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).
***
If the state reserves the right to commit mass murder no one should be surprised that the people follow suit.
Mass shootings happen with appalling regularity in the United States. It is bad enough that recent shootings took place in Atlanta, Boulder, and Indianapolis, but the horror is always followed by the same useless faux debates. Half the population wants to limit gun ownership, the other half doesn’t and continues a gun buying spree to prove their point. Politicians pretend to take action, victims are mourned, thoughts and prayers are uttered, and the cycle repeats itself with the next awful event.
What very few people dare to discuss is how these acts are connected with U.S. history and with the state in its current form. This country exists as a result of genocides and terrorism.The indigenous inhabitants were attacked with wars and disease and the survivors were driven from their ancestral lands. Africans were enslaved and treated like chattel, all Black people were deprived of their legal rights, and Jim Crow lasted for 100 years. Lynch law prevailed and the torture and killing of black people was a spectator sport across the land. The fits and starts of anything resembling justice have been far outweighed by institutional resistance which maintains the status quo.
The police continue to kill three people every day, more than 1,000 people every year. While George Floyd’s police murderer was on trial, young Daunte Wright was killed in a nearby community. Video footage revealed that 13-year old Adam Toledo was unarmed with his hands raised when he was shot and killed by Chicago police. Lest anyone forget, Chicago is the city which holds hundreds of people at Homan Square, a city jail that operates like a CIA black-ops site. Chicago should forever be known as the city where black men were tortured by police for years.
When this nation wasn’t practicing state sanctioned terror within its boundaries, it committed atrocities internationally. Wars, interventions and coups have been committed from Chile to Haiti to Guatemala to Iraq to Ukraine. There are U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and more than 800 bases under U.S. or other NATO nation control around the world.
Joe Biden has undone the Trump administration agreement to leave Afghanistan by May 1. He cynically uses the date of September 11 to forestall what should have happened years ago. The occupation of Afghanistan has gone on so long that people born after it began are now old enough to join the military themselves. But no one should be fooled. Biden is privatizing war with contractors and intelligence operatives and moving troops to create havoc elsewhere in the world.
If the state reserves the right to commit mass murder no one should be surprised that the people follow suit. They are taught that their violent country is exceptionally good, fair, benevolent and democratic. The U.S. leads the world in military spending and brings wars home by militarizing local police. Of course the bloodletting doesn’t end. It would be shocking if it did.
The phony concern must come to an end. Foolish and false platitudes such as, “This is not who we are,” should disappear from discourse and be replaced with honesty. Biden has proposed increasing defense spending to $753 billion and after the rhetorical dust settles, there will be a bipartisan congressional consensus to approve what he wants. Military spending takes up 60% of the discretionary budget and is the reason why people in this country cannot have nice things.
State violence is like background music that seeps into the collective consciousness. The same people who express shock when an individual goes on a killing spree in this country are silent when their government is responsible for killings around the world. They may support the mass incarceration state, which makes the U.S. the world’s number one jailer.
It is all connected. State sanctioned violence tells the people that individual violence is just fine. The hand wringing over the latest shooting doesn’t mean anything if the wars and law enforcement brutality continue. The hypocrisy is obvious and no one should be surprised when a well-armed population makes use of their personal arsenals.
The United States of America is and will remain violent without some revolutionary change. The carnage is both official and personal. If this country is honest the next mass shooting should be ignored by the media, politicians, and by the people too. Any consternation is temporary because it is dishonest. For now the most that can be expected is that Americans will finally end the pretense of concern and treat the inevitable results of their history and politics with nonchalance. It is the only honest thing they can do.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at patreon.com/margaretkimberley and she regularly posts on Twitter @freedomrideblog. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
On April 29 the U.S. Senate confirmed Victoria Nuland as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, which has been described as the fourth most important position in the State Department. Though as the first three are filled by political appointees and the other by a career foreign service officer, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs is the highest-ranking member of the U.S. Foreign Service.
In an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April as part of her confirmation process, she reflected on her thirty-two years in the Foreign Service working for five presidents of both parties and nine secretaries of state. She retailed some of her “historic moments” in that career, among them “working on tough arms control problems and conflicts from Rwanda to Haiti to Bosnia and Kosovo.” But what she expressed as her last-listed and perhaps proudest moment was, while she served as Deputy Chief of Mission at NATO, the military bloc for the first time activating its Article 5 collective defense clause, which contributed to the now twenty-year-old war in Afghanistan, a comprehensive naval interdiction mission in the Mediterranean Sea (Operation Active Endeavor) and European AWACS flights over the U.S. along with several other missions.
A major part of her career has been spent at NATO headquarters: she was Deputy Permanent Representative (ambassador) to NATO from 2000-2003 and Permanent Representative from 2005-2008. In both positions she was instrumental in recruiting military forces from NATO allies and partners for the war in Afghanistan, with NATO military personnel also stationed in Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan. At one point 130,000 of the 150,000 foreign troops in the country served under NATO command in the International Security Assistance Force: service members from 54 countries. Never before or since have troops from so many nations fought in a war, much less in one theater of war or one country.
She also worked on promoting seven nations to NATO membership at the historic Istanbul, Turkey summit in 2004: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia. All are in Eastern Europe; all but Slovenia were members of the defunct Warsaw Pact; three – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – were Soviet republics. Bulgaria and Romania provided the U.S. and NATO with eight military bases in the following two years. NATO has flown fighter jets from air bases in Latvia and Lithuania for years, in the case of the second nation since 2004.
Her State Department biography states she also served as Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large for the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s (That was likely under Strobe Talbott, later president of the Brookings Institution.) She had a brief stint as a faculty member at the National War College. And she was Principal Deputy National Security Advisor for Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003 to 2005; that is, during and immediately after the invasion of Iraq.
During the transition period in Russia immediately following the dissolution of the Soviet Union she worked at what is described as covering Russian internal politics at the American embassy in Moscow and served on what the State Department termed the Soviet Desk in Washington. She is, in short, a seasoned Russia hand. She is reported to speak Russian and “a smattering” of Chinese, having worked in Guangzhou, China (1985-86) and at the State Department’s Bureaus of East Asian and Pacific Affairs the following year. She was in Mongolia in 1988 where she has been credited with assisting in setting up the first American embassy in the nation that is wedged between Russia and China.
She was a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations twice, and the second time, as a State Department fellow, she directed a Council on Foreign Relations task force on “Russia, its Neighbors and an Expanding NATO.” She has also been a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a senior counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. And she is on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy. (Her husband, Robert Kagan, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was a member of the defunct Project for the New American Century, of which he was a key founder along with Bruce P. Jackson, also past president the U.S. Committee on NATO/Expand NATO. Both Nuland and Kagan are now Democrats.)
But the world would likely never have heard of her until now except for her role in engineering the overthrow of the government of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Her face was first revealed to viewers outside the State Department, the National War College and major think tanks as she was handing out food to anti-government rioters in Kiev at the beginning of that year.
Having been appointed Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs the preceding year, she became the major American official assigned to Ukraine during the crisis of late 2013 and early 2014. In a leaked phone conversation of January 28, 2014 between her and American ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, the two provided future historians with a textbook-perfect specimen of engineering a coup, replete with the exact people who would lead the post-coup “transitional government.” Three and a half weeks before President Yanukovych was deposed.
When the tape appeared on YouTube it created an international furor, not because of what it revealed about plotting the overthrow of a government which shares a 1,200-mile border with the U.S.’s nuclear rival Russia, not because it exposed the most naked form of interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, not because shortly afterward the plot resulted in a what is now a seven-year war with the ever-worsening prospect of a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and NATO on one side and Russia on the other – no, but because the diplomat with decades of diverse experience said, when the ambassador raised the issue of the European Union’s role in the transition, “F-ck the EU.” That made the conversation noteworthy. The only outrage in the West was over the fact that the contents of a private conversation has been divulged. Russia was blamed of course. Three years later Hillary Clinton denounced the leak as an example of Russia “weaponizing” intelligence information. She had no objection to overthrowing a friendly government and plunging Europe into a new war.
Yesterday no doubt there was rejoicing and exultation in Kiev. There should have been weeping and gnashing of teeth in the Donbass and Crimea. And grave concern in Moscow. Nuland like her boss Joe Biden may have unfinished business in Ukraine.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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).
***
Turkey launched two brand-new operations in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
The operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) began in the provinces of Sirnak and Hakkari on April 29th.
The operation in Sirnak province is code-named Eren Cudi-Besta and the one in Hakkari province is code-named Eren Kazan-Ogul.
They are named after a 15-year-old boy who was a collateral damage death in a clash between Turkish Forces and the PKK in Iraq’s Trabzon province.
Ankara also said that these two new operations are in conjunction with the Claw-Lightning and Claw-Thunderbolt operations, launched in the Kurdistani Duhok province less than 7 days ago.
As of April 26th, Turkey reported on their wild success – armed forces struck about 460 targets, and have neutralized at least 42 members of the PKK.
It should be noted that Ankara greatly enjoys overestimating its achievements in such operations.
On the other side, the PKK claimed that its fighters killed 21 Turkish service members in a series of operations between April 27th and 29th, while Turkey reported a single serviceman losing his life and two others being injured.
Furthermore the PKK said that its fighters had had attacked a secret Turkish base near the village of Sheladize in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region on April 27th.
The group targeted two M60 battle tanks, which were parked in the base, with anti-tank guided missiles.
Even beyond operations, hostilities between Turkey, Turkish-backed forces and Kurdish groups are commonplace.
All of this takes place in addition to regular airstrikes by the Turkish air force.
Ankara’s encroachment on Iraq’s borders simply adds to the chaos that Baghdad has to deal with.
On April 29, Iraqi security forces foiled a terrorist attack and killed a suicide bomber in the center of the northern province of Kirkuk.
ISIS hasn’t claimed responsibility for the attack, but the terrorist group is quite active in the province.
On April 24, ISIS terrorists attacked a post of the Iraqi Federal Police near the town of al-Suss.
On April 28, the terrorists carried out a second, bolder attack by pounding a base of the Iraqi military in al-Zarkah with five mortar shells.
Further south in Iraq, ISIS terrorists raided a post of the Iraqi military in the southern countryside of the western province of al-Anbar.
The militants stormed the post, which is located on the border with Saudi Arabia, without facing any real resistance.
The post’s personnel fled, leaving behind their weapons and equipment.
They set it on fire and simply left.
Meanwhile, United States supply convoys continue blowing up as a result of constant IED attacks.
Thus, US forces are focused on their general security rather than assisting the Iraqi Armed Forces and the Popular Mobilization Units in containing ISIS.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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).
***
Titles can be deceptive – “The Crash of Flight 3804” meant nothing for all my readings of history and geopolitics. It was not about the crash that killed Dag Hammerskjold, nor about any of the more recent crashes like the U.S. navy shoot down of Iran Air 655 in 1988. Even the subtitle seemed deceptively uninteresting until it read “and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil.” As usual, the determining factor became the author – a lawyer, an investigative journalist, and a Middle East reporter of the kind that has actually been on the ground in a few of the controversial areas. Hesitantly, I decided to give it a read.
Frequently I am asked if there is a book I would recommend to give a primer or an overview for certain geopolitical arenas – usually the Middle East, and Israel/Palestine. And quite frequently it is difficult to find a book that covers the requested topics in a way to serve as both an introduction and as a significant, accurate, and highly readable ‘story’, although there are many excellent books on specific topics. This book, “The Crash of Flight 3804” is now that recommendation.
Apart from the personal aspects of the story, which is the fine and not overstated thread throughout as well as the motivation, Charlotte Dennett has written an excellent book summarizing the geopolitics of the Middle East historically through to current events. Her main theme is essentially follow the pipelines, follow the money, and by doing so she traces a history of espionage, geopolitical gamesmanship, and terror that defines what makes the Middle East today.
History
The history begins with the personal element, the killing/murder of her father in Flight 3804 from Jidda to Addis Abbab in March 1947. From that came the revelation that her father Daniel Dennett was a U.S. master spy examining the events in the Middle East before Israel created its state in the 1948 nakba and before the creation of the CIA, but not before oil, pipelines and big money had already shaped the political and geographical landscapes.
The history works mostly forwards but traces back to World War I, the intrigues of the Germans with the Ottoman empire, the attempts by the British, French, and Russians to establish controlling interests in the oil rich region as oil became the power for the military and the industrialists of the era. It puts in place the Zionist proposals and actions, the Balfour letter (and it was just a letter, not a law), and the situation with the Saudis and other relationships within the declining Ottoman empire.
The focal point for the geopolitics is the story of pipelines, for whoever controls the pipelines controls the movement and endpoint of the vast oil fields of the Middle East. Fortunately Dennett has included many maps drawing the outlines of the region and the many planned and built pipelines, and for current events, the location of newer oil fields that are and will cause current and not so future problems – the Levantine Basin in the Eastern Mediterranean, the untapped sources in Yemen, and new potentially large discoveries in the illegally occupied Golan Heights.
Money
As a story of money and oil the names of traditional bankers rise reasonably frequently – the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds predominating. As I read it occurred to me that she was not really discussing the development of the petrodollar until –
“…the wars [all Middle East wars] have been linked to the US command of the oil-based petrodollar, much as they have been linked to the control of oil, and most significantly Saudi oil…and oil in Iraq…and possibly the oil in Yemen….the larger part of what is known as ”dollar hegemony” is the control of oil.”
The reader is introduced to the wars in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Syria in particular as part of the need to control petrodollar hegemony, as “a switch by OPEC from a dollar standard to a euro standard would be the Federal Reserve’s biggest nightmare.” Dennett does not develop this idea but if it needs stating: without oil being mandated as priced in US dollars, the economy of the US. would collapse as its dollar would become worthless – no one would need the dollars to purchase oil with and the huge U.S. debts supported by the advantage of being the global reserve currency would collapse.
So oil pipelines are big money, the petrodollar is the global reserve currency and the U.S. uses its vast military to support it,
…the country that espouses liberty for all is in fact an economic empire backed by military legions, one only needs to look at the number of US troops and military bases that the United States commands around the world….
Israel
Dennett’s chapter “The Hidden History of Pipeline Politics in Palestine and Israel” provides an insightful summary by way of examining who controls pipelines within the problems that currently beset Israel/Palestine and the general Middle East. Not many historians mention it but the military-oil aspect of the creation of Israel is well supported. Using old maps as her guide to some of her research and questions, she asked,
“Where, I asked myself, was the military base that would protect the Trans-Arabian Pipeline? It wasn’t in Lebanon. It wasn’t in Syria. And then it hit me. It wasn’t in Israel. It was Israel.”
Historically Dennett begins with World War I,
“…fought, in large part, not to make the world safe for democracy but to help robber barons reap enormous profits and establish spheres of influence in resource-rich parts of the world, including the Middle East.”
The British Empire straddled the world, and the Zionists “advocated for a Jewish state in Palestine as a European outpost to protect the Red Sea and Britain’s vital trade route to India.” The Balfour Letter among its several purposes was related to British “imperial interests” in Mesopotamian and Palestine.
During World War II, arguably the last battle of World War I, the geopolitical positioning of the U.S. played an important role in the holocaust. The U.S. became aware of the genocide in 1943, but worried about Ibn Saud and possible threats to “end the United States’ exclusive oil concession in Saudi Arabia if increased Jewish immigration to Palestine were allowed” the U.S. decided against bombing Auschwitz in order to end that part of the German program.
At the end of the war, British imperial power was in sharp decline and the U.S. was the global leader in military and economic power. At this point, “Protection of the Saudi oil concession and the Saudi pipeline “at all costs” trumped all other considerations,” and a “strong militarized Israel could serve as the key regional protector of the Saudi pipeline.” The result is that today, “a powerful coalition comprised of the Zionist lobby,evangelical Protestants and armsmakers now constitutes significant domestic constraint on those who might seek to alter U.S. policy towards Israel.”
Recent events concerning Palestine – in particular Gaza and its Mediterranean coast – and Israel focus on pipelines not yet built as the countries of the Levant argue over the newly discovered oil and gas resources under the Mediterranean. Once again, a clear map shows the outlines of the gas and oil fields and the coastal water limits of each of the littoral countries.
In sum Dennett argues,
“…as we consider what has happened in the Middle East over the past seven decades, and what is happening today in Syria, Iraq, Gaza, and now Yemen, we have question whether the timeworn quest for oil – to be pursued “at all costs” – lies at the heart of many of these tragedies.”
Afterwords
In her afterwords, Dennett becomes a bit soft and fuzzy towards the CIA as they finally recognize the contribution her father made to espionage efforts in the Middle East and the knowledge he displayed concerning the region. She and her family are visited by three CIA agents – one a psychiatrist, one in the role of the consoling historian (with the official version) , and the big guy who did not play much of a verbal role. They presented arguments that Flight 3804 crashed due to bad weather, without knowing that Dennett’s own research indicated the weather was clear and stable for the flight.
Yet after being wined and dined and fêted by the CIA she implies that she accepts their efforts to save American democracy, and wonders about the “marauding militias [Middle East terrorists] killing civilians and frankly undoing the well-intentioned efforts to win over hearts and minds.” Her last perspective offers two possibilities: a lifetime of being filled with American exceptionalism and indispensability; or perhaps a caution for herself not to be persecuted and targeted by the CIA.
Surely if she read her own words she would not think the efforts were “well intentioned” except for anyone but the monied oil barons and the interlocking corporations of the military-industrial-financial institutions of the U.S. As for hearts and minds, she unfortunately reduces her own presentation by denying the force of her arguments that this had nothing to do with either good intentions or hearts and minds, that killing civilians – as per her own arguments – is what the militarized U.S. does, and above all it is about oil and money.
Better to let her father have the main afterward:
“Pray to God that wherever else we may choose to intervene, the United States will be spared the disgrace of intervening in the Near East.” [Clark University Speech, 1942.]
Read it!
Regardless of her short softened ending, this is an amazing piece of historical writing. Her unique focus on pipelines quite literally creates a web of intrigue throughout the Middle East. It can serve as an historical primer for many events concerning the Middle East. It serves as an excellent summary, introducing and clearly explaining without huge detail, the machinations of U.S. and other imperial interests in the region. Students, foreign affairs ‘experts’ and officials should have this work as required reading.
This is an engaging insightful book that I recommend as a primer or an overview for the Middle East and the U.S.’ overall imperial drive around the world.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
May 2nd, 2021 by Centre for Global Justice, Peace and Accountability
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).
***
Join us on Saturday 8th May for an enlightening journey into the heart of some of the world’s most grave injustices. Through, art, music, film & theatre as well as practical workshops, panels, interviews and mini-lectures we pause to reflect on how we find out about these injustices, what price was paid for the truth and by whom, how these grave circumstances are understood, spun and reported, and what can be done to facilitate justice.
Which topics will the festival cover? How are these topics selected?
Our aim is to inspire, rejuvenate and refresh all those who contribute and participate. Contributions to the festival cover the law, journalism, technology, psychology, finance, propaganda, social issues and activism, as well as art and music. In addition to respecting the broad themes of the festival, we have tried to spend time with each contributor to understand their passions and interests and then to construct a schedule that is enriching for contributors as well as for participants.
Who will join us on this journey?
Here’s our alphabetical list of confirmed contributors. This list is being refreshed daily. In the next few days, we will also give you a schedule of contributions. In addition to contributions from those listed below, we will also be sharing art, music and more through the day.
Mads Andenæs, Lawyer and former chair of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
Diani Barreto, Painter and activist
Somerset Bean, Graphic designer
Max Blumenthal, Investigative journalist and author
Jonathan Cook, Journalist and author
John Christensen, Founder of the Tax Justice Network
Eileen Chubb, Whistleblower and founder of Compassion in Care
Marjorie Cohn, Law Professor, writer and former President of the National Lawyers Guild
Naomi Colvin, Whistleblower advocate
Sevim Dagdelen, Politician and German MP
Viktor Dedaj, Author and activist
Kareem Dennis (Lowkey), Rapper and activist
John Doe, Hacktivist
Davide Dormino, Sculptor
Suelette Dreyfus, Technology researcher, journalist and writer
Rod Driver, Writer
Andrew Feinstein, Writer, campaigner and former politician
Denzil Forrester, Artist
Marianna Fotaki, Academic and Public health expert
Andrew Fowler, Investigative journalist
Nathan Fuller, Writer and campaigner
George Galloway, Politician, broadcaster and writer
Chamira Gamage, Campaigner
Martin Garbus, Attorney and author
Cristina Godoy-Navarrete, Human rights activist
Kevin Gosztola, Journalist and filmmaker
Deepa Govindarajan Driver, Academic and trade unionist
Tareq Haddad, Writer and investigative journalist
Nicky Hager, Author and investigative journalist
Jeremy Hammond, Hactivist
Charles Hector, Lawyer and human rights activist
Nancy Hollander, Lawyer
Selma James, Writer and activist
Lissa Johnson, Psychologist and writer
Eva Joly, Lawyer and former magistrate and politician
John Jones, Journalist
Ögmundur Jónasson, Politician and former interior minister of Iceland
Torsten Jurell, Visual artist
Peter Kennard, Artist and professor of visual art
Kate Kenny, Academic specialising in whistleblowing
John Kiriakou, Author and CIA whistleblower
Niki Konstantinidou, Playwright and lawyer
Niels Ladefoged, Filmmaker
Richard Lahuis, Photographer
Joe Lauria, Journalist and author
Lisa Longstaff, Women’s rights activist
Clara López Rubio, Filmmaker
Lauri Love, Activist and technology expert
David McBride, Lawyer and whistleblower
Ray McGovern, Activist and former CIA officer
Alan MacLeod, Journalist
Franck Magennis, Lawyer and activist
Stefania Maurizi, Investigative journalist
Barbara Meister, Journalist and author
Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on torture and arbitrary detention
David Miller, Academic
Federica Morelli, Journalist and activist
Moritz Mueller, Journalist
Iain Munro, Academic
Craig Murray, Author and human rights activist
Fidel Narvaez, Human rights activist
Peter Oborne, Journalist
Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Former Guantanamo detainee, engineer and writer
Iain Overton, Investigative journalist
Juan Passarelli, Filmmaker
John Pilger, Journalist and author
Sami Ramadani, Academic and anti-war activist
Afshin Rattansi, Journalist
Margaret Ratner Kunstler, Attorney and author
John Rees, Anti-war activist and journalist
Piers Robinson, Academic
Stephen Rohde, Writer and political activist
Maggie Ronayne, Academic, trade unionist and women’s rights campaigner
John Russell, Academic and artist
Arne Ruth, Retired editor
Justin Schlosberg, Academic and media activist
Prem Sikka, Academic and tax-justice campaigner
Norman Solomon, Journalist
Jeffrey Sterling, Lawyer and CIA whistleblower
Serena Tinari, Investigative journalist
Fred Turnheim, Journalist and academic
Cathy Vogan, Journalist and academic
Sam Weinstein, Social justice campaigner and trade unionist
Chris Williamson, Politician
Asa Winstanley, Journalist
Andy Worthington, Journalist
NHS Whistleblower
Probation Whistleblower
Support Not Separation
Will it be another set of webinars / Zoom panels with talking heads?
We take an active position of resisting surveillance capitalism. We want to encourage means of participation and organisation through free/libre software, decentralized services and federated platforms, and through the use of end-to-end encryption. We think these are essential building blocks towards our collective goals.
Our festival is an attempt to organise ourselves through decentralized tools such as Mobilizon (for announcements of events and session, scheduling, registration, etc.) and through Big Blue Button (virtual conference rooms) and Jitsi for online gatherings. Unless absolutely necessary, you won’t have to register to attend.
I’m not a techie! Can I have a test drive so I feel confident about using the software on the day
Yes. We are scheduling two drop-in sessions for attendees (on May 6th and 7th) so its all easy for you to use on the day.
Can I watch it afterwards? Will it be live streamed?
Yes, it will be live-streamed via Peertube, Youtube and Twitter. The Courage Foundation will be live-streaming the event, and Consortium News, TruthDefence will also re-stream and cover the festival.
Where is the schedule? How can we pick and choose what we want to go to ?
We are a tiny organising team, so please bear with us. The schedule and the links for each session will be posted here in due course. Typically, all you will need to do is to click the relevant link to attend a session. Please bookmark this page so you can return to it nearer the time and check the most updated plans.
Any institutional sponsors or promoters?
The festival is not sponsored by any organisations. We are grateful that a number of civil society organisations are supporting this festival by promoting it widely. The list includes the Courage Foundation, Blueprint for Free Speech, Resistance TV, Truth Defence, Labour Campaign for Free Speech and the Global Women’s Strike and we are very grateful for their practical help and solidarity.
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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).
***
Many people couldn’t help but laugh when Biden told Boris Johnson on March 26 that the USA and it’s NATO allies should create “an infrastructure plan to rival the Belt and Road Initiative” post haste. What would such a program look like? How would it be funded when the USA is so embarrassingly bankrupt? Who among the nations of the world would ever consider buying a ticket onto such a sinking ship?
It took a few weeks for details to finally emerge, but by the end of the April 22-23 Climate Summit hosted by Biden, John Kerry and Anthony Blinken, it has become abysmally clear what delusions possessed the poor president.
After having announced a 52% carbon reduction policy below 2005 levels by 2050, Biden swiftly committed the USA to what he called the most comprehensive infrastructure plan in history with a $2 trillion Green New Deal-like infrastructure program designed to revive the policy of America’s 32nd president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mirroring FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, Biden has even planned a Civilian Climate Corps, along with a Green Climate Bank to parallel FDR’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation.
The catch? Biden’s version was written by the same financial technocrats that FDR went to war with 80 years ago and unlike FDR’s version, the modern green version of the New Deal will have the effect of destroying the productive industrial powers and living standards of the nation once green grids are built.
A Comparison of Two New Deals
Where FDR’s New Deal was premised the removal of Wall Street’s hegemony over national sovereignty via the Pecora Commission, Glass-Steagall, and SEC, Biden’s Green New Deal is shaped by Central Bankers’ Climate Compacts and green finance strategies authored by the richest oligarchs on the planet like the Bloomberg-Carney Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. In fact, it shouldn’t come as a coincidence that the first legislative effort to establish a Green New Deal, was not American at all, but was submitted by Britain’s Lord Adair Turner in 2009 while he was acting head regulator of the City of London which remains the nerve center of world finance today as it was a century ago. Up until 2019, Lord Turner was the chair of George Soros’ Institute for New Economic Thinking- an organization devoted to making Huxley’s Brave New World a practical reality and upon which he still serves as Senior Fellow.
Where FDR created large scale infrastructure megaprojects like the Tennessee Valley Authority, Rural Electrification Project, Hoover Dam, Colorado River Basin programs, and St Lawrence Seaway which all had the effect of leap frogging to higher rates of industrial power than at any other time in history, Biden’s Green New Deal professes to do the opposite. Yes, jobs will be created in insulating a few million homes and building windmills and solar panels, however those jobs will be short lived. For once they are built there will be nothing left to do but maintain the solar panels with unionized squeegees in an imaginary world of no change and zero-technological growth that might look good in computer models, but has very little correspondence with humanity’s actual requirements for long term survival.
It appears to be genuinely believed by ivory tower technocrats managing the Biden Administration that financing a green infrastructure program won’t be difficult. The 2020-21 pandemic showed the enlightened elite that money can always just be printed from thin air. The U.S. debt has already risen to 27 trillion, so what’s a few trillion more?
Where that fails, just compensate by imposing Carbon Pricing onto all carbon sinners. Many nations have already gotten onboard that bandwagon with Sweden, Lichtenstein and Canada leading the race charging $129, $96, and $91 per ton of carbon emissions respectively. Coming out of Biden’s Climate Summit, Canada’s Justin Trudeau committed to raising this cost to $170/ton by 2030 while U.S. National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy announced will soon rise to $56/ton in the USA (a seven fold increase from the $1-7/ton price under Trump).
Additionally, cap and trade schemes are always there for wealthy polluters to purchase unused carbon quotas from poorer polluters at home or abroad, so revenue can certainly be found that way. If all else fails, just raise taxes.
In case poor nations of the world might feel like avoiding this sinking ship in order to work more closely with Russia and China, Biden was kind enough to announce a new international green finance strategy to assist the developing sector in their decarbonizing aspirations.
The Problem with Green Energy
For those who doubt the idea that the USA can or even should meet those 2035 carbon reduction targets, they might have solid reasons for their assumptions. For one thing, the USA currently relies upon 1,852 coal fired power plants which would mean that 11 plants would need to be shut down every month until 2035. What would compensate for this loss of capacity?
Obviously not nuclear, since that has become politically-radioactive in the minds of most of Biden’s liberal constituency.
Would it be green energy that fills the gap? Considering that green energy is magnitudes more costly, and unreliable relative to fossil fuels, hydro or nuclear power, that is also unlikely. The truth is, as Germany discovered recently, shutting down coal and nuclear at home, simply forces a nation to keep fossil fuel plants running as back up for the unreliable green energy grids while increasing imports of coal/natural gas-driven electricity from other countries. In Germany’s case, imports of nuclear and coal-generated electricity from Poland and the Czech Republic increased by 60% since the nation’s industrial base understood that green energy sources could never meet it’s needs. In the USA’s case, Mexico would most likely be the top supplier. Across the European Union where most nations have entirely submitted to pressure to “decarbonize” by 2050, coal, gas and crude oil imports now make up 2/3rds of all energy imports.
While some advocates of the Green New Deal applaud the amazing breakthroughs in green energy tech over the past years which they say has reduced the price per kilowatt hour from an unreasonably high 35 cents to as low as 4 cents today… the truth is that the technology remains largely identical to the photovoltaic cells and windmills of yesterday with the only difference being the massively increased infusions of government subsidies given to private companies producing the green energy which the IMF calculated to be $5.2 trillion in 2017 alone (aka: 6.5% of the global GDP). And where do those subsidies come from? you guessed it. The tax payers.
Lest we forget the oft-overlooked fuel source of bioethanol, over 40% of the USA’s corn production currently gets burned in the form of biodiesel and ethanol while billions starve and suffer food shortages around the world. The high cost of being green.
Geopolitical Incompetence 101
You might now be asking: Why would the USA which has admittedly chosen to define itself as an existential rival to Russia and China to the point of risking a full-scale nuclear war, be so intent on subverting its own economic foundations at a moment that both Russia and China (and over 136 nations of the world) have chosen to move on toward a diametrically opposing paradigm of large-scale infrastructure growth and scientific progress?
If we take the old adage “whom the gods would destroy they first make mad” as a truism, then signs for a bright future for the Green New Dealing western community poor indeed.
Since Biden’s first days as president of the USA, the entire fabric of U.S. governance from top to bottom was completely overhauled in the form of omnibus executive orders designed to make the global climate emergency the top priority for all branches and levels of government- economic, military, intelligence, health and beyond. Under this green geostrategic paradigm, vast starvation, migration patterns, and wars have much less to do with imperial abuse, and everything to do with global warming.
Biden created new directorates of climate policy with offices in the White House, demanded that the Director of National Intelligence and State Department overhaul their governance around dealing with the climate crisis and even passed executive orders banning all oil and natural gas drilling and exploration projects on land or offshore where government land is held. Biden even went so far as to assert that 30% of the entire surface of the USA would be brought off limits to all development by 2030.
Sustained vs Sustainable Development
Compare this with China which has simultaneously committed to building green energy systems without deluding itself into thinking that fossil fuels, nuclear or hydro could be taken out of their energy baskets.
In fact, the primary fuel sources driving the large-scale development corridors of the New Silk Road are considered “dirty” sources verboten by the west like coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear and hydro. This fact even drove a delusional Biden to attempt to pressure Xi Jinping to speed up their phase out of coal by 2030 to which the Chinese leader responded “no”.
Biden had earlier described China as the primary climate offender of the world saying: “China is far and away the largest emitter of carbon in the world, and through its massive Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing is also annually financing billions of dollars of dirty fossil fuel energy projects across Asia and beyond.” He even demanded that leaders of the west “rally a united front of nations to hold China accountable to high environmental standards in its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects, so that China can’t outsource pollution to other countries.”
In his remarks at the Climate Summit, President Putin re-emphasized to the western puppet heads of state who were busy massaging each other and chanting “build back better” in unison, that “green growth” should not occur at the expense of “sustainable growth”. Simply put, Putin is committed to putting people before ivory tower energy policies that may demand human sacrifices at the alter of Gaia, and emphasized Russia’s commitment to nuclear power, raising its fertility rate, raising average life expectancy which has already grown from 56 years/male and 61/female in the mid-1990s to 70 years today and plans are to increase that to 78 years by 2030.
The irony about all of this is that China and Russia are increasingly adopting a system of political economy which is fundamentally OPEN and driven by scientific and technological progress without any supposed limits on its potential for improvement. This paradigm is fundamentally in harmony with the original New Deal policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt who himself envisioned a post-imperial world of win-win cooperation (in opposition to a dystopic closed-system world envisioned by Winston Churchill). The USA on the other hand, which professes to be the heir to the New Deal reforms of Franklin Roosevelt has come to embody the worst aspects of the Malthusian elite managing the British Empire for centuries which FDR devoted his life to stop.
It was this empire that considered it “scientifically necessary” to subjugate India, China, Ireland, Africa and every other rival to lives of poverty, war, famine and stupidification.
This was the empire which the republican revolution of 1776 aimed at overthrowing- not only from the Americas, but internationally. It is this same empire which was nearly destroyed by the Russian-U.S. alliance that shaped much of the 19th century and which again arose during WW2 as FDR and Stalin recognized they had much more in common with each other than either had with arch-racist Churchill. The British Empire was always run as a “closed system”, scientifically managed intelligence operation following Malthusian principles and adherence to strict mathematical equilibrium. In this formula for domination, military forces have typically been less important than control of nerve centers of finance, narcotics and other levers of corruption mental and spiritual corruption than many people- even among the most educated historians realize.
And so we have come full circle. The gods have certainly made those elites managing the west mad, but whether or not the entire world will have to pay the price of their insanity yet remains to be seen.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review.
Featured image: US President Joe Biden departs after delivering remarks on Russia in the East Room at White House, Washington, DC, April 15, 2021 (Source: Indian Punchliine)
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
The study below was reported in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (Publication date April 20, 2021)and details the harm caused by mask wearing and adds to a growing body of under-reported, censored and suppressed public health information that contradicts the biomedical narrative that masks are safe and effective and recommended by the CDC.
