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As of this week, over 194 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in the US. Consequently, a growing majority of Americans are delighted that life may return to normal because most believe they are now protected from infection. Clearly that is not the case. Bill Maher tested positive for Covid last week and had to cancel his television show for his first time since 1993. This was despite Maher having been fully vaccinated. Moreover the vaccines’ serious adverse effects are being downplayed by health officials and the media. Who will experience an adverse effect appears to be arbitrary; therefore, it is a game of Russian Roulette as to whether a person will be critically injured or be protected from the virus. One of the world’s most accomplished rock guitar musicians Eric Clapton received both doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine and had such severe reactions he feared he might never play the guitar again.  Clapton posted a message:

“About six weeks later [after receiving the first shot] I was offered and took the second AZ shot, but with a little more knowledge of the dangers. Needless to say the reactions were disastrous, my hands and feet were either frozen, numb or burning, and pretty much useless for two weeks, I feared I would never play again, (I suffer with peripheral neuropathy and should never have gone near the needle.) But the propaganda said the vaccine was safe for everyone.”

However it is not simply a miniscule few who are suffering undesirable Covid-vaccine events such as blood clots and other cardiovascular complications, anaphylaxis, severe allergic reactions, various neuropathies, abnormal menstrual bleeding and suspected miscarriages, extreme muscle weakness, fatigue, etc.  If this were the case, an argument could be made for siding with benefits over risks. Covid vaccines have only been administered for less than six months, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the risks may outweigh the benefits. Suspected numbers of miscarriages following Covid vaccines is especially worrisome. A government study published in the New England Journal of Medicine attempted to analyze and downplay the risk. Yet at the same time, the study observed a trend of 11.6% of spontaneous abortions occurring less than 13 weeks after the mRNA vaccination.  It is becoming increasingly obvious that these vaccines’ safety profiles are far less than Anthony Fauci, the FDA and the CDC are touting.

More younger adults are experiencing adverse vaccine symptoms than from the risks due to acquiring a wild coronavirus. Worldwide reported adverse effects and deaths are escalating dramatically. In the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), reported Covid-19 vaccine deaths have now reached 4.434 as of May 13^th 2021 which is more vaccine-related deaths from conventional vaccines recorded in VAERS during the past 21 years.  Since VAERS is a passive reporting system, the actual serious adverse effect rate may be as high as 1in 10 shots. No other vaccine on the CDC’s vaccination schedule has such a poor record of safety.

As with Bill Maher, fully vaccinated people are still being infected and testing positive. Younger healthy adults, who earlier had an insignificant chance of becoming sick or dying from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, are now being injured and in some cases dying from the vaccines.

A recent study published in JAMA observed delayed hypersensitivity vaccine reactions well after injections. The University of Pennsylvania estimates that between 5 to 10 percent of recipients of the mRNA vaccines have “severe adverse reactions” – an inordinately high percent compared to every other non-Covid vaccine. And a group of medical institutions including the University of Greifswald School of Medicine, and the Medical University of Vienna are proposing a new medical condition, “vaccine-induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia,” now be associated with the AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson vaccines.

A recent paper warns about the dangers of vaccine-induced prion disease. The list of adverse effects continues to mount.  A Pfizer document refers to the possibility of Covid vaccine shedding to the unvaccinated.  Doctors are coming forward and accusing the CDC of scrubbing the statistics of actual vaccine-related deaths. The risks were quite obvious in the vaccine makers’ own clinical trial documents before the FDA awarded Covid vaccines with emergency use approval to launch a nation-wide vaccination program. Whether or not health officials at the CDC or FDA thoroughly deliberated on the many warnings or simply ignored them is open to debate.  But the evidence strongly leans towards the latter.

Earlier, we presented the historical evidence of widespread corruption at the CDC; however, the FDA is far more influential because it is the final watchdog that determines a drug’s efficacy and safety profile. In the most perverse scenario, the FDA relies upon outside experts to sit on its advisory committees to review a drug’s or a vaccine’s safety. Many of these experts have a gross conflict of interests with the pharmaceutical industry.  This institutional dilemma is steeped into the FDA’s very DNA. As far back as 2006, Public Citizen discovered that 1 out of 3 of outside consultants and advisory members to the FDA had financial conflicts. The situation has only worsened over the years.

A Pogo investigation in October last year, uncovered several advisers on the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee who had direct ties with the Covid-vaccine companies, including direct payments for consulting fees. Dr. Archana Chatterjee, for example, has received over $200,000 from agreements with these companies. The same is true for the Committee’s chairman, University of Michigan Dr. Arnold Monto who received fees from the largest vaccine firms including  Pfizer, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis. The previous chair, Dr. Hana El Sahly from Baylor University, had to recuse herself due to her role in supervising Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials. Earlier, Monto was the principal investigator for Sanofi’s influenza vaccine. Another is the president of Meharry Medical College where coronavirus clinical trials were conducted. Three other Committee members likewise held close conflict-of-interest relationships with vaccine makers.  Shortly before issuing emergency use approval, a second Pogo analysis concluded that the FDA Committee whitewashed the warnings indicated by the Covid-19 vaccine trials. The meeting was adjourned by the FDA director for the Office of Vaccines Research and Review in favor of green-lighting the vaccines before Committee members suspicious of the clinical results could weigh-in. Prof. Carl Elliott, a medical ethicist at the University of Minnesota, summarized the problem of corporate bias now plaguing the FDA. “You do something positive for a company that you feel confident is going to pay you back for it later on,” Elliot stated. “And they do.”  The FDA‘s current rules regarding conflict of interest is strictly limited to the honor system.  In Europe, on the other hand, the European Medicines Agency strictly prohibits experts with ties to private industry from sitting on its advisory committees.

Even with FDA efforts to crack down on conflicts of interests due to Congressional pressure, the industry has found other means to get their representatives onto advisory panels. And the heads of the agency willingly turn a blind eye.  A Science exposé reported on the growing strategy of “pay after” conflicts of interests. Outside advisors will declare no conflicts but then rule in favor of a drug or vaccine only to be reimbursed afterwards. The journal’s review of compensation records uncovered “pay after” schemes for the approval of 28 psychopharmacologic, arthritis, cardiac and renal drugs.” The investigation also uncovered:

“Of the more than $24 million in personal payments or research support from industry to the 16 top-earning advisers—who received more than $300,000 each—93% came from the makers of drugs those advisers previously reviewed or from competitors.”

Probing still deeper, the Pacific Legal Foundation released an analytical review of 2,952 rules issued by the Department of Health and Human Services over a 17-year period. The Foundation determined that 75 percent of these rules were unconstitutional and “issued by low-level officials and employees with no authority to issue rules.” With respect to the FDA dozens had no democratic controls and involved tens of millions of dollars ruled over by career bureaucrats.

Every American who is prescribed a drug by a physician has the belief that the pill has undergone rigorous trials to scrutinize its safety and will be effective. And when there are known potential adverse effects, we blindly assume the attending physician knows these dangers. However, this is a myth perpetuated not only by drug makers but also by our own federal health agencies.

As we have reported on many occasions, iatrogenic deaths, deaths caused by medical error and prescribed medications is now the third leading cause of mortality in the US. The Institute of Medicine has warned about “the nation’s epidemic of medical errors.” A large percent of these errors are related to adverse drug events (ADEs). The FDA states, “ADRs are one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in healthcare.” Dr. Curt Furburg published an article in the Archives of Internal Medicine proposing sweeping changes throughout the FDA.  Furburg and his colleagues wrote, “We see eight major problems with the current system of assessment and assurance of drug safety at the FDA.” A fundamental problem is the FDA’s initial review for drug approval that often fails to detect serious ADRs: “A study by the US General Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that 51% of all approved drugs had at least one serious ADR that was not recognized during the approval process.”

A 2003 investigation published in The Independent in the UK reported “under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA routinely conceals information it considers commercially sensitive, leaving medical specialists unable to assess the true risks [of approved drugs].” One case involved a very popular over-the-counter drug, the painkiller ibuprofen. The investigators’ search uncovered concealed data showing that ibuprofen increased heart attack risks by 25 percent. Even Freedom of Information (FOI) filings to the FDA do not produce all the information being requested. For example, a group of Swiss investigators filed an FOI to procure trial data about the musculoskeletal pain drug Celecoxib and received back only 16 of the 27 trials conducted on it. A separate FOI concerning a similar drug, Valdecoxib, had pages and paragraphs deleted because sections of the document were marked as “trade secrets.” An even worse case involving a leaked report concerning internal memos and secret FDA reports provided detailed evidence that the FDA approved 9 different antidepressants, representing a total of 22 studies enrolling 4,250 children, while knowing full well that the risk of “suicide-related events” was twice as high as children taking a placebo. These are just several examples among numerous others, which may best be summarized by a Forbes article entitled “The FDA is Basically Approving Everything.”

Isnt it time for real truth telling? The FDA, which was budgeted for $5.9 billion in FY 2019, is ruled and governed by a small group of political scientists who have abdicated their ethical responsibilities as physicians and medical professionals. With all the controversy and debate over the efficacy and safety of new mRNA vaccines and the aggressive emergency approval of the ineffective anti-Covid drug remdesivir, we may consider a Harvard University article published in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics entitled “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs.”  For the past four decades, the paper states,

“patients have suffered from a largely hidden epidemic of side effects from drugs that usually have few offsetting benefits. The pharmaceutical industry has corrupted the practice of medicine through its influence over what drugs are developed, how they are tested, and how medical knowledge is created. Since 1906, heavy commercial influence has compromised Congressional legislation to protect the public from unsafe drugs. The authorization of user fees in 1992 has turned drug companies into the FDA’s prime clients, deepening the regulatory and cultural capture of the agency.”

We are witnessing the pharmaceutical industry increasing its demands for shorter than average times for the FDA to review new drug submissions; alternatively they have an option to pay the FDA costly fees to have these drugs fast-tracked under its Accelerated Approval Program, thereby jumping over many regulatory hurdles to bring their products to market more quickly. According to a 2019 review of the Program, conducted by the University of Nebraska’s Institute for Operations Research, “from 1992 to 2008, 36% of post-market studies had not been completed, and 50% of the uncompleted studies took on average of 5 years to even begin.”  Yet throughout the duration of years, these drugs continued to be prescribed and reap enormous profits for the companies benefiting from the FDA’s loopholes.

As a consequence, the FDA’s entire regulatory protocol has consistently deteriorated with each passing year. From a system originally mandated to function as a guardian to protect patients from dubious industry commercial interests, it has been transformed into an anti-preventative pipeline favoring drug companies’ bottom line and their shareholders.

In 2013, the Union of Concerned Scientists released its investigative report, four years after the Obama administration launched a process to increase transparency in the federal sciences agencies — another well-meaning Obama initiative that failed to make any fundamental change. The Union concluded that the  FDA had created a culture lacking scientific integrity, including no formal procedures for investigating scientific misconduct.

The FDA’s serious failures to carry out its duties to monitor and regulate drug companies are well exemplified in the case of the North Carolina outsourcing firm Cetero.  After several years of gross negligence to thoroughly review pharmaceutical drugs, mostly generic knock-offs submitted for licensure, the agency finally uncovered Cetero’s five-year history of faking documents and data or early clinical trials and bioanalytics.  While we expect contractors who carry out clinical trials for large drug companies to be busy at work conducting research on the recorded trial data, on over 1,900 occasions there were no personnel in the Cetero facilities. Approximately 1,400 trials for roughly 100 drugs were faked. Whereas the FDA did little to conduct a thorough investigation, the European Medicines Agency on the other hand discovered that Cetero and its Big Pharm partners, including Roche and Genentech, failed to submit 80,000 reports on American approved drugs that killed over 15,000 Europeans. We need to consider that the Mayo Clinic is on record stating that the last ten years of cancer research are utterly useless due to systemic fraud.

To understand the systemic rot eating away the FDA, we may take note of the research of Dr. Charles Seife and his students at New York University. Seife and his team undertook the task to investigate and analyze the extent to which the FDA covers up evidence of fraud and corruption in medical drug trials. They reviewed FDA documents for about 600 clinical trials. One of Seife’s primary questions was the frequency that FDA officials discover flagrant and intentional misconduct and subsequently decide to bury the evidence and prevent it from becoming public to the medical community.  He discovered such actions to be an official pattern within the agency. Given the high rate of content deleted or blacked out from the documents the FDA provided, the investigators could only determine which pharmaceutical company or drug was involved in 1 of 6 of the reviewed trials. For one trial alone, where FDA inspectors found significant fraud and misconduct, 78 different medical publications printed articles based upon that single study.  In an article for Slate, Seife writes,

“Nobody ever finds out which data is bogus, which experiments are tainted, and which drugs might be on the market under false pretenses. The FDA has repeatedly hidden evidence of scientific fraud not just from the public, but also from its most trusted scientific advisers, even as they were deciding whether or not a new drug should be allowed on the market. Even a congressional panel investigating a case of fraud regarding a dangerous drug couldn’t get forthright answers.”

In one case, a new anti-blood clotting drug, rivaroxaban, involved four large trials recruiting thousands of patients in clinical sites in over a dozen countries. According to Seife, one of the trials “was a fiasco.”  In half of the sixteen clinical sites, the FDA discovered “misconduct, fraud, fishy behavior or other practices so objectionable that the data had to be thrown out.” One Colorado site falsified data. At the Mexican site, there was “systematic discarding of medical records.” Despite these overwhelming problems, the drug trial was published favorably in the prestigious British journal The Lancet. The FDA found similar problems in the three other trials; in one the data was ruled “worthless.” The FDA advisory committee of “expert” reviewers were only informed that inspectors discovered only “significant issues” at two sites in one of the trials. Rivaroxaban was nevertheless approved in 2011. Since then lawsuits for wrongful death from the drug continue to increase.

One of the deeper flaws within the FDA’s mode of operations is that it solely relies on the studies and clinical trials conducted by drug makers without conducting any studies of its own. Consequently these private firms have complete control over the clinical data and can provide such data or not at their own discretion. For example, if a company conducts 20 clinical trials on a potential new drug and15 trials conclude it is absolutely useless or results in serious reactions and deaths, the company is only required to submit documentation for the 5 trials that are favorable.

Over the years, Congressional subcommittees have voiced warnings to FDA officials to clean up their act. A House Government Reform Committee reported that both the CDC’s and FDA’s advisory committees for vaccines were thoroughly compromised with pharmaceutical conflicts of interest.

One of the most glaring examples of FDA misconduct, deceit and cover-up to protect pharmaceutical interests in the agency’s history was the federal case against Merck and its anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx. Dr. David Graham, a former Associate Director for Science and Medicine in the FDA’s Office of Drug Safety, testified before the US Senate. Dr. Graham has impeccable credentials qualifying him as an expert on the failures of pharmaceutical drugs. He graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and trained in Internal Medicine at Yale and in adult Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Graham told the Senate:

“During my career, I believe I have made a real difference for the cause of patient safety. My research and efforts within the FDA led to the withdrawal from the US market of Omniflox, an antibiotic that caused hemolytic anemia; Rezulin, a diabetes drug that caused acute liver failure; Fen-Phen and Redux, weight loss drugs that caused heart valve injury; and PPA (phenylpropanolamine), an over- the-counter decongestant and weight loss product that caused hemorrhagic stroke in young women.

“My research also led to the withdrawal from outpatient use of Trovan, an antibiotic that caused acute liver failure and death. I also contributed to the team effort that led to the withdrawal of Lotronex, a drug for irritable bowel syndrome that causes ischemic colitis; Baycol, a cholesterol-lowering drug that caused severe muscle injury, kidney failure and death; Seldane, an antihistamine that caused heart arrhythmias and death; and Propulsid, a drug for night-time heartburn that caused heart arrhythmias and death. . . .

“I have done extensive work concerning the issue of pregnancy exposure to Accutane, a drug that is used to treat acne but can cause birth defects in some children who are exposed in utero if their mothers take the drug during the first trimester. During my career, I have recommended the market withdrawal of twelve drugs. Only two of these remain on the market today—Accutane and Arava, a drug for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis that I and a co-worker believe causes an unacceptably high risk of acute liver failure and death.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that witnesses told the Senate panel that Merck and the FDA knowingly had data well before the approval and licensure of Merck’s Vioxx painkiller that proved the drug’s serious cardiovascular health risks. Nevertheless, the FDA granted it approval without resolving the risks, and Vioxx was aggressively marketed.

Testifying about Merck’s Vioxx, Dr. Graham states:

Today . . . you, we, are faced with what may be the single greatest drug safety catastrophe in the history of this country or the history of the world. We are talking about a catastrophe that I strongly believe could have, should have been largely or completely avoided. But it wasn’t, and over 100,000 Americans have paid dearly for this failure. In my opinion, the FDA has let the American people down, and sadly, betrayed a public trust.

According to Dr. Graham. “Not only did the FDA ignore known risks from Vioxx and related drugs but . . . it tried to prevent Graham and others from publicizing their own research that proved the extent of these risks.”

Members of Congress have echoed Graham’s concerns. Charles Grassley (R–Iowa) said he was concerned that the FDA “has a relationship with drug companies that is too cozy.”  Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D–New Mexico) said the problem was within the FDA’s own culture.“ This culture is one whereby the pharmaceutical industry, which the FDA is mandated to regulate, is the FDA’s most favored and lucrative client.

Sixteen years have passed since Dr. Graham’s public statements exposing the life-threatening policies and corruption that infest the FDA. It’s difficult to comprehend why the agency has been unable to clean up its act. Instead the FDA’s culture of deceit has only worsened. Nevertheless, the evidence clearly shows that our government health officials would rather support pharmaceutical profiteering than the health and safety and American citizens. In fact, 45 percent or $2.7 billion of its budget derives from private pharmaceutical “user fees.”

The disturbing data suggest that the FDA’s evaluation of pharmaceuticals for safety and efficacy may be so flawed that only 4% of all trial results are identified as such. As a result, FDA scientists and officials responsible for approving drugs to the market are kept largely uninformed about the egregious scientific misconduct involved in obtaining study data. Further, these erroneous and fraudulent studies are published in peer-reviewed scientific literature and accepted as valid science. The American public is ‘virtually defenseless’ if another medication proves to be unsafe after it is approved.

But it gets worse.  The agency has been warning against highly effective off-patent drugs to treat early SARS-CoV-2 infections such as hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and ivermectin.  Shortly after the pandemic was formally announced, and with no promising treatment in sight, the FDA recommended HCQ but then reversed its decision in June after Anthony Fauci publicly announced the coming arrival of Gilead’s novel drug remdesivir. The FDA’s approval of remdesivir baffled many scientists, according to the journal Science, who were keeping a close watch on the drug’s clinical reports, which showed a “disproportionally high number of reports of liver and kidney problems” Nor did remdesivir lessen hospital stays or lower mortality rates.

Two months ago the agency issued a warning statement against the use of ivermectin. “The very next day,” reported the Alliance for Natural Health, “Merck announced positive results from a clinical trial on a new drug called molnupiravir in eliminating the virus in infected patients.”  Again, the FDA had been working in concert with the pharmaceutical industry to advance expensive experimental drugs rather than cheaper and proven drugs with decades of research to back their safety records.

In addition, the FDA has waged a war against alternative medical systems for many decades, including natural supplements. Last September, the agency attempted to ban N-acetylcysteine (NAC) after it showed promise to reduce cytokine storms associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. The supplement had already been shown to improve lung problems due to respiratory infections such as pneumonia and acute respiratory distress symptom. Three years ago, an FDA advisory committee met to consider banning five supplements made by specialized compounding pharmacies: alpha lipoic acid, CoQ10, pyridoxal-5-phosphate, creatine monohydrate  and quercetin dehydrate. Earlier the FDA had banned curcumin, boswellia and aloe vera from pharmacologic compounding. One of the key executors of the agency’s revitalized assault against supplements and the natural health industry was Trump’s appointment of Scott Gottlieb as FDA Commissioner. Following his two years at the FDA’s helm, Gottlieb quit and joined Pfizer’s Board of Directors.

The FDA’s argument is rather straightforward, albeit dubious; since supplements, including Vitamin C and D, Omega-3 fatty acids, and even minerals such as magnesium and zinc have not been formally submitted to the FDA for evaluation to be registered as “approved drugs,” it is against the law to make any health claims about their health benefits.  This is despite the thousands of peer-reviewed studies in the National Library of Medicine to support their efficacy. The average median cost to conduct clinical trials to meet FDA standards for approval, according to a Johns Hopkins University evaluation, is $19 million and upwards to $2-3 billion. In other words to get Vitamin D officially recommended as a viable preventative defense against Covid-19 would require a minimum of $19 million in addition to numerous fees and other legal costs prior to and after submission. And that doesn’t even address the problem of ownership since Vitamin D is a natural substance and excluded from patenting. In the meantime, supplement manufacturers are prohibited from stating the vitamin’s benefit to the public thereby contributing to a gross disservice.

“Clearly these are the actions of an agency looking to restrict the supplement market,” according to the Alliance for Natural Health, “and remove as many products as possible in as many ways as possible.”  One reason is that if a vitamin or supplement were to go through the FDA licensure treadmill, the agency could potentially require a supplement’s access by prescription only. It would no longer be available over the counter. And this in turn would be another boon for the drug industry, which is already developing synthetic supplemental knock-offs that are patentable.

Much of the blame lies on the shoulders of politicians on both sides of the aisle and the mainstream media who have enabled the FDA and CDC to run amok and then propagate the pharmaceutical industry’s nonsense. A recent Harvard University and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation survey reported that public trust in America’s health care system has rapidly fallen during the pandemic to 34 percent. Only 37 percent stated they had much trust in the FDA.

This trend may very likely continue as a growing number of physicians and medical experts are sounding alarms over the flagrant incompetence of our federal officials leading the national efforts against Covid-19 and the approval vaccines with highly questionable safety records and expensive novel drugs that fail to warrant use. Worldwide, tens of thousands of otherwise orthodox medical professionals are charging Anthony Fauci, the CDC, FDA and the World Health Organization with gross mishandling of the pandemic.  Lawsuits are underway against national health ministries around the world for deceiving their populations with fraudulent PCR testing, fake mortality rates and unwarranted public health policies that have produced extreme harm and suffering.  As the situation deteriorates more suits will be anticipated.

Sadly there is no reason to expect the FDA to undergo a structural change. For decades Congressional committees have warned the agency about it’s ignoring the public health of Americans and its revolving door policies with drug makers. Yet matters continue to worsen. A complete overhaul by adopting policies similar to the European Medicines Agency such as independent leadership divorced from the pharmaceutical complex and full public funding, would be a decent start. Another  solution could be the creation of separate and independent National Drug Safety Board without ties to private industry or overlapping conflicts of interest with the existing health agencies in dire need of reform. However that tipping point has not been reached to expect any of our politicians to switch sides and for once serve the public’s health interests.

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Richard Gale and Gary Null PhD direct Progressive Radio Network. They are frequent contributors to Global Research.

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We, the undersigned, strongly condemn the sabotage in the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant in Iran on 11 April 2021, as a form of nuclear terror. This attack has been almost universally attributed to Israel, including by the Israeli media, and confirmed by US and Israeli intelligence officials. Such attacks carry a serious risk of high level radioactive leakage which could potentially endanger the lives of thousands of innocent human beings and irreparably contaminate the environment causing long-term genetic malformations and disease, with far-reaching destructive consequences into the future.

It has been repeatedly verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran’s nuclear programme is peaceful and under a strict monitoring regime. Israel, in contrast, is the only nuclear weapons state in the Middle East as it is in possession of a large arsenal of nuclear weapons, which is the reason for the country’s refusal to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The deafening silence of the self-proclaimed international community in response to Israel’s nuclear terror could set a deadly precedent for its repetition and escalate into an endless chain of retaliations and an arms race in the already war-ravaged Middle East. Therefore, we call on the UN and the Security Council to responsibly and unreservedly condemn and hold Israel accountable for repeated dangerous and profoundly irresponsible attacks on civilian nuclear installations and the assassination of Iranian scientists. In addition, we urge UN member states to embark, as a matter of urgency, on the long-delayed task of nuclear disarmament of Israel and placing its nuclear programme under the supervision and monitoring of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in line with the long-standing drive to creating a Nuclear Free Middle East.

Abrahamian, Professor Ervand (Distinguished Professor of History, Baruch College & City University, New York)

Adib-Moghaddam, Professor Arshin (Professor in Global Thought & Comparative Philosophies, School of Oriental and African Studies, London)

Azad, Dr Bahman (Executive Secretary, US Peace Council)

Baraka, Ajamu (National Organizer, Black Alliance for Peace, USA)

Brown, Dr Catherine (BA Cantab, MA, London, MSc Lond, PhD Cantab)

Brown, Dr Raymond (FRCPych, Consultant Psychotherapist (retired), UK)

Chomsky, Professor Noam (Institute Professor Emeritus MIT, Laureate Professor U. of Arizona)

Coombe, Sheila (Activist, Founder Frome Stop War)

Deane, Dr. Raymond (Composer, author, political activist, Ireland

Edalat, Professor Abbas (Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics, Imperial College, London, Founder of CASMII)

Ferrada de Noli, Prof Marcello (Psychiatrist, Professor emeritus of Epidemiology, Founder, Swedish Professors & Doctors for Human Rights)

Finkelstein, Dr Norman (Political scientist, activist, former professor, author)

Flowers, Margaret (Director, Popular Resistance, USA)

Harris, Roger (Board Member of The Task Force on the Americas)

Hedges, Chris (former Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times)

Lauria, Joe (Editor-in-chief Consortium News)

Mercouris, Alexander (Editor-In-Chief, The Duran)

Mohit, Dr Morteza, M.D. (social and political analyst, USA)

Porter, Gareth (Historian, investigative journalist, author, policy analyst in U.S. national security issues)

Prashad, Vijay (Historian, Journalist, Executive-Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Chief Editor LeftWord Books)

Ramadani, Dr Sami (Lecturer in sociology, activist, author)

Shahabi, Mehrnaz (peace and cultural activist, UK)

Shahabi, Mehrdad (peace and cultural activist, Iran)

Taherian, Dr. Mohammadreza (cultural activist, Iran)

Turner, Carol (Vice-Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, London)

Farshid Vahedian (peace and cultural activist, US)

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.

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The hostilities in Gaza continue, with Israel clearly having the upper hand and being unrelenting in its efforts.

On May 16^th, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the bombing of the Gaza Strip would continue despite any ceasefire efforts.

Netanyahu said the Israeli air raids were continuing at “full-force” and would “take time”, adding that his country “wants to levy a heavy price” from Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

For this day only, at least 42 Palestinians were killed, including 10 children. The total number of deaths over a one-week-period are around 200.

On Israel’s side the casualties sit at 10, including two children.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that as of the evening of May 16^th, Palestinian groups have launched over . towards Tel Aviv’s territory. It also alleged that nearly 15% of the launches failed, fall fell inside Gaza and harmed Palestinians.

Hamas started firing short-range rockets at southern Israel, instead of the longer-range weapons launched a day earlier.

The exchange continued on May 17^th. According to media reports, the IDF is targeting open areas,evacuated military bases and empty training camps linked to Palestinian fighting groups in and around Gaza City.

Still, Israel’s bombardments on the Gaza Strip get heavier, target a wider area and last longer, leading to more casualties.

The IDF said that it was doing its best to avoid civilian casualties and reduce them to a minimum, but added that Hamas and Islamic Jihad had used residential buildings to hide their military targets.

Apart from missiles, six Israeli police officers were injured as a result of a ramming attack in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem.

A video of the attack shows a car ramming the officers who were gathered under an umbrella in one of Sheikh Jarrah main streets. The attacker, a Palestinian, was shot and killed on the spot by the Israeli Police. It remains unclear if he was armed.

Protests are taking place throughout Israel and many parts in the world housing Palestinian and Jewish communities.

Meanwhile, mostly fruitless international efforts are on-going to end the violence.

Iranian officials have called on the United Nations and fellow Muslim nations to step in to stop “apartheid” while a top military commander has pledged Iran will stand by Palestinians.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said his administration was working with Palestinians and Israelis to establish a sustained calm. He said so not live, but at a pre-recorded video played on May 16^th to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

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***

I wanted to use this opportunity to talk about my experiences over the past two decades working with new technology as an independent freelance journalist, one who abandoned – or maybe more accurately, was abandoned by – what we usually call the “mainstream” media. 

Looking back over that period, I have come to appreciate that I was among the first generation of journalists to break free of the corporate media – in my case, the Guardian – and ride this wave of new technology. In doing so, we liberated ourselves from the narrow editorial restrictions such media imposes on us as journalists and were still able to find an audience, even if a diminished one.

More and more journalists are following a similar path today – a few out of choice, and more out of necessity as corporate media becomes increasingly unprofitable. But as journalists seek to liberate themselves from the strictures of the old corporate media, that same corporate media is working very hard to characterise the new technology as a threat to media freedoms.

This self-serving argument should be treated with a great deal of scepticism. I want to use my own experiences to argue that quite the reverse is true. And that the real danger is allowing the corporate media to reassert its monopoly over narrating the world to us.

‘Mainstream’ consensus 

I left my job at the Guardian newspaper group in 2001. Had I tried to become an independent journalist 10 years earlier than I did, it would have been professional suicide. In fact, it would have been a complete non-starter. I certainly would not be here telling you what it was like to have spent 20 years challenging the “mainstream” western consensus on Israel-Palestine.

Before the Noughties, without a platform provided by a corporate media outlet, journalists had no way to reach an audience, let alone create one. We were entirely beholden to our editors, and they in turn were dependent on billionaire owners – or in a few cases like the BBC’s, a government – and on advertisers.

When I arrived in Nazareth as a freelance journalist, though one with continuing connections to the Guardian, I quickly found myself faced with a stark choice.

Newspapers would accept relatively superficial articles from me, ones that accorded with a decades-old, western, colonial mindset about Israel-Palestine. Had I contributed such pieces for long enough, I would probably have managed to reassure one of the papers that I was an obliging and safe pair of hands. Eventually, when a position fell vacant, I might have landed myself a well-paid correspondent’s job.

Instead I preferred to write authentically – for myself, reporting what I observed on the ground, rather than what was expected of me by my editors. That meant antagonising and gradually burning bridges with the western media.

Even in a digital era of new journalistic possibilities, there were few places to publish. I had to rely on a couple of what were then newly emerging websites that were prepared to publish very different narratives on Israel-Palestine from the western corporate media’s.

Level playing field 

The most prominent at the time, which became the first proper home for my journalism, was Al-Ahram Weekly, an English-language sister publication of the famous Cairo daily newspaper. Few probably remember or read Al-Ahram Weekly today, because it was soon overshadowed by other websites. But at the time it was a rare online refuge for dissident voices, and included a regular column from the great public intellectual Edward Said.

It is worth pausing to think about how foreign correspondents operated in the pre-digital world. They not only enjoyed a widely read, if tightly controlled, platform in an establishment media outlet, but they had behind them a vitally important support structure.

Their newspaper provided an archive and library service so that they could easily research historical and newsworthy events in their region. There were local staff who could help with locating sources and offering translations. They had photographers who contributed visuals to their pieces. And they had satellite phones to file breaking news from remote locations.

None of this came cheap. A freelance journalist could never have afforded any of this kind of support.

All that changed with the new technology, which rapidly levelled the playing field. A Google search soon became more comprehensive than even the best newspaper library. Mobile phones made it easy to track down and speak to people who were potential sources for stories. Digital cameras, and then the same mobile phones, meant it was possible to visually record events without needing a photographer alongside you. And email meant it was easy to file copy from anywhere in the world, to anywhere, virtually free.

Documentary evidence 

The independent journalism I and others were developing in the early Noughties was assisted by a new kind of political activist who was using similarly novel digital tools.

After I arrived in Nazareth, I had little use for the traditional “access journalism” my corporate colleagues chiefly relied on. Israeli politicians and military generals dissembled to protect Israel’s image. Far more interesting to me were the young western activists who had begun embedding – before that term got corrupted by the behaviour of corporate journalists – in Palestinian communities.

Today we remember names like Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, Brian Avery, Vittorio Arrigoni and many others for the fact that in the early Noughties they were either killed or wounded by Israeli soldiers. But they were part of a new movement of political activists and citizen journalists – many of them with the International Solidarity Movement – who were offering a different kind of access.

They used digital cameras to record and protest the Israeli army’s abuses and war crimes from up close inside Palestinian communities – crimes that had previously had gone unrecorded for western audiences. They then sent their documentary evidence and their eye-witness accounts to journalists by email or published them on “alternative” websites. For independent journalists like me, their work was gold-dust. We could challenge Israel’s implausible accounts with clear-cut evidence.

Sadly most corporate journalists paid little attention to the work of these activists. In any case, their role was quickly snuffed out. That was partly because Israel learnt that shooting a few of them served as a very effective deterrent, warning others to keep away.

But it was also because as technology became cheaper and more accessible – eventually ending up in mobile phones that everyone was expected to have – Palestinians could record their own suffering more immediately and without mediation.

Israel’s dismissal of the early, grainy images of the abuse of Palestinians by soldiers and settlers – as “Pallywood” (Palestinian Hollywood) – became ever less plausible, even to its own supporters. Soon Palestinians were recording their mistreatment in high definition and posting it directly to YouTube.

Unreliable allies 

There was a parallel evolution in journalism. For my first eight years in Nazareth, I struggled to make any kind of living by publishing online. Egyptian wages were far too low to support me in Israel, and most alternative websites lacked the budget to pay. For the first years I lived a spartan life and dug into savings from my former, well-paid job at the Guardian. During this period I also wrote a series of books because it was so difficult to find places to publish my news reporting.

It was in the late Noughties that Arab media in English, led by Al-Jazeera, really took off, with Arab states making the most of the new favourable conditions provided by the internet. These outlets flourished for a time by feeding the appetite among sections of the western public for more critical coverage of Israel-Palestine and of western foreign policy more generally. At the same time, Arab states exploited the revelations provided by dissident journalists to gain more leverage in Washington policymaking circles.

My time with Al-Ahram came to an abrupt end after a few years, as the paper grew less keen on running hard-hitting pieces that showed Israel as an apartheid state or that explained the nature of its settler colonial ideology. Rumours reached me that the Americans were leaning on the Egyptian government and its media to tone down the bad news about Israel.

It would be the first of several exits I had to make from these English-language Arab media outlets. As their western readership and visibility grew, they invariably attracted hostile attention from western governments and sooner or later capitulated. They were never more than fickle, unreliable allies to western dissidents.

Editors as sheepdogs 

Again, I would have been forced to abandon journalism had it not been for another technological innovation – the rise of social media. Facebook and Twitter soon rivalled the corporate media as platforms for news dissemination.

For the first time, it was possible for journalists to grow their own audiences independently of an outlet. In a few cases, that dramatically changed the power relations in favour of those journalists. Glenn Greenwald is probably the most prominent example of this trend. He was chased after first by the Guardian and then by the billionaire Pierre Omidyar, to set up the Intercept. Now he’s on his own, using the editorially hands-off online platform Substack.

In a news environment driven chiefly by shares, journalists with their own large and loyal followings were initially prized.

But they were also an implicit threat. The role of corporate media is to serve as a figurative sheep-dog, herding journalists each day into an ideological pen – the publication they write for. There are minor differences of opinion and emphasis between conservative publications and liberal ones, but they all ultimately serve the same corporate, business-friendly, colonial, war-mongering agenda.

It is the publication’s job, not the journalists’, to shape the values and worldview of its readers, over time limiting the range of possible thoughts they are likely to entertain.

Readers to the rescue 

In the new environment of social media, that began to change. Not only have some journalists become more influential than the papers they write for, but others have abandoned the employee-servant model completely. They have reached the conclusion that they no longer need a corporate outlet to secure an audience. They can publish themselves, build their own readership, and generate their own income – freeing themselves from corporate servitude.

