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Israel is undergoing a change of management, with reliably hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being replaced by extreme nationalist Naftali Bennett. Bennett has at intervals favored the disenfranchisement of non-Jewish Israeli citizens and the ethnic cleansing of all non-Jews from historic Palestine, killing them if necessary. He opposes the creation of any Palestinian state and routinely describes Palestinian protesters as terrorists while stating his belief that they should be shot on sight. He has also boasted of his shooting Palestinians during his military service, saying at one point “I already killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there is absolutely no problem with that.” He was heavily involved in “Operation Grapes of Wrath” in Lebanon in the 1980s, where his commando unit killed numerous civilians, and takes pleasure in recounting his participation in Israel’s war crimes.

All of which means that there will be no respite from the brutal Netanyahu reign of terror which has been prevailing on the West Bank, in Gaza and also in Jerusalem itself. If anything, the pressure on Arabs forcing them to leave will intensify. Evidence that the recently negotiated cease fire was little more than a pause in the plan to mitigate international pressure before continuing to make the former Palestine Palestinian free is already available. Israeli police and army units have been arresting hundreds of Arabs, many of whom are Israeli citizens, not because they have broken any of the “rules” imposed by the Netanyahu government, but as a preventive measure to have them identified, allowing them to be safely locked away when the next round of fighting begins. Eighteen hundred arrests have been reported since unrest began in April, but the figure is probably much higher than that. An estimated 25% of those who are detained are children and 85% of those children arrested report that they were physically abused.  Also, at least 26 Palestinians have been killed while resisting. It has been claimed that the police, embarrassed by being ridiculed by protesting Palestinians, are “settling scores” and “closing accounts,” frequently using savage beatings during arrests and as collective punishment to break the Arab resistance.

Israeli police have also been active at and around the al-Aqsa mosque, where they have been denying Muslims access to the holy site while promoting sightseeing visits by Israeli Jews. This is a clear violation of the rules established for access to the mosque and it sends a strong signal to Palestinians that there is more to come and the intention is clearly that they will eventually be removed by whatever means necessary from Greater Israel.

The Director for the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (ADALAH) Hassan Jabareen observed recently how the violence over the past month was deliberately provoked by Israel both to shore up Netanyahu’s electoral prospects while “the massive arrest campaign announced by Israeli police…is a militarized war against Palestinian citizens of Israel. This is a war against Palestinian demonstrators, political activists, and minors, employing massive Israeli police forces to raid the homes of Palestinian citizens.”

The Israelis, who clearly have a sense of humor, called the first phase of the mass arrests “Operation Law and Order.” The raids themselves have been carried out inside Israel itself and on the West Bank. Those Palestinians who are citizens of Israel have what has frequently been described as “second class rights” in the country’s judicial system. Although Israel claims its Arab citizens—roughly 20% of the nation’s population—have equality under the law, even the pro-Israel US State Department has repeatedly accused Israel of practicing “institutional and societal discrimination” toward its Arab citizens.

As a consequence, Palestinians who are arrested are indicted, charged and in some cases detained indefinitely under existing state of emergency and anti-terror legislation. A common charge is “incitement” which requires little or nothing in the way of evidence. Many of the arrested Palestinians have in fact been released after payment of exorbitant bails, averaging about $1,000. One Palestinian activist reportedly paying $7,400 to be set free.

It should be noted that the armed Jewish settlers who rioted in the lead up to last month’s fighting, destroying Palestinian homes and other property, have not been identified and detained by Israeli authorities. Activist Remi Kanazi notes how “Apartheid inside Israel is when Jewish Israeli mobs chant ‘Death to Arabs’ and brutalize Palestinians in their neighborhoods, while the cops do nothing, only for those same cops to conduct mass arrests of Palestinian citizens two weeks later.”

Outside of Israel proper, other Palestinians, who are citizens of the Palestinian Authority or who have United Nations documentation, have no rights at all under Israeli law and are being detained at will and, in many cases, indefinitely, without any access to legal counsel or to family members. Most of them were not doing anything illegal, even by Israeli standards, when they were arrested. They were guilty of being Palestinian.

In one example of how the process works, well-known Palestinian activist Iyad Burnat, who had previously been arrested at age 17 and imprisoned for two years for having thrown stones at Israeli soldiers has been targeted. He lives in Bil’in on the West Bank and has had his two sons abducted from their home in recent night invasions by Israeli security forces. Abdul Khaliq, 21 years old, was taken away on May 17th and Mohammed, 19 years old, was abducted on May 24th. They are being held in the Almasqubia detention center in Jerusalem and have been denied any contact either with their parents or legal counsel. The Israeli authorities have provided no explanation of why they were arrested in the first place.

In another recent example of the brutality of the Israeli police, al-Jazeera reports in detail how thirteen-year-old Mohammed Saadi was kidnapped, blindfolded, beaten and threatened with a gun to his head by five policemen working undercover in his hometown of Umm al-Fahem. Saadi was among thousands who gathered for a funeral procession held for Mohammed Kiwan, a 17-year-old boy who had been shot and killed by Israeli police a week earlier.

Activists among the Palestinians observe that the Israeli repression has proven counter-productive. Most Palestinians now understand that the Israelis intend to exterminate them. One observer notes that “The fear barrier has been broken. Israeli forces are up against a people who no longer have anything to lose. The young men in Jerusalem don’t see they have a future to look forward to, due to socioeconomic factors that is either the result of or exacerbated by the occupation policies towards them. These people are defending their right to exist, their homes and their homeland, and had it not been for their resistance, Jewish settlers would have taken control of many places in Jerusalem.”

Clearly, the Joe Biden administration will do nothing even if the Israeli government were to arrest and torture 100,000 Arabs, but there is growing sentiment even in Congress and the Zionist controlled media that “what is wrong is wrong.” Congresswoman Betty McCollum’s has twice introduced a bill, which is languishing in congressional committee, that calls on the United States to block aid to Israel that can be perceived as being used to arrest, beat and imprison children. Her legislation the Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act​ H.R. 2407 amends a provision of the Foreign Assistance Act known as the “Leahy Law” to prohibit funding for the military detention of children in any country, including Israel.

McCollum argues that an estimated 10,000 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli security forces and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system since 2000. These children between the ages of 11 and 15 have sometimes been tortured using chokeholds, beatings, and coercive interrogation. As of September 2020 there were an estimated 157 children still detained in Israeli prisons, a number that has certainly gone up dramatically given the current crackdown by the police and army. Even though Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will surely block any attempt to let the McCollum bill see light of day one can at least honor the Congresswoman for what she is attempting to do and hope that some day the United States government will finally act honorably and help deliver liberty and justice for the long suffering Palestinians.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

A new report published in Railway Age magazine and written by the Information Technology Innovation Foundation (ITIF) has sounded the alarm about China’s growing high-speed rail sector. The report comes amid escalations in the U.S.’s New Cold War against China, of which technology is a key component.

China is by far the world leader in high-speed rail investment and development, sporting more than 35,000 kilometers (21,700 miles) of high-speed rail, or 68 percent of the world’s total. The ITIF itself admits to China’s rapid success in this sector since its first high-speed rail line was completed in 2008:

Since then, China has opened thousands of kilometers of high-speed lines with speeds ranging from 200 to 350 kph. To do this, China spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the world’s most expensive public-works project since President Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System of the 1950s. 

The United States might learn from China’s success in investing in high-speed rail and try and emulate it; however, according to the ITIF, China’s high-speed rail policies damage “innovation” by privileging domestic market development and state-owned enterprises over the interests of private, foreign firms primarily residing in the West. China is accused of employing a form of “mercantilism” to manipulate the global market at the expense of the superior capabilities of Western, Japanese, and American investors.

The term “mercantilism” has been used by big business interests in the U.S. and West to portray China’s policy of indigenous development as a high crime against the free market. In fact, the ITIF has been sounding the alarm about China’s prioritization of its own tech sector since 2013.

It lamented that China was no longer keeping its promise “to be a low-cost production platform for foreign multinational corporations (MNCs).” As if the Chinese government’s function was to serve the latter’s needs and not that of its own people.

The ITIF’s latest report focusing on China’s high-speed rail sector comes amid escalating U.S. attacks on China’s tech sector. Most associate this “tech war” with the Trump administration’s sanctions on China’s Huawei Corporation and social media apps such as WeChat and TikTok. However, the Biden administration and its allies have been just as aggressive in their attempts to forestall China’s technological development.

Biden has proclaimed that the U.S. is in a battle against China to “win the 21st century” and has expanded the list of Chinese telecommunications and supercomputing companies on the U.S.’s blacklist. In a recent speech to the UK-funded Chatham House, neo-con hawk and twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton passionately claimed that the U.S. is at “the mercy of China” and demanded that the U.S. “take back the means of production.”

The U.S. war on China’s tech sector therefore shares widespread bipartisan support. As this analysis will demonstrate, far from calling for more public investment in the needs of an increasingly destitute U.S. workforce, the ITIF’s new warnings about China’s high-speed rail sector reveal how powerful economic interests are pushing for a new Cold War with China alongside the perpetuation of neoliberal economic policies that prioritize the interests of multi-national corporations.

Who Is behind ITIF?

Richard Haass, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations noted in a 2002 speech at the State Department that think tanks serve as an important bridge between policy and action, and have been shaping U.S. foreign policy for over 100 years.

What Haass leaves out is that the majority are funded by corporate and military interests to help condition the public and skew public policy in a direction that favors capitalist elites and not the public at large.

The Information Technology Innovation Foundation (ITIF) claims to be an independent public policy think-tank based in Washington, D.C. However, a closer look into its background demonstrates that ITIF is a pillar of free-market fundamentalism and the military and corporate domination in world affairs required to maintain the U.S.-led neoliberal order.

Currently, it is one of several players driving a false and demonized view of China that may very well provoke a new world war.

The ITIF receives the vast majority of its funding from U.S. corporations in every sector of the economy. This includes the two largest employers in the United States, Walmart and Amazon.

More notable in the realm of technology and militarism is the host of donors from the defense and U.S. big-tech industries. Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and leading Silicon Valley corporations as well as the Charles Koch Institute join an alliance of U.S. monopolies and industry associations backing the ITIF.

The same corporations backing the ITIF have led the charge in pressuring Washington to take a hostile approach to China’s tech sector, whose success threatens them. Amazon and Northrop Grumman, the major arms manufacturer also are top sponsors of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

Logo, company name Description automatically generated

[Source: antinuclear.net]

ASPI has produced several dubious reports on China’s supposed repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Some of these reports attack journalists who have challenged the official narrative, notably at the Grayzone project. ASPI publications have generally been used by Washington to enhance sanctions against China over “human rights” claims.

A group of people standing in front of a building Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Cover of ASPI report on the persecution of Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang province. Military-funded think-tanks are playing up China’s alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang to mobilize public opinion against China. [Source: saveuighur.org]

ITIF founder and President Robert D. Atkinson is a champion of global neoliberalism who is regarded highly in elite circles as a tech policy guru.

Prior to founding the ITIF, Atkinson served as Vice President of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think-tank of the Bill Clinton-led Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) that sports initiatives such as the Neoliberal Project. Atkinson has served as an adviser for every U.S. administration from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump.

Atkinson currently holds a post as an adviser for the Minister of Science, Research, and Innovation in the UK. He also serves on the Markle Foundation’s Task Force on National Security, which helped write the 9/11 Commission Report and regularly lobbies for the privatization of the national security state in Congress on behalf of the Foundation’s president, Zoë Baird, Bill Clinton’s failed Attorney General nominee.

In a testament to his commitment to Clinton-era neoliberalism, Atkinson argued in a 2011 article that progressives should drop social welfare policies and instead “support corporations” in their fight against  “foreign mercantilism.”

More recently he has been warning about the China “threat”which he uses as a pretext for promoting the implementation of his conservative economic ideals.

China’s High-Speed Rail Ascendency a Nightmare for Neoliberalism

Given Atkinson’s history, it should come as little surprise that the ITIF’s report Heading Off Track: The Impact of China’s Mercantilist Policies on Global High-Speed Rail Innovation reads like a cartoonish screed against public investment.

Authored by Nigel Cory, the report provides an inside look into the nightmare that China’s high-speed rail presents to the global order of neoliberalism.

Mercantilism is a derogatory word devised by free-market fundamentalists to describe the prioritization of domestic market development. According to the report, China’s largest rail manufacturer, the CRRC, is state owned and “has the largest share of the global high-speed rail market due to its dominance of the Chinese market.”

What is particularly troublesome to the ITIF is that China’s early reliance on foreign technology to develop its high-speed rail sector has been gradually replaced with domestic alternatives.

The report blames China’s dominance over its own market for the failures of European, Japanese, and U.S. rail manufacturers to keep up with high-speed rail production. European firms such as Alstom or Japanese firms such as Hitachi are described as “innovative” more than a dozen times yet have seen their market share in the industry decrease as much as fifty percent since 2007. The United States does not have a single high-speed rail firm capable of developing high-speed rail and has thus fallen the furthest behind.

US High Speed Rail Association

[Source: ushsr.net]

That more “innovative” firms in the U.S. orbit have fallen behind China is an obvious contradiction. To explain away failure, the ITIF outlines measures China has taken to unfairly keep foreign corporations out of the Chinese market. Many of these claims are contradicted in the report itself.

“Forced technology transfer” is a particular sore point for the ITIF and forms the basis of claims of “stolen” intellectual property constantly made by the United States and its allies. China is accused of forcing foreign firms to share technology on an unequal basis. Yet so-called “forced” technology transfers are not forced at all. Rather, as the report explains:

China’s ongoing requirement for 100 percent Chinese-owned technology in many procurement contracts, combined with foreign firms having to engage with majority-Chinese owned JVs [joint ventures] in order to submit a bid, amounts to a de facto mandate to transfer technology to local partners. Foreign firms continue to capitulate because they have no choice—they either give up their technology or lose out to other competitors in the growing Chinese market.

Describing this scenario as “forced” obscures the actual problem: that China does not allow its high-speed rail market to be controlled and dominated by foreign, mainly U.S. and European, firms. Rather, China allows foreign firms to invest in rail development only if Chinese firms maintain majority ownership and are allowed access to information which allows them to develop the technology domestically.

While the ITIF claims foreign rail firms had “no choice” in doing business with China, it also admits that these same firms entered into such agreements willingly in part because China was not expected to catch up to its foreign peers so fast.

Another particularly sore point for the ITIF is China’s bidding process. Foreign rail firms must partner with a Chinese firm just to hold a license to operate and compete for procurement contracts in the Chinese market. Foreign firms are allowed no more than forty-nine percent of the shares in any joint venture.

As the report laments, only a limited number of entirely state-owned companies are allowed to contract for projects in China, thereby ensuring little flexibility in the way revenue is spread between foreign and Chinese partners.

A huge fear among the industrial and financial magnates that fund ITIF is that China’s model for infrastructure development in the high-speed rail sector will spread globally. The report expresses anguish over the Belt and Road Initiative directly, the massive government-led global infrastructure plan that China hopes will create sustained trade relations between itself and nations along the old Silk Road.

China has appointed CRRC, its foremost state-owned rail company, to develop rail projects abroad such as the Sino-Laos railway set to debut before 2021’s end.

The global expansion of China’s high-speed rail sector is particularly problematic because of its disregard for profit. High-speed rail is a costly endeavor which requires massive investments in research and development and components that can range from $17 to $21 million per kilometer of rail. The report quotes an unnamed executive who makes clear that foreign firms lack “the full weight and money of the state behind them in the way the Chinese rail companies do.”

In sum, China is accused by the ITIF of unfairly gobbling up market share from foreign firms by “stealing” intellectual property and “forcing” technology transfer. No proof is provided by the ITIF that verifies either claim. More importantly, the report simultaneously admits that foreign (read U.S. and EU) firms are unable to compete with China in large part because high-speed rail requires massive public investment rather than the prioritization of private profit.

Sanctions: Economic Weapon of the New Cold War

To punish China’s public investment in high-speed rail, the ITIF recommends first and foremost that foreign competitors, principally the United States and Europe, pursue sanctions against China. Thirty-nine countries around the world currently suffer from starvation sanctions imposed by the U.S. or EU. Sanctions are an act of war that cuts off a country’s access to the international market and, in the cases of Iran and Venezuela,prevent the import of crucial supplies necessary to sustain human life.

The World Must End the US' Illegal Economic War. Sanctions Imposed on 39 Countries - Global Research

CodePink activist protests U.S. worldwide sanctions.

The ITIF specifically calls on the EU and the United States to work together to prevent Chinese acquisition of rail firms and contracts abroad. This would amount to a de facto blockade of China’s access to European and U.S. technology required for the development of high-speed rail and is not dissimilar to existing U.S. sanctions on the semiconductor industry meant to slow China’s progress in the realm of “smart” technology.

The ITIF also suggests that U.S. and European governments adopt higher prices for public procurement contracts for foreign investment in rail projects and more stringent screening processes to essentially prevent China’s high-speed rail sector from expanding into the industrialized world.

Perhaps most damning is the ITIF’s inclusion of the demand that the World Bank withdraw financial support to China. Historically, the World Bank has operated alongside the IMF as an enforcer of global privatization, particularly in the Global South.

Structural adjustment programs implemented in countries across Asia, Latin America, and Africa have reinforced neocolonialism and massively increased extreme poverty around the world to the benefit of financial elites in the U.S. and Europe. That the ITIF would demand the withdrawal of World Bank funds from Chinese-backed high-speed rail projects demonstrates the lengths the U.S. and its allies will go to contain the rise of China.

Sanctions are indisputably the economic weapon of choice in the U.S.-led New Cold War on China. While many who politically identify as “left” in the U.S. and West see China as a “capitalist” country, it is clear that the U.S. and its allies employ targeted sanctions not on capitalist firms but on socialist development in China and elsewhere.

The ITIF specifically targets state-owned enterprises in China for sanctions in the same manner that the U.S. currently enforces targeted sanctions on state-owned enterprises in Belarus and Myanmar.

Regardless of whether the justification is “human rights” or “competition,” the effect of sanctions is to starve countries of their capacity to meet the needs of their people in the hopes that they will either “play ball” with U.S. and EU hegemony or see their political systems replaced with more compliant regimes.

China does not “play ball” with U.S. hegemony. China maintains public ownership over key sectors of the economy such as high-speed rail and disregards U.S. and European sanctions placed on poor nations across the Global South. This is evidenced by China’s massive bilateral relationships with Iran and Russia. China is also Europe’s, Latin America’s, and Africa’s largest trading partner.

Furthermore, high-speed rail marks only one area where China has surpassed the U.S. and European powers technologically. China leads the world in artificial intelligence, regenerative medicine, and a host of other sectors that once were dominated by private U.S. and European firms.

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Visitors check their phones behind the screen advertising facial recognition software during the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) at the National Convention in Beijing, China, April 27, 2018. [Source: pri.org]

Sanctions are thus deemed necessary to arrest the development of China’s large publicly driven tech sector from taking the reins as the foremost economic power. The ITIF published a follow-up article authored by Robert Atkinson himself which anguished over the reality that Chinese state-driven development is fast becoming the engine of the global economy.

This article appeared to reflect a tacit admission of the failure of the economic model Atkinson and his ilk have tried to impose on the rest of the world, and reaffirmation of China’s policies.

Free-Market Fundamentalism Spells Doom for Humanity

The ITIF not only calls for sanctions but also for direct public investment to spur “innovation” and make the U.S. and its allies competitive again. The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee has followed these recommendations by approving $110 billion in basic research in the tech sector.

Still, there is an obvious contradiction in the demonization of China’s state-owned economy and the U.S.’s decision to increase government spending in tech research to counter China. This contradiction is unlikely to be resolved given that the New Cold War is predicated upon the religion of free-market fundamentalism—an ideology which is foundational to U.S.-led neoliberal capitalism.

As economist Michael Hudson remarks, the New Cold War on China is essentially a clash of two systems:

Today’s Cold War 2.0 aims to deter China and potentially other counties from socializing their financial systems, land and natural resources, and keeping infrastructure utilities public to prevent their being monopolized in private hands to siphon off economic rents at the expense of productive investment in economic growth. 

Free-market fundamentalism spells doom for humanity. It is that which Secretary of State Tony Blinken chastised China when he said they were not following the “rules-based international order.”

Free-market fundamentalism is behind the massive bailouts and stock buybacks Biden supported under the Obama administration and the massively bloated U.S. military budgets, which pad the profits of private weapons manufacturers.

Abroad, free-market fundamentalism inspired the 1973 CIA-backed coup in Chile, sanctions on Zimbabwe for its engagement in land reform, and the dozens of societies destroyed by the U.S. in the name of “freedom” and “democracy.”

China’s high-speed rail sector is now under fire from the U.S.-led neoliberal order precisely because the titans of big tech and finance cannot imagine development that does not place the massive profits of capitalists such as Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates in command of international politics.

Think-tanks such as the ITIF serve as mouthpieces for their Wall Street and Silicon Valley funders. It is quite clear from ITIF’s report on high-speed rail that, beneath the bellicose rhetoric and policies of the U.S.-led New Cold War on China, is a very real attempt to stymie the progress of alternative economic arrangements to neoliberalism on the world stage.

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Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He and Roberto Sirvent are co-authors of the book entitled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News—From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror(Skyhorse Publishing). He can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter @spiritofho, and with the Black Agenda Report on Youtube at The Left Lens with Danny Haiphong.

Featured image is from silknsteel.podbean.com

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During the hours of Tuesday night, areas in central and southern Syria were subjected to missile attacks carried out by “Israeli” warplanes across Lebanese airspace, while the Syrian air defense forces confronted the hostile missiles and shot down a number of them.

Sources reported that the enemy planes launched their missiles from Lebanese airspace, focusing on locations in the south and west of Homs Governorate, central Syria, in addition to other locations in the south of the country.