65 German Studies: Face Masks Cause Mask-Induced Exhaustion Syndrome (MIES)
Many countries introduced the requirement to wear masks in public spaces for containing SARS-CoV-2 making it commonplace in 2020. Up until now, there has been no comprehensive investigation as to the adverse health effects masks can cause. The aim was to find, test, evaluate and compile scientifically proven related side effects of wearing masks. For a quantitative evaluation, 44 mostly experimental studies were referenced, and for a substantive evaluation, 65 publications were found.
The literature revealed relevant adverse effects of masks in numerous disciplines. In this paper, we refer to the psychological and physical deterioration as well as multiple symptoms described because of their consistent, recurrent and uniform presentation from different disciplines as a Mask-Induced Exhaustion Syndrome (MIES). We objectified evaluation evidenced changes in respiratory physiology of mask wearers with significant correlation of O2 drop and fatigue (p < 0.05), a clustered co-occurrence of respiratory impairment and O2 drop (67%), N95 mask and CO2 rise (82%), N95 mask and O2 drop (72%), N95 mask and headache (60%), respiratory impairment and temperature rise (88%), but also temperature rise and moisture (100%) under the masks. Extended mask-wearing by the general population could lead to relevant effects and consequences in many medical fields.
Summary
1. Masks in everyday use risk self-contamination by the wearer both inside and outside, including via contaminated hands [5,16,88]. Masks are soaked by exhaled air, which potentially accumulates infectious agents from the nasopharynx and also from the ambient air on the outside and inside of the mask.
2. Serious infection-causing bacteria and fungi should be mentioned here [86,88,89], but also viruses [87].
3. Masks worn by the general public, are considered by scientists to pose a risk of infection because the standardized hygiene rules of hospitals cannot be followed by the general public [5].
4. History shows that influenza pandemics of 1918-1919, 1957-58, 1968, 2002, in SARS 2004-2005 and 2009, masks DID NOT fight against viral infections [67,144].
5. Even later, scientists and institutions rated the masks as unsuitable to protect the user safely from viral respiratory infections [137,146,147]. Even in hospital use, surgical masks lack strong evidence of protection against viruses [67].
6. The mask is nothing more than a symbol of the wearers fear of infection – reinforced by the collective fear mongering, which is constantly nurtured by mainstream media [137].
7. The mask represents psychological support for the general population as a false sense of security to reduce anxiety. [152]
8. The WHO’s recommendation of the mask is about giving mask wearers the feeling of a contribution made to preventing the spread of the virus, as well as the reminder to adhere to other measures. [2].
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
We thank Dr. Gary G. Kohls for bringing this article to our attention.
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).
***
What if you were to know that a cabal of corrupt bureaucrats and scientists at the heart of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have known for almost two decades that vaccines, including the MMR, can lead to autism and other neurological disorders? Most people are unaware that the CDC is a militarized federal agency further influenced by private pharmaceutical interests.
Due to the politicization of national immunization, vaccine efficacy and safety has become all but irrelevant. Its policies drive profits for itself and its partners. Now the agency is committed to have as many Americans mandated to be fully vaccinated as soon as possible, irrespective of how many lives are destroyed. The very mindset and disregard for human life that created the notorious Tuskegee experiment is alive and thriving in the innards of the CDC.
It is time to take a hard look at the advocates of compromised pharmaceutical science and the motivations that compel the CDC and it’s vaccine network to systematically mislead the public for personal benefit, power, and greed. We need to begin to understand that the agency operates as an independent “deep state,” secretive, non-transparent, and conducting itself in covert ways behind the disguise of heralding public health. When the brilliant journalist I.F. Stone wrote, “Every government is run by liars, and nothing they say should be believed,” he may have just as well been speaking about the CDC and its alliance with the pharmaceutical industry, many medical journals, and the mainstream media.
The money-driven institutions of evidence-based medicine and science, which have hijacked America’s health agencies–the CDC, FDA, Health and Human Services (HHS), National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute, and the USDA– have plunged a stake into the heart of authentic scientific inquiry, knowledge and innovative medical progress. Its efforts to hermetically seal and silence the debate on vaccination safety with propaganda, coercion, erroneous and deceptive research, and blatant criminality have succeeded in transforming modern vaccinology into an egregious pseudo-science that is today destroying the lives of millions of infants, children and their families.
The deep-seated problems that reside in the CDC are not going unnoticed by a growing number of Americans. A Rand Corporation survey of public trust in the agency during the Covid-19 pandemic found a 10 percent decline. See this. For decades distrust in the CDC has been high among Black Americans; today, levels of trust among non-Hispanic whites and Hispanic respondents are comparable. One of the fundamental reasons for Americans’ mistrust and skepticism has been the agency’s culture of muddying the lines between scientific facts and compromised opinions that support gross and deep-seated conflicts of interest.
This problem has also entered the ranks of CDC personnel. A group of CDC scientists who called themselves SPIDER (Scientists Preserving the Integrity, Diligence and Ethics in Research) became anonymous whistleblowers after releasing a written complaint criticizing the agency for operating as a tax-funded subsidiary of the drug industry in partnership with the FDA. And after a Congressional Government Reform Committee brought CDC officials to testify before legislators, the Committee concluded the agency had routinely allowed scientists with conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies to serve on its two advisory committees that make recommendations on vaccine policy.
The blurring of the lines between the pharmaceutical industry and our federal health agencies has been a scandal evolving over the course of several decades. The revolving door between private interests and top government employees never ceases to gyrate. For example, former CDC director Julie Gerberding left government to become president of Merck’s vaccine division, a move that has since earned her upwards to $3 million in stock options. This may seem to be a modest reward for Gerberding heading the agency now irrefutably responsible for the cover-up of the CDC’s own studies proving the MMR vaccine increases the risk of autism in African American boys. The MMR is manufactured by Merck.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, one of the nation’s expert watchdogs in the corporatization of our federal medical establishment, has called the CDC “a cesspool of corruption.” Unlike the FDA, which has a contract with the American public to assure warnings about health risks and contraindications of registered drugs and medical devices, the CDC has no such contract with the nation’s citizenry. It seemingly holds no ethical standard and abides by no mandated rules of law. For this reason it may be best regarded as an intelligence agency rather than an institution committed to public health.
One recent example of the CDC’s covert activities took place in 2016. Across the mainstream media, journalists en masse denounced the documentary film Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe. The film recounted the events of CDC whistle-blower Dr. William Thompson and his agency’s intentional cover-up and destruction of documents of scientific evidence proving the MMR vaccine caused autism. Rather than denouncing the nation’s vaccine agenda, the film uncovers massive corruption in the CDC’s vaccine division.
But a problem with the media-wide demonization of the film arose, which included outlets such as ABC, CNN, MSNBC, the Guardian, the Washington Post and the New York Times, Forbes, Rolling Stone and many others. The media blitzkrieg occurred before the film’s actual release. None of the journalists had watched it. None knew the underlying story line aside from what could be gleaned from a 3 minute trailer. Our investigative article, “Why is the CDC petrified of the film Vaxxed” uncovered a template for an editorial script upon which all of these reviews were based. They originated from a single source, and the tracks led to the halls of the CDC. The CDC’s partnership and fellowship programs with the Association of Health Care Journalists is nothing less than an intelligence indoctrination program to train journalists to be the mouthpieces of the CDC’s fake science. The curriculum held at the CDC’s Atlanta campus includes propaganda in federal health policies, epidemiology (no authentic gold standard biological science), pandemic preparedness, vaccine safety and autism. Journalists are also instructed to access CDC publications and databases to peruse federal resources, public relations kits, and propaganda.
Vaccine policy and the development and promotion of the childhood vaccine schedule is only one of the CDC’s many corporate tasks. It is not exclusively concerned with the physical and mental health of the nation. It is also engaged in the design and development of biological weapons and threats of bioterrorism. Because vaccines are biological drugs that may be weaponized, they fall under the CDC’s purview and jurisdiction. Consequently the Centers work closely with the Department of Defense and the intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency with whom there is the exchange of data collection and sharing of classified information. In its April 21, 2000 MMWR report entitled “Biological and Chemical Terrorism: Strategic Plan for Preparedness and Response” the CDC reported that for “the first time the CDC has joined with law enforcement, intelligence and defense agencies in addition to traditional CDC partners to address a national security threat.”
This may have been the turning point when the Centers morphed into a pseudo-intelligence agency and assumed a “deep state” role by adopting an inquisitional task of population surveillance and information data collection as a matter of intelligence gathering instead of improving healthcare. During the past years, this has further grown into spying and covert operations against the critics of our national health and immunization policies. Immunization, as described on the CDC’s website, is now a matter of national and global security.
Therefore, no longer are vaccines simply a public health intervention. In fact, immunization has been removed from science altogether and consequently can only rely upon flawed and unreliable research to support policy templates and recommendations that get enacted at state levels. These policies are left for politicians to debate, which is rarely done, and is no longer open for discussion among expert medical researchers outside of the CDC’s ranks and its network of trolls, shills and medical puppets spewing disinformation into the public sector. This alone is sufficient incentive for targeting and silencing voices challenging vaccine safety and efficacy and who demand a reevaluation of vaccination and its toxic ingredients.
Few people realize that the CDC owns 56 vaccine patents; these patents are licensed to drug makers with royalties who later buy and distribute $4.6 billion worth of vaccines through its Vaccines for Children Program, which accounts for 40% of its budget. This has given rise to a 2015 British Medical Journal investigative report accusing the CDC of becoming a lapdog for commercial interests.
The CDC also controls a separate non-profit institution known as the CDC Foundation, which operates like an astro turf organization. Founded in 1992 through an amendment inserted into the George H.W. Bush’s Preventative Health Act, the Foundation operates outside of Congressional oversight. This is clearly stated in its documentation:
“The Foundation shall not be an agency or instrumentality of the Federal Government, and officers, employees and members of the board of the Foundation shall not be officers of the Federal government…. The purpose of the Foundation shall be to support and carry out activities for the prevention and control of diseases, disorders, injuries and disabilities, and for promotion of public health… the Foundation shall establish a fund for providing endowments for positions that are associated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…”
In other words, the Foundation has been established as a recruiting service, funded by non-Federal sources, which can include private corporations and drug makers, for the sole purpose to serving the tax-funded CDC. Moreover, endowments to the Foundation are “unrestricted,” which means they can be spent solely based upon the discretion of the donator and to support the giver’s vested interests. Among the CDC Foundation’s list of partners we find all of the large vaccine makers – Glaxo, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, and Sanofi Pasteur – and of course the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
A Freedom of Information Act submission discovered that the CDC had been providing guidance to the companies for influencing authorities on sugar and beverage policies. For example, the CDC Foundation receives large donations from Pepsi and Coca Cola, and thereby exerts its influence to taint national guidelines about diabetes, liver disease and other illnesses. In another example, Roche, the manufacturer of the drug Tamiflu against influenza infection, donated $193,000 to the Foundation in return for the CDC’s advocating the drug’s benefits for relieving flu symptoms. This completely undermines the FDA’s own ruling that Tamiflu’s clinical trial data does not support the claims that the drug saves lives or lessens hospitalization.
It has been through the Foundation that Bill Gates’ faux philanthropy has bought off the CDC. Gates has given tens of millions of dollars to the CDC Foundation over the years. In 2013, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $13.5 million to support the CDC’s efforts to undertake surveillance and increase meningitis and rotavirus vaccination rates in Sub-Sahara Africa.
Furthermore, the Centers’ activities are no longer limited to the US’ domestic health; after 911, its mission expanded, far beyond its original mandate, and today the agency is globally engaged. On the Centers’ website, it defines itself as America’s “Global Health Protection Agency” in charge of “implementing global health security” and works in partnership with other nations. Since 2006, the CDC claimed it had trained over 115,000 professional personnel in its interpretation of health issues. It’s Global Rapid Response Team of over 400 experts “can deploy in as little as 48 hours” to respond to local and regional health emergencies. In brief, the Centers are immersed in the technology of surveillance, information gathering and analysis. These are among the defining characteristics of an intelligence agency.
Other intelligence activities often associated with a “deep state” and now undertaken by the CDC include pressuring peer-reviewed medical journals to retract studies that challenge their ideology or endanger the agency’s reputation. In 2014, Prof Brian Hooker, a biochemist at Simpson University, reevaluated the CDC’s own data showing a 350% increase in autism among African American boys receiving the MMR. Initially approved for publication by the journal Translational Neurodegeneration, the study was shortly thereafter suspended after the CDC pressured the journal with fabricated claims against Dr. Hooker. This is a textbook case of intelligence sabotage of a critic by false accusation.
Similar to the Pentagon and the CIA, the CDC has also infiltrated Hollywood. Hidden within the corridors on the University of Southern California campus is the relatively unknown organization Hollywood Health and Society. Its top funders include the CDC, the National Cancer Institute, the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the largest private funder of vaccines, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The small organization’s mission is to provide “briefings and consultations with experts, case examples, panel discussions about timely health issues” for Hollywood script writers and producers. Among the main topics listed on its website are influenza, smallpox and autism, all official propaganda stamped with the CDC’s seal of approval.
Among the trove of classified national security documents released by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, were several regarding the government’s intelligence agencies’ infiltration of the internet in order to manipulate information, deceive the public and destroy personal reputations of opponents, including independent journalists. Among the documents was a manual, “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations.” One of its stated missions is to flood the internet with false information and data to destroy the reputation of its opponents. Furthermore, the manual provides instructions on taking control of online public discourse in order to generate allegiance to the intelligence agency’s false point of view.
Vaccine opponents often complain about the blogosphere being riddled with anonymous trolls, most who would be unable to debate their way out of cardboard box on scientific issues regarding vaccines, but who nevertheless follow the intelligence manual’s strategies to disparage vaccine critics. Bill Gates, who is on record condemning parents who refuse vaccines and who is no stranger to the higher echelon of executives in the vaccine industry and department heads at the CDC, funded a professor at the University of Connecticut to develop a monitoring system to track all anti-vaccine internet traffic. Given Gate’s utter disdain towards voices speaking out against vaccines, we can be certain this was not for humanitarian, research purposes but as part of intelligence gathering in the CDC’s war against the health of the nation. Others who have been CDC mouthpieces yet are viewed as respectable and medically credentialed kingpins, such as Paul Offit, Peter Hotez, Senator Richard Pan, and others are welcomed by the media as the foremost authorities and final voices on vaccine topics.
To our peril, federal agencies take full advantage of the average American’s scientific illiteracy. An important survey conducted by Michigan State University found that only 4% of American adults had an understanding about stem cells. Seventy percent could “not read or understand” the science section in the New York Times. An earlier study funded by the US National Science Foundation noted that about half of Americans understood that the earth rotates once around the sun annually, 45% of people had an “acceptable” understanding of DNA, and only 22% knew what a molecule was. Although scientific illiteracy is an enormous threat to a functioning democracy and an informed public, nevertheless it is a boon for the CDC and the vaccine industry. Manipulating this ignorance with heavy doses of fear tactics, such as revealed through the CDC’s press model to guide the mainstream media’s role in increasing vaccine compliance, health officials have managed to successfully thwart many efforts to educate the public to evaluate the pros and cons of vaccination.
Along with the corporatization of Washington’s three branches of government, and the emergence of a surveillance state watching over the shoulders of every citizen, the politicization of medicine, particularly vaccines, is another sign of the further decay of the nation towards totalitarianism. For almost two decades, fake news and bureaucratic deception, anger, hatred and disproportional distrust has taken the spotlight as the nation’s health further erodes. Annually, the quality of Americans’ health is declining and this is most evident in the younger generations who have received the bulk of vaccines. While the CDC and its allies conjure distorted statistics with no sound scientific basis from thin air in order to convince us that vaccines have saved countless lives, in fact these screeds are no more scientifically reliable than visiting the local gypsy soothsayer to have your palm read. A doctorate in science or a medical degree from Harvard does not excuse a person from duplicitous chicanery.
The good news is that the tide is slowly turning. The populace is steadily losing its faith in government. Autism rates continue to rise and parents are able to access extensive independent medical research to understand the real dangers of vaccines. A fundamental reason why parents increasingly refuse to vaccinate themselves and their children is quite simple; the cartel of pharmaceutical-friendly bureaucrats writing the nation’s healthcare policies has been losing the public’s trust. There is no secret why federal health officials and their absolutist claims to mandate vaccine compliance are untrustworthy. In 2016 over 1500 medical researchers surveyed by the prestigious journal Nature failed to reproduce another scientist’s experimental results. Over half were unable to reproduce their own experiments. The article concludes that the potential reasons for this lack of scientific confirmation are numerous. However, most important is that no single scientific study or paper can claim to be the final word on any medical issue, and this is especially true with vaccine research. The complexities of the human immune system, its biomolecular mechanisms and epigenetic relationships with external environmental factors are not fully understood. And there remains much more to discover and digest. Modern immunology still has a long ways to go and needs frequent revision as new discoveries emerge. In contrast, vaccine science continues to rely partially upon an antiquated understanding of the body’s immune system focused almost exclusively on antibody generation.
One example of medical negligence has been the rising epidemic of citizens who are immune-compromised and therefore most susceptible to adverse vaccine reactions. When a severe condition of immunosuppression is clearly diagnosed, it is not uncommon for physicians to withhold vaccinations. But how many Americans are immune-compromised? When this question was posed to a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in 2015, to his surprise Dr. Theo Schalldiscovered there were no population accurate statistics and none of our federal health agencies nor medical institutions were tracking it. Not only are these people at higher risk for vaccine injury, they are also at a higher risk for infection from wild viruses. Federal vaccine policies do not differentiate the population with weakened immune systems from healthier individuals. The CDC’ immunization schedule is a one-size-fits-all paradigm/ Its bottom line demands that everyone should and must be vaccinated.
After reviewing the different immune-compromised populations (eg, immunosenescence or weakened immunity due to age in the senior population, malnourishment, cancer patients, people with AIDS and HIV, transplant recipients, patients under immunosuppressive drugs with autoimmune conditions, and primary genetic immunodeficiency disorders, Schall estimated there were approximately 122.6 million Americans with a weakened immune system and stand at higher risk for infections. Our revaluation of the available figures places this figure now at 130.4 million, over one-third of the US population.
The question whether 130 million people, including hundreds of thousands of children, should be subject to injections with infectious viruses– live, attenuated or killed – or now the new generation of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines that have no prior precedence for observing long-term adverse effects, is never discussed. Volumes of medical and biochemical research confirming the severe vaccine ingredients are also ignored. Nor is any consideration given to the number of vaccines administered and the risks due to the accumulative levels of toxic ingredients when multiple vaccines are given simultaneously or within short time intervals. Nor do pediatricians routinely evaluate the state of children’s immunological health before determining whether or not to administer vaccines. There is no profit from delaying or postponing vaccination. No perks are received from insurance companies for increasing vaccination compliance. And finally, physicians and pediatricians are largely as ignorant as the general public about the scientific evidence supporting and debunking vaccine safety and efficacy myths. Their primary source of information is channeled through the CDC and its disinformation campaign.
The CDC has yet to conduct or fund definitive and legitimate studies to determine once and for all individual vaccine safety and whether or not vaccines as exogenous factors are contributing to the onslaught of illnesses ravishing the country. Yes, such gold standard studies, which remain absent from the pro-vaccine arsenal, would be very costly. But that would be the price to pay to bring sanity to the irrational conclusions of the CDC’s decision makers on our nation’s national advisory vaccine committee. Nevertheless, the cumulative financial cost of all previous government sponsored fake science would be a small price to pay for the future well-being of children.
During Congressional proceedings in 2002 into the causes for the unaccountable rise in autism in the United States, CDC officials confirmed no studies have been undertaken to compare the quality of health between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Yet the subcommittee was assured by the CDC that such studies would be conducted. A decade later, when the CDC was again yanked back into a subcommittee, still no studies had been conducted, and again, Congress was assured such studies were forthcoming.
We should not hold our breath. Officials at the CDC and Department of Health and Human Services know perfectly well that vaccinated children are susceptible to far more allergies and illnesses than their unvaccinated peers. Their greatest fear is a thorough long-term study to see whether unvaccinated children are indeed healthier. Otherwise, the necessary research to prove the health advantages of vaccines would have been conducted long ago.
Yet there are reasons why such studies are not mandated nor funded. Health agencies are fully aware that vaccines are a scourge. Instead they pump out ecological and epidemiological cohort studies, notorious for subjective manipulation, confounders and biases to support their dogma. Such studies, which are little more than algorithmic equations for sifting, shifting and fudging data, are scientifically invalid for determining any medical truth. Nevertheless, epidemiological studies remain the most cited articles by the most vocal proponents of vaccination and vaccine mandates.
However, corruption at the CDC is not limited to national vaccine policies and the deceptive manipulation of scientific data to further advance a national vaccination regime. The agency has also been discovered to mislead the nation on other health issues that in turn shape government policies. Earlier it was accused of inflating numbers of rapes in the US. The CDC estimated 2 million rapes occurred within a single year (2011); however, the Justice Department’s crime statistics recorded only 238,000. Later Time magazine reported that the manner the CDC gathered its information was extremely flawed and biased.
In 2016 The Hillreported that the CDC misled Congress with its WISEWOMAN project — a national screening and evaluation project to help reduce heart disease risks in women between 40-64 and to promote healthier lifestyles. The CDC’s data of the project was all “cooked” to make the results look better than it was and that the project was larger and more inclusive than it actually was.
The writings of Hannah Arendt over fifty years ago about the origins of totalitarian ideologies and states have never been more poignant and prophetic than today. She worried deeply about the language of absolutism, and particularly in the realm of science, which is now the underlying mission of the CDC to politicize immunization. The attempt to reduce all of human life to well-defined processes, to predictable patterns and primitive linear reductionism, was in Arendt’s view both self-defeating and extremely dangerous for a healthy society. In a totalitarian state, objectivity is tyrannical. Scientific objectivity that threatens the official policy even more so. In the case of vaccines, the entire industry is a creed that has institutionalized a denial of the most fundamental principles of science and fact finding. And worse, the CDC’s ongoing war of terror against the unvaccinated has become lawful. And this is what gives rise to a totalitarian culture of science.
Arendt was certain that a fascist worldview does not necessarily have to be framed in nationalism, religious doctrine nor based upon race and ethnicity. She worried that science, and its technologies, once they become politicized, would give rise to new forms of totalitarianism and persecution in the future. And today this totalitarian stench breathes through many scientific institutions and universities, throughout the private vaccine industry, and its most pungent odor of rot and decay fills the halls of the CDC.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.
Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including The War on Health, Poverty Inc and Plant Codes.
Featured image: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. (Raed Mansour/Flickr)
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).
***
Politically savvy individuals know that democracy has rarely existed and probably never outside small groups of humans who deliberately organize themselves to share power or grant it temporarily to one or a small number of people for a particular purpose. In most contexts, ‘democracy’ is simply a label used to deceive the unwary into believing that ordinary people have a say in how we are governed. But this has never been the case in any political framework on a larger scale.
Whatever victories have apparently been achieved in the long struggle to achieve political representation, human rights, dignity, economic justice, cultural and gender identity, ecological sustainability and other causes dear to the hearts of those who have struggled, the elite (local, national or global) has always retained control and merely surrendered the minimum necessary to keep the bulk of the human population submissive.
Consequently, as outlined in ‘Why Activists Fail’, while elite control over human societies started to gather pace with the Neolithic revolution 12,000 years ago, it has simply been progressively consolidated since that time. Real power over anything that matters, including fundamental decision-making and the vast bulk of the world’s wealth, remains firmly in the hands of the elite.
More importantly, as one result of the elite’s long reign and the grotesquely distorted priorities it has advanced within the delusional versions of democracy we have experienced, human society is now characterized by staggering levels of psychological, social, economic, military and geopolitical dysfunctionality and Earth is on the brink of ecological collapse with Homo sapiens threatened by four distinct paths to extinction. See ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls: A Report on the State of Planet Earth at Year’s End 2020’.
But what is interesting about the elite coup that is being implemented now, under cover of the non-existent virus SARS-CoV-2 – see, for example, ‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’ and ‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’ – and the supposed Covid-19 pandemic, is that the final facade of our ‘democracy’ is being dismantled in plain site with most of the human population begging for it to be done provided that they are kept ‘safe’. It is pitiful to observe and brings to mind one of Benjamin Franklin’s most famous lines: ‘They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’
How is this final destruction of even the delusion of democracy being executed? Well, the simple answer is this: ‘It is being done in a variety of ways, depending on the context.’ Here are some examples in each of three categories.
Destruction of Democratic Processes, Human Rights and the Rule of Law
While so-called democratic processes have long been a sham and the rule of law (as it is meant to mean in a conventional sense) does not exist – see ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’ – even the sham elements of democracies – rule by Parliament (rather than executive fiat or unelected bureaucrats), respect for human rights (including freedom of speech), obedience of laws and adherence to legal process – have been ignored by virtually all governments (national, provincial and local) around the world as measures decided by the elite and promulgated through its international organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization have simply been implemented by governments without so much as a public (or even a parliamentary) debate. In fact, any attempt to present an alternative view in any mainstream forum leads to one of a range of outcomes such as dismissal from office, censorship – with corporate and major social media leading the way – or howls of accusation such as ‘conspiracy theorist’ to discredit the dissenting voice.
This has happened, of course, because politicians are not beholden to voters, which is why lobbying politicians is a waste of time, unless the issue is of little significance politically, militarily, economically and environmentally. As implied above, the elite controls the political fate of politicians who well know that their political survival has nothing to do with pleasing ordinary voters. Politicians are beholden to the elite that manipulates levers of power such as the corporate media and education systems, employs an army of lobbyists to ensure that elite preference is clearly understood (while using bribes where necessary), and has ready access to removal options such as, at its most benign, withdrawal of pre-selection endorsement.
Moreover, those supposedly basic human rights – such as freedom of speech, assembly and movement – have been eviscerated under the various lockdown, curfew and martial law measures with many people attempting to exercise these rights quickly discovering that they no longer exist except, perhaps, in the very narrowest of circles or in particular contexts (even if those with the courage to do so often find that these ‘rights’ do exist but only if one is courageous enough to exercise them).
As early as March 2020, governments around the world were introducing draconian laws supposedly in response to the ‘pandemic’. For example, Denmark’s parliament ‘unanimously passed an emergency coronavirus law which [gave] health authorities powers to force testing, treatment and quarantine with the backing of the police.’ As noted by Copenhagen University law professor Jens Elo Rytter, the measures were unlike anything passed in the last 75 years: ‘It is certainly the most extreme since the Second World War. There have been some powerful encroachments in various terror packages. But this goes further.’ See ‘Denmark rushes through emergency coronavirus law’.
But with the passing of a full year since the coup began, the progressive destruction of any semblance of democracy is now rapidly in train.
Of course, Switzerland is far from alone in considering such measures and there is plenty of evidence that virtually all countries will deny airline travel to those not vaccinated. See, for example, ‘Guidance for global travel’.
And Dr. Rudolf Hänsel in Germany reports that on 13 April 2021, the government of Germany tightened the ‘Infection Protection Act’, with the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) confirming that this so-called ‘Emergency Brakes Act’ abrogates the fundamental rights of inviolability of home and body. As noted by the renowned legal scholar Volker Boehme-Neßler: The planned coercive measures such as the curfews are ‘unconstitutional, dictatorial and against human nature’. See ‘Germany: The “Dictatorship of Democracy” Secretly Transformed into an “Open Dictatorship”’.
For a wider look at the bigger picture, Dr. Joseph Mercola interviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The interview touched on elements of Mercola’s new book The Truth About Covid-19 explaining how ‘The technocrats’ plan, as laid out in various papers and reports, is to use bioterrorism to take control of the world’s resources, wealth and people’. See ‘The Truth About Covid-19’.
But perhaps constitutional lawyer John W. Whitehead, in collaboration with Nisha Whitehead, captures the true depth of what has transpired in these two paragraphs about the United States but equally applicable to other countries:
Not only have the federal and state governments unraveled the constitutional fabric of the nation with lockdown mandates that sent the economy into a tailspin and wrought havoc with our liberties, but they have almost persuaded the citizenry to depend on the government for financial handouts, medical intervention, protection and sustenance.
Of course, a common response of many people is to fearfully deny that this is actually happening or to deny that it is really as bad as it seems. But reality has a nasty habit of biting, sooner or later, although it won’t be either in this case. It is already happening.
The Great Reset: Rule by Elite Agents including International Organizations
But I wonder if you remember voting for the WHO or the World Economic Forum to tell your government to tell you what you to do. In fact, I wonder if you remember having a say in the composition, and hence decision-making, of these international organizations. Do you even know their elite masters?
And yet ‘suddenly’, or so it seems, ‘our’ national, provincial and local governments are doing what these elite agents are telling them to do, which is to tell us what to do in response to this ‘virus’. How did that happen? Do you remember it happening, at least this obviously, previously?
So do you think that voting for some other party at the next election in your country is going to precipitate change?
Of course, it will suit the elite nicely to have you preoccupied over which party will govern your country in future. Because it won’t matter. Just as it never has.
So while you might pin your hopes on some political party (and perhaps, even, a new one) most of what has been familiar about your life in the past will vanish. The changes being wrought by the elite’s corporations as you read this article are profound. For example, vastly more satellites are being shot into Space – see ‘SpaceX launches 60 new Starlink internet satellites, nails latest rocket landing at sea’ – and a staggering array of new infrastructure is being installed on the ground so that 5G (and 6G) can be used to make elite control of our lives total.
This will enable comprehensive surveillance of our daily activities, digital ID (possibly implanted in your brain) linked to your bank account and health records, a social credit ID that will end up dictating every facet of your life, the digitization of money, the robotization of the workforce and military, and the biological and electronic connectivity (through embedded sensors, software and other technologies) of humans and machines through the Internet of Things. And that is just part of what the fourth industrial revolution and the transhumanist agenda will mean for you and me. For a little more, see ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.
More fundamentally, this interview by Dr Reiner Füllmich of WHO insider Dr. Astrid Stuckelberger carefully explains why WHO is a corrupt dictatorship with signatory nations legally required to obey the Director General’s directives and Bill Gates given equivalent status to a member nation-state. See ‘WHO Insider Blows Whistle on Gates and GAVI’.
But the most comprehensive demonstration that any semblance of democracy is being destroyed is perhaps the removal from political office of those presidents who dared to challenge the elite-driven narrative that our world is seriously threatened by a virus.
As recorded in progressive media, at least two presidents openly resisting the elite-driven narrative have been removed in coups, with both presidents killed outright.
Similarly, President John Magufuli of Tanzania not only rejected the Covid-19 narrative but openly ridiculed it in a televised address, in which he exposed the fraudulent nature of the testing ‘when he covertly had non-human samples – from fruits, goats, sheep, and car oil – tested for Covid on the PCR test, returning positive results from a paw-paw, a quail, and a goat’ thus openly irritating the global elite. See ‘John Magufuli: Death of an African Freedom Fighter’ (which includes the video of President Magufuli exposing the Covid-19 lie).
What is touched on above is, in many respects, just the tip of the iceberg. The profound transformations under way do not bode well for any semblance of a human future worth living.
And you will watch as your children lose whatever remaining capacity they had for independent thought further broken down by the propaganda directed at them. See ‘Brainwashing our children’.
But this list could go on.
Resisting the Death of Democracy
If you want to strategically resist the elite coup currently in train – that is, to undermine the power of the global elite to take complete control of our lives – there is a comprehensive nonviolent strategy for doing so outlined in ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ with detailed supportive information available in Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.
And it will be invaluable if you make yourself increasingly self-reliant as the mechanisms that you have been seduced into becoming dependent upon are progressively and rapidly being taken away. See ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.
If you wish to campaign to avert one or more of the four most immediate paths to human extinction – deployment of 5G, nuclear war, the collapse of biodiversity and the climate catastrophe – you can see a list of strategic goals for doing so here: Campaign Strategic Aims.
Conclusion
Human life as you experienced it until the beginning of 2020 has now ended. It will not return. The long-standing elite plan to take complete control of our lives is now being progressively implemented. Act 1 – the ‘Covid-19 pandemic’ – successfully distracted most people so comprehensively that the measures implemented by the global elite to depopulate humanity and take full control of those still living proceeded rapidly. Act 2 is but a short time away.
If you want any chance of restoring a semblance of the lives we have lost, you are invited to join those strategically resisting the elite coup. If your resistance is not strategic, it will have zero impact.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.
He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Appendix
The Earth Pledge
Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:
I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
I will not buy rainforest timber
I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.
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).
***
Identity politics has been on the ascendancy in many parts of the world in the last few decades. Its relationship to ethnicity, culture and religion is what concerns us at this point. To understand this relationship one has to consider the context. We should also try to explain the impact of identity politics upon religion itself.
The United States of America is that one country where identity politics has become more prominent in recent times. Significant elements within the majority community feel that their power has been eroded not only by the alleged assertiveness of the African-American minority (Barack Obama was president of the USA for 8 years from 2008 to 2016) but also by the growing educational and economic clout of the Asian-American communities. Besides, there is the increasing presence of the Hispanic minority and its demographic implications for the country as a whole. Fear of these changes has been exaggerated and distorted to mobilise White supremacist sentiment.
A parallel development of sorts has been occurring in parts of Europe. Segments of the White majority have become antagonistic towards minorities many of whom profess Islam. Cultural differences aside, the flow of migrants from West Asia and parts of the African continent— a huge chuck struggling to survive — has intensified resentment and anger on the part of the majority. If anything, heightened unemployment in some of the host societies has exacerbated the situation. The newly arrived migrant often becomes the target of racist attacks.
Outside Europe and the US, there is another state, psychologically part of the West, where the racist temperature has also risen significantly. This is Israel where identity politics has become a major force marked by anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments among the Jewish population. Needless to say these sentiments are antithetical to Jewish philosophy itself.
Within Israel’s neighbourhood, the emergence of a state committed to Islam as ideology has reinforced identity politics. There are of course other states in the region which also define themselves in terms of religion. When a state projects a religious identity, its internal dichotomies and divisions are often concealed and camouflaged, giving the erroneous impression that a harmonious whole prevails.
As the state’s religious identity becomes more and more decisive, inter-religious ties and even intra-religious relationships are transformed in accordance with the dominant religious complexion of the day. Indeed, even the nation’s history and its evolution is re-interpreted to reflect the narrative set by the national elite. This is happening in a South Asian state today where ancient rites and rituals are revived in order to articulate an explicit religious identity which undermines the rich diversity and cosmopolitan character of its past and present.
