children while the vaccines could cause injury and death.

In light of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails released Wednesday, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) calls for health agencies to immediately halt the administration of COVID-19 vaccines to minors, whether in clinical trials or under Emergency Use Authorization.

With a recovery rate of 99.997%, children are not at great risk of serious health consequences from COVID-19 infections — but they are at significant risk of adverse events from the vaccine.

On May 19, Pfizer released a 37-page “fact sheet” of clinical trial data on its COVID-19 vaccine tested on children 12 and older. The date showed four out of five children in the trials suffered from mild to severe adverse events.

Regardless of the severity of these adverse events, long-term effects on children’s health from this experimental vaccine are unknown.

Emails released Wednesday prove Fauci knew the virus and pandemic would fade away without a vaccine, that masks do not work and that those who have recovered from infection have substantial immunity.

Despite having this knowledge, Fauci insisted people, including children, wear masks and that those who had already had COVID be vaccinated.

CHD demands federal and state agencies err on the side of caution, especially when it comes to our future: the world’s children. Immediate suspension of decisions regarding COVID vaccines for children is crucial.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a meeting on June 10 to discuss the possible licensure of the Pfizer vaccine for pediatric populations.

CHD Board Chair Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Children’s Health Defense have been advocating for years for improvements in the nation’s vaccine safety program which is in shambles.

In a March 15 letter to President Biden, Kennedy outlined the long list of problems in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS):

• Adverse events are rarely reported by the public or doctors.
• Clinical trial data is often biased, unavailable or nonexistent.
• Conflicts of interest between the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory. committees and pharmaceutical companies are rampant.

According to a study funded by the U.S. Health and Human Services and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s, the VAERS system captures only 1% of vaccine adverse events.

Yet as of May 21, VAERS data showed 262,521 adverse events including 4,406 deaths following COVID-19 vaccines since Dec. 14, 2020. Vaccine injuries among 12- to 17-year-olds more than tripled in the last week of reporting.

In 1976, approximately 50 deaths shut down the Swine Flu campaign under President Gerald Ford. Despite the underreporting to VAERS, the U.S. now has nearly 100 times that number of deaths following COVID vaccination.

The 1986 National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act has stymied legal action as has the 2005 PREP Act, both of which give vaccine makers virtually zero liability for their products.

Instead, claimants — including children — must file claims for injuries which are rarely paid. Parents of children injured and killed by vaccines are aware of this system. Now people injured by COVID-19 vaccines, or whose loved ones die, also are finding out they’re on their own.

Kennedy’s new book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health”, can be pre-order now from Barnes & Noble and Amazon. It will be published on July 20.

While most media has been silent, CHD commends Tucker Carlson and other journalists who are covering Fauci’s emails. CHD is in the process of filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit demanding access to the unredacted emails.

CHD urges people around the world to comment on its FDA petition asking that the Emergency Use Authorizations for COVID vaccines be revoked immediately.

The organization also asks people to add their names on a letter to Congress supporting the Prepare Act which would establish a National Commission on the COVID-19 pandemic to examine and report upon the facts and causes behind the worldwide crisis.

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The Vietnam War ended in 1975, but Vietnamese people today continue to suffer the effects of Agent Orange, the deadly dioxin-containing chemical weapon that the U.S. sprayed over 12 percent of South Vietnam from 1961-1971, poisoning both the people and the land.

Descendants of the approximately 2 to 4 million Vietnamese people, hundreds of thousands of U.S. Vietnam veterans, and Vietnamese-Americans who were exposed to the toxin continue to record disproportionate rates of congenital disabilities and higher rates of many diseases.

U.S. veterans receive some compensation from the U.S. government, but very little assistance has been given to the Vietnamese people, the intended victims of the defoliant Agent Orange.

Thus, on May 25, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) introduced H.R. 3518, the Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2021, in the House of Representatives. The Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign, for which I serve as co-coordinator, assisted Lee in drafting the bill.

“The United States has a moral responsibility to compensate the victims of the Agent Orange campaign,” Lee told Truthout. “In the same way we are focused on beginning to repair the damage of systemic racism in the form of reparations, and the war on drugs with restorative justice, it is also our responsibility to try and atone for this disgraceful campaign during the Vietnam War.”

Lee noted,

“The United States has contributed more than $125 million over the last 30 years in assistance through USAID for persons with significant disabilities, regardless of cause, in areas heavily sprayed with Agent Orange. This project is part of the U.S. government’s efforts to address legacies from U.S.-Vietnam War.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) recognizes 15 diseases and illnesses as associated with the spraying and use of Agent Orange by the U.S. Armed Forces during the Vietnam era. These maladies are AL amyloidosis, chronic B-cell leukemias, chloracne, diabetes mellitus type 2, Hodgkin’s disease, ischemic heart disease, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, acute and subacute peripheral neuropathy, porphyria cutanea tarda, prostate cancer, respiratory cancers and soft-tissue sarcomas.

Although the DVA provides some (albeit insufficient) compensation for 20 severe congenital disabilities in children of female U.S. veterans who served in Vietnam, the only congenital condition recognized for children of male U.S. veterans is spina bifida.

But no assistance has been provided to the children of Vietnamese or Vietnamese Americans associated with their exposure, or their parents’ or grandparents’ exposure, to Agent Orange.

Lee said H.R. 3518 “would expand benefits to children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange; expand research on Agent Orange and its effects on the health of exposed individuals; and provide medical, housing and poverty reduction assistance to Vietnamese individuals affected by exposure as well as their children,” adding, “It would also provide environmental remediation for areas in Vietnam exposed to Agent Orange and conduct a needs assessment on the Vietnamese American community.”

In addition, Lee observed, the bill would “provide grants that fund a broad health assessment for Vietnamese Americans who may have been exposed to Agent Orange as well as their children and descendants.” H.R. 3518 requires the establishment of “centers that provide ‘assessment, counseling, and treatment for conditions related to exposure to Agent Orange’ in areas with large Vietnamese-American populations,” Lee said.

In the current moment, advocates for Lee’s bill are urging those who support it to contact their congressional representatives and ask them to sign on to H.R. 3518 as a co-sponsor.

French Court Dismisses Agent Orange Lawsuit

Two weeks before the introduction of Lee’s bill, a French court dismissed a lawsuit that Tran To Nga, a French-Vietnamese victim of Agent Orange, filed in 2015 against 14 chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto, that produced and sold Agent Orange. The court in Evry, France, ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the case because the companies acted “on the orders” of the U.S. government which was involved in a “sovereign act.”

Working in Vietnam as a war correspondent in 1966, Tran and others with her were enveloped by the U.S. government’s spraying of the chemicals. “I saw a plane pass with a cloud behind it. And then my whole body was drenched in a sticky powder, and I started coughing and coughing. I didn’t know that this powder that had just covered me was a poison,” Tran says in the new documentary, The People vs. Agent Orange, directed by Alan Adelson and Kate Taverna and scheduled to air on PBS on June 28.

Tran’s first daughter weighed 6.6 pounds at the age of three months. Shortly after birth, her daughter’s skin began shedding. The baby could not bear to have any skin contact or simple demonstrations of affection, Tran testified in 2009 before the International People’s Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange. The child still weighed 6.6 pounds when she died at 17 months. Tran’s second daughter still suffers from alpha thalassemia, a genetic blood disease. Tran herself has type 2 diabetes, tuberculosis and cancer.

“For forty years, I carried within me this guilt of being a bad mother who did not know how to protect her children, or worse, who sowed misfortune to her offspring,” Tran told Truthout in an email. It wasn’t until 2008 when Tran visited Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange that she made the connection between her toxic exposure and the illnesses she and her daughters have endured.

Tran decided to sue the U.S. companies “because all the other victims no longer have the opportunity to do so. If I don’t,” she added, “the [Agent Orange] drama would be unknown for a long time to come and the crime of the greatest chemical war against humanity still goes unpunished. Above all, millions of dioxin victims would never have any assistance to be able to live with dignity during their already too miserable and painful lives.”

Tran’s lawyer, William Bourdon, who is appealing the judge’s ruling, said the court applied an obsolete definition of sovereign immunity that did not comply with international and French law. “I am disappointed, I am angry, but I am not sad,” Tran said at a news conference. “We are going to carry on because our cause is just. Truth is on our side.”

U.S. Chemical Companies Committed “Ecocide”

Tran’s lawsuit alleges that the U.S. chemical companies committed “ecocide” because Agent Orange destroyed the environment of Vietnam. The 2009 Paris tribunal, which heard testimony from 27 victims, witnesses and scientific experts, made a finding of “ecocide.” The seven judges from three continents, including me, concluded, “The damages caused to the land and forests, water supply, and communities and the ecosystems can be legitimately be called an ecocide, as the forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam have been devastated and denuded, and may either never grow back or take 50 to 200 years to regenerate.”

Today, dozens of environmental hotspots continue to contaminate the soil, food, sediment, wildlife and livestock in Vietnam with dioxin. In 2017, the United States assisted in cleaning up the Agent Orange contamination at the largest hotspot at the Da Nang Airport. In addition, the United States has pledged $30 million a year for 10 years toward the cleanup of the hotspot at Bien Hoa, but the total cost may exceed $1 billion. And there are several other smaller hotspots throughout Vietnam that must also be cleaned up as they continue to expose the people there to dioxin and arsenic.

Lee told Truthout she is “proud that, at the request of the Vietnam government, the U.S. cleaned up Danang Airport and reduced the risk of dioxin exposure to the surrounding community. Now, we are working together on dioxin remediation at Bien Hoa Airbase, which is the largest remaining dioxin hotspot in Vietnam.” Lee noted, “USAID has agreed to provide an initial five-year, $183 million contribution to this project. The bill provides for additional cleanup in areas that were heavily sprayed, such as areas that served as military bases and sites of aircraft crashes, and I will continue to ensure that U.S. assistance is provided for the Bien Hoa Airbase clean up.”

But the Chemical Companies Get Off Scot-Free

In 1979, U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War sued the U.S. government and the chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto, for compensation resulting from their exposure to Agent Orange. The case settled out of court in 1984 for $180 million which gave a few of the plaintiffs a few thousand dollars each. Later, U.S. veterans won a legislative victory for compensation and they receive several billion dollars per year in benefits.

Vietnamese victims filed a lawsuit in 2004 against the chemical companies that manufactured Agent Orange. In 2008, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein, who had also presided over the U.S. veterans’ lawsuit, dismissed the case brought by the Vietnamese people, concluding that Agent Orange did not constitute a poison weapon prohibited by the Hague Convention of 1907. Weinstein had reportedly told the chemical companies when they settled the U.S. veterans’ suit that their liability was over and he apparently made good on his promise. His 2008 dismissal was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. In the film The People vs. Agent Orange, Weinstein says that the veterans’ case “was not settled on any scientific basis. It was settled on a political basis … The moment it was settled, [the chemical companies’] stock went up.”

U.S. veterans who continue to suffer Agent Orange related diseases were exposed to, but were not the intended victims of, the deadly chemicals. Nonetheless, the U.S. government is paying for their compensation when private companies that manufactured the chemicals, which they knew to contain deadly dioxin, have not paid the price for allowing the United States to use those chemicals in the first place. Moreover, those companies profited from their sales of Agent Orange to the government.

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Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. 

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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A must see movie for all Americans is ”Inherit the Wind” (1960, Stanley Kramer, Director). To those who never saw this film, it accurately portrays the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee. The trial of substitute high school teacher John Scopes was for breaking Tennessee’s Butler Act, which forbade the teaching of evolution in state funded schools.

The film had many levels to it in addition to the story line of questioning the legality of such a law. What really frightened this writer, and yes, frightened is the proper word to use, is how 96 years later America has not ( to use the apropos word) evolved at all!

In the film we are made to look at Dayton, Tennessee (renamed Hillsboro for the film) and its inhabitants. This was deep in the Bible Belt and most of the townspeople reflected it, excepting the very few who did not subscribe exactly to fundamentalist Christianity.

That minority was looked upon as heathens and godless outcasts. Satan was deemed to be alive and well in the hearts and minds, and yes, the very souls of anyone anywhere who refused to go along with this Old Time Religion. We could see and hear the townspeople marching and singing that song as they first welcomed Mathew Harrison Brady; and later when they burned school teacher Bertram Cates in effigy.

This fanaticism was furthermore reflected in the person of Mathew Harrison Brady (portraying William Jennings Bryan, and played brilliantly by Frederic March) as their ‘spiritual savior‘ and lead prosecutor in the trial.

He was transformed through the townspeople’s childlike adoration of him into almost a godlike and all knowing savior. Brady had come and he would damn the sinner and transgressor Cates  for all his blasphemous garbage about Darwin and evolution.

Brady’s adversary in this quest for God’s glory was Henry Drummond, Chicago activist attorney, self proclaimed agnostic and Brady’s long time friend and political supporter (played by Academy Award nominee Spencer Tracy). They did battle in the courtroom for more than just John Scopes or evolution itself. They were battling for what was really on trial in Dayton, Tennessee: The right of someone to think and reason for oneself! Keep in mind that the Inherit the Wind novel was written a mere seven years after that disgraceful era called McCarthyism, a time all of us should revisit and study.

Today’s Realities

Look how far we have actually fallen as a nation, as a culture for that matter. We had a president who used Muslim and Mexican bashing to help him recruit supporters. His VP was a far right wing evangelical fanatic, worse even than Trump when it comes to advocating pre-emptive war against the Muslims.

Millions of Americans either belong to or agree with this phony Tea Party adoration that mirrors the ‘America First‘ and fascist leaning movements of the 1930s. These people have learned ZERO from our disgraceful and illegal pre-emptive invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, or our destructive carpet bombing of Libya.

Just as the crazy Islamic fanatics think that God is theirs and theirs alone, so do the right wing Christians (and Zionists) think the same about the God they have decided to worship. Utter insanity!