The Syrian air defenses were able to confront a number of hostile missiles, and shot them down before reaching their targets. The sounds of explosions resulting from the response were widely heard in various parts of the cities of Damascus and Homs.

A Syrian military source said during a statement issued during the attacks:

“At 23.36 pm on Tuesday 8-6-2021, the Israeli enemy carried out an air aggression from over Lebanese territory, targeting some targets in the central and southern region, and our air defense media confronted the aggression’s missiles. Some were dropped.”

The source confirmed that the Israeli aggression did not result in any casualties, stressing that its effects were limited to material damage.

The Israeli occupation planes carry out missile attacks from time to time towards Syrian territory, with a focus on the vicinity of the capital, Damascus, at a time during which the Syrian anti-aircraft forces are able to work effectively in terms of confronting hostile missiles, and shooting down large numbers of them, before they reach their targets.

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Featured image is from SANA

Rebel Women: Past, Present, and Future

June 10th, 2021 by Barbara Nimri Aziz

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Naomi Osaka initially garnered global acclaim as a tennis champion. Today she is a rebel. Thank you, Naomi.

Seeing how she defied the norm regarding participation in press conferences, the public gained a strikingly different perception of Ms. Osaka. Ultimately this athlete’s dissidence may be her most remembered and influential victory.

Riotous, rebellious, defiant; warriors, insurgents, dissidents, sirens, pioneers, innovators:– women and girls who simply will not accept the norms set for them are growing in number, historically and currently (thanks to awakened, skillful researchers).

“I expect something else (other than what you defined for me)”, girls insist. When we realize our dreams for ourselves, inevitably we widen paths for others. We redefine standards, as Osaka’s refusal is surely doing. Let’s also redefine these women as ‘rebels’ since this word symbolizes the insight, the fight and the burden that change calls for.

Rebel girls were once wearisome, impractical or suspect annoyances. In recent years they became reimagined and popularized as heroes. In the West, this transformation could be traced to its modern feminist movement. In 2016 a dynamic perception of ‘rebel’ was introduced in a children’s picture book chockfull of women stories. Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls is the creation of pioneer editors Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo whose first edition featured not one but a hundred accomplished women from various places and times. Its first edition sold millions and was translated into many languages. New editions, spinoffs and imitations followed.

In the Goodnight Stories portraits, rebellion is not characterized by military figures like Joan of Arc, Maoist guerrillas or African warrior queens. This history highlights scientists, political activists, artists, athletes, and pilots. Significantly, its ‘rebel girl’ is as much the child reader as those accomplished ladies on its pages. These selected ‘goodnight stories’ are for girls’ night-(and day)-time dreams.

The book’s extraordinary impact is surely due to it being far more than a few page-long biographies; Goodnight Stories actually offers an alternative history of humankind. This isn’t a story of one woman in a news feature, nor an empress, i.e., an exception. Here is a whole race:— accomplished women from across many centuries and diverse cultures. Their personalities and achievements retell the history of civilization. They offer child readers a new vision of human potential– a host of models, a myriad of ways that youngsters might consider their lives. It rewrites history, and it redefines ‘rebel’.

This collection may also affect how writers, anthropologists and historians reframe their accounts of women, as evidenced in titles of recent biographies. Take for example The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (2021) where authors Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert examine Parks’ six decades of activism. They challenge earlier perceptions of her as an ‘accidental’ actor in the American Civil Rights Movement. To young people, ‘rebellious life’ might more poignantly characterize that extraordinary career and demonstrate how Park’s contribution was not a single event but an unrelenting campaign. Any women’s ascent needs to be understood as a sustained struggle against obstacles she confronted, perhaps personally, from childhood, certainly within patriarchal society, and against prevailing cultural norms.

We find rebel celebration in Wake, a new collection, also designed for young readers. In Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts author Rebecca Hall defines her subjects, Black women who fought against their enslavers, as warriors. (Only rebels could manage what they did.) This book is moreover written to reclaim a once-secret history. (Black slave revolts by men are fairly well documented, not those led by women.) So, in addition to recording warrior biographies, Wake challenges cover-ups, an insidious all-too-common process that means the pursuit of rebel women’s histories has to address flawed historiography. Our work on rebellious lives frequently involves recognizing and exposing history’s secrets. (Also see Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments.)

When I first undertook to record the suppressed careers of two Nepali women Yogmaya Neupane and Durga Devi, both early 20th century rebels, I faced two challenges: I had to rely on oral accounts from a fading source—a community of elderly ascetics living in a hermitage, women dismissed by others as ‘unauthoritative’; then references to both rebels were essentially erased within a few decades of their deaths. Nepal’s ruler imposed a strict ban on Yogmaya and her surviving followers, suppressing any record of her work. While  Durga Devi was made ‘forgotten’ by angry male adversaries after her relentless career of shaming them, first in a (successful) fight for her property rights, then exposing their corruption.

As I uncovered these women’s careers, it became clear how their sheer determination to resist, as we find with Osaka, often necessitates some degree of rebellion.

Similarly, women like the talented Pakistani vocalists recorded in Fawzia Afzal-Khan’s Siren Song needed supreme efforts to persist in the face of personal threats and marginalization in order to protect and foster a rich music tradition. Afzal-Khan’s account of the careers of Malka Pukhraj, Roshanara Begum, and Reshma is a rich biography; it  also illustrates multiple ways women performers negotiate around challenges thrown in their path by political turmoil and by standard societal demands. We may not think of musicians as rebels, but Afzal- Khan’s sirens are just that, as are some of America’s great Black vocalists, e.g. Nina Simone and Marvin Gaye.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Barbara Nimri Aziz.

BN Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon

All images in this article are from the author

China’s Space Program

June 10th, 2021 by South Front

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The Stakes

While national prestige is a major motivating factor behind the construction of aircraft carriers and major surface combat ships (though less so with the largely invisible submarines), the same is even more true for space projects, such as high-visibility “first flights” or “first landings”, not to mention of course space stations. To be sure, the Cold War-era space race did yield tangible benefits to its main participants, US and USSR, in the form of advancements in rocketry, space navigation, communications, and other technologies with national security and civilian applications. Yet it wouldn’t be a “race” if there were no benefit from being the “first” to cross certain thresholds, such as first satellite, first man, first spacewalk, first orbital rendezvous, first man on the Moon. The ability to accomplish these “firsts” marked the country in question as being worthy of global leadership on account of the prowess of its scientists and the power of its political system capable of mobilizing resources necessary to accomplish spectacular feats. Therefore for all the expense space programs entailed, the “hard” and “soft” power benefits made them highly worthwhile and even cost-effective government expenditures.

Last but not least, the competing space programs made it all but impossible to turn space, including the Earth’s orbits, into one country’s exclusive domain. If, say, the United States had enjoyed an unchallenged monopoly on space flight, it is possible that it would turn The Final Frontier into its sovereign domain, just as it did with other “frontiers” in US past. While the idea of outer space being a universal good to be shared by all of humanity, it should be noted that idea was not codified until the 1967 Outer Space Treaty which still remains in force today. The fact the concept of national sovereignty over space had to be codified in international law is a reflection of notions to the contrary that were evident in the 1950s and 1960s, and which were made first untenable by the Soviet space successes of those decades. The Outer Space Treaty was little more than a legalistic reflection of the de-facto status quo created by the bipolar balance of power between the two nuclear superpowers, which meant that even if one of them made an attempt to claim sovereignty over space, the inevitable outcome would be war.

Full Spectrum Dominance

The end of the Cold War and the Soviet collapse meant that the door to space weaponization was if not open, then at least propped ajar. The 1990s-era Rumsfeld Space Commission’s final report included recommendations for the use of space, and when the Bush/Cheney administration took over, it is often forgotten that before 9/11 the course of their national security policy was heavily geared toward aeronaval and space warfare at the expense of capabilities for land warfare. The appointment of USAF General Richard Myers whose career revolved around space capabilities was an indicator of that trend that was abruptly curtailed by 9/11.

After about a decade of diversion into unwanted and unanticipated counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq, wars that were supposed to be victoriously wrapped up within a matter of months as if they were Tom Clancy novels, United States returned to the problem of space with a vengeance, and the current frenzy of activity evidenced by the extensive support granted to a variety of private entrepreneurs interested in commercial exploration, most notably Elon Musk and his SpaceX, suggests a desire to make up for the lost time and possibly even accomplish what could not be accomplished during the Cold War, namely the extension of US sovereignty to, if not orbital space, then to a celestial body in the form of planet Mars.

The emphasis on establishing permanently manned outposts on the Moon and Mars is likewise indicative of a renewed desire to extend US sovereignty to those celestial bodies. The Outer Space Treaty does, after all, acknowledge the sovereignty of every space object, manned or unmanned. A Mars Base, for example, would classify as a space object, except in this instance the space object would also control “real estate”, so to speak, on Mars. United States’ recent track record with international treaties is such that one cannot rule out either a unilateral withdrawal from Outer Space Treaty or a highly novel reinterpretation within the realm of “rules-based international order” that would naturally justify US claims, possibly with certain US client states, for example Great Britain, brought into the operation to give it an international character.

US turn toward unilateralism also means there will be rather less international cooperation in space in the coming decades. Probably no single object better exemplifies the evolution of the international system over the past several decades than the International Space Station (ISS). Consisting of five Russian, eight US, two Japanese, one European, and no Chinese modules, the ISS is falling victim to the emerging great power rivalry that threatens to end international cooperation on space exploration before it ever really took off, as US, Russia, and China each have plans to establish their own national space stations.

2021: China’s Space Turning Point?

For decades, China’s space program appeared to be an unhurried version of the Soviet one, with gradual build-up of launch capabilities in the form of the steadily growing family of Chang Zheng (Long March) rockets which have maintained an outstanding reliability record and account for a quarter of the world’s commercial space launches in spite of US restrictions dating back to the 1990s. For many years, however, China’s space hardware so far has not exhibited any spectacular technological breakthroughs, and likewise the pace of manned flights has remained low. The Shenzhen spacecraft is closely pattern after the venerable Soviet Soyuz design, with a capacity of three cosmonauts, and has performed only six manned missions between 2013 and 2016.

In contrast, February 2021 proved a spectacular month in China’s space program, with a list of accomplishments no space power would thumb their nose at. That month saw the landing of the Tianwen-1 unmanned Mars lander, making China the third country after United States and Russia to succeed in that endeavor, and the launch of the Tiangong Space Station (TSS), the aforementioned Chinese manned space station which was overshadowed by the likely deliberately fostered artificial media panic over where the top stage of the Long March 5B booster rocket was supposedly going to crash. Once completed with additional modules, TSS is expected to be of a size and mass approximately the same as the Soviet/Russia Mir Space Station that was decommissioned in 2001.

February 2021 is unlikely to be a flash in the pan event, given the uptick in the planned Chinese manned space flights. A Shenzhen flight is to take place in June 2021, with the destination being the TSS, another one is scheduled for September 2021, and two more missions are scheduled for 2022. More distant projects include exploration of the Moon and Mars.  Manned Moon landings and an unmanned Moon research base which are to take place in the 2030s, though these missions may require a new generation of spacecraft to be developed. A September 2020 launch of a Long March 2F rocket appears to have been a test of the Shenlong spaceplane that has been in development for nearly two decades. While Shenlong is a small craft with a  length of only 12 meters that is intended for unmanned missions, it is unlikely it is the only spacecraft design currently under development in the People’s Republic of China.

China That Can Say No

It remains to be seen whether China’s space program will remain a national symbol of power and glory or evolve into an international effort that will include Russian and even EU participation. So far China appears to be determined to go it alone. There are reports that the TSS orbital inclination angle is such that it would be very difficult for spacecraft launched from Russia to dock with it. While the Tangong and Shenzhen, as well as the Chinese space program in general, owe a great deal to Soviet and Russian technical assistance, China may be understandably concerned to establish its own reputation as a spacefaring power rather than a country still technologically dependent on Russia in that respect. On the other hand, the TSS is expected to perform international science experiments, and one also must not underestimate the alienating effects of US foreign and space policies on other countries. Moreover, United States has had a considerable head start in its renewed race for the Moon and Mars and is throwing colossal amounts of money at its various spaceflight programs. While much of that money is spent wastefully, United States remains a formidable space rival and here too its ambitious space goals may yet drive China and Russia toward greater cooperation.

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The White House announced that the file of the Syrian war will be present on the agenda of the upcoming summit between the US and Russian presidents, where the White House National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, stated that US President Joe Biden will discuss issues related to Syria during the summit that will be held with the Russian president, “Vladimir Putin“.

It is believed that one of the most prominent Syrian issues that the two presidents will discuss is related to the issue of humanitarian aid access, especially since Sullivan made it clear during his statement that his country has a very clear position regarding humanitarian aid, and there must be humanitarian corridors in Syria to deliver aid and save lives.

He is scheduled to meet the Russian and American presidents, on the sixteenth of this month, as part of a summit, which is the first of its kind between the two countries since Joe Biden took office.

Political analysts believe that the results of the expected summit will clarify more, the reality of the directions of the new US administration regarding Syria, and it will reveal whether there has actually been a change in American attitudes, especially since Biden has made several statements since taking office indicating his intention to cooperate to end the Syrian war, most notably the one in which he said that his country “is not interested in Syrian oil and seeks to cooperate with Russia to activate the operations of the international coalition against “ISIS“, in addition to taking a decision to revoke the license of the American company responsible for the process of extracting oil from Syrian fields.

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“Several live-fire and simulated engagements against subsonic, supersonic, and ballistic targets demonstrations will take place during the exercise, including the first defensive live-intercept of a ballistic missile using multinational data systems to track the target. The multinational cooperation for a ballistic missile intercept in outer space is truly remarkable and proves the Alliance’s commitment to interoperability and defence.”

The fourth iteration of the Formidable Shield air and missile defense exercise started off Scotland’s Hebrides islands on May 15 and ended in Norway’s Arctic North on June 3. Europe’s largest anti-missile exercise, it was led by U.S. Sixth Fleet and conducted by Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO. The two share a commander, Vice Admiral Eugene Black III. (As NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the commander of U.S. European Command are the same.)

Properly called Exercise At-Sea Demo/Formidable Shield (ASD/FS) 2021, it included 16 ships, 31 aircraft, and some 3,300 military personnel from ten NATO nations in the live training events: Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the U.S.

The deputy commander of Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO (STRIKFORNATO), Royal Navy Rear Admiral James Morley, said of the exercise that it was “one of the most complex and intensive integrated Air and Missile Defense events ever undertaken in the European theatre.” And he added that it “has taken place across the maritime, air, and space domains, involving 150 warfare training serials and live events, demonstrating the resolve and capability of the NATO Alliance to provide collective defence.”

The reference to space domains was not insignificant as agencies, commands and organizations participating in the two-and-a-half week maneuvers included the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, NATO’s new Space Command, U.S. Navy’s Task Group Integrated Air and Missile Defense, STRIKFORNATO’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense, NATO’s Ballistic Missile Defense Operations Centre at the Allied Air Command in Ramstein, Maritime Theater Missile Defense Forum and Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems. The U.S. Marine Corps 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit conducted its first High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launch in Europe during the exercise.

The flagship for the exercise was the Spanish frigate ESPS Cristóbal Colón. Referring to its name (Christopher Columbus in English) and improving on the claim by the STRIKFORNATO deputy commander, above, Task Force 64’s commander, Jonathan Lipps, who led the exercise, said:

“Like the namesake of this warship, you will lead an international armada at sea that will make history conducting the world’s most complex joint and combined integrated air and missile defense exercise across the Maritimes. From below sea level to low earth orbit, you will reinforce the importance of mission command across all domains in high-end warfare….”

The exercise shifted to and ended at the Andøya Space (formerly named Andøya Space Center and Andøya Rocket Range) rocket launch site, rocket range and spaceport in the Arctic region of northern Norway.

One drill featured the U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Paul Ignatius and the Royal Netherlands Navy’s air defense command frigate HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën, with the first launching a Standard Missile-3 interceptor missile to destroy a live medium-range ballistic target. The event was described by the American military as one “mark[ing] a major milestone in the scientific effort to integrate allied space sensors into NATO IAMD, comprising rigorous engineering efforts between several countries and major contributions from the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA).”

Also, U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Roosevelt conducted a dual-layer Integrated Air and Missile Defense scenario employing two Standard Missile-3s and two Standard Missile-2s against a simulated medium-range ballistic target and what was referred to as a live raid of subsonic targets. U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross conducted an air defense engagement using an SM-2 against a subsonic target as well. New systems were tested against “supersonic high-diving targets plummeting…at speeds in excess of 12,000mph – 16 times the speed of sound.”

Spain’s Cristóbal Colón, the Royal Norwegian Navy guided-missile frigate HNoMS Fridtjof Nansen and the Dutch De Zeven Provinciën frigate fired Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles.

The U.S. has 62 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers like those mentioned above and 22 Ticonderoga-class guided-missiles cruisers equipped with the AEGIS Weapons System and capable of launching Standard Missile-3s. The land-based version, part of a program known as Aegis Ashore or European Phased Adapted Approach, have been stationed in Romania and are scheduled to be deployed to Poland as well. Four (soon to be six) Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers are based at the Naval Station Rota in Spain under joint U.S. Navy-NATO arrangements.

A comprehensive sea- and land-based system of hundreds, ultimately thousands, of Standard Missile-3’s deployed by the U.S. and its allies creates the possibility of employing them for the second phase of a first-strike attack (conventional or nuclear) against the military assets of an adversary (e.g., Russia, China, Iran, North Korea); that is, using them to neutralize any missiles not destroyed in the first phase.

The Missile Defense Agency’s mission director for Exercise At-Sea Demo/Formidable Shield said of the exercise: “The MDA is dedicated to furthering the warfighter’s understanding of the ballistic missile threat, and how to negate it….No training can replace actually detecting, tracking, and negating a ballistic missile. The more exercises of this type MDA can support, the more confident and proficient the warfighter will become in using our defensive weapon systems.”

In the words of U.S Navy Commodore Brett Lefever, Deputy Integrated Missile Defence branch at STRIKFORNATO, ahead of the event: “Several live-fire and simulated engagements against subsonic, supersonic, and ballistic targets demonstrations will take place during the exercise, including the first defensive live-intercept of a ballistic missile using multinational data systems to track the target. The multinational cooperation for a ballistic missile intercept in outer space is truly remarkable and proves the Alliance’s commitment to interoperability and defence.”

In short the exercise was used to test U.S. and NATO antiballistic missile capabilities. With nothing short of what the STRIKFORNATO official celebrated as a ballistic missile intercept in outer space.

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Featured image: Standard Missile-3 Block IIA launch (Source: Anti-bellum)

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Israel’s political situation is proving quite precarious for outgoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As a result, he’s struggling to prove that he’s required at the lead, since Tel Aviv’s enemies will allegedly flourish if Netanyahu is not there.

Late on June 8th, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck various targets in southern and central Syria. According to Syrian media, air defense systems managed to shoot down some Israeli missiles which were fired from the direction of Lebanon.

Not all missiles were shot down and some caused damage. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights claimed that violent explosions were felt in Damascus and around the city, followed by Israeli strikes on military positions of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA). It also claimed that 10 pro-government fighters were killed in the strikes.

Air strikes also took place in the south of Homs province and in the border zone between Homs and Tartus.

This is the first strike attributed to Israel in nearly a month, and it coincides with Netanyahu’s struggle to remain in seat. There is no official confirmation from the IDF on carrying out the strike.

In addition to Israel’s regular assertions, the “moderate opposition” in Greater Idlib also frequently breaches the ceasefire regime and shells the nearby settlements.

Militants in the region shelled several villages in nearby Hama province, in the villages of Jubas and Dadikh, and farmland was damaged. No casualties were reported.

On June 7th, militants fired 6 rockets at the village of Jurin in the northwestern province of Hama, causing damage to residential buildings and private property.

In northern Syria, the perpetual state of chaos between the Kurdish groups and the Turkish-backed factions also continues.

The Kurdish Afrin Liberation Force reported that it had carried out a successful operation against the Turkish Armed Forces and pro-Ankara militants.

Between June 1 and 4th, the Kurdish group reportedly killed 13 Turkish soldiers and 2 pro-Turkish faction members. Two vehicles were destroyed.

In confirmation, Ankara admitted to losing a single serviceman in northwestern Syria.

On June 8th, a car bomb exploded in northern Syria’s Afrin causing extensive damage to nearby property. No casualties were reported.

Still, violence in northern Syria is the norm. The Kurdish groups and Turkish-backed factions continually carry out operations against each other. Infighting among the pro-Turkish groups is also not uncommon, with civilians frequently being injured and sometimes killed in collateral.

With the Syrian Arab Army reactivating air defense systems in northern Syria, it could mean that an attempted solution to the plight may be coming sooner rather than later.

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A Cleveland Clinic study of the effectiveness of COVID vaccines in people with a history of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and those without found those who had COVID but weren’t vaccinated appeared to have acquired strong natural immunity.

A new preprint study by the Cleveland Clinic found people previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 were less likely to be reinfected than fully vaccinated individuals who never had the virus — suggesting the vaccine is of no benefit to people who already had COVID.

The Cleveland Clinic recently studied the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination among people with a history of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and those without. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the necessity of COVID vaccination in persons previously infected with SARS-CoV-2.

The study, available on medRxiv, provides insight into how the immune system protects the body once a COVID infection is confirmed, the Cleveland Clinic said.

The clinic studied 52,238 employees. Of those, 49,659 never had the virus and 2,579 had COVID and recovered. Of the 2,579 who previously were infected, 1,359, or 53%, remained unvaccinated, compared with 41%, or 22,777 who were vaccinated.

The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection remained almost zero among three groups — those previously infected who remained unvaccinated; those previously infected who were vaccinated; and those previously uninfected who were vaccinated — compared with a steady increase in cumulative incidence among previously uninfected subjects who remained unvaccinated.