Revivalisms of this sort are often linked to the pursuit and perpetuation of power. We are now witnessing how facets of religion are being exploited to serve the narrow interests of a military-cum –political elite in a certain Southeast Asian state. It has resulted in a situation in which the universal message of peace and compassion at the core of the religion’s teachings has been perverted to legitimise an elite’s obsession with power and wealth.
It is obvious that a variety of factors are responsible for the articulation of identity politics through religion and ethnicity. Politics, power, elite interests and changing economic circumstances, sometimes combine with re-interpretations of religious texts to endow identity politics with a dynamism of its own. As we have hinted, identity politics is seldom the essence of faith. It is not at the crux and core of the philosophy of any religion.
To appreciate this, one has to look at what the illustrious prophets and sages taught at the outset of their mission. The long line of Hebrew prophets was concerned about justice. The Hindu sages focused upon righteous conduct. The Buddha’s primary goal was to restore compassion in the conduct of human affairs. For Jesus Christ love was his central purpose. The quintessence of the Quranic message is justice and compassion embodied in the Oneness of God ( Tauhid) which is the foundation of the unity of creation and the solidarity of the human family.
Within such a vision, there is no room for sectarianism, for a ‘us versus them’ dichotomy. Identity politics thrives upon such divisions. When common values are emphasised, when shared principles are highlighted, it is our common humanity that shines forth.
For that to happen, a radical psychological shift will have to occur in the way in which we understand and practise faith. It is the deed we perform rather than the word we profess that will define who we are and what we are. It is what we do that will signal our humanity. And our humanity will define our identity —- our true, real identity.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Malaysia.
He is a frequent Research Associate of the the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image: The seven members of the Kings Bay Plowshares, who entered the Georgia naval base on April 4 to protest nuclear weapons, white supremacy and racism. (WNV/Kings Bay Plowshares)
The Covid-19 vaccine is profit driven. The US government had already ordered 100 million doses back in July 2020 and the EU is to purchase 300 million doses. It’s Big Money for Big Pharma, generous payoffs to corrupt politicians, at the expense of tax payers.
The objective is ultimately to make money, by vaccinating the entire planet of 7.8 billion people for SARS-CoV-2.
The Covid vaccine in some cases envisages more than one shot. If this initiative goes ahead as planned, it would be the largest vaccine project in World history and the biggest money making operation for Big Pharma.
The Second Wave of the pandemic commenced in October 2020. The Pfizer Moderna corona vaccine was launched in early November 2020.
Worldwide, people are led to believe that the corona vaccine is a solution. And that “normality” will then be restored.
How is it that a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which under normal conditions would take years to develop, was promptly launched on the 9th of November 2020?
Moreover, the vaccine announced by Pfizer, Moderna Inc, AstraZeneka and Johnson and Johnson (J & J) is based on an experimental gene editing mRNA technology which has a bearing on the human genome. Coupled with the mRNA vaccine initiative is the development of a so-called digital passport which will be imposed on entire populations. (See analysis below).
And why do we need a vaccine for Covid-19 when the WHO, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as well as numerous scientists have confirmed unequivocally that Covid-19 is “similar to seasonal influenza”.
The mRNA Vaccine is “Unapproved” and “Experimental”
Four major companies including Pfizer Inc, Moderna Inc, AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson (J & J) are currently involved (early 2021) in marketing the experimental mRNA vaccine with the relentless support of national governments.
Amply documented, barely reported by the media, numerous cases of deaths and injury have occurred.
The “Green Light” to market the experimental mRNA vaccine was granted back in December 2020, despite the fact that according to the FDA, the vaccine is an “unapproved product”.
The FDA in an ambiguous statement has provided a so-called Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, namely “to permit the emergency use of the unapproved product, … for active immunization…” (see below)
There is something fishy and “contradictory” in this statement. The experimental Pfizer mRNA vaccine is both “unapproved” and “permitted”.
I have checked this statement with a prominent lawyer. It is blatantly illegal to market an “unapproved product”.
In the US, the Pfizer-Moderna vaccine is categorized by the CDC as an “investigational drug”. “The emergency use” clause is there to justify the launching of what might be described as an “illegal drug”.
There is an ongoing fear campaign but there is no “Emergency” which justifies “Emergency Use”. Why?
Both the WHO and the CDC have confirmed that Covid-19 is “similar to seasonal influenza”, It is not a killer virus.
The PCR test used to estimate “confirmed positive cases” is flawed. Since March 2020, the Covid-19 “numbers” have been manipulated, hiked up.
Flashback to 2009. In a historic US Department of Justice decision in September 2009, Pfizer Inc. pleaded guilty to criminal charges. It was “The Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement” in the History of the US Department of Justice:
American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. and its subsidiary Pharmacia & Upjohn Company Inc. … have agreed to pay $2.3 billion, the largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice, to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from the illegal promotion of certain pharmaceutical products, … ” (September 2, 2009)
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”?
I should mention, however, that in 2009, Pfizer was so to speak “Put on Probation” by the US Department of Justice. It was obliged to enter into “a corporate integrity agreement” with the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). “That agreement provided for “procedures and reviews to … avoid and promptly detect” misconduct on the part of Pfizer, Inc.
Johnson and Johnson and “The Opioid Epidemic”
At the height of the corona crisis, barely covered by the media, coinciding with the launch of the Covid-19 vaccine in early November 2020, Johnson and Johnson (and its three distributors) (involved in the marketing of prescription opioids) “reached a tentative $26 billion settlement with counties and cities that sued them for damages”. The class action law suit was “the largest federal court case in American history” (For further details see Chapter VI pertaining to “The Impacts on Mental Health”)
Are these legal antecedents relevant to an understanding of Big Pharma’s vaccine initiative?
Johnson and Johnson is currently involved in the production and marketing of a Covid adenovirus viral vector vaccine which also entails genetic therapy. (The above J & J 26 billion dollar settlement is one among several law suits against J&J).
Human Guinea Pigs
In relation to the Covid Vaccine, “fraudulent marketing” is an understatement: The mRNA vaccine announced by Pfizer, Moderna Inc, Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneka is an “unapproved drug” based on the “experimental” gene editing mRNA technology which has a bearing on the human genome.
“Human tests began in late July and early August [2020]. Three months is unheard of for testing a new vaccine. Several years is the norm.” (F. William Engdahl, Global Research, November 2020)
This caricature by Large + JIPÉM explains our predicament:
Mouse No 1: “Are You Going to get Vaccinated”,
Mouse No. 2: Are You Crazy, They Haven’t finished the Tests on Humans”
“All vaccines against the SARS-COV-2 virus are by definition novel. No candidate vaccine has been… in development for more than a few months.”:
“If any such vaccine is approved for use under any circumstances that are not EXPLICITLY experimental, I believe that recipients are being misled to a criminal extent.”
In early December, Dr Michael Yeadon together with Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg “filed an application with the EMA, the European Medicine Agency responsible for EU-wide drug approval, for the immediate suspension of all SARS CoV 2 vaccine studies, in particular the BioNtech/Pfizer study on BNT162b (EudraCT number 2020-002641-42).
History of the SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Project
There are many contradictions. The analysis below addresses the earlier stages of the vaccine project as well as the role of the 201 Simulation under the auspices of the John Hopkins School of Medicine held in New York on October 19, 2019.
The Covid vaccine is a multibillion dollar Big Pharma operation which will contribute to increasing the public debt of more than 150 national governments.
Supported by the fear campaign, Money rather than Public Health is the driving force behind this initiative.
The GSK-Pfizer Partnership
Five months before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, two of the largest Worldwide Pharma conglomerates decided to join hands in a strategic relationship. In August 2019, GSK confirmed the formation of a major partnership with Pfizer entitled theConsumer Health Joint Venture.
While the relationship is said to be limited to “trusted consumer health brands”, the agreement envisages joint financial procedures including joint multibillion dollar investment projects. While it does not constitute a merger, the GSK-Pfizer alliance implies selective integration and de facto collusion in many of the two companies’ activities including the vaccine market.
“The completion of the joint venture with Pfizer marks the beginning of the next phase of our transformation of GSK. This is an important moment for the Group, laying the foundation for two great companies, one in Pharmaceuticals and Vaccines and one in Consumer Health.” (GSK, August 1, 2019, emphasis added)
This GSK-Pfizer relationship also encompasses a network of partner pharmaceutical companies, research labs, virology institutes, military and biotech entities, etc. many of which are currently involved in the Covid vaccine initiative.
At present, a handful of multinational companies including GSK and Pfizer control 80% of the global vaccine market. Under the agreement between the two companies, GSK-Pfizer is slated to play a dominant and coordinated role in regards to the Covid-19 vaccine.
The October 2019 Coronavirus Event 201 Simulation Exercise
The coronavirus was initially named nCoV-19 by CEPI and the WHO: exactly the same name as that adopted in the WEF-Gates-John Hopkins Event 201 (2019-nCov) pertaining to a coronavirus simulation exercise held in Baltimore in mid October 2019.
The Event 201 John Hopkins simulation addressed the development of an effective vaccine in response to millions of cases (in the October 2019 simulation) of the 2019 nCoV. The simulation announced a scenario in which the entire population of the planet would be affected: “During the initial months of the pandemic, the cumulative number of cases [in the simulation] increases exponentially, doubling every week. And as the cases and deaths accumulate, the economic and societal consequences become increasingly severe.”
The scenario ends at the 18-month point, with 65 million deaths. The pandemic is beginning to slow due to the decreasing number of susceptible people. The pandemic will continue at some rate until there is an effective vaccine or until 80-90 % of the global population has been exposed. From that point on, it is likely to be an endemic childhood disease.
According to the WEF Video below, produced in relation to the 201 Simulation, “we ran a massive viral pandemic simulation.., 65 million deaths Worlwide.”.
Video Produced by the World Economic Forum in association with the 201 John Hopkins Simulation
Ironically, on January 30th 2020, the WHO defined the new virus as 2019-nCoV, i.e. the same name as that used in the 201 simulation in October 2019.
It was only later that Covid-19 was identified by the WHO not as a virus but as a disease: coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the Virus was identified as “severe acute respiratory syndrome” coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
Two weeks after the virus had been formally identified by the People’s Republic of China (Jan 7, 2020), a vaccine for the novel coronavirus was announced by CEPI at the Davos World Economic Forum, January 20-24, 2020.
The Central Role of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)
The lead entity for the novel coronavirus vaccine initiative is the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) an organization sponsored and financed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Note the chronology: The development of the 2019 nCoV vaccine was announced at the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) a week prior to the official launching by the WHO of a Worldwide Public Health Emergency (January 30) at a time when the number of “confirmed cases” Worldwide (outside China) was 83. (see Chapter II)
The pandemic was launched by the WHO on March 11. And five days later, barely covered by the media, the first tests involving human volunteers were conducted by Moderna in Seattle on March 16.
According to Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) the project to develop a vaccine commenced not only prior to the discovery and identification of the coronavirus (January 7, 2020) but several months prior to the October 2019 simulation exercise.
“We did that in the last year or so [early 2019]. … ”
(scroll down for interview with Richard Hatchett)
CEPI is seeking a “monopoly” role in the vaccination business the objective of which is a “global vaccine project”, in partnership with a large number of “candidates”.
It announced funding for its existing partnership with Inovio and The University of Queensland (Australia). In addition, CEPI confirmed (January 23, 2020) its contract with Moderna, Inc. and the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been instrumental in waging the fear and panic campaign across America: “Ten Times Worse than Seasonal Flu”. (See WEF Video below)
The presentation of the representative from Moderna Inc describing the features of the mRNA vaccine starts at 11’50”.
“We inject instructions … mRNA is a platform”
CEPI was dealing simultaneously with several pharmaceutical companies. The Moderna- NIAID agreement was implemented. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was launched in the US in late November 2020.
On January 31st, 2020 the day following the WHO’s official launching of the global public health emergency (PHEIC) and Trump’s decision to curtail air travel with China, CEPI announced its partnership with CureVac AG, a German-based biopharmaceutical company.
A few days later, in early February 2020, CEPI “announced that major vaccine manufacturer GSK would allow its proprietary adjuvants— compounds that boost the effectiveness of vaccines — to be used in the response”. (The pandemic was officially launched on March 11).
There were many “potential vaccines in the pipeline” with “dozens of research groups around the world racing to create a vaccine against COVID-19”.
The COV-19 Global Vaccination Program
CEPI (on behalf of Gates-WEF, which funded the 201 simulation exercise) is currently playing a key role in a large scale Worldwide vaccination program in partnership with biotech companies, Big Pharma, government agencies as well as university laboratories.
The foregoing statement by CEPI was made nearly two months prior to the official declaration of a pandemic on March 11.
“We’re having conversations with a broad array of potential partners”.
And critical to those conversations is:
What’s the plan to make very large quantities of vaccine within a time frame that is potentially relevant to what people seem to be increasingly certain will be a pandemic, if it isn’t already there? …” [Richard Hatchett, CEPI CEO in interview with stat.news.com]. …
The underlying focus was to develop a global vaccine:
And part of that was doing a global survey of manufacturing capacity to think about where we wanted to plant the manufacturing of any successful products we were able to bring forward.
Of significance, Hatchett confirmed that the project to develop a vaccine commenced not only prior to the discovery and identification of the coronavirus (January 7, 2020) but several months prior to the October 2019 201 simulation exercise.
“We did that in the last year or so. [early 2019]… We are using the information that we have collected and have that team now thinking about opportunities for scaling vaccines of various different types. That is a work in progress. For some of the technologies the tech transfer [to a manufacturer] may be something that could be done in a time frame that was pertinent to the epidemic, potentially.
I think it is going to be really important to engage those folks who have access to really substantial production capacity. And having the big producers at the table — because of their depth, because of their experience, because of their internal resources — would be very, very important.
The candidate vaccines will be very, very quick. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID [who has been spreading panic on network TV], is out in public as saying he thinks the clinical trial for the Moderna vaccine may be as early as the spring. (emphasis added)
What is now unfolding in real life is in some regards similar to the October 2019 201 Simulation exercise at John Hopkins.
The scenario is how to produce millions of vaccine shots on the presumption that the pandemic will spread Worldwide, and for that you need the Covid-19 “positive cases” to go fly high.
The CEPI sponsored vaccine conglomerates had already planned their investments well in advance of the global Worldwide health emergency (declared by the WHO on January 30, 2020):
I [Hachett] think part of the general strategy is to have a large number of candidates. [and] you want to have enough candidates that at least some of them are moving rapidly through the process.
And then for each candidate, you need to ask yourself the question: How do you produce that? … [And] how are you going to get to that point with production at a scale that is meaningful in the context of a disease that is going to infect the whole of society?(Interview conducted by Helen Branswell, statsnews, February 3, 2020)
Moderna Inc
Moderna Inc based in Seattle was one of the several candidates involved and supported by CEPI.
Moderna announced on February 24th the development of “an experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, known as mRNA-1273″. “The initial batch of the vaccine has already been shipped to U.S. government researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)” headed by Dr. Antony Fauci.
While Moderna Inc initially stated that the first clinical trials would commence in late April, tests involving human volunteers started in mid-March in Seattle: (bear in mind the pandemic was officially launched on March 11)
Some of the study’s carefully chosen healthy volunteers, ages 18 to 55, will get higher dosages than others to test how strong the inoculations should be. Scientists will check for any side effects and draw blood samples to test if the vaccine is revving up the immune system, looking for encouraging clues like the NIH earlier found in vaccinated mice.
“We don’t know whether this vaccine will induce an immune response, or whether it will be safe. That’s why we’re doing a trial,” Jackson stressed. “It’s not at the stage where it would be possible or prudent to give it to the general population.” (FOX news local)
The Covid Vaccine and the ID2020 Digital Identity Platform
While CEPI had announced the launching of a global vaccine at the Davos World Economic Forum, another important and related endeavor was underway. It’s called the ID2020 Agenda, which, according to Peter Koenig constitutes “an electronic ID program that uses generalized vaccination as a platform for digital identity”.
“The program harnesses existing birth registration and vaccination operations to provide newborns with a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity”. (Peter Koenig, March 2020)
The founding Partners of ID2020 are Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) among others.
It is worth noting the timeline: The ID2020 Alliance held their Summit in New York, entitled “Rising to the Good ID Challenge”, on September 19, 2019, exactly one month prior to nCov-2019 simulation exercise entitled Event 201 at John Hopkins in New York:
Is it just a coincidence that ID2020 is being rolled out at the onset of what the WHO calls a Pandemic? – Or is a pandemic needed to ‘roll out’ the multiple devastating programs of ID2020? (Peter Koenig, March 2020)
ID2020 is part of a “World Governance” project which, if applied, would roll out the contours of what some analysts have described as a Global Police State encompassing through vaccination the personal details of several billion people Worldwide. According to Dr. David Martin(quoted by Makia Freeman):
“This is not a vaccine … using the term vaccine to sneak this thing under public health exemptions … This is a mRNA packaged in a fat envelope that is delivered to a cell. It is a medical device designed to stimulate the human cell into becoming a pathogen creator. It is not a vaccine! Vaccines actually are a legally defined term … under public health law … under CDC and FDA standards, and a vaccine specifically has to stimulate both an immunity within the person receiving it, but it also has to disrupt transmission.
In the Wake of the Lockdown. The Second Wave
The Second Wave: The fear campaign continues in the wake of the lockdown. A new lockdown is unfolding (December-January) in several countries.
Will the hardships of the economic and social crisis (coupled with a fear campaign) encourage people to get vaccinated?
To implement the Global Vaccine, the propaganda campaign must continue. The Truth must be suppressed. These are their “guidelines”, which must be confronted and challenged.
Several governments (aka corrupt politicians) including the US, UK, France, Germany, Canada as well as India have already provided the green light. Information and analysis on the features of the virus (similar to seasonal influential) is being suppressed by the media.
While Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has been used to treat patients in both Europe and North America, Big Pharma with the support of the governments is intent upon suppressing evidence on how COVID-19 can be cured, without the need of a vaccine. (See Chapter VI)
The Covid Vaccine and “Herd Immunity”: Changing the Definitions
Herd immunity is an important concept in medicine. According to Healthline:
“It happens when so many people in a community become immune to an infectious disease that it stops the disease from spreading.
This can happen in two ways:
1. Many people contract the disease and in time build up an immune response to it (natural immunity).
2. Many people are vaccinated against the disease to achieve immunity.
Herd immunity can work against the spread of some diseases. There are several reasons why it often works.” (See Healthline)
The WHO has redefined herd immunity with a view to supporting the multibillion dollar Covid vaccine initiative:
Below (Left) is the official WHO definition (June 2020). And in November (Right) the WHO decided unilaterally to redefine a fundamental medical concept, focussing solely on the role of vaccination in achieving herd immunity.
.
To our knowledge, the peer reviewed definition of herd immunity has not changed.
The new “definition” of the WHO visibly serves the interests of Big Pharma.
.
Flashback: The 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic
Remember the 2009 H1N1 “pandemic” when Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology compared the H1N1 pandemic to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic while reassuring the public that the latter was more deadly. (CBC: Get swine flu vaccine ready: U.S. advisers).
Based on incomplete and scanty data, the WHO Director General Margaret Chan predicted with authority that: “as many as 2 billion people could become infected over the next two years — nearly one-third of the world population.” (World Health Organization as reported by the Western media, July 2009).
It was a multibillion bonanza for Big Pharma supported by the WHO’s Director-General Margaret Chan.
In a subsequent statement Dr. Chan confirmed that:
“Swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren’t successful.” (Official Statement of Obama Administration, Associated Press, 24 July 2009).
There was no H1N1 pandemic affecting 2 billion people. Millions of doses of swine flu vaccine had been ordered by national governments from Big Pharma.
Millions of vaccine doses were subsequently destroyed: a financial bonanza for Big Pharma, an expenditure crisis for national governments.
There was no investigation into who was behind this multibillion dollar fraud. Several critics said that the H1N1 Pandemic was “Fake”
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a human rights watchdog, is publicly investigating the WHO’s motives in declaring a pandemic. Indeed, the chairman of its influential health committee, epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, has declared thatthe “false pandemic” is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.” (Michael Fomento, Forbes, February 10, 2010)
Michael Fomento concludes:
Even within the agency, the director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Epidemiology in Munster, Germany, Dr. Ulrich Kiel, has essentially labeled the pandemic a hoax. “We are witnessing a gigantic misallocation of resources [$18 billion so far] in terms of public health,” he said.
They’re right. This wasn’t merely overcautiousness or simple misjudgment. The pandemic declaration and all the Klaxon-ringing since reflect sheer dishonesty motivated not by medical concerns but political ones.
Unquestionably, swine flu has proved to be vastly milder than ordinary seasonal flu. It kills at a third to a tenth the rate, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. Data from other countries like France and Japan indicate it’s far tamer than that.
The WHO’s H1N1 pandemic was declared in June 11, 2009. GSK was on contract to the Canadian government. The GSK’s ArepandrixTM vaccine was delivered to Canadian health authorities within less than four months.
“As a result, an impressive 45% of Canadians received protection from the H1N1 virus by being vaccinated with GSK’s ArepanrixTM” according to GSK’S President-CEO Paul Lucas in a statement on October 9 2009 to Canada’s Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
Within four months?. Does that give them Time to Test????
Lots of people in Canada fell sick after receiving the H1N1 ArepanrixTD vaccine.
And that vaccine killed a little girl called Amina Abudu, which then led to a ten year lawsuit against GSK.
A vaccine was rushed to market, and the five year old was among millions of Canadians to get the shot, amid widespread fears about the new pathogen.
Five days later, Amina’s older brother found her lying unconscious in the bathroom of the family’s east-end Toronto home. She was dead.
Her devastated parents came to blame the flu shot itself and sued the vaccine’s manufacturer, Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK), for $4.2 million. The little-noticed trial of that lawsuit drew toward a close on Tuesday, a rare judicial airing in Canada of a vaccine’s alleged side effects.
The parents’ lawyer, Jasmine Ghosn, alleged the preventive drug was brought out quickly and without proper testing during a chaotic flu season, as the federal government exerted “intense pressure” on Canadians to get immunized. (National Post, November 2019)
It took ten years for a judgment. The Family lost. GSK declined responsibility for her death. And the Canadian government reimbursed GSK’s legal expenses.
That lawsuit against GSK should be reopened. Canada’s government bears the burden of responsibility.
ArepanrixTD (2009) vs PandemrixTM (2009)
GSK has casually acknowledged that the ArepanrixTD which was used in Canada is “similar” to the GSK’s PandemrixTM applied in the UK and the EU, which led to brain damage in Children. It was subsequently withdrawn. But ArepandrixTD applied in Canada prevailed. An ArepandrixTD (2010) was subsequently released the following year (and compared to PandemrixTD (2009)
GSK acknowledges that PandemrixTD (2009) causes narcolepsy, which is categorized as “a chronic neurological disorder that affects the brain’s ability to control sleep-wake cycles.”
COVID-19 Vaccine is Déjà Vu. Lets not be taken in again.
Important Lessons to be Learned from the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic
The COVID-19 “pandemic” is far more serious and diabolical than the 2009 H1N1. The COV-19 pandemic has provided a pretext and a justification for destabilizing the economies of entire countries, impoverishing large sectors of the World population. Unprecedented in modern history.
And it is important that we act cohesively and in solidarity with those who are victims of this crisis.
People’s lives are in a freefall and their purchasing power has been destroyed.
What kind of twisted social structure awaits us in the wake of the lockdown?
Can we trust the World Health Organization (WHO) and the powerful economic interest groups behind it. The answer is obvious.
Can we trust the main actors behind the multibillion dollar global vaccination project?
Can we trust the Western media which has led the fear campaign?
Disinformation sustains the lies and fabrications.
Can we trust our “corrupt” governments? Our national economy has been devastated.
In recent developments, the Covid vaccine is being implemented in a large number of countries.
Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg who revealed the fraud behind H1N1 is actively involved together with Dr. Michael Yeadon in the campaign against the Covid-19 vaccine.
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).
***
First published on February 8, 2021
On Dec. 10, 2020, American biotechnology company Moderna, Inc., which is pioneering the development of experimental messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines, gave a 12-year old a dose of the company’s mRNA-1273 vaccine in a Phase 2/3 study of the new vaccine. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said, “Our goal is to generate data in the spring of 2021 that will support the use of mRNA-1273 in adolescents in advance of the 2021 school year”.1
Moderna was granted an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Dec. 18, 2020 for administration of the experimental COVID-19 biologic to adults 18 years or older. The estimated study completion date is June 30, 2022.2
Moderna Admits Struggling to Find Tweens and Teens Willing to Sign Up
Moderna needs to enroll at least 3,000 adolescent participants to provide valid safety and efficacy data, and to get authorization from the FDA for the COVID-19 biologic to be administered to children as young as age 12.3 However, by mid-January, the company acknowledged it was struggling to find enough adolescent volunteers,4 which will potentially delay FDA authorization for the mRNA coronavirus vaccine to be given to this age group.5
Moncef Slaoui, PhD, the scientific head of the previous administration’s Operation Warp Speed COVID-19 vaccination program expressed concern about having trouble getting adolescent volunteers to enroll in clinical trials. On Jan. 12, 2020 he said that, while a vaccine trial in adults is accruing 800 volunteers per day, the teen trial is getting only about 800 per month.6
The Moderna teen trial, called TeenCove, expects to enroll adolescents at up to 15 sites nationwide.7 Katherine Luzuriaga, MD, principal investigator at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, one of the 15 clinical trial sites, said study participants will receive either the experimental biologic or a saline placebo in a 2:1 ratio.
Those receiving the experimental biologic will receive two doses of 100 micrograms each, given 28 days apart, as is authorized for adults. Participants will be followed for one year after receipt of the second dose.8 They’re hoping to enroll children from diverse communities, especially those in Black and other minority communities which reportedly have been the most severely affected by COVID-19. Study participants must be between 12 and 17 years old, in good health, and have never tested positive for COVID-19.
In its “Frequently Asked Questions” section, TeenCove states that, “compensation for your family’s time will be available. We realize it takes time to come for study visits, so we want to make sure this is not too much of a burden for you and your child. The study site will review these details with you.”9
“Hard for Parents to Justify” Enrolling Children in COVID-19 Clinical Trials
Yvonne Maldonado, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University School of Medicine and chair of the committee on infectious diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), said it’s crucial to get vaccine data for children of all ages. She said, “Many of us want to see kids vaccinated—for their own safety of course, but also because it really reduces the chain of transmission.” She observed that the fact that COVID-19 is usually so mild in minors makes it hard for parents to justify enrolling their kids in trials. “If the disease were something that was very clearly impacting them in a hugely negative way, you’d probably see more interest there,” she said.10
On Jan. 22, 2020 Pfizer, Inc. announced it had finished enrolling children between 12 and 15 years old in a study testing its COVID-19 biologic, as they seek to expand the shot’s use among different age groups. The study, which was announced in October, had enrolled over 2,000 participants, a Pfizer spokeswoman said in an emailed statement to Reuters.11
To Test or Not to Test COVID-19 Vaccines in Children?
Nationwide through Jan. 31, 2021, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported there were 267 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in ages 0-17, which accounted for less than 0.1 percent of all deaths in the U.S since the beginning of the pandemic. Persons over 65 years of age accounted for 81 percent of all deaths.12
Waiting until vaccines appear safe to test them in children is a common practice, as children’s biological responses to vaccination can be different than adult responses. Some doctors think testing in children should begin sooner than later, continuing the current overall push to expedite the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to all age groups. Others have argued that because children are less likely to have severe complications or die if they become infected with SARS-CoV-2, the risks of testing COVID-19 vaccines on them could actually be greater than those posed by the severe disease symptoms the shots are designed to prevent.13
The FDA convened a panel of outside experts for its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) that met on Oct. 22, 2020 to review data and advise the agency on candidate coronavirus vaccines. Members of the FDA advisory committee expressed several serious concerns about the testing and approval process. Luigi Notarangelo, MD, chief researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said:
I think children at this point should not be considered for use of this vaccine until there is sufficient evidence that it’s safe for them, and what we’ve been presented today does not provide that.14
Pressure to return children to school may make testing vaccines in children more urgent, but Anthony Fauci, MD, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, states it’s “an extra added benefit when we get the vaccine for the kids,” but that it is not a prerequisite for reopening. That sentiment has been echoed by many teachers’ groups and medical experts. “There’s very little concern or sense that school shouldn’t be open because the kids aren’t vaccinated,” said Colin Sharkey, the executive director of the Association of American Educators.15
“This year has been the strangest anyone has ever experienced,” said Lisa Brown, a mother whose 15 year-old son is enrolled in the adolescent arm of the Pfizer mRNA study. “It’s important for this age group to get vaccinated so that they can go back to school, and things can go back to normal.”16
Many parents are “more afraid of COVID than the vaccine,” according to Laurie Evans, whose 16-year-old daughter is enrolled in the Pfizer study.17 But fear is only one element that would attract the thousands of American families Pfizer and Moderna need to enroll children for pediatric clinical trials. Many medical researchers and health officials are also emphasizing the concept that enrolling in COVID-19 vaccine experiments and getting vaccinated is for “the greater good,” suggesting that “getting a vaccine, when it’s available, is not just about you. It’s about protecting your grandmother who has diabetes and Uncle Sean, who is immune-compromised.”18
Limited Long-Term Follow-Up of Pfizer, Moderna COVID-19 Biologics
So far, both the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 biologics are believed to be generally tolerable, with most of the reported short-term side effects including fever, chills, fatigue, headache and injection site pain and swelling.19 However, clinical trials only included thousands of participants followed up for a few months. Important safety data won’t be available until they have been followed for many more months and even years.
Pfizer and Moderna have promised to collect and disclose follow-up clinical trial safety and efficacy information when it becomes available.20 However, long-term follow-up for conditions such as cancer and autoimmune diseases will become difficult, if not impossible, if the vaccine makers hasten to offer their vaccines to the placebo groups, which will completely erase the ability for researchers to compare or evaluate potential long term differences in health outcomes among the vaccinated and placebo groups.
Moderna and Pfizer executives have both suggested that the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial participants, who received a placebo, should be vaccinated.21
The challenge of keeping children in the study long enough to evaluate longer-term consequences of the vaccine is well articulated by mother Laurie Evans. She is concerned that the two-year commitment to which her daughter agreed as a COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial participant means that, if she received a placebo, she might be discouraged from getting the actual vaccine when it is approved since that would compromise the ongoing research.
Her daughter is also concerned about that scenario, especially if her school requires students to be vaccinated in order to attend. Evans reports that Pfizer has been surprisingly vague on that point so far and has not yet spelled out what it will expect from placebo recipients.
Vaccine Experiments on Children Have Cruel Past
From 1950 to 1972, Saul Krugman, MD conducted hepatitis vaccine trials on disabled children aged five to ten years old at the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island in New York. One parent, Dianna McCort, said she was “desperate” to find a placement for her daughter. She described how Dr. Krugman offered to jump the long waitlist and put her daughter in the newer, cleaner research wards with more staff, but only if she allowed her daughter to be enrolled in the hepatitis B vaccine experiments.
“I did feel coerced,” McCort said, “I felt like I was denied help unless I took this [opportunity].” Dr. Krugman also told parents that since hepatitis was already prevalent at Willowbrook, their children may as well have the chance to not contract hepatitis B by getting the experimental hepatitis B vaccine.22
Willowbrook was one in a long line of human experiments on children, prison inmates, people in mental health facilities, and minority populations in the U.S.. In 1974, the National Research Act was passed in an effort to create regulations that protected subjects in human research trials. The Act created an ethics task force, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research.
Vaccine experiments carried out without parental consent on babies and young children in Mother and Baby homes in Ireland during the 1960s violated the Nuremberg Code created by an international war crimes commission after horrific Nazi experiments on children during World War II were discovered. Patrick Meenan, MD, who led the vaccine program in Ireland and was also a key government advisor on the issue, stated: “There was a tradition of doing testing in orphanages. You went to where the material was to put it crudely.”23
“Mistakes with vaccines can erode the public’s trust”
In the Philippines, 600 child deaths are currently under investigation after children received the Sanofi-Pasteur dengue vaccine, Dengvaxia. Fourteen government officials have been indicted for acting with “undue haste” in procuring the vaccine and launching the mass immunization campaign before the clinical trials were finished.
The debacle in the Philippines offers a key lesson for governments and manufacturers when it comes to approving and selling new vaccines. Physician and bioethicist Keymanthri Moodley, who directs the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, advises researchers and public health officials to “slow down” because mistakes with testing vaccines can erode the public’s trust and have long-term consequences for the health of an entire country. He said,
When a vaccine goes wrong, it creates fear and anxiety in terms of the public, especially the parents. That fear can impact negatively on the established immune programs that are actually safe and work very well.24
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
The man who helped expose US-NATO crimes now resides in a British supermax prison full of convicted murders and armed robbers.
Julian Assange is kept in solitary confinement amidst incredibly restrictive and harsh conditions. He has been denied visits from his family for over six months now. During this last winter he has been denied the warm clothing sent by his family and left to shiver in a cold prison cell against the background of a deadly global pandemic.
****
On Feb 17, 2020, Doctors for Assange demanded an end to the torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange.1 Yet no responsible authority has acted. Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and two medical experts visited Mr Assange in prison in May, 2019, concluding that his treatment constituted psychological torture, a form of torture aimed at destroying the personality of an individual.2 The situation has deteriorated since then, with continued abuses of Mr Assange’s fundamental rights and the medical risks posed by COVID-19.
.
Since February, 2020, there has been a string of hearings in the context of Mr Assange’s US extradition trial. A timeline is provided in the appendix. His treatment throughout has been described as “shocking and excessive” by the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI).3 He has been held in a bulletproof enclosure unable to fully hear proceedings and denied meetings with his lawyers. He was strip-searched, handcuffed 11 times, moved to five different holding cells, and had privileged client–lawyer communications seized.3
Mr Assange attended, by videolink due to ill health, only one hearing, missing the four following hearings because of COVID-19-related restrictions and medical risks.
Prison lockdowns in the UK have prevented meetings with his lawyers to prepare for future hearings. These irregularities and excesses cause helplessness, arbitrariness, threat, and isolation, all key components of psychological torture.