In the last few years, this is a path I have pursued myself – becoming mostly reader-financed. For most of us, it is a precarious option. But it is liberating too – in a way that no previous generation of journalists could ever have imagined possible.

We are subject to no editorial oversight or control, apart from our own self-imposed sense of what is right and fair, or in some cases what we think our readers are ready to hear. We have no bosses or advertisers to please or appease. Our owner are the readers. And with an owner that diverse and diffuse, we have been freed of the tyranny of billionaires and corporations.

This new model of journalism is revolutionary. It is genuinely pluralistic media. It allows a much wider spectrum of thought to reach the mainstream than ever before. And perhaps even more importantly, it allows independent journalists to examine, critique and expose the corporate media in real time, showing how little pluralism they allow and how often they resort to blatant falsehood and propaganda techniques.

The fact that a few journalists and activists can so convincingly and easily tear apart the coverage of corporate media outlets reveals how little relationship that coverage often bears to reality.

Reporters for hire 

Corporate media took none of this lying down, of course, even if it was slow to properly gauge the dangers.

Dissident journalists are a problem not only because they have broken free of the controls of the billionaire class and are often doing a better job of building audiences than their corporate counterparts. Worse, dissident journalists are also educating readers so that they are better equipped to understand what corporate journalism is: that it is ideological prostitution. It is reporting and commentary for hire, by an establishment class.

The backlash from the corporate media to this threat was not long coming. Criticism – narratively managed by corporate outlets – has sought to character-assassinate dissident journalists and browbeat the social media platforms that host them. Reality has been inverted. Too often it is the critical thinking of dissident journalists that is maligned as “fake news”, and it is the genuine pluralism social media corporations have inadvertently allowed that is repudiated as the erosion of democratic values.

Social media platforms have put up only the most feeble resistance to the traditional corporate media-led campaign demanding they crack down on the dissidents they host. They are, after all, media corporations too, and have little interest in promoting free speech, critical thinking or pluralism.

Manipulated algorithms 

What resistance they did muster, for a short time, largely reflected the fact that their early business model was to replace top-down traditional media with a new bottom-up media that was essentially led by readers. But as social media has gradually been merged into the traditional media establishment, it has preferred to join in with the censorship and to marginalise dissident journalists.

Some of this is done out in the open, with the banning of individuals or alternative sites. But more often it is done covertly, through the manipulation of algorithms making dissident journalists all but impossible to find. We have seen our page views and shares plummet over the past two years, as we lose the online battle against the same, supposedly “authoritative sources” – the establishment media – we have been exposing as fraudsters.

The perverse, self-serving discourse from establishment media about new media is currently hard to miss in the relentless attacks on Substack. This open platform hosts journalists and writers who wish to build their own audiences and fund themselves from reader donations. Substack is the logical conclusion of a path I and other have been on for two decades. It not only gets rid of the media’s sheepdog-editors, it dispenses with the ideological pens into which journalists are supposed to be herded.

Sordid history 

James Ball, whose sordid history includes acting as the Guardian’s hatchet man on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, was a predictable choice as the Guardian Group tried this month to discredit Substack. Here is Ball ridiculously fretting about how greater freedom for journalists might damage western society by stoking so-called “culture wars”:

“Concerns are emerging about what Substack is now, exactly. Is it a platform for hosting newsletters and helping people discover them? Or is it a new type of publication, one that relies on stoking the culture wars to help divisive writers build devoted followings? …

“Being on Substack has for some become a tacit sign of being a partisan in the culture wars, not least because it’s a lot easier to build a devoted and paying following by stressing that you’re giving readers something the mainstream won’t.”

Ball is the kind of second-rate stenographer who would have had no journalistic career at all were he not a hired gun for a corporate publication like the Guardian. Buried in his piece is the real reason for his – and the Guardian’s – concern about Substack:

“Such is Substack’s recent notoriety that people are now worrying that it might be the latest thing that might kill traditional media.”

Notice the heavy-lifting that word “people” is doing in the quoted sentence. Not you or I. “People” refers to James Ball and the Guardian.

Severe price

But the gravest danger to media freedom lies beyond any supposed “culture wars”. As the battle for narrative control intensifies, there is much more at stake than name-calling and even skewed algorithms.

In a sign of how far the political and media establishment are willing to go to stop dissident journalism – a journalism that seeks to expose corrupt power and hold it to account – they have been making examples of the most significant journalists of the new era by prosecuting them.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been out of sight for a decade – first as a political asylum seeker, then as an inmate of a British prison – subjected to endlessly shifting pretexts for his incarceration. First, it was a rape investigation that no one wanted to pursue. Then, it was for a minor bail infraction. And more recently – as the other pretexts have passed their sellby date – it has been for exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange could languish in jail for years to come.

Former UK ambassador Craig Murray, a chronicler through his blog of the legal abuses Assange has suffered, has faced his own retribution from the establishment. He has been prosecuted and found guilty in a patently nonsensical “jigsaw identification” case relating to the Alex Salmond trial.

My talk has been recorded too early to know the outcome of Murray’s sentence hearing, which was due to take place the day before this festival [and was later postponed to Tuesday May 11]. But the treatment of Assange and Murray has sent a clear message to any journalist inspired by their courage and their commitment to hold establishment power to account: “You will pay a severe price. You will lose years of your life and mountains of money fighting to defend yourself. And ultimately we can and will lock you away.”

Peek behind the curtain 

The west’s elites will not give up the corrupt institutions that uphold their power without a fight. We would be foolish to think otherwise. But new technology has offered us new tools in our struggle and it has redrawn the battleground in ways that no one could have predicted even a decade ago.

The establishment are being forced into a game of whack-a-mole with us. Each time they bully or dismantle a platform we use, another one – like Substack – springs up to replace it. That is because there will always be journalists determined to find a way to peek behind the curtain to tell us what they found there. And there will always be audiences who want to learn what is behind the curtain. Supply and demand are on our side.

The constant acts of intimidation and violence by political and media elites to crush media pluralism in the name of “democratic values” will serve only to further expose the hypocrisy and bad faith of the corporate media and its hired hands.

We must keep struggling because the struggle itself is a form of victory.

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This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

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Nakba, May 15, 2021. Future historians will mark the day when Western “liberal democracy” issued a graphic proclamation: We bomb media offices and destroy “freedom of the press” in an open air concentration camp while we forbid peaceful demonstrations under a state of siege in the heart of Europe.

And if you revolt, we cancel you.

Gaza meets Paris. The bombing of the al-Jalaa tower – an eminently residential building which also housed the bureaus of al-Jazeera and AP, among others – by “the only democracy in the Middle East” is directly connected to the verboten order carried out by Macron’s Ministry of Interior.

For all practical purposes Paris endorsed the occupying power’s provocations in East Jerusalem; the invasion of al-Aqsa mosque – complete with tear gas and stun grenades; racist Zionist gangs harassing and crying “death to Arabs”; armed settlers aggressing Palestinian families threatened with expulsion from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan; a campaign of carpet bombing whose lethal victims – on average – are 30% children.

Paris crowds were not intimidated. From Barbes to Republique, they marched in the streets – their rallying cry being Israel assassin, Macron complice. They instinctively understodood that Le Petit Roi – a puny Rothschild employee – had just firebombed the historical legacy of the nation that coined the Déclaration Universelle des Droits de L’Homme.

The mask of “liberal democracy” kept falling again and again in a loop – with imperial Big Tech dutifully canceling the voices of Palestinians and defenders of Palestine en masse, in tandem with a diplomatic kabuki that could fool only the already brain-dead.

On May 16, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi chaired a United States Security Council (UNSC) debate via video link that had been stalled by Washington, non-stop, throughout the week. China presides the UNSC throughout May.

The UNSC could not even agree on a mere joint statement. Once again because the UNSC was blocked by the – cowardly – Empire of Chaos.

It was up to Hua Liming, former Chinese ambassador to Iran, to break it all down in a single sentence:

“The US doesn’t want to give the credit of mediating the Palestine-Israel conflict to China, especially when China is the president of the UNSC.”

The usual imperial procedure is to “talk”, “offer you can’t refuse” Mafia-style, to both sides under the table – as the combo behind Crash Test Dummy, an avowed Zionist, had already admitted on an appalling White House tweet “reaffirming” its “strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself”.

Liming emphasized, correctly, “this is the key reason why any solution or ceasefire between Israel and Gaza or other forces in the region would be temporary.”

The whole Global South is incessantly bombarded by the imperial “human rights” rhetoric – from convicted crook Navalny to fake reports on Xinjiang. Yet when there is a real human rights catastrophe unleashed by the settler colonialist ally’s carpet bombing, Liming pointed out how “the hypocrisy and double standards of the US have been exposed again”.

One phone call can stop it

Amos Yadlin is the former IDF Military Intelligence Directorate chief, and also former Israeli military attaché to the US.

In a meeting with South African Zionists, he admitted the obvious: the Zionist carnage against Gaza can be stopped by Crash Test Dummy – who happens to be, what else, a Zionist puppet.

Yadlin claimed that the Crash Test Dummy administration, rather the combo behind it, was getting “impatient” and he would be “not surprised if this will all stop in 48 hours.” And once again he had to reinforce the obvious: “When the Egyptians ask Israel to stop, Israel doesn’t want to stop. But if the Americans will ask Israel to stop, Israel will have to listen.”

The Empire practices trademark doublespeak when referring to the “international community” – which in theory gathers at the UN. The concomitant 24/7 propaganda barrage applies only to the motley crew of partners in crime, minions, lackeys, poodles and vassals, imperially ignoring and/or pissing on the heads of over 80% of the planet. Confronted with the reality of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine and others, “rules-based international order” does not even qualify as a joke for retards.

So next time you see some sub-zoology specimen deploying the “Israel has the right to defend itself” Maximum Stupidity argument, the only possible response is to unleash facts as missiles.

Every sentient being with a conscience knows Palestine faces a racist settler colonialism project boasting an armed-to-the-hilt-military and several nuclear bombs, specialized in practicing state terrorism.

Gaza though is a particularly horrifying case. Population: nearly 2 million people. One of the top densely populated areas on the planet. A de facto open air concentration camp where no less than 50% are children, one in ten stunted to a great extent because of food shortages provoked by the Israeli blockade. The official Israeli military plan is to allow just enough food in so the whole population barely survives. 50% of the population depends on food aid.

No less than 70% of families are refugees, who were ethnically cleansed from what is now southern Israel: there are roughly 1.46 million refugees out of a population of 1.9 million.

Gaza has 8 refugee camps – some being bombed as we speak. Never forget that Israel ruled Gaza directly from 1967 to 2005 and did less than zero to better their appalling conditions.

There are only 22 health centers, 16 social services offices and 11 food distribution centers, serving roughly 1 million people. No airport or port: both destroyed by Israel. The unemployment rate is 50% – the highest on the whole planet. Clean water is available to only 5% of the population.

But then there’s the Resistance. Elijah Magnier has shown how they have already pierced Israel’s pre-fabricated aura of invulnerability and “prestige” – and there’s only one way to go, as the speed, accuracy, range and potency of rockets and missiles can only improve.

In parallel, in a wise strategic move, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have made it very clear they prefer that Hezbollah does not get itself directly involved – for now, thus allowing the whole Global South to be focused on the carnage perpetrated against Gaza.

“A landscape of iron and desolation”

Sociologie de Jerusalem, by Sylvaine Bulle, is a short but quite illuminating book showing how the battle for East Jerusalem is as imperative for the future of Palestine as the tragedy in Gaza.

Bulle focuses on the “internal racism” in Israel directly linked to the hegemony of extreme-right Zionist “elites”. A key consequence has been the “peripherization” and marginalization of East Jerusalem, thrown into a situation of “forced dependence” of Westernized West Jerusalem.

Bulle shows how East Jerusalem only exists as “a landscape of iron and desolation”, through a juxtaposition of ultra-dense and totally abandoned zones. Palestinians who live in these areas are not regarded or respected as citizens.

Beit Lahia – the horrifying detail (Source: The Saker)

It got much worse after 2004 and the construction of The Wall – which prevented the daily mobility of Palestinians living in the occupied territories and the Palestinians in Jerusalem. That was an extra fracture, with parts of East Jerusalem isolated on the other side of the wall and a lot of people now living in a real no man’s land. Very few across the “liberal democratic” West have any idea how does that feel in practice.

Palestinians in East Jerusalem don’t have Israeli nationality. Most have Jordanian passports. Yet now even Palestinians with Israeli nationality are rebelling – in most cases in very poor towns in the center of the country. Young generations simply have no reason to believe they belong in Israel.

As for Israeli secular leftists, they have been “neutralized” and carry no political power, as they were incapable of integrating the working masses, which in turn were completely captured by hardcore religious extremists.

Bulle’s conclusion, expressed with way too much diplomacy (this is France, after all), is inevitable: the state of Israel is more and more Jewish and less and less democratic, a de facto Zionist regime. She believes it might be possible to rebuild the link between Jewish national identity and democracy, including the rights of Palestinian minorities.

Sorry, but that’s not gonna happen, as the current tragedy, which started in East Jerusalem, graphically shows.

The Via Dolorosa continues – as we all watch in horror. Just imagine the inter-galactic Western levels of hysteria if Russia or China were bombing, firing shells and missiles and killing children in residential areas. No wonder the Empire of Chaos – and Lies, posing as a “liberal democracy” while enabling the murderous Zionist project, is firmly flirting with the dustbin of History.

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This article was originally published on The Saker.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: 6 members of the same family assassinated at this bombing in Beit Lahia (Source: The Saker)

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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April’s 4.2 percent past year increase in the Consumer Price Index is not likely to dissuade the Federal Reserve from continuing its policy of near-zero interest rates. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell believes the rising prices are just a temporary phenomenon caused by the ending of lockdowns releasing pent-up consumer demand.

Powell may be right that the ending of lockdowns would inevitably be accompanied by a rise in prices. However, this is just the latest reason the Fed has given for putting off increasing interest rates. Powell does not want to admit that the real reason the Fed will continue to keep rates low is that increasing rates will cause the federal government’s interest payments to rise to unsustainable levels.

One way the Fed increases the money supply — and thus lowers interest rates — is by purchasing US Treasury securities. These purchases increase demand for US government debt, keeping government’s borrowing costs low. An expansionary monetary policy thus enables increased federal spending and deficits. Since the lockdowns, the Fed has worked overtime to monetize federal debt, doubling its holdings of Treasury securities.

A Truth in Accounting report from April concluded the real federal debt is 123 trillion dollars — over four times larger than the 28 trillion dollars “official” debt. The higher debt calculation includes the federal government’s unfunded liabilities. The biggest unfunded liabilities are the 55 trillion dollars in promised but unfunded Medicare benefits and the 41 trillion dollars in promised but unfunded Social Security benefits.

Congress could transition away from entitlement and welfare programs without harming current or soon-to-be beneficiaries by cutting spending on militarism and corporate welfare. Part of the savings from these cuts could be used to pay down the debt, and part could be used to provide payments for current and soon-to-be beneficiaries of government programs while we transition to a free market.

Unfortunately, there is not much appetite in Congress for spending cuts. The main Democratic criticisms of President Biden’s 1.52 trillion dollars budget, which increases spending by 8.4 percent, are that Biden is not proposing bigger increases in spending and debt, or in taxes on “the rich.” Biden’s budget increases are in addition to the trillions in other spending Biden is pursuing, including related to Covid, infrastructure, and his “American Families Plan.”

Republicans are making obligatory attacks on Biden’s spending, while also attacking Biden for increasing military spending to “only” 753 billion dollars. Republican complaints about Biden’s big spending ring hollow given their support for Presidents Donald Trump and George W. Bush’s spending increases and Republicans’ proposals to spend billions on infrastructure.

Some conservatives have even embraced the madness of Modern Monetary Theory. These conservatives are urging people to stop worrying about spending and debt and instead figure out how to use Fed-financed government spending to advance conservative ends.

The refusal of Congress to cut spending means the Fed will keep increasing its balance sheet in an effort to monetize skyrocketing debt. Eventually, the increasing debt and inflation will lead to a major economic meltdown. The meltdown will likely include a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status.

The only way to avoid the crash is to spread the truth among enough people to force Congress to reverse course. Early steps in reversing course are blocking Biden’s big spending plans and passing Audit the Fed so the American people can finally know the truth about the Federal Reserve’s actions.

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Featured image is from Money Control

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***

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s recent call for an arms embargo on Israel is a welcome development. A halt to weapons deliveries is one way to pressure Israel, whose military has killed about 100 Palestinians, including 20 children, in recent days. While less discussed, however, there are even simpler ways to curtail direct Canadian involvement in Israeli violence against Palestinians.

On Wednesday, Singh organized a press conference calling on the Trudeau government to suspend all weapons sales to Israel. Later that day, he raised the issue in the House of Commons and argued that “by arming one side of the conflict it is undermining the peace process and it is supporting the illegal occupation.”

Singh should be applauded for promoting the position of NDP members who overwhelmingly supported the Palestine Resolution at the party’s convention last month. The resolution called for “suspending the bilateral trade of all arms and related materials with the State of Israel until Palestinian rights are upheld” and “ending all trade and economic cooperation with illegal settlements in Israel-Palestine.”

Another position the NDP leader could adopt to lessen Canadian complicity in Israeli aggression is to call for the application of this country’s laws concerning support for foreign militaries. The Foreign Enlistment Act makes it illegal to induce or recruit for a foreign military, while Canada Revenue Agency guidelines state that “supporting the armed forces of another country is not” a charitable activity.

Despite these well-established and clearly defined laws, for 70 years Canadians have been recruited into a foreign military that is actively dispossessing Palestinians. In 1947-48 more than 300 Canadian Second World War veterans were recruited to go to Palestine to support the Zionist movement and subsequent ethnic cleansing, also known as the Nakba, when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes.

In his biography, the heir to Tiptop Tailors, Ben Dunkelman—the main Canadian recruiter for the predecessor to the Israeli military, known as the Haganah—claimed “about one thousand” Canadians “fought to establish Israel” (during the First World War, hundreds of Canadians, including General Charles ‪Macpherson Dobell, also fought with the British to conquer Palestine). Indeed, dozens of Canadians reportedly fought with the Israel Defense Forces during major recent assaults on Lebanon (2006) and Gaza (2009, 2014).

According to recent IDF statistics, an average of 200 Canadians are fighting in the Israeli military at any given time. Beyond their direct role in enforcing the blockade of Gaza and staffing West Bank checkpoints, foreign soldiers joining the IDF are a powerful symbol to reassure Israelis who may be weary of IDF violence. This may be why significant efforts are devoted to recruiting non-Israelis to join the IDF.

In June, United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto and Federation CJA Montréal publicized a webinar titled “Joining the IDF,” which claimed to offer participants “everything you need and want to know about joining” the Israeli military. On several occasions the Israeli consulate in Toronto has advertised that they have an IDF representative available for personal appointments for those wishing to join the IDF.

In 2019 the Israeli consulate in Toronto announced:

“An IDF representative will conduct personal interviews at the Consulate on November 11-14. Young people who wish to enlist in the IDF or anyone who has not fulfilled their obligations according to the Israeli Defense Service Law are invited to meet with him.”

At the same time as Canadians are being recruited to join the IDF—in violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act—some registered Canadian charities continue to support the Israeli military in probable contravention of Canada Revenue Agency regulations. The Jewish National Fund of Canada has openly financed numerous projects supporting the Israeli military and illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Other taxpayer subsidized charities such as Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel and Beit Halochem Canada (Aid to Disabled Veterans of Israel) have directly or indirectly supported the IDF.

In 2018, the Toronto-based charity, HESEG Foundation, which was established “to recognize and honor the contribution of Lone Soldiers to Israel,” spent more than $9 million in Israel.

With registered Canadian charities raising over a quarter billion dollars for Israel-focused projects in 2018, tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidized donations are likely supporting the IDF, directly or indirectly.

The Canadian Foreign Policy Institute has called on Minister of National Revenue Diane Lebouthillier to direct the Canada Revenue Agency to investigate whether taxpayer subsidized charities are supporting the Israeli military in violation of charity guidelines. Additionally, a campaign was launched in October to pressure Justice Minister David Lametti to investigate illegal Israeli military recruitment in Canada.

The campaign includes an open letter signed by Noam Chomsky, Roger Waters, Yann Martel and many others as well as a parliamentary petition sponsored by NDP MP Matthew Green calling for an investigation into illegal Israeli military recruitment in Canada. Since the petition was launched last month, it has already been signed by four times the number required to be read in the House of Commons.

It is well past time to upend Canada’s direct contribution to violence against Palestinians. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh should add his voice to those seeking to protect Palestinians from Israeli violence by pressuring government officials to apply Canadian law.

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Bianca Mugyenyi is an author, activist and director of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute. She is based in Montréal.

Featured image: In this July 22, 2014 file photo, smoke and fire from a devastating Israeli airstrike rise over Gaza City during the holy month of Ramadan. Photo by Hatem Moussa.

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Israeli forces have displayed a shocking disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians by carrying out a number of airstrikes targeting residential buildings in some cases killing entire families – including children – and causing wanton destruction to civilian property, in attacks that may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity, said Amnesty International today.

The organization has documented four deadly attacks by Israel launched on residential homes without prior warning and is calling for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to urgently investigate these attacks. The death toll in Gaza continues to climb with at least 198 Palestinians killed including 58 children and more than 1,220 injured. Ten people in Israel, including two children, have been killed and at least 27 injured by Palestinian attacks.

“There is a horrific pattern emerging of Israel launching air strikes in Gaza targeting residential buildings and family homes – in some cases entire families were buried beneath the rubble when the buildings they lived in collapsed.  In the cases documented below, no prior warning was given to the civilian residents to allow them to escape. Under international humanitarian law, all parties must distinguish between military targets and civilian objects and direct their attacks only at military objectives. When carrying out attacks, parties must take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians,” said Saleh Higazi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“Although the Israeli military has given no explanation of what military objectives it was targeting in these attacks, it is hard to imagine how bombing residential buildings full of civilian families without warning could be considered proportionate under international humanitarian law. It is not possible to use large explosive weapons, like aircraft bombs that have a blast radius of many hundreds of meters, in populated areas without anticipating major civilian casualties.

“By carrying out these brazen deadly attacks on family homes without warning Israel has demonstrated a callous disregard for lives of Palestinian civilians who are already suffering the collective punishment of Israel’s illegal blockade on Gaza since 2007.”

The Israeli army claims that it only attacks military targets and has justified airstrikes on residential buildings on that basis. However, residents told Amnesty International that there were no fighters or military objectives in the vicinity at the time of the attacks documented.

“Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian property and infrastructure are war crimes, as are disproportionate attacks. The International Criminal Court has an active investigation into the situation in Palestine and should urgently investigate these attacks as war crimes. States should also consider exercising universal jurisdiction over those who commit war crimes. Impunity only works to fuel the pattern of unlawful attacks and civilian bloodshed, which have we have repeatedly documented in previous Israeli military offensives on Gaza,” said Saleh Higazi.

At least 152 residential properties in Gaza have been destroyed since 11 May, according to the Gaza-based human rights organization, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Public Works and Housing in Gaza, Israeli strikes have destroyed 94 buildings, comprising 461 housing and commercial units while 285 housing units have been severely damaged and rendered uninhabitable.

According to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) more than 2,500 people have been made homeless due to the destruction of their homes and more than 38,000 people have been internally displaced and have sought shelter in 48 UNRWA schools across Gaza.

Indiscriminate rocket-fire by Palestinian armed groups towards civilian areas of Israel has also killed and injured civilians and damaged homes and other civilian properties. The rockets fired from Gaza into Israel are imprecise and their use violates international humanitarian law which prohibits the use of weapons that are by nature indiscriminate. These attacks should also be investigated by the ICC as war crimes.

Amnesty International has previously published evidence that the Israeli military had a deliberate policy of targeting family homes during the 2014 conflict.

Devastating attacks on family homes

In one of the heaviest episodes of bombardment since the latest fighting began, between 1am and 2am on 16 May Israel carried out airstrikes against residential buildings and streets in Gaza City. The attacks completely destroyed two residential buildings belonging to the Abu al-Ouf and al-Kolaq families – killing 30 people – 11 of them children.

Gaza’s Ministry of Labour building was also destroyed in the attacks. The attack blocked al-Wehda Street, one of the main roads leading to the main hospital in Gaza, al-Shifa.

The families residing in the four-storey al-Ouf building, which included residential apartments and shops, received no prior warning – they were buried beneath the rubble in the attack.

Yousef Yassin, a medic from al-Shifa Hospital, was one of the first to arrive on the scene of al-Ouf Building after the attack and helped pull survivors from the wreckage with the Red Crescent. He described the scene to Amnesty International as one of “great destruction”.

“I helped get out four dead [bodies], but there were many more. It was very hard. There was no warning, so people were inside their home sitting together, and this is a lively, bustling area,” he said.

I helped get out four dead [bodies], but there were many more. It was very hard. There was no warning, so people were inside their home sitting together, and this is a lively, bustling area

Shortly before midnight on 14 May Israeli air strikes hit the three-storey building of the al-Atar family in Beit Lahia killing 28-year-old Lamya Hassan Mohammed Al-Atar her three children Islam, seven, Amira, six, and Mohammed an eight-month-old baby.

Lamya’s father, Hassan Al-Atar, a civil defence officer told Amnesty International he headed to the scene of the attack with an ambulance and rescue team after a relative called him with news of the attack.

 “He told me that our home had been bombed and [he was] stuck under the rubble [with his] wife and children,” he said.

“I arrived at the house, which is made up of three stories – 20 people live there – I tried to find people, but I could not. Then the rescue team arrived to help and we eventually found my daughter, a mother of three, with her children, one of whom was a baby, under one of the cement pillars of the house; all of them were dead. The other residents seem to have managed to escape from an opening after the bombing and got to the hospital. I was shocked,” he said.

Nader Mahmoud Mohammed Al-Thom, from al-Salatin neighbourhood in Beit Lahia, described how his home where he lives with eight others was attacked without any warning shortly after midnight on 15 May.

“There was no warning missile, no warning call, the house was bombed, and we were inside. Thank God that the civil defence and by sheer chance was close by and saved us from under the rubble, thank God no one died. We had injuries but not serious, when we got out I saw a fire at the gate of the house, then the ambulance took us to the hospital. I think this is when I lost consciousness. Thank God no one was badly hurt but we lost our house. We are now in the street; we do not know where to go what to do.”

His family sought shelter at an UNRWA school but the school they arrived at was closed when they arrived and they had to sleep outside in the school yard. His entire home was destroyed including his clothes, money and paperwork and all their belongings.

In addition to residential homes, Israeli attacks have damaged water and electricity infrastructure as well as medical facilities and halted the operations of the North Gaza Seawater Desalination plant, which supplies water to more than 250,000 people.

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Featured image: Lamya al-Atar and her three children were killed in an Israeli air strike on their home in Gaza on 14 May 2021©Private

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An interesting recent article by international lawyer John Whitbeck suggests that the billions of dollars that the United States gives to Israel annually is not technically “foreign aid” as the Jewish state is as measured by per capita GDP the 19^th wealthiest in the world, ahead of countries like Germany. It is, instead “tribute,” which is defined as the “payment made periodically by one state or ruler to another, especially as a sign of dependence.”

That the United States has surrendered key aspects of its national sovereignty to Israeli control has been observed by many. Whitbeck dates the submission to the events surrounding the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in June 1967, which 34 crewmen died and 172 were injured in an attempt to sink the ship and kill all the crew. To protect Israel, President Lyndon B. Johnson and his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara initiated a cover-up that has persisted until this day. The unavenged killing of large numbers of US servicemen has signaled to a series of Israeli governments since that time that they could do anything to Washington without any consequences, including spying on its benefactor, involving Washington in its own wars, and exploiting the US Treasury as its own resource.

The United States has favored Israel above all other nations while a series of Republican and Democratic administrations have accepted that the US is the junior partner in the relationship virtually without demur, culminating in the unprecedented Barack Obama arrangement whereby Israel would receive $38 billion over the course of ten years, automatically and with no conditions placed on the Jewish state’s actions vis-à-vis American regional interests. And now, with the bloodletting continuing unabated in Gaza, Honest Joe Biden has agreed to “sell” the Israelis $735 million worth of new weapons to replenish their arsenal.

Whitbeck’s analysis is convincing, but one might also see a more personal element in how Israel has achieved dominance. Any American politician who seeks to object to the “most favored nation” status of Israel is likely to get unelected the next time he or she has to run for office. The list of the fallen includes Senators Chuck Percy and William Fulbright as well as congressmen Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney and James Traficant. The key to defeating incumbents in electoral office was and is money and the power and access that it buys. Israel and its supporting cast of 600 pro-Zionist Jewish organizations have billions of dollars to play with and they also include in their ranks co-religionists and other bought sympathizers who control the editorial and news content of America’s printed, television and radio media. Those congressmen who make a show of strongly supporting Israel are rewarded with campaign donations, a friendly media and a virtual lock on reelection. Those who do not are “disappeared.”

The last president who successfully made Israel back down was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who compelled Israel, France and Britain to cease their attempt to seize the Suez Canal from Egypt in 1956. George H. W. Bush was the most recent president to try to pressure Israel, when he refused to guarantee loans that Israel intended to use to expand its illegal settlements, a move which Bush correctly perceived as being bad for US relations through the region. The media subsequently piled on Bush when he ran for a second term, discovering that there was something “wrong” with the economy, which was not true. That and other contrived stories led to Bush’s loss to safely Zionist Bill Clinton. Bush’s son George W. learned the lesson from his father’s loss, even failing to investigate the possible Israeli role in 9/11 so as not to irritate his masters in Tel Aviv. W also acquired along the way a throng of neocon Jewish advisers at the Pentagon and National Security Council who were the architects of the disastrous Iraq War and the Global War on Terror (GWOT) which still plagues us to this day.

Israel’s power to control developments in the United States has recently been manifest in its ability to influence government decision making even down to the state and local level. An increasing number of public schools now have mandatory holocaust education, which, in Wisconsin for example, includes both grade school and high school levels and also applies to private schools. Also, thirty-three states now have laws punishing citizens who promote or participate in boycotts of Israeli products, the non-violent so-called Boycott Divestment and Sanction (BDS) option. Many states have special trade agreements with Israel that are designed to benefit the import of products and services from the Jewish state without mandating any reciprocity while the federal government likewise allows Israel to bid on contracts, including those relating to defense, intelligence and national security.

The Israelis take advantage of their easy access to US infrastructure by spying on both the American government and on private organizations that it considers to be unfriendly. Last year a number of electronic intrusion devices were discovered near federal buildings in Washington. They were planted by the Israelis but nothing was ever done about it. One also recalls how Israeli snoopers were recording White House phone calls under Bill Clinton, some of which were conversations with Monica Lewinsky, at the time potential blackmail material.

Another part of the Zionist game plan is the aggressive use of the anti-Semitism label to silence critics as well as the exploitation of the so-called holocaust with its assertion of perpetual victimhood of the Jewish people to create eternal sympathy for Israel. Of course, it helps to have a media willing to support such nonsense rather than expose it for what it is, but that is what having gross overrepresentation of Zionists as media owners and editors is all about.

All of which brings us to the present, in which an Israeli terror campaign against the Palestinians which has included removing families from their homes and marches through the remaining Arab parts of Jerusalem by angry mobs of armed settlers chanting “death to Arabs” while also calling for “burning” and “hanging” the local residents. The Palestinians have finally had enough and are fighting back and the Israeli armed forces have characteristically responded by attacking targets including apartment buildings in Gaza, killing numerous children.

And a bit of context is necessary. Israel has for many years denied the Palestinians basic human rights while also stealing their homes, land and water. Houses and even villages have been demolished and an estimated millions of productive olive trees burned or destroyed. Palestinians are not free to travel in the West Bank, are arrested and held in prison for no reason, including children, and are shot with no consequences for the Israeli army or police shooter.

US media attempts to portray the violence taking place currently as some kind of even-handed struggle, which it is not. Israel has had control of the historic Palestine for more than fifty years. It has the most powerful military in the Middle East and the Palestinians are basically unarmed, hitting Israel with “rockets” that are largely home-made and ineffective as demonstrated by the disparity in the casualty count. Human Rights Watch, which has been timid about how it treats Israel, has finally reported with stacks of evidence how Israel is an apartheid state that commits numerous human rights violations and occasional war crimes, just as it is doing right now. The intention of all this is to make the life of Palestinians so miserable that they all leave. Israel would prefer not to have to do the job by killing all of them, a route nevertheless endorsed by a number of leading Israeli politicians, but would much prefer that they go voluntarily.

The fact is that the United States enables Israeli behavior by cravenly heeding Netanyahu’s warning not to interfere. It has already blocked several resolutions in the United Nations Security Council to stop the fighting because they are too critical of Israel. The fact that Washington, like a broken record, continues to voice support of Israel the perpetual victim even when it is clearly the aggressor is shameful. If you want to know just what kind of country we Americans now live in, Jen Psaki, White House press spokesperson has provided the answer. She has announced that our government’s position on the ongoing violence in the Middle East is that

“The president’s support for Israel’s security, for its legitimate right to defend itself and its people, is fundamental and will never waiver. We condemn ongoing rocket attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups against Jerusalem.”

Excuse me, but even some minimal compassion for dead Arab children seems to be missing in Biden’s statement, though its ruthlessness inevitably is exceeded by Donald Trump’s bleat

“When I was in office we were known as the Peace Presidency, because Israel’s adversaries knew that the United States stood strongly with Israel and there would be swift retribution if Israel was attacked. Under Biden, the world is getting more violent and more unstable because Biden’s weakness and lack of support for Israel is leading to new attacks on our allies. America must always stand with Israel and make clear that the Palestinians must end the violence, terror, and rocket attacks, and make clear that the U.S. will always strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Donald Trump’s “peace presidency?” Does he include his attacks on Syria and his assassination of a senior Iranian official? Another wannabe with GOP presidential aspirations Florida’s Ron DeSantis, self-designated as “Israel’s governor,” puts it another way, “Hamas is a terrorist organization and Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorist attacks.” Is this a Monty Python sketch? Israel was attacked and is defending itself? Time to wake up America. Israel the victim is preparing a genocide and the fact that no one is Washington is willing to say “no” gives it a green light to go ahead. The blood will be on our hands this time around as Joe Biden and company could have made the decision to stop the developing madness over the past month by putting pressure on Israel to stop the home expulsions and riots by settlers, but clearly that did not and will not happen. And when it all blows up and maybe tens of thousands will die, we will likely hear the same noise coming out of Washington: “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

To conclude with another comment by John Whitbeck relating to his desire to see the United States reclaim its sovereignty would be appropriate. He writes “For many years, I have had a recurring but thus far unrequited dream: Someday, during a Senate confirmation hearing, a nominee will respond to demands to… pledge allegiance to [Israel] with a simple affirmation of pure and genuine patriotism: ‘Senator, with all due respect, I owe my allegiance to the United States of America and to no other country. If you have a problem with that, don’t vote to confirm me.’”

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review.

How the United States Helps to Kill Palestinians

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, May 18, 2021

The U.S. corporate media usually report on Israeli military assaults in occupied Palestine as if the United States is an innocent neutral party to the conflict. In fact, large majorities of Americans have told pollsters for decades that they want the United States to be neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Video: The Corona Crisis And The Big Lie

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Michael Bloom, May 17, 2021

The fear campaign was sustained by political statements and media disinformation. People are frightened. They are encouraged to do the PCR test, which is flawed. A positive PCR test does not mean that you are infected and/or that you can transmit the virus.