Of all infections during the study period, 99.3% occurred in participants who were not infected previously and remained unvaccinated. In contrast, 0.7% of infections occurred in participants who were not previously infected but were currently vaccinated.

Significantly, not one of the 1,359 previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated had a SARS-CoV-2 infection over the duration of the study, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

The study’s conclusion appears to support what others, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, have said about immunity in people previously infected with the virus. In a livestreamed conversation last month, Fauci told Howard Bauchner, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, it’s unlikely people can get COVID more than once.

Fauci however continues to recommend everyone get the vaccine — unlike Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) who as The Defender reported, has been one of the most vocal opponents of vaccinating people who have already been infected with SARS-CoV-2.

During a May 24 interview with John Catsimatidis on his radio show WABC 770 AM, Paul, a physician, said he was making the personal decision not to get vaccinated because he already had COVID, so he had acquired natural immunity. He said there was no evidence to support vaccinating people who’ve already had the disease.

Paul told Catsimatidis:

“Frankly, all of the studies show that I have just as good of immunity as the people who’ve been vaccinated. Now in a year’s time, if people say ‘Oh people that had it naturally are getting infected a lot more than people who’ve been vaccinated,’ I might change my mind. But until they show me evidence that people who have already had the infection are dying in large numbers or being hospitalized or are getting very sick, I’ve just made my own personal decision that I’m not getting vaccinated because I’ve already had the disease and have natural immunity now.”

Paul has often challenged Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during Senate panel hearings on Fauci’s recommendations that people who have had COVID need the vaccine.

“Sorry Dr. Fauci and other fearmongers, new study shows vaccines and naturally acquired immunity DO effectively neutralize COVID variants. Good news for everyone but bureaucrats and petty tyrants!” Paul said March 21 in a tweet.

In his tweet, Paul pointed to a study published online at the JAMA Network showing vaccines and naturally acquired immunity effectively neutralize COVID variants.

In a May 27 op-ed in the Courier Journal, Paul wrote:

“To dictate that a person recovered from COVID-19 with natural immunity also submit to a vaccine — without scientific evidence — is nothing more than hubris. If you have no proof that people who acquired natural immunity are getting or transmitting the disease in real numbers, then perhaps you should just be quiet.”

Paul said people are getting re-infected in large numbers after being vaccinated, which he said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly admitted on its  website. But people are not getting reinfected after having the disease naturally.

Paul said the CDC originally tried to hide the fact there were “no studies showing that getting the vaccine if you already have natural immunity is of any benefit at all.”

According to Paul, Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) got the CDC to admit there was no science to support the agency’s recommendation that people with natural immunity to COVID need the vaccine.

As The Defender reported, Massie called out the CDC in April when he found vaccine studies showed no benefit to people who had coronavirus and that getting vaccinated didn’t change their odds of getting reinfected.

The CDC claimed “the COVID vaccine would save your life or save you from suffering, even if you’ve already had the virus and recovered, which has not been demonstrated in either the Pfizer or Moderna trials,” Massie said in an interview with Full Measure. Massie contacted officials at the CDC about the misinformation. Officials there  acknowledged the information was false, but instead of correcting it, tried to rephrase the mistake.

“Facts are facts,” Paul wrote. “I’m no more likely to get or transmit COVID than someone who is vaccinated. We know this. Doctors know this. Scientists who design vaccines know this. Vaccines are created to attempt to replicate the immunity we get from having been infected with a disease,” Paul said. “Vaccines are a replacement for natural immunity. They aren’t necessarily better. In fact, natural immunity from measles confers lifelong immunity and the vaccine immunity wanes over a few decades.”

Paul pointed to a recent British study where David Wyllie, consultant microbiologist at Public Health England, and others found no symptomatic re-infections from COVID after following 2,800 patients for several months. In fact, Paul wrote “there have been no reports of significant numbers of re-infections after acquiring COVID-19 naturally.”

Shane Crotty, virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, conducted a study analyzing immune cells and antibodies from nearly 200 people who had been exposed to COVID and recovered.

Crotty concluded:

“The amount of (immune) memory (gained from natural infection) would likely prevent the vast majority of people from getting … severe disease, for many years.”

The results, published in Science, showed the immune systems of more than 95% of people who recovered from COVID had durable memories of the virus up to eight months after infection. Previous studies showed natural infection induced a strong response, but this study showed that response lasted, said co-author Dr. Daniela Weiskopf.

In a recent study in The Lancet, Dr. Florian Kramer noted:

“The findings of the authors suggest that infection and the development of antibody response provides protection similar to or even better than currently used SARS COV-2 vaccines.”

Increased risk of vaccine injury in those with previous infection

As The Defender reported, numerous scientists have warned vaccinating people who already had COVID could potentially cause harm, or even death.

According to Dr. Hooman Noorchasm, surgeon and patient safety advocate, it is scientifically established that once a person is naturally infected by a virus, antigens from that virus persist in the body for a long time after viral replication has stopped and clinical signs of infection have resolved.

When a vaccine reactivates an immune response in a recently infected person, the tissues harboring the persisting viral antigen are targeted, inflamed and damaged by the immune response, Noorchasm said.

“In the case of SARS-CoV-2, we know that the virus naturally infects the heart, the inner lining of blood vessels, the lungs and the brain,” explained Noorchasm. “So, these are likely to be some of the critical organs that will contain persistent viral antigens in the recently infected — and, following reactivation of the immune system by a vaccine, these tissues can be expected to be targeted and damaged.”

Colleen Kelley, associate professor of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine and principal investigator for Moderna and Novavax phase 3 vaccine clinical trials, said in an interview with Huffington Post, there had been reported cases in which those who previously had the virus endured harsher side effects after they received their vaccines.

Dr. Dara Udo, urgent and immediate care physician at Westchester Medical Group who  received the COVID vaccine a year after having the disease, had a very strong immune response very similar to what she experienced while having COVID.

In an op-ed published by The Hill, Udo explained how infection from any organism, including COVID, activates several different arms of the immune system, some in more robust ways than others and that this underlying activation due to infection or exposure, combined with a vaccination, could lead to overstimulation of the immune response.

Udo called for an intentional, well-planned approach to avoid eliciting adverse immune responses in those who had been “COVID-primed” and suggested only one of two doses be given to previously infected people, or none at all.

In a public submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, J. Patrick Whelan M.D. Ph.D., expressed similar concern that COVID vaccines aimed at creating immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein could have the potential to cause microvascular injury to the brain, heart, liver and kidneys in a way that does not currently appear to be assessed in safety trials of these potential drugs.Based on several studies, Whelan said it appeared that the viral spike protein in the SARS-CoV02 vaccines is also one of the key agents causing damage to distant organs that may include the brain, heart, lung and kidney.

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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

Torture Enters the Courtroom

June 10th, 2021 by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

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For the first time in American history, a federal judge last week authorized the government to admit as evidence in a criminal case in a public courtroom words uttered by the defendant that were obtained under torture.

The fruits of torture — which is any cruel or degrading or intentionally painful or disorienting behavior visited upon a person in captivity to induce compliance or to gratify the torturer — are not permitted in any court in the United States, and their inducement is criminal.

Here is the backstory.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a low-level former member of the Taliban, is accused with others of plotting the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 that killed 17 American sailors. He has been in U.S. custody since 2002 and at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2004. When he was first captured, he was turned over to the CIA for interrogation, not the Department of Justice for prosecution.

The practice of the federal government immediately following 9/11, when it captured anyone overseas from whom it believed it could extract national security information, was to hand the person over to the CIA for torture — the feds call it “enhanced interrogation” — at a “dark site” in a foreign country with which the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty.

The reason for the location of the torture was the erroneous belief by DOJ and CIA officials that torture conducted or condoned by American personnel is not prosecutable if it occurs outside the U.S.

That has never been the law in the U.S., but it has been the practice of the DOJ and the CIA to shield their personnel with secrecy when they are caught engaging in torture in a foreign country.

However, because either the tortured person or someone connected to whatever the tortured person revealed was to be tried in a federal court, and because no federal court can admit evidence against a defendant that was obtained under torture, the feds devised a scheme around this.

That scheme called for FBI “clean teams” to interrogate the tortured person after the torture was completed, using conventional and lawful interrogation techniques. These techniques often proved more successful than CIA torture. Because these techniques were lawful, and the person being interrogated was advised of his rights and treated humanely by the FBI, the information thus obtained from him was usable in federal court.

At trial, a defendant can always demonstrate that he had been tortured, not to obtain the jury’s sympathy but to enable his lawyers to argue to the jurors that they should disregard as unconstitutional, immoral, unlawful and un-American whatever evidence the torture produced.

Al-Nashiri’s lawyers told the court and the prosecutors at Guantanamo Bay that they intend to argue at trial to the jury that the government has the wrong man and that the true plotters have already been killed by U.S. forces. The feds, in order to counter that argument, told the court that they have statements that al-Nashiri made during his torture that can arguably be used to question his defense.

If the trial judge in the court in Guantanamo Bay had followed the law — the Constitution, the statutes and the rules of procedure, all of which profoundly reject the fruits of cruel and unusual punishment and shocking behavior — as well as American history, he would have excluded from the trial whatever al-Nashiri told his torturers while they had a broomstick well into his rectum.

If the trial judge had followed the law and our values, he would have dismissed the case against al-Nashiri because the government’s behavior shocks the conscience. If the trial judge had followed the law, he would have ordered the torturers into his court room and had them arrested on the spot.

But the trial judge in this case did not follow American law and rejected American values and all sense of human decency when he authorized the government to introduce at trial a partial transcript of the statements al-Nashiri allegedly made under torture. He also broke with 230 years of precedent. He also gave judicial credibility to governmental barbarism and nihilism in the extreme, which holds that individual human beings are subject to the state and, since their rights come from the state, they and their rights exist at the pleasure of the state.

The government lies, cheats, steals and kills; and it has written laws that permit it to do so and make legal recourse against it nearly impossible.

But nothing it does is more damnable than torture.

Torture is the ultimate triumph of the state over a person and the ultimate degradation of personhood. It is a complete rejection of the values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And it doesn’t work.

The history of torture is the history of victims divorced from reality by overwhelming fear and unbearable pain and willing to say whatever the torturers demand in return for a cessation of the pain. Stated differently, the fruits of torture are divorced from the truth. As a truth-producing mechanism, torture is a failure.

Many appeals remain for al-Nashiri before his jury trial comes to pass; and torture — with all its sufferings by victim and perpetrators — is part of the history of his case. I trust that saner judicial heads in the appellate process will prevail and this precedent-shattering and monstrous decision will soon be overturned. But its damage is done.

The government of the United States engages in torture and will continue to do so until the torturers are punished. And the prosecutors for whom the torturers work will someday try again to get the fruits of their barbaric behavior legitimized in an American courtroom.

When will the government stop the use of torture? Whom will it torture next? Why does it swear to uphold the Constitution and then trash it?

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Global Pushback Against Tyranny Has Begun

June 10th, 2021 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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***

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

Mainstream media have near-universally censored any news of this global demonstration. Those that did report it either understated the global nature of the event and its attendance, or misrepresented the intent of this “Worldwide Freedom Day”

The intent behind Worldwide Freedom Day was to tell our elected officials and unelected global leaders that we withdraw our consent to unconstitutional overreaches and attempts to strip us of our rights and freedoms, and that we will no longer submit to and cower in fear

The PCR test is at the heart of the COVID-19 scam. Without the PCR fraud and the asymptomatic spreader lie, the COVID-19 pandemic would have been a short-lived blip

Lies have been able to stand through the implementation of universal censorship of anyone who speaks truth and points out the scientific fallacies that drive the pandemic narrative. With these psychological tools, they manufactured the greatest hoax the world has ever seen

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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.

The documentary above, “The Pushback,” details the day the world stood together against government overreach and the destruction of human rights — and why we must unite, every day, and push back.

Chances are, you didn’t hear about this global rallying cry for freedom, as the mainstream media have near-universally censored any news of it. The few that did report it either understated the global nature of the event and its attendance, or misrepresented the intent of this “Worldwide Freedom Day.”

Freedom From Fear

So, just what was the intent behind this global demonstration? In short, to tell our elected officials and unelected global leaders that we withdraw our consent to these unconstitutional overreaches and attempts to strip us of our rights and freedoms, and that we will no longer submit to and cower in fear. As noted in the film, fear and hysteria were carefully nurtured using a false narrative that said:

  • A deadly novel virus is sweeping across the planet
  • No one is immune and there’s no cure
  • Asymptomatic people are major disease vectors, and therefore:
  • We have to shut everything down, isolate everyone and wear masks until the whole world has been vaccinated

And, of course, anyone who challenges this crazy narrative is labeled a danger to society. Every part of this narrative is false and unrealistic. In reality:

  • SARS-CoV-2 poses a high risk to a very limited group of people and a negligible risk to the vast majority
  • Few are susceptible to severe illness or death
  • There are several effective treatments available
  • Asymptomatic people — historically known as healthy people — do not spread the infection
  • Lockdowns and mask mandates did not work and have caused great harm
  • Vulnerable people have been harmed instead of helped

Ground Zero of the False Narrative

March 3, 2020, the World Health Organization tweeted out a comment by WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, which said:

“Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.”

It makes COVID-19 sound like a serious problem indeed. The problem is that Ghebreyesus compared apples and oranges. He reported the case fatality rate (CFR) of COVID-19, versus the infection fatality rate (IFR) for the flu.

As explained in the film, CFR is the proportion of deaths from a disease compared to the number of people diagnosed (the total number of confirmed cases). The IFR, meanwhile, is the proportion of deaths from a disease compared to the total number of infected individuals, confirmed or suspected.

Since CFR requires the infection to be confirmed through laboratory testing and clinical evaluation, and the total number of infected people can be hard to determine and includes suspected cases, the CFR is always lower than the IFR.

By conflating CFR and IFR in the same sentence, comparing two different sets of statistics, Ghebreyesus grossly overstated the threat of COVID-19. Stanford University researcher John Ioannidis pointed this out in a March 7, 2020, response, in which he said, “Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the WHO, cause horror — and are meaningless.”

October 14, 2020, Ioannidis published a review of 61 seroprevalence studies1 showing that the IFR for COVID-19 was actually only 0.23% — a far cry from the CFR of 3.4% — and for people under the age of 70, the IFR was just 0.05%. In other words, COVID-19 is actually less deadly than the flu. Many have noted that the IFR for flu is typically only around 0.1%, and even at that, COVID-19 is less deadly for people under the age of 70.

PCR Test Added Fuel to the False Narrative

As noted in the documentary, at this point, there are so many false narratives it’s hard to know where to begin, but a good place is the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test, as it is at the heart of this scam. If it weren’t for this flawed test, there would be no pandemic to speak of.

The fact is, the PCR test is not designed to be used as a diagnostic tool as it cannot distinguish between inactive viruses and “live” or reproductive ones.2 This is a crucial point, since inactive and reproductive viruses are not interchangeable in terms of infectivity. If you have a nonreproductive virus in your body, you will not get sick and you cannot spread it to others.

What’s more, the test was developed using nothing more than computer modeling of a genetic sequence. No actual viral isolate from a patient was ever used in the development of this test.

November 30, 2020, a team of 22 international scientists published a review3 challenging the scientific paper4 on PCR testing for SARS-CoV-2 written by Christian Drosten, Ph.D., and Victor Corman. The Corman-Drosten paper was quickly accepted by the WHO and the workflow described therein was adopted as the standard across the world.

The 22 scientists demanded the Corman-Drosten paper be retracted due to “fatal errors,”5 one of which is the fact that it was written (and the test itself developed) before any viral isolate was available. All they used was the genetic sequence published online by Chinese scientists in January 2020.

As if that doesn’t make the test unreliable enough, laboratories were instructed to amplify the RNA collected far too many times, resulting in healthy people testing “positive.” The number of amplifications is known as the cycle threshold (CT).

When you get a positive result using a CT of 35 or higher, you’re looking at the equivalent of a single copy of viral DNA. The likelihood of that causing a health problem is minuscule. Yet the WHO,6,7,8 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention9 were recommending CTs between 40 and 45, thereby guaranteeing a vast majority of “cases” were in fact false positives.

How the Greatest Hoax in History Was Fashioned

As detailed in the featured film, widespread PCR testing gave the mainstream media the fodder needed to create hysteria. For months on end, every broadcast had a tickertape showing the number of “cases” detected.

Other fear-induction tactics included universal masking and 6-foot social distancing rules, replete with plastic barriers everywhere and signs on every floor telling you where to stand and in which direction to walk.

One of the primary tactics that drove the narrative that masking and social distancing were necessities was the lie that asymptomatic people were spreading the infection. Anyone could be a lethal threat. No one was to be exempted from suspicion.

That old man with a cough? Lethal threat. That muscular jogger, flushed from fresh air and exercise? Lethal threat. That pink-faced precocious 2-year-old? Lethal threat. A fearful public soaked up the propaganda and started verbally and physically attacking non-maskers without regard for logic, reason or science.

Without the PCR fraud and the asymptomatic spreader lie, the COVID-19 pandemic would have been a short-lived blip. The lies were able to stand for one reason and one reason only, and that was the implementation of universal censorship of anyone who spoke the truth and pointed out the scientific fallacies that were driving the pandemic narrative.

With these psychological tools — preceded by a single carefully crafted revision of the definition of “pandemic” a decade ago — they manufactured the greatest hoax the world has ever seen. Indeed, you could say the redefinition of pandemic was what brought us to this precipice in the first place. The WHO’s original definition of a pandemic was:10,11

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

The key portion of that definition is “enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” This definition was changed in the month leading up to the 2009 swine flu pandemic. The change was a simple but substantial one: They merely removed the severity and high mortality criteria, leaving the definition of a pandemic as “a worldwide epidemic of a disease.”12

By removing the criteria of severe illness causing high morbidity, leaving geographically widespread infection as the only criteria for a pandemic, the WHO and technocratic leaders of the world were able to bamboozle the global population into believing we were in mortal danger.

What Works and What Doesn’t

The total discarding of science is perhaps the most perplexing part of this pandemic. We’re told to follow the science, but what they actually mean is that we must do as we’re told, without evidence. As noted in the film, we’ve long known what works and what doesn’t, when it comes to pandemic disease mitigation.

Effective measures include hand-washing and isolating the sick. Everything we’ve been told to do over this past year falls squarely in the “proven ineffective” category, and that includes large scale quarantines, border closures, school closures, social distancing and universal mask use. What’s worse, everything we’ve been told that is necessary to save lives, actually fuels disease.

What Was the Pandemic Really About?

In my best-selling book, “The Truth About COVID-19 — Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports and the New Normal,” I detail the backstory of how the COVID-19 pandemic was created and, more importantly, why. If you do not understand the geopolitical landscape we’re in right now, you will struggle to understand why anyone would possibly lie about a virus and create a pandemic out of smoke and mirrors.

In a nutshell, a small but highly organized technocratic elite have used this pandemic as a justification for eroding liberty, freedom and democracy from Day 1, and the reason is because they want to usher in a whole new global system. The global elite refer to this new system as the Great Reset, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Build Back Better plan.

Make no mistake, the plan — as laid out in various papers and reports, including s 2010 Rockefeller Foundation report,13 in which they describe their “Lockstep” scenario, which is a coordinated global response to a lethal pandemic, and its 2020 white paper,14 “National COVID-19 Testing Action Plan” — is to use bioterrorism to take control of the world’s resources, wealth and people.

The plan is to use the need for coordinated pandemic response as the justification for permanent surveillance and social controls that hobble personal liberty and freedom of choice.

To learn more about the hidden power structure running this global reorganization toward authoritarian control, see “Bill Gates Wants to Realize Global Vision in His Lifetime,” “The Great Reset and Build Back Better,” “Technocracy and the Great Reset” and “Who Pressed the Great Reset Button?

The Time to Stand for Freedom Is Right NOW

In 2007, Naomi Wolf published “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot,” in which she lays out the 10 steps to tyranny. She’s now warning everyone, everywhere, that we are at Step 10. Once Step 10 locks into place, there’s no going back. It’ll be too dangerous to fight back.

Right now, you might face police brutality or censorship. If that dissuades you from doing your part in standing against the totalitarian dictates right now, in the future, you’ll lose everything.

The good news is the would-be tyrants have not won yet. That said, we have no time to spare. We have no time to remain idle, hoping it will all just go back to normal on its own. In countries where citizens do not have a Second Amendment right to bear arms, the answer is peaceful mass civil disobedience.

In the U.S., we do have the Second Amendment, which allows citizens to own and bear arms, and the mere possibility of an armed uprising makes it more difficult for a tyrannical government to get their way. That said, peaceful disobedience is the primary strategy in armed countries as well.

We must also rally behind legislation that prevents the alteration of laws that safeguard our freedoms. To that end, Wolf has started the Five Freedoms Campaign, which you can find on her Daily Clout website.

The campaign focuses on creating legislation to preserve key freedoms and prevent emergency laws from infringing on our freedom to assemble, worship, protest and engage in business. Legislation is also being crafted to open schools, remove mask mandates and eliminate requirements for vaccine passports.

Hope, in the Face of Tyranny

I have no doubt that we will ultimately stop the globalists’ drive toward global tyranny. It’s not going to be easy. It may take years, and it may get far worse before it gets better.

The founders of the U.S. fled repressive societies or were children or grandchildren of those who did. They had to personally reckon with criminalized speech, arbitrary arrests and state sanctioned torture and even murder. The men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew that if they lost the war, they would be executed for treason.

These men and women were radicals, fighting for liberty and personal freedoms. They had a vision of reality that was an absolute slap in the face of what the rest of the world tolerated. They were willing to sacrifice their lives to turn that vision into a reality. Most all of us have forgotten their sacrifices and have capitulated to the carefully constructed narrative to create fear that allows most to give up their claim to freedom.