.
Mr Assange is at grave risk from contracting COVID-19. As he is non-violent, being held on remand, and arbitrarily detained according to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,4 he meets internationally recommended criteria for prisoner release during COVID-19.5, 6 A bail application with a plan for monitored home detention was refused, however, and Mr Assange is held in solitary confinement for 23 h each day.
Isolation and under-stimulation are key psychological torture tactics, capable of inducing severe despair, disorientation, destabilisation, and disintegration of crucial mental functions. Given recent attacks against journalists, the psychological torture of a publisher and journalist sets a precedent of international concern.
.
Human rights organisations and others have called for Mr Assange’s release and condemned the extradition proceedings. Amnesty International has advocated for Mr Assange’s release on bail.5 The Council of Europe considers7 Mr Assange’s treatment to be among “the most severe threats to media freedom”.8
We reiterate our demand to end the torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange.1 IBAHRI states that, in view of Mr Assange being a victim of psychological torture, his extradition to the USA would be illegal under international human rights law.3 The World Psychiatric Association emphasises that withholding appropriate medical treatment can itself amount to torture,9 and under the Convention Against Torture, those acting in official capacities can be held complicit and accountable not only for perpetration of torture, but for their silent acquiescence and consent.
.
As physicians, we have a professional and ethical duty to speak out against, report, and stop torture.10, 11 Silence on Mr Assange’s torture might well facilitate his death.12 The silence must be broken. Now. Please join us!
We are members of Doctors for Assange. This Correspondence has 216 signatories, representing 33 countries. A longer version of this Correspondence and the list of signatories is available in the appendix.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Notes
1. Doctors for Assange
End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. Lancet.2020; 395: e44-e45
9. Pérez-Sales P WPA position statement on banning the participation of psychiatrists in the interrogation of detainees. World Psychiatry.2018; 17: 237-238
10. Keller AS Human rights and advocacy: an integral part of medical education and practice. Virtual Mentor.2004; 6: 33-36
11. Rubenstein LS The medical community’s response to torture. Lancet.2003; 3611556
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).
***
Prashant Bhushan, an advocate-on-record for the Supreme Court of India, put a post on Twitter that recommended reading a peer-reviewed study demonstrating that masks are ineffective and can cause substantial adverse physiological and psychological effects.
Twitter removed the tweet, citing a violation of Twitter rules.
The study suggests that by mechanically restricting breathing, wearing a face mask may lead to a low level of oxygen in the blood (hypoxemia) along with excessive carbon dioxide in your bloodstream (hypercapnia), which in turn may lead to numerous long-term health effects
YouTube also removed a video that featured a scientific roundtable on COVID, because a Harvard professor warned that children should not wear face masks
A legal cause has been launched in the U.K., calling for schools to stop requiring children to wear masks in school, due to their harm to psychological health and development
In Weilheim, Germany, a district court concluded that the mask requirement in schools is unconstitutional and void, immediately removing the order on school premises
*
March 26, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) tweeted a post against the use of masks for the general public: “If you do not have any respiratory symptoms, such as fever, cough, or runny nose, you do not need to wear a medical mask. When used alone, masks can give you a false feeling of protection and can even be a source of infection when not used correctly.”1
About one year later, Twitter is now censoring tweets that call facemasks for COVID-19 into question, citing a violation of Twitter rules.2 In the span of less than one year, how did we go from public health officials advising against masks to them now being considered infallible and not up for debate?
“Given that masking of healthy populations for long periods of time is a new policy, it is astounding that the media and scientific journals decided within a matter of months that the efficacy of the practice could not be questioned or studied, nor its adverse effects discussed,” Jeffrey Tucker, editorial director for the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) noted.3
The latest to be silenced was Prashant Bhushan, an advocate-on-record for the Supreme Court of India, a respected human rights attorney with 2.1 million Twitter followers.
Prior to its censoring, his tweet recommended reading a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Medical Hypotheses,4 which demonstrates that masks not only are ineffective for blocking the transmission of infectious disease but also that they can cause substantial adverse physiological and psychological effects.5
It’s alarming to say, but as noted by The COVID Blog, “Twenty-something Twitter employees with Starbucks lattes are now the authorities in law and science versus respected, long-time attorneys who have fought corruption their entire lives.”6
What Does the Censored Mask Study Say?
The study, written by Baruch Vainshelboim with Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System/Stanford University, summarizes scientific evidence on wearing facemasks in the COVID-19 era. Four hypotheses are given, with ample scientific support to back them up:7
The practice of wearing facemasks has compromised safety and efficacy profile
Both medical and non-medical facemasks are ineffective to reduce human-to-human transmission and infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19
Wearing facemasks has adverse physiological and psychological effects
Long-term consequences of wearing facemasks on health are detrimental
“Interestingly, 99% of the detected cases with SARS-CoV-2 are asymptomatic or have mild condition, which contradicts with the virus name (severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2),” Vainshelboim notes, pointing out that the initial infection fatality rate of 2.9% was an overestimation based on limited COVID-19 tests that inflated the rate.
“This was confirmed by the head of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from US stating, ‘the overall clinical consequences of COVID-19 are similar to those of severe seasonal influenza,’ having a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%,” he added.8 As for the efficacy of face masks, SARS-CoV-2, which is about 1,000 times smaller than face masks’ thread diameter, can easily pass through a mask.
A meta-analysis of 39 studies also found “possibly no difference between N95 versus surgical masks and probably no difference between surgical versus no mask in risk for influenza or influenza-like illness” in community settings.9
Physiological and Psychological Effects of Masks
By mechanically restricting breathing, wearing a face mask may lead to a low level of oxygen in the blood (hypoxemia) along with excessive carbon dioxide in your bloodstream (hypercapnia).
In turn, Vainshelboim wrote, “Chronic low-grade hypoxemia and hypercapnia as result of using face mask can cause exacerbation of existing cardiopulmonary, metabolic, vascular and neurological conditions.” In addition, wearing a face mask could lead to the following physiological effects:10
Hypoxemia
Hypercapnia
Shortness of breath
Increase lactate concentration
Decline in pH levels
Acidosis
Toxicity
Inflammation
Self-contamination
Increase in stress hormones level (adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol)
Increased muscle tension
Immunosuppression
Psychological effects were also noted, which include:11
Breathing through mask materials, and rebreathing the same air, also poses a high likelihood of self-contamination that could have the end result of suppressing the immune system. Vainshelboim explained:13
“In addition to hypoxia and hypercapnia, breathing through facemask residues bacterial and germs components on the inner and outside layer of the facemask. These toxic components are repeatedly rebreathed back into the body, causing self-contamination.
Breathing through facemasks also increases temperature and humidity in the space between the mouth and the mask, resulting in a release of toxic particles from the mask’s materials.
A systematic literature review estimated that aerosol contamination levels of facemasks include 13 to 202,549 different viruses.14 Rebreathing contaminated air with high bacterial and toxic particle concentrations along with low O2 and high CO2 levels continuously challenge the body homeostasis, causing self-toxicity and immunosuppression.”
Are Masks Just Virtue Signaling?
In May 2020, a group of doctors and researchers wrote in a perspective piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine that masks offer little protection outside of health care facilities, except to calm people’s nerves:15
“We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection,” they wrote, and went on to describe masks as playing a “symbolic role” as “talismans” to increase the perception of safety, even though “such reactions may not be strictly logical.” “Expanded masking protocols’ greatest contribution may be to reduce the transmission of anxiety, over and above whatever role they may play in reducing transmission of COVID-19,” they add.
Since then, masks have indeed taken on a symbolic role, one that presents an outward visible sign that you’re obeying COVID protocols and are acting as a “moral” COVID citizen. AIER pointed out that this mask orthodoxy is part of what’s driving the rampant censorship online, including by YouTube.
“YouTube has taken it upon itself to censor the opinions of esteemed scientists that depart from the orthodoxy on masks. This is not surprising given that masks have become dogma – a visible symbol of compliance and fealty to the medical/political agenda that elevates the coronavirus above all else,” Tucker wrote.16
Calls for Children to Stop Wearing Masks
YouTube removed an AIER video that featured a scientific roundtable on COVID. In the video, Harvard professor Martin Kulldorff commented,
“Children should not wear face masks. They don’t need it for their own protection and they don’t need it for protecting other people either.”17
According to YouTube, the video was removed because “it included content that contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”18
Kulldorff isn’t the only one who’s calling for children to not be masked. Lucy Johnston, health and social affairs editor with the Sunday Express, asked on Twitter, “Why did Govt not trial use of masks in schools to assess benefits vs risks? Two legal cases now show masks causing both mental & physical harm.”19
One such case was launched in the U.K., with two expert reports speaking out against the use of masks for children. The first, a psychology report,20 states that masks are likely to be causing psychological harm to children and interfering with development.21
“The extent of psychological harm to young people is unknown,” the report states, “due to the unique nature of the ‘social experiment’ currently underway in schools, and in wider society.”22 The second report focused on health, safety and well-being. “Figures illustrate that the risk of death from this disease for this age group is negligible,” the report states, continuing:23
“Hence the introduction of compulsory face covering measures for extended periods of each day in the school, which have potential for a range of long-term health, safety and other harms of as yet unknown quantum, is disproportionate. To introduce these without detailed, thorough and meticulous risk assessment, is potentially reckless.
… The precautionary principle applies especially to children who have little power to oppose decisions made by the adults who hold authority over them and responsibility for them. Those same children will carry the health burden of any errors or omissions for the rest of their lives.
The face covering measure imposed on these secondary schoolchildren are intended to reduce the risk of them contracting an infectious disease Sars-CoV-2, but the risk to this age group of death or serious illness from contracting the same pathogen is almost nil. Most don’t have any symptoms at all or experience a sniffle, a cold or mild influenza like illness.”
German Town Deems School Mask Requirement Unconstitutional
In Weilheim, Germany, a district court concluded that the mask requirement in schools is unconstitutional and void, immediately removing the order on school premises.24 The ruling was made after experts, including psychology professor Christof Kuhbandner, suggested masks pose a significant risk to children’s mental and physical well-being, and could interfere with development by disrupting nonverbal communication.
“Mask mouth,” which increases tooth decay, bad breath and gingivitis, was also cited, as was the ineffectiveness of face masks, with experts stating there is no evidence that face masks reduce the risk of infection from SARS-CoV-2 “at all or even significantly.” Increasingly, people are standing up to the fact that little is known about the long- and short-term risks of masking healthy people.
March 30, 2021, Spain’s central Health Ministry announced a new law, published in the Official State Gazette (BOE),25 that would remove the social distancing component, making masks mandatory in all public spaces, even if no one else is around — including when sunbathing at the beach or swimming in the ocean.26
A number of regional governments immediately suggested that they would defy the initial orders, while the tourism industry also criticized the move,27 forcing the health ministry to reconsider, and showing that standing up for what you believe in continues to make a difference.
Circling back to the featured Medical Hypotheses paper, Vainshelboim is doing just that, even though taking a position against masks today “involves serious professional risk.”
As Tucker wrote, “The paper appears in the midst of an ongoing effort … to normalize and universalize mask wearing, even as many states are repealing their mask mandates with public support. The evidence that doing so has had any effect on the trajectory of the virus is scant at best.”28
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
“The Liberal government says it supports small modular reactors to help Canada mitigate climate change. The government is simply barking up the wrong tree, for several reasons: cost, cost and cost, as well as renewables, safety and radioactive waste.”
It so happens that this Spring has been the anniversary of three of the most devastating nuclear meltdowns in history – Fukushima Daiichi (March 11, 2011), Three Mile Island (March 28, 1978), and Chernobyl (April 26, 1986). [3]
A nuclear disaster of this magnitude are unique in that they is the only environmental crisis that will continue to be a threat to human health well into the future – for hundreds of years! [4]
According to standard accounts, the death toll from the Chernobyl meltdown ranged from 4,000 to 200,000 although the scientific studies by Doctors Yablokov, Vassily and Nesterenkoin their book Chernobyl: Consequences of a Catastrophe for People and the Environment placed the numbers closer to 1,000,000.[5]
The triple meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi Atomic Power Reactors event launched radiation affecting Japan and the world. About 160,000 individuals were forced to flee. Wikipedia listed 15,000 deaths mostly attributable to the earthquake and tidal wave that struck the site.[6][7]
However, Chris Busby, scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, predicted a death toll of more than a million through the radiation released and even discovered that the fall-out from radioactive iodine damaged thyroids in children as far away as California. Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president and chief spokesperson for Fairewinds Energy Education, has been monitoring the situation for years and similarly stated, “I believe we’re going to see as many as a million cancers over the next 30 years because of the Fukushima incident in Japan.” [8]
These incidents have generally turned the Japanese people off of nuclear but there is a key incentive that makes it appear tempting for others outside the country. [9]
The role of nuclear power is being re-examined by leaders as a mechanism for radically reducing climate change. As a result, in October of last year, the government of Canada announced an investment of $20 million dollars in small modular nuclear reactors as an attempt to meet its net zero greenhouse gas emission goals by the year 2050.[10]
Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’ Regan put it bluntly:
“We have not seen a model where we can get to net-zero emissions by 2050 without nuclear…The fact of the matter is that it produces zero emissions.”[11]
The power of the atom is an amazing phenomenon humankind has had the ability to harness. But the costs of nuclear as measured by devastating radiation and the growth of radioactive waste that we’ll have to warehouse for thousands and thousands of years should provoke thoughts among citizens about how badly we need power to boil an egg!
This week’s Global Research News Hour will look at some of the lessons learned and not learned by the meltdown of the past as the Canadian government embraces a carbon diet via a nuclear binge.
In our first half hour we hear from environmental journalist Robert Hunziker about Fukushima ten years later, its plans to allow irradiated water to be dumped directly into the Pacific Ocean, and his thoughts about the nuclear industry getting away with murder.
In our second half hour, Professor M.V. Romana explains the flaws in Canada’s Small Modular Reactors as a strategy for fighting climate change, he goes into the waste generated in them, and explores where this project intersects with energy in the global picture.
Robert Hunziger is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He’s made multiple appearances in electronic media to talk about global climate change as well as the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. He is based in Los Angeles.
Professor M. V. Romana serves as the Simons chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security. He is also the Director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. His recent article ‘Why the Liberals’ Nuclear Power Plan is a Pipe Dream’ warns of the Small Modular Reactors still being nuclear.
CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.
WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.
Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.
CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am.
Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.
Justin McCurry (Mar 11, 2021), ‘Japan marks 10 years since triple disaster killed 18,500 people’, The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/11/japan-marks-ten-years-since-triple-disaster-killed-18500-people
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).
First published on April 5, 2021
***
Dr. Ryan Cole is the CEO and Medical Director of Cole Diagnostics, one of the largest independent labs in the State of Idaho. Dr. Cole is a Mayo Clinic trained Board Certified Pathologist.
He is Board Certified in anatomic and clinical pathology. He has expertise in immunology and virology and also has subspecialty expertise in skin pathology.
He has seen over 350,000 patients in his career, and has done over 100,000 Covid tests in the past year.
He recently was invited to speak at the “Capitol Clarity” event in Idaho, apparently sponsored by the Lt. Governor’s office, where he discussed successful outpatient treatments for COVID, and to offer his views on the new COVID “vaccines.”
Dr. Cole begins by showing statistics that prove Idaho is no longer in a “pandemic,” but an “endemic.” He states that the highest risk factors for contracting COVID are advanced age, obesity, and low Vitamin D levels.
He also explains that coronaviruses have historically always followed a 6-9 month life cycle. He gives previous examples such as SARS-1, MERS, etc.
One very interesting statistic that he pointed out is that in the U.S. the average annual age of death is 78.6 years old, and the average age of death during COVID has also been 78.6 years old.
Dr. Cole is very adamant that proper levels of Vitamin D are essential to fight coronaviruses. He states:
There is no such thing as “flu and cold season,” only low Vitamin D season.
Slide from Dr. Cole’s presentation.
Slide from Dr. Cole’s presentation.
Dr. Cole then goes on to explain that by law, the government cannot use experimental vaccines on the population if there are already effective treatments.
So all of the current experimental COVID “vaccines,” which Dr. Cole himself admits do NOT meet the legal definition of a “vaccine” to begin with, are all illegal because there are therapies, such as Vitamin D, that are effective in treating COVID patients, as well as older already FDA-approved drugs like Ivermectin.
He points out that the NIH (the National Institute of Health), which is a U.S. government agency involved with approving drugs, holds patents on the Moderna experimental COVID “vaccine,” which is like asking the fox to guard the hen house.
This is also the agency that Anthony Fauci works for, and has been employed there for over 30 years and is one the highest paid politicians in the U.S., making more money than even the President of the United States. (Go ahead and fact check this for yourself.)
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Featured image: Dr. Ryan Cole. CEO and Medical Director of Cole Diagnostics. (Source: Health Impact News)
The American people are not being told the truth about Covid, masks, social distancing, lockdowns, mortality or vaccines. In fact, the only thing of which we can be 100 percent certain, is that the government, the public health officials and the media have been lying relentlessly and remorselessly on virtually every topic for the better part of the last year.
This therapy is untested. No substantial animal trials. In the few animal trials carried out, all animals died. Claiming an emergency, the FDA recognizes the gravity of the current public health emergency and has granted a so-called Emergency Use Application (EUA) for what effectively is a gene-therapy, not a vaccine.
In Europe, planning for vaccine passports began at least 20 months prior to the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. Apparently, the pandemic conveniently provided European politicians with the ‘excuse’ they needed to introduce the idea. The ‘European Commission first published a proposal for vaccine passports on 26 April 2018.
The founding Partners of ID2020 are Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) among others. ID2020 is part of a “World Governance” project which, if applied, would roll out the contours of what some analysts have described as a Global Police State. The EU has adopted the Vaccine Passport.
There is evidence that Pfizer is routinely involved in bribing numerous politicians at the highest levels of government. In turn, draconian governmental measures are being applied which consist in instructing people to take the mRNA vaccine, despite ample evidence that this so-called “vaccination program” has already resulted in countless deaths and injuries.
Joining us today is Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, here to discuss the ‘dangerous mRNA vaccines’ and how he and his organization warned about the blood clots (and much else now coming to pass) that we are now seeing from the COVID-19 injections, months before they began.
Following their decision to give experimental COVID-19 vaccines emergency use authorizations, regulatory bodies around the world are already saying that future vaccines adapted for coronavirus variants will not be required to undergo extensive safety testing.
After several months dealing with capacity-related issues in COVID-19 vaccine administration, US states are set to find themselves with a supply of Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson immunizations outstripping demand for the experimental shots.
In a shocking new report on the COVID-19 vaccines, it has been discovered that the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine may have long term health effects not previously disclosed, including “ALS, Alzheimer’s, and other neurological degenerative diseases.”
Here’s 10 things you need to know about the COVID vax, plus a list at the end of the article of just some of the horrendous injuries and deaths it has caused thus far.
The Pharma giant Pfizer use an experimental technology known as gene editing, specifically mRNA gene-editing, something never before used in vaccines. Before we rush to get jabbed in hopes of some immunity, we should know more about the radical experimental technology and its lack of precision.
The drug companies, politicians, medical establishment, and media have joined forces to universally refer to this as a vaccine when it is not one, with the intention of manipulating people into feeling safer about undergoing a medical treatment.
Given the potential for adverse effects, potentially fatal ones, it is completely inappropriate and unacceptable that EMA permits these products, which hold only emergency use authorisations, to be administered to younger (<60y) people who are healthy, as they are at unmeasurable risks from SARS-CoV-2.
To the memory of late Kevin Zeese. His legacy will live. Seventy years of attacks on the right to unionize have left the union movement representing only 10 percent of workers. The investor class has concentrated its power and uses its power in an abusive way, not only against unions but also to create economic insecurity for workers.
After failing to block Turkey’s purchase of the advanced S-400 Russian air defense system, Washington diplomacy in recent months appeared to have managed to “flip” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to support of US interests in several critical countries.
A Health Impact News subscriber in Europe ran the reports for each of the four COVID-19 shots we are including here. Since we have started publishing this, others from Europe have also calculated the numbers and confirmed the totals.
The number of children attempting or committing suicide in northwest Syria has risen sharply over the past year, with almost one in five of all recorded suicide cases involving adolescents, Save the Children said on Thursday.
One year later the WHO retracts. They don’t say “We Made a Mistake”. It’s carefully formulated. While they do not officially deny the validity of their misleading January 2020 guidelines, they recommend RT-PCR “Re-testing” (which everybody knows is an impossibility).
The UK government paid £8,330 in November 2018 to bring Ecuador’s defence minister Oswaldo Jarrín to Britain, two months before the planned seizure of Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, it can be revealed.
The golden post-9/11 years of the war contractor — the providers of food and transportation, fuel, construction, maintenance, IT, not to mention security and interrogation services for the U.S. military — appear to be drawing down.
As demonstrations erupt across the United States against the oppression inflicted on the African American people, the first three months of the presidency of Joe Biden and his administration has been marked by ongoing racial unrest and social strife.
Prior to 2007, financial companies had come to dominate the economies of many countries. For example, in the US 40% of corporate profits were in banking. In 2007 many countries experienced what has come to be known as the Global Financial Crisis. This was caused by a complex range of connected factors, some of which will be discussed in this post.
On April 27, the International Commission of Inquiry on Systemic Racist Police Violence Against People of African Descent in the United States issued its long-awaited report on the U.S.’s police-perpetrated racist violence.
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).
***
On April 27, the International Commission of Inquiry on Systemic Racist Police Violence Against People of African Descent in the United States issued its long-awaited report on the U.S.’s police-perpetrated racist violence. The Commissioners concluded that the systematic police killings of Black people in the U.S. constitutes a prima facie case of crimes against humanity and they asked the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to initiate an investigation of responsible police officials.
These crimes against humanity under the ICC’s Rome Statute include murder, severe deprivation of physical liberty, torture,persecution of people of African descent, and inhumane acts causing great suffering or serious injury to body or mental or physical health. All of the crimes occurred in the context of a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population of Black people in the United States, as documented by the findings of fact in the 188-page report.
The 12 commissioners are eminent experts and jurists from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and the Caribbean. I am one of four rapporteurs who helped draft the report. After 18 days of hearings and extensive research, the commissioners found that both U.S. law and police practices do not comply with international law.
Testimony of family members, attorneys, activists and experts about police killings of 43 Black people, and the paralyzing of another, was presented to the commissioners. All of the victims were unarmed or were not threatening the officers or others.
Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd, testified before the commissioners. At the press conference announcing the release of the report, he said, “I want to thank the commissioners for recognizing my humanity as a good Black man in America, and for recognizing my brother George’s humanity, and the humanity of other families across this nation. And bringing to light and acknowledging the United States government is perpetrating crimes against humanity against Black people in the United States.”
“This finding of crimes against humanity was not given lightly, we included it with a very clear mind,” Commissioner Hina Jilani from Pakistan toldthe Guardian. “We examined all the facts and concluded that there are situations in the U.S. that beg the urgent scrutiny of the ICC.”
The commissioners made the following findings of fact:
1. Pretextual traffic stops are a common precursor to police killings and uses of excessive force against people of African descent. Tavis Crane was killed by police after his young daughter threw a piece of candy out the window.
2. Race-based street stops, known as “stop-and-frisk,” often trigger the use of deadly force by police. Eric Garner was suspected of selling individual untaxed cigarettes. George Floyd was suspected of using a counterfeit $20 bill.
3. Fourth Amendment violations invariably lead to the use of excessive force and police killings of Black people. Breonna Taylor was killed following the execution of a “no-knock” warrant after a judge had replaced it with a knock warrant.
4. Police routinely use excessive and lethal restraints against Black people. They include Tasers, chokeholds, compression asphyxia, “rough rides” and the use of vehicles as deadly weapons. George Floyd died from asphyxia. Freddie Gray was taken on a 45-minute “rough ride” resulting in his death.
5. Lethal police violence against Black people is exacerbated by officers’ failure to provide medical attention. For example, Andrew Kearse was kept in the back of a squad car for 17 minutes as he begged for help, repeating, “I can’t breathe.” He died of a heart attack in the car.
6. Lethal police violence against Black people experiencing a mental health crisis is systematic. After Daniel Prude’s family called police to provide mental health assistance, he was walking naked in the street. The officers put a spit hood over his head after he began spitting. They held him face down on the pavement for two minutes and 15 seconds, and he stopped breathing.
7. Cis- and transgender Black women, girls and femmes are disproportionately killed by police in the U.S. A friend of Kayla Moore, a mentally ill transgender woman, called for mental health assistance for Moore. Officers found a warrant for someone with Moore’s birth name, but 20 years older. They arrested her, threw her face down onto a futon to handcuff her, and she died of asphyxiation. Then they made disparaging comments about the gender identity of the woman they had killed.
8. Systemic racist police violence kills and traumatizes Black children and youth. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was shot to death by police as he played in a park with a toy gun. The young children of Jacob Blake witnessed their father being shot and paralyzed by police.
9. Racist police violence traumatizes and devastates families and communities. Manuel Elijah Ellis was hit, punched, choked and tasered to death by police. “We’re broken, generations of us are emotionally tired. Our bodies are weathered, and it causes us physical illness. It causes us lifelong ailments and diseases. It causes us generational trauma that we are passing on,” Jamika Scott, a friend of the Ellis family, testified.“We are traumatized. We live in a constant state of PTSD, we are hyper vigilant, we are fearful, we are anxious, we are depressed,” she added. “It tears holes in families and communities. And it’s not just one family, it’s what happens to one family in this community, it happens to all of us. And it happens, it has lasting echoes throughout generations.”
10. Black immigrants are particularly vulnerable to systemic racist police violence and police killings. Botham Jean, born in St. Lucia, was eating ice cream in his apartment when an officer walked in, mistakenly thinking it was hers, and shot him dead. “What was she defending,” Allison Jean, Botham Jean’s mother, asked, “as the only weapon he held was the color of his skin?”
11. Legal actors are complicit in police violence and killings of Black people through qualified immunity and systemic impunity of officers. Police officers in the United States enjoy impunity for their racist violence. They are rarely held accountable for killing black people, and qualified immunity protects them against liability for violation of constitutional rights.
a) Alarming pattern of destruction and manipulation of evidence, cover-ups and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors have a conflict of interest and medical examiners often do the bidding of police. After Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown as Brown raised his hands and said, “Don’t shoot,” the officer bagged his own gun and washed Brown’s blood off his hands. After police killed Henry Glover, the officers burned the car with his body in it.
b) Prosecutorial misconduct and grand jury abuse. The offending officers testified at the grand juries in the killings of both Michael Brown and Tamir Rice, and in neither case was the officer cross-examined. There were no indictments of officers in either case.
c) Systemic impunity and lack of oversight by police. Internal affairs investigations invariably exonerate officers. Police can’t be trusted to police themselves. The “blue wall of silence” keeps officers from reporting misconduct by fellow officers. Police unions facilitate impunity of officers. The police union got the body camera footage a few days after the killing of Daniel Prude but it took the Prude family six months to get it, and only after they filed several lawsuits.
d) Qualified immunity. A recent U.S. District Court judge wrote, “[J]udges have invented a legal doctrine to protect law enforcement officers from having to face any consequences for wrongdoing. The doctrine is called ‘qualified immunity.’ In real life it operates like absolute immunity.” In case after case heard by the commissioners, victims’ families faced extraordinary obstacles to holding officers accountable for the killing of their family members.
Violations of Human Rights
The commissioners found that systemic racist police violence against people of African descent in the United States has resulted in a pattern of gross and reliably attested violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms. These include violations of the right to life; the right to liberty and security; the right to mental health; the right to be free from arbitrary detention; and the right to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, including by the use of tasers, chokeholds and compression asphyxia. The U.S. Torture Statute only punishes torture committed abroad.
The commissioners also found violations of the right to be free from discrimination based on race, gender, disability or status as a child. The “stop and frisk” doctrine is an invitation for racial profiling, and the Supreme Court allows pretextual stops for traffic violations even when the officer is motivated by racism, in violation of international law.
In addition, the commissioners found violations of the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence, which constitute extrajudicial killings, as well as the right to be treated with humanity and respect. The commissioners found violations of the duty to provide medical care to detained persons; to ensure investigations of extrajudicial killings that are independent, competent, thorough and effective; and to prosecute suspects and punish perpetrators to ensure they are held accountable.
The commissioners found that both U.S. laws and police practices — as documented in the 44 cases heard by the commissioners and national data — do not comply with the international standards on the use of force.
According to international standards, law enforcement may only use force when strictly necessary, and it must be proportionate to the seriousness of the harm it is meant to prevent. They may not use firearms except in self-defense or defense of others, and only against imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm. Lethal force cannot be used to protect law and order or to safeguard property, according to international law.
But Supreme Court jurisprudence allows police officers to use deadly force if they have probable cause to believe the suspect committed a pastcrime. No state laws require that lethal force can only be used as a last resort when necessary to prevent imminent death or serious injury.
Not Just “a Few Bad Apples”
The commissioners found that contrary to the popular notion that unjustified killings of Black people by police are merely the actions of “a few bad apples,” the real problem is structural racism that is embedded in the U.S. legal and policing systems.
Collette Flanagan, founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality, whose son Clinton Allen was murdered by police, testified before the commissioners. At the press conference launching the report, Flanagan called out police departments who “are still insisting that policemen when caught on camera using unnecessary deadly force are merely just a few bad apples.” On the contrary, she said, “We are into orchards of bad apples with trees that have diseased roots tainted with racism and white supremacy, and they are bearing rotten fruit.”
Indeed, from March 29 (the day the trial of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd began) through April 18, at least 64 people in the United States died at the hands of law enforcement. More than half of the victims were Black or Brown.
Recommendations
The commissioners addressed their recommendations to several entities, including the United Nations Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as the executive branch of the U.S. government and the U.S. Congress. The commissioners recommended several reforms, as well as passage of the BREATHE Act, which is aimed at divesting federal resources from policing and investing instead in new approaches to community safety.
The commissioners call on the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC, upon receipt of this report of the Commission of Inquiry, to initiate an investigation into crimes against humanity committed and condoned by officials in the United States. The U.S. has not ratified the Rome Statute for the ICC. The commissioners call on the executive branch of the U.S. to sign and ratify the Rome Statute. In the meantime, the commissioners recommend that the United States submit to the jurisdiction of the ICC for purposes of an investigation into these crimes against humanity against people of African descent in the U.S.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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.
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).
***
Many Americans can see for their own eyes how people from low income areas speak, due to the overwhelming news coverage (finally) of police killings of unarmed blacks. When there are equally disturbing instances of murders within areas where low income whites and brown folks live, the public can get a view of how these folks speak. Unfortunately, that is perhaps the only occasion for middle income and high income Americans to see how their fellow citizens appear.
In many cases, when family and neighbors of the murdered speak, more than a majority of these people are uneducated and not well versed. Yes, some within these communities are the exception and not the rule. Yet, no one in either politics or the media will touch this subject.
Then we turn to the police officers, not necessarily the ones who did the killing. Most of them are not very well educated people. This writer does not have the statistics to back me up, but I can assure you that most police officers throughout America are not four year college grads. Many were lucky to just get out of high school. Many are ex military, as police departments, ever since our illegal invasions and occupations in the Middle East, heavily recruit from these ranks.
Higher education is the key and has always been so. If a person from a low income, high crime area graduates with a four year degree, do you think their ‘Take‘ on things would be similar to one who has barely, if ever, finished high school? Methinks not. Similarly, someone who has a good paying job is not liable to turn to crime or become lethargic. Obviously, when it comes to drugs it matters not what education or income level one is at.
Drug addiction flows through it all. What would happen is that, with higher education and higher pay, the ‘Inner communities’ would see less of that as opposed to nowadays. We have an Antebellum society in this country, where the slavery of old is replaced by ‘Jim Crow’ and ‘White Trash’ culture. The former ‘Slave Patrols’, in many instances, have been replaced by local police, where few if any of these folks have the educational standing needed for a better community. The slaves we know were not allowed to be educated. The slave patrols had low educated and low intelligent white men to do the bidding of the plantation masters. This is what the recent revelations as to police killings of the unarmed has shown us… Nothing has really changed.
The Super Rich have always made sure that the plantation system remains intact. There have always been Ghettos (”A part of the city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups”) regardless of which city or town it may be. As the Germans did so brutally in Poland after they invaded it, the ghetto is purposely made to be run down, overcrowded and underserviced. Sadly, how the police function in these areas is very comparable, in some distant instances, to keep the inhabitants in! Yes, there are many well intentioned public servants and police leadership that wish to actually protect and serve those inside of this ‘Rich Man’s Plantation’. Yet, when push comes to shove the protocol becomes to ‘Keep the natives down as much as possible’. As stated before, this goes for poor whites and poor brown people as well.
What is the answer to this problem that has been with our nation since its founding? It would take a book of ideas and solutions to even peel away the crust of this scab. The short answer is to tax the Super Rich, drastically cut the obscene militarist spending and mindset and redistribute income more fairly. A Universal Basic Income for all of us (even at $ 1400 a month every month) is a start. By just those two cuts I suggested, money could be appropriated to build the infrastructure of ALL our low and middle income communities nationwide. Improved local roads, local housing etc is crucial. Police departments should have to only recruit four year college degreed candidates (with majors in either criminal justice, sociology or psychology to name a few). The current police should be mandated to work towards getting four year degrees within a certain time frame or…. OUT! A national program similar to the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) of the FDR years, whereupon millions of young men and women would work on environmental conservation efforts at good pay . Imagine also Public Banking and community owned and operated nonprofit mortgage banks only charging a tad above overhead. Food for thought folks.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
Statement of Position
After several months dealing with capacity-related issues in COVID-19 vaccine administration, US states are set to find themselves with a supply of Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson immunizations outstripping demand for the experimental shots.
According to a recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, by about mid-May states will reach a “tipping point where demand for rather than supply of vaccines is our primary challenge.”
One official with the American Public Health Association put it this way: “Anybody who’s ever done a public health program knows that the last 20-30% of your target is the hardest.” Perhaps anticipating the challenge, the Biden administration dedicated $48 billion in its stimulus legislation to “implement a national, evidence-based strategy for testing, contact tracing, surveillance, and mitigation with respect to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.”