CDC Admits that It Miscalculated the Risk of Outdoor COVID Transmission

By Jonathan Turley, May 17, 2021

The New York Times is reporting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was relying on a faulty study in declaring a 10 percent chance of the transmission of Covid-19 outdoors. After using the “miscalculation” to support outdoor mask mandates for over 300 million Americans, the CDC now says that it is more like one percent.

It’s Time to Put this Dysfunctional U.S.-Israel Relationship to the Test

By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, May 17, 2021

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reached out to his counterpart in Israel on Wednesday to reaffirm Washington’s “ironclad” support for Tel Aviv to do what it needs to defend itself against “Hamas and other terrorist groups” amid escalating violence there this week. President Biden issued a similar statement after his phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

What Is Left for Palestine?

By Craig Murray, May 17, 2021

Western media and politicians are now firmly coalesced around the Israeli government narrative. Israel is unwillingly fighting a war of self-defence in Gaza after hostilities were commenced by aggressive Hamas military attack.

NATO Conducts Europe’s Largest Air, Missile Exercise Off Scotland

By Rick Rozoff, May 17, 2021

What the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bills as the largest and most complex air and missile defense exercises in Europe started on May 15 at and near the Hebrides off the western coast of Scotland and will continue until June 3. Some of the drills are also occurring at a military training site in Norway.

Egypt Opens Rafah Crossing with Gaza Strip to Receive Palestinians Injured in Israeli Aggression

By Ahmed Morsy, May 17, 2021

Egyptian authorities on Sunday opened the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip and received a number of Palestinians injured in an ongoing Israeli aggression on the coastal enclave, state-run news agency MENA reported.

Halt Vaccine Passports!

By Dr. Mike Yeadon, May 17, 2021

It is very important that people understand what is happening here. The intention is to introduce vaccine passports everywhere. But this is a disguise. It’s a world’s first digital common-format, globally-interoperable ID system with an editable health flag (vaccinated Y or N).

“Planned Obsolescence”: The Push for Big Pharma’s Booster Covid Shots and Annual Vaccinations

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, May 17, 2021

Last month, the CEO from Pfizer, Albert Bourla said that yearly Covid-19 vaccinations may need to become normalized just like the flu shot.   A New York Times article headlined with ‘Booster shots and re-vaccinations could be needed. Drug companies are planning for it’ said that a single shot of the Covid-19 vaccine won’t be enough.

10,570 Dead 405,259 Injuries: European Database of Adverse Drug Reactions for COVID-19 “Vaccines”

By Brian Shilhavy, May 17, 2021

The data was compiled from healthdata.org, and The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent population health research center at UW Medicine, part of the University of Washington. In almost every country, death rates INCREASED just after the COVID-19 “vaccine” roll outs.

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.

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The U.S. corporate media usually report on Israeli military assaults in occupied Palestine as if the United States is an innocent neutral party to the conflict. In fact, large majorities of Americans have told pollsters for decades that they want the United States to be neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

But U.S. media and politicians betray their own lack of neutrality by blaming Palestinians for nearly all the violence and framing flagrantly disproportionate, indiscriminate and therefore illegal Israeli attacks as a justifiable response to Palestinian actions. The classic formulation from U.S. officials and commentators is that “Israel has the right to defend itself,” never “Palestinians have the right to defend themselves,” even as the Israelis massacre hundreds of Palestinian civilians, destroy thousands of Palestinian homes and seize ever more Palestinian land.

The disparity in casualties in Israeli assaults on Gaza speaks for itself. 

• At the time of writing, the current Israeli assault on Gaza has killed at least 200 people, including 59 children and 35 women, while rockets fired from Gaza have killed 10 people in Israel, including 2 children. 
• In the 2008-9 assault on Gaza, Israel killed 1,417 Palestinians, while their meagre efforts to defend themselves killed 9 Israelis. 
• In 2014, 2,251 Palestinians and 72 Israelis (mostly soldiers invading Gaza) were killed, as U.S.-built F-16s dropped at least 5,000 bombs and missiles on Gaza and Israeli tanks and artillery fired 49,500 shells, mostly massive 6-inch shells from U.S.-built M-109 howitzers. 
• In response to largely peaceful “March of Return” protests at the Israel-Gaza border in 2018, Israeli snipers killed 183 Palestinians and wounded over 6,100, including 122 that required amputations, 21 paralyzed by spinal cord injuries and 9 permanently blinded.

As with the Saudi-led war on Yemen and other serious foreign policy problems, biased and distorted news coverage by U.S. corporate media leaves many Americans not knowing what to think. Many simply give up trying to sort out the rights and wrongs of what is happening and instead blame both sides, and then focus their attention closer to home, where the problems of society impact them more directly and are easier to understand and do something about.

So how should Americans respond to horrific images of bleeding, dying children and homes reduced to rubble in Gaza? The tragic relevance of this crisis for Americans is that, behind the fog of war, propaganda and commercialized, biased media coverage, the United States bears an overwhelming share of responsibility for the carnage taking place in Palestine.

U.S. policy has perpetuated the crisis and atrocities of the Israeli occupation by unconditionally supporting Israel in three distinct ways: militarily, diplomatically and politically. 

On the military front, since the creation of the Israeli state, the United States has provided $146 billion in foreign aid, nearly all of it military-related. It currently provides $3.8 billion per year in military aid to Israel. 

In addition, the United States is the largest seller of weapons to Israel, whose military arsenal now includes 362 U.S.-built F-16 warplanes and 100 other U.S. military aircraft, including a growing fleet of the new F-35s; at least 45 Apache attack helicopters; 600 M-109 howitzers and 64 M270 rocket-launchers. At this very moment, Israel is using many of these U.S.-supplied weapons in its devastating bombardment of Gaza.

The U.S. military alliance with Israel also involves joint military exercises and joint production of Arrow missiles and other weapons systems. The U.S. and Israeli militaries have collaborated on drone technologies tested by the Israelis in Gaza. In 2004, the United States called on Israeli forces with experience in the Occupied Territories to give tactical training to U.S. Special Operations Forces as they confronted popular resistance to the United States’ hostile military occupation of Iraq.  

The U.S. military also maintains a $1.8 billion stockpile of weapons at six locations in Israel, pre-positioned for use in future U.S. wars in the Middle East. During the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014, even as the U.S. Congress suspended some weapons deliveries to Israel, it approved handing over stocks of 120mm mortar shells and 40mm grenade launcher ammunition from the U.S. stockpile for Israel to use against Palestinians in Gaza.

Diplomatically, the United States has exercised its veto in the UN Security Council 82 times, and 44 of those vetoes have been to shield Israel from accountability for war crimes or human rights violations. In every single case, the United States has been the lone vote against the resolution, although a few other countries have occasionally abstained. 

It is only the United States’ privileged position as a veto-wielding Permanent Member of the Security Council, and its willingness to abuse that privilege to shield its ally Israel, that gives it this unique power to stymie international efforts to hold the Israeli government accountable for its actions under international law. 

The result of this unconditional U.S. diplomatic shielding of Israel has been to encourage increasingly barbaric Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. With the United States blocking any accountability in the Security Council, Israel has seized ever more Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, uprooted more and more Palestinians from their homes and responded to the resistance of largely unarmed people with ever-increasing violence, detentions and restrictions on day-to-day life. 

Thirdly, on the political front, despite most Americans supporting neutrality in the conflict, AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbying groups have exercised an extraordinary role in bribing and intimidating U.S. politicians to provide unconditional support for Israel. 

The roles of campaign contributors and lobbyists in the corrupt U.S. political system make the United States uniquely vulnerable to this kind of influence peddling and intimidation, whether it is by monopolistic corporations and industry groups like the Military-Industrial Complex and Big Pharma, or well-funded interest groups like the NRA, AIPAC and, in recent years, lobbyists for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

On April 22, just weeks before this latest assault on Gaza, the overwhelming majority of congresspeople, 330 out of 435, signed a letter to the chair and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee opposing any reduction or conditioning of US monies to Israel. The letter represented a show of force from AIPAC and a repudiation of calls from some progressives in the Democratic Party to condition or otherwise restrict aid to Israel. 

President Joe Biden, who has a long history of supporting Israeli crimes, responded to the latest massacre by insisting on Israel’s “right to defend itself” and inanely hoping that “this will be closing down sooner than later.” His UN ambassador also shamefully blocked a call for a ceasefire at the UN Security Council. 

The silence and worse from President Biden and most of our representatives in Congress at the massacre of civilians and mass destruction of Gaza is unconscionable. The independent voices speaking out forcefully for Palestinians, including Senator Sanders and Representatives Tlaib, Omar and Ocasio-Cortez, show us what real democracy looks like, as do the massive protests that have filled U.S. streets all over the country.

US policy must be reversed to reflect international law and the shifting US opinion in favor of Palestinian rights. Every Member of Congress must be pushed to sign the bill introduced by Rep. Betty McCollum insisting that US funds to Israel are not used “to support the military detention of Palestinian children, the unlawful seizure, appropriation, and destruction of Palestinian property and forcible transfer of civilians in the West Bank, or further annexation of Palestinian land in violation of international law.”

Congress must also be pressured to quickly enforce the Arms Export Control Act and the Leahy Laws to stop supplying any more U.S. weapons to Israel until it stops using them to attack and kill civilians.

The United States has played a vital and instrumental role in the decades-long catastrophe that has engulfed the people of Palestine. U.S. leaders and politicians must now confront their country’s and, in many cases, their own personal complicity in this catastrophe, and act urgently and decisively to reverse U.S. policy to support full human rights for all Palestinians.

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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The masters behind covid-19 have designed the perfect WWIII scenario. No need for a war that destroys the infrastructure. The fear-mongering and coerced vaxxing apparatus is and will be massively sterilizing as well as resulting in mortality:

“More people, according to VAERS, have died after getting the shot in four months during a single vaccination campaign than from all other vaccines combined over more than a decade and a half.”

“The U.K.’s government vaccine adverse event system has collected more 2,200 reports of reproductive disorders after coronavirus injections, including excessive or absent menstrual bleeding, delayed menstruation, vaginal hemorrhaging, miscarriages, and stillbirths.” (Quoted in Koenig on Depopulation)

The article below is a followup on a previous article by Peter Koenig entitled:

The Corona Crisis: Has “Depopulation” Already Begun?

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We are at the cross-roads of falling into the fangs of a diabolical super-capitalist “cult” that wants to decimate massively our world population. In fact, it has already started.

And what these “diabolical elites” usually do, is to announce their “horror plans” in advance in the form of  “scenario planning” and “simulations”.  And they did. We cannot say we were not told.

Let me just list a few instances where and when we were told that a “depopulation cum genocide” is part of a planned agenda.

1. The 2o10 Rockefeller Report entitled Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development– pointed already more than 10 years ago to the “Lockstep Scenario” – which we are in right now, plus three more sinister scenarios. Preparation for this report – and the well-laid out plan started decades before. In its introduction, the report says,

“We believe that scenario planning has great potential for use in philanthropy to identify unique interventions, simulate and rehearse important decisions that could have profound implications, and highlight previously undiscovered areas of connection and intersection” …..

“The results of our first scenario planning exercise demonstrate a provocative and engaging exploration of the role of technology and the future of globalization….”

I believe it is not a coincidence that 9 years later, the so-called Event 201, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – BMGF (a close associate of the Rockefellers), the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine – JHSM (created and funded by The Rockefellers) and the World Economic Forum – WEF (a consortium of neoliberal capitalist entrepreneurs and thinkers), computer-simulated the first scenario outlines by the Rockefeller Report, the “Lockstep Scenario”, a corona virus outbreak creating worldwide havoc, killing 65 million people in 18 months, and destroying / destabilizing a large part of the world economy, creating misery, famine and death.

Although there is no direct reference to the clear eugenics agenda of the R-Report, its focus is on how philanthropy may help shape the future of the poor, of developing countries. There is enough insinuation to conclude that one of the tools to help is population reduction. See the following in the Introduction section:

“The results of our first scenario planning exercise demonstrate a provocative and engaging exploration of the role of technology and the future of globalization ….”

And

“…. how can we best position ourselves not just to identify technologies that improve the lives of poor communities but also to help scale (emphasis by author) and spread those that emerge? And how will the social, technological, economic, environmental, and political conditions of the future enable or inhibit our ability to do so?”

2. Event 201, organized by JHSM, simulated the coming Corona Crisis on 18 October 2019 in New York City.

https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/videos.html

The main purpose of Event 201 was computer-simulating precisely what began a few months later in Wuhan, China, and is happening today.

It is what the R-Report referred to as scaling the population? And that in the presence of the famous and powerful, representatives of the highest levels of the UN, WHO, IMF, World Bank UNICEF, CDC, FDA, EU / EC, and many more.

For those who don’t know, the JHSM was created and is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation – a key propagator of eugenics. The Rockefellers already supported Hitler and his eugenics agenda, by supplying the Third Reich with petroleum to sustain its economy and, especially, to invade the Soviet Union, to destroy the capitalist threat of communism. Alas, they failed. (See analysis of historian Dr. Jacques Pauwels, The Myth of a Good War)

3. Henry Kissinger’s 1974  National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM200)– stating population growth as a national security threat. The report is still valid, more than ever – and its implementation in full swing.

While the report does not contain a direct quote of population reduction or otherwise a direct reference to a eugenics agenda, it is multiple times insinuated by referring to population growth being a “National Security Threat”, a State Department lingo for “controlling overpopulation”, i.e., reducing population.

Kissinger’s himself often infamously said:

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money, controls the world.”

Well, Bill Gates and many of his billionaire cronies are working on food control, world wide, but especially beginning in the US, where Gates has become the largest private landowner of the United States with at least 242,000 acres (about 980 square kilometers) of American farmland, spread over several states.

4. Klaus Schwab’s (WEF founder and CEO for life) “The Great Reset” describes in detail what is to happen to humanity in the coming ten years, also called the UN Agenda 2030, with the infamous concluding quote, by 2030 “You will own nothing, and you will be happy”.

video “You’ll own nothing, And you’ll be happy.”

Again, there is no direct reference to a coming depopulation of the world.

However, in an interesting 2016 interview with Swiss French TV, Klaus Schwab talks about implanting microchips:

“What we see is a kind of fusion of the physical, digital and biological world”.

The referenced section of the interview was summarized in a 2 minutes youtube on 16 May 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg6BlXuj8cM .

These statements in 2016 clearly announce The Great Reset, with all its consequences, where Artificial Intelligence (AI) merges with humankind, whereby “human survivors” become fully controlled “transhumans”, responding to outside computer signals.

There is no limit of what such computer signals can do to humans, aka, “transhumans” – a term first invented by Klaus Schwab in his book, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”.

Later he refers to covid-19  as “The pandemic [which] represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world”.

In other words, the world that we tirelessly built together for decades is no longer viable and satisfactory. Let’s scrap it and reconstruct it altogether as soon as possible.

What he doesn’t say, but is implicit in his Great Reset, is that his new world, a One World Order, will be reigned by a tyranny of an all-possessing few billionaire oligarchs. The infamous conclusion of the Great Reset is “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.”

5. The Georgia Guidestones, a granite monument,  “anonymously” erected in 1980 in Elbert County, Georgia, in the US of A, speaks for itself.

The monument makes ten predictions, of which the first one is “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature”.

Given today’s world population of about 7.7 billion (2019), this implies a reduction of almost 95%. We can only hope that this remains but a pipedream. For details on the Guidestones monument see here

Concluding Remarks 

And there are many more signals which we may have heard of, or vaguely perceived, but soon forgotten. Some of them, like the full contents of the WEF’s Great Reset – is so horrifying that many who heard of it, or even read it, simply discard it, as unreal.

That’s a mistake. You should take note and realize this is a diabolical plan. BUT you should not be afraid – NEVER – instead bond together, with our spiritual and human positive-thinking power we can vibrate with the light – and overcome.

The crossroads dilemma is – do we accept this diabolical project, or do we choose the light?

Choosing the light, the truth – might be much more uncomfortable than “sticking with the darkness”, the lies we have been told and tolerated for so many years.

Choosing the light, the truth makes us strong, makes us swing on a high frequency.  But it requires togetherness and perseverance – the reinvention of the term “solidarity” – and spirituality. And we will.

For more details, see:

The Corona Crisis: Has “Depopulation” Already Begun?

By Peter Koenig, May 12, 2021

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

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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The New York Times is reporting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was relying on a faulty study in declaring a 10 percent chance of the transmission of Covid-19 outdoors. After using the “miscalculation” to support outdoor mask mandates for over 300 million Americans, the CDC now says that it is more like one percent. It is astonishing that such a key and controversial component of our Covid policies was not just based on a miscalculation but never actively questioned or reexamined to discover the error.

The Times’ Leonhardt noted

“There is not a single documented Covid infection anywhere in the world from casual outdoor interactions, such as walking past someone on a street or eating at a nearby table.”

The outdoor risk has been a major source of disagreement with many contesting mandatory mask rules for those walking or working or recreating outside. It turns out that, according to the Times, the 10% benchmark is based “partly on a misclassification” of virus transmission in Singapore at various construction sites. Those sites were incorrectly described as outdoor but now appear to have actually taken place in indoor settings. Singapore also classified settings that were a mix of indoors and outdoors as outdoors, including construction building sites.

The real risk is one percent or less.  Yet, cities like Chicago closed whole parks — magnifying the isolation and depression for citizens.  Various cities like New York closed playgrounds despite being outdoors and used by the lowest risk population for Covid. States closed parks and trails that could have been key areas of release for people during lock downs.  When Washington, D.C., issued its mandatory outdoor mask in July 2020, the city stressed:

Dr. Robert Redfield, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the World Health Organization, and the District of Columbia Department of Health are all agreed that wearing masks when social distancing is impossible to maintain can reduce the spread of the disease dramatically.

We spent trillions on this pandemic and the issue of masks and curtailing outside movements was continually in the news. Yet, there appears to have been little time or money spent on the basis for this key component of the mandatory policies supported by the CDC and mandated by many states.

I can understand the reliance on an article in the prestigious Journal of Infectious Diseases. I cannot understand the failure to closely examine its basis since it appears to have been the primary basis for the policy. Hundreds of millions of Americans were impacted as well as the economy. Yet, CDC is only now noting that the article appears to have been fundamentally flawed in its underlying assumptions and calculations.

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An official tally of suspected adverse effects resulting from COVID-19 jab has surpassed 30,000 in Sweden. Majority of the cases are happening in people vaccinated with AstraZeneca’s vaccines branded as Covishield in India.

The Scandinavian nation received 31,844 reports of COVID-19 vaccine side effects as of last week. Three variants of the drug are offered by Sweden.

Recently, 10,460 reports of health issues from Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 2,458 from Moderna shot have been received. The side-effects from these 2 shots appear small as compared to 20,563 reports associated with AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria or Covishield.

Fever, headache are the common adverse effects of the vaccine and other reactions include dizziness, joint pain and nausea.

Though, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been administered to only 26% of total vaccinated population in Sweden, if we talk about the adverse effect cases, 63% of them are linked to AstraZeneca vaccine.

Out of total 32,000 reports, 663 cases are unclear about which vaccine was administered. General public have submitted two-third of the reports. The agency notified that individual report don’t demonstrate any link between the vaccine and the medical episode.

An official with the medical products agency, Ebba Hallberg, told Swedish media that receiving such reports of vaccine adverse effects was unusual, but the figure was high due to public focus on the new vaccines.

Serious side effects are reported by healthcare providers. She said, it was possible that AstraZeneca vaccine was over shown in data as the vaccine was given to many healthcare workers and young people who are tech-savvy and be more likely to report an issue.

The agency got many reports of suspected adverse effects over past months than it does over 4 years, as per one Swedish outlet.

Sweden suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria or Covishield vaccine temporarily in March following reports of blood clots in recipients.

New reports have linked the drug to many other side effects, and even death. A 35-year-old health worker died in Vietnam from anaphylaxis after getting vaccinated.

It has been described as very rare case of side effects linked to vaccine.

Meanwhile, the US is planning to dump 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines on India to help us fight COVID-19.

These AstraZeneca or Covishield vaccines however is unapproved for use in the US and hence the unwanted stock is being offloaded on Indians.

Moreover, this comes at a time when numerous European countries have stopped or suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine for causing bood clots and are launching lawsuits against the company.

As reported by GreatGameIndia, German scientists have recently found the exact 2 step process how the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine causes blood clots in recipients.

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Dear Fellow South Africans, 

Our experience with the democratic transition is a lesson about the power of empathy, negotiation and compromise.

The escalating situation in Israel and Palestine affirms once more what we South Africans know too well, that intractable conflicts can only be solved through peaceful negotiation.

It also demonstrates that unless the root causes of a conflict are addressed, in this case the illegal occupation by Israel of Palestinian land and the denial of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, there will never be peace.

The latest violence was sparked by an Israeli court decision to evict a group of families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem to make way for Israeli settlements.

The sight of men, women and children being evicted from the homes their families have lived in for generations brings back painful collective and personal memories for the majority of South Africans – of forced removals and land dispossession.

It was a pain and humiliation faced by my own family, and by many South African families. My family was forcibly moved to different parts of the country on two occasions.

Being forced from one’s home at gunpoint is a trauma not easily forgotten, and is carried across generations. As a country we are still living with the residual effects of the callous acts carried out in the name of apartheid spatial planning.

For all who believe in equality, justice and human rights, we cannot but be moved and indeed angered, at the pain and humiliation being inflicted on the Palestinian people; for it echoes our own.

Israel’s actions are a violation of international law. They show a total disregard for successive United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions that call for an end to the occupation of Palestinian land and for the fulfillment of the rights of the Palestinian people.

Since Israeli security forces launched assaults on worshippers at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem last week, the violence has now engulfed the Gaza Strip, large parts of the West Bank and a number of Israeli cities. It has claimed the lives of dozens of people, including children.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) at least 40 children have been killed in Gaza since 10 May. Over half of them were under 10 years old.

It is also deeply troubling that Israeli forces last week destroyed a multi-storey building that housed a number of media organisations, sending a chilling message to media reporting on the violence.

The senseless and continued Israeli bombardment of Gaza will have devastating consequences for more than two million people who have been suffering under an illegal Israeli blockade for 14 years. As is always the case, it is civilians who will bear the brunt, with their homes and livelihoods destroyed.

Every effort must be made to dissuade both sides from further escalation, and to end the violence that is causing fear, death and misery on both sides.

We call on all parties involved to show restraint, to respect human life, and to cease the current hostilities.

Far too many lives have been lost to this intractable conflict. The continued occupation of Palestinian land and the suffering of the Palestinian people is a blight on the conscience of humanity.

As South Africa we are committed to being part of international efforts aimed at reviving a political process that will lead to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state existing side-by-side in peace with Israel, and within internationally recognised borders.

The two-state solution remains the most viable option for the peoples of Israel and Palestine, and must continue to be supported.

Just as Israeli security forces were attacking worshippers at the Al Aqsa Mosque, we in South Africa were preparing to commemorate the centenary of the Bulhoek Massacre at a religious site in Ntabelanga in the Eastern Cape. On 24 May 1921, colonial security forces armed with machine guns and artillery opened fire on worshippers, killing more than 160 people and wounding nearly 130.

The massacre laid bare the brutality not only of the police force of the Union of South Africa, but also the racist system that it was charged to uphold.

Just like the dispute in the Sheik Jarrah neighbourhood, the atrocity at Bulhoek was not just about a local dispute; it was fundamentally about the forced dispossession of land, about colonial occupation, about racial discrimination and about the violent suppression of dissent.

As we reflect on the crisis in the Middle East and particularly on the suffering of the Palestinian people, we would do well to recall the words of Selby Msimang, a founding member of the African National Congress.

In the aftermath of the Bulhoek massacre he wrote: “History has shown that the human soul naturally revolts against injustice.”

The protests and the revolt of the oppressed people of South Africa against colonialism and apartheid proved the veracity of this prophecy.

As lovers of freedom and of justice, we stand with the Palestinian people in their quest for self-determination, but also in their resistance against the deprivation of their human rights and the denial of their dignity.

As citizens of a country that was able to turn its back on race-hatred and bloodshed and build an inclusive society rooted in human rights for all, it is our collective hope that the people of Israel and Palestine will follow a similar path; that they will find each other, and that they will find peace.

With best regards,

Cyril Ramaphosa

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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reached out to his counterpart in Israel on Wednesday to reaffirm Washington’s “ironclad” support for Tel Aviv to do what it needs to defend itself against “Hamas and other terrorist groups” amid escalating violence there this week. President Biden issued a similar statement after his phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As Daily Beast defense reporter Spencer Ackerman pointed out shortly after, this amounts to nothing less than a “greenlight” for Israel to keep pounding what it claims are military targets in the densely-populated Gaza strip. In essence, keeping our nose out of “their” business, just as Israel officials had demanded of Washington earlier in the week, regardless of the anti-American backlash it foments against the United States in the region.

This is the U.S.-Israel relationship in a microcosm. The blank check Washington has given to Tel Aviv by way of $3.8 billion in annual aid, including high tech equipment to maintain its “qualitative military edge,” and deference on almost all political issues, has allowed Israel to resist agreeing to an equitable solution to the conflict with the Palestinians. Instead, it’s maintained an illegal and inhumane occupation that, in the words of Israel’s former Chief negotiator Uri Savir, “is corrupting our youth.” As such, this blank check prevents a two-state solution, undermines U.S. interests in peace and stability in the region, and ultimately also endangers Israel’s future as a democratic state.

And that’s not even taking into account that while telling the United States to butt out of its business, Israel has openly attempted to thwart U.S. diplomatic measures with Iran, including efforts to rejoin the JCPOA and re-open diplomatic channels with Tehran. In fact, Israeli officials have not only warned openly that war could follow if the United States gets back into a “bad deal,” but are most certainly behind the recent sabotage of Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, and the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist late last year.

And yet despite some attempts to balance the equation in Washington, successive administrations have placed no conditions on the fulcrum of aid that has allowed Israel to cultivate the most powerful military force in the Middle East, complete with the most sophisticated weapons the United States can offer, and an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Its homeland security, drone, and surveillance technology are unmatched, so much so that they are a primary exporter to the rest of the world. There is a reason why a quarter of inferior Hamas rockets fall short of targets while the Israeli missile strikes hit Gaza targets with precision.

While much of the international community condems Israel’s annexation of Palestinian territory, razing of Arab neighborhoods, and racial and religiously discriminatory policies, the United States is the only country that uses its veto in the U.N. Security Council to shield Israel from any criticism or any sense of accountability. In fact, the United States for a second time this week thwarted a Security Council statement against Israeli violence on Wednesday. Consequently, we get blamed for Israel’s policies by virtue of our role as Israel’s enabler.

For all intents and purposes Israel behaves the way it does because it has no incentive not to. There are signs that the rest of the Middle East is getting a different memo — that Washington cannot be relied upon to fight its friends’ battles, and that absent that firepower they may have to work out their own problems, with diplomacy. We are seeing that right now with Saudi Arabia engaging in talks with Iran, its growing detente with Qatar, and seeming interest in ending the war in Yemen. Meanwhile, Mideast rivals Egypt and Turkey are now holding their first “frank talks” since 2013.

Whether it’s President Trump deciding not to retaliate for alleged Iranian attacks on Saudi oil facilities, Biden announcing the United States would no longer assist Riyadh in its offensive operations against the Houthis in Yemen, or even the White House risking the ire of Turkey by using the word “genocide” to describe Ottoman slaughter of Armenians in 1915, the signals have been going out that Washington is slowly relinquishing its position as the Middle East’s dominant military power.

Of course we’re a long way from the ideal: Biden did no favors by recently greenlighting massive arms sales to the UAE and Egyptian regimes despite their systematic human rights abuses. In the case of the UAE, the monarchy continues to flout a U.N. arms embargo to fuel a proxy war in Libya (along with Turkey), and is still engaged in the war in Yemen, despite claiming otherwise. We still don’t know whether Biden will allow planned weapons deals made under the Trump administration to go through.

But an earnest effort to get back into the nuclear deal with Iran and an obvious military pivot to Asia should be more than a hint that the United States is no longer fully invested in old Carter Doctrine approaches that neither work, nor frankly, serve our national interest.

So why doesn’t it send the same message to Israel? Despite its special status, the current relationship could be considered a seriously dysfunctional one. Where other countries in the Middle East are slowly coming to realize that diplomacy may be the pathway forward, Israel puts U.S. interests at risk by contributing to instability in the region. This is an open secret even in official Washington, and sometimes in moments of candor, it’s spoken out loud.

Like when then-Centcom Commander David Petraeus, hardly an icon of radical thinking, told a Senate committee in 2010:

The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [Area of Operations]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas.

Predictably, Petraeus was slammed for seeming to blame Israel for the violence by extremists in the Palestinian territories and within its own borders. The shaming he and others have received for acknowledging the blowback for our hands-off approach to Israel in the region all but guarantees there won’t be an honest conversation on whether it is truly time to use the leverage we have — some $146 billion in assistance through 2020 — to help our Israeli friends steer a more peaceful path.

The Biden administration should take the same tough love tone with Netanyahu and his government as he has with the Saudis — for the sake of Israelis, Palestinians, and their neighbors in the region. And for our own sake. Every mosque stormed by troops, civilian killed, every home destroyed, can be tied to the United States. We will never be free, nor fully safe, until we confront this dysfunctional relationship head on.

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Featured image: Blinken meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on June 16, 2016
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Barely a month has passed since Jared Kushner, former US President Donald Trump‘s son-in-law and Middle East envoy, declared the Arab-Israeli conflict over.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kushner declared that “the political earthquake” unleashed by the latest wave of Arab normalisations with Israel wasn’t over. Indeed, Kushner enthused, more than 130,000 Israelis had already visited Dubai since Trump hosted the signing of the Abraham Accords last September.

New friendly relations were flowering between Jews and Arabs. Just wait for the direct flights between Morocco and Israel. Saudi Arabia would soon be next. “We are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Kushner wrote triumphantly.

No US figure has written anything so arrogant and been so wrong since President George W Bush landed on an aircraft carrier after the invasion of Iraq sporting the fateful banner: “Mission Accomplished”. It was a claim Iraqi IEDs made US coalition soldiers swallow for many years thereafter.

Kushner regrets nothing. He knows he is right, because he has God on his side. But even among secular nationalists, Kushner is by no means alone in thinking that the seven-decade old conflict is over bar the shouting.

Minority rule

To be Israeli is to notch up one territorial victory after another – the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, the settlements around it, the Jordan Valley. Each year the state of Israel expands to inhabit a little bit more of the Land of Israel, the traditional Jewish name for territory that stretches far beyond the 1967 borders.

Israel has long since established itself as the only state between the river and the sea, one increasingly incapable of tolerating any other political identity alongside it. This is their solution to the conflict, where the Jewish minority rules over an Arab majority.

To be Palestinian is to receive one blow after another – America’s acceptance of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel; a new president in the White House who once said that if Israel did not exist, the US would have to invent it; the headlong rush to invest in, and trade with, Israel – even by Arab countries which have yet to recognise it.

Their own leadership is isolated and hopelessly divided. On Thursday, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, officially postponed the first elections in 15 years. Israel’s refusal to allow Jerusalemites to vote was the pretext for this. “As soon as Israel agrees [to let Palestinians vote in Jerusalem], we’ll hold the election within a week,” Abbas said in a televised speech. But, as everyone knows, the cause of this indefinite delay resides in the certain blow Abbas would receive if he did go to the polls. His party, Fatah, has split into three lists, of which the list he heads is the least popular. Abbas’s search for a popular mandate is looking increasingly troubled.

So this is what the end of conflict looks like. It’s only a matter of time before the Palestinians see that their best interest lies in giving up, Kushner and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calculate. Besides, the Palestinians already have a state of their own. It’s called Jordan.

In victory, the peril is greatest

All of which is dangerous make-believe. The project to establish Israel as a Jewish state has never been in more peril than it is now, when it thinks it is on the cusp of victory. For the real earthquake rumbling is not the one that signals an end of conflict, nor is it rumbling in the West Bank or Gaza. It is shaking Israel, in Jerusalem and in the territory it took in 1948.

It is between the Palestinians – who are either Israeli citizens or Jerusalemites – and the state itself, and it has Jerusalem at its centre. No wall or checkpoint will protect Israel from its consequences.

The following exchange between a Palestinian protester and a Jewish TV reporter was recorded in front of the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem recently. “Where was your grandfather born?” asks the Palestinian. “Where my grandfather was born? In Morocco,” replied the Mizrahi presenter. “Not in this land, right? He was not here. And he did not come here before, right?”

“So, what do you mean?” “As for me, my grandfather and his father were born here.” “Do I have to return to Morocco? Is this what you mean?” The Palestinian answered: “This land is not for you… this land is not yours. Jerusalem is ours and it is Islamic.”

The spark for the confrontation was the decision to ban Palestinians from sitting in the courtyard and stairs in front of Damascus Gate, where Palestinians used to sit after prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque. The reason for the continued closure this year was Covid-19, but this provoked outrage. “Did they perform the closure when there was Purim and Passover for the Jews? They must open the courtyard and stairs for us,” the demonstrators demanded.

Ethnic cleansing campaign

There are many more serious threats to their way of life, but the attempted closure of this area appeared to be the last straw. Jerusalemites face an organised campaign of ethnic cleansing. They are either being forced to destroy houses built without planning permission, or they face expulsion from their homes. A fresh round of expulsions is set to take place in Sheikh Jarrah on 2 May, which could prove to be another spark for mass protest.

Over on the coast in Jaffa, confrontations between Palestinians and Israelis have another cause: the sale of so-called absentee properties to settlers. These are the properties in Jaffa whose Arab owners fled during the Nakba in 1948 and which are now occupied by Palestinian tenants with lifetime tenancy.

In 1948, the newly formed state of Israel expropriated these properties in Jaffa, which at the time constituted 25 percent of all the real estate in the country. For three years, Amidar, the Israeli state-owned housing company, has offered tenants the right to buy, but at prices they can not afford.

The sale has created an instant flashpoint. For weeks now, Palestinians in Jaffa have been gathering to demonstrate. Graffiti proclaiming “Jaffa is not for sale” has gone up in Arabic and Hebrew. The clear intention is to replace the city’s Arab population with Jewish setters.

Clashes between police, settlers and Jaffa’s Palestinians took place after two Palestinians from the al-Jarbo family, who are facing evictions from a residential building in the al-Ajami neighbourhood, reportedly assaulted the director of a Yeshiva, Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, as he attempted to view the property. Amidar is planning to expel Palestinian residents of the property and sell it to the rabbi, who wants to turn it into a synagogue.

Over in the northern city of Umm al Fahm, and other Arab towns in the Northern Triangle and Galilee, there is yet another cause of protest. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have demonstrated against police inaction over armed gang violence for eight Fridays in a row. In each of these protests, the Palestinian flag has re-emerged. The chants are against the occupation, and yet this is all happening within the 1948 borders of Israel itself.

And so the mass chants go:

“Greetings from Umm Al-Fahm to our proud Jerusalem. O Zionist… can you hear? Closing the roads is on the way. Time revolves… and after night there will be day. From beneath the rubbles we rise… from beneath the destruction we are reborn. Paradise, paradise, paradise… remain safe O our homeland. Greetings from Um Al-Fahm to our proud Jerusalem.”

A new generation

The protesters are young, fearless and leaderless. Neither Fatah nor Hamas hold any sway here. All think of themselves not as citizens of Israel, but as Palestinians whose land and rights have been taken over by the Israeli state. They chant national Palestinian slogans.