Where does hypocrisy fit into all this? Well, we know that the far right wing, which is the Republican Party, is full of hypocrites. The Chicken hawks  are most evident, made up of A) All those men who supported and trumpeted the Vietnam War, yet refused to go and serve there and B) All those men, and yes now women too, who were of age to join up for Iraq War 1 and Iraq War 2 and chose to stay home, but were full of ” USA USA ” bluster. They spend their time , especially those in elected office, railing against what they call ‘entitlements‘ and keep voting to increase this obscene military spending (now over 50% of our taxes).

They have the nerve to complain about Obama Care as socialism, when it really was a complete sellout to private health insurers; yet they have their own top grade and free socialist health coverage that our taxes pay for… even after they leave office!

The other side of this hypocrisy is of course the center/right wing of the Two Party system, the Neo Con Democrats. This group likes to tell us how they ‘Feel your pain etc‘ and then go along with the Military Industrial Complex. 

Under their ‘savior’, Mr. Obama, military spending topped 56% of our taxes in 2011. The Democrats supported Obama’s 10X increase in drone missile attacks, his NATO led destruction of Libya and continuation of our over 1000 permanent military bases in over 100 countries! Just as the Bush/Cheney gang was responsible for tens of thousands of civilian deaths through bombing and missile attacks, Obama and the Democrats signed off, and continue to sign off on such horror. The Democrats agreed with Obama’s decision to continue the Bush/Cheney bailout of the crooked Wall Street crowd, which we taxpayers will be paying off for generations!

Watching Inherit The Wind should allow you to see how rigid and foolish many of our fellow citizens still are.

A few years ago Trump had a rally in Melbourne, Florida. The first plan in his agenda was for his wife to lead the mob in prayer. No, they did not sing ”Old Time Religion” but could easily have. Then, Mr. Trump had this ‘ramped up‘ supporter of his, another ‘Joe the Plumber’ type, Gene Huber, recite his love and adoration for his president, wearing (I kid you not) a black tee shirt (Hitler’s SS color of choice) with the words ‘President Donald Trump‘. Melbourne was transformed into Hillsboro, Tennessee for the afternoon.

Thus a warning to those of us who ‘know better‘: If we do not stand up and protest this fanaticism… “He that troubleth his own house will inherit the wind…”

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, It’s the Empire, Stupid.

Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

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

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On June 1 the Irish Times disclosed that Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs recently recommended to the nation’s Commission on Defence that Ireland expand military integration with NATO and the European Union. In the first case with the military bloc’s Partnership for Peace program which the country joined in 1999.

At the moment Ireland is one of only six European Union members that are not also members of NATO. The others are Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Malta and Sweden. All of those but Cyprus are members of one or more NATO military partnerships: Austria, Finland, Malta and Sweden are members of the Partnership for Peace, and Finland and Sweden are also Enhanced Opportunities Partners; the latter two are de facto NATO members in most substantive ways. European nations not in the European Union are also in the Partnership for Peace: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine. NATO members not (or not yet) in the EU are Albania, Britain, Macedonia, North Macedonia, Norway and Turkey. Of the eleven nations that have joined both the EU and NATO since 1999, all joined NATO first.

According to the Irish daily, the foreign ministry asserted that more extensive cooperation with NATO “can ensure that the Defence Forces has the relevant capability and the necessary force protection elements to participate in increasingly demanding overseas missions.”

In also advocating the deployment of military attachés abroad “in regions where Ireland is seeking to expand its global footprint,” the ministry stated:

“The engagement of the Defence Forces with the EU, Nato, through Partnership for Peace and the OSCE will become increasingly important as regional organisations continue to take on more responsibilities.” Such subordination of Irish military forces to multinational organizations, including the thirty-nation, U.S.-dominated military bloc, will represent “a significant foreign policy development.” It will enhance “the capacities, expertise and international networks of the defence organisation” in furtherance of a rules-based international order (a quote).

As all of Europe is being recruited into the U.S.’s escalating confrontation with Russia, with the Pentagon, NATO and the EU working in unison on all fronts, nations like Ireland which had long prided themselves on their neutrality will not be allowed that status much longer. Neutral it was in World War II and at least formally during the Cold War, but no more.

As the Irish Times paraphrased it, Ireland’s “growing strategic engagement” with international (as the required verbal anodyne) peace and security operations will necessitate “ongoing support through progressive, forward-looking co-ordination between Foreign Affairs, the Department of Defence and the Defence Forces.”

As though appearing providentially (though in fact by less-than-divine design), the same publication three days later ran an editorial piece titled What price Irish neutrality in today’s world? The opening paragraph reads:

“The cyberattack on the Irish health service [blamed by the writer on Russia, needless to say] and the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Belarus should prompt a fundamental reassessment about the relevance of neutrality to the challenges of today’s world. The role and under funding of the Defence Forces over many years has to be part of that assessment.”

The choice of Belarus as a precipitating cause for enticing Ireland into NATO’s deadly embrace is not fortuitous. Since last August, and especially since the aforementioned Ryanair incident, the West – U.S., European Union and NATO; always united, virtually inseparable – has devised a common strategy of fostering regime change in that nation, with possible-to-probable military intervention as the fifth act, and through striking Belarus aiming a major blow at Russia as well. It’s not a matter of Irish and other erstwhile neutral European nations needing to protect themselves from the menacing actions of Belarus (…); it’s one of NATO requiring that all of Europe be enrolled in the campaign against Belarus and Russia.

The editorial’s second paragraph is a masterstroke of speciousness and sophism in the service of militarism and intervention abroad:

“Irish neutrality, as commonly understood, is a long-outdated concept which suggests that this State not only doesn’t take part in military alliance but has no particular view on the course of international relations. It dates from the second World War when Ireland was neutral as between the fascist powers and the Allies.”

To expose the negative to light: neutrality is not properly understood; it is passé, retrograde and unenlightened in any case. That by not joining a military alliance that consists of thirty members and forty partners on six continents which has waged unprovoked war on three of those six is to just not care about the world. In fact for Ireland to maintain a posture of neutrality now in the face of Belarusian and Russian transgressions is the moral (and practical) equivalent of appeasing and accommodating Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. There appears no other way of interpreting the above comments.

After discussing NATO’s role in training Irish military personnel for “noble and humanitarian” missions abroad, the author reiterates the preceding moral-political indictment of neutrality in stating, “Leaving aside purely operational factors there is the deeper question of being clear which side this country is on and how it can best protect itself in the future.”

Are you with the democratic, tolerant, clear-seeing West or are you a compromised asset of dictatorial and fascistic regimes like those of Belarus and Russia? The way that (inevitably) implied query is posed in and by the West, there are only two responses permitted. And the vicious and voracious ambitions of Minsk and Moscow may well extend to the green fields and hills of Eire itself, is also used as a bugbear to frighten the Irish into submission.

The Irish Times columnist also engaged in this agile display of legerdemain: new EU nations in Central and Eastern Europe supported Ireland “during the protracted negotiations over Brexit,” and as they are to a one threatened by imminent invasion by Russia’s barbarian hordes (as is implied: “Those countries feel threatened by incessant Russian pressure on their borders and meddling in their internal affairs.”), then Ireland must prove its gratitude and loyalty by…going to war with Russia?

This is the manner, crude, but lacking counterinformation all too effective, in which nations are seduced by militarism and driven to war.

There is a history for NATO to build on, unfortunately. Ireland provided the bloc with troops for its post-conflict military operations in Bosnia and Kosovo; joined the Partnership for Peace program in 1999, which was employed to enlist the fourteen Eastern European countries that have joined NATO since 1999; and was later granted an Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme. In addition:

• It participates in the Partnership for Peace Planning and Review Process
• It participates in the Interoperability Platform, which “brings Allies together with 24 selected partners that are active contributors to NATO’s operations”
• It provides support for NATO-led operations and missions
• It deployed troops to Afghanistan for NATO’s International Security Assistance force from 2002-2016 and its successor, Resolute Support Mission afterward

Should the West, with Ireland’s assistance to the extent it supplies it, succeed in deposing the government of Belarus and supplanting it with a pro-NATO client regime, there will not be a single wholly European nation not under NATO’s jackboot.

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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.

Featured image is from http://nousnatobases.org

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The COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech appears to put young men at elevated risk of developing a heart muscle inflammation called myocarditis, researchers in Israel say. In a report submitted today to the Israeli Ministry of Health, they conclude that between one in 3000 and one in 6000 men ages 16 to 24 who received the vaccine developed the rare condition. But most cases were mild and resolved within a few weeks, which is typical for myocarditis. “I can’t imagine it’s going to be anything that would cause medical people to say we shouldn’t vaccinate kids,” says Douglas Diekema, a pediatrician and bioethicist at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Israeli health officials first flagged the issue in April, when they reported more than 60 cases, mostly in young men who had received their second dose of vaccine a few days earlier. Around the same time, the U.S. Department of Defense began to track 14 such cases. In mid-May, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it, too, was reviewing myocarditis cases. Officials at the European Medicines Agency said on 28 May they had received 107 reports of myocarditis following the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, or about one in 175,000 doses administered. But relatively few people under age 30 have been vaccinated in Europe.

The Israeli panel’s findings come as Israel and many European countries are debating whether younger adolescents should be vaccinated against COVID-19. Israel has been vaccinating teenagers 16 and older since late​ January, and the Ministry of Health is scheduled to announce tomorrow whether vaccinations will be opened to children 12 and older. Other countries, including the United States and Canada, began vaccinating children 12 and older in mid-May.

“From a parent’s perspective, this really comes down to risk perception, assessment of the data,” says Diekema, who has studied risk-benefit trade-offs. Even if a link between myocarditis and the vaccine holds up, the condition is usually mild, requiring treatment only with anti-inflammatory drugs, whereas COVID-19 infection can also cause serious disease and long-term side effects, even in young people. As suspicion has percolated about a possible connection, “I don’t know many physicians who are changing their minds about vaccinating their kids,” Diekema says.

In Israel, which relied almost exclusively on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in its early and fast vaccination drive, the Ministry of Health in January assembled a panel led by Dror Mevorach, head of internal medicine at the Hadassah University Medical Center, to investigate the issue. Mevorach tells Science he and his colleagues identified 110 myocarditis cases among 5 million people in Israel who had received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the month before their diagnosis. That translates to about one in 50,000 vaccine recipients, a number that isn’t concerning given the background rate of myocarditis in the general population, where it is typically triggered by viral or bacterial infections, including COVID-19.

But the rate of myocarditis following vaccination among young men was higher. Ninety percent of the cases picked up in Israel appeared in men, and although myocarditis is normally more common among young men, the rate among those vaccinated was somewhere between five and 25 times the background rate, the report says. (Two cases of fatal myocarditis have also been reported in Israel, but the panel says investigations of those deaths were inconclusive; one patient may have had a more generalized inflammatory syndrome, and the other diagnosis was “not verified,” the report says.)

The new analysis “is very suggestive of a causal nature,” between the vaccine and myocarditis, Mevorach says. “I am convinced there is a relationship.”

“It does suggest that this is, at least statistically, a real phenomenon,” says Peter Liu, a cardiologist and chief scientific officer of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. Diekema says it’s important to investigate “even a hint of a signal,” but cautions that “while this report is suggestive … it requires validation in other populations by other investigators before we can be certain the link exists.” Other factors may be in play, Diekema says. Now that children are back to socializing and playing sports, his hospital’s emergency room is “seeing more viral diseases than we’ve seen in a year,” and as a result, “I would expect to see a little bump in myocarditis versus a year ago.” Ideally, scientists should compare cohorts of vaccinated and unvaccinated youngsters at the same time, Diekema says, and he’s heartened that such studies are now gearing up.

Myocarditis cases following the Moderna vaccine, which isn’t in use in Israel, are also being investigated in the United States. It’s not clear why the two vaccines, which both rely on messenger RNA (mRNA), might heighten the risk. One possibility is that the very high antibody levels that both generate in young people may also, in rare cases, lead to a sort of immune overreaction that inflames the heart. “There’s no question these [vaccines] are extremely immune-generating,” Liu says. Mevorach says he suspects the mRNA itself might be playing a role. The innate immune system recognizes RNA as part of the body’s defense against microbes—including RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2, he notes. “I think that actually the mRNA is a kind of natural adjuvant,” which ramps up the immune response, he says.

Diekema says the medical community is now on alert for youngsters with chest pain and other symptoms soon after vaccination—allowing them to be quickly identified, treated, and reported to health departments. Mevorach agrees that awareness among vaccinees, their parents, and their doctors is important for prompt and effective treatment. He says he and his colleagues treated about 40 cases. Only a few needed corticosteroids, he said, and most have recovered fully.

One important question is whether delaying the second vaccine dose might reduce any potential risk. There may be an opportunity to find out: Several countries have stretched the interval between the two doses from the 3 weeks tested and recommended by Pfizer to 12 or even 16 weeks, because they want to give as many people as possible at least one shot. A drop in myocarditis cases among those whose second dose was delayed might show up in data in the months ahead. Lowering the dose in young people may also be worth considering, Liu says. Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines are now being tested at lower doses in children under 12, with results expected in the coming months.

Even if the link between the shots and myocarditis firms up, Liu says the vaccine’s benefit—being well-protected from COVID-19—outweighs the risks, even for young people, who are generally at lower risk of severe disease. But Mevorach says the trade-offs may be different in Israel, given its extremely low numbers of SARS-CoV-2 infections—just 15 new cases were diagnosed yesterday. He hopes the Ministry of Health will leave the decision on whether to vaccinate younger teens to their parents and doctors. “At the moment, we no longer have an emergency,” he says.

Update, 1 June 2021, 4.55 PM: Text has been added to this story about two reported fatal cases of myocarditis; the expert panel said investigations of those cases were inconclusive.

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Gretchen Vogel is a contributing correspondent for Science Magazine based in Berlin, Germany.