By means of comparison, the National Intelligence Program budget, which includes the CIA and parts of the FBI, will spend about $62 billion in the current year – just 29% more than a single COVID-related line item in the president’s “American Rescue Plan.”
On April 24, state health authorities in Indiana, New York, Virginia, Missouri, and Michigan resumed administering Johnson & Johnson’s COVID vaccine following an 11-day federal “pause” on the single-shot inoculation. According to published reports, a review by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) advisory committee, known as ACIP, uncovered 15 cases of vaccine side effects involving potentially fatal blood clots. All were women, most under 50 years old. Three died and seven remain hospitalized. ACIP ultimately decided to lift the pause and recommended attaching a warning label to the experimental injection, to which J&J’s chief medical officer agreed to add at a later date.
The CDC’s early warning system for vaccine side effects, its 30-year-old Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, has captured thousands of other “adverse events” since the COVID-19 vaccination effort began in late 2020.
Yet these complications have received a fraction of the attention paid to J&J’s blood-clotting controversy. Why? America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) opposes attempts by state and federal jurisdictions to mandate vaccination for COVID-19 and supports further study by independent health officials before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) replaces its conditional “emergency use authorization” (EUA) for the immunizations with full approval, known as a biologics license, a decision which could come as early as April or May 2021. This AFLDS Issue Brief is intended to provide additional information for concerned citizens, health experts, and policymakers about adverse events and other post-vaccination issues resulting from the three experimental COVID-19 vaccines currently administered under EUA. As always, potential vaccine recipients should weigh the available evidence on medical side effects against their particular needs free of third-party coercion, intimidation, and threats.
Taking Patient Experiences Seriously
Drugmaker Pfizer expects to collect $15 billion in 2021 from sales of its mRNA experimental COVID vaccine. There is an irrepressible economic incentive among pharmaceutical companies for childhood COVID vaccines, boosters, and the like. Public health experts should stop and assess data on possible vaccine side effects and related post-vaccination questions before it is too late. Here are some major categories of concern as-yet publicly unaddressed by either the FDA or CDC. AFLDS believes these patient concerns ought to be taken more seriously by health regulators in the United States and abroad. Failing to consider these and other “known unknowns” is a dereliction of basic medical research.
1. Why is there concern surrounding this particular vaccine?
The COVID-19 vaccines are still experimental. They are currently being used on an “emergency” basis and are not FDA approved. It takes years to be sure something new is safe. The vaccines are new as is the technology they employ. This new biotechnology introduces something called a “spike protein” instead of the traditional attenuated antigen response in a conventional vaccine.No one knows definitively the long-term health implications for the body and brain, especially among the young, related to this spike protein. In addition, if documented problems with the protein do arise, there will never be any way to reverse the adverse effects in those already vaccinated.
2. What about the reported neurological issues?
There are two major neurological concerns related to the COVID vaccines. These are the spike proteins and the lipid nanoparticles which carry the mRNA into the cell. They are both capable of passingthrough the “blood-brain barrier” which typically keeps the brain and spinal cord completely insulated from entrants into the body. There simply has not been enough time to know what brain problems and how often a brain problem will develop from that. There is concern amongst many scientists for prion disease (neurodegenerative brain disease).
Traditional vaccines do not pass through the blood-brain barrier. Crossing the blood-brain barrier places patients at risk of chronic inflammation and thrombosis (clotting) in the neurological system, contributing to tremors, chronic lethargy, stroke, Bell’s Palsy and ALS-type symptoms. The lipid nanoparticles can potentially fuse with brain cells, resulting in delayed neuro-degenerative disease. And the mRNA-induced spike protein can bind to brain tissue 10 to 20 times stronger than the spike proteins that are (naturally) part of the original virus.
3. Can the unvaccinated get sick from contact with the vaccinated?
The vaccine produces many trillions of particles of spike proteins in the recipient. Patients who are vaccinated can shed some of these (spike protein) particles to close contacts. The particles have the ability to create inflammation and disease in these contacts. In other words, the spike proteins are pathogenic (“disease causing”) just like the full virus. What is most worrisome is that a person’s body is being suddenly flooded with 13 trillion of these particles and the spike proteins bind more tightly than the fully intact virus. Because of the biomimicry (similarity) on the spike, shedding appears to be causing wide variety of autoimmune disease (where the body attacks its own tissue) in some persons. Worldwide cases of pericarditis, shingles, pneumonia, blood clots in the extremities and brain, Bell’s Palsy, vaginal bleeding and miscarriages have been reported in persons who are near persons who have been vaccinated. In addition, we know the spike proteins can cross the blood brain barrier, unlike traditional vaccines.
4. What about interaction between unvaccinated children and vaccinated adults?
AFLDS is concerned that some children will become COVID symptomatic after their parents and teachers get vaccinated. This concern does not relate to risk from infection. Indeed, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, approximately “1.6% of children with a known case of COVID-19 have been hospitalized and 0.01% have died.” Rather, public health bureaucrats might use these cases of breakthrough transmission or symptoms to speculate that a child’s illness is related to a SARS-CoV-2 “variant,” when in reality it is a reaction to the vaccine. Our other concern is that children could develop long-term chronic autoimmune disease including neurological problems due to the fact that children have decades ahead of them and trillions of the spike proteins mentioned above.
5. Is there a post-vaccination menstrual bleeding risk?
AFLDS is aware of thousands of reports involving vaginal bleeding, post-menopausal vaginal bleeding, and miscarriages following COVID-19 vaccination as well as anecdotal reports of similar adverse events among those in close contact with the vaccinated. We cannot comment definitively on the close contacts yet, other than to say we have heard reports of this worldwide. But there is so much reporting of vaginal bleeding post-vaccination that it is clear a connection between the vaccine and irregular bleeding exists. Despite this clear-cut evidence, menstrual-cycle changes were not listed among the FDA’s common side effects in its phase-three clinical participants. Women’s reproductive health needs to be taken seriously rather than waved away by agenda-driven public health officials.
Conclusion
The continued rollout of COVID-19 vaccines moves along without due consideration of patient side effects and post-inoculation complications. AFLDS calls on state and federal health regulators to release more adverse-event-related data and conduct additional follow-up studies before the FDA fully licenses any of the vaccines currently administered under emergency use authorization. The growing body of evidence is too compelling to ignore.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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).
***
“Of all the ways we have to run a banking system, the one we have today is the worst” (Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England)
Prior to 2007, financial companies had come to dominate the economies of many countries. For example, in the US 40% of corporate profits were in banking.(1) In 2007 many countries experienced what has come to be known as the Global Financial Crisis. This was caused by a complex range of connected factors, some of which will be discussed in this post.(2)
Setting the Scene
From the 1980s onwards, governments and their corporate lobbyists had gradually re-structured the economies of advanced nations towards the extreme form of capitalism known as neoliberalism. This system is dominated by a belief in de-regulation or ‘light touch’ regulation, which effectively means that the role of financial regulators is to enable banks to carry out their activities, rather than to police them. This enabled banks to carry out a range of activities that were profitable for them, but caused serious problems for everyone else.
A Series of Interconnected Frauds
Banks are always trying to come up with schemes to make bigger profits. This led to them lending money to people who could not repay it, mostly as mortgages. The banks used contracts that customers did not understand, with interest rates that started low and rose sharply. These were called liar’s loans(3) or sub-prime mortgages. Salesmen were paid commissions to persuade customers to take out these loans.
The banks then sold these loans to other investors in a process known as securitisation, without explaining that the loans were unlikely to be paid back. Some of these securities became so complex and opaque that hardly anyone could understand exactly what each one was. One of the world’s leading experts on the subject, Bill Black, has explained that the only way to make money from these securities was to deceive the people who were buying them.(4)
The risk of the mortgages not being repaid had been passed on to someone else, so banks had no reason to ensure that they made sensible loans. The more bad loans they could make, the more profit they could make, but the more risk was created for everyone else.(5) Organisations known as Credit Ratings Agencies are supposed to tell investors how safe or risky an investment is, but they failed to rate these securities correctly, suggesting that they were safer than was actually the case.(6)
Some banks, such as Goldman Sachs, then created ways to make even more money, by betting that these loans would not be repaid.(7) The banks made money three times over, by creating mortgages, then advising the investors, then betting against their own investors. Many senior executives claimed that they did not know what was actually going on, but this was part of a deliberate strategy to make their operations as opaque as possible.
The fraudulent mortgages led to a spiral of ever-upward house prices, which enabled borrowers to borrow even more, pushing up house prices. This is known as a house-price bubble. Eventually the bubble bursts, when people are no longer able to pay for such expensive homes. House prices in many places dropped rapidly, so many people had mortgages that were greater than the value of their properties (negative equity). Some banks suffered losses so great that they were effectively bankrupt. Banks stopped lending, even to each other. Many people were removed from their homes, and others were unable to move house. Businesses could not borrow to finance their activities. Many businesses went bust, and many jobs were lost.(8)
Former bank employees have admitted that what they did before the crisis was to steal other people’s money. A former Goldman Sachs trader, Greg Smith, admitted that his bosses described clients as “muppets” to be “ripped off”.(9) Bill Black has explained that all regulatory agencies were complicit in failing to properly regulate the banks.(10) They knew about the different frauds and how to stop them, but chose not to do so.
The frauds described above are just the tip of the iceberg. Since the crisis, the banks have been involved in a wide array of criminal and unethical behaviour. They repeatedly commit fraud on an industry-wide scale.(11) They have sold numerous products that were unsuitable for their clients, and they regularly try to manipulate markets, using all manner of complex schemes, such as placing fake orders. In 2014 British and US banks were fined £2.6 billion for rigging money-markets.(12) US banks have been fined billions of dollars for breaking rules related to terrorism, tax evasion and accounting fraud.(13) These fines sound large, but they are not sufficient to deter criminal behaviour. In 2020, the total amount of fines related to money-laundering was $10 billion.(14) The individuals who run these institutions are hardly ever prosecuted.
Complexity, Contagion and Systemic Risk
The banks employ armies of lawyers and accountants to re-structure their businesses and their accounts.(15) This is sometimes called legal and financial engineering. The scale and complexity of their operations is so great that no individual has any idea of the overall situation, and no one understands how precarious their financial position is. During the crisis, it turned out that the whole financial system was so complex and interconnected that it created a form of contagion. When some banks went bust, others were technically bankrupt too. What had started as a problem with sub-prime mortgages rippled around the world, de-stabilising the economies of many countries.
Too Big To Fail: Profits for the few, losses for the many
Many of the biggest financial companies in Britain and the US, such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Northern Rock, were involved in these activities. These banks are considered to be so important to the economy, or ‘too big to fail’, that governments believe they have to rescue them when things go wrong. This is known as a bailout. The bailout was much larger than most people realize. In November 2011, secret information became available showing that the total size of the US bailout was at least $7.7trillion.(16) The banks and the regulators repeatedly lied to cover up how unstable the situation had become. The bailout money has not been used to reduce the debts of ordinary people or to finance activity in the real economy. It was given to the banks, and it has ended up increasing the wealth of the super-rich.
Since the crisis, the biggest banks have become even bigger. Numerous commentators have pointed out that the current global banks are not only too big to fail, they are now too big and too complex to regulate or to manage. Matt Taibbi summarised the bailout as follows:
“what we actually ended up doing was…committing American taxpayers to permanent blind support of an ungovernable, unregulated, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash…America’s six largest banks now have a total of 14,420 subsidiaries, making them so big as to be effectively beyond regulation. A recent study found that it would take 70,000 examiners to inspect such trillion-dollar banks with the same level of attention normally given to a community bank.”(17)
The banking system is structured in a way that is guaranteed to cause problems. Banks advise clients, but they are also allowed to trade for themselves. This creates what is known as a conflict of interest, where Goldman Sachs can bet against its own clients, or engage in other forms of corrupt trading. Without fundamental reform, these problems are likely to continue. There will be another financial crisis in the future, and no one knows how bad it will be.(18)
This Has All Happened Before
The fraudulent nature of bankers has been recognized for many years. A former Governor of the Bank of England once said:
“If we closed down a bank every time we found an incidence of fraud, we would have rather fewer banks than we do at the moment”.
The 2007 crisis is not the first catastrophic failure of the financial system. In 1929, the world experienced the great depression, and thousands of US banks failed. There are strong parallels between recent events and those that led up to the 1929 crisis. In both cases, banks had been given more and more freedom to manipulate the system for their own benefit.
After the problems in 1929, the remedies included the complete separation of different types of banks in the US.(19) Banks that do basic lending to homeowners and small businesses were separated from those that focus on gambling on stockmarkets. This worked well and provided a stable financial system for decades afterwards. However, lobbyists persuaded policymakers to gradually reverse these safeguards. Separation is no longer required, and financial crises have become much more commonplace around the world.
The evidence that emerged about the criminality of the banks in the run-up to the 2007 crisis shocked most people, and there were great expectations that new regulations would be introduced. Discussions about the banks became a regular feature of mainstream conversation. A number of solutions were put forward, but in the end, none of the really big problems were fixed, and some have been made even worse.
Executive Pay
I have talked in previous posts about rentiers – companies and people who receive huge amounts of unearned income, or increases in wealth, because the economy is rigged. The financial system is probably the most extreme example of this. During and after the crisis, executives at the biggest banks kept taking huge salaries despite the chaos they caused. For example, two US firms, known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:
“paid out more than $200 million in bonuses between 2008 and 2010, even though they lost more than $100 billion in 2008 alone, and required nearly $400 billion in federal assistance during the bailout period.”
Similarly, the giant insurance company, AIG:
“paid more than $1 million each to 73 employees of AIG Financial Products, the tiny unit widely blamed for having destroyed the insurance giant (and perhaps even triggered the whole crisis)”(20)
Self-evidently, executive pay has become a means for powerful people with government connections to extract almost unlimited wealth from the system, with no justification.
Propaganda About Banking Permeates Our Societies
The media presentation of finance gives the impression that it is about rich people investing to make a better economy and a better society, but this is not currently true. Banks are no longer doing what most people believe banks do. Many of their loans are actually for unproductive purposes.(21) They devote vast resources to finding ever more complex ways to extract more wealth from everyone else. The US Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volcker, suggested that the ATM was the only financial innovation that has benefitted society in recent years.(22)
The media celebrate the big profits of banks. However, if the financial system is working properly, profits should be small. Big profits, and great wealth for a few people, are signs of a system that is not working properly.
The Future
The financial crisis triggered serious recessions in many countries. Governments have implemented ‘austerity measures’, which means decreasing government spending, so healthcare, education and social services are under-funded. At the same time, the wealth of the richest 1,000 people in Britain doubled in the five years after the crisis.(23)We have a system where the banks take all the profits when things go well, but taxpayers take the losses when things go wrong. This puts banks in a situation where they know they cannot lose, which encourages them to take even more risks.
Suggesting fundamental changes to the financial system might sound like the impossible dreams of an idealist, but the financial system has often been changed. In 1999, parts of Europe replaced their national currencies with a European currency called the Euro. In 1986, Britain carried out the ‘Big Bang’ where the system was changed dramatically.(24) Before 1971, the US dollar could be converted into gold, but the rules were changed in 1971 so that was no longer possible. In 1944, at a conference that created the World Bank and the IMF, there were in-depth discussions about how the financial system should be structured in the future.
Re-structuring banking, using rules similar to the ones that were introduced after the great depression, is not difficult. The different aspects of banking can be separated, so that gambling does not de-stabilise the rest of the system. Big banks can be broken up so that they can be regulated properly. The biggest obstacle is lack of political will.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda, and explaining war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media. This article was first posted at medium.com/elephantsintheroom
2) Other failings that are not discussed here include shareholder-focused governance mechanisms, narrative closure, inadequate mathematical models, capital and liquidity constraints, pro-cyclicality, accounting standards, and structural issues such as international financial imbalances
15) Doreen McBarnett, ‘Financial Engineering or Legal Enginering? Legal work, legal integrity and the banking crisis’, in Iain MacNeil and Justin O’Brien (eds) The Future of Financial Regulation, 2010
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).
***
Russia is a major world power, and if the EU can attempt to bully it in such a dangerous way, then there’s nothing stopping the bloc from doing the same to comparatively weaker countries.
The European Parliament (EP) passed a resolution on Thursday threatening very serious consequences against Russia if it carries out an “invasion” of Ukraine. These include immediately stopping oil and gas imports from the country and cutting it off from the SWIFT payment system, as well as freezing the assets of so-called “oligarchs” and their families on top of canceling their visas. The text also condemns alleged Russian intelligence operations in Europe, including disinformation operations and the latest claims that its agents were behind the 2014 munitions blast in Czechia. They also want to stop Nord Stream II.
The EP also supports meddling in Russia’s internal affairs. Examples of this include criticism of the country’s recent jailing of anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny due to his parole violations and the authorities’ decision to investigate whether his organization is extremist. The resolution expresses support for unsanctioned rallies in Russia too while criticizing the authorities’ response to them. One of the most disturbing proposals put forth is to seriously consider the UK’s proposal for a “Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions Regime”, which could predictably be exploited for political purposes considering the tense relations with Russia.
The EP’s resolution is therefore very dangerous because it shows that ideologically driven anti-Russian political forces in Europe are serious about imposing extreme costs on Moscow solely for warning that it might defend its legitimate border interests and those of its citizens in Eastern Ukraine in the event that Kiev launches a military operation there. Cutting Russia off from the SWIFT payment system might be akin to an unofficial declaration of war considering the country’s international financial dependence on it. In addition, it’s counterproductive to stop importing Russian oil and gas when no viable alternatives exist at the moment.
Russia, like all countries, has an obligation to enforce its laws. Navalny’s jailing was done in accordance with existing legislation on this issue, as is its breaking up of unsanctioned rallies and temporary detainment of their participants. As a case in point, some EU countries have also detained participants of unsanctioned rallies that were organized against their COVID-19 lockdowns in recent months, especially whenever they clash with police. Furthermore, France is currently investigating various organizations as extremist ones, just like Russia is doing too. The basis of Brussels’ proposed meddling in Moscow’s internal affairs is therefore hypocritical.
The rest of the world is rightly concerned after this resolution was just passed. Russia is a major world power, and if the EU can attempt to bully it in such a dangerous way, then there’s nothing stopping the bloc from doing the same to comparatively weaker countries. In addition, similar resolutions might one day be tabled against China too on a similar basis as well. Basically, nobody would be safe if the EU succeeds in cutting Russia off from SWIFT and so openly meddling in its internal affairs by criticizing its law enforcement agencies and their work. That’s why this resolution is so dangerous to world peace.
COVID-19 is still sweeping across the world, and the extended effect of lockdown has been disastrous for the EU member states’ economies, not to mention the psychological health of their citizens. There are much more urgent tasks at hand for the EP to tackle than concocting a list of threats and criticisms to officially make against Russia. It’s disappointing to see that it’s more focused on such issues than those much closer to home. Their supporters might argue that Russia’s alleged assassinations, attacks, and disinformation plots constitute pressing domestic threats, but none of these have been publicly proven and thus remain speculation.
The EU is approaching an historic crossroads whereby it can finally become more independent of American influence or it can continue to languish under the boots of US neo-imperialism. Judging by the latest resolution, it regrettably appears that the EP is opting for the latter after jumping on America’s anti-Russian bandwagon to score political points with their patron across the Atlantic. This is dangerous and counterproductive to EU interests. What’s more, it’s also deeply unfortunate too since the EP can and should put its legislative skills to work trying to solve more urgent crises like COVID-19 instead.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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).
*** As demonstrations erupt across the United States against the oppression inflicted on the African American people, the first three months of the presidency of Joe Biden and his administration has been marked by ongoing racial unrest and social strife.
In the aftermath of the police killings of Ma’Khia Bryant and Andrew Brown, Jr. in Columbus, Ohio and Elizabeth City, North Carolina respectively, many are convinced that the convictions of Minneapolis former police officer Derrick Chauvin will not ease the level of violence by law-enforcement directed toward Black and Brown peoples.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on April 16 that the Biden administration was rescinding the limitations on consent decrees related to the monitoring of law-enforcement agencies involving problems of racial bias, the use of lethal force and other issues. These measures were utilized by previous administrations, even Republican, in response to excessive complaints made to police departments and governing bodies.
The cities of Minneapolis, Minnesota and Louisville, Kentucky, the municipalities where police brutally killed George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Garland has already announced the commencement of federal investigations related to civil rights violations. These two urban areas were the scene of mass demonstrations and rebellions during the summer of 2020, when people all over the U.S. and internationally went into the streets in response to the racist killings by police and vigilantes.
Demands and contentious debates have surfaced surrounding the future of policing in the U.S. as well as Europe. Defunding and dismantling the law-enforcement agencies are topics of discussion in cities such as Minneapolis, Oakland and Detroit. No city government has gone to the extent of completely abolishing police budgets and reinvesting these tax funds to social services, healthcare, education, utilities, clean affordable water services and environmental quality.
Some municipalities have mandated the halting of traffic stops which are utilized as an initial form of contact for the criminal justice system. However, in most areas, the aggressive character of policing has intensified, making many believe that a rash of killings since the convictions of Chauvin may be in response to the anger felt by law-enforcement agents for the mass pressure which was critical in the outcome of the trial in Minneapolis.
In Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where Andrew Brown, Jr., a father of seven was killed on April 23, a local judge blocked the release of all body cam footage of his death which resulted in multiple gunshot wounds to his arms and head, people are marching through the small coastal town on a daily basis. The family of Brown is demanding justice through a complete investigation and the indictment of the police officer responsible. Only 20 seconds of the incident was shown to the family and their attorneys in a private meeting with law-enforcement. Even within this limited time frame the family members say it was clear his death was an unnecessary execution.
The question then becomes, how can the Justice Department response to a myriad of similar cases from the east to the west coasts and all through the southern, northern and midwestern regions of the country, provide relief to the besieged communities? By opening probes into every single municipality where there is police misconduct would surely overwhelm the federal investigative law-enforcement system.
“Consent decrees are court-ordered agreements that can be used to resolve violations of the law or systemic misconduct discovered during federal investigations of state or local law enforcement agencies. For instance, after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, the DOJ launched an investigation of the Ferguson Police Department for ‘an alleged pattern or practice of unlawful misconduct’ and other issues. Less than a year later, the DOJ said it found ‘a number of patterns or practices of unconstitutional conduct.’ A federal judge in April 2016 approved the consent decree between Ferguson and the DOJ, which required broad changes at the police department. Just before he was fired by Trump in November 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions signed a memo curtailing the Justice Department’s use of consent decrees.’”
Nonetheless, there is the need to examine the actual history of these judgments declared by the federal courts and the DOJ and their effectiveness in curtailing abuses by law-enforcement agencies. These actions by a succession of attorney generals are by no means a novel approach to a centuries-long crisis of policing of the oppressed peoples.
Previous Consent Decrees Did Not End Police Brutality
In the city of Detroit, an epidemic of killings by police officers during the 1990s and early 2000s prompted the formation of a Coalition Against Police Brutality and other mass efforts in response. A November 1992 brutal police murder of 35-year-old Malice Green by two white police officers on the southwest side, prompted the then first African American Mayor Coleman Young to terminate both individuals directly involved.
Former Detroit police officers Walter Budzyn and Larry Nevers were convicted of second-degree murder in a highly publicized trial in the summer of 1993. This represented the first conviction of white law-enforcement agents for murder against an African American in the U.S. The holding of Budzyn and Nevers criminally accountable was due to community mobilization and the threat of another citywide rebellion. Just months prior to the murder of Green in Detroit, the U.S. had exploded over the acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers in the brutal beating of Rodney King.
This unprecedented action was carried out by a jury impaneled in the municipal Recorder’s Court in Detroit. Since Detroit was and still is a majority African American city, the jury backed up by public sentiment, was able to find both white officers guilty of murder. Subsequently, with the retirement of Mayor Young in 1992 and the ascendancy of Dennis Archer the following year, police violence against residents accelerated.
By 2000, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department had begun an investigation into the Detroit Police Department (DPD). A consent judgment was rendered in 2003, placing the City of Detroit and the DPD under a consent decree related to the use of lethal force and the deplorable conditions existing then in the lock up facilities.
Despite these federal mandates, there were enormous difficulties associated with the process of review and the actual reforms required. There were huge cost overruns and obvious corruption related to the federally appointed monitors. Police abuses and killings would continue during the period following the imposition of the consent decree.
The most egregious incident was the police killing of 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones on the eastside of Detroit in May 2010. This horrendous act was carried out while a national network television program, the First 48, were filming the entire bogus raid which resulted in the death of the child.
There was never anyone held accountable criminally for the killing of Jones. The suspect being sought by police lived in an upstairs flat from where the disastrous raid was executed. A resident of the upstairs residence said that the suspect could have been arrested on several occasions because they were in and out of the home for several days.
Later in 2014, amid an illegally imposed emergency management and bankruptcy, the consent decree by the Justice Department was lifted absent of any public discussion. The current Chief of Police James Craig was appointed by the emergency manager Kevin Orr. Corporate-oriented white Mayor Mike Duggan has kept Craig in office despite his ineffectiveness and ineptitude, resulting in the call by over 40 community-based organizations for his removal during summer of 2020.
At present the DPD is being sued by antiracist activists from Detroit Will Breathe, which surfaced last year in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The DPD engaged in systematic violence and false arrests of demonstrators and bystanders at the aegis of the Duggan administration and its bank-led backers in the form of the business interests of Quicken Loans, Illitch Holdings, Chase Bank and other ruling class magnets dominating the politics of the majority African American municipality.
These acts of subversion of the people’s will as it relates to the imposition of consent decrees and other police reforms illustrate the institutional and systematic resistance to even minimal efforts to ease pressure on oppressed peoples. Consequently, the capitalist racist structures of oppression and exploitation must be removed in order that genuine equal justice becomes a reality in the U.S.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Detroit rally at Clark Park art work, April 17, 2021 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
The Chagossian people have sued the British Crown for lost fishing rights. They are seeking £1 Billion in restitution in the British Indian Ocean Territory Supreme Court, the case is Nourrice and Prosper et al. v. Her Majesty The Queen.
British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) is best known for the top secret US naval base on Diego Garcia Island and the forced deportation of the original Afro-Creole inhabitants from the Chagos Archipelago (1967-1973) and subsequent apartheid laws barring them from returning home.
The United Nations General Assembly, African Union, and International Court of Justice found the Britain’s deportation of the Chagos Islanders 50 years ago and continued military occupation of the Chagos Archipelago (British Indian Ocean Territory) is a serious violation of international law, the Chagossians are still banned from the territory by apartheid laws and US and British military forces.
The Chagossians are suing British colonial administration for £1 Billion (BIOT) Pounds to compensate them for lost fishing rights. The Chagos Archipelago is one of the world’s prime fisheries rich in tuna, shell and game fish. Indigenous fishing rights are recognized by the UN, African Union and many countries with native peoples including the United States, Canada, and Australia.
According toDr. Jonathan Levy, the international lawyer representing the Chagos islanders:
“There is no doubt the Chagos Archipelago fishing rights have both monetary and cultural value and the Chagossians are barred from even entering the territory’s waters. The colonial administration has the power to issue the currency requested and has no excuse for what amounts to continuing theft of indigenous property and rights.”
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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).
***
Former UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd once said about Boris Johnson: “he’s the life and soul of the party, but he’s not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.”
Yet here we are, almost two years into his leadership, and the British media are still acting with shock and surprise over Boris’s antics. The British are a funny bunch. In all honesty, it seems people are more upset over his negative comments over the John Lewis furniture in No.10 Downing Street than they were when Johnson lied to the Queen in September 2019 to prorogue parliament. There certainly seems to have been more media coverage of it.
In fact, after criticising the decor he and his fiancee Carrie Symonds were left with after the departure of former Prime Minister Theresa May, a “John Lewis nightmare” as it’s been reported, Johnson took pains to dismiss reports that he had anything against the department store in question: “If there’s one thing I object in this whole farrago of nonsense … I love John Lewis!” he insisted. If only he had expressed similar regret over illegally proroguing parliament to try to stymie debate of the Brexit bill. But not Boris.
You do get the feeling though that the establishment have had enough of Boris. It’s as if they’ve decided his time has come. At one time he seemed like the only man who could ‘Get Brexit Done’ and indeed, he did successfully strike a deal with the EU and take Britain out of the trading bloc. But the media campaign against him of late has been overwhelming and packed full of sleaze and corruption scandals.
Firstly last month he was questioned by the media over whether he acted with ‘honesty and integrity’ during his relationship with US businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri, after she gave an interview to The Mirror with all the gory details of Johnson’s four year extra-marital affair.. Under his watch as Mayor of London, Arcuri was given £126,000 of public money in the form of grants for her company and event sponsorship. In addition she was given access to three foreign trade trips led by Mr Johnson. Seemingly Johnson had not committed any criminal wrongdoing, but should have declared a conflict of interest.
Then came Johnson’s controversial former advisor Dominic Cummings, clearly still bitter about his departure from Downing Street, who has spilled the beans on a number of the Prime Minister’s less tasteful comments. Cummings had clearly stored them up, waiting for the right opportunity to ‘pounce’. And this was it. The first claim is that Johnson said he would “rather see bodies piled high in their thousands” than order another Covid lockdown last autumn. This statement could be easily dismissed as fiction if it weren’t for the fact that two witnesses have come forward to say they would testify that the PM did indeed say that.
Aside from Johnson’s apparent lack of empathy, there are also leaked text messages which appear to demonstrate abuse of power as he promises billionaire businessman James Dyson he will personally ‘fix’ a tax issue so his employees could return to the UK. To be honest this will not come as a surprise to many, as cronyism appears to be rife in Johnson’s cabinet. (Earlier this year it was ruled that Health Secretary Matt Hancock had acted ‘unlawfully’ by not publishing the details of billion-pound PPE contracts, including one given to a friend and neighbour.) Labour and the SNP have called for a full independent public inquiry into why Tory donors and friends have been handed lucrative contracts, special access, tax breaks and peerages by Johnson’s government.
As author Paul Mason wrote in the New Statesman recently, the Conservative government is getting away with corruption ‘on an epic scale”. He said: “In short, we are adrift in a sea of corruption, past and present. If you’ve been anywhere near power, you know how this works. None of it is done in secret. It’s done with the connivance and the blind eye of everyone who sees it happen. Nobody asks awkward questions such as, why is this guy even in the room? Nobody who wants a promotion or an invite to the summer party, that is.”
Paul Mason also added the rather concerning, but valid observation that nobody seems to care. Indeed one does wonder what it would take in the UK for people to protest at such government impropriety. For all our boasting about democracy, it seems when it comes down to it, we’d rather accept the status quo than ruffle any feathers. In England people voted for Boris Johnson, after all, fully aware of his character. As Gina Miller wrote earlier this year in The Guardian: “It is not the British way to make a fuss, and no doubt there are those who think even now that the government taking it upon itself to break the law in “very specific and limited ways” isn’t something to be too concerned about.”
Therefore it is likely that Boris Johnson will survive this latest fiasco. After all, he has endured so many scandals throughout his colourful career to date, and come off relatively unscathed. Some would even say it makes him more human. And of course, the main thing is that he really does love John Lewis.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
The UK government paid £8,330 in November 2018 to bring Ecuador’s defence minister Oswaldo Jarrín to Britain, two months before the planned seizure of Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, it can be revealed.
It is unusual for foreign ministers to have their trips to the UK paid by the British government, and the week-long visit came after prime minister Theresa May had been told to “butter up” Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, in order to get Assange expelled from the embassy.
The new information comes from UK Foreign Office documents released to Declassified, as well as the recently published diaries of former foreign office minister, Sir Alan Duncan, who was a key player in the Assange negotiations.
The documents note that “the main objective” of the November 2018 visit was Jarrín’s “participation” at an annual national counter-terrorism exercise that rehearses the government’s response to a major terrorist attack.
The exercise is organised by the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, a part of the Home Office which “oversees the Security Service [MI5] and police counter-terrorism operations in the UK”.
It is unclear why Ecuador’s defence minister was chosen to attend a counter-terrorism exercise as the South American nation is not a target of terrorist groups.
Image on the right: British Armed Forces Minister Mark Lancaster (left) meets Ecuador’s Defence Minister, Oswaldo Jarrin, in the UK, 7 November 2018. (Photo: UK Ministry of Defence / Twitter)
The documents note that “one of the main meetings” was with then armed forces minister Mark Lancaster, after which the Ministry of Defence reported the two countries were “strengthening our ties”.
Jarrín also visited the Foreign Office’s “crisis centre” and met with the head of UK Export Finance, Louis Taylor.
Partner of choice
Two months before Jarrín’s visit, in September 2018, the UK government had spent another £12,806 facilitating a three-day visit by Ecuadorian officials concerned with fighting corruption and money laundering in the country.
The evaluation of the trip noted that it helped the UK government to “build strong relationships” and that “the UK was subsequently commended as a partner of choice to President of the Republic [Lenín Moreno]”.
A Foreign Office spokesperson told Declassified:
“The Foreign Office regularly arranges meetings with ministers and officials from other countries to encourage closer engagement with our international partners and help achieve our foreign policy objectives.”
She added:
“As part of this work, some of the costs of these visits are occasionally covered by the Department or by Posts. These are carefully considered on a case by case basis, and only when resources are available.”
British security officials also visited Ecuador in the build-up to Assange’s exit from the embassy, government records show.
In July 2018, Philip Barton, then director general of security at the Foreign Office, flew to Ecuador for “short notice bilateral meetings” with its foreign ministry. A week after his return he travelled to Cheltenham for “meetings at GCHQ”, the UK’s largest intelligence agency, government travel logs show.
Then, two weeks before Assange was expelled from the embassy, on 27 March 2019, Britain’s then deputy national security adviser for intelligence, Richard Moore, spent £4,469 on a business-class flight to Ecuador, the logs show.
Moore was appointed chief of MI6, Britain’s external intelligence agency, just over a year later. Barton now runs the Foreign Office.
Delayed expulsion
The two British-funded trips for Ecuadorian officials came as the government was ramping up efforts to get Ecuador to rescind the asylum it had granted Assange in 2012 to avoid persecution by the US government.
Until now, the nature of these negotiations has remained mostly secret, and freedom of information requests relating to the Assange case and the role of British ministers are routinely blocked.
But the diaries of Sir Alan Duncan, who led the Assange negotiations as UK minister for the Americas, shed light on the pressure Britain brought to bear on Ecuador after the new government of Lenín Moreno assumed power in May 2017.