Meanwhile in the Negev in the south, Israeli bulldozers have achieved something of a record. They have destroyed the same village, al-Araqib, for the 186th time. The tension is a nationwide phenomenon. It is in the north, south, east and west. The epicentre of this spreading revolt is not Umm al Fahm or Jaffa. It is Jerusalem. Every dawn buses bring people from Palestinian towns from within 1948 borders to pray. They are called “Al-Murabitun”, the protectors of Al-Aqsa.

The chant from Shafa Amr: “O Jerusalem do not shake… you are full of Arabism and might.” From Jerusalem: “Forget about peacefulness… we want stones and rockets. O Aqsa we have come… and the police will not deter us.”

These protestors are not uniformly motivated by religion nor are most of them socially conservative. Piece by piece, a national protest movement is forming, just as the First Intifada did, but this time it is not happening in the West Bank or Gaza but within Jerusalem and the 1948 borders of Israel itself.

A new generation is rediscovering the need to take to the streets. And a new axis is being formed. It is not pointing eastwards from Jerusalem to Ramallah, but west from Jerusalem to Jaffa. The security forces in Israel do not know how to react. According to Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonoth, there is dissension between various branches of the security forces on how to react.

Senior officials within the army and the intelligence services, the newspaper reported, have expressed “a professional disappointment in the conduct of the police within Jerusalem during the recent confrontations, for there was no sufficient preparation and dealing with the early events provoked emotions.”

The paper said that the intelligence services warned the police against closing the stairs leading to Bab al-Amoud “because of the explosion it would cause in the region”. The authorities gave way on the closure of the space in front of the Damascus Gate, to wild celebrations.

On the brink

There is fuel in the air. It will not take long before it finds another spark. Jerusalem is on the brink of an explosion.

Are Israel’s international allies going to sit back and await the death and bloodshed that would inevitably accompany a fresh uprising? Joe Biden has embarked on a bid to restore US leadership by staking out a foreign policy allegedly based on support for human rights. His administration is the first in US history to recognise the Armenian genocide.

But if Biden actually wants to make a difference, it is not the past he should be talking about, but what is happening right now in front of his nose. If this new president’s attachment to human rights is genuine and not just a cynical collection of sound bites, he should not be talking about history, he should be making it. Biden should start to deal with the biggest serial abuser of human rights: Israel.

That there is injustice and discrimination that meets the internationally agreed definition of apartheid, there can no longer be any doubt. One human rights organisation after another has produced exhaustive and scholarly reports testifying to its existence. Last month, it was B’Tselem. This month it was Human Rights Watch. Does Biden challenge this evidence? Does he agree with Israel that these reports are fictional?

The weight of evidence can no longer be ignored, the human rights abuses occur daily.

Day by day, the state of Israel, not merely its settlers, or the far right, has become more extreme in enforcing its sovereignty over the people whose lands it has seized. For how long then can Biden defend a regime whose existence depends on the daily use of force over a people that make up 20 percent of its citizens and the majority of the population between the river and the sea?

The Abraham Accords Israel signed with two Arab states were a delusion. Netanyahu calculated that opening relations with Arab states was the means by which he could bypass a Palestinian state and ignore Palestinian rights. He was gravely wrong on both counts.

For Palestinians, it no longer matters how Biden or the rest of the world reacts. Abandoned by the international community, neglected by the media, betrayed by most Arab states, ignored by a leadership that has become irrelevant to their needs, their fate now rests in their hands alone. It rests in the streets. It always has been this way.

But don’t pretend you were not warned when conflict in Jerusalem explodes.

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David Hearst is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He is a commentator and speaker on the region and analyst on Saudi Arabia. He was The Guardian’s foreign leader writer, and was correspondent in Russia, Europe, and Belfast. He joined the Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.

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In Belfast, Northern Ireland, this afternoon hundreds of young people walked to support the people of Gaza and protest the barbaric actions of the Israeli military that continue with air strikes, bombing and killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza.  The youngsters also condemned the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli occupation forces wounding hundreds of Muslim worshipers. These violations add to the myriad Israeli crimes against the Palestinians over decades.

Israel is an Apartheid State that continues with a policy of Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinian people.  These latest barbaric cruel actions by the Israeli Defense Forces are another breach of international law that must be condemned and stopped immediately. Such State violence must not be accepted by the peoples of the world. We cannot stand by allowing such Israeli inhumanity against Palestinians.  Our silence will be shameful in the face of their illegal and brutal murder of Gaza’s children.

We had hoped that when President Biden took office, he would act against the Israeli governments’ continued destruction of Palestine; instead, the USA continues its unabated compliance with Israeli military ventures.

The European Union must retaliate financially against Israel. For too long the Israeli government has been playing victim as they carry out Ethnic Cleaning of Palestinians by increasing military occupation of their ancestral lands—which they renamed Real State.

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Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book The Vision of Peace (edited by John Dear, with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from www.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com.

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Western media and politicians are now firmly coalesced around the Israeli government narrative. Israel is unwillingly fighting a war of self-defence in Gaza after hostilities were commenced by aggressive Hamas military attack. The storming of Al Aqsa mosque, the shooting at people in prayer, the right wing mobs attacking East Jerusalem, the Krystallnacht style destruction of Palestinian businesses and lynching of Arab Israelis, none of that ever happened at all. What happened was that Hamas launched a missile war and Israel was obliged, ever so reluctantly, to exercise its right of self defence, with enormous care not to hit civilians, except that, entirely accidentally, the IDF has killed a couple of hundred civilians including scores of children.

Palestinians die in the passive tense in western media. The media always says they “have died”; they were never “killed”, and there is virtually never any attribution of the death. By contrast, Israelis are active tense “killed by Hamas” or “killed by missile strikes”. Look out for this journalistic sophistry – once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

I used to be a firm opponent of missile strikes from Gaza. My view was firstly, that they cannot be militarily targeted so constitute an attack on civilians, secondly that they were a gift to Israeli propaganda, and thirdly that they were militarily ineffective. All of those remain true, and yet my view has changed and I find myself celebrating the fact that Hamas has, against all odds, managed to acquire more and better missiles. Part of that change of view is that I have come to see that there is no such thing as an innocent adult coloniser. But the bigger part is that I cannot see what on earth else the Palestinians are supposed to do.

Western politicians obviously believe that the Palestinians should accept apartheid quietly, and should have the good grace silently to wither away. The ultra-venal leaders of the majority of Arab states also wish the Palestinians would just die and allow them to enjoy the lavish personal benefits of their new alliances with Israel. It is absolutely plain there is no political process of any kind in train to alleviate the Palestinian plight, that even those “liberal” western politicians who floated the idea of a “two state solution” meant, at best, internationally recognised apartheid and bantustans. Joe Biden manages the remarkable feat of being still more zionist than Donald Trump.

Were I a Palestinian, I should undoubtedly have concluded that for an entire nation to turn the other cheek to a power which is seriously intent on genocide, is not a viable policy. Military resistance may seem hopeless, but sometimes to attempt to live with a shout of defiance and an effort to fight is the only dignified option remaining to a human.

It was a beautiful day in Glasgow yesterday for the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Committee demo, and it was great to be able to meet up again with so many magnificent and public-spirited people. It was an especially young crowd, which was excellent, and I was able to meet many Palestinians who drew comfort from the public support at a traumatic time.

Watching Mick Napier very much in charge of events, I was struck by the thought that there are so many really excellent and altruistic people who put their heart and entire lives into good causes for very little credit. Mick has been involved with SPSC as long as I can remember, has won important court victories in Scotland against ridiculous definitions of anti-semitism, and I have seen him at vigils on cold wet nights with a dozen people there. It made me realise how many Mick Napiers I have had the great privilege to know. We must not take the good-hearted for granted.

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On May 6, right-wing Israeli officials descended on Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem, to show their support for the settler movement’s push to displace Palestinian residents and take their homes.

One of the officials was Aryeh King, a deputy mayor of Jerusalem and settler who lives in the Palestinian neighborhood of Ras al-Amud. In an exchange caught on camera, King mocked Palestinian activist Mohammed Abu Hummus for being shot by Israeli forces in his backside, and then, pointing at his head, said, “It’s a pity it didn’t go in here.” It was a wish for the death of a Palestinian.

The remarks turned a spotlight on King’s involvement in the saga of Sheikh Jarrah, the Palestinian neighborhood targeted by Israeli settlers that is at the heart of the current crisis in Israel-Palestine. The impending removal of Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah fueled tensions in Jerusalem, which spiraled out of the holy city into Gaza and the rest of Israel-Palestine. Israeli airstrikes are now blanketing Gaza, with Palestinian groups firing rockets back; both Jewish and Palestinian mobs are roaming cities in Israel, beating up whoever they can find.

King is one of the players, among others, who has stoked tensions in Sheikh Jarrah, the site of a long-simmering crisis. In 2007, King started the Israel Land Fund, and since then, the group has worked to buy land in Palestinian neighborhoods throughout occupied East Jerusalem to sell to Jewish settlers.

The Israel Land Fund isn’t trying to dominate East Jerusalem by itself. It’s doing it with the help of private American donors, who get tax deductions for the money they give to U.S.-based nonprofits who funnel the money to Israeli settlements. The overwhelming majority of the Israel Land Fund’s budget comes from the Central Fund of Israel, a U.S.-based nonprofit.

The Central Fund of Israel is among a network of U.S.-based groups fueling dispossession and displacement of Palestinians from neighborhoods in Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers. The groups’ tax-exempt nonprofit status means their donors receive an effective U.S. government subsidy to bolster the settlement moment — in contradiction of the Biden administration’s policy against the land takeovers, which are widely considered to be a gross violation of international law.

“Organizations like the ILF are part of a much broader scheme involving the transfer of millions of dollars via U.S. private foundations like CFI to Israeli organizations that together, along with the Israeli state, constitute the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise,” said Diala Shamas, a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. “That American organizations are taking advantage of so-called charitable designation to perpetrate violence on the ground and a situation of apartheid in the West Bank goes contrary to the basic principles laid out in the U.S. Tax Code, and other provisions of U.S. law.”

From 2009 to 2013, U.S. charities funneled over $220 million to Israeli settler organizations, according to a 2015 Haaretz investigation. U.S. nonprofits’ central involvement in the Israeli settler movement has sparked calls amongst Palestinian rights advocates for the U.S. government to investigate the U.S.-based organizations fueling Palestinian displacement.

Reached by phone on the number listed on the Central Fund of Israel’s website, a man who refused to give his name declined to comment on the group’s activities, saying, “My history with journalists has been so horrible. I’m not interested.” An Israel Land Fund spokesperson said, “ILF is not involved in any illegal act.” The spokesperson told The Intercept that the group is “not involved so much” in Sheikh Jarrah.

The Israel Land Fund assisted in the eviction of a Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah in 2017, and King openly advertises that one of his major targets is the neighborhood. “In about 10 years we will have in [Sheikh Jarrah], some 400, maybe 500 Jewish families,” King told the Jerusalem Post in 2017. The Israel Land Fund advertises “residential plots” in what the group calls “Nahalot Shimon,” the Hebrew name given to parts of Sheikh Jarrah. The fund also notes that Palestinians — “Arabs” in the settlers’ parlance — currently live on the plots they claim are owned by Jews.

Two other Jerusalem neighborhoods, Batan al-Hawa and Al-Bustan, are also facing a wave of eviction orders instigated by U.S. nonprofit-backed settler groups. The Sheikh Jarrah and Al-Bustan eviction plans, which threaten the homes of some 2,000 Palestinians, were condemned as violations of international law by 25 House Democrats in a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday, calling on the State Department to pressure Israel over the pending forced displacement.

Sheikh Jarrah is key to the Israeli settler movement’s plan to take over neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem, as a way to create what King calls “layers” of Jews that would “secure the future of Jerusalem as a Jewish capital for the Jewish people.”

In 1967, Israel conquered East Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in the Six-Day War, beginning the military occupation that continues to this day. Israeli Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem is considered illegal under international law, a violation of the Geneva Conventions that prohibit an occupying power from sending its own citizens to live on occupied land. The U.N. considers Israeli claims of sovereignty over East Jerusalem to be an unlawful annexation.

An international consensus long held that the thorny issue should be resolved through peace talks, but as negotiations have lost momentum in the past decade, several influential nations, including the U.S., have moved toward recognizing Israeli sovereignty. In 2017, President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move long rejected by previous presidents who said that the status of Jerusalem should be subject to negotiation. In 2018, the U.S. moved its embassy to Jerusalem, an act that Palestinians saw as supporting Israeli claims over the entire city, including its occupied eastern half. President Joe Biden has not reversed the embassy move.

For the settler movement, implanting more settlers in East Jerusalem is part of a push to consolidate Jewish demographic dominance over Palestinians, cement Israeli control over the entirety of Jerusalem, and kill the diminishing chances for a Palestinian state with a capital in Jerusalem, a central Palestinian demand.

Since 1972, Israeli settlers have used Israel’s court system to target Sheikh Jarrah. The settlers say that the original owners of the land are Jews who sold the land to them. In making their eviction claims, they rely on a law that allows Jews who owned property before 1948, the year Israel was founded, to reclaim their homes.

Palestinians and their advocates point to the discriminatory nature of the law: Palestinians who lost property in 1948, when Israeli forces expelled 750,000 from their homes as part of the founding of Israel, cannot reclaim lost homes. The Palestinians who live in Sheikh Jarrah are refugees from the 1948 war, given their homes by the Jordanian government, which controlled the area until 1967, and UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

The drive to displace Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah was set to reach a crescendo this month when Israeli settlers, backed by the courts, planned to kick out four Palestinian families from their Sheikh Jarrah homes. At the last minute, the Israeli Supreme Court postponed a hearing that could have decided the legality of the settler moves, though the Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah do not expect a permanent respite.

“Just imagine yourself sitting in your home and a company comes out of nowhere whose only mission is to kick native people out and bring in settlers,” said Rasha Budeiri, a Palestinian from Sheikh Jarrah whose family is under threat of forced displacement. “We’ve built memories there. That’s the house my mom grew up in and got married in. It shouldn’t be acceptable. Someone should stop it.”

The organization behind the targeting of eight Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah is a U.S.-registered real estate firm by the name of Nahalot Shimon. Though the Israel Land Fund is not linked to the current round of evictions, King is loudly advocating for it because it will help his dream of turning Sheikh Jarrah into a Palestinian-free, Jewish-only settlement. In 2017, King’s organization helped evict eight members of the Shamasneh family from their home in Sheikh Jarrah. The Israel Land Fund contacted the heir of what the courts said were the original Jewish owners and represented her in legal proceedings to kick the family out.

The Central Fund of Israel, the main funder of King’s group, is a New York-registered nonprofit run by Jay Marcus, the owner of a textile company, that takes in millions of dollars every year from donors who get to write off the checks as tax deductions. Since 2011, the CFI has given the Israel Land Fund over $720,000 for its settlement activities, according to documents filed to Israeli regulators and reviewed by The Intercept. In 2017, the Central Fund of Israel’s donation constituted 99.2 percent of the Israel Land Fund’s total budget.

Such arrangements between U.S. nonprofit groups and Israeli settler organizations are not uncommon. Two miles to the south of Sheikh Jarrah lie the Silwan neighborhoods of Batan Al-Hawa and Al-Bustan, which are both in the crosshairs of Israeli settlers. In November 2020, an Israeli court ruled in favor of Israeli settler group Ateret Cohanim’s request to displace 87 Palestinians from their homes in Batan al-Hawa. Ateret Cohanim is backed by the U.S.-based American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, which delivers tax-deductible donations to the settler group. According to the site Charity Navigator, which tracks such groups, in September 2020 the Internal Revenue Service automatically revoked the American Friends’ tax-exempt status because the group failed to file documents with the U.S. government. In 2017, the last year records are available, the group gave its settler counterparts over $525,000.

And in Al-Bustan, 88 Palestinian homes are facing demolition orders to make way for archaeological attractions mean to showcase the ancient Jewish link to the area. The group instigating the demolitions is Elad, an Israeli settler group, which in turn is funded in part by Friends of Ir David, a U.S.-based nonprofit. Friends of Ir David gave $36 million to the Israeli group between 2006 to 2013, according to Haaretz.

“They depend on their donors’ money,” said Hagit Ofran, the director of the Israeli group Peace Now’s Settlement Watch. “Without the donors’ money, there’s no settlement in East Jerusalem.”

The leading role U.S. charities play in the displacement of Palestinians has prompted Palestinian rights advocates to call for increased scrutiny of the nonprofits.

“This isn’t about what we think is morally or ethically right or wrong. It’s about the simple proposition that Americans — through these so-called charities — cannot directly support, or aid and abet, unlawful activities regardless of where they occur,” said Shamas, the Center for Constitutional Rights staff attorney. “Members of Congress should call on the Department of State and the IRS to investigate these groups, and at the very least, not grant them the privilege of tax-deductible status.”

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What the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bills as the largest and most complex air and missile defense exercises in Europe started on May 15 at and near the Hebrides off the western coast of Scotland and will continue until June 3. Some of the drills are also occurring at a military training site in Norway.

Formidable Shield 2021, said NATO Deputy Spokesperson Piers Cazalet, “shows how Allies are working together to defend NATO forces and populations from the very real threat of missiles.” Though what they are also practicing for it neutralizing missiles – Russian missiles to be exact – that might be fired in retaliation for a NATO attack against that nation and its assets.

This year’s iteration of the exercise, held biannually, includes guided-missile warships tracking a missile flying over 12,000 miles an hour, and practicing destroying anti-ship, submarine-launched and supersonic missiles “using NATO procedures.”

The exercise is held under the aegis of U.S. Sixth Fleet but is being conducted by Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO.

It includes 3,300 military personnel from ten NATO nations – the U.S., Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain – fifteen ships and dozens of aircraft. To emphasize the Euroatlantic nature of NATO (if not by intent), the flagship this year is the Spanish Navy’s frigate ESPS Cristobal Colon.

Raytheon Missiles & Defense boasted of the progress made since the 2019 Formidable Shield, with its president, Wes Kremer, stating, “Formidable Shield 2021 represents an opportunity to demonstrate the interoperability we have built with our NATO allies over decades.” Raytheon and other American weapons manufacturers are dedicated supporters of NATO and its Euroatlantic values as well as the rules-based international order.

Raytheon provided an inventory of the equipment being employed in the exercise to defend freedom, peace, gender equality in the workplace, carbon emission monitoring and other missions NATO has appropriated to itself (this is meant to be ironic), including but not limited to sensors, effectors, radars and interceptors “to strengthen collective defense and exhibit the interoperability and integration of allied missile defense systems.”

The arms manufacturer is proud of its role in promoting Euroatlantic core values by providing the following to the exercise, at market rates of course, paid for by NATO nations’ taxpayers:

• Standard Missile-3 (SM-3): an interceptor that destroys incoming ballistic missile targets.
• Standard Missile-2 (SM-2): an interceptor that destroys incoming cruise missile and air targets.
• Standard Missile-6 (SM-6): an interceptor that destroys incoming ballistic missile targets in the terminal phase, air targets and naval surface targets.
• Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR): a radar that provides early warning and detects and tracks incoming ballistic missile targets.

Standard Missile-3s have been deployed in Romania by NATO for the past decade; directly across the Black Sea from Russia.

Increasingly more advanced versions of the anti-ballistic missile are used in the Aegis Combat System developed by the U.S. and its allies. The Pentagon has 66 Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers and 22 Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers capable of being equipped with it. Since 2015 four American Arleigh Burke-class destroyers have been rotated at the Rota Naval Station in Spain for deployment in the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, where they’re sent to taunt Russia by parading the Standard Missile-3s, which are capable of shooting down Russian missiles. It’s recently been announced that the American destroyers, deployed to Spain under a NATO arrangement, are to be increased to six.

For all the pablum of “cruise and ballistic missiles…often [being] the weapon of choice, both for state and non-state actors,” according to NATO’s Cazalet, the current exercise and Raytheon interceptor missiles are designed to intimidate Russia.

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Rick Rozoff is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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On April 14, 2021, the House Committee on Natural Resources held hearings on two competing bills to end Puerto Rico’s colonial status. The different bills reflect the changing political dynamics in the archipelago, as well as the Puerto Rican diaspora’s growing political clout. HR 1522, the Puerto Rican State Admission Act, binds Congress to admit Puerto Rico into the Union if a majority vote in favor of doing so in a special referendum. HR 2070, the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act, authorizes the insular legislature to convene a semi-permanent status convention where elected delegates decide on alternative self-determination options that are “outside the territorial clause of the constitution.” The bill creates a bilateral negotiating commission of US government officials and the convention delegates. In a referendum, voters will select a territorial option, which may include statehood, independence and sovereign free association. The bill requires that Congress “approve a joint resolution to ratify the preferred self-determination option” approved in a referendum. Commonwealth [Estado Libre Asociado–ELA] is not included as an option in this status bill.

These bills were introduced as Puerto Rico copes with a vexing political and economic landscape in the aftermath of natural disasters, economic collapse, persistent public protests, a crisis of governability and a pandemic. Puerto Rico is at a crossroads. The political class is beleaguered, and lacks the skills and legitimacy to manage the colony. A financial control board imposed by the federal government and unaccountable to the people rides roughshod over the economy. The Statehood Admission Act is not a solution to the crisis since it wants to perpetuate the rule of those who are responsible for the crisis in the first place. In contrast, the Self Determination Act creates the possibility for a new political leadership to oversee Puerto Rico’s decolonization.

HR 2070 has generated a lot of political attention, grass roots activity and media coverage. This is the first time since 2009 that a self-determination bill has been introduced in both houses of congress. HR 1522, on the other hand, has received little attention. It is merely the latest in a stream of statehood bills. This statehood bill, as the others before it, will languish in committee. The Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) and its stateside supporters have introduced six “Puerto Rico Statehood Admissions Acts since the 114^th Congress in 2015-2016. None of them has made it out of the Senate committee of jurisdiction.  The PNP is urgently pushing for statehood, but it can’t convince Congress that Puerto Ricans are clamoring for it. Even before HR 1522 was introduced, prominent senators on both sides of the aisle announced that Puerto Rico’s admission into the Union was doubtful at best. In January 2021 Senator Cory Booker said there were not enough votes in the Senate to support statehood. Republican Senator Rick Scott agreed the Senate would not admit Puerto Rico into the Union. Senator Charles Schumer said that he “is not going to support the statehood bill,” noting that the referendums “did not reflect the strong consensus required to advance” a statehood bill.  Although the statehood bill is dead on arrival, Governor Pedro Pierluisi is determined to pursue this lost cause.

In 2020 the PNP held a status referendum in an effort to drum up support for the statehood party candidates. Voters were asked “Should Puerto Rico be admitted immediately into the Union as a State?”  Fifty two percent of the voters answered yes. PNP declared this a significant victory and called on Congress to accept the referendum results. A Columbia University law professor called the results historic, and claimed that with this vote the “people stake their claim to statehood.” But since only 53% of the electorate voted, and of those 38,000 cast blank ballots, some argue that only 26% supported statehood.” The PNP has regularly been criticized for designing referendum ballots that are intentionally confusing in order to steer voters to the statehood option. Governor García Padilla, of the pro-Commonwealth Partido Popular Democrático (PPD), told a Senate Committee in 2013 that the purported growth in statehood support was due to changes in the electoral law ordered by the PNP-controlled electoral commission. “There has not been a surge in statehood support, just a change in how votes are counted or should I say excluded.”  Senator Richard Wicker said that support for statehood had “not changed significantly over the last 20 years,” and there is no “impetus for Congress to entertain yet another” bill to admit Puerto Rico into the Union.

Since 2004 electoral participation has declined rapidly from 82% in 2004 to 53% in 2020. Governors are being elected with ever smaller pluralities. Pedro Pierluisi, the unpopular and polarizing statehood gubernatorial candidate, claimed victory in the 2020 elections with only 33% of the votes cast. A well-known sociologist calculated that electoral support for the PNP has been declining steadily. In the 2012 elections the PNP got 834,191 votes, but in 2020 the number dropped to 623, 053. The PNP is barely hanging on to power. After the ouster of Governor Rosselló in 2019 and the ill-fated administration of his successor, Wanda Vásquez, the PNP’s credibility is in shreds. One prominent journalist and commentary is convinced that the state in Puerto Rico has failed.

The PPD, the architect of now discredited ELA, is struggling for political survival as well. In the 2012 status referendum 54% of the voters said no to the statement “Puerto Rico should continue to have its present form of territorial status.” When Puerto Ricans voted against ELA, they voted to end colonialism. After the vote the PPD seems to have lost its way. For decades the PPD pushed to “enhance” the Commonwealth by getting Congress to grant it autonomy over key policy areas. But Congress rejected the proposals as “constitutionally impermissible.” After the 2012 referendum Senator Ron Wyden, Chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, said that “the new commonwealth option continues to be advocated as a viable option by some. It is not.” He noted that “the current relationship undermines our country’s moral standing in the world.” Nonetheless, PPD president and senator José Luis Dalmau warned Congress that excluding ELA as a territorial option in the Self Determination Act of 2021 would be “invalid.” It seems that neither the PNP nor the PPD are willing to accept that Congress has decided to permanently reject their territorial ambitions.

Puerto Rico has struggled through five turbulent and traumatic years.  By 2015, after being mired in an economic recession for a decade, Puerto Rico had amassed an insurmountable debt.  President Obama responded to the fiscal crisis by rescinding Puerto Rico’s fiscal autonomy. He imposed a Financial Oversight Management Board (FOMB) that usurped the legislature’s control of the budget. The FOMB imposed a neoliberal regime with catastrophic consequences for the population. In 2017 Hurricanes Irma and María laid waste to Puerto Rico and a swarm of earthquakes in 2019 further devastated the archipelago, forcing a record number of Puerto Ricans to migrate to the United States.  Government ineptitude in responding to the emergency magnified the catastrophic effects of the natural disasters which left over 4000 dead.  The pandemic hit Puerto Rico as it was digging itself out of the earthquake’s rubble. By mid-April 2021 over 2,200 had died from the coronavirus.

In summer 2019 hundreds of thousands of indignant Puerto Ricans finally had had enough. After two weeks of protests, they forced the resignation of Governor Rosselló, a reviled figure widely blamed for Puerto Rico’s interminable crises. The extraordinary protests set the stage for an unexpected political party realignment the following year.  In the 2020 elections the still aggrieved population voted in record numbers for political parties that support independence and self-determination. The venerable Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), and upstart Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana (MVC), obtained 28 percent of the gubernatorial vote, and their candidates were elected to the legislature. Their victory was a stunning rejection of the political class. Both the MVC and PIP testified in support of HR 2070, and are actively advancing a progressive agenda in the legislature.

Puerto Ricans are tired of politics as usual.  Protests are now a way of life, and Puerto Ricans openly challenge the authority of an ailing colonial state whose legitimacy is in shreds. The young reject the PNP and PPD which are both obsessed with territorial status. They are resisting sweeping austerity measures and resolutely face the ensuing police brutality. Women feminists were a vital force in the summer 2019 uprising and established the Colectiva Feminista en Construcción. In the early days of May 2021 the Colectiva held fervent and boisterous demonstrations to protest the government’s failure to contain the plague of femicides.  Hundreds of others are protesting the government’s continued failure respond to the transportation and health crisis that victimize the residents of Vieques. Labor unions are challenging Governor Pierluisi’s decision to sell the public electric utility to the LUMA corporation. Puerto Ricans in all walks of life have turned to a new politics of solidarity, resilience and resistance. They have broken with a culture of dependency on the government, or “assistenlialism.”

Puerto Ricans have built a multitude of mutual aid associations that provide vital services the government has essentially forsaken. An array of other issue-specific organizations are challenging destructive environmental policies, are fighting gentrification driven by Americans attracted by generous tax incentives. Other organizations are fighting privatization of the publicly owned assets and resources, and others are working toward energy and food self-sufficiency. Indeed, one of the most remarkable developments of the last few years has been the politicization of the population and the emergence of a political consciousness that demands government accountability. One well known activist described the emergence of “an unforeseen duality between the self-management movement and the protests that were organized to defend the people” (author’s translation). The colonial state is floundering in this hyper-politicized environment.

Many, if not most, of the 5.8 million Puerto Ricans who reside in the United States consider themselves members of the Puerto Rican nation. The Puerto Rican diaspora is actively promoting the Self Determination Act, while combating the PNP’s statehood campaign. HR 2070 has captured the attention of virtually all Puerto Rican diaspora organizations. Ninety organizations wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer urging them “to support and prioritize the passage of the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act.” Boricuas Unidos en la Diaspora Puerto Rico (BUDPR), Diaspora en Resistencia, Power4PuertoRico, Our Revolution Puerto Rico and Frente Independentista Boricua have scores of thousands of followers on their social media platforms. These organizations joined forces with Vamos a Puerto Rico, a prominent Puerto Rico-based social justice grass roots organization, to lobby for HR 2070. Diaspora organizations placed ads in the New York Times, convened webinars on decolonization and self-determination, organized zoom panels with representatives from the PIP and MVC, have held rallies, lobbied congress, and set up a Twitter account to contact key legislators. On April 20, diaspora organizations held a public hearing on HR 2070 and sent send the proceedings to the Committee on Natural Resources.

Progressive organizations including LatinoJustice, Center for Popular Democracy, Democratic Socialists of America, and Open Society Policy Center support HR 2070. The Center for American Progress applauded the bill, noting that the “landmark legislation would facilitate, not impose, a status resolution mechanism to resolve 123 years of colonialism on the island.” Pierluisi and the PNP were caught off guard by the scope of activism for HR 2070.

The political realignment that is taking place in Puerto Rico creates a propitious moment for the self-determination act to become law. The federal government knows that the once reliable political class can no longer manage the colony. If HR 2070 becomes law, years may pass before Congress and the convention delegates agree on self-determination options. In the interim the anti-colonial forces can consolidate and expand their political base.  With the Commonwealth excluded as a territorial option, and the PNP unable to generate support in Congress, independence or a sovereign free-associated state emerge as real possibilities for the world’s oldest colony.

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Pedro Cabán is Professor of Latin American, Caribbean and U.S. Latino Studies at the University at Albany. He is the author of “Constructing a Colonial People: Puerto Rico and the United States: 1898-1932.”

Featured image: Scene from a protest in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Photo: Billboard

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Egyptian authorities on Sunday opened the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip and received a number of Palestinians injured in an ongoing Israeli aggression on the coastal enclave, state-run news agency MENA reported.

The opening of the Rafah terminal, which is the only crossing point between Egypt and Palestine’s Gaza Strip, comes in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

As many as 5,588 Palestinians – 1,225 in Gaza and 4,363 in the West Bank – have been injured since Monday as a result of the violent Israeli aggression, according to official Palestinian numbers.

A number of injured Palestinians crossed Sunday from the enclave into the Egyptian side, where they will receive treatment at Egyptian hospitals, MENA reported.

A number of equipped ambulances were there to transport the injured to hospitals after classifying their health conditions, it added. Also, administrative and medical teams have been sent to facilitate the passage of the wounded and their companions for treatment.

The almost week-long Palestinian-Israeli escalation has been deemed the most serious since 2014 as Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in retaliation for hostilities by Israeli police against Palestinian protesters near Al-Aqsa Mosque, Israeli air strikes targeting civilian buildings in the Gaza Strip, and most importantly the Israeli eviction of Palestinians from East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

The action-reaction loop, which initially started on Monday­, brought the death toll in Palestine to 202 – 21 in the West Bank and 181 in Gaza, including 52 children and 31 women – health officials said, while Israel has reported 10 dead.

Egypt has been politically mediating in an attempt to reach a ceasefire. An Egyptian delegation – which met Tel Aviv and Hamas officials last week – has proposed a one-year truce for both sides that is to be monitored and coordinated by Cairo.

The Cairo proposal, however, was rejected by Tel Aviv.

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Featured image:Rafah crossing (Reuters)

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It is very important that people understand what is happening here. The intention is to introduce vaccine passports everywhere. But this is a disguise. It’s a world’s first digital common-format, globally-interoperable ID system with an editable health flag (vaccinated Y or N).

It makes no one safer. If you’re vaccinated, you’re protected & are not made safer by knowing others immune status.

As in Israel, you will be compelled to present a valid VaxPass in order to access defined facilities or access services. No VaxPass, you’re denied.

This system only needs 50%+ of the adult population to start up because of its huge, coercive power on the unvaccinated.

It’s illegal, medical apartheid.

If they succeed, it won’t help you to refuse. They’ll move on, leaving that minority behind.

A VaxPass System like this will give to those controlling the database & its algorithms TOTALITARIAN TYRANNY over us all.

The ONLY way to stop this biosecurity nightmare is to NOT GET VACCINATED FOR NON-MEDICAL REASONS!!!

I fear that, if our adversaries gain this absolute control, they will use it to harm the population. There’s no limit to the evil which will flow from this strategic goal.

DO NOT ALLOW THIS SYSTEM TO START UP, because it’s unstoppable afterwards.

One example: your VaxPass pings, instructing you to attend for your 3rd or 4th or 5th booster or variant vaccine. If you don’t, your VaxPass will expire & you’ll become an out-person, unable to access your own life.

How much choice do you have?

It’s none. You are controlled. Forever.

PLEASE share this widely, on every platform you use.

Thank you,

Dr Mike Yeadon

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Last month, the CEO from Pfizer, Albert Bourla said that yearly Covid-19 vaccinations may need to become normalized just like the flu shot.   A New York Times article headlined with ‘Booster shots and re-vaccinations could be needed. Drug companies are planning for it’ said that a single shot of the Covid-19 vaccine won’t be enough “Scientists have long said that giving people a single course of a Covid-19 vaccine might not be sufficient in the long term, and that booster shots and even annual vaccinations might prove necessary”but that was just a hypothetical scenario, however “that proposition has begun to sound less hypothetical.”  The article goes on to say that “Vaccine makers are getting a jump-start on possible new rounds of shots, although they sound more certain of the need for boosters than independent scientists have.”  The idea of getting a Covid-19 vaccine shot every year will be difficult task as more people are starting to refuse them because of the lack of trust.  Bourla said that “a third dose of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine was “likely” to be needed within a year of the initial two-dose inoculation — followed by annual vaccinations.”

But there seems to be a problem with these vaccines because people who got vaccinated eventually contracted Covid-19, but the vaccines are supposed to work against the virus, right?  Obviously, all of the vaccines from Pfizer-BioNtech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Astra Zeneca do not work as they claim and because of that, you need to take them annually to protect yourself.

As we know from all of the evidence that has been provided since the launch of these experimental vaccines can cause serious reactions that can lead to a host of injuries and even death in some cases.  In fact, what they are telling you is that they don’t work as well as they expected, but that’s a good thing for them because it creates a population of ‘repeat customers’, sort of like planned obsolescence.

Planned obsolescence is

“a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so that it becomes obsolete after a certain pre-determined period of time upon which it decrementally functions or suddenly ceases to function, or might be perceived as unfashionable.”  (Wikipedia)

Can we apply this definition to the new Covid-19 experimental vaccine market? “The rationale behind this strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases (referred to as “shortening the replacement cycle”). It is the deliberate shortening of a lifespan of a product to force people to purchase functional replacements.”  What is revealing is how this can be described as a business model of Big Pharma’s pursuit of profits:

Planned obsolescence tends to work best when a producer has at least an oligopoly. Before introducing a planned obsolescence, the producer has to know that the customer is at least somewhat likely to buy a replacement from them (see brand loyalty). In these cases of planned obsolescence, there is an information asymmetry between the producer, who knows how long the product was designed to last, and the customer, who does not. When a market becomes more competitive, product life spans tend to increase

So The Flu Shot Must Be Unprofitable

They needed a new product because demand for the flu shot was already in decline due to lack of trust.  An interesting article from August of last year by The National Interest, ‘Flu Shot: Why Do So Many People Refuse to Get Vaccinated?‘ the article is primarily based on doctors who were urging the public to get the annual flu shot. “Despite the touted benefits of getting a flu shot each year, the majority of U.S. adults and about 60% of children still refuse to roll up their sleeves for one, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2018-2019 data.”