Jennifer Couzin-Frankel is a Staff Writer.

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It is quite apparent to everyone that, at present, the socio-economic and political situation in the United States is far from stable and society increasingly polarized. In fact, even members of the current US military and political elite admit this in their public speeches. Hence, President Joe Biden and his team have been trying hard to unite the nation and guide it in a less divisive direction.

Since the relationship between the United States and Russia has taken a turn for the worse in recent years, it is quite clear to the author that, nowadays, the US administration has been seeking confrontation with the Russian Federation, be it over politics, trade or even the construction of Nord Stream 2 (which is of no concern to the US) for the European Union (EU). And President Joe Biden is seemingly trying to achieve this aim by using fairly aggressive and ideologically divisive rhetoric as a tool.

Based on a number of reports published by American and Western media outlets, aside from anti-Russia propaganda, the US government has begun its preparations for a possible invasion of Russia via the Baltic countries, the Black Sea, the Arctic Ocean and regions bordering the Russian Federation to the East.

According to a May 17 report in Business Insider,

the “US Special Operations Europe (SOCEUR) conducted its largest annual exercise in conjunction with a smaller one” with troops from several NATO member and partner countries. Both drills were staged “at the same time to simulate a full-blown conflict with Russia ranging from the Baltic states and Scandinavia south to Ukraine and the Black Sea region”. The realistic exercises were called Trojan Footprint 21 and Black Swan 21 and “took place in Romania and across Eastern Europe”.

The article also stated that Crimea “would be an ideal environment for Naval Special Warfare operations”. In fact, US SEAL teams are already capable of conducting “over-the-beach raids and ambushes, maritime and land special reconnaissance, and underwater special operations, such as placing sensors on the ocean or limpet mines on enemy vessels”.

The author of the article also opined that Russian radar installations and A2/AD (anti-access/ area denial) “batteries and command-and-control systems would be a logical target for SEAL platoons”. The two exercises essentially showed “how conventional and special-operations units would work together in a major conflict with Russia”.

According to Business Insider, the Russian military bolstered its presence in Crimea since its annexation, “making it a seemingly impenetrable fortress guarding Moscow’s southern flank both from land and air”, and making invading it quite a challenge.

At this point, it is worth reminding revenge-seekers in the United States that Crimea has been viewed as Russia’s stronghold for quite some time. In fact, a number of burial grounds for foreign fighters on the peninsula serve as a reminder of this land’s bloody history. And in the past, there were no openly gay servicemen unlike nowadays in the US and its allies’ armies.

A May 17 article in The National Interest reported that the United States had a plan to attack Kaliningrad, which was described as “a single symphony of violence to break down advanced defenses”. General Jeffrey L. Harrigian, Commander of US Air Forces in Europe, said that the city and its garrison “could be prime targets for” multi-domain operations. Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., the Deputy Editor for Breaking Defense, clarified that there would be simultaneous attacks on Kaliningrad from the air, land, sea and cyberspace, i.e. “a single symphony of violence to break down advanced defenses”. Hackers could first “disrupt communications networks while jamming planes confuse radars”. In the meantime, “bombers, ships and submarines could lob long-range cruise missiles” and ground forces “fire rockets”. Stealth fighters and bombers would then be able to “penetrate surviving defenses to drop GPS-guided” weapons.

Still, individuals behind the aforementioned plans appear to have forgotten about the possibility of a massive counter missile strike against the United States and its European allies, as well as the potential damage Russian hypersonic weapons could cause to those who beat the drums of war and anyone else dragged into the conflict… For it was in fact Russia’s Katyusha rocket systems that turned the tide of World War II.

Preparations for an armed invasion of Russia are no longer kept under wraps in the European Union.

During the May 6 meeting of EU’s Foreign Affairs Council involving EU Defense Ministers, a decision was made to grant the requests of Canada, Norway and the US to participate in the PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation, a part of European Union’s security and defense policy) project Military Mobility.

The three countries would be the first states to be invited to participate in the initiative. But the very project Military Mobility is not so much centered around defense, as this initiative coming to fruition would give the West an opportunity to relocate roughly 50,000 personnel to the Baltic states. One issue at present is the poor infrastructure in the EU, especially in Eastern Europe. Hence, in the nearest future, the plan is to upgrade it so that roads, bridges, railroads etc. are able to cope with large quantities of heavy military transport.

Germany’s Minister of Defense Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer welcomed the move to invite the three aforementioned nations to take part in project Military Mobility, and described it as “another big step in the transatlantic alliance and in the cooperation between the European Union and NATO”. Her support for the initiative could stem from the memory of successful military campaigns of the past, for instance, during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). However, Kramp-Karrenbauer is apparently unaware of the failed attempts to conquer the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union in the 19th and 20th centuries.

As part of the anti-Russia propaganda drive, some truly impressive photographs were published by Western media recently showing maritime drills, dubbed Exercise Ragnar Viking, that involved vessels of the British Royal Navy, US Navy, the French Navy and the Royal Norwegian Navy. The Drive reported that, according to the US Navy, the drills were intended to “showcase high-end NATO cohesion, solidarity, and credibility in the Norwegian, North, and Baltic Seas”. The article also said that specific elements of the exercise “included a demonstration of long-range strike capabilities from the North Atlantic into Lithuania, amphibious landings in Norway, plus anti-submarine warfare and surface action group operations in the North Atlantic”.

Unfortunately, the aforementioned examples are not the only ones indicative of a vengeful policy toward Russia adopted recently by the United States and its NATO allies, which is in direct contrast to statements made by President Joe Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressing willingness to have a more stable and predictable relationship with the Russian leadership.

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Valery Kulikov is a political expert, writing for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

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Propaganda is an organized attempt to get large numbers of people to think or do something — or not think or do something. It’s not like classical rhetoric, which is about persuasion through argument, but rather a means of sub-rational manipulation

For the past two decades, professor Mark Crispin Miller has taught a course on propaganda at New York University, in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development

In September 2020 after urging his students to look into the scientific rationale for the mask mandates, to assess the truthfulness of the propaganda drive promoting them, he was subject to an administrative “review” for that and other alleged crimes

Miller is suing 19 of his department colleagues for libel after they signed a letter to the school dean demanding that “review” of Miller’s conduct, falsely accusing him of “explicit” hate speech, mounting “attacks on students” “advocating for an unsafe learning environment” and discouraging his class from wearing masks

Miller’s case shows that the infringement of academic freedom is inimical to independent thinking and free inquiry. Without such freedom, higher education is more than likely to teach students only to believe what they are told by state and corporate powers, which means not educating them at all — a failure damaging to them and catastrophic for democracy

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Watch the video here.

In this interview, professor Mark Crispin Miller, Ph.D., provides us with a startling example of a crackdown on academic freedom, with dire implications for free speech in America today. Ironically, it was his teaching students how to question propaganda, and to resist it, that brought on the curtailment of his academic freedom, after over 20 years of teaching that important subject at New York University.

His experience at NYU in the fall of 2020 culminated in his suing 19 of his department colleagues for libel — a case that has become a major flashpoint in the larger struggle to defend free speech and academic freedom, not just in the United States, but throughout the West today. Miller explained how he had come to teach the study of the media, and propaganda in particular:

“I had learned, as an English major, how to read literary texts closely and carefully to discover their hidden depths … and I discovered to my delight that you could do that with great movies as well. The more closely you watch them, and the more times you watch them, the more you see in them.

I then began to notice that TV commercials were also extremely subtle. As propaganda messages, they were really very carefully done so that they would appeal to you on both a conscious and an unconscious level. So, I started writing about those, and then about political rhetoric.

I started writing more and more about the media, and I was favoring magazines for [a] public readership … I wanted to reach more than just an academic audience from the beginning. And I quickly felt the urgency of alerting people to what the media was doing

…

By the ’90s, it had become a crisis, as a handful of transnational corporations were controlling most of the content that everybody was absorbing, news and entertainment alike, and it was getting worse and worse. So, I started to become an activist for media reform. I wrote a great deal on this and lectured about it very widely.

This is through the ’90s — and you can see how successful I was. The Telecom[munications] bill of 1996, signed by Bill Clinton, set the seal on the creation of a media monolith, The Media Trust, which had already started in earnest under Reagan. Now, it was really getting serious.

Fast forward to 2001 … I shifted my interest from media concentration to the urgent need for voting reform, because it was becoming ever clearer that the outcome of our elections does not necessarily reflect the will of the electorate … As you can see, my interests were becoming more and more taboo.”

The Rise of State-Corrupted Corporate Media

Signs of trouble emerged in 2005, when Miller published the book “Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform.” Miller and his publisher had hoped the book would open the door to nationwide discussion of the need for radical reform of the election system, but to their surprise, the book was instantly “blacklisted” by the corporate media. No one would review it.

“I even hired my own publicist,” Miller says. “This is the woman who is the publicist for Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert. She came in full of piss and vinegar, [saying] ‘We’re going to really make this [book] famous.’ And she’d never encountered such resistance. She couldn’t get anywhere.”

Oddly, it was the LEFT press — for which he had often written — that now labeled Miller a “conspiracy theorist” — a stigma that’s stuck with him ever since. The slander drove him to investigate more deeply. “I asked myself, when did this become a thing?” he says. “When did ‘conspiracy theory’ come to spring from everybody’s lips?”

Miller went to the archives of The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time magazine, searching for the terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist.” Up until 1967, “conspiracy theory” was used only from time to time in various ways, while the term “conspiracy theorist” was never used.

From 1967 onward, however, “conspiracy theory” was used with increasing frequency. Why? Because, in early 1967, the CIA sent a memo — No. 1035-96 — to all its station chiefs worldwide, instructing them to use their media assets to attack the works of Mark Lane, Edward Jay Epstein and other investigators who were questioning the Warren Report for its ludicrous assertion that “lone gunman” Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy.

The memo advised the use of certain lines of attack — what we today call “talking points” — to help discredit those dissenting voices. One was that “If there was a conspiracy that big, somebody would have talked by now” — a dismissive claim that’s still in use today, especially concerning 9/11. Another tactic the agency advised was to associate the “conspiracy theories” with communist subversion, thereby casting wholly reasonable inquiry as a threat to the “free world.”

“This raises a profoundly important issue about democracy in general,” Miller says, “as to whether it’s possible when you have the media, the press, covertly manipulated by the state. And, it is part of this hidden history of America that … we all need to understand if we want to get a clear sense of what’s happening now.”

As Miller started advocating for media reform, he was hired by the late Neil Postman to teach at the NYU.

“He hired me in part because he wanted another public intellectual on the faculty … who was critical of the media. He shared my view that the whole purpose of media study should be to help inform people generally about the urgent need for a properly functioning democratic media system,” Miller says.

“I used to feel that media literacy should be taught in every high school and college. I still believe that, but I now realize that a key component of that curriculum has to be propaganda study. It’s crucial.”

Over the years, NYU’s media studies department ballooned and shifted direction, becoming more diffuse, more theoretically inclined and more fixated on the pieties of “social justice” — a phrase that Miller points out has been appropriated to mean something other than what it used to mean. Indeed, the “social justice” issue has a great deal to do with the censorship — the “canceling” — of professor Miller.

COVID Propaganda

While it acquaints his students with the history of modern propaganda — its birth in World War I, its use by the Bolsheviks and by the Nazis — Miller’s course on propaganda is primarily concerned with teaching students to perceive and analyze propaganda in real time, or to look back at very recent propaganda drives.

This is not an easy thing to do, he warns his students, since, while it’s easy to spot propaganda that you disagree with, it can be very difficult to recognize it as propaganda when it tells you something that you want to hear, and want to think is true.

“That’s the most effective propaganda,” Miller says. “It works best when you don’t see it for what it is. You think it’s news. You think it’s entertainment. You think it’s information. You think it’s expertise. So, you will agree with it. Someone else out there is spewing disinformation, but you’re getting the real thing.

So, it’s hard to study propaganda, because you must make an effort to pull back and be as impartial as possible. Read comprehensively, do all the research you can [on] all sides of that issue. See what the propaganda has blacked out. See what the propaganda has stigmatized as fake, as hoax, as junk science, and look at it objectively.

What’s hard is that you have to move out of your comfort zone. Sometimes you discover that a thing you’d fervently believed for years was false, or half true. I’ve had this experience myself many, many times.”

Miller made these points at the first “meeting” (via Zoom) of his propaganda course in September 2020, noting that such a thorough and impartial propaganda study can be difficult, not just because it makes you question your own views. Such a study can also pose a social challenge, as your discoveries may come as a shock to those around you — friends, roommates, family, even other of your teachers, who’ve never looked into the matter for themselves.

“The COVID crisis has been driven by a number of propaganda themes,” Miller says. However, the word “propaganda” does not automatically mean that the information is false or malign. Propaganda can be true and used for benevolent ends. Public service ads encouraging you not to smoke, for example, are a form of propaganda.

The problem with propaganda is that it’s inherently biased and one-sided, which can become outright dangerous if the other side is censored. This is particularly so when it comes to medicine and health, and the censoring of COVID-19 treatment information and the potential hazards of the COVID vaccines is a perfect example of this.

“Propaganda is an organized attempt to get large numbers of people to think or do something — or not think or do something. That’s really all it is. That’s an informal definition but it’s a good one,” Miller says.

“It’s not like classical rhetoric, which is about persuasion through argument. [Propaganda] is a kind of sub-rational manipulation. It’s been with us for a long time, but the rise of the digital world, our absorption into the digital universe, has radically intensified this kind of effort and made it successful beyond the wildest dreams of [Nazi minister of propaganda] Dr. [Joseph] Goebbels or [profession public relations pioneer] Edward Bernays.

This incredible technological sophistication enables them, first of all, to move people at the deepest level. It also enables them to suppress dissidents with remarkable efficiency, spotting the word ‘vaccine’ in a post and then blocking it.