Moreno quickly undid most of the policies of his leftist predecessor Rafael Correa and aligned himself with the US, signing deals with the International Monetary Fund and making obvious his annoyance at Assange’s continued asylum at the country’s embassy in London.
In 2016, Duncan had met Correa’s foreign minister Guillaume Long who was still committed to upholding Assange’s right to asylum. An exasperated Duncan lamented in his diaries that Long “defends the supposed human rights of Julian Assange”.
But by March 2018, with the Moreno administration in place, Duncan was more hopeful and had a one-on-one meeting with prime minister Theresa May where he “updated her on Ecuador and Assange”. “She might want to butter up President Moreno”, he wrote.
Two weeks later, he added:
“I think I am nearly there with Ecuador to get Julian Assange out of their London embassy. It’s taken months of delicate negotiations, but nearly nearly…”
Six months later, in September 2018, Duncan had a call with Ecuador’s new foreign minister José Valencia.
“We both want Assange out of the embassy,” he wrote, “but the Ecuador government won’t quite yet take the necessary final step for fear of the domestic reaction.”
In the background, negotiations were clearly taking place which are not mentioned in Duncan’s diaries. In October 2018, Duncan noted:
“The Assange issue is progressing. Our channels into Ecuador are paving the way to a solution.”
Then, on 8 January 2019, Duncan wrote:
“Annoyingly Assange’s forcible exit from the Ecuadorian embassy has been delayed. Ecuador’s government lawyers are now saying that it requires a Presidential decree which will take at least a week or two.”
Later on that day, Duncan went to the House of Commons to meet the new Ecuadorian Ambassador Jaime Marchán-Romero.
“His principal mission is to get Assange out of the embassy — it has been six years — and although he had been aiming for tomorrow, as I’d just learnt it’s going to take longer. A tad frustrating, but we’ll get there”, Duncan wrote.
After this meeting, he “updated” then foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt on the situation.
Operation Pelican
Duncan’s annoyance that Ecuador had delayed expelling Assange increased the following month when he wrote:
“Internal meeting on Ecuador, who have gone quiet on pushing Assange out of the embassy despite saying it was going to happen on 9 January.”
He added:
“It looks as though their Foreign Minister had said it would happen without explicitly telling the President. Assange is not mentally stable; he has been defecating in wastepaper bins… It is a disgusting situation. I insist we lay a clear paper trail tracking our constant demands that he be evicted”.
Soon after, he noted Ecuador’s ambassador “is determined to get Assange out of his embassy, but President Moreno requires a final push in order to be persuaded to press the button.”
After another meeting with the ambassador a fortnight later, Duncan noted: “We are so nearly there in getting Assange chucked out of the embassy.”
On 11 April 2019, the day Assange was finally seized by UK police, he wrote:
“Suddenly it’s game on: I’m told Assange will be sprung from the [Ecuadorian] embassy today. So I drop everything and head to the Operations Room at the top of the Foreign Office. Operation Pelican is go — suitably assisted by one official wearing a pelican-motif tie.”
In the Operations Room, Duncan watched a live feed when at 10am plainclothes policemen entered the embassy.
“We were expecting Assange to be brought out very soon after their arrival, but texts to the Ops Room revealed he had caused a bit of a commotion and had been screaming and bawling while edging towards the Ambassador’s office — at which point he was forcibly restrained”.
He continued:
“Then, with military precision, six police officers marched up to line up each side of the entrance steps, to form a protective corridor through which Assange was bundled out at about 10.20am.”
Duncan concluded:
“So, job done at last — and we take a commemorative photo of Team Pelican. It had taken many months of patient diplomatic negotiation, and in the end it went off without a hitch. I do millions of interviews, trying to keep the smirk off my face.”
Aftermath
Two days after Assange’s eviction, on 13 April, Duncan noted he “had put [Daily Mail journalist] Simon Walters in touch with Ambassador Marchán, thus giving the Daily Mail their scoop about the ‘fetid’ Assange hovel. The pictures of his living conditions were beyond repulsive.”
That day the Daily Mail ran a hit piece using photos from inside the embassy with apparently incriminating photos of unwashed plates in the kitchen. “Revealed, full squalid horror that drove embassy finally to kick him out”, the subtitle read.
The article alleged that Assange “left soiled underpants stuffed down the lavatory in a fit of rage”, but provided no evidence. Duncan’s allegations about Assange defecating in wastepaper bins from two months before were not included in the article.
Ten days later, Duncan met with Hugo Shorter, head of the Foreign Office’s Americas division. “We are both still basking in the successful release of Julian Assange”, he noted.
Then in mid-June 2019, with Assange having been incarcerated in Belmarsh maximum security prison for two months, Duncan put on a party.
“[S]traight to drinks in my office for all the Operation Pelican team, those who worked on the removal of Julian Assange from the Ecuador embassy”, he wrote.
“I gave them each a signed photo which we took in the Ops Room on the day, with a caption saying ‘Julian Assange’s Special Brexit Team 11th April 2019’.”
Later on that month, Duncan went on an official trip to Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, for “bilateral meetings” with President Moreno, according to government records. Duncan’s diary is empty for these days he was in Ecuador.
But the final reference to Assange in his diaries comes two weeks later, on 15 July 2019, when he is in Ecuador again for another meeting with President Moreno.
“Visiting him to say thank you is an essential conclusion to the Assange episode and he exudes goodwill and warmth. He loves the UK, and I gave him a beautiful porcelain plate from the Buckingham Palace gift shop. Job done,” he wrote.
Other UK officials were also re-engaging with Ecuador after Operation Pelican was completed. In May 2019, the month after Ecuador had expelled Assange, trade minister George Hollingbery flew to Quito to sign the UK-Andean Countries Trade Agreement, according to UK government records.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Matt Kennard is head of investigations at Declassified UK, an investigative journalism organisation that covers the UK’s role in the world.
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).
***
A recent Oxford University press release announced that scientists working at its Jenner Institute have succeeded in developing a vaccine against malaria. Known as R21/Matrix-M, the vaccine was tested in a 12-month trial involving 450 young children in Burkina Faso and is claimed to have shown up to 77 percent efficacy. Quoted in the British media, Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute, indicated that he might apply for emergency use authorization for the vaccine, thus bypassing the need for full clinical trials. Having already obtained such authorization for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, which was similarly developed at the Jenner Institute, Hill’s intention to obtain this for the malaria vaccine suggests that emergency use applications are becoming seen as the ‘new normal’ in the field of vaccine development.
A life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes, the World Health Organization estimates there were 229 million cases and 409,000 deaths from malaria worldwide in 2019. The search for a successful vaccine against the disease has been going on for decades now. A vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been in use in parts of Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi for the past few years, but it requires four doses and has low efficacy. It also has serious safety concerns, including seizures and a tenfold increased risk of meningitis. An effective, safe approach to preventing malaria without the risk of side effects is therefore urgently needed.
Professor Hill suggests that the Jenner Institute will probably ask regulatory bodies in the UK or Europe for a scientific opinion on the new malaria vaccine, after which it would apply to the World Health Organization for approval for use in Africa. “They did Covid in months,” Hill argues, “why shouldn’t they do malaria in a similar length of time?” Quite likely, this line of thinking could become a standard argument used when pharma companies are pushing for emergency drug and vaccine authorizations.
Fast-tracking vaccines for COVID-19 variants
Following their decision to give experimental COVID-19 vaccines emergency use authorizations, regulatory bodies around the world are already saying that future vaccines adapted for coronavirus variants will not be required to undergo extensive safety testing. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has specifically stated that lengthy randomized controlled trials will not be needed. European regulators have similarly said they will fast-track approvals of coronavirus vaccines that are adapted to combat mutations. Seemingly, therefore, preparations are underway to coerce the world into accepting annual COVID-19 vaccinations and emergency use authorizations as the norm.
None of the above should be taken as suggesting that our organization, the Dr. Rath Health Foundation, completely opposes all forms of vaccines. We recognize that vaccines based on peptides, short chains of the naturally occurring amino acids found in food, have potential in the prevention and control of diseases such as cancer, for example. Scientists at the Dr. Rath Research Institute in California have already published pioneering work in this area.
But the increasing reliance on emergency use authorizations for new pharmaceutical vaccines involves taking an enormous gamble with public health. Perhaps recognizing this, millions of Americans are reportedly now skipping their second doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Large numbers of people in Europe also seem unlikely to accept them. A recent survey found almost four in ten people in France and 23 percent in Germany say they definitely or probably won’t get vaccinated.
Patients have a right to expect that the preventive health therapies they use are safe. Putting the interests of drug companies and their stakeholders before public safety does nothing to achieve this. The growing reliance on emergency use authorizations should be a warning sign to us all.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. You can find Paul on Twitter at @paulanthtaylor
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).
***
After failing to block Turkey’s purchase of the advanced S-400 Russian air defense system, Washington diplomacy in recent months appeared to have managed to “flip” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to support of US interests in several critical countries from Libya to Armenia to Ukraine, even Afghanistan. With the Turkish economy on the brink of catastrophe as the Lira plunges, it looks more and more like cynical strategists in Washington could have merely lured the wily Erdogan into a deadly bear trap.
Turkish President Erdogan has been called a master at playing off all sides to his advantage, a political chameleon who has flipped from Washington and NATO of which Turkey is a vital member, to Russia and Iran and also China.
In 2016 he accused the CIA of being behind a coup attempt to assassinate him and bring the CIA-controlled networks of exiled Fethullah Gülen into power as Washington had had enough of Erdogan’s flips in allegiance. The coup failed and reports were that Russian intelligence intercepts were given Erdogan that saved his life. After that, relations with Moscow improved markedly. In November 2015 Russia had imposed a severe travel ban to Turkey of Russian tourists and a ban on Turkish food imports in retaliation for a Turkish jet shooting down a Russian jet inside Syrian territory, an act of war. The Russian sanctions hit the Turkish economy deeply.
Then Erdogan began a shift towards Moscow. In 2017 Turkey ignored repeated protests from Washington and NATO and agreed to buy the advanced Russian S-400 air defense missile system, said to be the most advanced in the world. The same time Russia began construction of the first of two Black Sea gas pipelines to Turkey, TurkStream in October 2016, further distancing Ankara and Washington.
2018 Lira Crisis
By 2018 relations between Washington and Ankara had become strained to put it mildly. The Big Three US credit rating agencies, Fitch, Moody’s and S&P all downgraded Turkey’s sovereign debt to “junk” status citing Erdogan’s recent hostile political moves. The result was a free-fall of the Lira forcing the Central Bank to sharply raise interest rates and strangle economic growth in the process. By August 2018 the US was also imposing economic sanctions on Turkey demanding the release of Andrew Brunson and other US citizens accused of espionage on behalf of the 2016 Gülen coup attempt. Turkish steel and aluminum exports were hit with doubled US tariffs as inflation rose. A pledge by Erdogan ally and fellow Muslim Brotherhood backer, Qatar, to invest $15 billion in Turkey managed to calm the crisis and a subsequent visit of Erdogan to Beijing secured some added billions in Chinese aid. The Turkish foreign minister accused “foreign powers” of being behind the Lira crisis for political reasons.
After a shock loss of the key political stronghold of the Istanbul Mayoral post in 2019, Erdogan clearly has been attempting to improve his “usefulness” to the West, especially to Washington. He faces major national elections latest 2023 and could be in danger of losing his grip if the economy continues to fall. Both Donald Trump and now Joe Biden appeared to welcome the Turkish help especially when it hurt Russian interests. So in 2019 when Turkey lent materiel and military support to the Washington-backed government in Tripoli in their war with Russian backed forces of General Haftar, it averted a collapse of the corrupt Tripoli regime, to the approval of NATO. Indirectly, Erdogan went against Putin and Russia.
Similarly, in September 2020 during the outbreak of the “Armenian–Azerbaijani War,” Turkey supplied critical drones and military advisors to their Muslim ally Azerbaijan against Armenia, a member of Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union. It was another indirect Turkish strike against Russian strategic interests, this, very close to home.
In October 2020 following significant Azeri military advances in Nagorno-Karabakh, Erdogan praised Azerbaijan’s “great operation both to defend its own territories and to liberate the occupied Karabakh,” adding that Turkey stands with and will continue to stand with “friendly and brotherly Azerbaijan with all our means and all our heart.” Putin was reportedly not amused.
The relations between Turkey and Armenia are hostile and go back to the First World War when Ottoman Turkey was charged with exterminating more than 1.5 million Armenians in an ethnic cleansing. Turkey to the present day vehemently rejects accepting responsibility for genocide against Armenians who after 1920 became part of the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991.
Now, as recently as April 10, as the Biden White House escalated pressure on Ukraine to act militarily to recapture the breakaway Donbass region as well as Crimea, which is today part of Russia, Erdogan invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Turkey for talks on military cooperation. In Istanbul after the talks, Erdogan announced that the two presidents had signed a 20-point strategic agreement that included Turkish support for Ukraine demands to return Donbass to Kiev as well as Crimea, the base for the Russian Black Sea Naval fleet. Following the CIA-backed coup in Ukraine in March 2014 Crimeans held a referendum in which citizens overwhelmingly voted to join Russia, something NATO was not happy about to put it mildly. In addition, Erdogan announced on April 10 that Turkey supported Ukraine’s bid to join NATO, an explosive issue as it would be a direct strategic threat to Moscow.
Already in January 2020 Turkey and Ukraine signed major military trade deals including an agreement that Ukraine supply Turkey with $600 million of cruise missile engines. Ukraine also supplies the Turkish military with engines for its drones that evade US sanctions on Turkey over the S-400. More recently Turkey has been reselling its Bayraktar TB2 combat drones to Ukraine’s military which plans to use them against the Donbass fighters. In brief, Erdogan has been doing many things to back US actions against Russia in recent months.
Genocide Mystery?
This makes it all the more curious that US President Biden on April 25 became the first US President to go against NATO ally Turkey and accuse it of genocide against the Armenians in 1915. Since Turkey joined NATO the subject of Armenian genocide has been taboo as Ankara has repeatedly made clear. Why, just when Erdogan is playing a key support role in the US Administration’s anti-Russia agenda, did Biden or his advisers find it necessary to come out blaming Ottoman Turkey for a genocide against Armenians that took place 106 years ago?
Given the reemergence of the Lira crisis since Erdogan fired the head of the Central Bank last month, replacing him with a party ally, Turkey has become vulnerable even more than in 2018. At this point it seems Washington has the wily Erdogan in a bear trap. If his new Central Bank chief now moves to cut interest rates to spur the economy amid the Lira crisis, tens of billions of Western investment funds could exit Turkey and plunge the economy into its worst crisis since 2018, likely even worse, prior to the 2023 national elections. For years Turkish companies have turned to dollar debt markets where interest rates were far lower than the Turkish rates. The Lira fall makes it far more costly to repay in dollars, especially as the economy is hit by the corona crisis and tourism has again been blocked by Moscow until June, claiming covid risk but clearly related to Erdogan’s recent Ukraine moves.
Erdogan has lost little time in reacting to the affront. Turkish protests have begun outside the strategic NATO Incirlik Air Base are demanding US troops leave.
On April 24, a day after Washington notified Erdogan of its planned Armenian genocide statement, Erdogan launched military actions in Iraq and Syria. The Turkish military announced that its Operation Claw-Lightning had resumed, aimed to “completely end” the terror threat on Turkey’s southern border to Syria. It involved airstrikes at positions of the PKK Kurdish forces which the US backs against Damascus. Turkey claims the PKK Kurds are terrorists threatening Turkey. At the same time the Turkish forces fortified their established position in Greater Idlib where there are now thousands of troops as well as heavy weapons, including battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, rocket launchers, surveillance systems, jammers and air-defense systems. Since 2018, the Turkish Idlib presence was supposedly to jointly monitor with Russia a mutual de-escalation on the Syrian territory.
Mending Arab Fences
More surprising has swiftly Erdogan moved to mend fences with his Arab neighbors. On April 26, Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said that Turkey was looking to rectify relations with Saudi Arabia where bilateral trade dropped a whopping 98% since an official Saudi boycott of Turkish goods in 2020 over what Saudis called hostile Turkish acts, a reference to Erdogan’s provocative, very public accusations that the Saudis brutally assassinated Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in October 2018, as well as Turkish support for Qatar amid a Saudi boycott. Before 2013 Riyadh had been a major financial backer of Erdogan who was then a key actor in the war against Assad in Syria. The new regime in Washington so far has been quite cold to Saudi Arabia, a big shift from Trump’s time.
At the same time Ankara is seeking to rebuild ties with Egyptian President al-Sisi that have been strained since the Egyptian military ousted Morsi and backed al-Sisi in a 2013 counter-coup to the Muslim Brotherhood’s US-backed Arab Spring. Were Erdogan to succeed in regaining the support of the Arab Gulf states including Saudi Arabia, Turkish military support for the Gulf could well alter Middle East geopolitics to the disadvantage of Washington. Over the past two years Turkey has emerged as a major surprise military force through deployment of its battle-proven Bayraktar TB2 drones owned by the family of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law, Selcuk Bayraktar. They have been decisive in Libya, in Nagorno-Karabakh and Syria.
What comes next in the turbulent rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is more uncertain that at anytime in his near twenty-year hold on power, first as Prime Minister and now as President. With national elections slated for 2023, if the economy continues to tank, all bets are off. The Biden “genocide” declaration suggests that Washington may try to push him over the edge well before 2023. However, the outcome is far from clear at this juncture, and very much depends on Erdogan’s ability to force effective new alliances.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook
Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index
List Price: $25.95
Special Price: $18.00
This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.
The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
The golden post-9/11 years of the war contractor — the providers of food and transportation, fuel, construction, maintenance, IT, not to mention security and interrogation services for the U.S. military — appear to be drawing down.
With the (hopeful) withdrawal of the remaining 3,600 troops in Afghanistan by September, attention is also on the nearly 17,000 contractors on the U.S. payroll there, 6,147 of whom are American citizens.
“The U.S. contractors will come out as we come out. That is part of the planned withdrawal we have in place right now,” said CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, in a briefing with reporters last week.
Despite earlier reports that the government has numerous contracts with companies stretching far beyond the deadline to leave, it would appear the thrust of U.S. operations in Afghanistan is diminishing, and the withdrawal has begun. Even if that takes a while, or the United States manages to keep some presence in the country after Sept. 11, the private sector footprint will never be as big as it was at its height in 2011, when there were over 90,000 contractors in Afghanistan. At times, including now, contractors outnumbered uniformed personnel.
To put it into perspective, there were 155,000 contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, compared to 145,000 active duty service members, in 2011. Contractors made up 62 percent of the workforce. The money paid to contractors is even more daunting: $104 billion for services in Afghanistan alone since 2002, nearly $9 billion just in the last five years.
With so much dependence on contractors, came trouble. Huge companies like Halliburton, with subsidiaries such as KBR, took advantage. Not only were companies overcharging and caught engaging in fraud during the early salad days, but worse, they cut corners to make more money. Who could forget the flimsy, defective showers and electrical systems electrocuting troops throughout Iraq? The unsafe drinking water on bases? Spoiled food?
Many died with no mention in the papers, came home injured and sick with none of the benefits of Pentagon health care or VA. They were a shadow army really, a massive experiment in how Uncle Sam could wage war across several countries cheaper and longer by leaning on the private sector to do it. But it wasn’t cheaper, and the cost not just in dollars: for every positive thing contractors did in-country, there is a school or a hospital or some facility that literally won’t stand after we’re gone. Afghan security forces that won’t be able to challenge the Taliban, bridges and infrastructure that will crumble. The largesse was corruptible and it was corrupted.
Halliburton and KBR and Blackwater are names of the past. But they got their gold, they care not about “the graveyard of empires.” Others, like Fluor Group, which provides logistical support to the military currently in Afghanistan, are going to see an end to the lush days, and they’re feeling it.
“The timetable to do this properly is already too tight,” said David Berteau, president of the Professional Services Council representing 400 government contractors, many working in Afghanistan. “We don’t have years, we have only months.”
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).
***
Earlier this month, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the White House office that reviews federal regulations, rejected the Department of Homeland Security’s proposal to collect social media identifiers on travel and immigration forms. OIRA concluded that DHS did not “adequately [demonstrate] the practical utility of collecting this information” and noted that the Muslim ban, which ordered the proposal, had been repealed.
The proposal, which the Brennan Center and our allies have opposed in writing, asked for authorization to require roughly 33 million people a year to register every social media handle they have used over the past five years on any of 20 platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. If approved, the measure would have required a wide range of individuals to turn over their social media handles to the federal government — including people eligible for short trips to the United States without a visa, those seeking asylum or refugee status, and permanent U.S. residents seeking to become citizens.
Halting the DHS collection is a big deal, and we welcome it. But it is only a first step. The Biden administration, which is now conducting a review of whether collection of social media identifiers “meaningfully improved screening and vetting,” should also end the State Department’s corresponding collection from about 14 million people a year who fill out its visa applications. Like the DHS proposal, this State Department policy was underpinned by the Muslim ban and was justified with practically identical supporting documentation. As OIRA’s decision signals, there is little evidence that social media screening is an effective screening tool. But we do know that facilitating dragnet surveillance of the modern public square harms free speech and privacy, imposing a disparate impact on people who have traditionally borne the brunt of government profiling in the name of national security.
It is unsurprising that DHS was unable to demonstrate the “practical utility” of its proposed collection. In fact, the agency’s own internal tests have questioned the benefits of using social media to screen people coming to the United States. In a 2016 transition brief prepared for the incoming Trump administration, DHS reported that in three of the four programs it used to vet refugees, information from social media “did not yield clear, articulable links to national security concerns,” even when an applicant was flagged as a potential threat through other channels. (The Department did not identify any derogatory information at all from the fourth pilot.) Among other observations, officials also pointed out the difficulty of understanding “with any level of certainty” the context and reliability of what they were reviewing. They concluded that “mass social media screening” was a poor use of resources, taking people away from “the more targeted enhanced vetting they are well trained and equipped to do.”
Indeed, the DHS Inspector General in 2017 reviewed the Department’s social media monitoring pilot programs and explicitly stated they could not justify scaling the practice because DHS didn’t define criteria for success against which to measure the programs. As OIRA noted, if there is any evidence that social media screening is an effective screening tool, the federal government certainly hasn’t provided it.
There is, however, evidence that social media surveillance discourages people from freely speaking and associating online. We have documented this chilling effect in our lawsuit challenging the State Department’s collection of social media identifiers on visa forms, which the Brennan Center filed in December 2019 along with the Knight First Amendment Institute and the law firm Simpson Thacher. (The lawsuit has been paused as the government reviews its screening programs, though the policy remains in effect.) For example, one member of a documentary filmmaker organization we represent “reviewed three years of social media activity and deleted posts criticizing the current U.S. administration” because of a fear that the posts would delay approval of their application. Another has “all but stopped expressing his views and interacting with others on social media” because he understands the government may review and monitor his posts.
People self-censor for a number of reasons. They reasonably fear that their speech will be misinterpreted, especially given that communication on social media is often highly context-specific and riddled with slang and jokes. This includes communications in non-verbal form that do not have universally accepted meanings (for example, whether a “retweet” on Twitter signals endorsement). Such interpretive difficulties are magnified as officials try to review posts in thousands of languages that are underpinned by a diverse range of customs and cultural norms, or when they rely on automated tools for textual interpretation that have error rates of twenty to thirty percent under the best of circumstances and perform even worse when applied to non-standard English.
Online speech is also easily misattributed. Indeed, in 2019, officials turned away an incoming Palestinian student at Harvard (before eventually bowing to public pressure to let him back into the country) after finding posts on his social media timeline that were critical of the U.S. government. Notably, the posts were made not by him but by people on his friend list, and he had not interacted with those posts. This experience also highlights why people may refrain from being critical of the government online when they are subject to surveillance, since they have legitimate reason to fear being penalized for their (or others’) speech.
Finally, social media offers a flood of sensitive information about a person that would not be apparent from an immigration benefit application and is irrelevant to what they are being screened for. While State Department policy, for example, prohibits officials from considering certain attributes to deny visas (“visas may not be denied on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, political views, gender, or sexual orientation”), officials enjoy broad discretion to adjudicate immigration benefits and do so behind closed doors. This is a recipe for subjective bias to infect decision-making and drive discriminatory outcomes.
Worse, both the State Department policy and DHS proposal emerged from the Muslim ban and were preceded by Trump officials’ statements that social media screening was intended to facilitate ideological vetting aimed at Muslims. The genesis of these policies only underscores how the dragnet collection of social media identifiers erects a digital screening infrastructure that is ripe for intentional, systematic profiling.
The Biden administration’s rejection of the Trump-era DHS proposal to collect social media identifiers on its travel and immigration forms is a major victory for free expression and privacy — both values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The new administration should also roll back related social media surveillance programs, such as the State Department’s collection program, that are grounded in the same flawed premises. Doing so would send an even stronger signal to the world that the United States remains committed to the rights of people across the globe to speak and associate free of government scrutiny.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Featured image is from Oscar Wong/Brennan Center for Justice
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
The report covers data collected from December 9, 2020, through April 21, 2021, for the three experimental COVID “vaccines” currently in use in the U.K. from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna.
They report a total of 1,047 deaths and 725,079 injuries recorded following the experimental COVID injections.
685 of the 1,047 deaths followed AstraZeneca COVID injections, and 573,650 of the 725,079 injuries followed AstraZeneca COVID injections.
Other European countries have also temporarily halted the AstraZeneca shots while they review safety data, but the UK has never halted injecting people with the shot causing fatal blood clots, and the reported events of death and injuries following AstraZeneca shots.
The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency concludes:
Vaccines are the best way to protect people from Covid-19 and have already saved thousands of lives. Everyone should continue to get their vaccination when asked to do so unless specifically advised otherwise.
As with all vaccines and medicines, the safety of COVID-19 vaccines is being continuously monitored .
Cases of an extremely rare specific type of blood clot with low blood platelets continue to be investigated.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
The 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 April 24, 2021 lists 8,430 deaths and 354,177 injuries following injections of four experimental COVID-19 shots:
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.
Here is the summary data through April 24, 2021.
Total reactions for the experimental mRNA vaccine Tozinameran (code BNT162b2,Comirnaty) from BioNTech/ Pfizer: 4,524 deaths and 151,306 injuries to 24/04/2021
11,191 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 40 deaths
7,372 Cardiac disorders incl. 522 deaths
50 Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 3 deaths
4,183 Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 3 deaths
112 Endocrine disorders
4,629 Eye disorders incl. 6 deaths
33,33 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 227 deaths
103,813General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 1459 deaths
214 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 16 deaths
3,338 Immune system disorders incl. 20 deaths
10,160 Infections and infestations incl. 527 deaths
3,950 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 89 deaths
7,595 Investigations incl. 168 deaths
2,564 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 91 deaths
53,714 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 47 deaths
150 Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 7 deaths
65,745 Nervous system disorders incl. 425 deaths
192 Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 7 deaths
80 Product issues
6,008 Psychiatric disorders incl. 63 deaths
938 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 66 deaths
994 Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 1 death
13,954 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 523 deaths
16,171 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 35 deaths
438 Social circumstances incl. 6 deaths
124 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 8 deaths
8,220 Vascular disorders incl. 165 deaths
Total reactions for the experimental mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273 (CX-024414) fromModerna: 2,283 deaths and 17,625 injuries to 24/04/2021
839 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 16 deaths
1,278 Cardiac disorders incl. 231 deaths
7 Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 2 deaths
378 Ear and labyrinth disorders
23 Endocrine disorders incl. 1 death
570 Eye disorders incl. 3 deaths
3,857 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 80 deaths
12,513 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 1012 deaths
77 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 3 deaths
476 Immune system disorders incl. 3 deaths
1,449 Infections and infestations incl. 118 deaths
803 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 44 deaths
1,087 Investigations incl. 60 deaths
515 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 47 deaths
5,669 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 47 deaths
48 Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 8 deaths
7,489 Nervous system disorders incl. 244 deaths
50 Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions
8 Product issues
862 Psychiatric disorders incl. 31 deaths
299 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 23 deaths
106 Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 1 death
2,198 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 197 deaths
2,163 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 19 deaths
162 Social circumstances incl. 6 deaths
109 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 13 deaths
1,166 Vascular disorders incl. 74 deaths
Total reactions for the experimental vaccine AZD1222(CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford/AstraZeneca: 1,579 deaths and 184,833 injuries to 24/04/2021
5,319 Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 64 deaths
7,374 Cardiac disorders incl. 199 deaths
76 Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 2 deaths
5,011 Ear and labyrinth disorders
155 Endocrine disorders incl. 2 deaths
7,922 Eye disorders incl. 5 deaths
56,473 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 62 deaths
141,042General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 495 deaths
248 Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 13 deaths
1,837 Immune system disorders incl. 7 deaths
10,631 Infections and infestations incl. 99 deaths
4,341 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 18 deaths
9,798 Investigations incl. 21 deaths
6,977 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 18 deaths
82,522 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 16 deaths
144 Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 4 deaths
111,873Nervous system disorders incl. 244 deaths
108 Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions
52 Product issues
9,514 Psychiatric disorders incl. 12 deaths
1,745 Renal and urinary disorders incl. 11 deaths
2,076 Reproductive system and breast disorders
15,824 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 171 deaths
23,168 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 10 deaths
364 Social circumstances incl. 3 deaths
383 Surgical and medical procedures incl. 12 deaths
8,706 Vascular disorders incl. 91 deaths
Total reactions for the experimental COVID-19 vaccine JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S) from Johnson & Johnson: 44 deaths and 413 injuries to 24/04/2021
11 Blood and lymphatic system disorders
45 Cardiac disorders incl. 10 deaths
1 Congenital, familial and genetic disorder
20 Ear and labyrinth disorders
1 Endocrine disorder
20 Eye disorders
109 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 1 death
235 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 14 deaths
3 Hepatobiliary disorders
18 Immune system disorders
44 Infections and infestations incl. 2 deaths
34 Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 1 death
61 Investigations
19 Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 1 death
95 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 1 death
232 Nervous system disorders incl. 3 deaths
3 Product issues
45 Psychiatric disorders
11 Renal and urinary disorders
5 Reproductive system and breast disorders
80 Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 3 deaths
50 Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders
5 Social circumstances
3 Surgical and medical procedures
96 Vascular disorders incl. 8 deaths
This is public information funded by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and anyone can use the EudraVigilance system and verify this data.
Denmark and Norway have completely suspended use of the AstraZeneca experimental COVID-19 shots.
A statement issued by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health stated that the AstraZeneca COVID “vaccine” is more dangerous than COVID itself, especially for young people.
The EMA continues to recommend it. They did, however, add a safety warning to the J&J shots, due to fatal blood clots. (Source.)
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
The number of children attempting or committing suicide in northwest Syria has risen sharply over the past year, with almost one in five of all recorded suicide cases involving adolescents, Save the Children said on Thursday.
Deaths by suicide increased by 86 percent in the last three months of 2020 in comparison to the first three months of that year, the charity reported.
It added that a total of 246 people died by suicide during that period, while another 1,748 suicide attempts were recorded.
“After ten years of conflict, we are now seeing children resorting to taking their own lives,” said Sonia Khush, Save the Children’s Syria Response Director.
“It is incredibly sad that children are reaching a point where they see no other way out from a life where they cannot get an education, enough food or adequate shelter.”
Of those who attempted suicide, at least 42 were 15 years old or younger at the time of the attempt, while 18 percent were between the ages of 16 and 20.
“Almost 15 percent of adult patients have suicidal thoughts,” said a mental health worker with Save the Children’s partner organisation, Hurras Network, in North Idlib.
“Children meanwhile express [their emotional struggles] through behaviour. They become aggressive, isolated or vengeful.”
The majority of the deaths, 187, were recorded in people who had been displaced from their homes, the NGO said.
Northwest Syria is home to some two million displaced people, many of them twice or even three times displaced from their homes over the course of the decade-long conflict.
Mental health crisis
The war in Syria, now in its tenth year, has devastated much of the country. More than 388,000 people have been killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and millions have been forced to live as refugees.
The northwest, which is the last rebel-held region of Syria, is where hundreds of thousands were forced to flee after other areas of the country were recaptured by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
The more than three million people living in the country’s northwest face routine aerial bombardment by the Syrian government and Russian forces.
The crowded and unsanitary conditions in displacement camps and the lack of infrastructure in the northwest of Syria are exacerbating mental health problems, Save the Children said.
The NGO also points to increased poverty, broken relationships, domestic violence, and child marriage as factors for the rising numbers of deaths by suicide, particularly in children.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Featured image is from Eva Bartlett
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
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).
***
National and global crises are seen as opportunities by government technocrats, billionaire oligarchs, Big Pharma, Big Data, Big Media and the military industrial intelligence apparatus to increase their power and wealth.
Incitement of fear has been a central strategy of totalitarian systems for millennia. Demagogues weaponize fear to justify demands for blind obedience and to win public acquiescence for the demolition of civil and economic rights
The technocrats’ plan, as laid out in various papers and reports, is to use bioterrorism to take control of the world’s resources, wealth and people
That pandemic measures are not about protecting public health and saving lives can be ascertained by the fact that no cost-benefit calculations for any of the measures have ever been presented. They are merely tools for control
The “scientific consensus” the medical technocracy wants you to believe in is that vaccines are the only available answer to this pandemic. The reality is there are many alternatives, and all of them are far safer than the experimental COVID-19 gene therapies being given. Two of the most important are vitamin D optimization and nebulized peroxide. I review many others in “The Truth About COVID-19”
*
In the interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. interviews me about my new book, “The Truth About COVID-19 — Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports and the New Normal,” co-written with founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association, Ronnie Cummins.
Kennedy wrote a piercingly insightful foreword1 to it. The book is being released today. If you preordered, thank you! If you didn’t, you can now pick it up without delay.
The Weaponization of Fear
In “The Truth About COVID-19,” we review the evidence suggesting a laboratory origin, and how the technocratic elite have used this pandemic as a justification for eroding liberty, freedom and democracy from Day 1. As noted by Kennedy in his foreword:
“Government technocrats, billionaire oligarchs, Big Pharma, Big Data, Big Media, the high-finance robber barons and the military industrial intelligence apparatus love pandemics for the same reasons they love wars and terrorist attacks. Catastrophic crises create opportunities of convenience to increase both power and wealth.