Big Pharma needed a perfect storm to create a new product by first putting the fear in the people and making sure they will go and get their experimental Covid-19 vaccine shot.  The National Interest, a neoconservative foreign policy publication that went on to say that “In the United States, on average, between nine and forty-five million Americans catch the flu each year, which leads to anywhere between 12,000 to 61,000 deaths. Between October 2019 and April 2020, CDC’s data reveal that there were an estimated thirty-nine to fifty-six million influenza infections and 24,000 to 62,000 fatalities” continued “Still, perhaps many don’t see the point of getting vaccinated, especially when the shot’s effectiveness only ranges from 20% to 60% each season—depending on the types of strains circulating.” Then came Covid-19 and the rest is history.

The Covid-19 Experimental Shot is Profitable

According to a website dedicated to the health industry and medical innovations called the Managed Healthcare Executive (MHE) published ‘The Price Tags on the Covid-19 Vaccines’ said that

“The race to find both novel and repurposed therapeutics and develop vaccines has been a multinational effort, although heavily funded by U.S. government dollars.” Realistically, government dollars means US taxpayer dollars “but should the vaccine developers profit off their efforts?” You know what the answer will be, but let’s continue “during a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing last summer, manufacturers were asked whether they would sell the vaccine at cost.”

Merck did drop out of the vaccine race since no profits were to be made but hey, at least they were honest about their profit motives.  “Moderna and Merck (which announced in January that it was dropping out of the COVID-19 vaccine development race) said they would not sell their vaccines at cost.”  However, Pfizer, BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have received US funding to develop and distribute the experimental Covid-19 vaccines to the public:  

The first vaccine pricing announcement came in July, when the U.S. government contracted with Pfizer and BioNTech to purchase enough vaccines for 50 million Americans. It’s no coincidence that the price of $19.50 per dose was similar to the pricing of the flu shots. Pfizer has said the research and development costs of its the vaccine approach $1 billion, and the company declined to take direct government funding.

But other companies have accepted huge government checks. AstraZeneca received up to $1.2 billion upfront, in exchange for at least 300 million doses. J&J is also receiving government money from the federal government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). Early in the pandemic, BARDA agreed to provide $456 million toward the company’s research and development effort. In August, the federal government agreed to pay J&J $1 billion for 100 million doses of its vaccine, thus the $10-a-dose price.

As of mid-July, Boston-based Moderna had received $955 million in U.S. funding. The company said in August that it would charge between $32 and $37 per dose for its vaccine, although company officials also said the price would be adjusted depending on the amount ordered. That may explain the price of $15 per dose price charged to the U.S. for its order of 100 million doses. Still, the company has been criticized for its pricing, partly because it has received so much government research support. The Lown Institute in Boston gave Moderna one of its Shkreli Awards in January. The awards are for the ”worst examples of profiteering and dysfunction in health care”

In terms of profit-making motives plus adding insult to injury, any person who was injured or who had died from any of the experimental vaccines, the manufacturers will not be held liable according to ’42 U.S. Code § 300aa–22 – Standards of responsibility’ which clearly says the following:

No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings

At the end of the day, Big Pharma is generating profits and in order to profit from a product, you need repeat customers.  How do you keep your customers?  By continuously spreading fear of an invisible enemy that is always lurking around you and that invisible enemy is Covid-19 and its army of new variants.

Wake up people! Big Pharma is like every other corporate entity that seeks profits at whatever cost even if it means that people will die from a toxic experimental vaccine that does not protect you against any variant of Covid-19.  These so-called vaccines were produced in under one-year without sufficient human or animal testing, but that’s not important because all they want to do is to keep their corporate board members happy, and that’s all that matters to them at this point.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Silent Crow News.

Timothy Alexander Guzman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCN

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update (4:10pm): According to the White House readout of Biden’s Saturday call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US president “reaffirmed his strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket attacks from Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza,” while condemning the “indiscriminate attacks” coming from the Gaza Strip.

NEW: Biden spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and raised concerns about civilian casualties in Gaza and the bombing of the building that housed AP and other media offices.https://t.co/Siva3uENZa

— Axios (@axios) May 15, 2021

He merely “raised concerns” about the “safety and security of journalists” – and glaringly absent was any specific mention in the call readout of the intentional targeting of the media building which was hit by a reported six airstrikes earlier in the day, causing it to be flattened.

According to Axios in the call with Netanyahu Biden stopped short of an outright condemnation of the attack, but merely “raised concerns about civilian casualties in Gaza and the bombing of the building that housed AP and other media offices, according to Israeli officials.”

The opening section from the White House statement on the call is as follows:

The President spoke today with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The President reaffirmed his strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket attacks from Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza. He condemned these indiscriminate attacks against towns and cities across Israel. The President updated the Prime Minister on high-level U.S. engagement with regional partners on this issue and discussed ongoing diplomatic efforts. The President noted that this current period of conflict has tragically claimed the lives of Israeli and Palestinian civilians, including children. He raised concerns about the safety and security of journalists and reinforced the need to ensure their protection.

Statement from @AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt on the Israeli attack against our bureau in Gaza:

"The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today."https://t.co/CqoDxogAJ3

— Samya Kullab | سامية كُلاّب (@samya_kullab) May 15, 2021

Biden also phoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian officials confirmed, which marks a first during his administration. Axios details the call as follows:

• “President Biden updated President Abbas on U.S. diplomatic engagement on the ongoing conflict and stressed the need for Hamas to cease firing rockets into Israel,” a White House readout of the called said.
• The Palestinian Authority on Friday criticized the U.S. position on the Gaza crisis and called the Biden administration to intervene.

And further, Abbas’s spokesperson, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, was quoted in a statement:

 “The silence by the Biden administration about what Israel is doing and the claim it is self defense led to massacres in Gaza and the West Bank. We ask the U.S. to take action because it is the only party in the world who can stop Israeli aggression.”

Meanwhile, more and more protests are popping up across Europe – and some in the United States – expressing solidarity with Palestinians. “Protesters gathered in London, Berlin, Madrid and Paris as the worst violence in years raged between Israel and militants in Gaza,” AFP and others observed.

Thousands of protesters in London and Madrid marched in support of Palestinians on Saturday as the worst violence in years raged between Israel and militants in Gazahttps://t.co/syzUFfODAc

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) May 15, 2021

The death toll continues to climb into the night Saturday, with regional media counting at least 145 deaths in Gaza from the airstrikes.

In Israel, at least eleven have been killed by the continuing onslaught of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket fire. Amid increased international condemnation for the appalling civilian death toll and especially high number of children killed and wounded, Netanyahu’s office released a statement placing blame squarely on Hamas for the casualties…

After the reported death of a family of 10 in an Israeli strike in Gaza this morning, eight of them children, the prime minister’s Arab-language spokesman blames Hamas, Channel 12 reports.

“Hamas bears full blame for the deaths of civilians in Gaza,” he says in a statement. “It sought this escalation and started it when it attacked Jerusalem. It intentionally buried its rocket launchers and weapons caches and posts in the center of residential areas and this is a war crime. It attacks our citizens to kill as many of them as possible and that is another war crime.”

Death toll from ongoing Israeli bombardment on besieged Gaza climbs to 145, including 41 children and 23 women, while US repeats support for Tel Aviv https://t.co/FETPmVuIQY

— TRT World (@trtworld) May 15, 2021

In the US, many are taking increasing notice of the apparent complete lack of any US plan or diplomatic intervention toward a ceasefire.

Once again, Netanyahu's govt is slaughtering Palestinian Arabs in Gaza for political reasons to avoid a 5th election, and to impede his pending prosecution. Once again, Biden/Pelosi show no compassion to the mounting Palestinian civilian fatalities, using U.S. weapons and aid.-R

— Ralph Nader (@RalphNader) May 14, 2021

For now it seems the Biden White House is merely content to express “concerns” as the region burns.

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update (12:49pm): So far the Biden administration has stopped short of condemning the Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza offices of US-based Associated Press and other international media outlets, which flattened the 12-story Al-Jalaa tower, resulting in widespread outrage from journalists and media rights organizations across the globe.

Hours after the attack Joe Biden as reportedly phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express Washington’s “concerns” and to convey the “paramount responsibility” to protect journalists.

#BREAKING Israel's Netanyahu, US president Biden speak after Israel flattens AP news office in Gaza: statement pic.twitter.com/ItqTbUH1Sh

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) May 15, 2021

This also as the death toll continues to soar amid unrelenting airstrikes – also as Hamas rockets continue to fly toward Israel – at over 140 Gazans killed since Monday.

Al Jazeera's office in Gaza destroyed by an Israeli airstrike. The building also housed residential apartments and the AP bureau. This is the 6th consecutive day Israel has been bombing Gaza. The Gaza death toll is at 140, including 39 children. pic.twitter.com/2rNm9eMIaG

— IMEU (@theIMEU) May 15, 2021

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update (12:30pm): The White House has said it communicated its “concerns” to Israel over the safety of journalists after IDF airstrikes obliterated the 12-story office building that housed international media headquarters in Gaza, most notably the AP and Al Jazeera…

“We have communicated directly to the Israelis that ensuring the safety and security of journalists and independent media is a paramount responsibility,” White House press secretary Psaki wrote.

We have communicated directly to the Israelis that ensuring the safety and security of journalists and independent media is a paramount responsibility.

— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) May 15, 2021

AP CEO Gary Pruitt previously said in a statement: “We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there. We received a warning that the building would be hit.”

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Israel has targeted yet another large office and residential tower in the Gaza Strip, but this time its warplanes have destroyed the 12-story building housing the media offices of the U.S.-based Associated Press and Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera, the AP itself as well as Reuters eyewitnesses confirm.

The outlets have said that Israel issued advanced warning of the airstrikes of up to one hour before the attack on Al-Jalaa tower. Representatives with the AP and the building owner had reportedly pleaded with IDF officials to give more time to enable a safe evacuation and also to take out crucial media equipment.

Oh my god. The building where al Jazeera’s office is housed has just been taken down by Israeli airstrikes. There was a warning and evacuated. It houses offices and private homes. I can’t believe it. pic.twitter.com/Q4luRYk9H9

— Stefanie Dekker (@StefanieDekker) May 15, 2021

However, eyewitnesses say they were not given extra time, but merely made it out with whatever they had in hand and with their own lives.

The building can be seen essentially collapsing in its own footprint, the same way that three prior residential apartment buildings did during days past. “The building was hit approximately six times before collapsing in plumes of black smoke, which engulfed the entire neighborhood,” international press reports noted.

⭕ LIVE footage of the moment an Israeli air raid bombed the offices of Al Jazeera and The Associated Press in Gaza City ⬇️

🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/RvtP1lEX1x pic.twitter.com/RBO1ZiDAl0

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 15, 2021

The moment Israel bombed Al-Jalaa tower in Gaza housing international media outlets including Al Jazeera and AP. Reports and media personnel were not even allowed time to grab their equipment before evacuating the building #GazaUnderAttack #Palestine pic.twitter.com/jR2oMDyr68

— Marwa Fatafta #SaveSheikhJarrah (@marwasf) May 15, 2021

“The strike on the high-rise came nearly an hour after the military ordered people to evacuate the 12-story building, which also housed Al-Jazeera, other offices and residential apartments. The strike brought down the entire structure, which collapsed in a gigantic cloud of dust,” AP writes.

“There was no immediate explanation for why it was attacked,” AP adds.

The IDF in a later follow-up statement alleged the media offices contained Hamas military intelligence units…

After providing advance warning to civilians & time to evacuate, IDF fighter jets struck a multi-story building containing Hamas military intelligence assets.

The building contained civilian media offices, which Hamas hides behind and deliberately uses as human shields. pic.twitter.com/zeDjEquePD

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 15, 2021

The devastating attack brought swift condemnation by various international media organizations and advocates, with a number of prominent journalists expressing their shock, saying they “can’t believe” the media building was so blatantly targeted by Israel’s military.

AP president Gary Pruitt issued a statement saying “we are shocked and horrified” at the “incredibly disturbing” attack wherein “we narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life.” 

WATCH: The owner of al-Jalaa tower pleads with an Israeli officer on live TV to let journalists collect their gear before he bombs it.

Moments later, Israeli air strikes demolish the #Gaza building that housed several international media offices used by AlJazeera and MEE pic.twitter.com/a5PRzQNOkC

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) May 15, 2021

“Journalists who worked there had been reporting on the Israeli attacks on Gaza,” Al Jazeera said in a social media statement. “Targeting journalists is a war crime.”

An Israeli airstrike destroyed the Al Jazeera office in Gaza. The Israeli military warned they would hit the building that houses media organizations including the AP.

Journalists who worked there had been reporting on the Israeli attacks on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/fZVo3TFEoO

— AJ+ (@ajplus) May 15, 2021

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“Casserian Engeri?”  translated from the Maasai language means, “And how are the children?” This is a traditional greeting among a Maasai tribe in Africa. One hoped to hear, “Sepati Ingera!” which means, “The children are well.” A good indicator of the health of a society is the health of its children.

Sadly, in the U. S. now, with the former Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director Robert Redfield saying publicly in July 2020 that deaths from suicides and drug overdoses among high school students far outweighed their deaths from Covid and failures among school children, especially high school students, is at epidemic levels, the answer to this question would have to be,

“No. The children are not well. Not well at all.” And I am astounded by the lack of outcry among most of our public officials.

For more than a year now, children and teens have been robbed of most of what gives their lives value and meaning – seeing their friends at school, club meetings, church groups, camps, family gatherings, singing groups, playing with school bands and orchestras. Some schools have continued sports programs, but many have not, sometimes with heartbreaking consequences, such as the death by suicide of Dylan Buckner, age 18, as reported in the April 21 edition of The Epoch Times. Dylan’s father, Chris, said he is certain that his state, Illinois’, school closures and extended stay-at-home orders worsened his son’s mental health and contributed to his death. Dylan had a 4.7 grade point average, loved playing football, which his father said helped him keep a structured routine, according to the article, “The Cost of Lockdowns.” He was on his way to college with football scholarships. And yet this year, the school system cancelled the football program because of fears of Covid. Dylan attempted suicide in September 2020 and succeeded in ending his life in January 2021.

For more than a year, fearful adults and misguided politicians have discouraged children and teens from getting together with friends and from living their lives normally.  Child development experts agree that peer relationships are among the most important to teens’ mental and emotional health. How could we have done this to a nation of children? For a virus that even former CDC Director James Redfield said poses almost no risk to them. He has said that the flu is 5 to 10 times more dangerous to children and that they have a 1 in a million chance of dying from Covid.

Early death projections from the virus have been shown to be overstated and terribly wrong. Yet, most politicians have not publicly issued retractions and corrections to calm fears and help people, especially children, resume normal lives. Instead, they let the fear-mongering and harm remain.

In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, politicians and bureaucrats stated publicly that children could infect their parents or grandparents with Covid, even if the child had no symptoms. Members of the Coronavirus Task Force, said that children, teens, and young people, just by living their normal lives – socializing with friends, playing sports, attending school events and parties – could unknowingly catch and then carry the virus to older family members and possibly cause death — even if the young person was not sick, even if they did not have so much as a sniffle. This was called “asymptomatic spread,” one of the many bizarre terms we have been forced to learn and think about for more than a year now.

Politicians and bureaucrats stood at the U.S. White House podium at the start of this crisis and said that after infecting an older family member and perhaps causing sickness leading to death, a child would “have to live with that.”

What a devastating, harmful, and irresponsible thing to say within hearing of children, teens, and young adults – that they could be a danger to others merely by breathing, by being, by living their normal lives. What an especially horrible and harmful thing to say when we were not even sure it was true.  It sounded unbelievable from the start. And it turns out that it was not true. Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said at a June 7, 2020 press conference that from the known research, “asymptomatic spread was very rare”.

A more recent Chinese study of 10 million people, published in Nature magazine found that asymptomatic spread was not only rare but almost non-existent. (See this). On November 22, 2020, Jeffrey A. Tucker published a comprehensive article on the American Institute for Economic Research web site, tracing information on asymptomatic spread over the past year. (See this)

When I read Tucker’s article and then the study published in Nature magazine, I wondered: where are our elected officials now? Where are those same high-paid politicians, bureaucrats, and public health authorities who had touted these terrible and alarming messages that had so comprehensively devastated the lives of young people for more than a year? Why were they not retracting these statements about asymptomatic spread, reassuring children, teens, and young adults that it is simply is not a worry.  That they, just by living their lives and being themselves, are not and never were “super spreaders,” are not automatic disease carriers. Why were officials not issuing calming and strengthening messages to young people – after more and different information on this virus has emerged? Where was the outcry to protect the mental and emotional health and academic lives of young people, especially teenagers?

Another article by Micha Gartz for the American Institute for Economic Research reminds us that the median age for death from this virus is 80 years old. Most people who contract the virus recover at home, while many become only mildly ill. Harm to communities from widespread lockdowns has been very real, however. The Crisis Text Line, a non-profit organization that provides free mental health texting to people in crisis, received 180,00 texts in November 2020, their largest number ever, Gartz notes in her article. (More “Covid Suicides” than Covid Deaths in Kids – AIER)

Even strong students, who have historically earned good grades, have been failing classes at alarming levels during school this past year’s school shut downs and predominantly online classes, according to published studies, including one from Fairfax County Public Schools, one of the largest school districts in the U.S. (See this)

Parents, who had previously heeded advice from groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics’ to limit children and teen’s screen time, for their health, to a maximum of two hours of quality content per day, have now succumbed to allowing their children to spend several hours per day on computers while missing friends, failing classes, and losing hope. Too much computer time can be a health hazard to young people, especially those who may be vulnerable to addiction. In 2019, the WHO listed computer gaming addiction as a disease, one that harms children, teens and young adults mostly. How are the children? Not well at all.

Lockdowns, massive fear, and school shutdowns have had a devastating effect on children and teens’ health.  A national independent non-profit organization called Fair Health that studies health care costs, reported in March 2021 a 333 percent increase in intentional self-harm claims among young people ages 12 – 18 from the period August 2019 to August 2020. The study, The Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Mental Health: A Study of Private Healthcare Claims, analyzed 32 billion private health care claims.  Claims have also increased dramatically for overdoses, obsessive compulsive disorders, depression, and anxiety among children 12 – 18, according to the study. The CDC reported over the summer of 2020 that 25 percent of young adults, ages 18 – 25 had seriously considered suicide. (See this).

Many experts have said publicly that lockdowns, including school closures, have been a disastrous and unnecessary mitigation strategy, causing immeasurable harms and countless deaths. Dr. Jay Battacharya, Professor at Stanford University Medical School, called the lockdowns, “the biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made” in a March 2021 Newsweek article. Battacharya is one of the authors of a petition called The Great Barrington Declaration, published in October of 2020, which calls for safety strategies for older people while calling for an end to lockdowns of whole societies, stating that lockdowns cause far more harm than benefit. “Keeping children out of school is a grave injustice,” states the declaration, which has been signed by 14,000 medical and public health scientists, 43,000 medical practitioners, and almost 800,000 citizens. Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Professor of Medicine at Harvard University and Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Professor at Oxford University are also authors of the petition.

Many studies now published show that states that remined opened for the past year fared no worse, and some better, than states that had the most restrictive closures and shutdowns. Further, there have been treatments for this virus, all along, such as Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin that, if given early, could have saved tens of thousands of lives, according to many sources. Dr. Peter McCollough spoke before Congress on early treatment and on the criminal silencing of doctors, including preventing doctors from treating Covid patients with drugs that work. These drugs were instead politicized with doctors barred from prescribing them.  (Senate Hearing on COVID-19 Outpatient Treatment | C-SPAN.org) With more courage and independent thinking, fear and harm could have been contained; instead many simply stood by and watched the light go out in children’s eyes, month after month for more than a year.

Children in sports have been made to wear masks though masks deplete oxygen and may impede focus and cause more accidents, some parents have complained, while professional athletes on TV do not have to wear them. While many schools have reopened to in-person classes, government-created school re-opening documents, with the repressive six-feet apart, sanitizing, and mask mandates, read almost like manuals for operating a concentration camp. I have taught in a prison, and these public school re-opening plans read and feel more repressive than conditions inside a prison. I have seen children in school this past year eating, spaced six feet from one another, only allowed to remove the mask to eat and not being permitted to eat with their friends. I can hardly keep from crying seeing them this way. School rooms and cafeterias these days look like more like rooms where children are sent to serve detention. Students look like they are being punished when they have done nothing wrong. How can this be? How can we remain silent?

Some students may feel so depressed with these conditions that they do not even want to attend school.  It can be almost overwhelmingly sad to not see human faces and smiles for extended periods. For years, teachers have studied and promoted the importance of children’s social and emotional learning, and now we expect children to attend schools like look and feel like prison camps. Or worse. How can we treat our children this way?

We want to believe that the information we receive about this virus is unbiased and nonpartisan — especially if government mandates have affected children and young adults so severely. Surely the measures must have been neutral and necessary.  But sadly, information we receive is not unbiased; we have to keep questioning, reading, listening, and thinking. Writer and researcher Dr. Namoi Wolf notes that the CDC created a foundation to receive money from big pharmaceutical companies, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and from technology companies that profit from online education.

While some politicians and high-paid bureaucrats still promote fear, panic, and paranoia,  others have begun speaking up on failed lockdown policies. In an April 21 Epoch Times article, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that elected officials, establishment media, and Big Tech have been to blame for perpetuating fears and selectively censoring one side of the mitigation debate. Why? Because they have made money off the fear, panic, and paranoia. “Media and big tech giants benefitted from lockdowns as people stayed home and consumed their products,” DeSantis said. Google removed videos of DeSantis talking to doctors who criticized failed lockdown policies. “Google and YouTube have been throughout this crisis censors in service of the ruling elite,” he said. While millions of people lost their businesses or jobs, and school children, teens, and young people struggled with despair, loneliness, and school failures, 614 U.S. billionaires increased their wealth by 931 billion dollars, according to a December 1, 2020, USA Today article. (During coronavirus pandemic, billionaires added $931B to net worth (usatoday.com)

For the health of our communities and our children, we have to keep rising above fear, confusion, paranoia, and even shame and guilt for getting the virus response so wrong. We have to keep returning the question, “And how are the children?” And if the children are not well, we must change course to stop harming them while working diligently to mitigate the harms that have already been done.

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Christine E. Black’s poetry has been published in Antietam Review, 13^th Moon, American Journal of Poetry, New Millennium Writings, Nimrod International, Red Rock Review, The Virginia Journal of Education, Friends Journal, The Veteran, Sojourners Magazine, Iris Magazine, English Journal, Amethyst Review, St. Katherine Review, and other publications.

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This article was originally published on Global Research on February 1, 2004.

Contrived behind closed doors in July 2001, the Dagan Plan was slated by its IDF and Mossad architects to be “launched immediately following the next high-casualty suicide bombing, would last about a month and is expected to result in the death of hundreds of Israelis and thousands of Palestinians.”

Israeli Defense Force (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz presented the government [in July 2001] with an updated plan for an all-out attack on the Palestinian Authority. The London-based Foreign Report reported that the plan calls for an invasion of Palestinian-controlled territory by some 30,000 Israeli soldiers, with the clearly defined mission of destroying the infrastructure of the Palestinian leadership and collecting weaponry currently possessed by the various Palestinian forces, and expelling or killing its military leadership. As reported in the Foreign Report and disclosed locally by Maariv, Israel’s invasion plan — reportedly dubbed Justified Vengeance — would be launched immediately following the next high-casualty suicide bombing, would last about a month and is expected to result in the death of hundreds of Israelis and thousands of Palestinians.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat would no longer be in control in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at the end of the military action, the IDF assumes, according to the London weekly. The report also discloses the assumption that the massive Israeli military action would result in the stationing of an international peacekeeping force in the territories, but by the time that such a force would arrive, facts on the ground would be quite different, with improved security conditions for Israel.

The Foreign Report suggests that the outlook of the top echelon of IDF commanders has changed recently, and reflects the position of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who wants a more active role for the army. While Prime Minister Sharon insists that he is not leading Israel into war, and that he will continue with Israel’s policy of restraint in the face of repeated Palestinian terrorist attacks, he has reportedly been leading an international campaign to discredit Arafat.

Also in July 2001, Knesset Member Michael Kleiner (Herut) called on Israel to either assassinate or topple Arafat. Kleiner’s words came in response to a Maariv article that reported Arafat instructing his forces to “kill a settler every day.” Kleiner suggested replacing Arafat, even if it meant the Hamas would take his place. According to Kleiner, the entire world recognizes the Hamas as a terrorist organization so Israel’s continued efforts against a radical Palestinian leadership would not be condemned.

Commentators have noted similarities between the invasion plan and the one that was implemented by Sharon as Defence Minister in Lebanon during 1982, [which led to the murder of up to 1700 Palestinians]. (See below.) Then, too, the goal was to destroy PLO infrastructure and weapons, and to expel or kill Arafat and his armed forces. The trigger for that invasion was the assassination attempt against Israel’s Ambassador in London.

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The Infamous “Dagan Plan”

The so-called “Dagan Plan” which carries the name of its author, Reserve General Meir Dagan had been drawn up prior to Sharon’s election as Prime Minister in February 2001. General Meir Dagan, was Sharon’s security adviser during his election campaign.[1] According to Alex Fishman writing in Yediot Aharonot, the Dagan Plan consisted in destroying the Palestinian authority and putting Yasser Arafat “out of the game”.[2]

“The ‘Dagan Plan’ was based on two unalterable premises:

“One, Arafat is a murderer, and one doesn’t negotiate with a murderer. Two, the Olso accord [mutual recognition of Israel and the PLO, 1993] is the greatest evil that has ever fallen upon Israel, and everything should be done to destroy it.”

Its objective was directed, by means of a vast operation of increasing intensity, toward progressively isolating the Palestinian president just as much domestically as diplomatically.”[3]

In the wake of the elections General Dagan was assigned a key role. He became Sharon’s “go-between” in security issues with President’s Bush’s special envoys Zinni and Mitchell.

The Bush Administration was in all likelihood familiar with the Dagan Plan and did nothing to block its implementation.

There were close consultations between US and Israeli military and intelligence officials. In turn, CIA Director George Tenet, had been put in charge of so-called “peace negotiations”. The hidden agenda was to stall the stall the peace process and implement the Dagan Plan.

In July 2001, an updated Dagan plan dubbed “Operation Justified Vengeance” was formally presented by the Israeli Defence Force to the government. (See above).

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Ellis Shuman is Israel Insider’s Senior Editor. The above text is a shortened version of Ellis Shulman’s article “Is Israel preparing to dismantle the Palestinian Authority?”Israel Insider, 12 July 2001 All rights reserved .Copyright Israel Insider, Koret Communications Ltd, 2001. Reprinted with permission.

Notes

1. for further details see, Sylvain Cypel, Sharon’s plan for getting rid of Arafat, according to Yediot Aharonot, Le Monde 17 December 2001

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

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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“Christianity defeated and wiped out the old faith of the pagans. Then with great fervour and diligence it strove to cast out and utterly destroy every last possible occasion of sin; and in doing so it ruined or demolished all the marvelous statues, besides the other sculptures, the pictures, mosaics and ornaments representing the false pagan gods; and as well as this it destroyed countless memorials and inscriptions left in honor of illustrious persons who had been commemorated by the genius of the ancient world in statues and other public monuments …. their tremendous zeal was responsible for inflicting severe damage on the practice of the arts, which then fell into total confusion.”
Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), Lives of the Artists.

The development and spread of Enlightenment ideas in the eighteenth century instituted new movements based on a scientific approach to the pursuit of happiness, sense evidence as the primary source of knowledge, and which believed in progress, liberty, constitutional government and separation of church and state. However, while the growth of Romanticism in the nineteenth century was a new movement emphasising the non-rational, or irrational, this was not new. Irrationalism stressed feeling, will and instinct over or against reason and its influence stretched back through time to the early Greeks. For example: “In ancient Greek culture—which is usually assessed as rationalistic — a Dionysian (i.e., instinctive) strain can be discerned in the works of the poet Pindar, in the dramatists, and even in such philosophers as Pythagoras and Empedocles and in Plato. In early modern philosophy — even during the ascendancy of Cartesian rationalism — Blaise Pascal turned from reason to an Augustinian faith, convinced that “the heart has its reasons” unknown to reason as such.”

Here I will look at the relationship between science and irrationalism throughout history showing that at times rational investigation complemented irrational ideas, and at other times irrational ideas arose that conflicted with rational analysis. Early polytheistic society was less dogmatic in its attitude to science compared with Christian theology. Science slowly regained a foothold over the centuries and church ideology weakened. However, Romanticism took the place of the church as the main irrationalist ideology to hinder the growing influence of science in many different fields. Similarly with Christian ideology, it was the conservative elites who advanced and benefitted from the irrationalist ideas of Romanticism, using the various offshoots of Romanticism (Nationalism, Modernism, Postmodernism, Metamodernism etc.) to try and hold back the progressive development of societies towards genuine democracy and freedom, the essential ideas that originated in the Enlightenment. However, as globalised hegemonic culture today becomes ever more saturated with Romanticism – in parallel with Romanticist political movements – there is a real fear that another wave of extreme irrationalist ideas and violence could be provoked and sweep the world within a short period of time.

Early religion and rational investigation

In early societies the irrational ideas of polytheistic religion were aided by rational investigation that helped with human understanding of nature, for example, the Mesopotamians studied scientific subjects, like astronomy, that helped with their religious system.

Astronomy was of utmost importance to some civilizations who left behind large artifacts (proto-observatories e.g. Newgrange in Ireland, Stonehenge in Great Britain, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Abu Simbel in Egypt etc.) connected with the longest and shortest days of the year. This would have helped in determining the seasons and understanding the length of the year and when was the best time to plant crops. Early religion was polytheistic and rooted in nature which can still be seen today amongst the indigenous peoples of many countries. In Ancient Greece, worshipping the gods centred around fertility, childbirth, farming, harvest and death:

“Peasants worshipped the omnipresent deities of the countryside, such as the Arcadian goat-god Pan, who prospered the flocks, and the nymphs (who, like Eileithyia, aided women in childbirth) who inhabited caves, springs (Naiads), trees (dryads and hamadryads), and the sea (Nereids). They also believed in nature spirits such as satyrs and sileni and equine Centaurs. Among the more-popular festivals were the rural Dionysia, which included a phallus pole; the Anthesteria, when new wine was broached and offerings were made to the dead; the Thalysia, a harvest celebration; the Thargelia, when a scapegoat (pharmakos) assumed the communal guilt; and the Pyanepsia, a bean feast in which boys collected offerings to hang on the eiresiōne (“wool pole”).”

Pan teaching his eromenos, the shepherd Daphnis, to play the pan flute, Roman copy of Greek original c. 100 BC, found in Pompeii. Pan is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, and  connected to fertility and the season of spring. Pan’s goatish image recalls conventional faun-like depictions of Satan.

The desire to systematize the connection between nature and farming resulted in the many-century long scientific endeavour to create an accurate calendar. The Greek poet Hesiod, who lived around 700 BC developed the Works and Days calendar “in which the farmer was to regulate seasonal activities by the seasonal appearances and disappearances of the stars, as well as by the phases of the Moon which were held to be propitious or ominous.”

Thus, the calendar would help people more accurately mark the seasons with celebrations and rituals that integrated their activity with the earth’s cycles:

“The cycle of the year, at both the change of the four seasons as well as the height of each season, used to hold great importance. The winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, was a time of new birth. Often it was symbolized by the birth of an annual male fertility figure, a representation of the year’s new sun. The height of the winter, midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, was a time to nurture that new life. Spring was about encouraging fertility, when the sun and earth would unite to later bring forth the abundance of the harvest and the bounty of the hunt. From the summer solstice through autumn the sun’s energy transferred to the crops. The height of summer and the fall equinox were celebrations of the year’s harvest and bounty. The end of the year when fields lay dormant and the earth seemed to die at the height of autumn was a time to honor the dead and release the past.” [1]

From the later sixth century BCE onward, myths and gods were subject to rational criticism on ethical or other grounds as the early Greek philosophers such as Thales of Miletus and later Anaximander and Anaximenes tried to explain natural phenomena without relying on the supernatural.

The rise of irrationalism

The spread of Christendom from the Middle East to Africa and Europe by 600 CE was to have huge consequences not only for polytheistic religions but also on burgeoning scientific exploration. The struggle to convert the Roman Empire to Chrisatianity was perceived by Christians as a struggle between the forces of darkness and light, between God and Satan.[2]

Saint Aemilianus, known for his destruction of ancient temples and libraries is shown using ropes to pull down a statue.
His followers are breaking up statues with picks and axes.

As Christianity gained more and more power it worked to not only convert the polytheists to monotheism but also to eradicate scientific learning through attacks on books, libraries and the philosophers themselves. The only thing that mattered in life was worshipping god and any threat to the ideology and theology of Christianity, like, for example, Epicurean (341–270 BC) atomic theory, was to be eradicated. Atomic theory stated that everything in the world was made by the collision and combination of atoms and not created by a divine being.Thus, according to Catherine Nixey:

“The intellectual consequences of this powerful [atomic] theory were summarized succinctly by the Christian apologist Minucius Felix. If everything in the universe has been ‘formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, what God is the architect?’ The obvious answer is: no god at all. No god magicked up mankind out of nothing, no divinity breathed life into us; and, when we die, our atoms are simply reabsorbed into this great sea of stuff. ‘No thing is ever by divine power produced from nothing,’ wrote Lucretius in his great poem, On the Nature of Things, and ‘no single thing returns to nothing’. Atomic theory thus neatly did away with the need for and possibility of Creation, Resurrection, the Last Judgement, Hell, Heaven, and the Creator God himself.”
[3]

Marble relief from the first or second century showing the mythical transgressor Ixion being tortured on a spinning fiery wheel in Tartarus. Epicurus taught that stories of such punishment in the afterlife are ridiculous superstitions and that believing in them prevents people from attaining ataraxia (“tranquility”). 

While the classical philosophers had variously argued multiple positions on the existence of gods (“that there were countless gods; that there was one god; that there were no gods at all, or that you simply couldn’t be sure” [4]), they were tolerated by the general polytheistic populace. This could be because the general population and the philosophers had the same aim in common: to understand nature. This was also because the Greeks saw their gods as being similar to themselves:

Israel Charged with War Crimes and Genocide. Complete 2013 Judgment of the Kuala Lumpur Tribunal

By Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, May 16, 2021

The government of Israel headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has committed extensive crimes against humanity. President Trump in his “Deal of the Century” has endorsed this criminal agenda directed against the people of Palestine.

History: Israel’s Move to Destroy the Palestinian Authority Is a Calculated Plan, Long in the Making

By Tanya Reinhart, May 16, 2021

In mainstream political discourse, Israel’s recent atrocities are described as ‘retaliatory acts’ – answering the last wave of terror attacks on Israeli civilians. But in fact, this ‘retaliation’ had been carefully prepared long before.

The Criminalization of War: Gaza

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 16, 2021

Two million Palestinians live  under an Israeli siege. Israel controls the entry of essential goods including food, water, energy and medicine. Israel also controls Gaza’s territorial waters in derogation  of international law.

Covid Vaccine: The Same Pattern Everywhere?

By Mike Whitney, May 16, 2021

Mass vaccination was supposed to reduce the threat of Covid but– in the short-term– it appears to make it much worse. Why? And why is Covid now “surging in 4 of 5 the most vaccinated countries”?