The Founders trusted us to remember our history and remain ever vigilant, to keep the precious web of liberty and personal freedom that they constructed from evaporating so that there would never be an American tyrant. The creators of the U.S. Constitution understood that the price of liberty was eternal vigilance.

Hopefully, enough people will see through the mainstream fog and see the truth of where we’re headed and how we got here (if you don’t, read “The Truth About COVID-19”), and once you understand who the actual enemy is, you become less fearful and more efficient. You can now help educate others, so that they understand what’s going on, how they’re being deceived and what they’re actually about to give up.

Lastly, there are legal solutions that can help thwart the globalist takeover, technological solutions that can strengthen citizens’ lobbying power, and censor-proof technologies that will allow us to circumvent current Big Tech monopolies. We have to work on all of these fronts but, together, I believe we can resecure freedom for our children and future generations.

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Notes

1 Bulletin of the World Health Organization October 14, 2020

2 CDC 2019 Novel Coronavirus RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel July 13, 2020 (PDF)

3 Corman Drosten Review Report

4 Eurosurveillance, Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus by real-time RT-PCR

5 Undercover DC December 3, 2020

6 WHO.int Diagnostic detection of Wuhan Coronavirus 2019 by real-time RT-PCR, January 13, 2020 (PDF)

7 WHO.int Diagnostic detection of 2019-nCOV by real-time RT-PCR, January 17, 2020 (PDF)

8 Eurosurveillance 2020 Jan 23; 25(3): 2000045

9 FDA.gov CDC 2019-nCoV Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel Instructions, July 13, 2020 (PDF) Page 35

10 The BMJ 2010;340:c2912

11 Wayback Machine, WHO Pandemic Preparedness May 1, 2009 (PDF)

12 Wayback Machine, WHO Pandemic Preparedness September 2, 2009 (PDF)

13 Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

14 The Rockefeller Foundation, National COVID-19 Testing Action Plan — Strategic Steps to Reopen Our Workplaces and Our Communities, April 21, 2020 (PDF)

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***

A new government is expected to be formed in Israel this week, finally ending the 12-year reign of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister.

Yair Lapid, the leader of centrist party Yesh Atid, managed to convince the leaders of eight different parties, ranging from religious nationalists to left-wing social democrats, to form a new coalition government, thereby avoiding the need for yet another Israeli election (the fifth in two years).

Such a coalition would have been unlikely in any other circumstances. News of the successful talks led to celebrations among Israel’s anti-Netanyahu voters.

The new government marks a significant shift to the right, echoing the results of the most recent election, in March, which saw an increase in votes for right-wing parties.

The leader of the right-wing Yamina party, Naftali Bennett, a hardline religious nationalist who previously led a prominent settler group, will assume the premiership for the first two years of the new government’s four-year term, before handing over to Lapid.

Key positions are reserved for centrist and right-wing parties such as Yamina, New Hope, Yesh Atid, Kahol Lavan and Yisrael Beiteinu, while minor roles will go to representatives from left-wing parties Labor and Meretz. For Israeli society, a right-wing government is acceptable and even preferred, and many are celebrating the imminent ousting of Benjamin Netanyahu.

No celebrations in Sheikh Jarrah

But the mood is very different in Sheikh Jarrah, the Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem at the centre of the most recent political upheavals, following attempts to forcibly expel several Palestinian families last month.

Israeli authorities seem unlikely to slow down the pace of ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah or other threatened neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, such as Batn Al-Hawa in Silwan. The ongoing Israeli court cases to expel Palestinian families from the latter “flagrantly violate the prohibition in international humanitarian law of forcible transfer and amount to war crimes”, according to Amnesty.

I spoke to numerous residents in Sheikh Jarrah, from different families and of varying ages. They had one thing in common: a heightened fear of what is to come.

Nabil Al-Kurd, the 77-year-old father of prominent activists Mohammad and Muna Al-Kurd, said that he has no hope in any Israeli government, past, present or future. “My hope lies only in God, and the new generation of politically aware Palestinians who mobilised global attention towards the issue of ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem.”

A day after I spoke with Al-Kurd, his 23-year-old twins Muna and Mohammad were arrested (they were later released). Their arrest was a form of intimidation, a response to their activism, which led to millions around the world learning about what was happening in Sheikh Jarrah. The twins mobilised through grassroots movements in Jerusalem, on social media platforms via the hashtag #SaveSheikhJarrah and by speaking to major international media outlets.

Kamel Ahmad (37), another resident, told openDemocracy that a change of personnel in the Israeli government does not mean any change in policy. He is worried that the new government will do its best to attract right-wing support from Netanyahu’s traditional base, to prove itself worthy of Israel’s largely right-wing electorate.

Veteran activist Saleh Diab said that the issue in Sheikh Jarrah is much larger than court cases about forced evictions. “There is no difference when it comes to Israeli politicians, whether they’re Labour, Likud or a third generation of political parties,” he said.

Saleh knows that the Israeli government wants to “maintain a solid Jewish majority in Jerusalem” – as stated in the ‘Jerusalem Outline Plan 2000’, the Jerusalem municipality’s master plan.

The new government is likely to be more right-wing and harsher in its approach towards Palestinian Jerusalemites fighting to stay in their homes

Ala’ Salaymeh (24) also lives in Sheikh Jarrah. She told openDemocracy that she expects the worst from the incoming government. She spoke of an anticipated rise in repressive policies, including the arbitrary arrest of activists, and more extreme measures as punishment, such as the revocation of Jerusalemite IDs or denial of access to medical insurance and services.

“Bennett’s anticipated government is likely to be more right-wing and harsher in its approach towards Palestinian Jerusalemites fighting for their right to stay in their homes,” she added.

Since early May, Israeli police have arrested more than 1,900 people across Israel, the vast majority of them Palestinian, plus a further 348 since the announcement on 20 May of a ceasefire in Gaza. A lawyer with the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, an Israeli NGO, said that the campaign of mass arrests was clearly “a policy of suppressing demonstrations” rather than maintaining order or fighting crime.

Jonathan Pollack is a 39-year-old Israeli ‘solidarity’ activist who is continuously present in Jerusalem’s threatened neighbourhoods. He is particularly worried about the pressure that Netanyahu’s right-wing allies will exert on the new government. He spoke of the ongoing incitement targeting Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party: “This might push Bennett to prove himself even more, and absorb the fringes of Israel’s right, to ensure the survival of his political career in case the current coalition collapses once Netanyahu is out of the picture.”

More right-wing than Netanyahu

In a televised statement made on Sunday, Bennett requested his new government be sworn in on Wednesday 9 June. He appealed to Netanyahu directly, saying: “We are allowed to choose a government that you are not the leader of. One that is ten degrees more right-wing than yours.” Netanyahu responded by calling Bennett a “liar”, and continued to incite anger against his party, in the hope that several Yamina MKs would defect, sabotaging Bennett’s attempt to unseat him.

The more right-wing government expected to be sworn in this week will be guided by ultra-nationalist politics, with the centre, left-wing and Islamist parties in the coalition serving as political fig leaf.

The new governing coalition is held together primarily by its aim to oust Netanyahu from power. By granting Bennett – the leader of a small party with just seven seats in the Knesset – the first rotation as prime minister, Yair Lapid considers his role as leader of the opposition fulfilled.

Israel’s dysfunctional political system has spilled its damage on to the streets, allowing incitement of and violence against Palestinians to go unchecked.

The wave of escalating tension was perhaps most visible in the behaviour of Israel’s police in recent weeks. Officers raided Al-Aqsa Mosque, harassed Palestinians in Jerusalem, and waged a “militarised war against Palestinian citizens of Israel intended to intimidate and to exact revenge as punishment for their political positions and activities”, as the director general of human rights organization Adalah said in a statement to Al Jazeera.

This escalation showed what a distracted political leadership can lead to. It eventually put Israel in a corner, as it faced a militaristic response from Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza and a wave of mass protests by Palestinians across historic Palestine.

Dysfunctional alliance

The new government will not be able to make any major policy changes, say observers. If anything, it will be more dysfunctional and more right-wing, risking further incitement and violence towards the Palestinian communities across historic Palestine.

Naftali Bennett and his political partner in Yamina, Ayalet Shaked, are both famous for their pronounced anti-Palestinian position. Together, they will occupy major positions within the new government.

Bennett did nothing when Shaked nearly wrecked the coalition talks by claiming the top seat on the judicial appointments committee, pushing aside the Labor party leader Merav Michaeli. This is a sign of what is to come; Bennett needs his right-wing ally and will meet her demands at the expense of his weak left-wing partners.

Bennett and Shaked will be backed by pro-annexation and pro-occupation parties, namely Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman (with seven seats in the Knesset), New Hope led by Gideon Sa’ar (six seats) and Kahol Lavan, led by Benny Gantz (eight seats). The above-mentioned ensemble is known for its support for policies of dehumanisation and violence towards Palestinians.

Some might say that the coalition’s hands are tied due to its fragile alliance with the centrist Labor (seven seats) and left-wing Meretz (six seats) parties. But in reality the right-wing coalition partners will be reaching out to attract support from Netanyahu’s allies in the Knesset.

By signing on to the coalition, Mansour Abbas, head of the United Arab List (Ra’am) party (four seats), is saving his political career. It was predicted that, if a fifth general election was held, Abbas’s position as party leader would be up in the air, and his party would not make the electoral threshold necessary to enter the Knesset unless it rejoins The Joint List, a political alliance of four Palestinian-majority parties.

The United Arab List had put forward demands to satisfy its electorate, focusing on Arab communities in the south of Israel, rather than having a general agenda to serve the Palestinian community at large.

Palestinians across the occupied territories and Jerusalem, and those who hold Israeli citizenship, are not hopeful about what is to come. If there is a silver lining to this new government, it is its fragility. But if this fragility is caused by the constant incitement by Netanyahu and his allies, it will only push the coalition parties further and further right as they try to attract Netanyahu’s supporters.

Bennett expects a new government that is “ten degrees more right-wing” than Netanyahu’s, but for Palestinians the shift to the right might be even more extreme than that.

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Featured image: Graffiti on the Israeli separation wall dividing the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis (Photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler via shutterstock.com)

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***

The Biden administration sparked vocal protests at home and abroad with last month’s decision to go full speed ahead on a sale of $735 million of precision-guided bombs to Israel. The sale moved forward even as Israel was in the midst of a devastating bombing campaign in Gaza that killed over 250 Palestinians, including at least 67 children, and drove 52,000 people from their homes. As with all Israeli military actions, the attacks relied heavily on U.S.-supplied weaponry, including precision-guided bombs and Lockheed Martin F-16 combat aircraft.

The new bomb sale is just the latest installment in a U.S. policy of supporting Israel’s military that goes back decades — over $236 billion (adjusted for inflation in 2018 dollars) in assistance since the founding of the Israeli state, more than three-quarters of it in the form of military aid. And Israel is three years into a ten-year U.S. commitment of $38 billion in military assistance — the only such long-term arrangement with any U.S. ally.  Israel has largely escaped accountability for its indiscriminate uses of U.S. military equipment, such as 2008’s Operation Cast Lead, which resulted in the killing of 1,383 Palestinians in Gaza, including 333 children. The United States does not even keep track of which military units get which U.S. weapons, making it extremely difficult to apply human rights strictures like the Leahy Law, which prohibits U.S. assistance to military units that commit gross violations of human rights.

Key members of Congress like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders attempted to block the bomb sale last month, but those efforts were unsuccessful, in significant part due to the short notice provided regarding the sale and the Biden administration’s determination to push it through quickly. But this is not the end of the story. The Biden administration can still stop the sale should it choose to do so. This week a group of 100 peace, human rights, and political groups released a letter urging the Biden administration to do just that. The letter had a broad range of signatories, including faith-based groups such as Churches for Middle East Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) and Jewish Voice for Peace Action along with more secular groups like Defense of Children International – Palestine, Justice Democrats, Indivisible, the Sunrise Movement, MoveOn, the Working Families Party, and Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN). Foreign policy think tanks like the Quincy Institute and the Center for International Policy also signed onto the letter. The breadth of support for the demands to block the bomb sale underscores the fact that opponents of uncritical military support for Israel are growing in strength, and are not going away.

Hassan El-Tayyab, the legislative manager for Middle East Policy at FCNL, summarized the thrust of the letter as follows:

“The Biden administration must use its existing authority to block delivery of this $735 million in new offensive arms sales to Israel. Moving ahead with these transfers will be seen as an endorsement of Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on Gaza and encourage more acts of violence against Palestinian civilians. The administration’s efforts should instead be focused on delivering humanitarian assistance to Palestinians, helping with reconstruction efforts in Gaza, using U.S. leverage with Israel to end its occupation and blockade, and supporting the diplomacy needed to achieve a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Beth Miller, Senior Government Affairs Manager at Jewish Voice for Peace Action, further noted that “It is outrageous that the Biden administration would even consider an arms sale to Israel, especially in the wake of the Israeli military’s most recent assault on Gaza. The world just saw exactly how Israel uses these weapons — to destroy infrastructure and wipe out families. By rubber stamping the sale, Biden is giving a green light to the Israeli government to continue killing Palestinians with our weapons. Under no circumstances can this sale go through.”

So far the Biden administration has made only the mildest of criticisms of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, as well as its wider suppression of Palestinian rights and routine repression of Palestinians in both the occupied territories and within Israel. The administration’s approach was underscored in a recent statement by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Asked in an interview with Axios whether Israel would be held accountable for attacks on a building in Gaza that housed the headquarters of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press, he reiterated the administration’s main talking point: “Israel has the right to defend itself, and it was on the receiving end of indiscriminate rocket attacks.” Blinken went on to say that “Israel, as a democracy… has an added burden to make sure it is doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties.” Given the death toll in Gaza, it is clear that Israel was not taking adequate precautions, but there’s no sign yet that the Biden administration is serious about imposing consequences for Israel’s misuse of U.S. weapons.

The attacks on Gaza are just one part of an Israeli approach that Human Rights Watch has described as imposing “deprivations [that] are so severe that they amount to crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

Now is the time to change course on U.S. military assistance to Israel in response to its ongoing repression of Palestinians. Stopping the bomb sale would be a good place to start.

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Featured image: Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City, the Gaza Strip, Palestine, Wednesday, May 12, 2021. (Nick_ Raille_07 / Shutterstock.com).

An Open Letter on U.S. Media Coverage of Palestine

June 10th, 2021 by Hassan Abbas

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Finding truth and holding the powerful to account are core principles of journalism.

Yet for decades, our news industry has abandoned those values in coverage of Israel and Palestine. We have failed our audiences with a narrative that obscures the most fundamental aspects of the story: Israel’s military occupation and its system of apartheid.

For the sake of our readers and viewers — and the truth — we have a duty to change course immediately and end this decades-long journalistic malpractice. The evidence of Israel’s systematic oppression of Palestinians is overwhelming and must no longer be sanitized.

In April, Human Rights Watch released a 213-page report that documented Israeli authorities committing “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.” Leading Israeli human rights group B’tselem characterized the region as governed by a regime of ethnic supremacy.

These terms — apartheid, persecution, ethnic supremacy — are increasingly gaining institutional recognition after years of Palestinian advocacy, and we, as journalists, need to examine whether our coverage reflects that reality.

Take, for example, the language used in the recent coverage of East Jerusalem neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah. Media outlets often refer to forced displacement of Palestinians living there — illegal under international law and potentially a war crime — as “evictions.”

This term misleadingly implies a real estate “dispute” between tenant and landlord, an inaccurate depiction of the state of affairs. The United Nations considers East Jerusalem occupied Palestinian territory, meaning Israel’s territorial claims there are not recognized. More importantly, using the term ignores the well-documented aim of the Israeli government to establish and maintain ethnic dominance over Palestinians.

During the last few days of Ramadan, Israeli forces violently attacked worshippers at the Al Aqsa mosque compound with tear gas and rubber-tipped bullets. Journalists didn’t call this an “attack” or “assault” on Palestinians, but rather a “clash,” as if both sides shared equal culpability and agency in the escalation.

When Israel attacked Gaza, media outlets framed it as a “conflict” between two equal entities, ignoring the total asymmetry in power. Under the guise of objectivity, rockets fired at Israel — which caused significantly less damage than Israeli airstrikes — were covered just as much as Israel attacking medical facilities and leveling entire residential buildings, clouding the nearly one-sided scale of violence and destruction.

The asymmetry in context does not just extend to the language we use; stories tend to disproportionately amplify Israeli narratives while suppressing Palestinian ones.

Too often, media outlets uncritically repeat Israeli military claims about its assault on Gaza without asking for evidence or proof, despite clear examples where Israeli officials spread false information. Journalists reported the claim from Israeli forces that they had launched a ground invasion — that was false.

The human toll caused by Israel’s bombardment is indisputable: Hundreds dead, more than 65 of them children. While statements made by Israeli officials and their defenders justifying the killing of civilians went unchallenged, Palestinian civilians had their humanity interrogated: Journalists asked whether they support violence or Hamas rockets.

Troubling still, reporting wanes considerably when Israel halts its airstrikes. Palestinians are ignored in so-called times of “peace” despite attacks and other hostile aspects of life under occupation continuing after the ceasefire.

Though there have been exceptions that accurately reflect the plight of many Palestinians, they are few and far between.

As journalists, we are entrusted with a profoundly important mission in a free and democratic society, the power to inform the people and guide the national conversation, from the family dinner table to Capitol Hill.

We are calling on journalists to tell the full, contextualized truth without fear or favor, to recognize that obfuscating Israel’s oppression of Palestinians fails this industry’s own objectivity standards.

We have an obligation — a sacred one — to get the story right. Every time we fail to report the truth, we fail our audiences, our purpose and, ultimately, the Palestinian people.

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Hassan Abbas — The Arab American News