In her seminal book, ‘The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,’ Naomi Klein chronicles how authoritarian demagogues, large corporations and wealthy plutocrats use mass disruptions to shift wealth upwards, obliterate the middle classes, abolish civil rights, privatize the commons and expand authoritarian controls …
The methodology is, in fact, formulaic, as Hitler’s Luftwaffe commander, Hermann Göring, explained during the Nazi war crimes trials at Nuremberg: ‘It is always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in any country.’”
Bioterrorism Is the New ‘War on Terror’
As stressed by Kennedy, the 9/11 attack was used to launch the “war on terror” and implement the ironically named Patriot Act which, far from protecting the rights of patriots actually eroded them and laid the groundwork for the modern surveillance state. Now, the enemy is microbes, which are even more nebulous and untouchable than the amorphous “terrorism” before it.
Make no mistake, the plan, as laid out in various papers and reports — including the Rockefeller Foundation’s 2010 report,2 “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development,” in which they describe their “Lockstep” scenario, a coordinated global response to a lethal pandemic, and its 2020 white paper,3 “National COVID-19 Testing Action Plan” — is to use bioterrorism to take control of the world’s resources, wealth and people.
It’s to use the need for coordinated pandemic response as the justification for permanent surveillance and social controls that hobble personal liberty and freedom of choice.
Pandemic measures indeed are not about protecting public health and saving lives. This can be ascertained by the fact that no cost-benefit calculations for any of the measures have ever been presented — not even now, nearly a year and a half later, at a time when states and nations are again considering another round of lockdowns and home quarantines. As noted by Kennedy:
“The suspension of due process, and notice, and comment rulemaking meant that none of the government prelates who ordained the quarantine had to first publicly calculate whether destroying the global economy, disrupting food and medical supplies, and throwing a billion humans into dire poverty and food insecurity would kill more people than it would save.”
If public health were the primary goal, no measure would be reimplemented a second, third or fourth time without first making those calculations. After all, we have well over a year’s worth of data on mask wearing, lockdowns and social distancing from all around the world. The only reason for ignoring that crucial part of health policy making is because they know the data do not support any of these strategies.
Censorship Is an Essential Feature of Totalitarianism
In addition to the weaponization of fear, totalitarian regimes need censorship. Not only must objections be quashed, but to effectively subvert democracy, with the aim of eliminating it altogether, you must first eliminate freedom of speech. As explained by Kennedy in his foreword:
“In including free speech in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison argued that all our other liberties depend on this right. Any government that can hide its mischief has license to commit atrocities.
As soon as they get hold of the levers of authority, tyrants impose Orwellian censorship and begin gaslighting dissenters … The free flow of information and self-expression are oxygen and sunlight for representative democracy, which functions best with policies annealed in the boiling cauldron of public debate. It is axiomatic that without free speech, democracy withers …
To consolidate and fortify their power, dictatorships aim to replace those vital ingredients of self-rule — debate, self-expression, dissent and skepticism — with rigid authoritarian orthodoxies that function as secular surrogates for religion. These orthodoxies perform to abolish critical thinking and regiment populations in blind, unquestioning obedience to undeserving authorities …
Censorship is violence, and this systematic muzzling of debate — which proponents justify as a measure to curtail dangerous polarization — is actually fueling the polarization and extremism that the autocrats use to clamp down evermore draconian controls. We might recall, at this strange time in our history, my father’s friend, Edward R. Murrow’s warning:
‘The right to dissent … is surely fundamental to the existence of a democratic society. That’s the right that went first in every nation that stumbled down the trail to totalitarianism.’”
Fabricated Dogma Poses as ‘Scientific Consensus’
For years, I have exposed corruption and the collusion between private industries and the government agencies that are supposed to regulate them. Today, the danger captured agencies pose to public health is clear for anyone to see.
Conveniently enough, the only “reputable sources” people are allowed to peruse are the very agencies that have been captured and corrupted by industry. Meanwhile, there are many thousands of independent medical experts and scientists who vehemently disagree with the “scientific consensus” presented by these agencies, and have the evidence to back up their objections.
All of them are now being censored to some degree or another. The end result is a thoroughly underinformed and misled public, and not a single good thing can come from that. As Kennedy says:
“Instead of citing scientific studies to justify mandates for masks, lockdowns and vaccines, our medical rulers cite WHO, CDC, FDA and NIH …
So, it’s unsurprising that, instead of demanding blue-ribbon safety science and encouraging honest, open and responsible debate on the science, the badly compromised and newly empowered government health officials charged with managing the COVID-19 pandemic response collaborated with mainstream and social media to shut down discussion on key public health and civil rights questions.
They silenced and excommunicated heretics like Dr. Mercola who refused to genuflect to Pharma and treat unquestioning faith in zero liability, shoddily tested experimental vaccines as religious duty.
Our current iatrarchy’s rubric of ‘scientific consensus’ is the contemporary iteration of the Spanish Inquisition. It is a fabricated dogma constructed by this corrupt cast of physician technocrats and their media collaborators to legitimize their claims to dangerous new powers.
The high priests of the modern Inquisition are Big Pharma’s network and cable news gasbags who preach rigid obedience to official diktats including lockdowns, social distancing and the moral rectitude of donning masks despite the absence of peer-reviewed science that convincingly shows that masks prevent COVID-19 transmission. The need for this sort of proof is gratuitous.
They counsel us to, instead, ‘trust the experts.’ Such advice is both anti-democratic and anti-science. Science is dynamic. ‘Experts’ frequently differ on scientific questions and their opinions can vary in accordance with the demands of politics, power and financial self-interest.
Nearly every lawsuit I have ever brought pitted highly credentialed experts from opposite sides against each other, with all of them swearing under oath to diametrically antithetical positions based on the same set of facts. Science is disagreement; the notion of scientific consensus is oxymoronic.”
Protect Your Own Health
The “scientific consensus” the medical technocracy wants you to believe in is that vaccines are the only available answer to this pandemic. So far, all preventive strategies and safer drug therapies have been downplayed at best, and censored or banned at worst.
The reality is that there are many alternatives, and all of them are far safer than the experimental COVID-19 gene therapies being given. I review the ones I believe are the most important in “The Truth About COVID-19.”
Nebulized Hydrogen Peroxide
A heavily censored and ridiculed strategy that can be used either preventatively or acutely is nebulized hydrogen peroxide.
It’s extremely inexpensive, easy to use (0.1 percent, which is 30 times less concentrated than regular drugstore 3 percent peroxide).
Your immune cells actually produce hydrogen peroxide. This is in part how they kills cells that have been infected with a virus. It appears that nebulized hydrogen peroxide merely enhances your immune cells to perform their natural function more effectively.
The key is to have your nebulizer already purchased and ready to go so that you can use it at the sign of first symptoms. You can also use it concomitant with vitamin C, as they likely have a powerful synergy and use different complimentary mechanisms.
For more details, check out my interviews with Dr. David Brownstein and Dr. Thomas Levy. Both have extensive experience with this treatment and have treated hundreds of COVID-19 patients with it.
Brownstein published a peer-reviewed consecutive case series of 107 COVID-19 patients treated with nebulized peroxide and other remedies, including oral vitamins A, C and D, iodine, intravenous hydrogen peroxide and iodine as well as intravenous (IV) vitamin C, along with intramuscular ozone, in the July 2020 issue of Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law.4
Since then, he’s treated more than 100 additional patients with these strategies. All have survived. Levy also details how to use nebulized peroxide in his free e-book, “Rapid Virus Recovery.” It’s also available in Spanish.
Hope, in the Face of Tyranny
At the end of my discussion with Kennedy, I express what I believe is the absolute truth: We will ultimately stop their drive toward global tyranny. It’s not going to be easy. It may take years, and it may get far worse before it gets better.
The founders of the U.S. actually fled repressive societies or were children or grandchildren of those who did. They had to personally reckon with criminalized speech, arbitrary arrests and state sanctioned torture and even murder. The men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew that if they lost the war, they would be executed for treason.
These men and women were radicals, fighting for liberty and personal freedoms. They had a vision of reality that was an absolute slap in the face of what the rest of the world tolerated. They were willing to sacrifice their lives to turn that vision into a reality. Most all of us have forgotten their sacrifices and have capitulated to the carefully constructed narrative to create fear that allows most to give up their claim to freedom.
The Founders NEVER expected us to become complacent and fall sleep or simply get lazy. They trusted us to be ever vigilant, to keep the precious web of liberty and personal freedom that they constructed from evaporating so that there would never be an American tyrant. The creators of the U.S. Constitution understood that the price of liberty was eternal vigilance.
Hopefully, enough people will see through the mainstream fog and see the truth of where we’re headed and how we got here (if you don’t, read “The Truth About COVID-19”), and once you understand who the actual enemy is, you become less fearful and more efficient. You can now help educate others, so that they understand what’s going on, how they’re being deceived, and what they’re actually about to give up.
Lastly, there are legal solutions that can help thwart the globalist takeover, technological solutions that can strengthen citizen’s lobbying power, and censor-proof technologies that will allow us to circumvent current Big Tech monopolies. We have to work on all of these fronts, but together, I believe we can resecure freedom for our children and future generations.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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).
***
“A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power.”― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
For good or bad, COVID-19 has changed the way we navigate the world.
It is also redrawing the boundaries of our world (and our freedoms) and altering the playing field faster than we can keep up.
Owing in large part to the U.S. government’s deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations, it has become increasingly obvious that we have entered into a new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations.
This powerful international cabal, let’s call it the Global Deep State, is just as real as the corporatized, militarized, industrialized American Deep State, and it poses just as great a threat to our rights as individuals under the U.S. Constitution, if not greater.
We’ve been inching closer to this global world order for the past several decades, but COVID-19, which has seen governmental and corporate interests become even more closely intertwined, has shifted this transformation into high gear.
Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven corporate interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the security sector, the technology sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, the pharmaceutical industry and, most recently, by the pharmaceutical-health sector.
All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels to increase their profit margins. The profit-driven policies of these global corporate giants influence everything from legislative policies to economics to environmental issues to medical care
Global Disease
The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled us into a whole new global frontier. Those hoping to navigate this interconnected and highly technological world of contact tracing, vaccine passports and digital passes will find themselves grappling with issues that touch on deep-seated moral, political, religious and personal questions for which there may be no clear-cut answers.
We are about to find our ability to access, engage and move about in the world dependent on which camp we fall into: those who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and those who have not.
“It is the latest status symbol. Flash it at the people, and you can get access to concerts, sports arenas or long-forbidden restaurant tables. Some day, it may even help you cross a border without having to quarantine,” writes Heather Murphy for the New York Times. “The new platinum card of the Covid age is the vaccine certificate.”
This is what M.I.T. professor Ramesh Raskar refers to as the new “currency for health,” an apt moniker given the potentially lucrative role that Big Business (Big Pharma and Big Tech, especially) will play in establishing this pay-to-play marketplace. The airline industry has been working on a Travel Pass. IBM is developing a Digital Health Pass. And the U.S. government has been all-too-happy to allow the corporate sector to take the lead.
Global Surveillance
Spearheaded by the National Security Agency (NSA), which has shown itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy, the surveillance state has come to dominate our government and our lives.
Yet the government does not operate alone. It cannot. It requires an accomplice.
Thus, the increasingly complex security needs of our massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental bureaucracy.
Take AT&T, for instance. Through its vast telecommunications network that crisscrosses the globe, AT&T provides the U.S. government with the complex infrastructure it needs for its mass surveillance programs. According to The Intercept:
“The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s ‘extreme willingness to help.’ It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers. According to the NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it ‘has access to information that transits the nation,’ but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T’s massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.”
Now magnify what the U.S. government is doing through AT&T on a global scale, and you have the “14 Eyes Program,” also referred to as the “SIGINT Seniors.” This global spy agency is made up of members from around the world (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, India and all British Overseas Territories).
Surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these global alliances, however.
Global War Profiteering
War has become a huge money-making venture, and America, with its vast military empire and its incestuous relationship with a host of international defense contractors, is one of its biggest buyers and sellers.
The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth. For example, while erecting a security surveillance state in the U.S., the military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70% of the countries worldwide).
Although the federal government obscures so much about its defense spending that accurate figures are difficult to procure, we do know that since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $1.8 trillion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (that’s $8.3 million per hour). That doesn’t include wars and military exercises waged around the globe, which are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.
It’s not just the American economy that is being gouged, unfortunately.
Driven by a greedy defense sector, the American homeland has been transformed into a battlefield with militarized police and weapons better suited to a war zone. President Biden, marching in lockstep with his predecessors, has continued to expand America’s military empire abroad and domestically in a clear bid to pander to the powerful money interests (military, corporate and security) that run the Deep State and hold the government in its clutches.
Global Policing
Glance at pictures of international police forces and you will have a hard time distinguishing between American police and those belonging to other nations. There’s a reason they all look alike, garbed in the militarized, weaponized uniform of a standing army.
There’s a reason why they act alike, too, and speak a common language of force: they belong to a global police force.
This idea of global policing is reinforced by the Strong Cities Network program, which trains local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as address intolerancewithin their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal. The cities included in the global network include New York City, Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, Paris, London, Montreal, Beirut and Oslo.
The objective is to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source: racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police—acting as extensions of the United Nations—will identify, monitor and deter individuals who exhibit, express or engage in anything that could be construed as extremist.
Of course, the concern with the government’s anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.
Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American “extremists” will carry out their objectives—to identify and deter potential extremists—in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).
This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.
Are you starting to get the picture now?
On almost every front, whether it’s the war on drugs, or the sale of weapons, or regulating immigration, or establishing prisons, or advancing technology, or fighting a pandemic, if there is a profit to be made and power to be amassed, you can bet that the government and its global partners have already struck a deal that puts the American people on the losing end of the bargain.
We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.
The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished.
In its place is a shadow government—a corporatized, militarized, entrenched global bureaucracy—that is fully operational and running the country.
Given the trajectory and dramatic expansion, globalization and merger of governmental and corporate powers, we’re not going to recognize this country 20 years from now.
It’s taken less than a generation for our freedoms to be eroded and the Global Deep State’s structure to be erected, expanded and entrenched.
Mark my words: the U.S. government will not save us from the chains of the Global Deep State.
Now there are those who will tell you that any mention of a New World Order government—a power elite conspiring to rule the world—is the stuff of conspiracy theories.
I am not one of those skeptics.
I wholeheartedly believe that one should always mistrust those in power, take alarm at the first encroachment on one’s liberties, and establish powerful constitutional checks against government mischief and abuse.
I can also attest to the fact that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I have studied enough of this country’s history—and world history—to know that governments (the U.S. government being no exception) are at times indistinguishable from the evil they claim to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.
And I have lived long enough to see many so-called conspiracy theories turn into cold, hard fact.
Remember, people used to scoff at the notion of a Deep State (a.k.a. Shadow Government). They used to doubt that fascism could ever take hold in America, and sneer at any suggestion that the United States was starting to resemble Nazi Germany in the years leading up to Hitler’s rise to power.
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
In February, 2021, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, M.D. and a number of his colleagues warned the European Medicines Agency about the potential danger of blood clots and cerebral vein thrombosis in millions of people receiving experimental gene-based injections. Since then, two of the four injections have been suspended or recalled in Europe and the United States for just that reason.
Owing in large part to the U.S. government’s deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations, it has become increasingly obvious that we have entered into a new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations.
For a mask to work, it needs to filter out particles. This requires that the pore size of the mask be smaller than the particles it is filtering. It also requires a tight fit: no leaks. If there is a bit of a charge on the mask that repels particles, as intended with new N95 masks, all the better.
“The program harnesses existing birth registration and vaccination operations to provide newborns with a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity”. The founding Partners of ID2020 are Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) among others.
The American people are not being told the truth about Covid, masks, social distancing, lockdowns, mortality or vaccines. In fact, the only thing of which we can be 100 percent certain, is that the government, the public health officials and the media have been lying relentlessly and remorselessly on virtually every topic for the better part of the last year.
A question that has lingered since the 2009 mass vaccination campaign against pandemic H1N1 swine flu is whether seasonal influenza vaccination might make pandemic infections worse or more prevalent.
Considering the level of tension between the nuclear powers, the topic deserves far more attention that it receives. In the US it is a difficult topic to address.
The United States and its NATO allies have weaponised the issue of human rights; using it to attack their geopolitical opponents particularly Russia and China. Sadly, the mainstream media in the West fails to point out the glaring hypocrisy of this weaponisation of human rights.
The following is the third in a series of interviews with a nurse who works in a hospital on the outskirts of Toronto, Ontario. She has provided sufficient evidence, and links to public records, to satisfy me that she is indeed a registered nurse working for over a decade in multiple Canadian hospitals, serving both in the emergency room and intensive care unit.
The Pharma giant Pfizer use an experimental technology known as gene editing, specifically mRNA gene-editing, something never before used in vaccines. Before we rush to get jabbed in hopes of some immunity, we should know more about the radical experimental technology and its lack of precision.
The reconstruction of a railway line from Belgrade to the border of North Macedonia, with the support of the EU, will assist in Serbia’s transformation into the Balkan’s main transportation and energy hub.
After a year of pain, suffering and enormous loss, the UK must reach for new solutions to the COVID-19 problem and any future respiratory disease outbreaks. We must learn from errors, acknowledge the harms of the measures we have taken and account for them moving forward.
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).
***
When I look back over the last year or so of the pandemic, I can forgive the first couple of months. We were all finding our feet with a largely unknown entity. However, as a clinical scientist with over 30 years in NHS laboratories and as an academic researcher with over 200 peer-reviewed clinical research articles in scientific and medical journals (including over 130 involving use of the polymerase chain reaction [PCR]), I found my views increasingly divergent from those of the Government and its advisors. Those who know me will know that it takes a lot to get me annoyed, but I could not sit by and do nothing when I could see the immense damage being done to countless lives and businesses in the name of supposedly protecting us from SARS-CoV-2.
But let me say at the start; I am not one to deny the damage that COVID-19 can do. (And I deliberately use that term, rather than SARS-CoV-2. It’s the disease that causes the problems – most people manage the virus without much difficulty.) COVID-19 can be very nasty and my heart goes out to all those affected. But the way in which the Government handled the pandemic has, in my view, been shocking. It’s felt like it has focused blindly on the virus (and not very well at that either – just think about PPE in care homes for a start) and ignored the massive implications on every other level.
So I wrote. I wrote letters to the local paper, emailed the Chief Medical Officer, submitted evidence to a Parliamentary Inquiry, signed the Great Barrington Declaration, published scientific papers on the ineffectiveness of face coverings and on the non-Covid harms to people with diabetes, and wrote to my MP. Several times. I also joined UsforThem and the Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART).
Back in October 2020, I wrote one of my letters to my MP, Fiona Bruce, raising a number of concerns about the Government’s handling of the pandemic, and requesting that she raise these concerns with the powers that be on my behalf. While the letter was written as a member of the public, I felt that my expertise and experience put me in a position to comment in a way that perhaps others couldn’t.
In the letter, I highlighted three main concerns:
1. Evidence. That measures to reduce the spread of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 were introduced without evidence to support them.
2. Context. That such measures were generating more harms than those caused by the virus itself, and this was not being reflected in a balanced way in the press briefings, including in the figures presented, thereby creating an atmosphere of fear.
3. Testing. That the way in which testing data has been presented had been misleading to the public and media. This area was of particular concern to me, given my clinical and research experience in the field.
In respect of the above three areas, I requested the following of my MP:
1. Please could you lobby that scientific evidence underpinning decisions is provided with all future communications.
2. I would ask that you raise this with the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Health as a matter of urgency to ensure that contextual information is co-presented at press briefings for comparison.
3. I would be grateful if you could impress upon the Secretary of State for Health, the Chief Medical Officers and the Chief Scientific Officer to present adjusted data in a more balanced way to reflect the major difference in rates of cases now with those in April.
…and…
I would request that you (i) ask the Secretary of State for Health to ensure that all positive tests are repeated before labelling an individual as positive, and (ii) that the estimated one third of deaths attributed to COVID-19 because of a SARS-CoV-2 positive test, but where thee cause of death was not COVID-19, be removed from the figures.
On April 13th 2021, some six months later, the reply arrived, along with a letter from Lord Bethell (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care), dated April 7th.
The response, which you can read here, was both enlightening and disheartening, if not unexpected.
Here is my commentary on the response from Lord Bethell, passed on by my MP:
Evidence
Lord Bethell referred to the release of papers and minutes from SAGE, presumably to exemplify the evidence underpinning the decisions to implement mitigation measures. The complete lack of credibility of anything coming from SAGE notwithstanding, this is hardly an independent assessment of the evidence underpinning the Government’s decisions.
To me, anyone with any scientific nous could present a fairly long list of actions that the Government has taken without first presenting clear evidence to indicate their effectiveness and an evidence-based risk-assessment of potential non-Covid harms. The “Rule of Six”, the 10pm curfew, face coverings (anywhere, let alone in schools), lockdowns (in any of its many guises, including Tiers), etc, etc, etc. Where is the assessment of non-Covid physical and mental health harms, economic impact, or the effect on our children’s education and wellbeing? Or even evidence on reducing transmission of the virus itself, for that matter?
All we have seem to have seen is exaggerated figures predicting doomsday scenarios, mostly based on modelling rather than actual data, none of which have come to pass. These seem only aimed at scaring the public into following their non-evidence-based guidelines (an approach which, to me, could itself have a potentially significant negative mental health impact).
Context
In terms of presenting COVID-19 data in a wider context, Lord Bethell’s response seemed silent on this one. I am still waiting to hear a press conference which presents the non-Covid harms that we are hearing about all the time in the scientific literature, from the mental health sector, from education, from the business world and from thousands of individual stories.
We are instead presented with advertising campaigns which tell us to “act like you have it”. Not only is that completely illogical – if we all took that literally, society would stop. All of it. No hospitals, no supermarkets, no police, nothing. We’d all be at home self-isolating. But it verging on emotional blackmail. Please give the public some respect and allow them to make responsible decisions.
Testing
The third area covered three distinct points:
Comparing like with like. A request to not compare figures in October with those in April when testing levels were at a much lower level.
False positives. A request to define positive ‘cases’ accurately by correctly addressing the issue of false positives.
‘With’, not ‘from’. A request to exclude deaths where COVID-19 was not the cause of death from the figures for COVID-associated deaths.
a. Comparing like with like. On the first of these, it’s hard to identify whether Lord Bethell had anything to say on this. He didn’t address it directly. My point focused on the unbalanced way figures were presented back in October which, in my view, presented to the public another doomsday, worst-case scenario to frighten them into compliance with Government wishes. Models presenting huge potential death tolls, all of which were subsequently shown to be out by orders of magnitude.
b. False positives. On the second point, Lord Bethell’s response went into some detail, the content of which itself seemed to either miss the point, or indeed add fuel to my initial concern.
On the positive side, there were some admissions about the PCR test. For example, his response stated: “We are also aware that when PCR test detects viral material it does not indicate that the virus is intact and infectious.” So a positive test doesn’t equate to infectiousness, or even having the virus at all. That’s obvious. It’s just a pity this isn’t mentioned in any of the press briefings along with an evidence-based assessment of its impact on the figures. “Positive tests”, “infections” and “cases” are used interchangeably.
Regarding the PCR test cycle threshold (Ct), he also acknowledged that “…values obtained in this way are semi-quantitative, meaning they do not measure the precise quantity of the virus…” He focuses on the small number of samples with a cycle threshold of over 37. I would be interested in what proportion are above 27, as there is increasing evidence that test samples above this level are significantly less likely to be infectious (and have a much higher false positive risk). Indeed, some data published by the Oxford Group based on the UK’s COVID-19 Infection Survey illustrated that the vast majority of ‘positive’ PCR tests have a Ct value of >27 (Pritchard et al. Impact of vaccination on SARS-CoV-2 cases in the community: a population-based study using the UK’s COVID-19 Infection Survey). So most of the positive tests contain low levels of virus (if any) and the risk of transmission is small.
But even taking Lord Bethell’s Ct cut-off, his comments on test specificity are particularly revealing. He acknowledges that, “Like any diagnostic test, there is a possibility of a false negative or false positive result”, but goes on to say, “but this is very small”. He states that: “Independent, confirmatory testing of positive samples indicates a test specificity that exceeds 99.3%, meaning the false positive rate is less than 1%.”
My HART colleague Dr Claire Craig did some sums on this. At a false positive rate of 0.7%, there would have been 8,700 false positives and 6,200 true positives for the week beginning April 12th on PCR. In other words, 58% of the positives would have been false. If we include the Lateral Flow Tests, then 70% of the cases would have been false positive that week.
My real question is, why are the ‘case’ figures not revised downwards accordingly, or at least the impact of false positives explained at the briefings?
c. “With”, not “from”. On the third point, Lord Bethell made some valid points, though their interpretation was a little off kilter. My concern related to the definition of the figures used to define Covid-associated deaths in official figures. In my mind there were three ways these could be derived; (i) those where the cause of death was primarily COVID-19 (“from” Covid), (ii) those where the person had a SARS-CoV-2, or even COVID-19, but where this was not the cause of death (“with” Covid), and (iii) those who had a false positive test for SARS-CoV-2 (i.e., did not actually have the virus or COVID-19 when they died).
My view was that these latter two would over-estimate the figures for Covid-associated deaths and should be excluded (though I acknowledge that separating the first two from each other can sometimes be difficult in clinical practice). Lord Bethell rightly pointed out three other possible scenarios that could theoretically cause an under-estimate of the figures. Firstly, those who “had COVID-19 but had not been tested”, secondly, those who had “tested positive only via a non-NHS or PHE laboratory” so their positive result was not recorded on their death certificate, and thirdly, those who “had tested negative and subsequently caught the virus and died”. He also acknowledged that it is possible that my options (ii) and (iii) above are plausible scenarios: “It is true that people who have tested positive for COVID 19 could, in a few cases, have died from something else.” (His phrasing is interesting here – I wonder if he realises that PCR is not a test for the disease, COVID-19, but for the virus, SARS-CoV-2?) It is saddening that he feels the need to qualify the option that overestimates death with the phrase “in a few cases”, but not his three scenarios that might lead to under-counting, despite the likelihood that these have much less impact on the figures.
Have we moved on since October?
My feeling is that we have moved on in some areas. Now we have the vast majority of susceptible individuals vaccinated (one of the few success stories), a huge number of people who are resistant or immune, herd immunity, and a whole range of effective treatments (and that’s excluding the two magic pills we are promised by autumn). This should mean that we are completely back to normal – no masks, no distancing, no sanitisers – and focusing on how we can help those in other countries to get to the same place, and recovering from the damage caused by the mitigation measures.
But sadly we still don’t get anything high profile (e.g. in Government briefings) on my areas of concern. Nothing on the evidence underpinning the Government’s decisions, nothing on non-Covid harms, nothing on the impact of false positives on “cases” and Covid-associated deaths. And still, millions of people in the UK suffer needlessly. An apology would be nice.
In the first paragraph of his response, Lord Bethell states that “we are committed to open sharing of the scientific advice that guides our response to COVID-19 where possible”. I am yet to be convinced.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Dr Anthony Fryer is Professor of Clinical Biochemistry at the Institute for Science and Technology in Medicine at Keele University and member of HART and is writing in a personal capacity.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
In February, 2021, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, M.D. and a number of his colleagues warned the European Medicines Agency about the potential danger of blood clots and cerebral vein thrombosis in millions of people receiving experimental gene-based injections.
Since then, two of the four injections have been suspended or recalled in Europe and the United States for just that reason.
In this episode of Perspectives, Professor Bhakdi explains the science behind the problem, why it is not just limited to the products already suspended, and why in the long term we may be creating dangerously overactive immune systems in billions of unwitting subjects.
“You are endangered when you take the vaccine. Your family is endangered when they take the vaccine. Your children are going to be endangered (if they take the vaccine.). I am horrified that children are now being vaccinated in clinical trials. This is criminal. I hope you realize that this is criminal, that you are endangering your own children. How can you do this?” (“Perspectives on the Pandemic– “Blood Clots and Beyond”, You Tube)
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
***
The American people are not being told the truth about Covid, masks, social distancing, lockdowns, mortality or vaccines. In fact, the only thing of which we can be 100 percent certain, is that the government, the public health officials and the media have been lying relentlessly and remorselessly on virtually every topic for the better part of the last year. As far as I can see, lying has become the official state policy. Am I wrong?
For example, we are now being told that the sudden uptick in deaths in various parts the country, are the sign of a “4th Wave”. Naturally, these fatalities are being blamed on the “variant” which is the current ‘hobgoblin du jour.’ What the media and the pundits fail to mention is that the unexpected rise in cases and deaths is only taking place in areas that are engaged in mass vaccination campaigns, a fact that can be easily extrapolated from the chart below.
A comparion of the impact of lockdowns and vaccinations on COVID – a simple statitical analysis. Correlation does not equal causation. However, almost without exception, there is no discernible benefit from lockdowns but significant rise in mortality immediately post vaccination. pic.twitter.com/B2vBlAsc3Z
I don’t know why this is happening, and I certainly don’t think the drug companies have laced their injections with Covid-19. But it certainly deserves to be investigated, don’t you think? And the people deserve to know what’s going on instead of being hoodwinked with some far-fetched fiction about a respiratory infection that persists into the summer months. That’s not what’s happening at all. Here’s how talk show host and author, Steve Deace, summed it up in an article at The Epoch Times:
“The two main objectives of our health care system—informed consent and second opinions—were denied to us at COVID… If the average American knew that almost half of the deaths in America with COVID occurred in nursing homes where less than one percent of Americans live, we would have never ever gone along with this level of subjugation. These are the sorts of data points that have been kept from the American people, so they have not been given the right to informed consent.” (“Steve Deace on ‘Faucian Bargain’: Second Opinions About COVID-19 Denied to Americans” The Epoch Times)
What we need to know now, is whether the Covid vaccines are safe or not? It’s a simple question, but getting answers is like pulling teeth. As everyone knows, any information that doesn’t support the ‘pro-vaccine agenda’ is scrapped by the media and promptly removed from both FB and Twitter. How does that serve the public interest? How is “informed consent” possible without a thorough airing of contrary views in public forums and the media?
It’s not possible, and that seems to be the point. The managers of this campaign seem to prefer brainwashing and mass coercion over dialogue and debate. And their method appears to be working too. Just look at the way that pregnant women and children are being lured into vaccinations that pose significant risks to their health but provide no tangible benefit. The people in these age groups have a better chance of being struck by lightning than killed by Covid, so why take the risk? Why roll the dice on dizziness, nausea, migraines, Bell’s Palsy, myocarditis, blood clots or death, when there’s nothing to be gained? Check out this article in the UK Daily Mail titled “Pregnant women should be fast-tracked for Covid vaccines”:
“Pregnant women should be fast-tracked for Covid jabs because the disease greatly increases the risk of health problems for mums-to-be, a leading medic has said. A study led by a top Oxford expert found that the virus raises the risk of serious maternal complications by more than 50 per cent, including a fivefold risk of mothers needing intensive care.
It doubles the risk of premature birth and newborn illness and also significantly raises the chance of the mother dying, according to a study of more than 2,000 expectant women…..
Is this true? Are pregnant mothers better off getting vaccinated? Dr. Joseph Mercola doesn’t think so. Here’s what he said:
“By injecting pregnant women with novel COVID-19 mRNA gene technologies, the medical establishment has thrown away one of the most fundamental safety edicts of medicine, which is that you do not experiment on pregnant women.
None of the COVID-19 vaccines on the market are licensed. They’ve only received emergency use authorization, as basic efficacy and safety studies are still ongoing. Yet pregnant women are urged to get vaccinated, and are lining up to get the shot…
This experimentation is doubly unforgivable seeing how women of childbearing age have virtually no risk of dying from COVID-19, their fatality risk being a mere 0.01%.
…it’s important to realize that this is a time during which experimentation can be the most hazardous of all, as you’re not only dealing with potential repercussions for the mother but also for the child. Any number of things can go wrong when you introduce drugs, chemicals or foreign substances during fetal development…
On the whole, injecting pregnant women with novel gene therapy technology that can trigger systemic inflammation, cardiac effects and bleeding disorders (among other things)…”
(“Pregnant Women Should Not Get a COVID Vaccine“, Mercola.com)
While I agree with Mercola in principle, the clinical trials are ongoing so we really don’t have sufficient data to make the determination one way or the other. That’s the problem of putting a vaccine into service before long-term Phase 3 clinical trials are concluded; you’re essentially “Flying blind.” The regulatory agencies seem to be ‘okay’ with that situation, but for pregnant women, it should be a matter of gravest concern especially when you read posts like this on author, Alex Berenson’s Twitter account:
Reports of medium- and-late-term pregnancy crises after the mRNA vaccines keep arriving in VAERS. Including case 1168104-1, a 38-year-old Virginia woman who suffered an apparent case of disseminated intravascular coagulation 16 days after vaccination. She and her fetus both died. pic.twitter.com/B0A47reJqV
Reports of medium- and-late-term pregnancy crises after the mRNA vaccines keep arriving in VAERS. Including case 1168104-1, a 38-year-old Virginia woman who suffered an apparent case of disseminated intravascular coagulation 16 days after vaccination. She and her fetus both died.
Yes, the fatalities are rare, but there is a common thread, isn’t there? Once again, we’re talking about a “clotting disorder” that could be triggered by– you guessed it– the Covid vaccine. And that is the central theme of this article, the vascular problems that one might experience after getting vaccinated. The connections of course are not always clear, but we suspect that scientists will eventually connect the dots. Consider, for a minute, this disturbing piece titled: “Thousands of reports of menstrual irregularities, reproductive dysfunction following COVID vaccines”. Here’s an excerpt from the piece:
“Thousands of women around the world are reporting disrupted menstrual cycles after receiving injections of COVID-19 vaccines. 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.
In the U.K., the Yellow Card adverse event reporting system includes 2,233 reports of “reproductive and breast disorders” after reception of AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines.
The U.K. Yellow Card program reports 1,465 reactions involving reproductive systems as well as 19 “spontaneous abortions” (miscarriages), five premature labors, and two stillbirths in association with the AstraZeneca vaccine as of April 5. (Note–according to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) “462 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 132 reports of misscarriage or premature birth.”)