Middle East and “Greater Israel”: There Will be War

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, May 16, 2021

At this point, there is no hope for peace in the Middle East, I know it sounds pessimistic but it’s fair to say that a new war has officially begun.  Israel’s aggressive behavior against the Palestinians, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Syria and of course, Iran has increased over the years.

Israel Isn’t Entitled to “Self-Defense” Against the People Under Its Occupation

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, May 16, 2021

As Israel continues to pummel the Palestinian people with bombs and artillery shot into Gaza from troops amassed along its borders in preparation for a ground invasion, the Biden administration has reaffirmed its unwavering support for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinians.

Video: Early Treatment With Hydroxychloroquine Would Have Significantly Lowered COVID Deaths. Dr. Philippe Brouqui

By Kristina Borjesson and Dr. Philippe Brouqui, May 16, 2021

As the head of Infectious Disease and Tropical Medicine at France’s Mediterranean University Hospital and Medical Director of the hospital’s Infection Institute, Dr. Philippe Brouqui is a member of a French team that has successfully treated thousands of covid patients and been attacked for using hydroxychloroquine as part of their early treatment protocol.

How the Rich Hide Their Wealth: Tax Havens and Capital Flight

By Rod Driver, May 16, 2021

The power and wealth of the biggest banks and financial institutions is one of the most under-reported issues in society. They control so much money, and they can move it between countries so easily, that they can destabilise whole countries.

Palestinians in Israel Now Face Far-right Mob Violence Backed by the State

By Jonathan Cook, May 16, 2021

With Jerusalem ablaze and Gaza on the brink of another major Israeli onslaught, it has been easy to overlook the rapidly escalating ethnic violence inside Israel, where one in five of the population is Palestinian. These 1.8 million Palestinians – Israeli citizens in little more than name – have spent the past week venting their frustration and anger at decades of Israeli oppression directed at their own communities inside Israel, as well as at Palestinians under more visible occupation.

Video: Pfizer’s Criminal Record. Largest Medical “Fraudulent Marketing” Case in US History

By US Department of Justice, May 15, 2021

How on earth could you trust a Big Pharma vaccine conglomerate which pleaded guilty to criminal charges by the US Department of Justice including “fraudulent marketing” and “felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act”?

We Must Awaken from “Corona Coma”, Reject “Great Reset” Robotic Technocracy and Assert Our Common Humanity

By Jack Dresser, May 15, 2021

While imagining breakneck progress, we’ve been backing off a cliff.  This is no surprise to those whose historic knowledge is not limited to the stifling propaganda dispensaries called American History class, mainstream news and Hollywood blockbusters that animate the anodyne story lines of comic books.

A Timeline of “The Great Reset” Agenda

By Tim Hinchliffe, May 15, 2021

Say it’s 2014 and you’ve had this idea for a technocratic Great Reset of the world economy for some time now, but it only works if the entire planet is rocked by a pandemic. How do you go about selling your idea?

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The Food and Drug Administration has moved from an entirely taxpayer-funded entity to one increasingly funded by user fees paid by manufacturers that are being regulated. Today, close to 45% of its budget comes from these user fees that companies pay when they apply for approval of a medical device or drug.

As a pharmacist and medication and dietary supplement safety researcher, I understand the vital role that the FDA plays in ensuring the safety of medications and medical devices.

But I, along with many others, now wonder: Was this move a clever win-win for the manufacturers and the public, or did it place patient safety second to corporate profitability? It is critical that the U.S. public understand the positive and negative ramifications so the nation can strike the right balance.

The FDA blocks thalidomide

Americans in the early 20th century were outraged when they found out that manufacturers used poor-quality methods for producing food and medication, and used unsafe, ineffective and undisclosed addictive ingredients in medications. The resulting Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 gave the taxpayer-funded Food and Drug Administration new authority to protect the U.S. consumer.

One of the FDA’s most shining successes occurred in the late 1950s when the agency refused to approve thalidomide. By 1960, 46 countries allowed pregnant women to use thalidomide to treat morning sickness, but the FDA refused on the grounds that the studies were insufficient to demonstrate safety. Debilitating birth defects resulting from thalidomide arose in Europe and elsewhere in 1961. President John F. Kennedy heralded the FDA in 1962 for its stance. An FDA driven by the data – and not corporate pressure – prevented a major tragedy.

How AIDS changed how the FDA is funded

The FDA continued its work fully funded by U.S. taxpayers for many years until this model was upended by a new infectious disease. The first U.S. case of HIV-induced AIDS occurred in 1981. It was rapidly spreading, with devastating complications like blindness, dementia, severe respiratory diseases and rare cancers. Well-known sports stars and celebrities died of AIDS-related complications. AIDS activists were incensed about long delays in getting experimental HIV drugs studied and approved by the FDA.

In 1992, in response to intense pressure, Congress passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act. It was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush.

With the act, the FDA moved from a fully taxpayer-funded entity to one funded through tax dollars and new prescription drug user fees. Manufacturers pay these fees when submitting applications to the FDA for drug review and annual user fees based on the number of approved drugs they have on the market. However, it is a complex formula with waivers, refunds and exemptions based on the category of drugs being approved and the total number of drugs in the manufacturers portfolio.

Over time, other user fees for generic, over-the-counter, biosimilar, animal and animal generic drugs, as well as for medical devices, were created. As time passed, the FDA’s funding has increasingly come from the industries that it regulates. Of the FDA’s total US$5.9 billion budget, 45% comes from user fees, but 65% of the funding for human drug regulatory activities are derived from user fees. These user fee programs must be reauthorized every five years by Congress, and the current agreement remains in effect through September 2022.

We’ve missed an opportunity to debate FDA funding and user fees #BMJOpinion by @joel_lexchin https://t.co/cBsbyPMfNE pic.twitter.com/JOmq5DVOj7

— The BMJ (@bmj_latest) September 6, 2017

Have user fees worked?

The FDA and the drug or device manufacturers negotiate the user fees. They also negotiate performance measures that the FDA has to meet to collect them, and proposed changes in FDA processes. Performance measures include things such as how quickly the FDA responds to meeting requests, how quickly it generates correspondence, and how long it takes from submission of a new drug application until the FDA approves or refuses to approve a drug or product.

Because of the additional funding generated by user fees and performance measures that the FDA has to meet, the FDA is quicker and more willing to discuss what it wants to see in an application with manufacturers. It also offers clearer guidance for manufacturers. In 1987, it took 29 months from the time a new drug application was filed by the manufacturer for the FDA to decide whether to approve a medication in the U.S. In 2014, it only took 13 months and by 2018, it was down to 10 months.

Changes in more recent years have also increased the number of standard new drug applications approved the first time around by the FDA from 38% in 2005 to 61% in 2018. In diseases where there are not many medication options for patients, the FDA has a priority review process, where 89% of new drug applications were approved the first time around and the approvals were completed in eight months in 2018. All this occurred while the number of new drug applications have been increasing over time.

Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen the FDA provide emergency use authorization for potential treatments in a matter of weeks, not months. The infrastructure and capacity to review the available information so rapidly is due in large part to the funding from user fees.

While the number and speed of drug approvals have been increasing over time, so have the number of drugs that end up having serious safety issues coming to light after FDA approval. In one assessment, investigators looked at the number of newly approved medications that were subsequently removed from the market or had to include a new black box warning over 16 years from the year of approval. These black box warnings are the highest level of safety alert that the FDA can employ, warning users that a very serious adverse event could occur.

Before the user fee act was approved, 21% of medications were removed or had new black box warnings as compared to 27% afterwards.

Some potential reasons that more adverse effects are coming to light after drug approval include senior FDA officials overturning scientist recommendations, a lower burden of proof for medication approval, and more clinical data in new drug applications coming from foreign clinical trial sites that require additional time to assess in an environment where regulators are rushing to meet tight deadlines.

Lack of money limits FDA

User fees are a viable way to shift some of the financial burden to manufacturers who stand to make money from the approval and sale of drugs in the lucrative U.S. market. Successes have occurred and provided U.S. citizens with medication more quickly than before.

[Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]

However, without careful consideration of what is being negotiated, the FDA can become weak and ineffective, unable to protect its citizens from the next thalidomide. There are some signs that the pendulum may be swinging too far in the direction of the manufacturers. Additionally, while drug approval functions at the FDA are well funded, the FDA is insufficiently funded to protect consumers from other issues such as counterfeit drugs and dietary supplements because they cannot collect user fees to do so. In my view, these functions need to be identified and require additional taxpayer funding.

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C. Michael White is a distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Pharmacy Practice, University of Connecticut.

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***

Nearly all the words and phrases used by the Democrats, Republicans and the talking heads on the media to describe the unrest inside Israel and the heaviest Israeli assault against the Palestinians since the 2014 attacks on Gaza, which lasted 51 days and killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, are a lie.  Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion defense aid package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising “the right to defend itself.” It is carrying out mass murder. It is a war crime. 

Israel has made it clear it is ready to destroy and kill as wantonly now as it was in 2014. Israel’s defense minister Benny Gantz, who was the chief of staff during the murderous assault on Gaza in 2014, has vowed that if Hamas “does not stop the violence, the strike of 2021 will be harder and more painful than that of 2014.” The current attacks have already targeted several residential high rises including buildings that housed over a dozen local and international press agencies, government buildings, roads, public facilities, agricultural lands, two schools and a mosque.

I spent seven years in the Middle East as a correspondent, four of them as The New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief. I am an Arabic speaker. I lived for weeks at a time in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison where over two million Palestinians exist on the edge of starvation, struggle to find clean water and endure constant Israeli terror. I have been in Gaza when it was pounded with Israeli artillery and air strikes. I have watched mothers and fathers, wailing in grief, cradling the bloodied bodies of their sons and daughters. I know the crimes of the occupation—the food shortages caused by the Israeli blockade, the stifling overcrowding, the contaminated water, the lack of health services, the near constant electrical outages due to the Israeli targeting of power plants, the crippling poverty, the endemic unemployment, the fear and the despair. I have witnessed the carnage.

I also have listened from Gaza to the lies emanating from Jerusalem and Washington. Israel’s indiscriminate use of modern, industrial weapons to kill thousands of innocents, wound thousands more and make tens of thousands of families homeless is not a war: It is state-sponsored terror.  And, while I oppose the indiscriminate firing of rockets by Palestinians into Israel, as I oppose suicide bombings, seeing them also as war crimes, I am acutely aware of a huge disparity between the industrial violence carried out by Israel against innocent Palestinians and the minimal acts of violence capable of being waged by groups such as Hamas.

The false equivalency between Israeli and Palestinian violence was echoed during the war I covered in Bosnia.  Those of us in the besieged city of Sarajevo were pounded daily with hundreds of heavy shells and rockets from the surrounding Serbs. We were targeted by sniper fire. The city suffered a few dozen dead and wounded each day. The government forces inside the city fired back with light mortars and small arms fire. Supporters of the Serbs seized on any casualties caused by Bosnian government forces to play the same dirty game, although well over 90 percent of the killings in Bosnia were the fault of the Serbs, as is also true regarding Israel.

The second and perhaps most important parallel is that the Serbs, like the Israelis, were the principal violators of international law. Israel is in breach of more than 30 U.N. Security Council resolutions. It is in breach of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that defines collective punishment of a civilian population as a war crime. It is in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention for settling over half a million Jewish Israelis on occupied Palestinian land and for the ethnic cleansing of at least 750,000 Palestinians when the Israeli state was founded and another 300,000 after Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank were occupied following the 1967 war. Its annexation of East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights violates international law, as does its building of a security barrier in the West Bank that annexes Palestinian land into Israel. It is in violation of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 that states that Palestinian “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”

This is the truth.  Any other starting point for the discussion of what is taking place between Israel and the Palestinians is a lie.

Israel’s once vibrant peace movement and political left, which condemned and protested against the Israeli occupation when I lived in Jerusalem, is moribund. The right-wing Netanyahu government, despite its rhetoric about fighting terrorism, has built an alliance with the repressive regime in Saudi Arabia, which also views Iran as an enemy.  Saudi Arabia, a country that  produced 15 of the 19 hijackers in the September 11 attacks, is reputed to be the most prolific sponsor of international Islamist terrorism, allegedly supporting Salafist jihadism, the basis of al-Qaeda, and groups such as the Afghanistan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba(LeT) and the Al-Nusra Front.

Saudi Arabia and Israel worked closely together to back the 2013 military coup in Egypt, led by General Adbul Fattah el Sisi. Sisi overthrew a democratically elected government. He has imprisoned tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists and human rights defenders, on politically motivated charges.  The Sisi regime collaborates with Israel by keeping its common border with Gaza closed to Palestinians, trapping them in the Gaza strip, one of the most densely populated places on earth. Israel’s cynicism and hypocrisy, especially when it wraps itself in the mantle of protecting democracy and fighting terrorism, is of epic proportions.

Those who are not Jewish in Israel are either second class citizens or live under brutal military occupation. Israel is not, and never has been, the exclusive homeland of the Jewish people.  From the 7^th century until 1948, when Jewish colonial settlers used violence and ethnic cleansing to create the state of Israel, Palestine was overwhelmingly Muslim. It was never empty land.  The Jews in Palestine were traditionally a tiny minority. The United States is not an honest broker for peace but has funded, enabled and defended Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.  Israel is not defending the rule of law.  Israel is not a democracy.  It is an apartheid state.

That the lie of Israel continues to be embraced by the ruling elites–there is no daylight between statements in defense of Israeli war crimes by Nancy Pelosi and Ted Cruz–and used as a foundation for any discussion of Israel is a testament to the corrupting power of money, in this case that of the Israel lobby, and the bankruptcy of a political system of legalized bribery that has surrendered its autonomy and its principles to its major donors. It is also a stunning example of how colonial settler projects, and this is true in the United States, always carry out cultural genocide so they can exist in a suspended state of myth and historical amnesia to legitimize themselves.

The Israel lobby has shamelessly used its immense political clout to demand that Americans take de facto loyalty oaths to Israel. The passage by 35 state legislatures of Israel lobby-backed legislation requiring their workers and contractors, under threat of dismissal, to sign a pro-Israel oath and promise not to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is a mockery of our Constitutional right of free speech. Israel has lobbied the U.S. State Department to redefine anti-Semitism under a three-point test known as the Three Ds: the making of statements that “demonize” Israel; statements that apply “double standards” for Israel; statements that “delegitimize” the state of Israel. This definition of anti-Semitism is being pushed by the Israel lobby in state legislatures and on college campuses. The Israel lobby spies in the United States, often at the direction of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, on those who speak up for the rights of Palestinians. It wages public smear campaigns and blacklists defenders of Palestinian rights–including the Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein; U.N. Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories, Richard Falk, also Jewish; and university students, many of them Jewish, in organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine.

The Israel lobby has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to manipulate U.S. elections, far beyond anything alleged to have been carried out by Russia, China or any other country.  The heavy-handed interference by Israel in the American political system, which includes operatives and donors bundling together hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in every U.S. congressional district to bankroll compliant candidates, is documented in the Al-Jazeera four-part series “The Lobby.” Israel managed to block “The Lobby” from being broadcast. In the film, a pirated copy that is available on the website Electronic Intifada, the leaders of the Israel lobby are repeatedly captured on a reporter’s hidden camera explaining how they, backed by the intelligence services within Israel, attack and silence American critics and use massive cash donations to buy politicians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured the unconstitutional invitation by then-House Speaker John Boehner to address Congress in 2015 to denounce President Barack Obama’s Iranian nuclear agreement.  Netanyahu’s open defiance of Obama and alliance with the Republican Party, however, did not stop Obama in 2014 from authorizing a 10-year $38 billion military aid package to Israel, a sad commentary on how captive American politics is to Israeli interests.

The investment by Israel and its backers is worth it, especially when you consider that the U.S. has also spent over $ 6 trillion during the last 20 years fighting futile wars that Israel and its lobby pushed for in the Middle East.  These wars are the greatest strategic debacle in American history, accelerating the decline of the American empire, bankrupting the nation at a time of economic stagnation and mounting poverty, and turning huge parts of the globe against us. They serve Israel’s interests, not ours.

The longer the mendacious Israeli narrative is embraced, the more empowered become the racists, bigots, conspiracy theorists and far-right hate groups inside and outside Israel.  This steady shift to the far right in Israel has fostered an alliance between Israel and the Christian right, many of whom are anti-Semites. The more Israel and the Israel lobby level the charge of anti-Semitism against those who speak up for Palestinian rights, as they did against British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, the more they embolden the real anti-Semites.

Racism, including anti-Semitism, is dangerous.  It is not only bad for the Jews.  It is bad for everyone.  It empowers the dark forces of ethnic and religious hatred on the extremes.  Netanyahu’s racist government has built alliances with far-right leaders in Hungary, India, and Brazil, and was closely allied with Donald Trump. Racists and ethnic chauvinists, as I saw in the wars in the former Yugoslavia, feed off of each other.  They divide societies into polarized, antagonistic camps that only speak in the language of violence.  The radical jihadists need Israel to justify their violence, just as Israel needs the radical jihadists to justify its violence.  These extremists are ideological twins.

This polarization fosters a fearful, militarized society.  It permits the ruling elites in Israel, as in the United States, to dismantle civil liberties in the name of national security.  Israel runs training programs for militarized police, including from the United States.  It is a global player in the multibillion-dollar drone industry, competing against China and the United States.

It oversees hundreds of cybersurveillance startups whose espionage innovations, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, have been utilized abroad “to locate and detain human rights activists, persecute members of the LGBT community, silence citizens critical of their governments, and even fabricate cases of blasphemy against Islam in Muslim countries that don’t maintain formal relations with Israel.”

Israel, like the United States, has been poisoned by the psychosis of permanent war. One million Israelis, many of them among the most enlightened and educated, have left the country. Its most courageous human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists—Israeli and Palestinian—endure constant government surveillance, arbitrary arrests and vicious government-run smear campaigns. Mobs and vigilantes, including thugs from right-wing youth groups such as Im Tirtzu, physically assault dissidents, Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and African immigrants in the slums of Tel Aviv. These Jewish extremists have targeted Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, demanding their expulsion. They are supported by an array of anti-Arab groups including the Otzma Yehudit Party, the ideological descendant of the outlawed Kach party, the Lehava movement, which calls for all Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories to be expelled to surrounding Arab states, and La Familia, far-right soccer hooligans. Lehava in Hebrew means “flame” and is the acronym for “Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land.” Mobs of these Jewish fanatics parade through Palestinian neighborhoods, including in occupied East Jerusalem, protected by Israeli police, shouting to the Palestinians who live there “Death to the Arabs,” which is also a popular chant at Israeli soccer matches.

Israel has pushed through a series of discriminatory laws against non-Jews that echo the racist Nuremberg Laws that disenfranchised Jews in Nazi Germany. The Communities Acceptance Law, for example, permits “small, exclusively Jewish towns planted across Israel’s Galilee region to formally reject applicants for residency on the grounds of ‘suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook.” Israel’s educational system, starting in primary school, uses the Holocaust to portray Jews as eternal victims.  This victimhood is an indoctrination machine used to justify racism, Islamophobia, religious chauvinism and the deification of the Israeli military.

There are many parallels between the deformities that grip Israel and the deformities that grip the United States.  The two countries are moving at warp speed towards a 21rst century fascism, cloaked in religious language, which will revoke what remains of our civil liberties and snuff out our anemic democracies.  The failure of the United States to stand up for the rule of law, to demand that the Palestinians, powerless and friendless, even in the Arab world, be granted basic human rights mirrors the abandonment of the vulnerable within our own society.  We are headed, I fear, down the road Israel is heading down.  It will be devastating for the Palestinians.  It will be devastating for us. And all resistance, as the Palestinians courageously show us, will only come from the street.

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

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 May 8, 2021 lists 10,570 deaths and 405,259 injuries following injections of four experimental COVID-19 shots:

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

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

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

Here is the summary data through May 8, 2021.

Total reactions for the experimental mRNA vaccine Tozinameran (code BNT162b2,Comirnaty) from BioNTech/ Pfizer: 5,368 deaths and 170,528 injuries to 08/05/2021

• 12,435   Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 54 deaths
• 8,551     Cardiac disorders incl. 636 deaths
• 62           Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 4 deaths
• 4,828     Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 153        Endocrine disorders
• 5,413     Eye disorders incl. 9 deaths
• 37,167   Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 270 deaths
• 115,627General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 1719 deaths
• 279        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 24 deaths
• 4,047     Immune system disorders incl. 25 deaths
• 12,099   Infections and infestations incl. 589 deaths
• 4,142     Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 72 deaths
• 8,904     Investigations incl. 196 deaths
• 2,961     Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 109 deaths
• 59,217   Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 58 deaths
• 194        Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 11 deaths
• 73,4       Nervous system disorders incl. 535 deaths
• 231        Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 9 deaths
• 83           Product issues
• 7,002     Psychiatric disorders incl. 81 deaths
• 1,143     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 82 deaths
• 1,241     Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 16,257   Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 619 deaths
• 18,516   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 46 deaths
• 564        Social circumstances incl. 9 deaths
• 142        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 9 deaths
• 9,851     Vascular disorders incl. 197 deaths

Total reactions for the experimental mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273(CX-024414) from Moderna: 2,865 deaths and 22,985 injuries to 08/05/2021

• 1,047     Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 19 deaths
• 1,674     Cardiac disorders incl. 301 deaths
• 8             Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 535        Ear and labyrinth disorders
• 29           Endocrine disorders incl. 1 death
• 793        Eye disorders incl. 4 deaths
• 4,952     Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 100 deaths
• 16,192   General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 1255 deaths
• 98           Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 6 deaths
• 587        Immune system disorders incl. 4 deaths
• 1,906     Infections and infestations incl. 151 deaths
• 1,042     Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 53 deaths
• 1,395     Investigations incl. 68 deaths
• 670        Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 58 deaths
• 7,143     Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 58 deaths
• 60           Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 11 deaths
• 9,617     Nervous system disorders incl. 294 deaths
• 62           Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions
• 11           Product issues
• 1,118     Psychiatric disorders incl. 45 deaths
• 383        Renal and urinary disorders incl. 32 deaths
• 135        Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 1 death
• 2,822     Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 255 deaths
• 2,901     Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 22 deaths
• 214        Social circumstances incl. 9 deaths
• 131        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 16 deaths
• 1,526     Vascular disorders incl. 100 deaths

Total reactions for the experimental vaccine AZD1222/VAXZEVRIA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford/ AstraZeneca: 2,102 deaths and 208,873 injuries to 08/05/2021

• 6,221     Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 86 deaths
• 8,504     Cardiac disorders incl. 261 deaths
• 83           Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 5,774     Ear and labyrinth disorders
• 174        Endocrine disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 9,158     Eye disorders incl. 7 deaths
• 62,739   Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 99 deaths
• 158,518General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 604 deaths
• 319        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 18 deaths
• 2,135     Immune system disorders incl. 8 deaths
• 12,002   Infections and infestations incl. 138 deaths
• 4,991     Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 33 deaths
• 11,441   Investigations incl. 38 deaths
• 7,621     Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 31 deaths
• 93,094   Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 24 deaths
• 178        Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 5 deaths
• 125,892Nervous system disorders incl. 318 deaths
• 128        Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 1 death
• 64           Product issues
• 10,895   Psychiatric disorders incl. 17 deaths
• 1,976     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 20 deaths
• 2,519     Reproductive system and breast disorders
• 18,411   Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 228 deaths
• 26,202   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 13 deaths
• 475        Social circumstances incl. 4 deaths
• 431        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 14 deaths
• 10,653   Vascular disorders incl. 131 deaths

Total reactions for the experimental COVID-19 vaccine JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S) from Johnson & Johnson: 235 deaths and 2,873 injuries to 08/05/2021

• 79           Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 7 deaths
• 169        Cardiac disorders incl. 22 deaths
• 3             Congenital, familial and genetic disorders
• 45           Ear and labyrinth disorders
• 3             Endocrine disorders incl. 1 death
• 110        Eye disorders incl. 1 death
• 783        Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 6 deaths
• 2,071     General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 67 deaths
• 20           Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 1 death
• 35           Immune system disorders
• 140        Infections and infestations incl. 6 deaths
• 117        Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 2 deaths
• 507        Investigations incl. 11 deaths
• 56           Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 6 deaths
• 1,348     Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 9 deaths
• 4             Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps)
• 1,852     Nervous system disorders incl. 32 deaths
• 5             Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions
• 4             Product issues
• 116        Psychiatric disorders incl. 2 deaths
• 35           Renal and urinary disorders incl. 3 deaths
• 29           Reproductive system and breast disorders
• 366        Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 18 deaths
• 172        Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 1 death
• 20           Social circumstances incl. 1 death
• 80           Surgical and medical procedures incl. 10 deaths
• 502        Vascular disorders incl. 29 deaths

What is the Worldwide Effect of COVID-19 Shots on Mortality?

Mordechai Sones of America’s Frontline Doctors published a video yesterday illustrating the effects of the COVID-19 shots in various countries with mortality rates.

The video is posted on YouTube (let us know if it disappears) with credit given to @britishbennyboy on Twitter for creating the animation.

The data was compiled from healthdata.org, and The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent population health research center at UW Medicine, part of the University of Washington.

In almost every country, death rates INCREASED just after the COVID-19 “vaccine” roll outs.

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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

This article first published eight years ago on March 5, 2013 reveals issues pertaining to the vaccination of children and the role of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

***

Bill Gates of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg were interviewed on Charlie Rose on February 28^th, 2013 that mainly focused on the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and how “new approaches” to their agenda can be utilized.

Bill Gates along with Michael Bloomberg has contributed large sums of money to numerous causes such as the Global Polio Eradication Initiative originally launched in 1988 by the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Bill Gates has been in the forefront for the depopulation agenda which he publically stated in 2010 during a conference for TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) that:

“The world today has 6.8 billion people… that’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”

The Charlie Rose interview was an indication on how new technological advances can possibly help them vaccinate the majority of children in the Third World including Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries throughout Africa.

The technology used to track children for vaccinations is dangerous.  It sets the precedence to target children in many Third World countries.  Charlie Rose asked Bill Gates about the “New Approaches” used in the process:

Charlie Rose: You mentioned the five or a six year plan the new initiative has learning from old lessons and therefore, coming up with new approaches.  What are the new approaches?

Bill Gates: Well, we’re able to use new technology like satellite photos to see are there people moving around, nomadic roots.  You know we see if when we go out to get all the children, if there’s some settlement areas that we’ve actually missed.  We also put a – – a phone in the vaccine box they carry around that looks where they’re located every three minutes and so it has that GPS data.  At the end of the day you plug that in and compare it to where they were asked to go, and you can see if you’re – you’re really covering all the kids.

The “New Technology” used to locate children to administer vaccinations is a method that will be introduced to many countries targeted for depopulation.  It is a scenario that poses a threat to humanity.

The Polio vaccine has contributed to the more deadly ‘Non-Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis (NPAFP)’.  NPAFP is not any different from polio paralysis, but it is twice as dangerous.

In an article titled “Study: Polio vaccine campaign in India has caused 12-fold increase in deadly paralysis condition” by alternative health website naturalnews.com staff writer Ethan A. Huff reported that:

“The mainstream media has been busy hailing the supposed success of India’s polio vaccine campaign over the past few years, with many news outlets now claiming that the disease has been fully eradicated throughout the country. But what these misinformation puppets are failing to disclose is the fact that cases of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP), a much more serious condition than that caused by polio, have skyrocketed as a result of the vaccine’s widespread administration”

What the polio vaccine has done was increase a more severe condition called non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP).

In 2011, for instance, the year in which India was declared to be polio-free, there were 47,500 known cases of NPAFP, which is a shockingly high figure under the circumstances. And based on data collected from India’s National Polio Surveillance Project, cases of NPAFP across India rose dramatically in direct proportion to the number of polio vaccines administered, which suggests that the vaccines were responsible for spurring the rapid spread of this deadly condition.

Not only has NPAFP increased 12 times due to the Polio Vaccine campaign, the cost to India increased 100 times more than the original amount as well.  Huff wrote:

According to the IJME report, the entire polio vaccine scam in India was spawned from initial grants made by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and various other groups that claimed the program would eventually pay off. But the overall costs once India started paying for the program quickly ballooned to more than 100 times the initial investment amount, with more than $2.5 billion and counting still being funneled into it.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is a fraud.  But more importantly, it is a dangerous step towards forced inoculations by the global elites who claim that their philanthropies are supposed to help people.  Overall, it sets a dangerous path towards an Orwellian society that will be monitored and targeted for vaccinations that do more harm than good.  The ultimate goal is depopulation, not saving populations.

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Steve Hendrix, Shira Rubin and Michael E. Miller at WaPo report that Israeli air strikes on the densely populated urban areas of the Gaza Strip had by Thursday evening killed 109 Palestinians, among them 28 children, and had wounded 621 persons.

The Israeli Air Force deliberately destroyed some of Gaza’s taller buildings, alleging that the ruling Hamas party had offices in them. They gave advance warning so that families could leave their homes. But the huge bombs falling on a civilian city inevitably did damage also to nearby buildings and have left families homeless. Flying glass and debris injured noncombatants.

Claire Parker and Adam Taylor at WaPo report that Hamas and other militant groups in the Palestinian Gaza strip have fired a thousand rockets into Israel since Monday. Almost all landed uselessly in the desert or were intercepted by Israeli Iron Dome interceptors. Despite being unguided, some landed on buildings or parked cars, apparently more or less by accident, and they killed seven Israelis, including a teenage boy and a young girl. These are war crimes on the part of Hamas and the other groups in Gaza, since indiscriminate fire into civilian areas is strictly forbidden in international law.

It has to be underlined, however, that the thousand rockets did not damage a thousand buildings. More like a handful. Most Gaza rockets only travel 3 to 6 miles, and at that range they just stir up desert sand. Hamas has deployed a few longer range rockets, and hit Tel Aviv.

But the rockets are still primitive and there weren’t many longer distance ones.

This is psychological warfare. The organization is letting Israelis know that it can strike relatively distant targets. The barrage was provoked by the Israeli attack on worshipers in the al-Aqsa Mosque. Hamas styles itself and Islamic party and could not let this defilement of Muslim sacred space go unanswered.

The rockets killed Israeli noncombatants, which is terrorism.

But there is also a principle of proportionality in the law of war. and Israeli fighter jets have killed many times the number of Palestinians as Hamas rockets had Israeli civilians. That is state terrorism.

Since the situation in Gaza is not well understood in the outside world, it is worth reviewing it.

Nearly two million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip, roughly the population of Houston inside city limits. It is one of the more densely populated places on earth.

Some 50% of the population consists of children. One in 10 children there are stunted, in part because of food insecurity imposed by the Israeli blockade.

Over 70 percent of the families in Gaza are refugees, having been ethnically cleansed from southern Israel.

Gaza is not an independent state. Its people are stateless and at the mercy of the Israeli military.

Here are the facts and figures given by the UN Relief and Works Agency:

1.46 million registered refugees out of 1.9 million total population (approximately 73 per cent)

8 refugee camps

22 health centres

16 relief and social services offices

11 food distribution centres for almost one million beneficiaries Figures as of 31 December 2019

Ashkelon, for instance, was the Palestinian town of Majdal, a town of some 9,000 in 1945, mostly Muslim but with some Christians. They were farmers or weavers and Majdal fabrics were famous. Some 8,000 were forced to flee advancing Zionist forces in 1948. Some slipped back in after the Israeli conquest, but in 1950 Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion ordered their expulsion. Some 2,300 were expelled to Gaza, joining townspeople who had already fled there two years before.

Other Palestinians in Gaza come from Beersheva, Ashdod, and other southern towns. Israelis now live in their homes and farm their land, while the Palestinians huddle in refugee camps. About a third of the Gaza population, 600,000, still live in eight refugee camps. Israel ruled Gaza directly 1967-2005 (doing nothing to improve their lives), and since 2005 has kept it as an open air concentration camp.

The Israeli Air Force destroyed the Gaza airport and port. Israel is considered in international law the Occupying power in Gaza, but often takes steps inconsistent with its responsibilities in this regard. At one point in the zeros the Israeli military made a plan to only allow enough food into Gaza to keep the population from becoming malnourished, but nothing more. No chocolate for the children. It was one of the creepiest moments in the history of colonialism.

The unemployment rate in Gaza is 50%, the highest in the world. Half the population depends on food aid. The aquifer is polluted and increasingly salty from rising seas owing to climate change, so truly clean water is available to only about 5 percent of the population. Israel has several water purification plants. The Palestinians of Gaza do not.

There is no equivalence between Israel and Gaza. Israel has the best-equipped military in the Middle East and has several hundred nuclear bombs, Its gross domestic product (nominal) per capita is on the order of $42,000 per year.

The nominal GDP per capita in Palestine is $3000, and those who live in Gaza earn less yet.

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Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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On Saturday afternoon, the al-Jalaa Tower in Gaza City, which housed a number of media offices used by outlets including Middle East Eye, was bombed by the Israeli air force. 

Shortly before the strike, Al Jazeera aired a phone call between the owner of al-Jalaa and an Israeli intelligence officer. The owner, named by Al Jazeera as Abu Hossam, asked to be given more time to evacuate equipment from the offices.

The intelligence officer declined his request. Occupants of the building were given a one-hour notice before the air strike took place. (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

Journalists search through the rubble of al-Jalaa Tower in Gaza city on Saturday after it was destroyed by an Israeli air strike.

The 12-storey building contained 60 residential units, with a number of offices for international media including Al Jazeera and the Associated Press, as well as Arab and local press.

In a statement, the Israeli army said it had struck the building becuase it housed “entities belonging to the military intelligence of the terrorist organization Hamas” without elaborating. (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

Journalists gather near the rubble of al-Jalaa Tower after an Israeli bombardment on Saturday.

Mohammed al-Hajjar, a photojournalist for MEE, was among those who left the building. He said the evacuation was a scene of panic and chaos as people rushed to take whatever they could and get out as quickly as they could.

He later returned to the site to inspect the wreckage: “There’s nothing left but our memories.” (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

A media worker gathers what he can find of his belongings amid the rubble of  al-Jalaa Tower in Gaza city, after it was destroyed in an Israeli air strike on 15 May 2021.

Middle East Eye has released a statement condemning Saturday’s attack:

“Bombing the offices of journalists providing eye-witness accounts of what is happening on the ground is not an act of self-defence.

Targeting journalists by attempting to prevent them from reporting what is going on is not the act of a self-declared democracy which claims to be the unique champion of freedom of information in the Middle East.” (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

Journalists search through the rubble of what used to be their workspace in al-Jalaa Tower in Gaza city, which was destroyed in an Israeli air strike on 15 May 2021. 

In a statement released on Twitter, the White House said it had communicated to Israel that “ensuring the safety and security of journalists and independent media is a paramount responsibility.”

Health officials in the enclave said Israeli air and artillery strikes since Monday have killed 139 people including 39 children in Gaza while more than 1,000 have been wounded. (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

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“This is truly a massacre that cannot be described,” said Dr. Al Reesh at the al-Shifa Hospital which received the bodies of 10 Palestinians killed, including eight children, and 15 people wounded by an Israeli air raid on the Shati Refugee Camp in the Gaza strip in the hours of Friday night and Saturday morning.  Among the dead were visiting relatives of a family on the second day of the Al-Fitr holiday. 

Shati is the third largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight refugee camps and one of the most crowded, with more than 85,000 refugees, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

The crisis began Monday, following days of protests against the forced expulsion of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Israeli security forces brutally crackdown on the peaceful protests, and further inflamed tensions with a raid on the Al-Aqsa mosque, preventing prayers in the holy month of Ramadan. This unprovoked Israeli aggression led to Hamas firing rockets at Israel.