Nesima Aberra

Spencer Ackerman — The Daily Beast

Meha Ahmad

Amal Ahmed — The Texas Observer

Maha Ahmed

Ahmed Ali Akbar — Freelance journalist

Tabir Akhter — BuzzFeed

Laila Al-Arian — Al Jazeera English

Laura Albast — Independent journalist

Mohsin Ali

Dalya Al Masri

Mohammad Alsaafin — AJ+

Yousef H. Alshammari — Independent journalist

Daniel Alvarenga

Najib Aminy — Reveal

Arielle Angel — Jewish Currents

Bethany Ao

Michael Arria — Mondoweiss

Alexandra Arriaga

Shakeeb Asrar — Independent journalist

Alex Atack

Munir Atalla

Kelsey D. Atherton

Ibtisam Azem

Rubaina Azhar

Sarah Aziza — Independent journalist

Arash Azizzada

Fatima Bahja

Ibrahim Balkhy — Vice News

Jonathan Ballew — Independent journalist

Dana Ballout

Julia Barajas

Vincent Barone

Moustafa Bayoumi

Mohamad Bazzi — New York University

Kim Bellware

Nassim Benchaabane

Noah Berlatsky — Freelance journalist

Johana Bhuiyan

Sam Biddle — The Intercept

Ariel Boone

Genevieve Bormes

Diane Bou Khalil

Assia Boundaoui — Independent journalist

Ari M. Brostoff — Jewish Currents

Alleen Brown — The Intercept

Kristina Bui

Dell Cameron — Gizmodo

Alma Campos — South Side Weekly

Alejandra Cancino

Aaron Miguel Cantú — Freelance journalist

Nora Caplan-Bricker — Jewish Currents

Roane Carey — Former senior editor/managing editor, The Nation

Christi Carras — Los Angeles Times

Brandon Caruso — NowThis News

Rosalie Chan

Kathy Chaney

Bettina Chang — City Bureau

Tauhid Chappell — Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists

Aida Chavez — The Nation

Lakeidra Chavis — The Trace

Siri Chilukuri

Jennifer Chowdhury

Annia Ciezadlo

Julia Clark-Riddell

Rachel Cohen — Freelance journalist

Mari Cohen — Jewish Currents

Sarah Conway — City Bureau

Erin Corbett — Freelance journalist

Ethan Edward Coston

Iris M. Crawford

Cora Currier

Jamal Dajani — Arab Talk Radio, KPOO

Jim Daley — South Side Weekly

Meg Daly

Dan Q. Dao

Anna Therese Day

Britni de la Cretaz

Sam Dean — Los Angeles Times

Grace Del Vecchio

Pauly Denetclaw

Phi Do — Los Angeles Times

Jack Doppelt

Leyla Doss

Karim Doumar — ProPublica

Maya Dukmasova

Ben Ehrenreich

Dara Elasfar — ABC News

Mariam Elba — ProPublica

Diana Elbasha

Sarah Eleazar

Tamer El-Ghobashy

Melissa Bunni Elian

Bian Elkhatib

Khalid El Khatib

Adam Elmahrek

Armand Emamdjomeh

Azad Essa — Middle East Eye

Melissa Etehad

Rose Eveleth — Flash Forward

Fatima Farha

Abdallah Fayyad — Boston Globe

Kiera Feldman — Los Angeles Times

Cat Ferguson

Sam Fouad

Benjamin Freed

Megan Fu — City Limits

Julia Furlan

G. Daniela Galarza — The Washington Post

Leor Galil

Simon Galperin

Eric M. Garcia — Freelance writer

Sarah Geis — Independent journalist

Masha Gessen

Ali Gharib

Carl Gibson — Freelance journalist

Lyndsey Gilpin — Southerly

Nathan Goldman — Jewish Currents

Melissa Gomez

Sam Gonzalez Kelly

Anand Gopal

Naomi Gordon-Loebl

Kia Gregory — Independent journalist

Ryan Grim — The Intercept

Abraham Gutman

Iliana Hagenah

Zahra Haider — NowThis News

George Hale

Abbas Haleem — Chicago Tribune

Katie Halper

Rachelle Hampton

Nikole Hannah-Jones

Mina Haq

Syed Haq — Intern, WBAI

Ali Harb

Devindra Hardawar

Kavish Harjai — NowThis News

Akil Harris — The Intercept

Lance Hartzler

Lila Hassan

Kelly Hayes — Truthout

Massoud Hayoun

Alexandria Herr

Jack Herrera — Independent journalist

Maia Hibbett — The Intercept

Eoin Higgins

Soleil Ho

Kristie-Valerie Hoang — INSIDER

Arya Hodjat

Joshua Holland

Juwan J. Holmes — The #FightToWrite Initiative

Brent E. Huffman

Nausheen Husain

Rummana Hussain — Chicago Sun-Times

Suhauna Hussain

Fatima Hussein — Washington Baltimore NewsGuild

Mukhtar M. Ibrahim — Sahan Journal

Nur Ibrahim

Dahlia Ibrahim

Nader Ihmoud — Palestine in America

Medha Imam

Zainab Iqbal

David Bradley Isenberg

Aymann Ismail

Nader Issa

Esther Iverem — On the Ground News Productions

Joseph Darius Jaafari

Malik Jackson — South Side Weekly

Sarah Jaffe

Maryam Jameel

Katrina Janco — Freelance Journalist

Ben Jay — Law360

Corli Jay — Freelance Reporter

Jamie Jiang — The Daily Bruin

DaLyah Jones — Press On

Sameea Kamal

Alex Kane

Sarah Kaplan — The Washington Post

Tony Karon — AJ+

Alexander Kaufman — HuffPost

Anumita Kaur

Sarah Kerson

Hana Khalyleh — Gannett

Amina Khan

Ahmer Khan

Aysha Khan

Saira Khan

Nader Khouri — Former photojournalist, Contra Costa Times

Rami G. Khouri

Tammy Kim

Elizabeth King — Independent journalist

Evan Kleekamp — Study Hall

David Klion — Jewish Currents

John Knefel

Madhu Krishnamurthy

Sadef Ali Kully — Freelance journalist

Akela Lacy — The Intercept

Laila Lalami — The Nation

Natan Last

Maya Lau

Sam Leeds

Natasha Lennard — The Intercept

Sarah Leonard — Lux Magazine

Aimee Levitt — The Takeout

Jasper K Lo

Erin B. Logan — Los Angeles Times

Crispin Long

Iacopo Luzi — Voice of America

A.Z. Madonna — The Boston Globe

Adam Mahoney

Wajeeha Malik

Barry Malone

Travis Mannon — The Intercept

Elize Manoukian

Sanya Mansoor

Christopher Mathias — HuffPost

Gracie McKenzie

Jesse Mechanic

Brittny Mejia

Ellie Mejia — City Bureau

Naib Mian — Condé Nast

Sebit Min

Jack Mirkinson — Discourse Blog

Kiran Misra — Independent

Tanvi Misra

Shereen Mo

Linah Mohammad

Steven Monacelli — Independent

Jesus J. Montero

Philip Montoro — Chicago Reader

Taylor Moore

Evan F. Moore

Benedict Moran

Sawsan Morrar

P.E. Moskowitz

Alaa Amy Mostafa — Reveal

Zainab Mudallal — The Washington Post

Maria Murriel — Pizza Shark Productions

Ali Mustafa — TRT World

Razzan Nakhlawi

Native American Journalists Association

Arionne Nettles — City Bureau

Laura Newberry — Los Angeles Times

Caitlin O’Hara — Freelance photojournalist

Edward Ongweso Jr. — Motherboard, VICE News

Deanna Othman

Samuel Park

Ariel Parrella-Aureli — Block Club Chicago

Ismael Perez

Fiza Pirani

Jacob Plitman — Jewish Currents

Brandon Pope

Randy R. Potts

Asmahan Qarjouli

Hafsa Quraishi

Isra Rahman — AJ+

Manny Ramos

Omar Rashad — Mustang News

Lizzy Ratner

Jacob Resneck

Gideon Resnick

Adam M. Rhodes — Chicago Reader

Sam Richards

Irene Romulo — Cicero Independiente

Isabella Rosario

Sarah Ruiz-Grossman — HuffPost

Sam Russek — Freelance journalist

Jordan S.

Sana Saeed — AJ+

Andrea Sahouri

H. Said

Michael Sainato

Richard Salame

Miguel Salazar

Maryam Saleh

Javeria Salman

Mythili Sampathkumar

Tara Santora

Nour Saudi

Jaya Saxena

Jeremy Scahill

Benjamin Schneider

Gabe Schneider — The Objective

Mai Schotz

Jessica Schulberg — HuffPost

Liliana Segura — The Intercept

Marybeth Seitz-Brown

Jackie Serrato — South Side Weekly

Salifu Sesay — Gimlet

Abby Sewell

Jashvina Shah

Sana Shah

Fuad Y. Shalhout

Sanskriti Sharma — Other Collective

Christopher Shay — The Nation

Annie Shields — The Nation

Destry Maria Sibley — Freelance journalist

Zachary Siegel — Independent journalist

Brandon Soderberg

Marie Solis

Alice Speri — The Intercept

Anna Sterling

Peter Sterne — Independent journalist

Rennie Svirnovskiy

Elise Swain — The Intercept

Saleema Syed — Chicago Tribune

Zayna Syed

Nadia Taha

Sally Tamarkin

Alex Tatusian

Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr.

Rekha Tenjarla — The New Yorker

Josh Terry

Prem Thakker

Priyanka Tilve

Rebecca Traister

Avery Trufelman

Esther Tseng

Irene Vázquez

Aria Velasquez

Robyn Vincent

Travis Waldron — HuffPost

John Washington — Freelance journalist

Noor Wazwaz

Emily Wilder

Nona Willis Aronowitz

Rawan Yaghi — Freelance journalist

Alex Yoon-Hendricks

Ata Younan — Freelance journalist

Ehab Zahriyeh

María Inés Zamudio

Margaret Zukin

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Journalist — Al Jazeera

Journalist — Al Jazeera English

Journalist — Al Jazeera Media Network

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Journalist — Colorado NPR member station

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Journalist — Condé Nast

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Journalist — Freelance journalist

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Journalist — HuffPost

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Journalist — The Wall Street Journal

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Journalist — The Washington Post

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Journalist — WNYC

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Satellite imagery reveals several areas of primary rainforest were cleared alongside agricultural fields in the Brazilian Amazon, all in close proximity to Indigenous and protected lands.

In March, the Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) lab at the University of Maryland detected areas of newly cleared forest in Lábrea municipality, in the state of Amazonas. Satellite imagery from Planet Labs confirms that the deforestation occurred in four areas and covers around 2,115 hectares (5,226 acres).

Satellite imagery from Planet labs shows deforestation between December 2020 and May 2021 in Lábrea, Amazonas state, Brazil. Screenshot from Global Forest Watch.

Satellite imagery from Planet Labs shows deforestation between December 2020 and May 2021 in Lábrea, Amazonas state, Brazil.

The largest of the deforested areas covers approximately 1,180 hectares (2,916 acres) and is with within 4 kilometers (2 miles) of the Kaxarari Indigenous Territory, which was threatened by fires in August 2020 from the adjacent croplands.

The northernmost cleared areas are close to Iquiri National Forest, a sustainable-use area that’s home to rare and threatened animals such as the eastern pygmy marmoset (Cebuella niveiventris), gray woolly monkey (Lagothrix cana), jaguar (Panthera onca), and giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla). As forests are fragmented, these animals have fewer pathways to move across the region.

Another view of the region shows recent deforestation amid the surrounding protected areas. Forest fragmentation can restrict the movement of animals among protected areas. The effects of deforestation also extend beyond the boundary of the cleared area, causing “edge effects.”

Lábrea municipality has been called a “crime factory,” its remote location and lack of law enforcement acting as a catalyst for illegal deforestation and land grabbing. Lábrea saw the fifth-largest increase in deforestation in the Amazon in 2019 and ranked as one of Brazil’s top five most deforested municipalities in 2020. The majority of privately owned forests have been cleared for cattle ranching in the region, Maurício Monteiro reports for Repórter Brasil.

Between January and July 2020, Lábrea had the fifth-highest number of forest fires of any Brazilian municipality, according to INPE, the national space agency. Fires typically follow deforestation in the Amazon, with land being cleared and then burned to make way for agriculture. Deforestation and fires in Lábrea were concentrated around the São Domingos rubber plantation, Monteiro reports.

Heat spots in areas with Prodes warnings (2017-2019). Area next to the borders of the Kaxarari Idigenous Land, in Lábrea, Amazonas state. Taken 17 Aug, 2020. CREDIT: © Christian Braga / Greenpeace

Fires next to the borders of the Kaxarari Indigenous Territory in Labrea, Amazonas state, Brazil, on Aug. 17, 2020. Image by Christian Braga/Greenpeace.

Forest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon hit a 14-year high for the month of May, amounting to 118,000 hectares (292,000 acres), an area roughly 20 times the size of Manhattan, according to INPE’s satellite-based deforestation tracking system, DETER.

Increased deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has been blamed on the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro. Since he took office in 2019, deforestation in Brazil has increased by nearly 50%, reaching a 12-year high. In 2020, land conflicts also hit a record high, with 1,576 cases recorded by the Catholic Church-affiliated Pastoral Land Commission, which has tracked conflicts for the past 35 years.

Experts say land grabbers have been emboldened by relaxed regulations and amnesties granted by the government. For instance, a measure proposed in 2019 (Provisional Measure 910) would allow those who illegally deforested protected federal lands before December 2018 to buy that property at reduced rates, granting them amnesty in the process.

“Brazil`s environmental regulations have been gutted under the Jair Bolsonaro presidential administration,” Phillip M. Fearnside, an ecologist at Brazil’s National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA), wrote in a commentary for Amazônia Real, “[T]he recent passing of control of both houses of congress to the coalition of parties supporting the president … will ease passage of a series of bills further dismantling environmental protections.”

Roughly 20% of the Amazon has been cleared since the 1970s. As a result of deforestation, fires and climate change, the Amazon dry season is getting longer and mega droughts more common. Some scientists warn that the Amazon is nearing a tipping point when precipitation diminishes until the rainforest transitions into an impoverished, less diverse savanna ecosystem that provides less function. Already, the ability of the Amazon to absorb COis declining and trees are dying at a faster rate. Ongoing destruction raises serious concerns about the fate of the world’s largest rainforest, and the plants, animals, and people it sustains.

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Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay. Find her on Twitter: @lizkimbrough_

Featured image: Jaguar by Eduardo Merille via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Contagious Lies: CDC Claims Hospitalization Rising Among Unvaccinated Teens — Contrary to Its Own Data

By Daniel Horowitz, June 09, 2021

We all knew this was coming. In order to justify the forced vaccination of children, the powers that be would somehow have to overturn 15 months of observations that COVID is less a threat to children than the flu and that unvaccinated children are less at risk than vaccinated adults (100 times less at risk than seniors), even if we are to believe Pfizer’s efficacy data.

Norwegian Health Chief Scolded for Saying COVID-19 Pandemic “Nearly Over”

By Paul Joseph Watson, June 09, 2021

A Norwegian public health professional received a massive official backlash after he suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic was “nearly over” judging by the country’s plummeting case numbers. Norwegian Institute of Public Health chief physician Preben Aavistland tweeted a graph showing rapidly declining hospital admissions along with the words, “Well, there goes the pandemic.”

Why We Petitioned the FDA to Refrain from Fully Approving Any COVID-19 Vaccine this Year

By Prof. Linda Wastila, Dr. Peter Doshi, Hamid Merchant, and Kim Witczak, June 09, 2021

We are part of a group of clinicians, scientists, and patient advocates who have lodged a formal “Citizen Petition” with the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), asking the agency to delay any consideration of a “full approval” of a covid-19 vaccine. The message of our petition is “slow down and get the science right—there is no legitimate reason to hurry to grant a license to a coronavirus vaccine.”

Over 90% of the News You See on Television Is Owned and Controlled by Just 5 Giant Corporations

By Michael Snyder, June 09, 2021

The way that people view the world is greatly shaped by the “news” that they see on television and read on the Internet.  Unfortunately, much of that “news” is produced by just five enormous corporations.  In fact, although the numbers vary from month to month, more than 90 percent of the “news” that Americans watch on television is controlled by those five corporations.

How Billion-Dollar Foundations Fund NGOs to Manipulate U.S. Foreign Policy: A Case Study from Nicaragua

By Rick Sterling, June 09, 2021

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.”

The War Over Genetic Privacy Is Just Beginning

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, June 09, 2021

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.

Vaccine Casualties: Is the CDC Hiding the Real Numbers?

By Tea Lynn Moore and Dale Hawkins, June 10, 2021

The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) is the post-marketing surveillance system the FDA asks healthcare professionals to report adverse vaccine events to. The system is passive, meaning: when a healthcare professional recognizes a connection between an adverse event and a vaccine, the report is only made when they choose to take the time out of their day to record it.

Minneapolis Erupts Again After Another African American Is Killed by a Federal Task Force

By Abayomi Azikiwe, June 10, 2021

Demonstrations have taken place in Minneapolis since June 3 when news quickly spread throughout the city saying yet another Black man was gunned down by law-enforcement. On June 3-4 numerous businesses were damaged, and property taken, when crowds gathered during a police examination of the area where the shooting occurred.

The “Three Seas Initiative”: The West’s “Answer” to China’s Belt and Road?

By Brian Berletic, June 09, 2021

To counter not only China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) but also Russia’s growing ties with Western Europe, an “alternative” infrastructure drive is being proposed that if and when completed, Washington, London, and Brussels hopes will further contain Russia and cut China off from European markets.

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As of May 14, 2021, in the US, 227,805 COVID vaccine adverse events, 12,625 COVID vaccine hospitalizations, and 4,201 COVID vaccine deaths have been reported to VAERS… but the true number may be magnitudes higher.

The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) is the post-marketing surveillance system the FDA asks healthcare professionals to report adverse vaccine events to. The system is passive, meaning: when a healthcare professional recognizes a connection between an adverse event and a vaccine, the report is only made when they choose to take the time out of their day to record it.

In 2010, Harvard Medical School was granted $1 million by the US Department of Health and Human Services to investigate VAERS to see how efficient it is and to create a new automated monitoring system. They analyzed data by creating an automated system within their own Harvard Medical System. Their report, titled: Electronic Support for Public Health – Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System found that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported to VAERS.”

As brilliantly efficient as Harvard’s newly created automated system was, it was never adopted by the country as planned. As Harvard stated in their final report, “Unfortunately, there was never an opportunity to perform system performance assessments because the necessary CDC contacts were no longer available and the CDC consultants responsible for receiving data were no longer responsive to our multiple requests to proceed with testing and evaluation.” So basically, upon learning of how few adverse vaccine reactions were actually reported to VAERS, the CDC (whose job it is to monitor disease and adverse reactions) chose not to accept a solution to the under-reporting problem.

Ten years later, despite the US government promising they would have a better safety monitoring system (known as BEST) up and running time for the COVID jab (it’s still in the “developmental stages”), the problem of fewer than 1% of adverse vaccine events being reported persists.

According to VAERS, there’s only 4.7 cases of anaphylaxis per million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 2.5 cases of anaphylaxis per million doses of the Modena vaccine. But an article in JAMA found a wildly different result. The article, titled Acute Allergic Reactions to mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines, studied Mass General Brigham employees who received their first dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (half received Pfizer and half received Moderna). Of the 52,805 participant employees who received their COVID-19 vaccine, they found that “98% did not have any symptoms of an allergic reaction after receiving an mRNA vaccine. The remaining 2% reported some allergic symptoms” however, severe reactions consistent with anaphylaxis occurred at a rate of 250 per million -100 times the VAERS rate!

So, now it appears VAERS only catches roughly 1% of anaphylactic reactions to the COVID mRNA vaccines -despite the fact that anaphylaxis is a reaction that is quite easy to spot (since the symptoms are severe) and easy to link to the vaccine (since symptoms typically arise within 30 minutes of the jab). The blood clotting disorder linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine, known as VITT, is also quite easy to catch since the condition does not occur naturally (previously the condition was only seen in gene therapies and as a reaction to certain medications). But what about complications that are less easy to spot? Heart inflammation, dementia, and infertility are all conditions that some experts suspect a COVID-19 vaccine may trigger. The slow onset of some conditions, along with the passive reporting system currently in place, may mean these complications won’t come to light in time.

Not only does the CDC seem uninterested in uncovering the true number of adverse vaccine reactions, the CDC also appears to have little interest in learning of the true effectiveness of the vaccine.

The CDC has been recording “breakthrough infections,” which are cases where a person tests positive for SARS-Cov-2 ≥14 days after they have completed all recommended doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. According to the CDC, the data is recorded to “help identify patterns and look for signals among vaccine breakthrough cases.”

For a long time, we’ve known that actual vaccine breakthrough numbers are likely higher than reported, as the surveillance system is passive and relies on voluntary reporting from state health departments, and may not be complete. In addition, some breakthrough cases will not be identified due to lack of testing (since most people don’t continue getting tested after they’ve been vaccinated). But recently, the “breakthrough” infection” numbers have been under-documented for an all-new reason.

Effective May 14, 2021, the CDC announced a change to their criteria in reporting breakthrough cases. According to a statement on the CDC’s website, the agency said to help “maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance” it will stop recording COVID breakthrough infections unless they result in hospitalization or death (whereas unvaccinated individuals who test positive for COVID-19 still count as a “case” even if they are asymptomatic).

Additionally, in April of this year, the CDC issued new guidance to laboratories recommending a reduction of the PCR test’s Ct (cycle threshold) value to 28 cycles (from 40 cycles), but only for fully vaccinated individuals being tested for COVID.

Both changes will result in lower overall numbers of reports of “breakthrough cases” in the U.S.

The change in Ct value, for instance, will make the tests wildly less sensitive for vaccinated people, while keeping the tests overly sensitive for unvaccinated people. According to the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Disease, patients who test positive with a Ct above 33 are not truly infected (meaning they are not contagious or symptomatic, and carry barely any virus). An investigative piece by The New York Times revealed that 90% percent of people testing positive did not test positive until after 30 Ct (meaning 90% of “cases” carried barely any virus or were false positives.) So, the CDC’s decision will artificially deflate the amount of “breakthrough cases” (by well over 90%) in comparison to unvaccinated individuals.

It is quite clear that the CDC has a goal of decreasing vaccine hesitancy in the general public by creating the illusion that the COVID-19 vaccines are performing better than they truly are. We keep hearing from officials that the vaccines are “safe and effective,” but how could we possibly know this when the CDC seems concerningly disinterested in recording both adverse vaccine reactions and vaccine efficacy. The truth is: we don’t know much about these vaccines and the system is set up in a way that prevents us from uncovering true numbers.

It may be that people are not getting vaccinated “because science,” they are getting vaccinated “because $cience.”

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***

Demonstrations have taken place in Minneapolis since June 3 when news quickly spread throughout the city saying yet another Black man was gunned down by law-enforcement.

On June 3-4 numerous businesses were damaged, and property taken, when crowds gathered during a police examination of the area where the shooting occurred. Nine people were arrested in the immediate hours after the killing.

Tensions had already escalated earlier on June 3 when the city removed a barrier erected around what has become known as “George Floyd Square”, marking where the horrendous police execution took place on May 25 of 2020. Residents in the area quickly set up other barriers preventing normal traffic at the thoroughfare around 38th and Chicago.

Initial reports in the corporate media from the Uptown section of the municipality indicated that the victim wanted on a murder warrant was shot to death by County sheriff deputies. Several hours after, however, it was revealed that the man was not wanted for murder and was killed by multi-jurisdictional squad operating within a fugitive task force attempting to serve a warrant. News reports were later corrected to indicate that the victim was not wanted for murder.

The Marshals claim that the victim, identified as Winston Boogie Smith, Jr., 32, a father of three, was being arrested on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Even the local Minneapolis StarTribune was forced to print a correction in regard to the circumstances surrounding the killing of Smith.

Witnesses in the vicinity said that they heard several gunshots in connection with the incident which occurred in a parking structure. The deputies involved in Smith’s death have been placed on paid leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation by the federal agencies.

Federal law-enforcement agents claim that Smith was sitting in a parked car and purportedly failed to comply with commands by the officers. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under which the agents are assigned have said that Smith had produced a weapon prompting a fatal response.

Emergency medical personnel summoned to the incident later pronounced Smith dead at the scene. A spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals were quoted in the StarTribune saying that the warrant for Smith’s arrest was issued in the state of Minnesota.

There was a woman in the vehicle with Smith who was injured by flying glass. No information is available about the number of police agencies involved in the task force. Media reports say two officers fired their weapons at the vehicle occupied by Smith and the unidentified woman.

A friend of Smith, Shelly Hopkins, questioned the official narrative being promoted by the Marshals. The circumstances surrounding the incident remain unclear while the federal law-enforcement agencies attempt to justify the death of Smith.

Hopkins was quoted by the Associated Press as saying:

“I wasn’t there. I don’t know exactly what happened. But I know him. And he didn’t deserve that… He had the best heart out of anybody I’ve ever met in my life.”

Another close friend of Smith, Waylon Hughes, told the Associated Press as well that she was not aware that the victim carried a firearm. Her assessment of Smith was that he cared very much about his children and friends.

The victim’s brother, Kidale Smith, questioned the law-enforcement version of events which resulted in Winston’s shooting death. Smith emphasized:

“This man had a family, and he’s just like anybody else. (People) always try to pin something on a man and try to identify him as a criminal, especially if he’s Black. You’ve got seven unmarked cars and you shoot a man in his car. You don’t even give him a chance to get out… You’re the U.S. Marshals. You’re supposed to be highly trained men, and you can’t handle a simple situation?”