At the same time, it gives them an astonishing advantage when it comes to surveillance of every single one of us … It is going to require a tremendous amount of skill and sophistication on our part, to organize under that watchful eye.”

Academic Censorship

One topic Miller suggested studying in that first meeting of his propaganda course last fall, was the mask mandates. Miller made it clear that he was NOT telling the students not to wear masks, but that this would be a purely intellectual exercise.

Such study (which was not an assignment, but only a suggestion) would consist of reading through the scientific literature on masking: specifically, all the randomized, controlled studies of masking and the use of respirators in hospital settings — studies finding that those face coverings do NOT prevent transmission of respiratory viruses; and, as well, the several recent studies finding otherwise.

He also offered tips on how non-scientists can assess new scientific studies: by looking at reviews by other scientists, and by noting the university where a given study was conducted, and to see if it has any financial ties to Big Pharma and/or the Gates Foundation, as such a partnership may have influenced the researchers there.

The following week, a student who missed that introductory talk (she had joined the class late) was present when the subject of masks came up again, and she was so enraged by Miller’s emphasis on the importance of those prior studies (whose consensus had been echoed by the CDC until early April 2020, and by the WHO until early June 2020), that she took to Twitter, accusing him of endangering the students’ health, and of posting on his website (News from Underground) material “from far-right and conspiracy sites” — and demanding that NYU fire him.

“I was kind of floored by this,” Miller says. “This has never happened to me before. It was unpleasant, but it was her First Amendment right to express herself on Twitter, so that per se was not such a big deal. However, what happened immediately after that is not acceptable.”

The department chair, without consulting with Miller, responded to the student’s tweet with his thanks, adding: “We as a department have made this a priority, and discussing next steps.” The next day, Carlo Ciotoli, the doctor who advises the NYU on its stringent COVID rules, and Jack Knott, the dean of Steinhardt, emailed Miller’s students, without putting him on copy, hinting that he’d given them “dangerous misinformation.”

They also provided them with “authoritative public health guidance” — i.e., links to studies recommended by the CDC, finding that masks are effective against transmission of COVID-19. Thus, they told the students to believe those newer studies that Miller had already recommended, whereas he encouraged them to make up their own minds.

Shortly after that, the department chair asked Miller to cancel next semester’s propaganda course, “for the good of the department,” on the pretext that Miller’s film course would attract more students, so that he should teach TWO sections of that course. (Both courses admit 24 students.) Miller agreed, as the chair has that prerogative, but he did so under protest; and, he couldn’t let the matter go.

“I mean, I’m teaching a propaganda course, and look what happened,” Miller says. “So, with the help of some friends, including Mickey Huff, who runs Project Censored, I wrote a petition¹ that people can find at Change.org. The only ‘ask’ in that petition is that NYU respect my academic freedom and set a good example for other schools.

But I did it in the name of all those professors, doctors, scientists, activists, journalists and whistleblowers who have been gagged or persecuted for their dissidence, not just over this last year, when it’s reached a kind of crisis point, but really for decades. It’s been going on for far too long, initially on the fringes, but now it’s happening all over the place.”

‘Slanderous Lunacy’

A month after the student attacked Miller on Twitter, he received an email from the dean, informing him that he was ordering a review of Miller’s conduct at the request of 25 of his department colleagues, whose letter to him was attached.

“I thought I’d seen everything,” Miller says. “[The letter] starts by saying, ‘We believe in academic freedom.’ The email from the dean and doctor also started saying ‘We believe in academic freedom,’ so I’ve learned that when somebody comes up and says, ‘I believe in academic freedom,’ you need to brace yourself because there’s a big buck coming. And that’s what happened with this letter from my colleagues.

‘We believe in academic freedom, BUT, as the faculty handbook points out, if a colleague’s behavior is sufficiently heinous, it can obviate his or her academic freedom. And we believe that’s the case with Professor Miller,’ it read.

Now, I think what the faculty handbook is referring to is if a professor tries to rape a student or uses lynch mob language against minority students or something like that. They put me in that category. Why? First of all, they said I discouraged students from wearing masks, and even intimidated those who were wearing masks, which is false to the point of insanity.

It was a Zoom class. I’ve never heard of a student wearing a mask on Zoom, although maybe that will be mandatory at some point. But my mask heresy was the least of it. They went on to charge me with ‘explicit hate speech,’ launching ‘attacks on students and others in our community,’ assailing my students with ‘non-evidence-based’ arguments or theories, ‘advocating for an unsafe learning environment,’ [and] ‘micro-aggressions and aggressions.’

I read this with increasing wonderment. If they had decided to craft a description of a professor completely antithetical to the way I teach, they couldn’t have done a better job. This was slanderous lunacy. They basically picked up where that student left off.”

Libel Suit Underway

In a Zoom “meeting,” Knott informed Miller that he had ordered the review at the behest of NYU’s lawyers, who told him that he must — a revelation that Miller finds significant, there being, in fact, no legal grounds for that review.

Soon afterward, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonprofit dedicated to protecting academic freedom, sent Andrew Hamilton, NYU’s president, a detailed letter going through the case law, demonstrating clearly that the dean’s review is illegitimate, and that the president should intervene, and quash. He did not reply.

Knott told Miller that the “review” would end with the semester — i.e., by mid-December 2020. Yet, seven months after it was ordered, Miller still has not heard anything about that putative “review” — which may have been put on hold, or quietly called off, because of what Miller did about his colleagues’ letter.

“After I talked to the dean, I went through the letter they wrote with a fine-tooth comb and crafted a cordial point-by-point rebuttal. I asked for a retraction and an apology, and they ignored it. A week later, I sent it again. I said, ‘Please, by November 20th I’d like you to retract this and apologize.’ Nothing.

So, I decided I had no choice. I certainly wasn’t going to let this go. It was outrageous, and represents, inside the academy, the kind of persecution and suppression that we see going on worldwide, throughout so-called democracies. So, I decided I had to sue them for libel.”

Support Free Speech Rights and Academic Freedom

At the time of this interview, Miller was waiting for the judge to rule on the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case. All of the documents relating to this case can be found on Miller’s website, MarkCrispinMiller.com.² If you want to make a donation to help fund Miller’s legal case, you can do so on his GoFundMe page.³

“I’m trying to raise $100,000,” he says, “because I expect this to be a protracted and costly fight with depositions. The money goes directly into an escrow account that my lawyer manages, so I’m not profiting off this personally. Nor am I only doing it on my own behalf, as with the petition.

They have hurt me greatly. Not only professionally, within the institution and beyond, because word of this has traveled, but also physically, because the stress of that ordeal has really slowed my recovery from Lyme disease, which I’ve been battling for 10 years.

I became so ill from this that I ended up in the ER at NYU, in January. So, I am on medical leave this semester. I’ve just been working on my health and telling my story, so that I can prevail in the court of public opinion. But it isn’t just about me, my health, my career. It really is about all of us.

It’s about you, it’s about Bobby Kennedy, Sucharit Bhakdi and John Ioannidis. It’s about the Frontline Doctors and the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration. It’s about what appears to be a majority of expert opinion on some level, while the medical establishment, like the academy and the media, is utterly corrupt.

There are a lot of people of conscience, doctors who observe their Hippocratic oath, professors who believe in trying to teach the truth, journalists who have no place to publish because they’re actually trying to report the other side of a narrative that is increasingly preposterous and lethal. It’s for all of us because, as many have observed, once free speech goes, and with it, academic freedom, that’s the whole ballgame. That’s the end.

If we can’t even talk about what’s happening, if we end up being accused of conspiracy theory — which is now openly equated with domestic terrorism — if we’re accused of hate speech (which is out of the social justice playbook), and if we’re accused of dangerous misinformation about the virus, which has been happening all year, if we encounter any of those three responses to our attempts to tell the truth, then we are vilified and marginalized.

And my colleagues managed to hit me with all three in that letter. They accuse me of conspiracy theory, they accuse me of hate speech and they accuse me of doing the students harm by discouraging them from wearing masks.

All false. All I did was urge my class to read through all the literature on masks and make up their own minds as an example of the kind of thing they should do with all these narratives.”

Beyond infringing on freedom of speech, Miller’s case shows how censorship ultimately ends up chilling independent thinking and curbing your freedom of inquiry — the freedom to ask questions and ponder an issue or problem from multiple angles.

And, without the ability to think freely and express one’s thoughts, life itself becomes more or less meaningless as well as dangerous, while higher education becomes nothing more than training for compliance, as students are each trained to “do what you’re told,” as Dr. Anthony Fauci put it so gleefully November 12, 2020.

Big Lies Are Protected by Public Incredulity

To learn more about Miller’s case, visit markcrispinmiller.com. Miller also publishes a daily newsletter of banned news that you can sign up for. In closing, Miller notes:

“I believe that what’s happening now is the culmination of a quiet history of eugenics in the West that starts at the beginning of the 20th century — a movement that was forced underground by the Holocaust, because that was a big embarrassment, and [that] reemerged in the early ’50s as a movement for population control.

People don’t want to understand this. They want to see Bill Gates as a benign figure, as a kind of Father Teresa bringing happiness and health … They don’t want to know that his father was an intimate of the Rockefellers and sat on the Board of Planned Parenthood, not because he was a feminist, but because he really did believe … that abortion is one tool for getting rid of the unfit.

There is a eugenic discourse now being floated on the op-ed page in The New York Times where Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel writes that we shouldn’t expect to live past 75.

He treats it kind of half-jokingly, but if you then look at the toll that this crisis has taken on the elderly — in particular what’s happened in the nursing homes in California, New York, Michigan, Washington and North Carolina, as well as in Canada, Britain and Sweden.

They housed COVID patients in nursing homes. This has the look of what Dr. Vernon Coleman has called eldercide, but nobody wants to think that’s what’s going on. Marshall McLuhan said, ‘Little lies don’t need to be protected. But the big lies are protected by public incredulity.’ That is to say, ‘Come on, you’re crazy, they wouldn’t do that.’

It’s easier to call people ‘conspiracy theorists’ than it is to face the likelihood, or even the remote possibility, that what we’re saying is true. There are many ‘conspiracy theories’ that over the decades have turned out to be completely true. So, we have to make sure people know it through every means available. And now it’s quite urgent.”

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Notes

¹ Change.org, Academic Freedom Petition

² MarkCrispinMiller.com MCM’s Libel Lawsuit

³ Gofundme.com Help Mark Crispin Miller Sue for Libel

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This essay is inspired by Dr Mercola’s announcement last week that [May] (reading between the lines) his life and his family’s have been threatened if he doesn’t remove from his web site a peer-reviewed study demonstrating the benefits of vitamin D and zinc in prevention of the worst COVID outcomes. In the present Orwellian era, where propaganda and deception are ubiquitous, one of the signposts of truth that I have learned to respect is that the most important truths are the most heavily censored.

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This is not what I enjoy writing about, but as I find dark thoughts creeping into my consciousness, perhaps it is better to put them on paper with supporting logic and invite my readers to help me clarify the reasoning and, perhaps, to point a way out of the darkness.

Already in January, 2020, two ideas about COVID were emerging. One is that there were people and institutions who seemed to have anticipated the event, and were planning for it for a long time. Gates, Fauci, the World Economic Forum, and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine were among the prescient. (I credit the (now deleted) videos of Spiro Skouras.) Second was the genetic evidence suggesting that COVID had a laboratory origin. Funders of the scientific establishment have lost their bid to ridicule this idea, and it has now leaked into the mainstream, where it is fused with the classical yellow peril propaganda: “China did it!”. I have cited evidence that America is likely equally culpable.

The confluence of these two themes suggests the dark logic that I take for my topic today: Those who knew in advance, not only that there would be a pandemic but that it would be a Coronavirus, were actually responsible for engineering this pandemic.

Immediately, I think: How could people capable of such sociopathic enormities be occupying the most powerful circles of the world’s elite? And what would be their motivation? I don’t have answers to these questions, and I will leave speculation to others. But there’s one attractive answer that I find less compelling: that it’s a money-maker for the large and criminal pharmaceutical industry. The new mRNA vaccines are already the most profitable drugs in history, but I think that shutdown of world economies, assassinations of world leaders, deep corruption of science, and full-spectrum control of the mainstream narrative imply a larger power base than can plausibly be commanded by the pharma industry.

Instead, I’ll try to follow the scientific and medical implications of the hypothesis that COVID is a bioweapon.

The Spike Protein

The spike protein is the part of the virus structure that interfaces with the host cell. SARS 1 and SARS 2 viruses both have spike proteins that bind to a human cell receptor called ACE-2, common in lung cells but also present in other parts of the body. Binding to the cell’s ACE-2 receptor is like the wolf knocking at the door of Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. “Hello, grandmama. I’m your granddaughter. Please let me in.” The virus is a wolf wearing a red cape and hood, pretends to be an ACE-2 enzyme molecule seeking entrance to the cell.

In order to enter the cell, the virus must break off from the spike protein and leave it at the doorstep, so to speak. This is an important and difficult step, as it turns out. Unique to the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a trick for making the separation. Just at the edge of the protein is a furin cleavage site. Furin is an enzyme that snips protein molecules, and it is common in our bodies, with legitimate metabolic uses. A furin cleavage site is a string of 4 particular amino acids that calls to furin, “hey — come over here. I’m a protein that needs snipping.”

The most compelling evidence for a laboratory origin of COVID is that coronaviruses don’t have furin cleavage sites, and until last year, this trick has never evolved naturally.

How we think about natural disease

The classical understanding of a viral or bacterial disease is this: A parasite is an organism that uses the host’s resources for its own reproduction. It is evolved to reproduce efficiently. If it has co-evolved with the host, it may be evolved to spare the host’s health, or even to promote it, because this is the optimal long-term strategy for any predator or parasite. But newly-emerged parasites can do well for awhile even if they disable or kill their hosts, and this is the kind of disease that is most damaging to us. The damage is done because the (young) virus’s strategy is to reproduce rapidly and disperse itself into the environment where it can find new hosts. The virus has no interest in harming the host, and was not evolved to this end, but this is a side-effect of commandeering the body’s resources for its own reproduction.