The Israeli bombardment of Gaza has killed at least 139 Palestinians, including 40 children, and wounded more than 920 since Monday. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank began protesting at security checkpoints in solidarity with their countrymen in Gaza under siege. Israeli forces have killed at least 13 in the West Bank while Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship rose in protests in mixed cities such as Lod, where Jews attacked their Palestinian neighbors and damaged homes and businesses.

To better understand the current crisis, and the underlying root causes, Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse reached out to Jafar Ramini, a Palestinian writer and political analyst and activist born in May 1943 in Jenin, northern Palestine. He was educated at Jenin local secondary school and then completed his education in London where he has resided for the past 53 years. In January 2021 he moved to Perth, Western Australia. Jafar lectures, and writes, and appears regularly on various international TV networks explaining both the history and modern-day politics of the Palestinian NAKBA.  At 78 years old he is still as passionate and as vocal as he has always been and has traveled extensively through Europe, the Middle East, and North America looking for the answer to a question that still eludes him.  Why have successive US Administrations since Harry Truman, supported Israel and its land-grabbing theft and ethnic cleansing of Palestine so blind-folded? And why do the UK, Canada, and Australia follow their lead without question? It would seem, says Jafar that we look at a country and a people with no moral compass and no sense of justice or fair play.

Steven Sahiounie (SS):  What is your opinion of the report by Human Rights Watch labeling “Israel” as an Apartheid state?

Jafar Ramini (JR):  Of course I support the Human Rights Watch declaration that Israel is an Apartheid state.  It is about time it was recognized as such having been practicing Apartheid, albeit undercover, since the inception of the Zionist state.  Now with the Nation-State Bill passed into law on1 May 2018 declaring that only Jews in Israel have the right to self-determination it is an unapologetic, unashamed admission of Apartheid as you could get. Israeli Arabs may have, so far, the right to vote but their vote is of little consequence and in all other matters they are second or even third-class citizens in Israel. As for the West Bank, occupied since the six-day war of June 1967 with citizens having no rights of any kind and for Gaza, continually under siege and especially now with this latest savage bombardment the Palestinian people have been described by Bishop Desmond Tutu under a worse version of Apartheid than South Africa in the 60s and 70s.

SS:  The war between the Palestinian resistance and the Israeli occupation is escalating, do you think other resistance groups will interfere?

JR:  It depends on what you mean by other resistance groups.  All the resistance factions in Gaza are engaged and I hope that they are tightly coordinating their efforts.  Other resistance groups in the area might get involved if they feel that their interests will be served.

SS:   US President Biden seems to not want to be involved in the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict. In your opinion will he be forced to get involved?

JR:  No President can afford to be uninvolved, at least on the Israeli side. AIPAC is watching and pushing. Mr. Biden’s credentials and those of his Vice-President, Ms. Kamala Harris is very steeped in Zionism and supporting Israel.  He is the one who in the 1980s bluntly declared that the three billion dollars in annual aid the US gives Israel is the best investment for America.  Had Israel not existed, he said, we would have invented it. Need I say more?

SS:   While President Trump was in office several Arab countries normalized their relationship with Israel.  In your opinion, after the latest escalation and the success of the Palestinian resistance do you think that the Arab people will realize that Israel is the enemy?

JR:  The leaders of those so-called Arab countries are the ones who were coerced by Trump and his son-in-law, Kushner to normalize with Israel.  The Arab people as a whole would never consider this.  I give you two obvious examples: When Sadat of Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 the people of Egypt never accepted it.  The same goes for the people of Jordan, when King Hussein signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, the Wadi Araba Jordanians never accepted it either. The same goes for us Palestinians in regards to the Oslo Accords.

SS:   In the current conflict in Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank are all united in their resistance to occupation. Will this bring about Unity among various Palestinian movements?

JR:  Unity amongst all Palestinian people of all persuasions has been what I dreamt of and fought for all my life.  The divisions between Fatah and Hamas for the last fourteen years have brought the Palestinian Cause nothing but damage.  After this latest savage attack by Israel on all aspects of Palestinian society, I dearly hope that this might bring them all together to face our common enemy. Unity is the only answer.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

Featured image: Photo of Jafaar Ramini Palestinian political analyst and journalist (Source: Mideast Discourse)

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As Israel continues to pummel the Palestinian people with bombs and artillery shot into Gaza from troops amassed along its borders in preparation for a ground invasion, the Biden administration has reaffirmed its unwavering support for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinians.

Israel could not commit its crimes without the overwhelming support of the U.S. government. U.S. officials are aiding and abetting Israel’s crimes with massive military aid and scotching any criticism of Israel in the UN Security Council.

President Joe Biden said he didn’t think Israel’s attack on Gaza has been a “significant overreaction.” He expressed his “unwavering support” for Israel’s“right to defend itself” from rocket attacks from Gaza, but he did not condemn Israel’s airstrikes that are killing Palestinian civilians and destroying residential buildings, or the Israeli attacks on worshippers at the Al Aqsa Mosque.

“Blanket statements like these with little context or acknowledgement of what precipitated this cycle of violence — namely, the expulsions of Palestinians and attacks on Al Aqsa — dehumanize Palestinians & imply the U.S. will look the other way at human rights violations,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) tweeted, and said Biden was giving Israel a “green light” to continue its onslaught.

“By only stepping in to name Hamas’ actions — which are condemnable — and refusing to acknowledge the rights of Palestinians, Biden reinforces the false idea that Palestinians instigated this cycle of violence,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “This is not neutral language. It takes a side — the side of occupation.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that there is a “fundamental difference between a terrorist organization in Hamas that is indiscriminately targeting civilians and Israel, which is defending itself.” But as Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, wrote in an email to this writer, claims like Blinken’s obscure the fact that nearly all of Israel’s targets have been civilians. And the vast majority of those killed have been Palestinians. Moreover, as an occupying power, Israel cannot use military force against the occupied Palestinian people because under international law, the occupier has a duty to protect the territory it occupies.

On May 13, Israeli troops bombed the Gaza Strip with artillery, tanks and war planes, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) prepared at least three brigades of troops for action.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who served as chief of general staff for the IDF during Israel’s 2014 massacre of 2,251 Palestinians in Gaza, threatened to commit additional war crimes. Gantz warned that “Gaza will burn” if Israelis have to sleep in shelters.

Hamas has fired rockets into Israel in response to the Israeli attack on worshipers at the holy Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. Seven Israelis have been killed. But 120 Palestinians have been killed and 900 people wounded, according to Palestinian health officials.

“This is the worst I witnessed in my life,” Sourani wrote in his email. “No safe haven in Gaza, so bloody and brutal; all the targets, almost are civilians, the most intention to exert pressure on resistance.” Sourani added:

They are terrorizing the two million in Gaza day and night, the peak this morning. We did not believe we will see the sunshine again. Everything is shaking in the house including our bodies. They destroyed the civilian police stations and headquarters, internal security, infrastructure, big building towers, etc. None of these, to the best of our knowledge, has any security significance.

The International Criminal Court Is Investigating Israeli War Crimes in 2014

On March 3, 2021, Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), announced that her office was launching a formal investigation into war crimes committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since Israel’s 2014 “Operation Protective Edge,” in which Israeli forces killed 2,251 Palestinians.

Bensouda found a reasonable basis to believe that Israeli forces committed the war crimes of willful killing, willfully causing serious injury, disproportionate use of force, and the transfer of Israelis into Palestinian territory. She also found a reasonable basis to investigate possible war crimes by Palestinians, including intentional attacks against civilians, using civilians as human shields, and torture and willful killing.

Seven years after Operation Protective Edge, Israeli officials are once again committing war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories. In its current “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” Israeli leaders areperpetrating the same war crimes as those they committed in 2014.

Israeli Apartheid Is a Crime Against Humanity

Under the ICC’s Rome Statute, “inhumane acts committed in the context of an institutional regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another racial group, with the intent to maintain that regime” constitutes the crime against humanity of apartheid.

In 2001, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) sent a delegation to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories and subsequently published a report documenting a system of apartheid.

Richard Falk, former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories and professor emeritus at Princeton University, and Virginia Tilley, professor of political science at Southern Illinois University, co-authored a report for the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia in 2017. It found “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians constitutes “the crime of Apartheid.”

In January 2021, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem issued a report titled, “A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This Is Apartheid.”

Like B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch had long resisted charging that Israeli leaders were committing the crime of apartheid. But on April 27, Human Rights Watch issued a detailed report describing Israel’s “intent to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” including East Jerusalem. The report added that this Israeli government intent “has been coupled with systematic oppression of Palestinians and inhumane acts committed against them. When these three elements occur together, they amount to the crime of apartheid.”

Palestinians Have a Lawful Right to Resist Israeli Occupation

Under international law, the Palestinians have a lawful right to resist Israel’s occupation of their lands, including through armed struggle. In 1982, the UN General Assembly “reaffirmed the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”

The Biden administration is claiming that Israel is acting in self-defense against the Hamas rockets, but under international law, Israel, as an occupying force, does not have the right to use military force in self-defense against its occupied territory.

Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and associate professor at Rutgers University, wrote in Jadaliyya, “A state cannot simultaneously exercise control over territory it occupies and militarily attack that territory on the claim that it is ‘foreign’ and poses an exogenous national security threat. In doing precisely that, Israel is asserting rights that may be consistent with colonial domination but simply do not exist under international law.”

As Falk said in an interview with Truthout, “It is always deceptive to treat the oppressor and the oppressed as if equal.” In the current situation, he added, “the oppressor acts contrary to applicable international law and elementary morality while the oppressed is countering by exercising rights of resistance and suffering the deprivation of basic rights. Of course,” Falk added, “the tactics of resistance should be scrutinized by reference to legal and moral constraints, but without losing sight of overwhelming structures of dominance and the far greater harm done bystate violence than by the violence of resistance.”

Yet the Biden administration maintains a false equivalency between Palestinian rockets and Israeli bombs.

The Biden Administration Is Aiding and Abetting Israeli Crimes

An individual can be convicted of a war crime or a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute if he or she “aids, abets or otherwise assists” in the commission or attempted commission of the crime, “including providing the means for its commission.”

The U.S. government gives Israel $3.8 billion in military aid annually. Israel could not maintain its occupation of Palestinian lands and persecution of the Palestinian people without U.S. assistance.

Moreover, the United States regularly prevents the UN Security Council from issuing resolutions or statements that criticize Israel. The U.S. was the only country on the Security Council to oppose a statement urging Israel to prevent the evictions of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The proposed statement, endorsed by 14 of the 15 Council members, called on Israel “to cease settlement activities, demolitions and evictions, including in east Jerusalem in line with its obligations under international humanitarian law” and refrain from taking unilateral actions “that exacerbate tensions and undermine the viability of the two-state solution.”

Between 1967 and 2017, the United States used its veto in the Security Council 43 times to protect Israel from international accountability.

End U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Countries that receive U.S. military aid can only use weapons for legitimate self-defense and internal security, according to the Arms Export Control Act. In addition, the Leahy Law forbids military units that commit human rights abuses from receiving U.S. weapons or training.Moreover, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits U.S. assistance to any country “which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” U.S. military aid to Israel violates all three of these laws.

There is growing opposition in Congress to U.S. funding of Israeli violence and human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin) tweeted,

“We cannot just condemn rockets fired by Hamas and ignore Israel’s state-sanctioned police violence against Palestinians — including unlawful evictions, violent attacks on protestors, and the murder of Palestinian children.” Pocan added, “U.S. aid should not be funding this violence.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress, tweeted,

“American taxpayer money is being used to commit human rights violations,” adding, “Congress must condition the aid we send to Israel, and end it altogether if those conditions are not followed. Statements aren’t working, Blinken. Enough is enough.”

Twenty-three members of Congress joined Representatives Marie Newman (D-Illinois) and Pocan in signing a letter urging the Biden administration to pressure Israeli leaders to “desist from its plans to demolish Palestinian homes in Al-Bustan and evict Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah,” two neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

On April 13, Rep. Betty McCollum introduced H.R. 2590,

“To promote and protect the human rights of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and to ensure that United States taxpayer funds are not used by the Government of Israel to support the military detention of Palestinian children, the unlawful seizure, appropriation, and destruction of Palestinian property and forcible transfer of civilians in the West Bank, or further annexation of Palestinian land in violation of international law.”

The National Lawyers Guild issued a statement in solidarity with the Palestinian people. It notes that May 15 is the 73–year anniversary of the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe.“In 1948, the Zionist settler colonial movement with the support of imperialist powers established the state of Israel through the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, waged through massacres and the destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages,” the statement reads. “This colonial project continues today as we are witnessing the forced expulsion of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem by armed settlers, indiscriminate violence against Palestinian protestors, attacks on Palestinian holy sites, and the ongoing devastating closure and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza.”

As Israel continues its assault on Gaza, congressional disapproval and international opposition will increase. Those who oppose Israeli war crimes should pressure their congressmembers and the White House to halt U.S. military assistance to Israel and stop blocking UN Security Council action to end Israel’s human rights violations.

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. 

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At this point, there is no hope for peace in the Middle East, I know it sounds pessimistic but it’s fair to say that a new war has officially begun.  Israel’s aggressive behavior against the Palestinians, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Syria and of course, Iran has increased over the years.  The US embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was the straw that broke the camels’ back for the Palestinians because it was a step towards Israel’s expanded control in one of the world’s oldest and holiest cities for Arabs, Christians and Jews alike.  Israel’s vision for hegemonic power in the center of the Arab world is written in Oded Yinon’s ‘The Zionist Plan for the Middle East’ which describes the long-term goal of Israel expanding beyond its borders deep into Arab territories. 

This current situation is the result of what Theodore Hertzl (the father of Zionism) who had envisioned a country for the Jewish people.  He said that “the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” Rabbi Fischmann  reiterated what Hertzl had dreamed of also said that “the Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”  The Yinon plan makes it clear on what Israel’s main objective is and it is disturbing:

The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation. 

This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme. This theme has been documented on a very modest scale in the AAUG publication, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism (1980), by Livia Rokach. Based on the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former Prime Minister of Israel, Rokach’s study documents, in convincing detail, the Zionist plan as it applies to Lebanon and as it was prepared in the mid-fifties

Israel’s expansion into Palestinian territories is part of that plan and the Palestinians understand this very well.  The US under the Biden regime like every American regime before it will support its closest ally in the Middle East and that is Israel.  There is one important group of people worth mentioning and that is the 50 million plus American Christian Zionists who support Israel because they believe that the chosen people of God shall return to the Holy Land.  According to the Christian Zionists, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 follows prophesies from the Holy Bible, therefore some Christians believe that Jews uniting in Israel will bring about the second coming of Jesus Christ.  With that type of support coming from the bible belt in America and Washington’s political establishment who are all in the pockets of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) allows Israel to continue its aggressive behavior towards their Arab neighbors.

It is also possible to consider the fact that within Israel’s circle of power, economists and political scientists have been sounding the alarm of a US economic collapse that won’t be able to support Israel’s future financially and militarily and that is a harsh reality that the Israelis do not want to face anytime soon, therefore, time is short for Israel. So they will continue to bomb the Palestinians and that will eventually lead into an expanded war against Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Syria. In the meantime, Israel will continue its war against the Gaza strip because they want the Palestinians to suffer the consequences of resisting occupying forces on their own land. The Israelis want Gaza, the West Bank and other areas to be totally destroyed in an effort to force the Palestinians into exile.

This new war will lead into something catastrophic for the world in the foreseeable future, it’s inevitable.  I hate to be pessimistic, but the reality is that war is already here, and it will be brutal.  The world needs to speak out against this injustice and stop this escalating war in Gaza from becoming a world war that can spin out of control.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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With Jerusalem ablaze and Gaza on the brink of another major Israeli onslaught, it has been easy to overlook the rapidly escalating ethnic violence inside Israel, where one in five of the population is Palestinian.

These 1.8 million Palestinians – Israeli citizens in little more than name – have spent the past week venting their frustration and anger at decades of Israeli oppression directed at their own communities inside Israel, as well as at Palestinians under more visible occupation.

Already the protests, which have been sweeping Palestinian communities inside Israel, have been greeted with a savage backlash – a combination of official violence from Israeli police and vigilante-style violence from far-right Jewish gangs.

Israeli politicians have been warning noisily of “Arab pogroms” against the Jewish population. But with the rising influence of the openly fascist far-right in Israel – many of them armed settlers, some with ties to military units – there is a much greater danger of pogroms against the Palestinian minority.

Israel’s Palestinian citizens have been at the heart of the wave of protests in occupied East Jerusalem that began a month ago, at the start of Ramadan. With the aid of their Israeli ID cards and relative freedom of movement, many travelled to East Jerusalem in organised bus convoys. They bolstered numbers in the demonstrations at Sheikh Jarrah, where many Palestinian families are facing expulsion from their homes by Jewish settlers, backed by the Israeli state. They also participated in the defence of al-Aqsa Mosque.

But last weekend, as social media was flooded with clips of police storming al-Aqsa and of Jewish extremists excitedly cheering a fire near the mosque, protests erupted inside Israel too. There have been nightly demonstrations in larger Palestinian towns, including Nazareth, Kafr Kanna, Kafr Manda, Umm al-Fahm, Shefa-Amr and Beersheva. Police have responded in familiar fashion, firing stun grenades into the crowds and smothering them with tear gas. There have been large numbers of arrests.

Boiling point

Some of the most violent clashes, however, have been taking place elsewhere, in communities misleadingly described by Israel as “mixed cities”. Israel has traditionally presented these cities – Lod (Lydd), Ramle, Jaffa, Haifa and Acre (Akka) – as examples of “Jewish-Arab coexistence”. The reality is very different.

In each, Palestinian citizens live on the margins of a former Palestinian city that was ethnically cleansed upon Israel’s founding in 1948 and has been aggressively “Judaised” ever since.

Palestinian residents of these cities have to deal daily with the racism of many of their Jewish neighbours, and they face glaring institutional discrimination in planning rules designed to push them out and help Jews – often members of the settler movement or extremist religious students – take their place. All of this occurs as they are tightly policed to protect Jewish residents’ rights at their expense.

Resentment and anger have been building steadily for years, and now seem to have reached a boiling point. And because the “mixed cities” are among the few places in Israel where Jewish and Palestinian citizens live in relatively close proximity – most other communities have been strictly segregated by Israel – the potential for inter-communal violence is especially high.

The roots of what some still view as a potential new intifada, or Palestinian uprising, risk being smothered in areas of Israel. The more the Palestinian minority protests against the structural discrimination it faces, the more it risks inflaming the passions of the Jewish far-right.

These Jewish fascists are riding high after their parties won six parliamentary seats in Israel’s March election. They are seen as integral to any coalition government that caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may put together.

Driving Palestinians out

For years, the settler right has been trying to drive remaining Palestinian families out of the “mixed cities”, especially those in the centre of the country, next to Tel Aviv. They have received state help to set up extremist religious seminaries in the midst of Palestinian neighbourhoods.

Now under cover of protests, the far-right has the chance to up the stakes. Its newest legislator, Itamar Ben Gvir, has claimed, fancifully, that police are being prevented from dealing with the protests firmly enough. The barely coded message is that the far right needs to take the law into its own hands.

More surprisingly, Ben Gvir was echoed by the government’s police minister, Amir Ohana, who called on “citizens carrying weapons” to work on the authorities’ behalf by “immediately neutralising threats and danger”. Social media has also been awash with calls from activists to arm themselves and attack Palestinian communities in Israel.

On Wednesday, the results of the incitement were all too evident. Jewish gangs, many of them masked, smashed and looted Arab-owned shops and food stalls south of Tel Aviv. Hundreds of onlookers were filmed by an Israeli TV crew watching as a driver was dragged from his car and severely beaten. Though the rampage had been going on for much of the evening, police were nowhere in sight.

Palestinian residents of mixed cities have been hurriedly organising defence patrols in their neighbourhoods. But with many members of the Jewish far right licensed to carry firearms, the reality is that Palestinian communities have few ways to protect themselves effectively.

Some of the worst scenes have emerged from Lod, where local Palestinians live in a few ghettoised neighbourhoods stranded in the midst of what is now effectively a Jewish city next to Tel Aviv.

‘Iron fist’

Confrontations on Monday led to an armed Jewish resident fatally shooting a Palestinian father-of-three, Musa Hasuna. The next day, his funeral escalated into a riot after police tried to block the mourners’ route, with the torching of cars and visible symbols of the Jewish takeover of central Lod, including a synagogue.

On a visit to the city, Netanyahu denounced the events as “anarchy” and warned that Israel would use an “iron fist if necessary”.

On Wednesday night, a curfew was imposed on the city, and under a state of emergency, control passed from the local council to police. Netanyahu said he had been working to overcome legal obstacles to give police even greater powers.

Echoing Netanyahu and the Jewish fascist parties, Israeli Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai argued that the explosion of Palestinian unrest had been caused by police being “too soft”.

Over the past few days, there have been tit-for-tat violent attacks on both Jewish and Palestinian citizens, with beatings, stabbings and shootings that have left many dozens injured. But claims of an imminent “civil war” in places such as Lod, as its Jewish mayor characterised the situation this week, fundamentally misrepresent the dynamics at play and the balance of power.

Even if they wanted to, Palestinian communities have no hope of taking on heavily armed security forces and Jewish militias.

Eruption of anger

What the state is doing in Lod and other communities – through the police and proxy settler allies – is teaching a new generation of Palestinian citizens a lesson in Jewish-state civics: you will pay a deeply painful price for demanding the rights we pretend to the world you already have.

Certainly, Netanyahu seems to have no real commitment to calming the situation, especially as violence between Jewish and Palestinian citizens takes his corruption trial off the front pages. It also feeds a right-wing narrative that is likely to serve him well if, as expected, Israel heads back to yet another general election in a few months’ time.

But other Israeli officials are stoking the flames, too – including President Reuven Rivlin, who unlike Netanyahu, is supposed to be a unifying figure. He denounced Palestinian citizens as a “bloodthirsty Arab mob” and, in an inversion of the rapidly emerging reality, accused them of conducting what he called a “pogrom” in Lod.

For decades, Israel has tried to cultivate the improbable notion for western audiences that its Palestinian citizens – restyled as “Israeli Arabs” – live happily as equals with Jews in “the only democracy in the Middle East”.

Israel has carefully obscured the minority’s history as Palestinians – clinging on to their lands during Israel’s mass ethnic cleansing operations in 1948 – as it has the systematic discrimination they face in a self-declared Jewish state.

As a consequence, the eruption of anger in Palestinian communities inside Israel is always difficult for Israel to manage narratively.

Treated as an ‘enemy’

Since the grip of a military government was loosened in the late 1960s, the Palestinian minority has staged constant protests. But massive, nationwide street demonstrations have erupted only once every generation – and they are always brutally crushed by Israeli forces.

Badly bloodied, Palestinian citizens have been forced to retreat into unhappy, and temporary, quiescence.

The Palestinian minority has long suffered a doubly discriminatory approach from Israeli security forces. On one hand, police have shirked a normal civilian policing role in Palestinian communities in Israel. That has allowed criminal elements to flourish in the vacuum created by this neglect. Murders and shootings are at an all-time high.

On the other hand, police are quick to crack down when Palestinian citizens engage in political dissent. The current arrests and police violence are part of a familiar pattern.

Many of the factors that brought Palestinians out into the streets in 2000 have not gone away. Violent, politically repressive policing has continued. House demolitions and racist planning policies still mean that Palestinian communities are chronically overcrowded and suffocated. Incitement from Jewish politicians is still the norm. And Palestinian leaders in Israel continue to be excluded from the government and Israel’s main institutions.

Permanent underclass

But in recent years, matters have deteriorated even further. The passage of the 2018 nation-state law means the minority’s legal position is formally worse. The law has explicitly relegated Palestinian citizens to a permanent underclass – not really citizens at all, but unwelcome guest workers in a Jewish state.

Further, the ascendant Jewish far-right has a mounting grievance against the Palestinian minority for standing in the way of its securing a solid electoral majority in a run of elections over the past two years. The success of Palestinian parties is seen as effectively blocking Netanyahu from heading a stable coalition of the ultra-nationalist right.

And, with a two-state solution firmly off the table for all of Israel’s Jewish parties, Palestinian citizens are staring at a political and diplomatic cul-de-sac. They have no hope of emerging from under the shadow of an Israeli security paradigm that readily views them as a fifth column, or a Palestinian Trojan horse inside a Jewish state.

It is that very paradigm that is currently being used against them – and justifying police and settler violence in places such as Lod, Jaffa and Acre.

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Covid cases have risen sharply in nearly every country that has launched a mass vaccination campaign.

Please watch this short video before You Tube removes it.

Why is this happening?

Mass vaccination was supposed to reduce the threat of Covid but– in the short-term– it appears to make it much worse. Why? And why is Covid now “surging in 4 of 5 the most vaccinated countries”? According to Forbes magazine:

“Countries with the world’s highest vaccination rates—including four of the top five most vaccinated—are fighting to contain coronavirus outbreaks that are, on a per-capita basis, higher than the surge devastating India, a trend that has experts questioning the efficacy of some vaccines … and the wisdom of easing restrictions even with most of the population vaccinated.” (Covid Surges…Here’s why the US should Worry”, Forbes)

Worse than India? How can that be? And why have 8 “fully vaccinated” members of the New York Yankees tested positive for Covid? Here’s the story from the Associated Press:

“New York Yankees shortstop Gleyber Torres tested positive for Covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated and having previously contracted the coronavirus during the offseason. Torres is among eight so-called breakthrough positives among the Yankees — people who tested positive despite being fully vaccinated.” (NBC News)

And if that’s not confusing enough, check out what’s going on in Cambodia. Cambodia began its vaccination campaign in early February after having compiled zero fatalities. That’s right, the country had no Covid deaths until March, a few weeks after it started its vaccination program. And that’s when the deaths started piling up as you can see in the eye-popping chart below.

chart from Joel Smalley Twitter

So, let’s see if we can figure this out. There were zero fatalities before the launching of the vaccination campaign, but soon after the injections began, the fatalities started to mount. Do you think there might be a connection here? Do you think that, perhaps, the deaths are linked to the vaccines?

Of course, they are. And, that’s why the media is trying to sweep this story under the rug. It doesn’t fit with the “official narrative” about the vaccines, so they’ve decided to “vanish” the story altogether. “Poof” and it’s gone! And, actually, it’s worse than a cover-up because– shortly after Biden took office– the CDC changed its testing methodology making it harder to test positive. In other words, they rigged the system so it would look like fewer “fully vaccinated” people had contracted Covid after inoculation. Dr. Joseph Mercola explains what’s going on behind the scenes:

“Now, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has lowered the CT even further, in what appears to be a clear effort to hide COVID-19 breakthrough cases, meaning cases in which fully vaccinated individuals are being diagnosed with COVID-19.” (“CDC embarks on a new Covid Coverup”, Mercola. com)

It’s all a big shell game. They’re gaming the system to make it look like the vaccines are stopping infection when the evidence proves the opposite. And notice the deliberately-misleading moniker the media invented for the people who get Covid after being vaccinated. They call them “Breakthrough cases”.

“Breakthrough”? Really?

If cases surge in nearly every country that launches a mass vaccination campaign, then there’s nothing “breakthrough” about it. It’s the predictable result of a failed experiment. Here’s more from an article titled: “Covid rates post-vaccination around the world:

“… the government assumed that if ‘you vaccinate lots of people and the problem goes away’, but the questioners among us did not assume that. Especially having read the FDA Briefing Document for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for example, many of us had questions after reading it; on Page 42, it states:

“Suspected COVID-19 cases that occurred within 7 days after any vaccination were 409 in the vaccination group vs 287 in the placebo group. It is possible that the imbalance in suspected COVID-19 cases occurring in the 7 days post-vaccination represents vaccine reactogenicity with symptoms that overlap with those of COVID-19. Overall though, these data do not raise a concern that protocol-specified reporting of suspected, but unconfirmed COVID-19 cases could have masked clinically significant adverse events that would not have otherwise been detected.” (“Covid rates post-vaccination around the world”, Inform Scotland)

WTF!?!

So, the FDA KNEW that vaccinated people were more likely to contract Covid than those in the placebo group, but they approved the vaccines anyway?!? Is that criminal negligence or just plain old stupidity?

Please. read the above paragraph again and decide whether you would have given these sketchy injections the “green light” or not? Here’s more from the same article:

“The following show data from around the world from some selected locations. It is, of course, vital to stress that correlation is not causation. And that there are countries where vaccine rollout does not precede or coincide with increased infections. However, I have been unable to find any nation where covid rates have begun to drop after vaccination started, or where a drop coincided with vaccination starting. In Indonesia, for example, the covid rate was falling when vaccination started and seems to have been unaffected in its trajectory by the vaccine being rolled out. The reader can look up these charts for him/herself on the website. Have a look at these and see what you make of them.” (“Covid rates post-vaccination around the world”, Inform Scotland)

Okay, so the author is trying to put the most charitable spin on vaccine performance as possible. He says, “correlation is not causation”, which means, ‘Don’t trust your eyes when you look at the charts’ because– if you do– you’ll draw the obvious conclusion that the vaccines greatly increase your chances of getting Covid in the few weeks afterwards.’ The charts will also convince you that Fauci, Biden and the media have been lying through their teeth about the effectiveness of the vaccines. (Please, check out the charts in the article and judge for yourself.) Here’s more:

“What is very clear looking at data worldwide, is that vaccinations are certainly not associated with a reliable fall in covid cases in any predictable timeframe. This, alongside the observations in the trial, surely must be addressed. What is happening here? Is it just that vaccinations are coincidentally being rolled out at the same time as outbreaks are due? In very many places? Or is the vaccine not working immediately? If not, why not? … Or is the vaccine making people more susceptible to infection? If this is the case … is this a temporary effect? What causes it? … How long does it take for any increased susceptibility to diminish?”…We are told that everyone must be vaccinated (but) How can free informed consent be given under these conditions?” (“Covid-rates Post Vaccination around the World”, Inform Scotland)

These are all good questions, unfortunately, Dr. Fauci and Co. don’t plan to answer any of them. Instead, their allies in the media are doing everything they can to disappear the story and deflect attention to the elusive ‘variants’, which is the diversion du jour. Am I being too harsh?

Maybe, but maybe not harsh enough. Take a look at this clip from a piece at Conservative Woman titled “Every reason to doubt the vaccine makers’ reassurances”:

“I have reported previously on an astonishing spike in deaths that occurred alongside an intensive vaccination campaign in Gibraltar, where the small community consequently developed the highest Covid death rate in the world. We also know that thousands of deaths have been seen in the US, EU and UK in the wake of Covid vaccinations, often immediately after the jab has been administered.

The manufacturers, leading medical journals and most governments insist these deaths are unrelated to the vaccine. In many instances, the deaths and serious illness have been attributed to coincidental infection with the virus. But evidence is mounting that for some, especially the weak and elderly, the vaccine itself is creating or worsening the very illness against which it is supposed to be protective….

“…a worrying phenomenon which appears consistently in Covid vaccine studies is a spike in purported ‘infections’ which occurs precisely during that three-week period, and usually immediately following the jab...The researchers raise the possibility that the jab may trigger ‘symptoms likened to Covid-19 symptoms including fever’ in those recently exposed to the virus... He suggests the mechanism may be a depression in immunity caused by a loss of white blood cells post-jab, observed in both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca trials, making the vaccinees more vulnerable to the virus in the short term.” (“Every reason to doubt the vaccine makers’ reassurances“, Conservative Woman)

Okay, so the author arrives at the same conclusion as the previous author; maybe the vaccine makes people more susceptible to the virus by lowering their defenses and, thus, inviting infection. That’s certainly one possibility, but there are other possibilities that could be infinitely more serious. Take a look:

“It has not been generally acknowledged that the jab is designed to protect us by provoking our cells into producing the very toxin that makes the virus more dangerous than its predecessors in the coronavirus family. This toxin, known as the spike protein, can damage not just the lungs but may also affect organs such the brain, heart and kidneys.

The reasoning behind administering the jab is that temporary exposure to the toxin may provide long-term protection against becoming ill from the virus. Early indications are that this strategy is working, although it is not at all certain yet to what extent the fall-off in infection rates seen in intensely vaccinated populations is seasonal and related to the waves of infection, or if it is a lasting benefit.

But there is also a very real possibility, supported by animal experiments as well as by the studies cited above, that the vaccine itself may produce symptoms in vulnerable people which are then attributed to Covid-19. The damage to health may be especially severe in an individual who has been recently or is concurrently infected with the actual virus.

There is therefore every reason to doubt the manufacturers’ assurances that the deaths and injuries seen to be accompanying vaccination, and that in some instances look like and are being attributed to Covid-19, are unrelated to the jabs. The situation is serious enough for some doctors and scientists to be calling for a moratorium on further Covid vaccinations until it has been properly investigated.” (“Every reason to doubt the vaccine makers’ reassurances“, Conservative Woman)

So, it could be, that something in the vaccine itself is killing people. That is one distinct possibility. Sure, the drug companies and public health officials dismiss the idea with a wave of the hand, but medical professionals and scientists think the danger is significant enough to demand that the mass-vaccination program be temporarily terminated.

Some readers will recall that the Salk Institute recently released a study which showed that SARS-CoV-2’s “distinctive ‘spike’ protein”.. “damages cells, confirming COVID-19 as a primarily vascular disease.” Here’s an excerpt from the article dated April 30, 2021:

“In the new study, the researchers created a “pseudovirus” that was surrounded by SARS-CoV-2 classic crown of spike proteins, but did not contain any actual virus. Exposure to this pseudovirus resulted in damage to the lungs and arteries of an animal model—proving that the spike protein alone was enough to cause disease. Tissue samples showed inflammation in endothelial cells lining the pulmonary artery walls. (Note– “Vascular endothelial cells line the entire circulatory system, from the heart to the smallest capillaries.”)

The team then replicated this process in the lab, exposing healthy endothelial cells (which line arteries) to the spike protein. They showed that the spike protein damaged the cells by binding ACE2. This binding disrupted ACE2’s molecular signaling to mitochondria (organelles that generate energy for cells), causing the mitochondria to become damaged and fragmented.

Previous studies have shown a similar effect when cells were exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but this is the first study to show that the damage occurs when cells are exposed to the spike protein on its own.” (“The novel coronavirus’ spike protein plays additional key role in illness”, Salk.edu)

The significance of this report cannot be overstated. The Salk researchers are confirming that the main damage from Covid is caused by the spike protein not the virus. And, if that’s the case, then why are we injecting people with vaccines that teach their cells to make spike proteins?

It makes no sense at all.

And how does this effect our understanding of the phenomenon that we’ve seen in countries around the world, that is, the sharp rise in cases following mass vaccination?

Allow me to offer a plausible, but as-yet unproven explanation:

The sharp rise in cases and deaths following mass vaccination is NOT related to Covid “the respiratory illness”, but Covid “the vascular disease”. The vascular component is mainly the result of spike proteins produced by cells in the lining of the blood vessels (Endothilium) that are activating platelets that cause blood clots and bleeding. The other main factor is autoimmune reaction in which the killer lymphocytes attack one’s own body triggering widespread inflammation (and potential organ failure.). In short, the post-injection fatalities are caused by the spike proteins produced by the vaccines and not by Covid. Once again, look at the chart of Cambodia. There were no deaths prior to vaccination. All the deaths came afterwards. That suggests that the fatalities are attributable to the vaccines.

One final thought: 118 million Americans have now been injected with a clot-generating spike protein. At present, no one seems to know of how long these potentially-lethal proteins remain trapped in the lining of the blood vessels or what damage they might eventually do. Keeping that in mind, wouldn’t this be a good time to exercise a bit of caution? Now that cases have dropped sharply across the country, why not ease up on the vaccinations until we have a better grasp of the long-term risks? That would be the sensible approach, right? Just postpone further injections until product safety can be assured.