Smith’s family is demanding transparency in the investigation. Reports indicate that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and the U.S. Marshals Service does not allow its agents and officers from other law-enforcement units assigned to its task forces to wear body cams.

Activists have been protesting everyday since the killing of Smith. At least two different organizations, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Black Lives Matter in Minneapolis, are calling for the removal of the head of the U.S. Marshals Service in the state of Minnesota. Demonstrations are being held outside the home of Ramona Dohman, the director of the Marshals Service.

According to the Minnesota CAIR’s executive director Jaylani Hussein:

“The system in this state is fundamentally flawed, and the federal oversight is also fundamentally flawed. We need transparency and accountability.”

Black Lives Matter Minnesota co-founder Monique Cullars-Doty described the law-enforcement killing of Smith as “reckless.”  She accused all agencies involved of being “completely reckless” and acting with “an intentional lack of transparency and an intentional lack of accountability.”

Since the police killing of Smith, the U.S. Assistant Attorney General in the region has ordered the usage of body cams for federal agents. Whether this will be implemented remains to be seen.

Black Man Killed by Hawaiian Police

Meanwhile earlier during the month of April in the U.S.-occupied state of Hawaii, another man was killed by the Honolulu police. Lindani Myeni, 29, was a South African immigrant married to a Caucasian woman whose family has lived in Hawaii for three generations.

Myeni and his wife, Lindsay, had moved to Hawaii from Denver with their two children in the hopes that the racism they experienced in Colorado would not be present in the Pacific islands state. The circumstances under which he was killed by police remain obscured due to the lack of information from the state authorities and the U.S. government.

Lindsay Myeni said that apparently Lindani had entered a home in Honolulu after taking off his shoes. He was wearing a traditional Zulu head covering representing his ethnicity from South Africa. His shooting death occurred after he had exited the home.

The South African government has repeatedly demanded information on the incident from local authorities and the U.S. State Department. South African diplomatic personnel in the U.S. have persistently sought an explanation for the killing of Myeni.

South African Minister for International Relations, Naledi Pandor, issued a statement on the position of the African National Congress (ANC) led government in regard to the police killing of one of its citizens. Pandor emphasized on behalf of her ministry that:

“The department also conveyed to the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria the concerns of the government about the lack of a comprehensive report on the circumstances that led to the death of Mr. Myeni and the utterances by the Mayor of Honolulu that the police had acted correctly. A request was made that the State Department should intervene to obtain a report as soon as possible and that the personal belongings of Mr. Myeni should be returned to the family. A follow-up request was later made to the U.S. Embassy for Mr. Myeni’s belongings, including his cellphone, to be returned to his family without further delay. As of 25 May 2021, the Consul-General in Los Angeles reported that the requested police report was still outstanding. The lawyers of Mrs. Myeni undertook to inform the Consul-General once there are new developments on the matter.”

Lindsay Myeni took her husband home for burial in Richards Bay located in KwaZulu-Natal Province and is currently living with her in-laws in South Africa. She has applied for permanent residency in South Africa and does not want to return to the U.S. in the immediate future.

Failure of the U.S. Congress to Pass the George Floyd Policing Act

These two incidents of police killings of men of African descent, one from the U.S. and another from the continent, illustrates the continuing crisis in police-community relations. A George Floyd Policing Act designed to institute reforms on a national level has still not been passed by the Senate.

The family of George Floyd visited the White House on May 25, the one-year anniversary of the brutal police execution, to push for the immediate adoption of the bill. The Act was passed by the House of Representatives along party lines in March due to a Democratic majority. It has yet to be voted on in the Senate which is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.

Nonetheless, the police abuse, brutality and killings continue despite the mass demonstrations and rebellions which have taken place over the last year since the killing of Floyd. What is required is the total dismantling of the existing system of law-enforcement and criminal justice which has its origins in the forced removals of Indigenous people and the enslavement and national oppression of Africans and other communities of color in the U.S.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Huawei’s HarmonyOS Aims at US Tech Dominance

June 10th, 2021 by David Goldman

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Pakistan and Russia in Gas Cooperation

June 10th, 2021 by Vladimir Danilov

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***

The US positions in Syria keeps weakening in recent years as the Syrian authorities gradually restore civil infrastructure and government institutes destroyed during the long-term war. By successfully conducting the presidential elections, Damascus virtually frustrated the plan of the White House for the establishment of a puppet Syrian government.

Seemingly, such situation did not suit the American intelligence and special services. The CIA leadership has rather quickly found the solution in prisons for former ISIS terrorists that are controlled by the Autonomous administration of the North and East Syria. In particular, Americans started recruiting the extremists in Gweiran and Shaddadi jails located in Hasakah province. The jihadists were viewed by the American intelligence as the most appropriate tool for the achievement of the US political and military goals in Syria. What is the motivation of Pentagon?

At first, American military experts than anyone else know all aspects and have impressive experience of the use of illicit armed groups in foreign conflicts for the sake of the US interests. Everybody knows the list of examples. Most prominent among the recent ones are Afghanistan, Libya, and, of course, Syria where Washington backed the Free Syrian Army in his war against the Syrian armed forces. Many years of using “proxy warfare” proved to be extremely instrumental so the American military leadership expectedly continued to stand by this strategy.

Secondly, the emergence of ISIS itself was due to the long-term hidden activities of the American intelligence services. The former US President Barak Obama acknowledged this fact in one of his interviews. It can be assumed that Washington just prepares a “revival” of well-trained extremists, who are ready for everything for money and the release from prisons, to carry out subversive operations in central Syria.

In other words, the ‘method’ of exploiting militants is not new to Washington, Americans have previously created powerful group, which will pose a serious threat for the Syrian army even with a little training and access to necessary arms. It is on these activities the American military advisors, who train militants to carry out subversive operations in central Syria, concentrated their efforts. In addition to conducting armed attacks, it is remarkable that the tasks of terrorists will include destroying supply lines and establishment of control over crossings on Syrian- Iraqi border. Moreover, a number of well-trained extremists are considered by the CIA as capable of assassinating the incumbent president of Syria and other top level officials.

It is difficult to take issue with that a series of terrorist attacks in the government-held territories not only will potentially explode the reputation of the Syrian authorities, but will be conductive to maintaining a threat of further distribution of the international terrorism. Many western mainstream media will not remain uninvolved and fill informational space with numerous publications over the alleged inability of Bashar Assad to ensure safety of the Syrian citizens.

We can only hope that both Damascus and the world community will be able not to allow such arbitrary behavior and violation of the international laws. Similar adventurism of U.S. intelligence will hardly allow the USA to achieve a desirable aim, but can quite generate a new wave of bloodshed and the revival of terrorism not only in Syria, but also across the entire Middle East.

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Ahmad al-Khaled is a Syrian journalist with four years of experience in covering the Syrian conflict and ME politics in general. His articles are published in leading regional and global media (Youm7, Ahl Masr, Rai Al Youm, Al Masdar, Ahval, Jerusalem Post, etc.)

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***

Mark Taliano published the second edition of Voices From Syria with co-author Syrian journalist, Basma Qaddour.

Mark is an educator and an activist.

He writes: 

“We are all being swept across a stormy frothing sea, rudderless, despairing. Not one of us is alone. When we find a common language of truth and peace, we will find salvation. The cancerous hands controlling our fates, our thoughts, our minds, keeping us apart, will be no more. Then we will be free.”

Indeed.

Mark talks with me about Syria and he minces no words in describing the evil unleashed on the Syrian people by the United States, Israel, and their allies through their terrorist proxies, Al Qaeda, Daesh and other mercenaries. We discuss the recent election in Syria and its meaning.  We also discuss the scamdemic and the dictatorship we are under with the excuse of a virus from his perspective in Ontario, Canada.

Mark researches and writes for Global Research with Michel Chossudovsky. 

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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.


Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

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***

To counter not only China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) but also Russia’s growing ties with Western Europe, an “alternative” infrastructure drive is being proposed that if and when completed, Washington, London, and Brussels hopes will further contain Russia and cut China off from European markets.

Called the “Three Seas Initiative,” it is described in a Bloomberg op-ed titled, “This Is How Europe Can Push Back Against China and Russia,” as:

…a joint endeavor by 12 eastern members of the European Union to update the physical and digital links between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas.

The op-ed argues that the initiative is the only way to fight off “Russian bullying and Chinese meddling.”

But upon closer scrutiny – even the selling points made by the author – Andreas Kluth – reads instead like a thinly veiled attempt to bully and meddle in Europe – and at the expense of the obvious opportunities trade and ties with Russia and China will bring.

Kluth’s argument includes blaming the Soviet Union’s neglect of Eastern European nations as the reason they lack modern infrastructure today, claiming:

Though economically vibrant, most of this region still lags the rest of the bloc in infrastructure. Travel by road and rail takes two to four times longer on average than in the rest of the EU. 

What’s missing in particular is good highways, railway tracks and gas pipes running north and south. This is a legacy of the Cold War. The Soviet hegemons made sure that Russian gas, tanks and troops could easily move east-west, but cared not a hoot about other connections among the countries they occupied.

Yet the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 – 30 years ago. If Eastern Europe currently still lacks modern infrastructure – it would be more appropriate to state that it is Brussels who “cares not” about making improvements.

The infrastructure proposed is also curious. The op-ed claims:

Projects include, for example, a port in Croatia that could welcome ships carrying liquefied natural gas — from the US, for example — and the pipelines that would bring this gas north to partner countries. Poland already has an LNG terminal.

This is not necessary infrastructure though. Europe already has access to hydrocarbons in the form of Russian energy moved into the region through existing pipelines and at costs much cheaper than LNG shipped across the Atlantic from the United States will ever be.

The inclusion of this “example” reveals Kluth’s hand and the true nature of this argument – this isn’t about stopping imagined “Russian bullying,” this is about imposing very real American bullying.

In other words, expensive infrastructure would be built specifically to put in place energy imports that would cost more and come with far more strings attached politically than Russian energy. These strings would include – and the op-ed itself mentions this specifically – cutting off relations with both Moscow and Beijing.

And regarding Beijing – Kluth accuses China of seeking political favor in return for infrastructure investments and construction projects – citing Hungary as an example of a partner nation “compromised” by its relationship with Beijing. Kluth claims that Hungary has blocked EU condemnation of alleged “human rights abuses” by China – never considering that the accusations themselves may have been politically motivated in the first place by opponents of Beijing.

Kluth – after describing the Three Seas Initiative as a means of escaping “bullying and meddling” – makes clear that US and EU investment in the projects should themselves come with political strings attached – noting:

…the EU should also be clear about its expectations. First, all involved, including Hungary, must acknowledge the geopolitical subtext and unambiguously declare their allegiance to Brussels, foregoing dalliances with Beijing. Second, the initiative mustn’t become the germ of an eastern bloc that defines itself in opposition to the rest of the EU.

While Russian “bullying” and Chinese “meddling” remain squarely in the realm of politically-motivated accusations – Kluth is openly declaring Washington’s and Brussels’ intentions to invest in a neglected Eastern Europe are predicated on acquiring unflinching obedience and the full surrender of national sovereignty – a proposition made without any hint of intentional irony.

Three Seas Initiative: About Primacy, Not Progress 

US foreign policy has been and continues to be predicated on maintaining global primacy. Any nation, anywhere on Earth that challenges Washington’s ability to act upon the global stage with absolute impunity is designated an enemy and thus targeted through a combination of political, economic, and even military coercion.

Two nations that have found themselves on this list for decades are Russia and China.

Both Russia’s re-emergence after the collapse of the Soviet Union as a major global power and China’s rise both regionally in Asia and globally – have demonstrably inhibited Washington’s worst impulses.

While Washington describes both Russia and China as threats to global peace and stability – it was Russia’s intervention in Syria that prevented the nation from suffering a similar fate as Libya or Iraq at America’s hands.

It has been China’s incremental rise that has created viable alternatives for nations across Asia just now working their way out from under the shadow of America’s Indo-Pacific “primacy” – a notion still included openly as part of US foreign policy – demonstrated in a “framework” paper published as recently as the Trump administration.

Notions of “Russian bullying” and “Chinese meddling” are geopolitical projections made by Western policymakers in a bid to justify a continued campaign of coercion – and not just against Russia, China, and nations along their peripheries – but also against allied nations like Germany who seek to diversify their ties between East and West – US sanctions targeting German companies involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project with Russia being only the latest example.

Perhaps the ultimate irony of all is that as Washington and Brussels attempt to dangle the promise of modern infrastructure over the heads of Eastern Europe – Kluth of Bloomberg himself admits that China has already come through in the case of Hungary – and Russia has been reliably pumping cheap energy into Eastern and Western Europe since before the collapse of the Soviet Union – and of course – ever since.

Once again – while pointing the accusing finger elsewhere – the US and its EU partners reveal themselves as the central threat to peace and prosperity. In reality, Chinese infrastructure projects coupled with US-EU investments, and cheap energy from Russia would be most beneficial to the nations of both Eastern and Western Europe – but clearly what is in the continent’s best interests run at cross-purposes to Washington’s and thus while Russia and China have never demanded exclusive economic ties with Europe – Washington is.

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Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. 

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***

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken crossed a red line last week while commenting on the 32nd anniversary of the 4 June 1989 events in Beijing. For all intents and purposes, he sought to provoke another Color Revolution in China through his factually inaccurate description of what happened on that fateful day. The average Western news consumer was likely misled into believing that it was a so-called “bloodbath” of allegedly “peaceful pro-democracy activists” when in reality it was an externally encouraged and highly violent regime change attempt that was thankfully stopped through the authorities’ responsible and timely intervention.

The reasons for why that event happened in the first place are myriad but are largely connected to the manipulative information warfare campaign that foreign forces waged inside of China at the time. The global context was such that the communist countries of the then-Soviet Union’s former Warsaw Pact were experiencing unprecedented unrest of a similar fashion and provoked in a parallel way. Coupled with the activities of foreign agents operating within the People’s Republic under diplomatic and other covers such as humanitarian ones, some citizens were misled into attempting to replicate those scenarios at home.

That was a gross error of judgment on their part as they were, consciously or not, behaving as pawns of a foreign regime change plot aimed at ushering in the West’s complete dominance of International Relations in the last few years of what many now consider in hindsight to have been the Old Cold War (as compared to what quite a few compellingly describe as the ongoing New Cold War). The aftermath of that incident spurred the Communist Party of China (CPC) to prioritize securing the People’s Republic from Hybrid War threats, which in turn resulted in the promulgation of decisive policies related to regulating foreign media and organizations.

Concurrent with those security-centric policies was the CPC’s continued focus on comprehensively improving the lives of its citizenry so as to simultaneously build a modern socialist country alongside ensuring that nobody feels neglected and is thus vulnerable to falling under foreign influence. The outcome of these prudent policies is that China achieved historically unprecedented growth and is now the world’s top economy by some metrics. So successful has this forward-looking strategy been that China is now assisting its countless partners across the world in replicating its growth model via its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) investments.

In recent years, China has also sought to pragmatically counteract foreign cultural influences that have proven themselves to have pernicious consequences for domestic security whenever they uncontrollably spread throughout other societies. The newfound focus on prioritizing China’s unique civilizational attributes and in imbuing its citizenry with associated patriotic sentiments has created a social firewall against these ever-evolving Hybrid War threats without cutting the country off from the rest of the world like some other states have done when attempting to defend themselves from the aforesaid.

With these impressive socio-economic and security accomplishments in mind, there’s absolutely no way that the US will ever succeed in provoking another Color Revolution in China. This isn’t just a boastful statement either but is proven by recent events in the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region (SAR). America’s attempt to export its cutting-edge Color Revolution technology to that city dramatically failed and represented a major setback for its strategic plans. In fact, one can even say that it was a huge self-inflicted blow to that country’s soft power since the rest of the world now knows that its regime change attempts can be stopped.

The US can no longer wield the Damocles’ sword of Color Revolutions over the heads of sovereign states like it used to since their people are no longer as scared of these scenarios as before after China recently showed that they can be thwarted. With this Hybrid War tool of American policy increasingly becoming irrelevant and the country’s appetite for conventional military interventions declining by the day as it urgently focuses more on resolving its growing number of domestic crises, one can predict that a new era of International Relations might be inevitable whereby the world will soon become much more peaceful than at any time in recent memory.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

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***

Sure, China is having a good pandemic. Life since the initial COVID outbreak in Wuhan is pretty much back to normal. Few restrictions are in place in Beijing or Shanghai. But globally? China is the new bogeyman. In corporate speak its brand image has been damaged. The crackdown in Xinjiang and its far from convincing protestations that COVID did not leak from a Wuhan lab has holed its credibility beneath the water line.

The trouble with the China rising to global dominance scenario is it is nonsense but it does suit certain factions in Washington and Beijing. It allows the US to have an enemy, and maintain defense spending. Beijing can pander to nationalist sentiment, otherwise known as “wolf-warrior diplomacy”. You know the story… stumbling America hampered by global commitments will give way to the more disciplined, regimented and innovative challenger. China’s president, Xi Jinping is not taken in by this. He knows, and has stated publically, that excessive growth and the corruption it inevitably brings will damage the party. His raison d’etre for wanting to become leader, back in 2012, was to save the party from itself, ensure its survival. Better to have a little growth and unquestioned party supremacy, he warned, than a booming economy with the party haemorrhaging power and authority.  Has he succeeded? As Zhou Enlai, the late Chinese premier, is often credited with saying about the success of the French revolution “it’s too early to say’’.  Zhou was actually referring to the student revolt in Paris in 1968.

The indicators are there, flashing in plain sight. Strong economies have strong currencies. Swift, the financial services network, stated that the Chinese currency the renminbi is used in less than 3 percent of international payments this year, compared with the dollar’s nearly 50 percent share.

Colleges, incubators of growth, are hampered. Global university rankings vary but all put Tsinghua and Peking, the country’s leading universities, outside the global elite, dominated by American and British institutions.

Transport systems are vital in a country with such a large population. High-speed trains are very comfortable but not as good, or as fast, as they had been promised. China had a simple destination and it failed; overtake Japan where the shinkansen, or bullet train, is almost a national symbol. It has been in service for almost 60 years and not one fatality. China’s ministry of railways, once a powerful entity, was found to be so corrupt it had to be scrapped and taken following  the Wenzhou train crash in 2011 that claimed 40 lives.

Its technology, much heralded, is also short-circuited. Facebook, Alphabet, and Twitter are global powers. Their Chinese counterparts , Tencent, Baidu, and Sina Weibo can barely make their presence felt beyond the Chinese border. While mobile phone payments are increasingly the norm in Beijing, the US has a commanding lead in developing the chips that power computers.

Constant state intervention is not good for sustained growth. Beijing bureaucrats dictate bank loans for inefficient enterprises and pointless infrastructure projects. An inadequate welfare system and a waste-ridden property sector, damages economic prospects.

China lacks global ideological clout. It is an economic power but it is nowhere near being the dominant one. The Belt and Road Initiative and a record of rapid economic development are worthy achievements but they are not a model that can easily be transferred to other countries. Soviet communism inspired revolutions. China wants trade deals but its economic model does not inspire. Foreigners are not rushing across its borders to seek work. And it is not a threat to the US. The threat to Washington lies much closer to home.

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Mexico: President AMLO Meets Vice President Kamala Harris

June 9th, 2021 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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***

Since the beginning of the American electoral process, the Mexican government has bet on Joe Biden’s project as an alternative to the migration crisis and as a way to guarantee financial resources for Latin America. However, the US president’s delay in fulfilling his promises has led to growing instability in relations with Mexico. This week, analysts around the world announced the beginning of a “new era” in bilateral relations between Americans and Mexicans with the first official meeting between Kamala Harris and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, where several topics of mutual interest were discussed. However, it seems too early to believe that such a meeting will have a real positive impact on relations between the two countries.

Earlier this week, US Vice President Kamala Harris personally met with Lopez Obrador in Mexico. Harris saw it as an extremely profitable opportunity and ensured a prosperous future in bilateral relations, guaranteeing the beginning of a “new era” in US-Mexico ties. “I strongly believe that we are embarking on a new era that makes clear the interdependence and interconnection between nations,” she said. This optimism was shared by several analysts who published articles in media outlets around the world announcing the success of the meeting and affirming that this is the starting point for a future of cooperation and mutual prosperity.

Despite the apparent success of the meeting, any optimism regarding this topic should be carefully considered. The US and Mexico have always had tense, unstable relations. In general, the interests of any Latin developing nation collide with Washington’s plans in its international projections. With Mexico, it is no different. The Latin country tries to assert itself as a protective state for the developing nations of Central America. As a Latin country in North America and with an economy considerably stronger than most other Latin nations, Mexico plays a of regional political power and mediator in conflicts between Washington and the Latin world – which obviously does not interest the US.

Currently, one of the most relevant points in the clash of interests between the US and Latin nations is the migration issue. Biden, whose electoral base was the Hispanic population on American soil, promised a comprehensive and efficient migration reform that would legalize the situation of thousands of Latinos in the US. It would be unfair to say that Biden has not made efforts to legalize immigrants – much progress has been made, but the long-awaited reform has not yet happened and may not occur anytime soon. The current migration rates have already been severely criticized by American society, in addition to having generated a diplomatic crisis with Canada due to the allocation of illegal immigrants on the northern border. The Biden Administration will, of course, maintain moderate efforts to disguise the problem, but it will not take any radical steps to legalize all immigrants. Mexico, as a mediator of interests between Latin States and the North, is impatiently awaiting a definitive response from the Biden Administration regarding the migration issue – and the longer Washington takes to resolve the problem, the more this harms Mexican interests.