How engineered diseases can be different

A bioweapon virus is designed to cause a certain kind of harm.

• What kind of harm? It depends on the projected use for the weapon.
• Doesn’t the virus have to reproduce? Probably, for most weapon applications; but a bioweapon is not necessarily designed for rapid reproduction. A bioweapon can be designed as a “sleeper” to remain dormant for months or years, or to cause incremental disability over a long period.

If COVID had evolved naturally, we would expect that its spike protein would be adapted to mate well with the human ACE-2 receptor. There’s no reason to suspect it being otherwise biologically active. But if COVID is engineered, it may be that the spike protein itself has been designed to make us sick.

One reason this is significant is that the vaccines have all been designed around the spike protein, assuming that the spike protein were metabolically neutral. If the virus had been naturally evolved, this is a reasonable assumption. But if it came from a laboratory (whether it leaked or was deliberately released) the spike protein might be actually be the agent of damage. There are several reasons to suspect that this is the case.

The Spike Protein as an Active Pathogen

Back in February, 2020, this article noted that the spike protein was not perfectly optimized to bind to human ACE-2 and put this forward as an proof that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus.” But if someone were designing the virus to cause harm, the spike protein would be a convenient locus for the damage vector, so the spike might have been designed with twin purposes in mind, binding and toxicity. The spike protein appears in many copies around the “crown” of the coronavirus. Since each copy has a furin cleavage site at its base, many spike proteins will break off into the bloodstream. We now have several reports and hypotheses concerning the spike protein as an active agent of damage. The spike protein is suspected of causing blood clots, of inducing long-lasting neurological damage, and of causing infertility. Many anecdotes describe injuries to un-vaccinated people who have been in close proximity to vaccinated, prompting speculation about “shedding” the spike protein.

“Individuals with COVID-19 experience a vast number of neurological symptoms, such as headaches, ataxia, impaired consciousness, hallucinations, stroke and cerebral hemorrhage. But autopsy studies have yet to find clear evidence of destructive viral invasion into patients’ brains, pushing researchers to consider alternative explanations of how SARS-CoV-2 causes neurological symptoms….

If not viral infection, what else could be causing injury to distant organs associated with COVID-19? The most likely culprit that has been identified is the COVID-19 spike protein released from the outer shell of the virus into circulation. Research cited below* has documented that the viral spike protein is able to initiate a cascade of events that triggers damage to distant organs in COVID-19 patients.

Worryingly, several studies have found that the spike proteins alone have the capacity to cause widespread injury throughout the body, without any evidence of virus.

What makes this finding so disturbing is that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer and currently being administered throughout the U.S. program our cells to manufacture this same coronavirus spike protein as a way to trigger our bodies to produce antibodies to the virus.” [Global Research article, Feb 2021]

Note: the Astra-Zeneca and J&J vaccines are also based on the spike protein, and cause the spike protein to be created in the vaccinated person.

“Research cited below” refers to this study in Nature which reports that the spike protein, injected into mice, crosses into the brain, where it causes neurological damage.

Bigger news came just this week from a study in which researchers from California’s Salk Institute collaborated with Chinese virologists. They have found that the bare spike protein without the virus (injected in mice) can cause damaged arteries of the kind that lead to heart disease and strokes in humans. The original paper was published in Circulation Research, and the Salk Institute issued a news report describing the research.

One of the most credible dangers of the spike protein involves fertility. None of the vaccines were tested in pregnant women, and yet many government and other authorities are recommending it as safe for pregnant women. VAERS has reported 174 miscarriages to date after COVID vaccination. VAERS is notoriously underreported. I find the anecdotes less concerning than the fact that no one is taking this seriously, and research is being actively discouraged in the best-respected science journals.

There is a credible mechanism, in that the spike protein is partially homologous to syncytin. Syncytin, in fact, was originally a retroviral protein, inserted into the mammalian genome many aeons ago, and evolved over the ages to play an essential role in reproduction, binding the placenta to the fetus. An immune response that attacks syncytin might be expected to be impose a danger of spontaneous abortion. In any ordinary times, this would be a subject that medical researchers would jump on, with animal tests and field surveys to assess the danger. But these are no ordinary times, and the risk is being dismissed on theoretical grounds without investigation. This is especially suspicious in the context of history: a Gates Foundation vaccination program in 1995 was allegedly promoted to young women, causing infertility. (Yes, I know there are many fact-checkers eager to “debunk” this story, but I don’t find them convincing, and some of these fact-checkers are compromised by Gates funding.)

Even doing what the spike protein is supposed to do — tying up ACE2 — can be a problem for our lungs and arteries, which are routinely protected by ACE2.

The most dangerous possibility, suspected but not verified, is that the spike protein causes a prion cascade. Prions are paradoxical pathogens, in that they are misfolded proteins that cause misfolded proteins. Their evolutionary etiology is utterly mysterious, so much so that it took Stanley Prusiner a decade after describing the biology of prions before the scientific community would take prion biochemistry seriously. But prions make potent bioweapons, which laboratories can design outside of natural evolutionary dynamics. The possibility of prion-like structures in the spike protein was noted very early in the pandemic based on a computational study. This recent review combines theoretical, laboratory, and observational evidence to make a case for caution. Once again, I find it disturbing that this possibility is being dismissed on theoretical grounds rather than investigated in the lab and the field.

Where did the idea come from that all vaccines are automatically safe? Why do so many journalists dismiss the suggestion that vaccines should be placebo-tested individually, like all other drugs? Why has it become routine to ridicule and denigrate scientists who ask questions about vaccine safety as politically-motivated luddites, or “anti-vaxxers”? How did we get to a situation where the “precautionary principle” means pressuring young people who are at almost no risk for serious COVID to accept a vaccine which has not been fully tested or approved? I don’t have answers, but I do know who benefits from this culture.

Putting together all the evidence

• Knowledge beforehand
• Suppression of treatments and cures
• Toxicity of the spike protein which, if it had been made by nature, should have been benign
• Inclusion of the spike protein
• Heavy promotion of scantily-tested vaccines and
• Censorship of scientists and doctors who question the vaccines’ safety

… putting together all this evidence, it is difficult to escape the inference that powerful people and organizations have engineered this pandemic with deadly intent.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Josh Mitteldorf.

Pfizer “Largest Health Care Fraud” 2009

Déjà Vu: Flash Forward to 2020-2021

How on earth could you trust a Big Pharma vaccine conglomerate which pleaded guilty to criminal charges by the US Department of Justice including “fraudulent marketing” and “felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act”?

The 2020-2021 mRNA vaccine violations far surpass the health care fraud committed by Pfizer Inc in 2009.

“Fraudulent marketing” is an understatement: The mRNA vaccine announced by Pfizer – BioNTech is based on an experimental gene editing mRNA technology which has a bearing on the human genome. 

The standard animal lab tests using mice or ferrets were not conducted.  Pfizer “went straight to human “guinea pigs.”

M. Ch,   Global Research Editor, May 15, 2021

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VIDEO. US Department of Justice (DOJ) Statement

$2.3 Billion  Medical Fraud settlement with Pfizer

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

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***

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a database managed by the CDC that collects reports of health problems experienced after taking a vaccine.

It aims to identify potential side effects that premarket safety testing may have missed. According to the CDC, VAERS is supposed to be “the nation’s frontline system for monitoring vaccine safety.” This is especially critical for the COVID-19 shots, since they were the first to go on the market without the long-term safety testing required for FDA approval. See Part 1 of this series.

You would hope that if a new vaccine wound up getting more death reports in five months than all the others combined over the entire previous 28 years, that might warrant some attention.

Think again.

An army of journalists and self-proclaimed fact-checkers stand ready to besiege anyone who dares to report on this astonishing data. Not only is there nothing to see, suggesting otherwise makes you a conspiracy theorist or a far-right extremist, according to our betters in the fake news media.

But empty vilification hasn’t been the only scurrilous technique employed by the powers-that-be.

Real Number of Deaths Unknown

When Tucker Carlson drew attention to the reports piling up in VAERS, the Washington Post, Forbes, and most other disparagers failed to mention his explicit reference to a group of Harvard researchers who conclusively demonstrated that the VAERS detection rate is abysmal. Again, see Part 1 of this series.

Carlson’s conclusion that nobody actually knows the true number of people who’ve died after Covid vaccination was flippantly assailed by the odious propagandists at Media Matters. They made an irrelevant rebuttal which involved a blatant lie:

But, that data does exist. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention oversees VAERS, it also runs the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD). [Media Matters]

But of course the data exists somewhere. Carlson’s point was that no one has collected and analyzed it to determine the true number of post-COVID-vaccine deaths.

Moreover, it doesn’t exist at VSD, which contains information from only nine healthcare facilities scattered across the US — not the entire country. And its purpose is to “conduct studies based on questions or concerns already raised by the medical literature and reports to VAERS,” not to be a frontline detection system in its own right.

So, someone would have to actively sift through the VSD data to know the number of post-vaccination deaths experienced at just those nine facilities. And there’s zero indication anyone has done even that.

Not only does nobody know the real number of Americans who’ve died after taking a Covid vaccine, no one in charge seems to even care.

The media outlets providing our vaccine overlords cover have also kept despicably silent about how few reports were coming in prior to the COVID-19 vaccines. The media excoriated people for mentioning a “mere” 4,000 death reports in five months, without mentioning that before the Covid vaccines came along, VAERS had only exceeded 200 death reports in an entire year once in its three-decade history.

Again, the VAERS tally shows 1,000 more deaths than the number of people who perished on 9/11.

But the point is that, from beginning to end, Carlson made it clear his main point wasn’t even about VAERS.

His subject was the bullying and censorship that’s getting heaped on “anyone who dares to question vaccines,” and he spent more time chronicling disturbing cases than he did on VAERS.

Nothing could have proven Carlson’s point better than the dishonest responses twisting both his words and the facts.

As Carlson noted, the data piling up in VAERS doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about the Covid vaccines. Maybe, the relentless publicity has massively increased the likelihood that potential side effects will get reported.

But without looking into the matter, it’s just as likely that reporting has been suppressed by the vilification of anyone who so much as raises the possibility that getting jabbed is anything less than perfectly harmless.

Who knows? The fact is we won’t until someone looks.

Whatever the case may be, the volume of death reports flooding VAERS is extraordinary. The effort to destroy anyone saying otherwise makes a full investigation much less likely and could portend something very dark indeed.

We’ve barely plumbed the depths of the VAERS cover-up.

Preposterous lies

The narrative gatekeepers are also hiding a significant source of undercounting that’s likely occurring precisely because of the unprecedented volume of reports coming in.

Moreover, they’ve frequently done so by saying something both false and preposterous.

Jack Brewster of Forbes, for example, both revealed and justified the utter contempt he has for his readers’ intelligence with this risible nonsense:

 VAERS is designed to allow anyone to report an event, meaning the data is unverified… [Forbes]

But, in case you’re as dopey as the people who read Forbes evidently are, the fact that anyone can submit a report obviously doesn’t mean that they’re being entered into the database without any verification.

The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake showed a little less disdain for his audience by at least taking the trouble to provide a bogus source for his claim that the “data in the VAERS system is unverified.” He linked to another attempt to squash discussion from his fellow charlatans at PolitiFact which, though it does indeed assert that VAERS reports “are not verified before they’re entered into the database,” gives no indication where they’re getting the idea from.

The regime’s vast army of internet trolls would be having a field day if PolitiFact’s unverified claim were true. The CDC’s “frontline system for monitoring vaccine safety” — apart from massively undercounting potential side effects due to a lack of awareness of VAERS among medical personnel (See part 1) — would also be stuffed with reports of people dying of unrelated causes.

You know, like the COVID-19 fatality count.

Reporter asks Orange Co Fla health official if the two COVID deaths listed as in their 20s had any underlying conditions. Reply:

“The first one didn’t have any. He died in a motorcycle accident.”https://t.co/IFUOz4WpbC

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) July 17, 2020

We’ve known from the beginning that the virus’s official death toll deliberately conflates dying with Covid and dying from Covid. In fact, a number of factors guarantee an unknown but enormous number of bogus entries in the official death toll. The media is suggesting without evidence that the same holds for the post-Covid vaccine fatality reports flooding VAERS, thus proving the old adage that “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

An AP effort to nip any public discussion in the bud contained this flagrantly deceptive remark by Dr. Sean O’Leary, “vice-chair of the committee on infectious diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics and professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado”:

For example, if you get a vaccine and then you get struck by lightning, you can report that to VAERS. [AP]

Indeed, you can. But Dr. O’Leary’s implied suggestion that not only are such reports routinely entered, but that the reports of post-COVID-jab fatalities include so many they can safely be ignored, is such a low-down piece of deception that he ought to be stripped of his medical license.

The regime media use this damning claim not to discredit the CDC, whose word they nonetheless insist we take as gospel, but to malign and bully those who assume that a publicly accessible database isn’t going to be full of garbage data.

If the CDC really isn’t lifting a finger to weed out pranksters and saboteurs, then they’ve got to be deliberately fomenting the supposed irrational “anti-vaccine” sentiment we’re supposed to think is so dangerous.

But, on at least this occasion, the agency appears to be innocent of anything sleazy since they explicitly advise anyone submitting a report that:

You will be contacted by VAERS if follow-up information (i.e., medical records or other medical documentation) is needed. [Dept. of Health and Human Services]

That sentence would clearly seem to indicate that there’s some kind of verification.

But it’s also the 11th response on a page listing 17 questions, each of which has to be clicked to view its answer. And the question itself doesn’t mention verification.

Moreover, after spending a couple hours trying to find out about verification, that one not-easy-to-find nor terribly informative sentence is the only thing that turned up.