If there was ever a time for caution, this is it.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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As the head of Infectious Disease and Tropical Medicine at France’s Mediterranean University Hospital and Medical Director of the hospital’s Infection Institute, Dr. Philippe Brouqui is a member of a French team that has successfully treated thousands of covid patients and been attacked for using hydroxychloroquine as part of their early treatment protocol.

Dr. Brouqui also says that young people with no risk of dying from covid should not be vaccinated.

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The vaccine agenda is failing. All vaxx-fanatics have already received their shots in the United States. They make up the one-third of Americans that are “fully-vaccinated” as of today. But the U.S. needs a new strategy for convincing the rest of the population to roll up their sleeves.

A new AP-NORC poll found that 61% of Americans who have not been vaccinated definitely or probably will not volunteer for any of the experimental shots. That is mostly because 1) the shot are dangerous and 2) there are no benefits but lot of risks. Seychelles is reinforcing the fact that these shots have no genuine medical purpose that helps anyone.

The Seychelles is the most vaccinated country in the world, according to Our World in Data. More than 60% of the island nation’s 98,500 residents are fully-vaccinated. But the country closed schools, limited bar hours, and cancelled all sporting events last week after active COVID-19 cases rose from 612 on April 28 to 1,068 on May 3. Most residents received the experimental inactivated virus Sinopharm shots. The rest received AstraZeneca (Covishield) shots. The CDC says American travelers should avoid the country.

Some mainstream media are blaming so-called COVID variants for the situation in the Seychelles. Others are saying the China-made Sinopharm shots are not as effective as the Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca shots. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Chile are among the top five most-vaccinated countries in the world as well. Those countries have also experienced rising COVID-19 cases with Sinopharm as their primary experimental shot.

The United States must prevent COVID-19 surges here, particularly among the so-called fully vaccinated, if it wishes to maintain this COVID-19 agenda. So the CDC is, again, changing its testing and statistical gathering methods.

Breakthrough cases about to disappear

A “fully-vaccinated” person who tests positive for COVID-19 is a “breakthrough case,” according to the CDC. Three Florida counties reported 38 such cases in March. Washington state reported 102 breakthrough cases last month, including two deaths. We covered the story of Mr. Alan Sporn, the Illinois man who died of COVID-19 two months after being fully vaccinated. These cases are happening far more often than we’re hearing about. If the trend continues, even Americans enthusiastic about the shots will start questioning their effectiveness. The CDC can’t allow that to happen.

The agency issued updated guidance on April 30 for testing vaccinated individuals for COVID-19. Breakthrough cases are now only counted in official statistics if the person is hospitalized or dies. The CDC is also lowering the PCR amplification cycle threshold for breakthrough case to 28 or less. Dr. Kary Mullis, who invented the PCR test, made clear that his invention was never intended to test for and diagnose diseases. Further, a vast majority of U.S. COVID-19 positive cases were derived from 40-plus PCR cycles.

Upwards of 90% of U.S. COVID-19 cases are/were false positives due to PCR cycle thresholds above 35. A cycle threshold of 28 for breakthrough cases almost guarantees negative COVID-19 tests for breakthrough subjects. The goal here is to make it look like the experimental mRNA and viral vector shots work in preventing the spread of COVID-19. But all the CDC is doing is utilizing statistical magic to tell the desired story.

Propaganda push to save the lie

So-called breakthrough cases are a major problem in maintaining the COVID-19 agenda. They are particularly affecting the sports world. Three New York Yankees staff members recently tested positive for COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated. Jake Walman, a defenseman for the NHL’s St. Louis Blues also tested positive for COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated.

Propaganda must accelerate to counter these breakthrough revelations, if you will. Critical thinkers already know that these shots have no tangible benefits. But if these breakthrough cases continue happening, the few remaining people leaning towards getting the shots might change their minds. Mainstream media and the CDC can essentially tell any story they want; and much of the population believes it. Breakthrough cases will soon be a thing of the past thanks to statistical manipulation.

It is your responsibility to humanity to share truth, no matter the odds against you. Stay vigilant and protect your friends and loved ones.

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

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

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Thousands of Canadians will be left stranded, and more than 400 workers are left without jobs after Greyhound Canada ceased operations today says the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU).

“This is devastating news for the thousands of Canadians, especially those from indigenous and First Nations communities, who have relied on Greyhound for transportation. Seniors won’t be able to visit their families, students won’t be able to get to school, and many others will be left stranded,” said ATU International President John Costa about the closure. “More than 400 workers including 305 of my brothers and sisters, are now out of a job. This adds insult to injury to these workers and their families already impacted by the pandemic and the Trudeau government and the Progressive Conservative Party MPPs are to blame. They not only failed to provide COVID-19 relief for this hard-hit industry but ignored calls for many years for critical federal funding of Greyhound Canada and the entire struggling intercity bus industry and to stop the ruinous deregulation of intercity bus lines.”

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Greyhound Canada had already suspended their services nationwide in 2020. The company claims the shutdown was due to a lack of federal COVID relief funding and omnibus Bill 213 that proposed deregulation of the intercity bus industry which if implemented as planned on July 1, 2021, will allow anyone to start an intercity bus company, cherry-pick profitable routes while bypassing rural and poor communities, and abolish safety requirements for the industry.

This comes only a few years after Western Greyhound Canada shutdown in 2018, citing a lack of financial sustainability in the face of deregulation and after the government reneged on a promise to provide funding to deal with the crisis.

In the U.S, the ATU secured $2 billion for the motor coach and school bus industries under the Coronavirus Economic Relief for Transportation Services (CERTS) Act. More than 300 Greyhound workers in the U.S. are still laid off or furloughed.

“For many years, Greyhound Canada has been the only form of transportation to connect people living in small towns across Canada with larger cities to provide opportunities for jobs, access to health care and other critical services” Costa continued. “In the U.S., we were able to secure critical relief funding for the motor coach industry that has been devastated by the pandemic and we continue to push for more. We call on the Trudeau government to do the same to save this lifeline and livelihood for thousands of Canadians.”

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“The introduction of that study to India was made on the basis that it was going to be great investment in the health of India and the health of India’s women. But in fact, later on, during the investigation around these alleged ethical violations… the profits that would have been made had the study passed through the trials would have been enormous! I mean, and this is something that Indian people are very aware of .

“The size of their population means that if you can get a mass vaccination program going there, if you can compel people to accept the vaccine, this involves billions and billions and billions if not trillions of dollars!”

– Jo Nash, from this week’s interview

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LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

India. Considering it is the seventh largest country by land mass, the second largest by population, and controls the fifth largest economy in the world, perhaps it does not get the attention it deserves.

But then, on November 26, 2021, 200-250 million people, a sizable chunk of humanity large enough to form the fifth largest country in the world rose up in an act of protest. It arguably marked the single largest uprising in history anywhere on the planet. The action was a reflection of farmers’ anger over new reforms pushed by Prime Minister Modi and his party the BJP. [1]

The three laws in particular passed in September of last year were proposed as a “watershed moment” for the farmers that would give them “easier access to futuristic technology that will boost production and yield better results. This is a welcome step.” But tens of millions of farmers who have shown their anger see these new  as “leaving them at the mercy of big corporations.” Even now, 40,000 committed protesters are sitting at Singhu and Tikri at the border of the capital city, Dejhi. Nothing other than the rejection of the Modi’s new farm program will convince these souls to deviate from this mission of defiance.

But another big issue in play is the explosion of cases and deaths in the country due to the second wave of the Corona Virus. Thomson Reuters reports that the population of the biggest democracy in the world is reeling with 250,000 deaths due to COVID. Deaths shot up by 4,205 over the course of a 24 hour period, with the number of cases according to conservative estimates surging up to 348,421 in the same time period. [2]

Dead bodies were reportedly burned in funeral pyres and washed up on the shores of the river Ganges. The hospitals had to turn away patients because they were overloaded with the ill. Political leaders were crying out for vaccines in order to curb the man more deaths that are sure to follow.

 Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia told reporters that without more vaccines:

“People will die in the same way in the third and fourth waves as they have this time.”

According to the World Health Organization’s most recent reports, 50 percent of cases in the world and 30 percent of deaths due to COVID take place in India. And yet, the vaccination roll-outs which have been in effect since January have only claimed 2.5 percent of the population as of this date! And unlike in other countries where the pandemic has essentially shut down protests, the farmers in India are sticking to their actions – at least so far. [3][4][5]

Some might think the time has come to contain the explosion before a large component of humanity perishes! Or – perhaps a different perspective is in order.

A recent article in the website for Left Lockdown Sceptics reveals that there is more going on here than a virus! She details elements in Indian society like air pollution and an oxygen market, diseases like TB and Diarrhoea claiming even more lives, and the immense number of people living in India (it is 100 times the population of the province of Ontario with 100 times the death and case total.) [6]

On this week’s Global Research News Hour we endeavor to unravel the details behind the Indian situation and truly determine where the voices of ordinary people lie in the height of popular turmoil.

In our first half hour we hear from Jo Nash, the author of the article entitled India’s Current ‘COVID crisis’ in context. She explains the media’s exaggeration of the facts given the details in her article. In our second half hour we hear from journalist Vandana K on the ground in Delhi. She relates to programmer Chris Cook of Gorilla-Radio in a February interview the details behind the farmer’s protests which for the time being is not in danger of discontinuing until Prime Minister Modi has a change of mind about his neoliberal plan.

Jo Nash is an independent researcher, writer and editor living in Scotland, UK. She previously worked as a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and earned a Master’s Degree in International relations while in Sri Lanka. Jo was a Lecturer in Mental Health at the University of Sheffield’s Faculty of Medicine in the UK for ten years where she earned her PhD in psychotherapy in 1998 before to moving to India to study the health benefits of meditation in 2008. She currently fundraises for a food bank in Bodhgaya, Bihar, north India.

Vandana K is a Delhi-based independent journalist and producer who writes on the intersections of environment, gender, youth and indigenous communities with a focus on climate change. She’s also covered India’s agriculture beat for nearly two years. Vandana’s articles can be found at Deutsche Welle, Resurgence & Ecologist, The Wire, and Canada’s Media Co-Op, where her recent piece, ‘The fight over agriculture in India, and how Punjabis in Canada are supporting farmers’ appears.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 316)

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Notes:

1. consortiumnews.com/2020/12/04/indias-one-day-general-strike-largest-in-history/
2. www.cbc.ca/news/world/india-covid19-death-toll-1.6023704
3.  World Health Organization: COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update,, May 11, 2021
4. www.cbc.ca/news/world/india-covid19-death-toll-1.6023704
5. Anju Agnihotri Chaba (May 12, 2021), ‘At protest sites, farm unions get Covid battle-ready with team of doctors, oxygen’, Indian Express; indianexpress.com/article/india/farmers-protest-coronavirus-pandemic-7311750/
6. leftlockdownsceptics.com/2021/04/indias-current-covid-crisis-in-context/?doing_wp_cron=1621007065.9737439155578613281250

Butting Heads with China and Russia: American Diplomats Are Outclassed

By Philip Giraldi, May 14, 2021

With the exception of the impending departure of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan, if it occurs, the White House seems to prefer to use aggression to deter adversaries rather than finesse. The recent exchanges between Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a meeting in Alaska demonstrate how Beijing has a clear view of its interests which Washington seems to lack.

New Intermarium: Biden, NATO Pledge Support to NATO’s Nine-Nation Eastern Flank

By Rick Rozoff, May 14, 2021

NATO’s Stoltenberg went out of his way to fawn over President Biden, praising him twice in a brief message. In particular he celebrated the new American administration’s “commitment to rebuilding alliances” and “strengthening NATO.”

Vaccine Passports Banned in Wyoming

By Steve Watson, May 14, 2021

The Governor of Wyoming has banned vaccine passports, issuing a directive that states no person should be denied access to any places or services based on their vaccination status. Republican Mark Gordon’s directive outlines that “Vaccine passport programs have the potential to politicize a decision that should not be politicized.”

The Siege of Gaza and the Fight for Jerusalem

By Donald Monaco, May 14, 2021

Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinian families living in East Jerusalem and its invasion of Al-Aqsa Mosque to quell protests against this atrocity escalated tensions in the ancient city that reverberated throughout occupied Palestine.

“Gaza Will Burn”: Israel’s War Cabinet Approves Escalated Aggression on Gaza

By Stephen Lendman, May 14, 2021

Late Wednesday, cabinet members unanimously agreed to intensify IDF terror-bombing of Gaza — including strikes on civilian targets. War minister Gantz said “Gaza will burn” — meaning an intent to commit greater crimes of war and against humanity than already.

History of World War II: Operation Barbarossa. The Roots of Its Failure

By Shane Quinn, May 14, 2021

Operation Barbarossa, whose 80th anniversary falls next month, was the largest military operation ever undertaken. This German invasion of the Soviet Union proved to be the decisive confrontation of the Second World War, and the effects of its outcome lasts to the current day.

Geopolitical Projection: US Claims China Is an “Aggressor”

By Brian Berletic, May 14, 2021

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has, in a 60 Minutes interview, accused China of acting “repressively at home and more aggressively abroad,” emphasizing it as a “fact.” He repeated unfounded claims that “1 million” Uyghurs are being interned in facilities in China’s western region of Xinjiang and referred to it as “genocide.”

“The Storming of The Bastille 2021” Le Retour! “Danser Encore”. Flashmob in Paris

By Catherine Austin Fitts and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 14, 2021

“Danser Encore” in Paris confronts the lies of a corrupt French government which serves the interests of the financial establishment. What is required is to Break the Legitimacy and Authority of  the architects of the infamous Covid Project including the “Great Reset”.

CDC: Death Toll Following Experimental COVID Injections Now at 4,434 – More than 21 Years of Recorded Vaccine Deaths from VAERS

By Brian Shilhavy, May 14, 2021

The CDC released the latest death figures following the experimental COVID injections this week, and that death toll now stands at 4,434 people, adults and children, that have been recorded as dying after receiving one of the experimental COVID injections.

“Greater Israel”: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East

By Israel Shahak and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 14, 2021

The Palestinian Catastrophe prevails. In a 2018 report, the United Nations stated that Gaza had become “unliveable”: With an economy in free fall, 70 per cent youth unemployment, widely contaminated drinking water and a collapsed health care system, Gaza has become “unliveable”, according to the Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territories.”

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Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

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The U.S. Treasury Department announced on May 11 new sanctions against Hezbollah. Washington continues to attack the finances of the Shi’ite party via the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to undermine the groups influence and to maintain perpetual economic chaos and political division in Lebanon. 

According to the Treasury Department, Al-Qard al-Hassan is the financial wing of Hezbollah that oversees the groups “overall budget and spending, including the group’s funding of its terrorist operations and killing of the group’s opponents.” Those targeted by the sanctions have reportedly transferred more than $500 million to Hezbollah despite sanctions. Andrea Gacki, director of OFAC, said that Hezbollah continued “to abuse the Lebanese financial sector” and that such actions demonstrate the groups “disregard for financial stability, transparency, or accountability in Lebanon.”

The message from the Joe Biden administration to Hezbollah was clear: they do not want the Iranian-backed party to have financial autonomy that will allow it to fully dominate the political scene.

After classifying the movement as a terrorist organization in 1995, Washington made its first sanctions against them a year later. Amato-Kennedy’s law sanctioned Syria and Iran for supporting the Lebanese movement. However, since then, the measures taken by Washington have been increasingly targeted.

Seeking at all costs to cut Hezbollah’s funds, the U.S. government has already carried out a series of coercive measures against several personalities close to the group. In 2015, President Barack Obama enacted the “Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act.” This decree made it possible to freeze assets in the U.S. belonging to any individual or entity suspected of financing Hezbollah or of having any connection to them.

Since then, American authorities have directly sanctioned party leaders. Last September, the U.S. Treasury targeted two Lebanese figures – former Transport Minister Youssef Fenianos and former Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil – and accused them of having helped the Shi’ite group. Hezbollah reacted by asserting that “everything that emanates from this (American) Administration is condemned and rejected.”

Lebanese banks, which were trying to respect American directives, were tempted, for political and commercial reasons, to look away and allow such operations to be carried out for the benefit of Hezbollah. At the same time, the U.S. did not attempt to control Lebanese banks as they find themselves trapped by their own contradictions. Washington therefore did not hesitate to plunge Lebanon into an even deeper banking and economic crisis to attack Hezbollah.

By means of these new sanctions, and fearing an all-powerful Hezbollah, American logic is ultimately to make the Shi’ite party unpopular in the eyes of the Lebanese people – a policy which is also based on various forms of pressure.

In fact, regardless of economic sanctions, Washington has implemented a series of measures aimed at undermining Hezbollah’s influence. Through an associative, educational and journalistic network, American public diplomacy is trying to damage the image of the Shi’ite party. Washington has therefore funded a local humanitarian organization, the MEPI (Middle East Partnership Initiative) to counter the actions undertaken by the pro-Iranian movement. But this funding also affects hostile political parties, as well as local and regional media.

Countries which oppose Iranian influence in Lebanon and the wider region have panoply of means to contain this influence. In addition, U.S. leaders are reportedly pressuring its European partners to include Hezbollah in their list of terrorist organizations. After the United Kingdom, Germany and Serbia, Latvia granted this request last December, a decision hailed by Washington

But the question remains whether such pressure can break Hezbollah’s significant political, economic and military control over Lebanon.

Such measures do next to nothing to alleviate the significant political and economic crisis in Lebanon. A weak and divided Lebanon means that Iran (through Hezbollah) cannot gain full control of the country. Although Hezbollah says its purpose of existence is to destroy Israel, one would imagine that the current conflict between the Israeli military and Gazan militants, in addition to the breakdown of civil society as mobs of Jewish and Muslim Israeli citizens attack each other, provides Hezbollah an opportunity to embark on its self-proclaimed ambition. Yet, after many days of conflict between Palestinian militants and the Israeli military, Hezbollah is yet to make a move against what it calls the Zionist Entity.

This would suggest that U.S. sanctions and pressure to keep Lebanon weakened and fragmented achieved its goal of pacifying a major threat against Israel. As long as threats against Israel emanate from Lebanon, Washington will ensure that the country will remain in a state of permanent crisis, and the latest sanctions are a testament to that fact.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from LobeLog

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Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

The Biden administration may soon recruit an army of private snoops to conduct surveillance that would be illegal if done by federal agents. As part of its war on extremism, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may exploit a “legal work-around” to spy on and potentially entrap Americans who are “perpetuating the ‘narratives’ of concern,” CNN reported last week. But federal informant programs routinely degenerate into “dollars for collars” schemes that reward scoundrels for fabricating crimes that destroy the lives of innocent Americans. The DHS plan would “allow the department to circumvent [constitutional and legal] limits” on surveillance of private citizens and groups. Federal agencies are prohibited from targeting individuals solely for First Amendment-protected speech and activities. But federal hirelings would be under no such restraint. Private informants could create false identities that would be problematic if done by federal agents.

DHS will be ramping up a war against an enemy which the feds have never clearly or competently defined. According to a March report by Biden’s office of the Director of National Intelligence, “domestic violent extremists” include individuals who “take overt steps to violently resist or facilitate the overthrow of the U.S. government in support of their belief that the U.S. government is purposely exceeding its Constitutional authority.” Perhaps like setting up a private informant scheme to evade constitutional restrictions on warrantless surveillance?

One DHS official bewailed to CNN: “Domestic violent extremists are really adaptive and innovative. We see them not only moving to encrypted platforms, but obviously couching their language so they don’t trigger any kind of red flag on any platforms.” DHS officials have apparently decided that certain groups of people are guilty regardless of what they say (“couching their language”). The targets are likely to be simply people with a bad attitude towards Washington. That will include gun owners who distrust politicians who vow to seize guns.

The latest fuzzball standards (“narratives of concern”?) fit the post-9/11 pattern of wildly expansive threat definitions. Shortly after its creation in 2002, DHS warned local law enforcement agencies to keep an eye on anyone who “expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the U.S. government” as potential terrorists. DHS-funded Fusion Centers have attached the  “extremist” tag to gun-rights activists, anti-immigration zealots, and individuals and groups “rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority”—even though many of the Founding Fathers shared the same creed. The Pentagon taught soldiers and bureaucrats that people who attend public protests are guilty of  “low-level terrorism.” An Air Force report accused women who wear hijabs of “passive terrorism.” Endless enemies lists come in handy at congressional appropriations hearings.

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Of all the nuclear weapon states, the United Kingdom has moved the furthest toward establishing a minimum nuclear deterrent. The United Kingdom has a stockpile of approximately 225 nuclear warheads, of which up to 120 are operationally available for deployment on four Vanguard-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). This estimate is based on publicly available information regarding the size of the British nuclear arsenal, conversations with UK officials, and analysis of the nuclear forces structure. The SSBNs, each of which has 16 missile tubes, constitute the United Kingdom’s sole nuclear platform, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) comprise its sole nuclear delivery system. The United Kingdom is the only nuclear weapon state that operates a posture with a single deterrence system (Table 1).

The United Kingdom’s nuclear posture

Carrying approximately 40 warheads, one of the four SSBNs is deployed at sea at all times in what is called a Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD) posture. Two of the submarines remain in port and can be deployed on short notice, while the fourth remains in overhaul and could not be quickly deployed, if at all. The patrol SSBN operates at “reduced alert;” that is, its capability to fire its missiles is measured in days, rather than a few minutes (as during the Cold War). Its missiles are also kept in a “detargeted” mode—target coordinates are stored in the submarine’s launch control center instead of in the navigational system of each missile.

To safeguard against the degradation of its nuclear command, control, and communications in wartime, the United Kingdom uses a system of handwritten letters to command its submarines in the event an adversarial strike incapacitates the country’s leadership. On their first day in office, the Prime Minister is expected to offer preplanned instructions regarding the United Kingdom’s nuclear response, which are said to include options like “Put yourself under the command of the US, if it is still there,” “Go to Australia,” “Retaliate,” or “Use your own judgment” (Norton-Taylor 2016).

British SSBNs, which carry out secondary tasks such as scientific data collection while on patrol, are based in southwestern Scotland at the Naval Base Clyde at Faslane, which has access to the Irish Sea. Nonoperational warheads are stored at the Royal Naval Armaments Depot (RNAD) at Coulport, approximately three kilometers west of the base.

The United Kingdom’s nuclear weapons stockpile

Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom has not declassified the history of its nuclear weapons stockpile size. Over the past two decades, however, the United Kingdom has made several declarations about reducing the sizes of its nuclear inventory and operationally available warheads. In 2006, the UK government announced that they would be “reducing the number of operationally available warheads from fewer than 200 to fewer than 160” (Ministry of Defence 2006, 17). It is believed that around that time, the UK nuclear stockpile included 240 to 245 nuclear warheads. In May 2010, Foreign Secretary William Hague declared, “[f]or the first time, the government will make public the maximum number of warheads that the United Kingdom will hold in its stockpile—in [the] future, our overall stockpile will not exceed 225 nuclear warheads” (Hague 2010, col. 181). The Ministry of Defence subsequently revealed that these reductions to a 225-warhead ceiling had already been completed by May 2010 (UK Ministry of Defence 2013).

Later that year, in October 2010, the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) declared that the United Kingdom would “reduce the number of warheads onboard each submarine from 48 to 40; reduce our requirement for operationally available warheads from fewer than 160 to no more than 120; reduce our overall nuclear weapon stockpile to no more than 180; [and] reduce the number of operational missiles on each submarine” (HM Government 2010, 38). In June 2011, the Secretary of Defence announced to parliament that some of these proposed changes had already been implemented: “at least one of the VANGUARD class ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) now carries a maximum of 40 nuclear warheads” (Fox 2011).

In its 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review, the UK Government reaffirmed its plans to cut the size of the nuclear arsenal. By this point, the number of operationally available nuclear warheads had already been reduced from fewer than 160 to no more than 120, and all Vanguard- class SSBNs “now carry 40 nuclear warheads and no more than eight operational missiles” (Fallon 2015). The 2015 strategic review restated that the overall size of the nuclear stockpile, including non-deployed warheads, was expected to decrease to no more than 180 by the mid-2020s (HM Government 2015, 34). Despite these stated intentions, it is believed that throughout the decade the overall size of the UK nuclear stockpile remained constant, at approximately 225 nuclear weapons in total. Warheads removed from service during this time were put into storage, but not dismantled.

In its 2021 Integrated Review, the UK Government suddenly reversed decades of gradual disarmament policies and announced a significant increase in the upper limit of the United Kingdom’s nuclear inventory, up to no more than 260 warheads (HM Government 2021, 76). This decision joins the United Kingdom together with China and Russia as the three members of the so- called P5 NPT countries to increase the sizes of their nuclear stockpiles. In clarifying statements, UK officials noted that the target of 180 warheads promised in the 2010 and 2015 SDSRs “was indeed a goal, but it was never reached, and it has never been our cap,” stating that 225 remained the cap even after the 2015 SDSR explicitly declared that “we will reduce the overall nuclear weapon stockpile to no more than 180 warheads” (Liddle 2021; HM Government 2015, 34). In a speech to the Conference on Disarmament, foreign minister James Cleverly stated that the 260 warheads “is a ceiling, not a target, and is not our current stockpile” (Cleverly 2021).

Because the United Kingdom has not declassified the history of its nuclear weapons stockpile size, illustrating how the stockpile has fluctuated over the years comes with considerable uncertainty. Based on documents previously published by the British government, statements made by government officials, and analysis of the British nuclear weapons force structure over the years. Figure 1 displays our estimates for the overall size of the United Kingdom’s nuclear arsenal between 1953 and 2025.

The degree to which the Johnson’s government’s policy change will affect the United Kingdom’s targeting requirements remains to be seen; however, the Integrated Review states that the stockpile increase comes in response to “the evolving security environment, including the developing range of technological and doctrinal threats” (HM Government 2021, 76). After publication of the review, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace explained this included Russian ballistic missile defenses: “We have to . . . maintain a credible deterrent to reflect and review what the Russians and others have been up to in the last few years. We have seen Russia invest strongly in ballistic missile defense. They have planned and deployed new capabilities. That means if [the UK deterrent is] going to remain credible, it has to do the job . . . . A quite clear study of how effectively warheads work and how they reenter the atmosphere means you have to make sure they’re not vulnerable to ballistic missile defense. Otherwise they no longer become credible” (Wallace 2021).

It is notable that while Russia is singled out as “the most acute direct threat to the UK,” the Integrated Review also includes what appears to be a subtle—but clear—nuclear threat against Iran, despite the fact that Iran does not have nuclear weapons: After assuring that “the UK will not use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons 1968 (NPT),” the document states that “[t]his assurance does not apply to any state in material breach of those non-proliferation obligations” (HM Government 2021, 77).

In addition to the warhead cap increase, the Integrated Review also reversed longstanding transparency practices and stated that the United Kingdom will “no longer give public figures for our operational stockpile, deployed warhead or deployed missile numbers” (HM Government 2021, 77). This is a mirror image of the Trump administration’s abrupt decision to keep the nuclear stockpile number secret after nearly a decade of relative transparency under the Obama administration (Kristensen 2020).

To increase its overall stockpile, the UK will likely bring warheads previously retired for dismantlement back into the stockpile. Under the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment’s (AWE) Stockpile Reduction Program, warhead disassembly is undertaken at AWE Burghfield. According to the Ministry of Defence,

The main components from warheads disassembled as part of the stockpile reduction programme have been processed in various ways according to their composition and in such a way that prevents the warhead from being reassembled. A number of warheads identified in the programme for reduction have been modified to render them unusable whilst others identified as no longer being required for service are currently stored and have not yet been disabled or modified (UK Ministry of Defense 2013).

These reserve warheads are either stored at the Royal Naval Armaments Depot Coulport or at AWE Burghfield. It is unclear how many stored warheads could be quickly reconstituted in light of the UK Government’s recent decision to raise its warhead ceiling; however, it is possible that a few dozen warheads could be returned to the stockpile over the coming years.

Nuclear modernization and the UK sea-based deterrent

Despite decades of nuclear weapons reductions, the United Kingdom—with broad parliamentary support—has committed to replacing its current fleet of Vanguard-class SSBNs with brand-new boats. The new Dreadnought-class SSBNs are expected to enter service in the early 2030s and have a service life of at least 30 years (Mills 2020). The four boats will be named Dreadnought, Valiant, Warspite, and King George VI (UK Ministry of Defence 2019).

The Dreadnought-class SSBNs will have new “Quad Pack” Common Missile Compartments that are being designed in cooperation with the US Navy to also equip the United States’ new Columbia-class SSBNs. Each “Quad Pack” Common Missile Compartment holds four launch tubes, and each Dreadnought-class SSBN will have three Quad Packs onboard for a planned total of 12 launch tubes—a reduction from the 16 launch tubes currently carried by the UK’s Vanguard-class submarines. Technical problems and quality control issues have resulted in the delayed delivery of the missile launch tubes for the Common Missile Compartment; however, in April 2020 the first four tubes were delivered and have since been welded into the first UK Quad Pack (UK Ministry of Defence 2020a). In July 2020, two more missile tubes were received by the submarine building facility at Barrow-in-Furness, meaning that half of the tubes required for the lead Dreadnought boat have now been delivered and are in the process of being integrated into the pressure hull (UK Ministry of Defence 2020a).

The United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent relies heavily on American nuclear infrastructure, to the point where its own independence has long been in question. The United Kingdom does not own its own missiles, but has title to 58 Trident SLBMs from a pool of missiles shared with the United States Navy. The UK Government is also participating in the US Navy’s current program to extend the service life of the Trident II D5 (the life-extended version will be known as D5LE) missile to the early 2060s (Mills 2021).

Additionally, the current UK warhead, which is called Holbrook, is believed to be highly similar to the United States’ W76-0 warhead—so similar that it has appeared in the US Department of Energy’s “W76 Needs” maintenance schedule (Kristensen 2006). As part of its Nuclear Warhead Capability Sustainment Programme, the United Kingdom is currently refurbishing its warheads for incorporation onto the US-supplied Mk4A aeroshell, which is an upgraded version of the Mk4 that includes an improved MC4700 Arming, Fuzing, and Firing (AF&F) system. UK officials have suggested that “the Mk4A programme will not increase the destructive power of the warhead;” however, the new AF&F system reportedly includes new technology that significantly increases the system’s ability to conduct hard-target kill missions (Norton-Taylor 2011; UK Ministry of Defence 2016; Kristensen, McKinzie, and Postol 2017).

These warhead upgrades are taking place at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) facility at Aldermaston, from where the warheads are transported on trucks north to the Royal Naval Armaments Depot (RNAD) Coulport, near Glasgow. Warhead scheduled for dismantlement are shipped to AWE Burghfield eight kilometers (4.8 miles) northeast of Aldermaston. The UK disarmament group Nukewatch has tracked these transports and assesses that by the end of 2020, two SSBNs had been loaded with Mk4A-upgraded warheads (Nukewatch 2020).

In February 2020, the UK defence secretary announced the start of a new warhead program to eventually replace the current warhead (UK Ministry of Defence 2020b). The announcement was preempted by the commander of US Strategic Command, who leaked during Senate testimony that the United States’ W93/Mk7 program “will also support a parallel Replacement Warhead Program in the United Kingdom” (Richard 2020). In April 2020, the UK defence secretary sent a letter to US members of Congress, lobbying them in support of the new warhead and describing it as “critical . . . to the long-term viability of the UK’s nuclear deterrent” (Borger 2020). The UK Ministry of Defence subsequently suggested that just like the similarities between the current US and UK warheads, the UK’s replacement warhead will be very similar to the US W93: “It’s not exactly the same warhead but . . . there is a very close connection in design terms and production terms” (Lovegrove 2020).

Concerns and issues for the future

The increasing costs and poor management of the United Kingdom’s nuclear complex have long been sources of frustration. The 2015 SDSR suggested that the costs of building the four new submarines would be £31 billion, an increase of £6 billion from 2011 estimates (HM Government 2015, 36, 2011, 10). The UK Government also set aside a contingency fund of £10 billion to cover possible cost overruns. In December 2020, the UK Ministry of Defence reported to Parliament that approximately £8.5 billion had been spent on the program as of March 2020, of which £1.6 billion had been spent over the previous 12 months (UK Ministry of Defence 2020a). Altogether, the National Audit Office (NAO) reported in 2018 that the Ministry of Defence was facing an “affordability gap” of £2.9 billion in its military nuclear spending between 2018 and 2028 (National Audit Office 2018, 36).

In addition to these longstanding cost concerns, in 2020 both the NAO and the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee published reports indicating that three crucial nuclear infrastructure projects would be delayed between 1.7 and 6.3 years, with costs increasing by over £1.3 billion due to poor management (National Audit Office 2020, 21; Committee of Public Accounts 2020, 3). One of these infrastructure projects is MENSA, a new warhead assembly and disassembly facility at Aldermaston that has been delayed by six years and overspent by 146 percent (National Audit Office 2020, 4). Other critical nuclear projects—such as Pegasus, for handling enriched uranium components, and Hydrus, for conducting hydrodynamic-radiographic experiments—have been plagued by similar issues (Plant 2020).

In a bid to resolve some of these issues related to management and oversight, in November 2020 the Ministry of Defence announced a renationalization of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, which had previously been government-owned but contractor-operated via a consortium led by Lockheed Martin (Wallace 2020).

Another future concern for the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent lies with the prospect of Scottish independence. Naval Base Clyde, where the United Kingdom’s SSBNs are ported, is in Scotland, at Faslane on the Gare Loch. A 2013 Scottish government white paper clearly stated that if Scotland voted for independence the following year, “we would make early agreement on the speediest safe removal of nuclear weapons a priority. This would be with a view to the removal of Trident within the first term of the Scottish Parliament following independence” (Scottish Government 2013, 14). Although Scotland narrowly voted to remain part of the United Kingdom, it is increasingly likely that the United Kingdom’s decision to exit the European Union—a decision opposed by the majority of Scotland—could soon trigger another referendum. Although several potential relocation candidates have been identified by external analysts—such as HM Naval Base Devonport in Plymouth—the costs and logistics involved with relocating the United Kingdom’s SSBN force would be prohibitive and could prompt the UK Government to reconsider its current plans to modernize its nuclear deterrent (Chalmers and Chalmers 2014; Norton-Taylor 2013).

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Kristensen is the director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in Washington, DC.

Matt Korda is a research associate for the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, where he co-authors the Bulletin‘s Nuclear Notebook with Hans Kristensen. Previously, he worked for the Arms Control, Disarmament, and WMD Non-Proliferation Centre at NATO HQ in Brussels. He is also the co-director of Foreign Policy Generation––a group of young people working to develop a progressive foreign policy for the next generation.

Sources

Borger, J. 2020. “UK lobbies US to support controversial new nuclear warheads.” The Guardian. 1 August. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/01/uk-trident-missile-warhead-w93-us-lobby.

Chalmers, H., and Chalmers, M. 2014. “Relocation, Relocation, Relocation: Could the UK’s Nuclear Force be Moved after Scottish Independence?” Royal United Services Institute. August. https://rusi.org/sites/default/files/201408_op_relocation_relocation_relocation.pdf.

Cleverly, J., Minister of State. 2021. “Conference on Disarmament: Minister Cleverly’s Address on the Integrated Review.” March 26. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/conference-on-disarmament-minister-cleverlys-address-on-the-uk-integrated-review

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Featured image: Nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard arrives back at HM Naval Base Clyde, Faslane, Scotland following a patrol. Photo: CPOA(Phot) Tam McDonald/MOD accessed via Wikimedia Commons. Open Government License version 1.0.