It is not by chance that the meeting between Obrador and Harris did not make any progress regarding migration. On the other hand, some extremely important topics were addressed – mostly due to pressure from the Mexican leader. This is the case, for example, with American financial support for Latin nations. Economic instability in Latin America – especially in Central America – is an extremely sensitive topic, as it affects not only the interests of Latin countries but also the American interests, because the more poverty in these countries, the more there will be immigrants in the US. Central American nations pressure Mexico to demand from Biden a financial assistance to the countries of the North Central American Triangle – Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala -, which has been promised for months and remains without any real effect. At the meeting, both leaders signed a memorandum of understanding promising to mutually collaborate for the economic development of southern Mexico and northern Central America. But, in practice, this will depend on the US government’s investment priorities.

Another point also discussed at the meeting and of central importance is the issue of combating the pandemic. Washington recently shipped 2.7 million doses of AstraZeneca and promised to ship one million single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccines. The gesture was a great diplomatic “kindness” with the neighboring country, considering that the US still prohibits the export of the vaccine – similar actions were taken with Canada, India and South Korea (all important geopolitical allies of Washington). This indicates that Washington really intends to make Mexico a closer nation with friendlier relations, but the problem is what that would imply for Latin countries. Mexico wants the US to help poor Central American nations fight the pandemic. The US is not interested in operating such assistance, which will also lead to more crises and migration flows, given the social impacts of the pandemic.

As a result, we have a vicious cycle where relations between the US and Mexico are getting better and better on points that concern only these two countries, but they do not advance in the agenda of aid to Central America. At the heart of this problem is the migration issue: the more crisis in Central America, the more immigrants in the US. Washington wants to curb migration but is currently unwilling to invest in mechanisms to avoid migration flows due to other “priorities” of the US government.

It is undeniable that Biden is willing to maintain good relations with Obrador, but for that he will demand that the Mexican president abandon his role as representative of the interests of the Latin nations and mediator in the dialogue between Central America and Washington – which Obrador will not do. The Mexican leader is not willing to give up his role as a mediator, not because he cares a lot about Central America, but because this role is of central importance for Mexican geopolitics: it is Mexico’s international projection as a regional political power. Washington wants Mexico close as a subordinate, not an allied power, so conflicts of interest will continue.

So, the meeting between Harris and Obrador was undoubtedly very important, but it was not a great advance. The topics discussed at the meeting were absolutely superfluous and only served the interests of these both countries, ignoring the most important issues (concerning Central America). Therefore, this may indeed be the beginning of fruitful bilateral relations, but it is far from being a “new era”.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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We all knew this was coming. In order to justify the forced vaccination of children, the powers that be would somehow have to overturn 15 months of observations that COVID is less a threat to children than the flu and that unvaccinated children are less at risk than vaccinated adults (100 times less at risk than seniors), even if we are to believe Pfizer’s efficacy data.

“CDC director reports spike in teen hospitalizations, urges parents to vaccinate kids over 12,” was the headline at the Hill on Friday, reporting on the CDC’s new study of hospitalizations. Naturally, it caught my attention because we all know that hospitalizations among all age groups have been plummeting to record lows across the country in recent weeks. It turns out that along with its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the CDC published a “study” purporting to show an increase in hospitalizations among 12- to 17-year-olds, with one-third of them being in the ICU and 5% of them being placed on ventilators.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky was ready to pounce. “I am deeply concerned by the numbers of hospitalized adolescents and saddened to see the number of adolescents who required treatment in intensive care units or mechanical ventilation,” said Walensky in a statement.

Of course, the solution is the great experimental gene therapy. “Until they are fully vaccinated, adolescents should continue to wear masks and take precautions when around other [sic] who are not vaccinated to protect themselves, and their family, friends, and community,” Walensky stated.

CNN dutifully echoed the false data and the premise it engenders without investigating it.

But there’s one problem. The CDC’s own data show that hospitalizations among all groups have plummeted over the past six weeks. It turns out they picked arbitrary start and end points – an old trick they’ve used with mask studies – which coincides with a period of increased hospitalizations among all age groups, including those with high vaccination rates.

The study period of the CDC’s report was from March 1, 2020, to April 24, 2021. It just so happens that April 24 was roughly the peak period for ALL age groups!

Most of that mini increase (after the major winter spread) was due to the final spring spread in the northeast and upper Midwest. Based on the CDC’s headlines, one would think that childhood hospitalizations are spreading now and that they are rising relative to other age groups. In reality, they have plummeted and only rose slightly from a near-zero baseline earlier this year along with other groups.

If anything, the April 24 “peak” hospitalization rate among teens was lower than the peak during the winter, yet nobody ever felt there was an emergent situation with teen COVID hospitalizations during the worst months of the winter.

This is the same thing the CDC and others did when they picked arbitrary start and end points last year showing a decline in cases after mask mandates were instituted, while ignoring the massive subsequent increase over the winter in these same places.

But here’s the kicker: Hospital rates among children actually increased more slowly during the early spring spread than among those over 65, which is the most vaccinated demographic.

So, there is no way to chalk up that superficial increase with an arbitrary start and end point to lack of vaccination. It’s merely a reflection of a time when cases went up mildly in a minority of the country (while plummeting in the South and West). Whatever tiny baseline of hospitalizations there are among children went up commensurately with the baseline increase during any other period of spread. Of course, today, hospitalizations are lower than ever. There is zero evidence that vaccination rates played any role in that trend.

Finally, numerous studies, including the CDC’s own data, show that there is a much higher rate of fake COVID hospitalizations among children than adults, aka when there is no proof they were hospitalized because of COVID. According to this very report from Friday, 46% of those reputed teen hospitalizations were “not clearly COVID-19 related.”

What’s worse, almost half of those teens in the observational study where the cause was unclear appear to have been admitted for psychiatric reasons!

In other words, it’s likely the depression induced by the very panic the CDC is trying to exacerbate among kids that has engendered a decline in mental health leading to hospitalization, not the virus itself.

According to the U.K. Daily Mail, a recent U.K. survey of humanitarian organizations found that “more than a quarter of 75 charities surveyed said some children had expressed suicidal thoughts, while 41 per cent said some had been abused at home in lockdown.” In the U.S., the CDC reports 1,139 deaths from COVID under the age of 25, but concedes that 30% of those deaths included could not plausibly be linked to the virus. At the same time, there were over 2,500 non-COVID excess deaths for that age cohort, meaning that the panic, hysteria, drug overdoses, and suicides likely killed 3.5 times as many teens and young adults as the virus.

It doesn’t take a forensic investigator to realize that there has been a plethora of teenagers in the hospital due to the lies overstating the threat of the virus to them. Naturally, at a time when COVID is increasing in all age groups, a certain percentage of those youngsters will test positive for the virus. Accordingly, any subsequent death of any teen who tested positive – whether he or she died from drugs or suicide – will be recorded as a COVID death.

In May, New York magazine published a story highlighting new studies showing that the pediatric hospitalization numbers for COVID have likely been dramatically inflated throughout the country. The first study, published in the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, was conducted by Stanford researchers and examined 117 reputed COVID hospitalizations among those under 18 at a children’s hospital in Northern California. They found that just 7.7% exhibited severe illness and 12.8% critical illness. Overall, 45% were classified as “unlikely to be caused by SARSCoV2,” and it appears that most of the others weren’t suffering life-threatening illness.

The second study, published in the same journal, found in America’s fifth-largest hospital that, among patients younger than 22, 40% had “incidental infection,” only 47% were “potentially symptomatic,” and just 14% were “significantly symptomatic.” They further found that “Fifty-five percent of incidental and 47% of potentially symptomatic patients had at least one identified comorbidity, while 90% of significantly symptomatic patients had at least one.”

The twisted irony is that the CDC is lying about COVID hospitalization trends in order to get children to vaccinate when, in fact, vaccine-related hospitalization are really on the rise today. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at UCSF, tallied the data from just one reported serious side effect listed in the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), myocarditis, and found that hospitalization for myocarditis post-vaccination among 12-17-year-olds is currently 12 times greater than hospitalization for COVID. Why do our “public health experts” not find that current trend alarming?

It’s quite evident that the pandemic in America is over with and it never affected children, even during its peak. However, the pandemic of lies, fear, panic, and emotional abuse is continuing indefinitely until Pfizer and Moderna satiate their rapacious appetite for children’s blood. Who will defend our children?

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Featured image: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. (Raed Mansour/Flickr)

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A Norwegian public health professional received a massive official backlash after he suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic was “nearly over” judging by the country’s plummeting case numbers.

Norwegian Institute of Public Health chief physician Preben Aavistland tweeted a graph showing rapidly declining hospital admissions along with the words, “Well, there goes the pandemic.”

Aavistland then made the fatal error of being upbeat about the end of the pandemic when speaking to a newspaper, saying things “are going very well” and that Norway is “in the final sprint” against the pandemic.

“Here in Norway, the pandemic is almost over. We can start preparing for an everyday life where the corona has very little place in our lives,” Aavitsland told Verdens Gang.

The physician also compared the situation to a forest fire where very few pockets of flames were left to be extinguished.

“Very few are hospitalised and only several thousand cases of infection are discovered every week,” he said. “The numbers are declining rapidly at the same time as more and more people are being vaccinated. We will see some small outbreaks here and there, but we know how to stop them within three to four weeks.”

For the sin of being optimistic, Aavistland was verbally crucified by the government and the medical establishment.

Mads Gilbert, the head of the emergency medicine department at the University Hospital of North Norway, accused Aavistland of “sabotaging” the fight against the pandemic.

“High-level role conflicts are very destructive. It sparks uncertainty, ambiguity and confusion. It must be extremely frustrating for the hard-working local health teams to get this type of double communication from the national top management,” Gilbert told NRK.

Espen Rostrup Nakstad, Deputy Director of Health at the Norwegian Directorate for Health and Social Affairs, said there was “no reason to rejoice” because of the existence of variants and the fact that not everyone has been vaccinated yet.

Prime Minister Erna Solberg also asserted that people should keep complying with what they are ordered to do by authorities.

“It is important not to revel in joy in advance. People may start thinking that they don’t need to be vaccinated, or that we stop doing as the authorities do,” she said.

Frode Forland, director of infection control at the National Institute of Public Health, said Norwegians couldn’t begin to think about life returning to normal until after the end of the summer.

The backlash Aavistland received yet again emphasizes how scientific and government elites literally never want the pandemic to end because it has enriched them with so much power.

Now that the precedent has been set in terms of the public’s cowering response, expect authorities to re-impose rolling lockdowns at the drop of a hat by merely pointing to new variants of COVID-19 or new viruses entirely.

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We are part of a group of clinicians, scientists, and patient advocates who have lodged a formal “Citizen Petition” with the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), asking the agency to delay any consideration of a “full approval” of a covid-19 vaccine. The message of our petition is “slow down and get the science right—there is no legitimate reason to hurry to grant a license to a coronavirus vaccine.” We believe the existing evidence base—both pre- and post-authorization—is simply not mature enough at this point to adequately judge whether clinical benefits outweigh the risks in all populations.

The covid-19 vaccines in widespread use have emergency authorizations (EUA), not actual approvals, a crucial regulatory distinction that reflects major differences in the level of regulatory scrutiny and certainty about the risk-benefit balance.

Our petition doesn’t argue that risks outweigh benefits—or that benefits outweigh risks. Rather, we focus on methods and processes, outlining the many remaining unknowns about safety and effectiveness—and suggest the kinds of studies needed to address the open questions.

If the FDA listens to us, they won’t give serious consideration to approving a covid-19 vaccine until 2022. Our first request is that the FDA require manufacturers to submit data from completed Phase III trials—not interim results. Trials by vaccine manufacturers were designed to follow participants for two years, and should be completed before they are evaluated for full approval, even if they are now unblinded and lack placebo groups. These Phase III trials are not simply efficacy studies; they also are necessary and important safety studies (as the study titles say), and all collected data remain invaluable.

We also call on FDA to require a more thorough assessment of spike proteins produced in-situ by the body following vaccination—including studies on their full biodistribution, pharmacokinetics, and tissue-specific toxicities. We ask the FDA to demand manufacturers complete proper biodistribution studies that would be expected of any new drug and request additional studies to better understand the implications of mRNA translation in distant tissues. We call on data demonstrating a thorough investigation of all serious adverse events reported to pharmacovigilance systems, carried out by independent, impartial individuals, and for safety data from individuals receiving more than two vaccine doses, in consideration of plans for future booster shots. We ask the FDA to request necessary studies in specific populations, including those previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, pediatric subjects, and those with immunological or other underlying medical complexities. Given the nature of the novel vaccine platforms, our petition asks for experts in gene therapy to be included among the external committee advising the FDA.

These are several of our major requests. The petition has been signed by a group of 27 clinicians, researchers, and consumer advocates with diverse experiences and thoughts about the pandemic. We all agree that there remain many open, unanswered questions surrounding the efficacy and safety of covid-19 vaccines that must be answered before the FDA gives serious consideration to granting full approval.

These are the reasons why we lodged our petition. There is no need to rush approval to help stop the pandemic because the vaccines already have Emergency Use Authorization. Yet a rushed process is the very possibility that now confronts us. In the past month, Pfizer and Moderna submitted formal applications for “full approval.”

Covid-19 vaccines are already fully accessible to all Americans who want one. EUAs have enabled their widespread use, and can remain in place even after the expiry of the SARS-CoV-2 public health emergency declaration, as is the case for various Zika products. Even without full approval, covid-19 vaccines will remain available for all who want them under EUA.

Some surveys suggest that vaccine hesitancy in the United States is due, in part, to lack of full FDA approval. While approval might lead to increased public confidence in covid-19 vaccines, as well as provide legal support for employer-instituted vaccine mandates, to approve a medical product for these reasons is outside FDA’s regulatory purview. Approval decisions must be driven by the safety and efficacy data. The potential unintended consequences of a rushed approval may contribute to growing mistrust of the US public health and regulatory institutions.

Finally, regarding the elephant in the room: publicly raising any element of hesitation about covid-19 vaccines will be seen by some as irresponsible, stoking unfounded fears in the public’s mind and contributing to the “vaccine hesitancy” problem trumpeted every day. But the alternatives—privately raising concerns or simply remaining silent—are arguably more detrimental to public trust in the long run. Staying silent is not the responsible option.  And the implications of only privately raising concerns to regulatory bodies are murky—most would probably not be acted upon, and if they were, it would promulgate the baggage of insufficient accountability and transparency in decision making.

To us, the Citizen Petition seemed the most responsible approach: voice our concerns in our own words, in a professional and transparent manner, through a formal mechanism that can promote accountability in regulatory decision making.

Approving a covid-19 vaccine now risks setting a precedent of lowered standards for future vaccine approvals. The “FDA approved” seal must represent a high bar—and premature licensure of a covid-19 vaccine could seriously damage public confidence in regulatory authorities, particularly if long-term safety issues were to emerge following licensure. Keeping covid-19 vaccines under EUA regulations would also encourage vaccine manufacturers to continue investing resources in completing the necessary safety and efficacy studies for a potential FDA consideration of full licensure in the future.

For each covid-19 vaccine, the benefits may ultimately outweigh the harms. Or not. Or we may end up in a more nuanced position, finding that benefits outweigh harms for some populations, but not others.  Only time—and better evidence—will tell.  And so it is vital we allow the scientific process the time required to gather and assess the evidence to be confident in the decisions we ultimately have to make.

Our citizen petition and supporting documents are filed under Docket ID FDA-2021-P-0521 on regulations.gov. Anybody can comment on the petition, or read others’ comments, including the FDA’s official reply once it arrives.

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Linda Wastila is Professor and Parke-Davis Endowed Chair of Geriatric Pharmacotherapy at the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Pharmacy. She has conducted policy and epidemiological research focusing on intended and unintended outcomes of clinical and policy interventions involving medications and their safety over the past 30 years.

Peter Doshi is an associate professor of pharmaceutical health services research at University of Maryland Baltimore School of Pharmacy and senior editor at The BMJ.  He has been calling for greater independence and transparency in covid-19 vaccine related decision making.

Hamid Merchant is a subject lead in pharmacy at The University of Huddersfield and has experience in pharmaceutical research and development both from industry and academia. His clinical knowledge and expertise in pharmaceutical formulation helps in understanding the clinical and therapeutic principles underpinning drug delivery and the science of dosage-form design.

Kim Witczak is a global drug safety advocate with over 25 years of advertising and marketing experience. She co-founded Woodymatters, an organization started after the death of her husband due to undisclosed side effects of antidepressants. Kim is currently Consumer Representative on the FDA Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee. 

 

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Quick Facts on Israel’s New Prime Minister Naftali Bennett

June 9th, 2021 by Institute for Middle East Understanding

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Born to American parents who immigrated from San Francisco to Israel in 1967, Bennett is a far-right ultranationalist who staunchly opposes Palestinian statehood or self-determination of any kind in Palestine/Israel. 

Although not a settler himself, from 2010 to 2012 he was head of the main political body (Yesha Council) that represents Israeli settlers living on occupied Palestinian land in violation of international law and is a staunch supporter of Israel’s settlement enterprise.

A former member of the Likud party, he was Netanyahu’s chief of staff from 2006-2008. As the leader of the Jewish Home party (2012-2018), he was a key partner in Netanyahu’s coalition government, serving as minister of education and minister of diaspora affairs. During the previous government, he was minister of economy and minister of religious services. He was also minister of education (2015-2019) and minister of defense (2019-2020) under Netanyahu. In 2018, he left Jewish Home to form the New Right party.

Bennett has repeatedly stated his categorical opposition to a Palestinian state being created in the occupied territories. Instead, he proposes Israel unilaterally annex the approximately 60% of the Palestinian West Bank that fell under full Israeli control under the supposedly temporary Oslo Accords, where most Israeli settlements are located. In 2014, Bennett told journalists Israel “will be gradually attempting to apply Israeli law [annexing] on Israeli controlled areas of Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank].” In 2013, he declared: “I favor implementation of Israeli sovereignty over the zone where 400,000 (settlers) live and only 70,000 Arabs.” Bennett also ridiculed then-ongoing US-led negotiations under the Obama administration, declaring it’s “all a joke.”

In 2014, Bennett wrote an op-ed for The New York Times, “For Israel, Two-State Is No Solution,” repeating once again his opposition to Palestinian self-determination and his plan to annex 60% of the West Bank. In 2013, he told the New Yorker magazine: “I will do everything in my power, forever, to fight against a Palestinian state being founded in the Land of Israel.” A few months later, in June, he declared: “The most important thing in the Land of Israel is to build, build, build [settlements]. It’s important that there will be an Israeli presence everywhere. Our principal problem is still Israel’s leaders’ unwillingness to say in a simple manner that the Land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel.”

In 2014, then-Minister of the Economy and Religious Services Bennett released a letter addressed to Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 20% of the population, warning them against becoming a “fifth column.” According to press reports, the letter, written in Arabic, was riddled with errors.

Bennett also advocates increased Jewish control over the revered Noble Sanctuary mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem, known as the Temple Mount to Jews, which is the third holiest site in Islam. Extremist messianic Jews want to build a temple in the Noble Sanctuary, which would spark a major religious conflagration in the region and beyond. In February 2014, Bennett told a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations that Israel was attempting to exercise greater control over the Noble Sanctuary, stating that he had already taken measures that would “ultimately influence the eastern side of Jerusalem, and that will include the Temple Mount.”

In October 2018, Bennett said that if he were defense minister he would order a shoot to kill policy against Palestinians attempting to walk across the boundary between Israel and Gaza, where nearly 2 million people have been trapped under an illegal Israeli siege and naval blockade for 15 years. When asked if he would instruct soldiers to kill Palestinian children, Bennett said, “They are not children — they are terrorists. We are fooling ourselves. I see the photos.” At that point, at least 140 demonstrators had been killed by Israeli soldiers, including at least 29 children according to the UN, as well as medical workers and journalists, and more than 29,000 others injured, as part of the Great March of Return.

In 2013, Bennett sparked controversy when it was reported that during a cabinet meeting on releasing Palestinian prisoners he declared: “If we capture terrorists, we need to just kill them… I’ve already killed a lot of Arabs in my life – and there is no problem with that.” Asked for clarification by journalists, a spokesperson said Bennett meant Israeli soldiers should be ordered to kill Palestinians instead of capturing and imprisoning them.

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What to Expect When Biden, Erdogan Meet

June 9th, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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Expectations are soaring in Ankara over the forthcoming meeting between US President Joe Biden and his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Brussels on June 14. Erdogan said recently, “I believe that our meeting with Mr. Biden at the NATO summit will be the harbinger of a new era.” 

Without doubt, the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s remarks at a White House briefing on Monday on Biden’s first presidential tour abroad carried positive vibes — that Biden is looking forward to reviewing the “full breadth” of Ankara-Washington ties and discuss Eastern Mediterranean, Syria, Afghanistan and other regional issues as part of an “expansive agenda” next week, while acknowledging that the two leaders will also look at the “significant differences” between the two NATO allies. 

Most important, Sullivan transmitted a “presidential message” to Erdogan personally:

“President Biden knows Erdogan very well. The two men have spent a good amount of time together and they’re both, I think, looking forward to the opportunity to really have a business-like opportunity to review the full breadth of the relationship.” 

The conventional wisdom amongst analysts is that the US and Turkey are hopelessly entangled in a messy relationship. But then, the two countries also have a long history of sequestering their alliance from deep differences. At the present moment, what lends enchantment to the Turkish American alliance is that Washington consistently regarded Turkey as a “swing” state which can tilt the West’s relations with Russia.

Add to that now a further dimension, with an eye on Turkey’s unique geography, as regards the US’ prioritisation of China’s exclusion from the western world. There’s no gainsaying that the upcoming meeting in Brussels will be a high-stakes affair.  

With a touch of exaggeration, perhaps, one can even say that Biden’s meetings with Erdogan (June 14) and Putin (June 16) are joined at the hips. In almost all the “talking points” that Sullivan singled out — Eastern Mediterranean, Syria and Afghanistan — Russia is a sleeping partner. 