So it appears that those in charge at the CDC must be so irredeemably corrupt as to actually want a reporting system in place that barely counts a fraction of potential vaccine side effects. It also looks like they’re not too keen on anyone knowing what happens to VAERS reports between submission and publication. Nor does the CDC appear to provide any information on the related question of lag time, leading most people to assume that what they’re seeing at any given time represents all there currently is.

But you know what they say about assuming.

How many additional reports haven’t been logged in?

There are a lot of reasons to think that side effects are at least so far wildly underreported.

For example, there are as many reports of life-threatening illnesses as there are deaths.

In fact, the COVID-19 vaccines have caused an unprecedented number of reports of any kind.

And, as Alex Berenson noted, it’s likely that any system that’s suddenly showing more reports in a single week than it used to record in an entire year is being overwhelmed enough to have a sizeable backlog.

VAERS (the federal vaccine side effects database) has updated for the week.

Holy moly.

It’s now at 118,000+ #covid vaccine reports. That’s up 32,000 in a week – a 35% rise. Before Covid, VAERS got that many reports in a year.

Just how bad is the backlog? https://t.co/ZILH3FPm1u

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) April 30, 2021

Berenson also reported on one woman who submitted a VAERS report in January but only received a request for more information in late April. In the interim, a jaw-dropping quarter million reports were added, suggesting that the backlog might be enormous.

A clue to how bad the VAERS backlog has gotten: This person submitted a report in late January, a quarter-million reports ago. She received an automated reply asking for more information TODAY. pic.twitter.com/YFPbZAZel2

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) April 30, 2021

But there are also other reasons to think that the CDC must be in possession of an extraordinarily large volume of reports that they’re not telling us about.

Here’s a screenshot from May 12 of the number of COVID-vaccine reports recorded in VAERS, sorted by month of vaccination.

Here’s the same data request on May 28.

As you can see, over 16 days in May, the reports continued to climb for people vaccinated in every month since December. Here’s that May-increase for each vaccination month.

As of May 28, 88% of adverse symptoms reported after Covid vaccination occurred within 15 days and 91% within 30. So, unless a lot of people are waiting several months to file a report, the CDC must have a significant backlog of reports that are getting entered months after they were received.

But also notice that on May 12, the most adverse events were reported for people who’d been vaccinated in January. Adverse event reports then steadily declined for those jabbed in February through April.

And though the May 28 data also shows the most reports for January vaccinations, the reports that were added make the decline less significant and interrupt it, creating second peak for those vaccinated in March.

That makes perfect sense if there’s a backlog getting retroactively filled in since, as you can see below, the total number of doses administered peaked in April and the number of first doses in March.

Absent a backlog, that would mean adverse events were dropping off considerably even as the number of people getting jabbed kept increasing.

Again, not impossible. But a substantial backlog perfectly explains both the early peak in adverse event reports relative to doses administered in the May 12 VAERS data, and why that peak became less pronounced when more adverse events were entered into the system, making the May 28 data better align with the dosage charts.

The upshot of all of this is that, though the CDC is allowing everyone to think that the VAERS data is up-to-date without actually saying so, there’s a lot of interconnecting evidence that a lot more reports must have come in than those we’re currently being allowed to see.

All of this would be bad enough by itself. But when placed in the larger context of the other deliberate deceptions about COVID-19, it becomes orders of magnitude worse.

When you step back to look at the whole picture, the obfuscation and contempt for evidence surrounding VAERS fits into the same pattern of deliberate deception that has been the norm since Covid first emerged a year and a half ago.

*

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Michael Thau is a columnist at RedState. He has a PhD in philosophy from Princeton and has been writing extensively on COVID-19 since this nightmare began.

Featured image is from Revolver

“When doctors treat patients early who are over age 50 with medical problems, with a sequence multi-drug approach, the available drugs, 4 to 6 drugs that are available to them now that monoclonal antibodies are better, there’s an 85% reduction in hospitalizations and death! 85%!” – Peter McCollough M.D. appearing before the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services in April. [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

After more than a year, the COVID pandemic has caused significant damage to societies around the globe. [2]

Whether or not you consider the virus be considered real, the world has seen a crushing blow to our liberties, our economies and even our way of life due to the lockdown and restrictions initiated in March of last year. Witness the shops, bars, and restaurants going bankrupt. Witness the museums, operas, concert halls and symphonies denied audiences. And free speech has been challenged as infestations of  media disinformation, online censorship, social engineering and the fear campaign bombards us from all angles in favour of the cherished narrative of V the Virus. [3]

Now almost halfway into 2021, with the vaccine against our collective pet-peeve at our disposal now for 6 months, we are still hearing word of people continuing to die of COVID. [4]

People who got their shot are wondering why the lockdowns continue and for how long. Perhaps the sooner those nasty vaccine hesitant individuals get the shot, perhaps the sooner we vaccinate our children, the horror will all be over and we can return to our pre-plaque lives once again.

So this is the point we come to now. Getting our kids vaccinated, even against the wishes of their parents. And forcing – I mean, persuading our corona colleague friends among the unvaccinated to screw their courage to the sticking place and take the shot as one of our most patriotic duties!

One notable character thrown into the mix that allegedly confuses the public with ‘disinformation’ and ‘conspiracy theories’ are the number of dissident thinkers questioning the rules of medicine and science that disrupt the army of COVID colonels to the rescue. And one set of non-conformists in particular.

We call them doctors.

While the media (present company excluded) has avoided all conversations with these men and women speaking out of turn, they are forming groups and their message still makes it into the minds of people in the U.S., Canada and around the world.

This week on the Global Research News Hour we will have nothing but guests who are doctors weighing in on what the facts tell them about the errors in the official COVID narrative, and what that says about those attacking their position.

In our first half hour, we will have a conversation with Stephen Malthouse MD, a Canadian family physician active with a group of doctors openly questioning measures taken in response to COVID-19. He addresses reasons why Canadians should not bring the risks associated with the vaccine to children as well as the concerns coming from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia and other medical health authorities about punishing those medical practitioners looking to publicly counter official COVID 19 doctrine.

In our second half hour we speak to Peter McCullough MD, leading figure in the U.S., on the dangers the wrongful, he says, treatment of drug therapies for early COVID 19 relief, the dangers of the COVID vaccine and the wrongful measures imposed on the population by health authorities in the U.S.

We also hear clips from the experts among the Pro-COVID vaccine crowd including Anand Kumar MD and Allison McGeer MD.

Stephen Malthouse MD is a Canadian physician who has been in family medical practice for more than 40 years and a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia since 1978. He is currently involved with the Declaration of Canadian Physicians for Science and Truth, challenging the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and other medical outlets for what they consider an unethical statement to the country’s physicians.

Anand Kumar, MD is both a doctor and a professor of Medicine, Medical Microbiology, and the department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. He has trained in internal medicine, critical care medicine and infectious diseases. He also co-signed an open letter to the Premier of Manitoba asking for a lock-down in the interests of limiting the exploding cases of Covid-19 hitting the urgent care centres hard.

Allison McGeer MD is a specialist in internal medicine and is a Canadian infectious disease specialist in the Sinai Health System, She has led investigations into the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Toronto and worked alongside Donald Low. During the COVID-19 pandemic, McGeer has studied how SARS-CoV-2 survives in the air.

Peter McCullough, MD is an internist, cardiologist and editor of two major journals and is one of the most published doctors in the domain of heart and kidney in the world.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 319)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Transcript – Interview with Peter McCullough, June 1, 2021

Global Research: I first asked Dr. McCullough to explain the rise and fall of hydroxychloroquine and similar treatments rather than vaccines.

Peter McCullough: Well, we’ve learned a lot over the last year, and with respect to medical therapy, the first comment I make is that we’ve really learned that the viral infection is very treatable, and it can be treated with many different drug programs. The principles are that a single drug doesn’t work. That drugs need to be given in combination, and no single drug is effective.

You mentioned hydroxychloroquine. We’ve learned that actually you can treat this illness without using any hydroxychloroquine. We’ve interviewed and worked with doctors all over the world. But in general, the Cadillac program would be like what President Trump received. Where he receives a monoclonal antibody infusion up front. And so did Rudy Giuliani. And then the other drugs are sequenced in. We can sequence in hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin plus erythromycin or doxycycline. We can use inhaled steroids now, which are very effective. Pulmicort budesonide, oral corticosteroids, prednisone is perfectly fine. There’s an anti-inflammatory medicine called colchicine very effective.

And then on the back end, we use full-dose aspirin 325 mg, and then we use forms of blood thinners like heparin, low-molecular-weight heparin or oral anticoagulants. In total it’s about 4 to 6 drugs, it’s really only in high-risk patients who need it, aged over 50 with medical problems, and the medications work in synergy with one another. A mild case, maybe only needs five days of treatment, the average person our age, about 10 days, and then some patients, seniors in nursing homes, those individuals over age 80, my experience is it takes about 30 days to treatment. But I’ve successfully managed many patients even up to age 90 years old. I’ve gotten them through the illness, they don’t need to be hospitalized or go on the ventilator. This is really good news for Americans in that this overall approach results in about an 85% reduction in hospitalization and death.

But the interesting thing is what you mentioned, is some of these drugs become so politicized. I did a seminar with Dr Chetty in South Africa, and he said that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin become so politicized he gave up on them. And he just treats the back end of the illness. So he uses a combination of inhaled steroids, oral cortical steroids, uses Singulair or Montelukast and then aspirin and heparin on the back end.

And he’s able to prevent nearly all the hospitalizations in thousands of patients. So what patients in America need to know is they need early treatment. Get a hold of their doctor or quickly get to the telemedicine services. Don’t waste time. We don’t…the only way someone gets admitted to the hospital nowadays is they get no treatment. They sit at home for two weeks, they get progressively sicker, and they end up in the hospital. Doesn’t have to happen.

GR: Someone with COVID goes through three phases: viral replication, inflammation, and abnormal blood clotting. I had the doctor go through the stages.

PM: You picked up on an important development, is that we understand the illness has three dimensions.

First, the very first stage is viral replication. So that’s where drugs that impair the virus, like the monoclonal antibodies, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin…if we could we’d give Remdesivir in the first day. That’s where the drug really works.

But after the first few days of viral replication, what happens is the dangerous Spike Protein on the outside of the virus, that’s the spicules structure that you see on the ball, that triggers blood vessel damage and inflammation. You’re at very high levels, this virus has a cytokine signature we’ve never seen before. Very high levels of interleukin 6, it just knocks your socks when we see it. And that level of association is associated with high fever, patients don’t feel good, muscle aches, sometimes GI disturbances, the microbiome gets disturbed.

And then, what is triggered is abnormal blood clotting. We’ve never seen a virus that causes blood clotting like this one does. And the blood clotting is unusual because it’s the Spike Protein impales red blood cells and actually causes red blood cells to stick together. It’s called haemagglutination, and it injures the platelets with a drop in platelet count and cause blood clotting at the same time

So we have a situation where we have viral replication, cytokine storm or inflammation, and abnormal blood coagulation. That’s the reason why a single drug doesn’t work. So I knew that right away. When people declared hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work, or ivermectin doesn’t work, we’ve heard that for every drug. Remdesivir doesn’t work. Convalescent plasma doesn’t work. Well of course, no single drug works because there’s three complicated elements in the infection. And so, what doctors quickly learned, the leading doctors learned, is that we look for a signal of benefit in these drugs, acceptable safety, put them into multi-drug regimens, and that’s how we save patients.

GR: Doctors who recommend this kind of treatment face punishment by the major health departments. Dr. McCullough provides me with some background.

PM: You know, it’s amazing you bring that up, Michael. Millionaire Steve Kirsch has put out a challenge, and it’s a two-million-dollar challenge. He’s done this in the last month. And he says, I challenge anybody to show that the National Institutes of Health or the CDC has done anything right with respect to its treatment recommendations. He challenged that. Not a single person in the world has come forward claiming that the CDC or NIH was right about anything on treatment. That is a stunning revelation, that the entire world understands, that our regulatory bodies have been completely wrong.

So when they state, when they gave, the National Institute of Health put out its first set of guidelines in the fall, it says don’t treat the patient. That is completely wrong. Let the patient get progressively sick. Completely wrong. Let the patient get forced into the hospital. Completely wrong. Once they get into the hospital, still don’t treat them, wait until they require oxygen. Completely wrong. By the time they require oxygen, there are actually micro blood clots in the lungs. So that they recommended that stage to give Remdesivir. Completely wrong.

Remdesivir is actually for a viral replication two weeks earlier. So it is a colossal blunder. Our public health agencies right now, their houses are on fire. We have an absolute disaster at the public health regulatory level, at all stations right now. And America right now is bypassing them.

America is going right to practising doctors, my phone is ringing off the hook, I’ve basically told them, listen, the doctor’s judgment supersedes what our Regulatory Agencies right now. If your doctors tell you, you know, giving the best advice on COVID, we’ve got to go with it. So when a doctor prescribes a medicine for a patient with COVID, that decision reigns supreme. And so this idea that there can be a backlash, or there can be penalties or what have you to doctors, listen we take care of patients with all these different problems across the board all day long.

Am I suddenly going to get penalized if I prescribe a cholesterol medicine? Or if I prescribed a blood thinner for a person with atrial fibrillation? So I certainly can prescribe these medicines for patients with COVID.

GR: Do any of your colleagues listen anyway? People who, well I hear it, but I don’t want to get punished?

PM: Well, you know, people have labelled me as being courageous. Well, I have to tell you, it’s not courage. It’s moral and ethical and fiduciary integrity. And I find it absolutely that anyone would threaten me with actions as I’m trying to take care of a patient using my best judgment with FDA-approved drugs that are prescribed appropriately off-label supported with the best evidence we’ve had. In fact, I published the most widely cited papers on how to do this in the world, and so, this idea is absolutely untenable. All of those who have sought to threaten doctors and intentionally hurt patients… one by one, justice will be served.

– intermission-

GR: In case you just joined us, our guest is Dr. Peter McCullough. He is an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and Professor of Medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine in Dallas. Also a major voice attacking the established agencies involved in fighting COVID.

I next put a question to him about the COVID vaccines.

In a clear-cut manner, based on concrete evidence, can you explain why this vaccine is not safe and effective even though Pfizer and Moderna provided evidence demonstrating 90% efficiency, and that while it’s not fool proof, the risks due to COVID vaccine outweigh the risks to dying of COVID?

PM: I think everyone should understand that we’re all participating in medical history. And so, what we know now is not the same as what we know last year or even six months ago. So we have an evolving knowledge. This is what we know.

It became known in May that the dangerous part of the virus is called the Spike Protein, the spicule on the surface. It’s now known that the Spike Protein was the target of gain-of-function research. It was research done in a Chinese lab partially funded by the United States National Institutes of Health.

This gain-of-function research made the Spike Protein, instead of it being naturally cleaved by an enzyme, a human enzyme called a furin, the gain-of-function research made the Spike Protein impenetrable. It made it super strong. And because now, this virus which was easily handled before by the human body, now the Spike Protein is super strong and it can’t be broken down, it goes right into cells so it’s far more contagious, and when the Spike Protein goes in cells, it’s almost like a shard of glass. It goes through the blood vessels ripping the blood vessels, causing blood clots, causing organ injuries. It’s all about the Spike Protein.

Well, the discovery was that the Spike Protein itself could be utilized to stimulate the body to make antibodies. So the great gamble of the vaccine development program was to trick the body, the human body, our bodies, into making this dangerous Spike Protein, this dangerous gain-of-function research Spike Protein. And that’s what the vaccines are doing. So the messenger RNA vaccines which our Pfizer, Moderna, the adenoviral vaccines which are J&J and AstraZeneca, they all work to cause the human body to produce the Spike Protein.

Now, when the vaccines came out of the clinical trials, our understanding was, and what was in the FDA regulatory binders, is that the vaccination stayed in the arm, it locally stayed in the arm, it didn’t circulate around in the body, that the messenger RNA or the adenoviral genetic material stayed in the muscle in the arm, and the Spike Protein was produced locally. That’s what our understanding was and we formed our reaction to it.

The clinical trials were done in very low-risk people and instead of the standard 24 months of safety, it was truncated to two months, and they recruited very well populations of individuals. In fact, J&J, their clinical trials program recruited 60% of people who had no medical problems, and that’s actually hard to find in research. And they found that whether the patient received placebo or the vaccine, the rate of getting COVID was less than 1%.

So it’s important for Americans and people in the world to understand that the vaccines were developed even in the heat of the pandemic back in the fall, with a chance of coming in contact in less than 1%. And we believe this is true today, that people who get the vaccine they have less than a 1% chance of ever coming in contact with COVID.

So we know that the vaccines as applied today will have no impact on the epidemic curves. They can’t because they have less than a 1% public health impact. The only thing that influences the curves is actually treating the virus and reducing hospitalization and death. Vaccines will never solve the problem because it’s a less than a 1% public health impact.

Well having said that they still looked okay coming out of the gate, and as an internist and cardiologist as a medical doctor, researcher, I see patients everyday, like all other doctors, I recommended the COVID-19 vaccine. In my practice today, 70% of my patients have received the COVID-19 vaccine. I am very pro-vaccine, and I’ve received all the standard vaccines myself.

But what happened over time, Michael, is we started to see cases of patients dying after the vaccine. Seeing patients hospitalized after the vaccine, and in large numbers. And as we sit here today, we’ve had over 4,400 patients die after the COVID-19 vaccine. 40% of them die on Days 1 2 and 3–

GR: Did you say 44,000?

PM: I’m sorry, 4400 patients die after the COVID-19 vaccine. On days 1, 2, and 3, thanks for correcting me, 4400, and we’ve had 14,000 hospitalizations. In Europe, there’s been over 10,000 patients die over the COVID-19 vaccine.

Now people have asked, well how does it stack up compared to other vaccines? Well, I can tell you, that the typical number for all the vaccines, all 70 vaccines in the United States applied to many hundreds of millions of dose administrations, the numbers of deaths or hospitalizations or severe reactions that would ever be reported on a scoreboard would be less than 200 a year.

So the COVID-19 vaccine program in five months has exceeded all the safety parameters and all the safety events of all vaccines administered to all patients in medical history. So people have already claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine program is the most dangerous vaccine program ever carried out in US history.

GR: Yeah. And when it does come up that this is violating protocols, they say well what it’s an emergency use or something like that, that allows it to go ahead?

PM: There’s several aspects of this that are working, I think, against safety. So the first thing is this is an investigational program. So when people take the vaccine, they are required to sign consent that says this is an investigation. That means it’s research, so there should be an unbiased separate clinical event adjudication committee, they should be a data safety monitoring board, there should be an investigational review board or ethics board.

When we do research, there’s always oversight committees that are separate from the sponsors or stakeholders, and here the stakeholders are Pfizer, Moderna, J & J, and AstraZeneca. We know that the World Health Organization, Gavi, Gates Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control, the FDA, and the NIH are all stakeholders. In fact, the National Institutes of Health holds patent positions on the Moderna patent.

So they’re all stakeholders. So we can’t have those people reviewing the deaths and the hospitalizations. America has to have separate panels reviewing these.

Astonishingly, as we sit here today, there are no review panels. There’s no safety checks. There is no safety mechanisms on this program. And because the vaccines are not fully FDA approved, the manufacturers don’t have to present important safety information to patients.

Normally when you get prescribed the drug and you pick it up, a folded sheet of paper that outlines all the safety information, so the patients can be thoroughly informed on safety. Normally when something is advertised on TV, they’ll get the benefits of the drug or agent but they’ll also tell you what the side effects are. Here, because it’s emergency use optimization, there’s no fair balance requirements in place, so the stakeholders are promoting vaccination wildly on TV but they’re not fairly presenting Americans with safety. The only view of safety is to go to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System VAERS And then see the data as they accumulate.

And that’s the reason why these numbers are so shocking. I think they really snuck up on doctors. Doctors have largely been in a trance recommending patients get the vaccines, and when I talk to my colleagues and say, do you realize there’s some 4400 deaths that have occurred? 14000 hospitalizations? It’s really a shock. They’re like where are you getting this information from?

I said these are the events reported to the CDC. I have reported some of these events myself, Michael, it takes about half an hour to do a report. I have to go through many screens, I have to put my doctor’s information, my license, they’re only capturing one of two of the Pfizer Moderna shots, so they have to back-calculate, we have to have the vaccine card and the lot number to do it, they are not keeping track if someone’s already had COVID and they don’t need the vaccine, they’re already immune, they’re not keeping track of that, and so what we know, and there’s serious warnings that say that it’s punishable by imprisonment or federal fines if we falsify the reports. I can tell you all those over 4,400 deaths and over 14,000 hospitalizations, they’ve really occurred, I think they’ve really occurred, and they may be the tip of the iceberg.

GR: There’s also the long-term risks like Bells Palsy or transverse myelitis, other factors, it takes a year or so to reveal. And I don’t think there’s been any significant testing. Do you expect that death could be an even higher priority a year or two from now than it is today?

PM: Well, each week we see more deaths coming in, so we have some states now that are getting to zero COVID deaths per day, in Texas, we’ve had a few of those, so we know on those days there is more vaccine deaths than there are COVID deaths.

I hope Americans understand this. There’s a tremendous price that’s being paid with American lives for this COVID vaccine. The long-term effects, there have been, I think over a thousand cases of Bells Palsy or paralysed of the face on one side reported in the safety database, we know the Spike Protein goes to the brain, the dangerous Spike Protein. It can damage astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, cells inside the brain, and there may be there certainly reports of headaches, blood clots forming in the brain, in fact, the FDA paused the program for blood clots in the brain of women.

In 18 countries in Europe, AstraZeneca was removed from the market for a period of time because of blood clots. Yet the vaccine program goes on and so one of the great concerns is that the vaccine program is offered as being elective by the CDC, it’s simply an elective investigational program, you don’t have to do it.

What’s happened is now it’s been weaponized from a sociological perspective of people feel forced to take this vaccine which they know has serious side effects, they know there are fatalities occurring and hospitalizations occurring during, and so the tension in America is rising every day. I’ve never felt such a tense time where in a sense there’s this vaccine but it’s been weaponized against the people.

GR: Wow. Maybe one more question. I know that there have been very high-profile people like Zelenko and Risch and Didier Raoult. They’ve all been attacked, and I’m wondering with, you’re being very outspoken, and you have the unmitigated gall to be credible, I mean, what kind of threats have you encountered through all of this?

PM: Well I can tell you I’m an internist and cardiologist, I stepped out of my usual role to face the crisis because I did not see infectious disease doctors, allergists, immunologists, pulmonologists, I didn’t see others addressing the millions of Americans who are developing COVID-19 at home. Everyone was focussing in the inpatient realm where we still have ICU mortality rates at 28 days of 38%. The in-hospital outcomes are not good. The opportunity was to treat patients as outpatients, and now there’s such an overwhelming positive response from Americans, we have four national telemedicine services, 15 regional telemedicine services, 250 treating doctors. We have treating doctors in every state.

America has basically just bypassed the Ivory Tower large medical centres, and they’re getting treatment. We had two Senate testimonies on this in the fall, huge breakthrough to America, the treating doctors, in a sense have become American heroes, and as our agency staffers get on TV, and basically bumble on about masks and vaccines, what America… They don’t care about masks and vaccines. They want to know how to get treatment to avoid hospitalization and death.

So what I told to my detractors is that any of my detractors who’ve attempted to personally go after me from an academic or professional perspective, I have over 600 publications in the National Library of Medicine. I have over 40 papers in a year on COVID-19. I have chaired or participated in 24 data safety monitoring boards for the FDA and for the pharmaceutical and device companies, and I’ve also seen and examined and treated patients with COVID-19. To my knowledge, in a single person, in a single person, I am the most experienced and qualified person in the world to opine on COVID-19, and if anybody wants to challenge me on that, bring it on!

GR: Dr. McCullough, it’s been a pleasure and an honour speaking to you today. Thank you so much for your dedicated work and for sharing your analysis with my listeners.

PM: Thank you

GR: I first asked Dr. McCullough to explain the rise and fall of hydroxychloroquine and similar treatments rather than vaccines.

PM: Well, we’ve learned a lot over the last year, and with respect to medical therapy, the first comment I make is that we’ve really learned that the viral infection is very treatable, and it can be treated with many different drug programs. The principles are that a single drug doesn’t work. That drugs need to be given in combination, and no single drug is effective.

You mentioned hydroxychloroquine. We’ve learned that actually you can treat this illness without using any hydroxychloroquine. We’ve interviewed and worked with doctors all over the world. But in general, the Cadillac program would be like what President Trump received. Where he receives a monoclonal antibody infusion up front. And so did Rudy Giuliani. And then the other drugs are sequenced in. We can sequence in hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin plus erythromycin or doxycycline. We can use inhaled steroids now, which are very effective. Pulmicort budesonide, oral corticosteroids, prednisone is perfectly fine. There’s an anti-inflammatory medicine called colchicine very effective.

And then on the back end, we use full-dose aspirin 325 mg, and then we use forms of blood thinners like heparin, low-molecular-weight heparin or oral anticoagulants. In total it’s about 4 to 6 drugs, it’s really only in high-risk patients who need it, aged over 50 with medical problems, and the medications work in synergy with one another. A mild case, maybe only needs five days of treatment, the average person our age, about 10 days, and then some patients, seniors in nursing homes, those individuals over age 80, my experience is it takes about 30 days to treatment. But I’ve successfully managed many patients even up to age 90 years old. I’ve gotten them through the illness, they don’t need to be hospitalized or go on the ventilator. This is really good news for Americans in that this overall approach results in about an 85% reduction in hospitalization and death.

But the interesting thing is what you mentioned, is some of these drugs become so politicized. I did a seminar with Dr Chetty in South Africa, and he said that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin become so politicized he gave up on them. And he just treats the back end of the illness. So he uses a combination of inhaled steroids, oral cortical steroids, uses Singulair or Montelukast and then aspirin and heparin on the back end.

And he’s able to prevent nearly all the hospitalizations in thousands of patients. So what patients in America need to know is they need early treatment. Get a hold of their doctor or quickly get to the telemedicine services. Don’t waste time. We don’t…the only way someone gets admitted to the hospital nowadays is they get no treatment. They sit at home for two weeks, they get progressively sicker, and they end up in the hospital. Doesn’t have to happen.

GR: Someone with COVID goes through three phases: viral replication, inflammation, and abnormal blood clotting. I had the doctor go through the stages.

PM: You picked up on an important development, is that we understand the illness has three dimensions.

First, the very first stage is viral replication. So that’s where drugs that impair the virus, like the monoclonal antibodies, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin…if we could we’d give Remdesivir in the first day. That’s where the drug really works.

But after the first few days of viral replication, what happens is the dangerous Spike Protein on the outside of the virus, that’s the spicules structure that you see on the ball, that triggers blood vessel damage and inflammation. You’re at very high levels, this virus has a cytokine signature we’ve never seen before. Very high levels of interleukin 6, it just knocks your socks when we see it. And that level of association is associated with high fever, patients don’t feel good, muscle aches, sometimes GI disturbances, the microbiome gets disturbed.