And more so, if we recognise that an “expansive agenda” cannot but include the entire swathe of the region where Europe and Eurasia overlap, which is turning into a theatre of contestation between the US (NATO) and Russia  — from Central Asia to the Caspian and Caucasus; and, from the Black Sea northward across Ukraine. 

To be sure, the Biden administration is preparing well for the upcoming meeting with Erdogan. To borrow an expression that Sullivan used to graphically thumb sketch Vladimir Putin, Erdogan too is a “a singular kind of personalised leader, and having the opportunity to come together in a summit will allow us to manage this relationship and stand up and defend American values most effectively.” 

Much preparatory work has been undertaken. Two top US diplomats travelled to Ankara in recent weeks for consultations —  Deputy Secretary of State, Wendy Sherman and the US ambassador to the United Nations (who carries cabinet rank), Linda Thomas-Greenfield. The State Department announced that Sherman would “underscore the importance of the US-Turkey relationship as we work together with our NATO ally to confront mutual challenges, and discuss areas of concern.” 

The US Mission to the UN at New York said in an announcement last week that Thomas-Greenfield would discuss “opportunities to strengthen the US- Turkey relationship, work with our NATO ally to address global challenges (and) improve cooperation on Syria.”  A senior US diplomat at the New York mission called this “a moment of intense engagement” with senior Turkish officials ahead of the Biden-Erdogan meeting. 

The US diplomat added that Turkey is “a critical NATO ally, and we have a strategic relationship that spans an enormous breadth of issues and concerns, including global and regional security issues, obviously, economic issues related to democracy and human rights.”  

The Turkish side too began preparing for the Biden-Erdogan meeting through past several weeks since Biden pronounced on April 24 the taboo “Armenian genocide” — after the 1915 wartime massacres under the Ottoman Rule. It was a red line for Turkey and Ankara should have reacted harshly — ranging from a closure of the İncirlik are base to the US or even stoping the operations of the ABM radar base in Malatya-Kurecik in eastern Turkey, a strategic asset of the western alliance system in encircling Russia. 

But Biden’s profound experience in international diplomacy was on display when he put a call through to Erdogan prior to making the announcement on the Armenian genocide and offered to meet in Brussels in June.

Interestingly, prior to that phone conversation, Sullivan made a call (April 23) with Erdogan’s top aide İbrahim Kalın where they reached a “consensus” on the exact wording that Biden would use in his announcement the next day whereby the blame for the Armenian genocide would be placed at the doorsteps of the dying Ottoman Empire and ensure Ankara wouldn’t be wrestling with compensation lawsuits in American courts by the heirs of Armenians who fled to the US in 1915 or after.  

Sullivan’s tactful diplomacy and Biden’s gracious gesture had a magical effect on Erdogan. By the way, a third call also came from Washington to Ankara to follow up on Biden’s conversation with Erdogan: this time around, State Secretary Antony Blinken called his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.

Indeed, three top-level calls from Washington to Ankara within two hours on April 23! They ensured that Biden’s announcement on April 24 all but became a non-event. Suffice to say, Biden’s highly inflammatory announcement has since become a damp squib. The highly excitable Turks have since moved on. 

The episode testifies to the inherent strength and resilience of Turkish-American alliance. This is the touchstone to apply to reassess Turkey’s current “Islamist” ruling elite. The point is, amidst the cacophony over “Neo-Ottomanism”, Turkey’s apparent obsession with “strategic autonomy” or Erdogan’s mercurial personality traits, the Turkish elite cannot afford a rupture in the umbilical chord that ties them to the western world. 

Turkey’s Islamist elite are as much the inheritors of Ataturk’s legacy that their country’s destiny lies with the West. The Americans — Biden, in particular — would know that home truth. Therefore, the leitmotif of the Biden-Erdogan summit is going to be the tango at a personal level between the two presidents whose genius for dealmaking is a legion.  

Having said that, the differences, concerns and interests that keep Washington and Ankara apart are not to be underestimated. That needs a separate analysis. But make no mistake, a process of reconciliation is due to commence. 

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Featured image: US Vice President Joe Biden (L) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at their last meeting at Yildiz Mabeyn Palace, Istanbul, Jan. 23, 2016 (File photo)

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The way that people view the world is greatly shaped by the “news” that they see on television and read on the Internet.  Unfortunately, much of that “news” is produced by just five enormous corporations.  In fact, although the numbers vary from month to month, more than 90 percent of the “news” that Americans watch on television is controlled by those five corporations.  Smaller outlets such as Newsmax are trying to make a dent, but it is an uphill battle.  Internet news is more diversified, but in conjunction with the 15 billionaires that own and control America’s newspaper industry, the same five corporations have come to dominate online as well.  The tech giants have certainly helped their cause by designating them as “trusted sources” and by adjusting algorithms to ensure that we get a steady diet of the “news” that the media giants are constantly putting out.  The entire system is designed to direct us to certain voices, and those voices are constantly working very hard to alter what we think about things.

According to one survey, the average American spends 238 minutes a day watching television.  If you allow anyone to pump that much propaganda into your mind day after day, it is inevitable that the way that you view the world is going to change.

Sadly, a lot of people out there still believe that the big corporate-owned news networks are the “guardians of democracy” and are just looking out for their best interests.

Needless to say, that is not even close to reality.  In our day and time, everyone has agendas to push, and the big corporate-owned news networks are not any exception.  The “journalists” at those networks are going to shape the news to push the messages that their corporate masters want them to push, and anybody that believes otherwise is simply being naive.

So exactly who are these five giant corporations that own and control almost all of the news that we see on television?

Well, the first is AT&T’s WarnerMedia which owns CNN

The Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news-based pay television channel headquartered in Atlanta.[3][4][5] It is owned by CNN Worldwide, a unit of the WarnerMedia News & Sports division of AT&T‘s WarnerMedia.[6] It was founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel.[7][8][9] Upon its launch in 1980, CNN was the first television channel to provide 24-hour news coverage,[10] and was the first all-news television channel in the United States.[11]

The second is Comcast which owns NBC News

NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown ManhattanNew York City.[5]

NBCUniversal is primarily involved in the media and entertainment industry. The company is named for its two most significant divisions, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) – one of the United States’ Big Three television networks – and the major Hollywood film studio Universal Pictures. It also has a significant presence in broadcasting through a portfolio of domestic and international properties, including USA NetworkSyfyBravoTelemundoUniversal Kids, and the streaming service Peacock. Via its Universal Parks & Resorts division, NBCUniversal is also the third-largest operator of amusement parks in the world.[6]

Of course Comcast also owns cable news outlet MSNBC

MSNBC is an American news-based pay television cable channel based in New York City. It is owned by the NBCUniversal News Group division of NBCUniversal (a subsidiary of Comcast). It provides NBC News coverage as well as its own reporting and political commentary on current events.

Disney has now become the largest media company in the entire world, and they are the proud owners of ABC News

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American multinational commercial broadcasttelevision network that is a flagship property of Walt Disney Television, a division of Disney General Entertainment Content of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, California, on Riverside Drive, directly across the street from Walt Disney Studios and adjacent to the Roy E. Disney Animation Building. The network’s secondary offices, and headquarters of its news division, are in New York City, at its broadcast center at 77 West 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

ViacomCBS may not be as big as the other corporations on this list, but their control of CBS News gives them a tremendous amount of influence…

CBS (originally an abbreviation for Columbia Broadcasting System, its former legal name that was used from 1928 to 1974) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network. It serves as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainment Group division of ViacomCBS. The network is headquartered at the CBS Building in New York City, with major production facilities and operations at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City, and CBS Television City and the CBS Studio Center in Los Angeles.

Last, but certainly not least, Fox Corporation (which is controlled by the Murdoch family) owns and controls Fox News…

Fox Corporation is an American mass media company headquartered in New York City. The company was formed in 2019 as a result of the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by The Walt Disney Company; the assets that were not acquired by Disney were spun off from 21st Century Fox as the new Fox Corp., and its stock began trading on January 1, 2019.[6][7][8] The company is incorporated in Delaware.

It is owned by the Murdoch family via a family trust with 39.6% interest;[9] Rupert Murdoch is chairman, while his son Lachlan Murdoch is executive chairman and CEO. Fox Corp. deals primarily in the television broadcast, news, and sports broadcasting industries. They include the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox Television Stations, Fox News, Fox Business, the national operations of Fox Sports, and others. Its sister company under Murdoch’s control, the present-day News Corp, holds his print interests and other media assets.

Many consider Fox News to be the “conservative alternative” to the other major news networks, but the truth is that the “news” that Fox News produces is not really that much different from the “news” that the other networks produce.

Every day, millions upon millions of Americans have conversations that center around the “news” that they just saw on television.  So those that decide what the “news” is going to be have an extraordinary amount of power.

Just look at what happened when the Fauci emails were revealed.  They showed that Dr. Fauci had been lying to us over and over again, and they also showed that he was involved in a massive conspiracy to cover up the true origin of the pandemic.

But CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, ABC News and CBS News all decided that it wasn’t going to be a scandal, and so most Americans don’t believe that it is one.

On Monday, a British news source published a bombshell story about text messages in which Hunter Biden used some of the most racist language imaginable, and that should be front page news all over the country.

But the big news networks are being silent about Hunter Biden’s text messages.  In fact, I couldn’t even find a single reference to the story on the homepage of Fox News.

So Hunter Biden’s racist language is not going to be a scandal because they don’t want it to be a scandal.

Meanwhile, Chris Harrison is being permanently canceled for simply suggesting that a contestant on his former show should be given “a little grace” for a mistake that she made in her past…

“We all need to have a little grace… Because I’ve seen some stuff online, again this judge-jury-executioner thing, where people are just tearing this girl’s life apart,” Harrison said during the interview. “I’m not defending Rachael. I just know that, I don’t know, 50 million people did that in 2018. That was a type of party that a lot of people went to.”

He continued: “The woke police is out there. And this poor girl Rachael, who has just been thrown to the lions. I don’t know how you are equipped when you have never done this before, to be woke enough, to be eloquent enough, to be ready to handle this.”

When are we finally going to get fed up with all the hypocrisy?

If Chris Harrison is going to get canceled simply for wanting to show a little bit of grace to someone, how much more does Hunter Biden deserve to get canceled for the horrific language that he used?

But Hunter Biden is not going to get canceled because he is off limits.

He can literally do anything that he wants because his father is in the White House, and the mainstream media is going to protect Joe Biden at all costs.

It is at this point in the article that I should encourage everyone to turn off the mainstream news networks and never look back.

But we all know that the vast majority of Americans are going to continue to watch their favorite news networks no matter how corrupt they become, and that is extremely unfortunate.

*

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Michael Snyder‘s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. He has written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The EndGet Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Featured image is from End of the American Dream

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***

In Iran, the beginning of June has been marked by a “pandemic” of fires in various locations.

On June 6th and 7th, two separate fires took place in the Islamic republic, with one happening near Tehran and the second in the central Kerman province.

The first fire took place in the city of Zarand in Kerman, at a steel factory.

The accident reportedly occurred due to the spillage of molten material.

In spite of ample evidence in videos and eyewitness reports to the contrary, authorities said that there had been no explosion.

According to local sources the explosion was so strong that people in villages and surrounding regions of Zarand were jolted.

There is also some speculation that it was somehow expected with personnel being evacuated hours earlier.

Less than a day later, a massive fire broke out at the Behnoush soft drink factory which is located to the west of Tehran.

The fire had started in an open-air storage area where flammable materials were stored.

No casualties were reported as a result of the fire.

Both fires were ruled as accidents, and it is a likely scenario as temperatures in Iran are quite high at the moment.

On June 2nd, a massive fire had broken out at the Shahid Tondgooyan refinery in Shahr-e-Rey, south of the capital Tehran, state media reported.

Hours before the incident in Shahr-e-Rey, the largest ship in the Iranian navy caught fire and later sank in the Gulf of Oman under unclear circumstances.

There is room to speculate, however, over the last few months, fires erupted in several military and industrial facilities across Iran.

Despite being dubbed as accidents, and keeping in mind the climate, the frequency of these fires could potentially suggest some were not accidental.

Separately, hopes are high in Iran, as months of negotiations on the Nuclear Deal have come to a close as representatives of all signatories have returned to their respective capitals to discuss further steps.

Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian top nuclear negotiator, said that good progress has been made in this round of talks, but there are still disagreements on key issues.

Additionally, Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif said that full compliance by the US to the deal needs to be resumed so that actual progress can be made.

However, US secretary of state Antony Blinken has one more time admitted that he was unsure whether or not Tehran was interested in rejoining the deal.

Negotiators have produced at least 20 pages of text with various options on how to solve the remaining hurdles.

Many points were made in regard to the lifting of sanctions, the limited use of centrifuges and more and it is expected that negotiations will continue in the following months.

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150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

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

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

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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)

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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.

Carey leaked memo

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.

Neri Zilber

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).

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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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.orgThe GuardianSalonThe GrayzoneJacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

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

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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.

USAID Nicaragua transition coup

[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.

A picture containing text, book Description automatically generated

[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.”

Elliott Abrams: The War Criminal Running US Policy in Venezuela

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.

Melinda Gates - Wikipedia

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.

A picture containing person, military uniform, weapon, group Description automatically generated

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.

A picture containing grass, outdoor, tree, cow Description automatically generated

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

The War Over Genetic Privacy Is Just Beginning

June 9th, 2021 by John W. Whitehead

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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***

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

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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.

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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

 

Leone Africano a caccia di nuove prede

June 8th, 2021 by Manlio Dinucci

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)

Israel Wins Big in Washington

June 8th, 2021 by Philip Giraldi

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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

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.

***

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:

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.”

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 BioNTechPfizer: 6,732 deathand 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 deathand 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/ AstraZeneca2,848 deathand 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 & Johnson466 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.

Featured image is from Health Impact News

The COVID-19 Attack on the Integrity of Knowledge

June 8th, 2021 by Emanuel Pastreich

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Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

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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Mass Protests Can End Vaccine Passports

June 8th, 2021 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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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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***

Denmark’s secret service helped the US spy on European politicians including German Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2012 to 2014, Danish media say.

The Defence Intelligence Service (FE) collaborated with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to gather information, according to Danish public service broadcaster DR.

Intelligence was allegedly collected on other officials from Germany, France, Sweden and Norway.

Similar allegations emerged in 2013.

Then, secrets leaked by US whistleblower Edward Snowden alleged tapping of the German chancellor’s phone by the NSA.

When those allegations were made, the White House gave no outright denial but said Mrs Merkel’s phone was not being bugged at the time and would not be in future.

Germany is a close ally of the US.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and a spokesperson for Angela Merkel have said they were not aware of Danish involvement until the DR report, which was shared with other European media over the weekend.

The NSA is said to have accessed text messages and the phone conversations of a number of prominent individuals by tapping into Danish internet cables in co-operation with the FE.

The alleged set-up, said in the report to have been codenamed “Operation Dunhammer”, allowed the NSA to obtain data using the telephone numbers of politicians as search parameters, according to DR.

Read the full article on BBC.

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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)


150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

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

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

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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Was the Whole Pandemic About the Vaccine?

June 8th, 2021 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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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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Nicaragua’s Green Revolution

June 8th, 2021 by Rohan Rice

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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

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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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.

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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US Sanctions Cost Iran Its Vote in UN Assembly

June 8th, 2021 by James Reinl

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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.

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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Selected Articles: Video: COVID-19 Criminality

June 8th, 2021 by Global Research News

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.

Beef isometric illustration full

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

Beef isometric illustration 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.

Beef isometric illustration indigenous communities

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

Community voices are ignored or silenced

For over a decade, Brazilian communities, civil society organisations, indigenous peoples and scientists have been raising the alarm on how the beef sector is enabling people to profit from deforestation. In some cases, people face threats, violence or criminalisation for speaking out.

Ranch owners cut down the trees to rear cattle

Yet this precious resource is being destroyed at an alarming rate – as people seek to profit from turning it into a man-made monoculture of pasture. It is estimated 70% of cleared lands in the Brazilian Amazon are now populated by cattle, with cows outnumbering people in Brazil.

For decades, Brazil dramatically improved its efforts to crack down on the destruction of the Amazon, leading to an 80% reduction of deforestation. However, the Bolsonaro government has now cut funding for forest conservation and environmental law enforcement and is rolling back the recognition of indigenous lands, undermining efforts to preserve this vital ecosystem.

Beef isometric illustration logging

AN ESTIMATED 70% OF CLEARED LANDS IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON ARE POPULATED BY CATTLE. NATHAN HACKETT / GLOBAL WITNESS

Some of this land is grabbed from indigenous peoples who suffer from threats and violence when they stand up to protect their forests.

And burn the remaining vegetation – often causing wildfires

Fires driven by deforestation have been ravaging the Amazon at record speed, with 30% more deforestation in 2020 than in the same period in 2019.

Beef isometric illustration forest fires

FOREST FIRES DRIVEN BY DEFORESTATION CONTINUE TO RAVAGE THE AMAZON AT RECORD SPEED. NATHAN HACKETT / GLOBAL WITNESS

Cattle are moved between different ranches

There are three different types of ranches for breeding, rearing and fattening cattle. Permits should show which cattle have been transported between which ranches.

  • Breeding: where cattle can be bred and raised up to 8-10 months
  • Rearing: where they can live for up to 16 months
  • Fattening: these ranches buy from the cattle breeding and rearing ranches, and supply the players along the next step of the chain, the slaughterhouses.

Beef isometric illustration cattle ranches

CATTLE ARE TRANSPORTED BETWEEN DIFFERENT RANCHES FOR BREEDING, REARING AND FATTENING. NATHAN HACKETT / GLOBAL WITNESS

In just one Brazilian state over three years, we found an estimated total of 140,000 football fields’ worth of deforestation resulting from cattle ranches.

Traders – funded by major banks – buy cattle from the ranches 

Next are the companies you may never have heard of: the multinational beef traders JBS, Marfrig and Minerva. They source cattle from thousands of independent ranches, slaughter them – over 18 million cattle in 2017 – and sell the beef on to the supermarkets, fast food companies and importers. These are multi-billion dollar companies that are rapidly expanding how much beef they source and sell.

Between them, these traders account for some 64% of exports of Brazilian beef, reaching markets in the UK, EU, US and China.

Beef isometric illustration traders

THE TRADERS BUY CATTLE  FROM THOUSANDS OF DIFFERENT RANCHES, SLAUGHTER THEM AND SELL THE BEEF ON TO INTERNATIONAL MARKETS. NATHAN HACKETT / GLOBAL WITNESS

They are no strangers to concerns about how their business is linked to the forest crisis. They all have no-deforestation pledges, and are supposed to monitor whether beef entering the supply chain is linked to forest destruction and human rights abuses.

Yet, in one state, these traders bought cattle from a combined 379 fattening ranches (direct suppliers), which contained 20,000 football fields’ worth of illegal deforestation. Our investigation showed that they also failed to monitor 4,000 cattle breeding and rearing ranches (indirect suppliers) which the fattening ranches bought from, containing an estimated 140,000 football fields of deforestation. JBS, Marfrig and Minerva denied all the allegations about the fattening ranches, and claimed they were taking action to monitor their indirect suppliers (see their responses in Beef, Banks and the Brazilian Amazon (pdf), pages 10, 20 and 25).

The message this sends to ranches is that there is money to be made by destroying forests in order to use the underlying land for cattle.

(But they couldn’t do it without finance)

And who is bankrolling the traders? Famous financial institutions including Barclays, Morgan Stanley and Santander. They provide the traders with loans and other forms of financial backing, offering commercially-attractive rates. This not only gives traders the cash they need to continue their operations, but it also tells the market that banks approve of the traders’ business activities, reinforcing their standing and reputation.

In response to our investigation (pdf), the banks claimed they analysed these risks carefully, had no-deforestation policies in place and were committed to zero deforestation.

Beef isometric illustration finance

FAMOUS FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS PROVIDE THE TRADERS WITH LOANS AND OTHER FORMS OF FINANCIAL BACKING. NATHAN HACKETT / GLOBAL WITNESS

Supermarkets, importers and fast-food joints buy from the traders

Famous supermarkets and brands, such as Burger King, Sainsbury’s, Subway, McDonalds, Walmart, Carrefour and Nestle are all  reported to be recent customers of the beef traders.

Beef isometric illustration supermarkets

FAMOUS SUPERMARKETS AND FOOD BRANDS BUY FROM TRADERS JBS, MINERVA AND MARFRIG. NATHAN HACKETT / GLOBAL WITNESS

These companies should be in crisis mode, given their links to egregious  environmental harms and abuses happening further up the chain. Yet they are failing to take decisive action. New laws are needed that require them to ensure that they are not importing or using products linked to deforestation. Already efforts are underway in the EU and UK to enact such laws.

Consumers unwittingly buy beef linked to deforestation

Beef isometric illustration consumers

YOU COULD BE LINKED TO HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES AND DEFORESTATION VIA THE BEEF YOU BUY OR VIA YOUR PENSION FUND OR BANK. BUT YOUR GOVERNMENT CAN CHANGE THIS. NATHAN HACKETT / GLOBAL WITNESS

Even if you don’t buy beef, you may be linked to human rights abuses and deforestation via the banks who are financing the traders. Unknown to you, your pension fund or your bank could be giving loans or holding investments in these companies.

However, governments have an opportunity to change all this. Lawmakers in the UK, EU, and potentially even the US are proposing new laws to end their complicity in global deforestation. However so far, these discussions are focused mostly on prohibiting products linked to deforestation from being imported or used. This means the money pipeline could continue – so banks and investors might still profit off the very products that a new law would ban.

If governments are serious about the climate crisis they must tackle the role of finance in global forest destruction. They must ensure that no business – including banks – can profit off forest destruction and the human rights abuses behind it.

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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.

***

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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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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