And then, what is triggered is abnormal blood clotting. We’ve never seen a virus that causes blood clotting like this one does. And the blood clotting is unusual because it’s the Spike Protein impales red blood cells and actually causes red blood cells to stick together. It’s called haemagglutination, and it injures the platelets with a drop in platelet count and cause blood clotting at the same time

So we have a situation where we have viral replication, cytokine storm or inflammation, and abnormal blood coagulation. That’s the reason why a single drug doesn’t work. So I knew that right away. When people declared hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work, or ivermectin doesn’t work, we’ve heard that for every drug. Remdesivir doesn’t work. Convalescent plasma doesn’t work. Well of course, no single drug works because there’s three complicated elements in the infection. And so, what doctors quickly learned, the leading doctors learned, is that we look for a signal of benefit in these drugs, acceptable safety, put them into multi-drug regimens, and that’s how we save patients.

GR: Doctors who recommend this kind of treatment face punishment by the major health departments. Dr. McCullough provides me with some background.

PM: You know, it’s amazing you bring that up, Michael. Millionaire Steve Kirsch has put out a challenge, and it’s a two-million-dollar challenge. He’s done this in the last month. And he says, I challenge anybody to show that the National Institutes of Health or the CDC has done anything right with respect to its treatment recommendations. He challenged that. Not a single person in the world has come forward claiming that the CDC or NIH was right about anything on treatment. That is a stunning revelation, that the entire world understands, that our regulatory bodies have been completely wrong.

So when they state, when they gave, the National Institute of Health put out its first set of guidelines in the fall, it says don’t treat the patient. That is completely wrong. Let the patient get progressively sick. Completely wrong. Let the patient get forced into the hospital. Completely wrong. Once they get into the hospital, still don’t treat them, wait until they require oxygen. Completely wrong. By the time they require oxygen, there are actually micro blood clots in the lungs. So that they recommended that stage to give Remdesivir. Completely wrong.

Remdesivir is actually for a viral replication two weeks earlier. So it is a colossal blunder. Our public health agencies right now, their houses are on fire. We have an absolute disaster at the public health regulatory level, at all stations right now. And America right now is bypassing them.

America is going right to practising doctors, my phone is ringing off the hook, I’ve basically told them, listen, the doctor’s judgment supersedes what our Regulatory Agencies right now. If your doctors tell you, you know, giving the best advice on COVID, we’ve got to go with it. So when a doctor prescribes a medicine for a patient with COVID, that decision reigns supreme. And so this idea that there can be a backlash, or there can be penalties or what have you to doctors, listen we take care of patients with all these different problems across the board all day long.

Am I suddenly going to get penalized if I prescribe a cholesterol medicine? Or if I prescribed a blood thinner for a person with atrial fibrillation? So I certainly can prescribe these medicines for patients with COVID.

GR: Do any of your colleagues listen anyway? People who, well I hear it, but I don’t want to get punished?

PM: Well, you know, people have labelled me as being courageous. Well, I have to tell you, it’s not courage. It’s moral and ethical and fiduciary integrity. And I find it absolutely that anyone would threaten me with actions as I’m trying to take care of a patient using my best judgment with FDA-approved drugs that are prescribed appropriately off-label supported with the best evidence we’ve had. In fact, I published the most widely cited papers on how to do this in the world, and so, this idea is absolutely untenable. All of those who have sought to threaten doctors and intentionally hurt patients… one by one, justice will be served.

– intermission-

GR: In case you just joined us, our guest is Dr. Peter McCullough. He is an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and Professor of Medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine in Dallas. Also a major voice attacking the established agencies involved in fighting COVID.

I next put a question to him about the COVID vaccines.

In a clear-cut manner, based on concrete evidence, can you explain why this vaccine is not safe and effective even though Pfizer and Moderna provided evidence demonstrating 90% efficiency, and that while it’s not fool proof, the risks due to COVID vaccine outweigh the risks to dying of COVID?

PM: I think everyone should understand that we’re all participating in medical history. And so, what we know now is not the same as what we know last year or even six months ago. So we have an evolving knowledge. This is what we know.

It became known in May that the dangerous part of the virus is called the Spike Protein, the spicule on the surface. It’s now known that the Spike Protein was the target of gain-of-function research. It was research done in a Chinese lab partially funded by the United States National Institutes of Health.

This gain-of-function research made the Spike Protein, instead of it being naturally cleaved by an enzyme, a human enzyme called a furin, the gain-of-function research made the Spike Protein impenetrable. It made it super strong. And because now, this virus which was easily handled before by the human body, now the Spike Protein is super strong and it can’t be broken down, it goes right into cells so it’s far more contagious, and when the Spike Protein goes in cells, it’s almost like a shard of glass. It goes through the blood vessels ripping the blood vessels, causing blood clots, causing organ injuries. It’s all about the Spike Protein.

Well, the discovery was that the Spike Protein itself could be utilized to stimulate the body to make antibodies. So the great gamble of the vaccine development program was to trick the body, the human body, our bodies, into making this dangerous Spike Protein, this dangerous gain-of-function research Spike Protein. And that’s what the vaccines are doing. So the messenger RNA vaccines which our Pfizer, Moderna, the adenoviral vaccines which are J&J and AstraZeneca, they all work to cause the human body to produce the Spike Protein.

Now, when the vaccines came out of the clinical trials, our understanding was, and what was in the FDA regulatory binders, is that the vaccination stayed in the arm, it locally stayed in the arm, it didn’t circulate around in the body, that the messenger RNA or the adenoviral genetic material stayed in the muscle in the arm, and the Spike Protein was produced locally. That’s what our understanding was and we formed our reaction to it.

The clinical trials were done in very low-risk people and instead of the standard 24 months of safety, it was truncated to two months, and they recruited very well populations of individuals. In fact, J&J, their clinical trials program recruited 60% of people who had no medical problems, and that’s actually hard to find in research. And they found that whether the patient received placebo or the vaccine, the rate of getting COVID was less than 1%.

So it’s important for Americans and people in the world to understand that the vaccines were developed even in the heat of the pandemic back in the fall, with a chance of coming in contact in less than 1%. And we believe this is true today, that people who get the vaccine they have less than a 1% chance of ever coming in contact with COVID.

So we know that the vaccines as applied today will have no impact on the epidemic curves. They can’t because they have less than a 1% public health impact. The only thing that influences the curves is actually treating the virus and reducing hospitalization and death. Vaccines will never solve the problem because it’s a less than a 1% public health impact.

Well having said that they still looked okay coming out of the gate, and as an internist and cardiologist as a medical doctor, researcher, I see patients everyday, like all other doctors, I recommended the COVID-19 vaccine. In my practice today, 70% of my patients have received the COVID-19 vaccine. I am very pro-vaccine, and I’ve received all the standard vaccines myself.

But what happened over time, Michael, is we started to see cases of patients dying after the vaccine. Seeing patients hospitalized after the vaccine, and in large numbers. And as we sit here today, we’ve had over 4,400 patients die after the COVID-19 vaccine. 40% of them die on Days 1 2 and 3–

GR: Did you say 44,000?

PM: I’m sorry, 4400 patients die after the COVID-19 vaccine. On days 1, 2, and 3, thanks for correcting me, 4400, and we’ve had 14,000 hospitalizations. In Europe, there’s been over 10,000 patients die over the COVID-19 vaccine.

Now people have asked, well how does it stack up compared to other vaccines? Well, I can tell you, that the typical number for all the vaccines, all 70 vaccines in the United States applied to many hundreds of millions of dose administrations, the numbers of deaths or hospitalizations or severe reactions that would ever be reported on a scoreboard would be less than 200 a year.

So the COVID-19 vaccine program in five months has exceeded all the safety parameters and all the safety events of all vaccines administered to all patients in medical history. So people have already claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine program is the most dangerous vaccine program ever carried out in US history.

GR: Yeah. And when it does come up that this is violating protocols, they say well what it’s an emergency use or something like that, that allows it to go ahead?

PM: There’s several aspects of this that are working, I think, against safety. So the first thing is this is an investigational program. So when people take the vaccine, they are required to sign consent that says this is an investigation. That means it’s research, so there should be an unbiased separate clinical event adjudication committee, they should be a data safety monitoring board, there should be an investigational review board or ethics board.

When we do research, there’s always oversight committees that are separate from the sponsors or stakeholders, and here the stakeholders are Pfizer, Moderna, J & J, and AstraZeneca. We know that the World Health Organization, Gavi, Gates Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control, the FDA, and the NIH are all stakeholders. In fact, the National Institutes of Health holds patent positions on the Moderna patent.

So they’re all stakeholders. So we can’t have those people reviewing the deaths and the hospitalizations. America has to have separate panels reviewing these.

Astonishingly, as we sit here today, there are no review panels. There’s no safety checks. There is no safety mechanisms on this program. And because the vaccines are not fully FDA approved, the manufacturers don’t have to present important safety information to patients.

Normally when you get prescribed the drug and you pick it up, a folded sheet of paper that outlines all the safety information, so the patients can be thoroughly informed on safety. Normally when something is advertised on TV, they’ll get the benefits of the drug or agent but they’ll also tell you what the side effects are. Here, because it’s emergency use optimization, there’s no fair balance requirements in place, so the stakeholders are promoting vaccination wildly on TV but they’re not fairly presenting Americans with safety. The only view of safety is to go to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System VAERS And then see the data as they accumulate.

And that’s the reason why these numbers are so shocking. I think they really snuck up on doctors. Doctors have largely been in a trance recommending patients get the vaccines, and when I talk to my colleagues and say, do you realize there’s some 4400 deaths that have occurred? 14000 hospitalizations? It’s really a shock. They’re like where are you getting this information from?

I said these are the events reported to the CDC. I have reported some of these events myself, Michael, it takes about half an hour to do a report. I have to go through many screens, I have to put my doctor’s information, my license, they’re only capturing one of two of the Pfizer Moderna shots, so they have to back-calculate, we have to have the vaccine card and the lot number to do it, they are not keeping track if someone’s already had COVID and they don’t need the vaccine, they’re already immune, they’re not keeping track of that, and so what we know, and there’s serious warnings that say that it’s punishable by imprisonment or federal fines if we falsify the reports. I can tell you all those over 4,400 deaths and over 14,000 hospitalizations, they’ve really occurred, I think they’ve really occurred, and they may be the tip of the iceberg.

GR: There’s also the long-term risks like Bells Palsy or transverse myelitis, other factors, it takes a year or so to reveal. And I don’t think there’s been any significant testing. Do you expect that death could be an even higher priority a year or two from now than it is today?

PM: Well, each week we see more deaths coming in, so we have some states now that are getting to zero COVID deaths per day, in Texas, we’ve had a few of those, so we know on those days there is more vaccine deaths than there are COVID deaths.

I hope Americans understand this. There’s a tremendous price that’s being paid with American lives for this COVID vaccine. The long-term effects, there have been, I think over a thousand cases of Bells Palsy or paralysed of the face on one side reported in the safety database, we know the Spike Protein goes to the brain, the dangerous Spike Protein. It can damage astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, cells inside the brain, and there may be there certainly reports of headaches, blood clots forming in the brain, in fact, the FDA paused the program for blood clots in the brain of women.

In 18 countries in Europe, AstraZeneca was removed from the market for a period of time because of blood clots. Yet the vaccine program goes on and so one of the great concerns is that the vaccine program is offered as being elective by the CDC, it’s simply an elective investigational program, you don’t have to do it.

What’s happened is now it’s been weaponized from a sociological perspective of people feel forced to take this vaccine which they know has serious side effects, they know there are fatalities occurring and hospitalizations occurring during, and so the tension in America is rising every day. I’ve never felt such a tense time where in a sense there’s this vaccine but it’s been weaponized against the people.

GR: Wow. Maybe one more question. I know that there have been very high-profile people like Zelenko and Risch and Didier Raoult. They’ve all been attacked, and I’m wondering with, you’re being very outspoken, and you have the unmitigated gall to be credible, I mean, what kind of threats have you encountered through all of this?

PM: Well I can tell you I’m an internist and cardiologist, I stepped out of my usual role to face the crisis because I did not see infectious disease doctors, allergists, immunologists, pulmonologists, I didn’t see others addressing the millions of Americans who are developing COVID-19 at home. Everyone was focussing in the inpatient realm where we still have ICU mortality rates at 28 days of 38%. The in-hospital outcomes are not good. The opportunity was to treat patients as outpatients, and now there’s such an overwhelming positive response from Americans, we have four national telemedicine services, 15 regional telemedicine services, 250 treating doctors. We have treating doctors in every state.

America has basically just bypassed the Ivory Tower large medical centres, and they’re getting treatment. We had two Senate testimonies on this in the fall, huge breakthrough to America, the treating doctors, in a sense have become American heroes, and as our agency staffers get on TV, and basically bumble on about masks and vaccines, what America… They don’t care about masks and vaccines. They want to know how to get treatment to avoid hospitalization and death.

So what I told to my detractors is that any of my detractors who’ve attempted to personally go after me from an academic or professional perspective, I have over 600 publications in the National Library of Medicine. I have over 40 papers in a year on COVID-19. I have chaired or participated in 24 data safety monitoring boards for the FDA and for the pharmaceutical and device companies, and I’ve also seen and examined and treated patients with COVID-19. To my knowledge, in a single person, in a single person, I am the most experienced and qualified person in the world to opine on COVID-19, and if anybody wants to challenge me on that, bring it on!

GR: Dr. McCullough, it’s been a pleasure and an honour speaking to you today. Thank you so much for your dedicated work and for sharing your analysis with my listeners.

PM: Thank you

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Notes:

1. www.globalresearch.ca/video-dr-peter-mccullough-warp-speed-went-full-tilt-vaccine-development-silencing-any-information-treatment/5743078
2. Ceyla Pazarbasioglu and M. Ayhan Kose (July 10, 2020)’Unprecedented damage by COVID-19 requires an unprecedented policy response’, Brookings blog; www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2020/07/10/unprecedented-damage-by-covid-19-requires-an-unprecedented-policy-response/
3. www.globalresearch.ca/the-2020-worldwide-corona-crisis-destroying-civil-society-engineered-economic-depression-global-coup-detat-and-the-great-reset/5730652
4. covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admissions