The reports include:
255 cases of abnormal uterine bleeding
175 cases of heavy menstrual bleeding
165 cases of vaginal hemorrhaging
55 reports of genital swelling, lesions, rashes or ulcerations
There was another article on this same topic in The Chicago Tribune just this week. Here’s an excerpt:
“Some people are reporting abnormal periods after a COVID-19 vaccine. U. of I. professor is looking for answers…. Clancy outlined her personal menstruation experience in a February tweet, after receiving her first dose of the Moderna vaccine. Hundreds of women and people who menstruate replied in the comments with their own experiences.
One Twitter user wrote, “I haven’t had a period in years and I’m about 3 weeks out of my second shot and I’m gushing blood I freaked out but now I see I’m not the only one. This is crazy.”
Another responded, “Two weeks exactly after shot number 2, my cycle started 12 days earlier and heavier than it’s been for the last three years.”
“I ended up finding a lot of people with similar experiences,” Clancy said…. “If you are a post-menopausal person who has experienced bleeding, you should really talk to your doctor,” Clancy said. “And if you have any significant or concerning symptoms alongside your changes to your menstrual cycle, you should also see a doctor.”…
Why is this happening? Why are so many women reporting “delayed menstruation”, “heavy vaginal bleeding” and miscarriages? Is there a link between the unusual menstrual bleeding and the clotting issues? Why didn’t any of these conditions show up in the clinical trials which were praised for their thoroughness? What does it all mean?
We don’t know, do we, because the Phase 3 trials are ongoing and we don’t have the results yet. But we do know that the CDC advisory board thinks these issues are trivial enough to ignore and to allow the failing vaccines to be put back into service. We know that for certain. Here’s the story:
“The CDC’s independent advisory panel Friday voted 10 – 4 to recommend the continued use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after the single-dose shot was paused over blood clotting concerns. The panel did not recommend adding any extra warning about the risk of rare blood clotting disorders.” (Children’s Health Defense)
No “extra warning” about blood clots? Really?
People died, isn’t that worth mentioning to the people who are weighing the risks-benefits of getting vaccinated?
And how rare are these blood clots? According to the media they are “rare, rare and REALLY RARE.” But, are they? According to an article in The Atlantic:
“Last Friday, (Andreas) Greinacher and his team published a paper on their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine. In a press briefing, he said they’d analyzed blood from several dozen people who had experienced blood abnormalities after exposure to the AstraZeneca vaccine, and that every single person tested positive for antibodies against platelet factor 4, and against platelet factor 4 joined with another molecule.
On the same day, a separate group in Norway published similar findings from five patients there who had received the AstraZeneca vaccine. Then, in a meeting this week of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which helps the CDC make vaccine recommendations, it was reported that five of the six American patients who developed this same blood condition after receiving the Johnson & Johnson shot had been tested for antibodies to platelet factor 4—and all were positive. “It is, in my opinion, absolutely clear that there’s a causal relationship” between the presence of these antibodies and the abnormal clotting, Greinacher had said at last Friday’s briefing. “There’s no doubt about this.” (“The Blood-Clot Problem Is Multiplying”,The Atlantic)
So, while it’s easy to dismiss the clotting deaths as “just a handful of people”, the reality is that a much larger number of people have been impacted, which means that something in the vaccine is triggering vascular problems that remain undiagnosed but could cause serious complications in the future. We don’t know for sure, because the long-term trials were never completed. So, it’s all a big crapshoot.
“So, why are they doing this?. Why are they rushing this vaccine back into service when the clotting fatalities might just be the tip of the iceberg”? Doesn’t that strike you as a bit reckless?
If I’d been vaccinated, I’d be mighty worried right now. The regulators, the government, the public health officials and the media, are all being extremely cavalier about people’s safety while–at the same time– they are vastly expanding their list of potential candidates. Did you notice that they’ve started Covid vaccine trials on children? Keep in mind, that children are at no risk of death if they contract Covid, but can experience severe adverse side effects from the vaccine. Simply put: The risks far outweigh the benefits. This is from the Daily Mail:
“‘Core planning’ documents have been leaked showing schoolchildren will be given one dose when they go back to class after the summer…A source told the Sun: ‘Plans are in place to vaccinate children aged 12 upwards, and senior government officials have been briefed...
This is utter insanity and, yet, the same scenario is unfolding in the United States. Here’s the story from the San Jose Mercury:
“Last month, Pfizer announced that its vaccine was safe and effective in adolescents as young as 12. So the vaccine is now being tested in much younger children.
Pfizer’s nationwide trial of 144 children will unfold in phases. It is testing three different doses — 10, 20 and 30 micrograms — in bundles of three different age groups: children ages 5 through 11; ages 2 to 5, and ages 6 months to 2 years. After safety and dosage studies, research will expand into more children and seek signs of efficacy.
Pfizer has already requested an amendment from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of its Emergency Use Authorization to expand the use of its vaccine to adolescents 12 to 15 years of age, about 2.5 million Californians.” (“Stanford begins testing Pfizer vaccine in babies and young children”, Mercury News)
This goes way beyond “unethical”, and medical professionals have admitted as much. Here’s what Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, M.D said on the matter:
“You are endangered when you take the vaccine. Your family is endangered when they take the vaccine. Your children are going to be endangered (if they take the vaccine.). I am horrified that children are now being vaccinated in clinical trials. This is criminal. I hope you realize that this is criminal, that you are endangering your own children. How can you do this?” (“Perspectives on the Pandemic– “Blood Clots and Beyond”, You Tube)
There’s no reason to vaccinate children for Covid-19. It is entirely unnecessary and deeply suspicious. Why are they doing this? What is their objective?
Here’s how the former Vice President of Respiratory Research for Pfizer, Mike Yeadon, summed it up. He said:
“Can you think of a benign explanation for why you would want to give an experimental-use, gene-based vaccine to tens of millions of people who will not die if they contract this virus? And, I say “no” you can’t, can you? And if you can’t think of a benign explanation then can you think of a malign explanation?”
Great question, but what’s the answer?
I don’t know, but I find it extremely unnerving.
Clearly, a great many people feel that the vaccine has given them their lives back. They can see their friends again, go out to dinner and hug their grandchildren. Unfortunately, the substance they have injected into their arms has already spread to their bloodstreams where it is trapped and gathering in the tissue surrounding the blood vessels. This is no small matter because this genetic material is “biologically active” and can potentially change the body’s immune response. This is the immune response that has preserved the species from the beginning of our collective existence on earth. These gene-based vaccines can alter that response, in fact, that was the intention. The scientists who created these vaccines did not want to simply insert live or dead virus into the body like a traditional vaccine does. They wanted to teach the cells “what to do”, thus, changing the immune system into a vaccine factory. The downside risk, of course, is that this tweaking will confuse the immune system causing it to attack vital organs in the body. That’s commonly referred to as an autoimmune disease “which is a condition in which your immune system mistakenly attacks your body. The immune system normally guards against germs like bacteria and viruses. When it senses these foreign invaders, it sends out an army of fighter cells to attack them.” Robert F Kennedy Jr. had this to say on the topic:
“What we know about coronavirus from 30 years of experience is that a coronavirus vaccine has a unique peculiarity, which is any attempt at making the vaccine has resulted in the creation of a class of antibodies that actually make vaccinated people sicker when they ultimately suffer exposure to the wild virus.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Could this happen? Could this new regime of vaccines create an immune system that is so hyper-vigilant that it wages a war against its own body?
Indeed, it could, in fact, this condition already has a name. It is called Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE) which means that your immune system has been “primed” to unleash its defensive arsenal against its own organs, blood vessels etc. We expect that ADE will become a household name in the years ahead as medical problems linked to this misguided mass vaccination campaign begin to pile up and the public outcry touches off a political firestorm. (Maybe then we’ll see some accountability, but don’t hold your breath.)
As for what happens next, well, we can’t say for sure but an “Open Letter” sent to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) by a number of doctors and scientists, points us in the right direction. Here’s part of what they said:
Dear Sirs/Mesdames,
“As physicians and scientists, we are supportive in principle of the use of new medical interventions which are appropriately developed and deployed, having obtained informed consent from the patient. This stance encompasses vaccines in the same way as therapeutics….
(but) we are concerned that there has been and there continues to be inadequate scrutiny of the possible causes of illness or death under these circumstances, and especially so in the absence of post-mortems examinations.”….
The letter then veers into the “meat and potatoes” of their complaint: Safety. Are the vaccines safe or not. Here’s what they say:
“Following intramuscular injection, it must be expected that the gene-based vaccines will reach the bloodstream and disseminate throughout the body…”
This is a critical point: The vaccine might be injected into a muscle in the arm, but it eventually gets into the bloodstream where it is “entrapped in circulation” and spread throughout the body including the brain. It is then taken up by the layer of cells (endothelial cells) that coat the blood vessels. Where the blood-flow is slower– like in the abdomen– more of the vaccine substance is taken up. This could be a very big problem in the future, but there’s no indication that the vaccine manufactures even thought about it. Here’s what happens next:
“…. during expression of the vaccines’ nucleic acids, peptides derived from the spike protein will be presented via the … pathway at the luminal surface of the cells. Many healthy individuals have …lymphocytes that recognize such peptides, which may be due to prior COVID infection, but also to cross-reactions with other types of Coronavirus…. these lymphocytes will mount an attack on the respective cells….It must be expected that endothelial damage with subsequent triggering of blood coagulation via platelet activation will ensue at countless sites throughout the body.”
So now your lymphocytes– which are the white blood cells that help to fight infectious diseases— are attacking the cells that are thought to be foreign invaders. (Sounds alot like ADE, doesn’t it?) This, in turn, leads to damage to the blood vessels and organs or the creation of blood clots which result in stroke, heart attack or other serious medical conditions. Here’s more:
“… this will lead to a drop in platelet counts, (Platelets are the smallest of our blood cells that are literally shaped like small plates) appearance of D-dimers in the blood, and to myriad ischaemic lesions ( ischaemia is a restriction in blood supply to tissues…..Ischemia is generally caused by problems with blood vessels, with resultant damage to or dysfunction of tissue) throughout the body including in the brain, spinal cord and heart. Bleeding disorders might occur in the wake of this novel type of DIC-syndrome including, amongst other possibilities, profuse bleedings and haemorrhagic stroke.”
Okay, so none of this is good, right? You don’t want blood-clots, you don’t want to have a stroke and you sure don’t want to die. So, why is this the first time you’ve read about this? This isn’t fiction and I’m sure as hell not making it up. These conditions have happened and will happen in the future as long as this gene-based gunk remains “entrapped in circulation” in a closed system wreaking “endothelial damage” (Endothelium is a single layer of squamous endothelial cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels, and lymphatic vessels)and forming blood clots. This is going to be the new reality for alot of people who took these experimental vaccines thinking they were fighting a deadly virus. Here’s more:
“The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor on platelets, which results in their activation. Thrombocytopenia has been reported in severe cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Thrombocytopenia has also been reported in vaccinated individuals. We request evidence that the potential danger of platelet activation that would also lead to disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) was excluded with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.”
What does that mean in plain English?
Well, Thrombocytopenia is a condition in which you have a low blood platelet count. Platelets (thrombocytes) are blood cells that help blood to clot. Platelets stop bleeding by clumping and forming plugs in blood vessel injuries. The term “disseminated intravascular coagulation” is the same as saying ‘widespread blood-clotting in the circulatory system’. In other words, the scientists want assurances that the vaccines were tested to prevent the kind of fatalities we’ve already seen with various vaccines that are still in service today. Here’s more:
“Should all such evidence not be available, we demand that approval for use of the gene-based vaccines be withdrawn until all the above issues have been properly addressed by the exercise of due diligence by the EMA. (The European Medicines Agency) There are serious concerns, including but not confined to those outlined above, that the approval of the COVID-19 vaccines by the EMA was premature and reckless, and that the administration of the vaccines constituted and still does constitute “human experimentation”, which was and still is in violation of the Nuremberg Code.” (“Urgent Open Letter from Doctors and Scientists to the European Medicines Agency regarding COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Concerns”,Doctors for Covid Ethics)
Keep in mind, this letter was posted weeks before the first blood clotting event took place, which means the problem could have been anticipated by anyone who understood the science. Even so, the EMA breezily ignored the letter and has done everything in its power to downplay the fatalities.
What are we to make of this? How can we trust our regulatory agencies when they cynically brush aside the legitimate concerns of respected professionals? And when have medical professionals ever put their names and reputations on the line to oppose the distribution of a vaccine?
Never. It’s never happened before, but growing numbers of professionals are stepping forward now because they think the consequences from allowing this campaign to continue unopposed, are just too horrific to ignore. 84 million Americans have now been fully inoculated. Imagine if–in two- or three-years’ time– the longer-incubating diseases emerge with a bang, that is, imagine if we’re hit with a tidal wave of vascular, heart and neuro degenerative diseases unlike anything we have ever experienced before. Imagine how that will impact our threadbare public health system leaving millions to fend for themselves.
And what if our efforts to defeat Covid have actually made matters worse? Here’s another clip from Berenson’s Twitter site:
“A reader points to a VERY worrisome finding in the @cdcgov Chicago nursing home report: patients L19, a 49-year-old staffer, and M20, a 77-year-old resident – both had very low PCR threshold counts (the nurse’s was under 17) and NO symptoms. Why does this matter?
Lower PCR counts mean a person has a heavier viral load – and is thus both more likely to be very sick and more infectious…. These two should have been extremely symptomatic. Instead, the vaccine seems to have protected them from feeling sick – but not from being thoroughly infected and potentially spreading the virus. THIS IS EVIDENCE FOR A POSSIBLE MAREK’S DISEASE OUTCOME, where vaccinated people spread the virus aggressively to the unvaccinated.” Alex Berenson
An article on PBS explains Marek’s Disease. Here’s an excerpt:
“The deadliest strains of viruses often take care of themselves — they flare up and then die out. This is because they are so good at destroying cells and causing illness that they ultimately kill their host before they have time to spread. But a chicken virus that represents one of the deadliest germs in history breaks from this conventional wisdom, thanks to an inadvertent effect from a vaccine. Chickens vaccinated against Marek’s disease rarely get sick. But the vaccine does not prevent them from spreading Marek’s to unvaccinated birds. “With the hottest strains, every unvaccinated bird dies within 10 days. …
In fact, rather than stop fowl from spreading the virus, the vaccine allows the disease to spread faster and longer than it normally would, a new study finds. The scientists now believe that this vaccine has helped this chicken virus become uniquely virulent….over the last half century, symptoms for Marek’s worsened. Paralysis was more permanent; brains more quickly turned to mush….
vaccination extended the lifespan of birds exposed to the hottest strains, with 80 percent living longer than two months. But the vaccinated chickens were transmitting the virus, shedding 10,000 times more virus than an unvaccinated bird.
“Previously, a hot strain was so nasty, it wiped itself out. Now, you keep its host alive with a vaccine, then it can transmit and spread in the world,” Read said. “So, it’s got an evolutionary future, which it didn’t have before.” (“This chicken vaccine makes its virus more dangerous”, PBS)
Are the vaccines allowing sick people –who are carrying a heavy viral load and shedding like crazy– to get on like they are not sick?
Nobody knows, just like no one seems to understand the correlation between mass vaccination and the short-term uptick in fatalities. (See Here)
On so many critical questions, we have no answers and, yet, the response of the public health czars, like Dr Fauci, seems to be that we should simply stop thinking altogether, roll up our sleeves and take the jab. But what if he’s wrong? What if we are paving the way for a disaster the likes of which were outlined by pediatric rheumatologist, Dr. J. Patrick Whelan, who said the following in a letter to the FDA:
“I am concerned about the possibility that the new vaccines aimed at creating immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein have the potential to cause microvascular injury to the brain, heart, liver and kidneys in a way that does not currently appear to be assessed in safety trials of these potential drugs….
“Before any of these vaccines are approved for widespread use in humans, it is important to assess in vaccinated subjects the effects of vaccination on the heart. As important as it is to quickly arrest the spread of the virus by immunizing the population, it would be vastly worse if hundreds of millions of people were to suffer long-lasting or even permanent damage to their brain or heart microvasculature as a result of failing to appreciate in the short-term an unintended effect of full-length spike protein-based vaccines on these other organs.” (“Scientists Challenge Health Officials on Vaccinating People Who Already Had COVID”, Global Research)
Whelan’s logic is unassailable, and he is joined by so many others all of who are saying the same thing: ‘The virus is showing signs of easing, so take your foot off the gas and let’s complete the vaccine trials before rushing ahead.’ Isn’t that the more rational approach? Here’s more:
“In his public submission, Whelan sought to alert the FDA about the potential for vaccines … spike protein to cause injuries.
Specifically, Whelan was concerned that the new mRNA vaccine technology utilized by Pfizer and Moderna has “the potential to cause microvascular injury (inflammation and small blood clots called microthrombi) to the brain, heart, liver and kidneys in ways that were not assessed in the safety trials.”(“Could Spike Protein in Moderna, Pfizer Vaccines Cause Blood Clots, Brain Inflammation and Heart Attacks?“, Global Research)
Once again, the same menacing buzzwords continue to pop up: “microvascular injury”, “blood-clots” and “spike protein-based vaccines”. Forget about the messenger RNA, that dissipates quickly. The central problem is the spike protein’s effect on the vascular and immune systems. That’s what we need to worry about.
The gene-based vaccines release a spike protein that spreads throughout the body, gets trapped in the bloodstream and collects in the layer of cells (endothelial cells) that coat the blood vessels.
Then–according to Dr. Hyung Chun, a Yale cardiologist– the cells “release inflammatory cytokines that further exacerbate the body’s inflammatory response and lead to the formation of blood clots. Chun has stated: “The ‘inflamed’ endothelium likely contributes not only to worsening outcome in COVID-19, but also is considered to be an important factor contributing to risk of heart attacks and strokes.”
This seems to suggest that the spike protein from the vaccine can have the same effect as the spike protein from the infection. Here’s more:
“Individuals with COVID-19 experience a vast number of neurological symptoms, such as headaches, ataxia, impaired consciousness, hallucinations, stroke and cerebral hemorrhage. But autopsy studies have yet to find clear evidence of destructive viral invasion into patients’ brains, pushing researchers to consider alternative explanations of how SARS-CoV-2 causes neurological symptoms….
If not viral infection, what else could be causing injury to distant organs associated with COVID-19?
The most likely culprit that has been identified is the COVID-19 spike protein released from the outer shell of the virus into circulation. Research cited below has documented that the viral spike protein is able to initiate a cascade of events that triggers damage to distant organs in COVID-19 patients.
Worryingly, several studies have found that the spike proteins alone have the capacity to cause widespread injury throughout the body, without any evidence of virus.
Can this possibly be true? In other words, if Covid-19 is a bioweapon –as some have suggested– then the instigators of the plan may have concocted a cure that is so similar to the virus itself, that no forensic investigation will ever conclusively identify the real perpetrators. This goes way beyond “plausible deniability”. In effect, the perpetrators –if there are perpetrators(?)– have wiped the fingerprints off the smoking gun before the crime has even been committed. Could anyone be that clever?
I have no idea, but it doesn’t change the task before us which is to extricate ourselves from this public health nightmare and piece-together what’s left of our fractured society. That starts with terminating the mass vaccination campaign until Phase 3 trials are completed and product safety can be assured. Better to be safe than sorry.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Worldwide, people have been misled both by their governments and the media as to the causes and devastating consequences of the Covid-19 “pandemic”.
The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext and a justification to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.
More than 7 billion people Worldwide are directly or indirectly affected by the corona crisis.
The COVID-19 public health “emergency” under WHO auspices was presented to public opinion as a means (“solution”) to containing the “killer virus”.
The video below is a recording of the March 31st, 2021 Global Research Webinar consisting of an introductory presentation by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, followed by debate and discussion.
The webinar event was attended by 100 people, including Global Research readers and authors.
More than 7 billion people Worldwide are directly or indirectly affected by the corona crisis.
What is required is the development of a broad based grassroots network which confronts both the architects of this crisis as well as the national and regional governments (States, provinces) involved in carrying out the lockdown and closure of economic activity as a means to combating “V the Virus”. The legitimacy of politicians and their powerful corporate sponsors must be questioned, including the police state measures adopted to enforce the various policies. (Face masks, social distancing, public gatherings, etc. )
This network would be established (nationally and internationally) at all levels of society, in towns and villages, work places, parishes. Trade unions, farmers organizations, professional associations, business associations, student unions, veterans associations, church groups would be called upon to integrate this movement.
The first task would be to disable the fear campaign and media disinformation as well put an end to Big Pharma’s Covid vaccination programme.
The corporate media would be directly challenged, without specifically targeting mainstream journalists, many of whom have been instructed to abide by the official narrative. This endeavour would require a parallel process at the grassroots level, of sensitizing and educating fellow citizens on the nature of virus, the PCR test, the vaccine, the impacts of the lockdown, the face mask, social distancing.
“Spreading the word” through social media and independent online media outlets will be undertaken bearing in mind that Google as well as Facebook are instruments of censorship.
The creation of such a movement, which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of the financial elites as well as the structures of political authority at the national level, is no easy task. It will require a degree of solidarity, unity and commitment unparalleled in World history.
It will also require breaking down political and ideological barriers within society (i.e. between political parties) and acting with a single voice. We must also understand that the “corona project” is an integral part of the U.S. imperial agenda. It has geopolitical and strategic implications. It will also require eventually unseating the architects of this diabolical “pandemic” and indicting them for crimes against humanity.
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).
***
For a mask to work, it needs to filter out particles.
This requires that the pore size of the mask be smaller than the particles it is filtering. It also requires a tight fit: no leaks. If there is a bit of a charge on the mask that repels particles, as intended with new N95 masks, all the better.
See the particle size comparison in the diagram below:
Coronavirus: 0.1μm (the speck on the far left)
Pore size of N95: 0.1 -0.3 μm (0.1-0.3 microns)
Pore size of standard surgical mask: 0.3-10 μm
As you can see from the picture, aerosolized coronaviruses can easily squeeze through the pores in a surgical mask, which may have a diameter 100 times larger than a single virus.
But the bigger issue is the leaks–the masks don’t fit snugly. It is almost impossible to both get a tight fit and be comfortable in a properly worn mask for more than a few minutes.
So instead we are wearing leaky masks that stop spit but don’t stop aerosolized viruses. What was told to the public early in the pandemic (and buried later) is that all the mask really does is stop you spitting at other people. It does not help the wearer much. Taking it on and off is a big contamination risk.
Remember the anthrax letters. Spores escaped through several layers of paper because the pores in the paper and envelopes were more than ten times larger than the diameter of the spores. The pores in the paper were as big as that boulder on the right, the same size as the pores in surgical masks. And coronaviruses are only one tenth as large as anthrax spores. Uh oh.
Wearing a mask outdoors is a joke.
Wearing a mask indoors–well, if you want to be serious about masking, get yourself some N95 masks, get fit-tested, and use a new one each time you put it on. That is a good strategy. The rest is mostly wishful thinking.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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).
***
It’s called the ID2020 Agenda, which, according to Peter Koenig constitutes “an electronic ID program that uses generalized vaccination as a platform for digital identity”.
“The program harnesses existing birth registration and vaccination operations to provide newborns with a portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity”.
The founding Partners of ID2020 are Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) among others.
ID2020 is part of a “World Governance” project which, if applied, would roll out the contours of what some analysts have described as a Global Police State.
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
The ‘sunk cost fallacy’ is a well known one. World War 1 is the classic example. By Christmas 1914 it was obvious to all that the war was a catastrophe, but to admit this was to admit that all the lives lost had been lost pointlessly. And no country would confess that.
However, after a year of pain, suffering and enormous loss, the UK must reach for new solutions to the COVID-19 problem and any future respiratory disease outbreaks. We must learn from errors, acknowledge the harms of the measures we have taken and account for them moving forward. We now need a more holistic, measured approach.
Many international studies bear out that lockdowns have proven to be a complete failure as a public health measure to contain a respiratory virus. They did not succeed in their primary objective of containing spread yet have caused great harm.
Lockdowns were explicitly not recommended even for severe respiratory viral outbreaks in all pandemic planning prior to 2020, including those endorsed by the WHO and the Department of Health. The reasons for ignoring existing policies and adopting unprecedented measures appear to have been (i) panic whipped up by the media (especially scenes from China), (ii) a reluctance to do things differently to neighbouring countries and (iii) the unfaltering belief in one single mathematical model, which latterly turned out to be wildly inaccurate (Imperial College, Neil Ferguson).
We must find the courage to do things differently and to admit mistakes. The USA is leading the charge here, with more and more states turning their backs on lockdowns and mask mandates.
Moving forward, we would recommend the following steps:
Reinstate the existing pandemic planning policies from 2019, pending a detailed review of the policies adopted in 2020. Look to countries and states which did things differently. There should be a clear commitment from the Government that we will never again lockdown.
Stop mass testing healthy people. Return to the principles of respiratory disease diagnosis (the requirement of symptoms) that were well researched and accepted before 2020. Manufacturers’ guidelines state that these tests are designed to assist the diagnosis of symptomatic patients, not to ‘find’ disease in otherwise healthy people.
Stop all mask mandates. They are psychologically and potentially physically harmful whilst being clinically unproven to stop disease spread in the community and may themselves be a transmission risk.
Vaccination. Abandon the notion that vaccine certification is desirable and that children should be vaccinated. There is no logical or ethical argument for either.
Devise a public education programme to help redress the severe distortions in beliefs around disease transmission, likelihood of dying and possible treatment options. A messaging style based on a calm presentation of facts is urgently needed.
A full public enquiry into the extent to which severe/fatal COVID-19 is spread in hospitals and care homes. There is stark recent evidence on this from Public Health Scotland and if true for the rest of the UK, there needs to be better segregation of COVID-19 patients and staff within these settings.
More funding and investigation of treatments for COVID-19, instead of only focusing on vaccination as a strategy. Given the high rates of hospital transmission, encourage a drive for more early treatment-at-home using some of the protocols discussed herein.
Divert funds. The not inconsiderable money saved from ceasing testing programmes can be diverted to much needed areas, such as mental health, treatment research and an increase in hospital capacity and staffing. The vast debts accrued during 2020 will also need to be paid off, a fact that seems to be worryingly absent from economic recovery plans.
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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).
***
First, let’s get this straight. The term “hesitancy” would apply to your pasty-faced nephew, who plays video games 19 hours a day, who’s dragged to the beach one summer afternoon, and is reluctant to stick his toe in the water as he stands near the last little gasp of foam breaking on the sand.
Most of the people who aren’t taking the COVID vaccine aren’t hesitant at all. They’re determined to reject the shot.
Most of the people who don’t want the COVID vaccine are quite sure they want to forego genetic damage, blood clots, and death.
So…who are the “hesitant” ones the vaccine hustlers are going after?
According to an old desiccated man who could play a mortician in an Abbott and Costello movie without a minute of rehearsal, and who happens to be the director of the largest medical research facility in the world—the US National Institutes of Health—Dr. Francis Collins.
According to Collins, the prime target of pro-vaccine propaganda is the dastardly evangelical/Trumper crowd.
Last week, Collins spoke with NBC’s Chuck (aging-wonder-boy) Todd, who made his original journalistic bones deftly pointing a wand at maps of voting districts on Election Night.
Collins intoned, in the manner of a funeral home director expressing condolences to customers over the accident that took the life of their beloved family member, who was driving while drunk and steered his car over a cliff:
“Particularly white evangelicals seem to be resistant to the idea that vaccines are something they want to take advantage of.”
“…certainly Republican men in particular seem to less likely to be interested in the vaccine.”
But wait. NIH head Collins—playing politics—forgot to mention that, according to a recent Harris poll, a whopping 42% of black Americans don’t want the vaccine.
Oops.
Well, no doubt “systemic racism” must be the reason black people are failing to see how glorious the vaccine is. They’re being kept in ignorance by white people.
Actually, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. A COVID Collaborative poll discovered black Americans have shockingly low levels of trust in the FDA (29%) and drug companies (19%). I’d say those numbers reveal acute intelligence, not ignorance, on medical issues.
Any group that distrusts the FDA at the rate of 71% is medically on the ball.
On the other hand, white Americans are the victims of systemic “safe and effective” lying by The New York Times, CNN, NBC, etc.
White Republicans are also being lied to by Donald Trump, Mr. Warp Speed, who is pushing the COVID vaccine like a lifeboat on the Titanic.
Trump is fronting for the COVID shot with a fervor matched only by Biden and Fauci and Bill Gates.
In an April 16 mass email to his followers (no doubt written by an aide), Trump, a major propaganda whore for Pharma, states:
Vaccine resistance is “deranged pseudo-science.”
“The federal pause on the J&J shot makes no sense. Why is the Biden White House letting insanely risk-averse bureaucrats run the show?”
It’s “sheer lunacy” for Biden “to delay millions of vaccinations and feed fears among the vax-resistant.”
“Indeed, this moronic move is a gift to the anti-vax movement.”
I spoke with a born-again Christian the other day. I asked him whether God had told him not to take the vaccine. He laughed. He said, “God told me to trust my research.”
“When did He say that?”
“I like to think it was just before I wrote to Trump telling him to wake up.”
We’re seeing hustlers on all points of the political spectrum pushing the COVID vaccine—the gene therapy that was designed, in clinical trials, to prevent nothing more than a cough, or chills and fever.
The gene therapy that has never been launched on the public before. The genetic injection that has only gained FDA certification for emergency use—a far lower and looser classification than full approval.
These criminal vaccine promoters deploy outrage and sob stories—whatever they think will play well—as they target various demographics.
Thousands of serious adverse effects from the shot are being reported. You can multiply those figures by 10 or 100 to gain a truer estimate of what is happening; and there are NO data on long-term effects.
You bet your ass people are “hesitant.” Medical authorities are telling them to accept an genetic injection that causes their cells to manufacture a protein they would never make under ordinary conditions.
Speaking of gene therapy, Dr. Francis Collins, the head of NIH, made his career on the back of discovering “genes associated with various diseases.”
In all the years of NIH’s existence, with a total budget in the hundreds of billions of dollars, show me ONE genetic cure for ANY disease across the board.
Just one.
I’m waiting.
It turns out that the history of genetics reveals the following: they can ALTER humans with it, but they can’t CURE humans.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
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).
***
An instrument of unusual significance is quietly on its way to becoming law in Europe: the proposal for a ‘Digital Green Certificate’ (DGC). Up for a vote in the European Parliament’s plenary on Wednesday, it erects a “universal framework” for the control of disease within the Schengen area.
The EU Commission has presented it as a return to freedom of movement, essentially suspended by member states since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic.
However the DGC, which creates certificates for Europeans showing the bearer has been vaccinated, tested or achieved immunity, is already beginning to lose its sheen.
Last week, the WHO asked that any plans for making proof of vaccination a condition of entry be abandoned, after the US ruled out enforcing vaccination cards on its territory.
So is it wise for Europe to continue with its own?
Freedom of movement is perhaps the European Union’s most cherished achievement, certainly among northerners seeking a visa-free sun holiday. In my home of Northern Ireland, with our ever-fragile cross-border peace agreement, we have a special appreciation for the importance of keeping borders open.
The recent EU threat to impose a ‘vaccine border’ between Northern Ireland and the Republic imperilled that peace. The EU can’t afford another blunder on borders, so it’s in its own interest that the DGC does what it says on the tin.
Lack of legal certainty
However a cursory glance at the contents suggests a case of mislabeling or at least a lack of legal certainty.
The commission assures us that the DGC will not restore (or entrench) border controls. But “universal framework” can only be read as a euphemism for checks within the Schengen zone. It is article 3 of the DGC that creates certificates of vaccination, testing and immunity.
Border guards will have to inspect these.
As it’s put in Article 3(1), there will be “cross-border verification”, performed by the member state “authorities” mentioned in Article 9(2). In the absence of such checks, the certificates would be useless and the “universal framework” would not exist.
With vaccinated European travellers separated from non-vaccinated, infected from non-infected, and immune from non-immune—the DGC, if applied, would be a guarantee of discrimination within the EU.
This is simply not permissable under the Schengen Code. Chapter II of the Schengen Borders Code allows for the temporary reintroduction of internal borders in some circumstances, but that does not include a public health emergency.
The whole endeavour is even more absurd if one acknowledges the scientific certainty that being vaccinated does not mean that one cannot be a carrier of the virus, nor infect others.
‘Vaccinated’ can still be infectious
We already know from the European Medicines Agency and WHO, confirmed by a decision this month of the Conseil d’État (France’s Supreme Court), that no proof exists of vaccination halting the spread of Covid-19.
Meanwhile, in the last months many courts including the Lisbon Court of Appeal and Administrative Court of Vienna have held that PCR testing is unreliable and cannot be relied on for determining infection; a physician must perform a proper medical diagnosis. Thus the DGC certificates are useless as proof of whether you are infected, or can or cannot spread the virus.
Meanwhile the proposed regulation will cost Europe dearly.
There are the financial implications of a universal border control regime which involves the constant handling of that most sensitive of data types: medical records. There is the loss of ideals intrinsic to European democracy. But more pertinantly for me, there is the situation in Northern Ireland.
The explanatory memorandum calls freedom of movement one of the EU’s “most cherished achievements” and a “driver of its economy”.
It is also a driver of peace in my home. The Northern Irish remain citizens of Europe without the Union, and will not accept being checked upon entry into what about a million of them consider their home: the neighbouring member state of Ireland. The prospect of violence is terrible.
Despite these risks and contrary to the recently introduced Better Regulation Rules, the DGC controls are being rushed through with nary a cost–benefit analysis, impact assessment or public consultation—and with limited parliamentary debate.
Why? Well, in the words of the head of the commission’s Covid taskforce, Thierry Breton, when speaking to RTL in March, so that Europeans can once again “enter a public place” and “live without being a risk to each other.”
Could Breton really mean to suggest that there ever was, or ever can be, life without risk? Has the Parisian gentleman, when crossing his home city by car for example, ever encountered the 4-lane 12-exit roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe?
Are these divisions of the population even temporary? The EU, never mind the member states, will have no say on when they end.
According to Article 15, the WHO will decide when the DGC controls are suspended. “Suspension” itself suggests controls that may return. Indeed, the commission grants itself power to reapply the DGC if the WHO declares another pandemic, which on 4 May 2009 it redefined as a spread of “cases”, rather than “deaths”.
With the prospect of rolling non-lethal pandemics, and border checks based primarily on vaccination status, the assertion in the explanatory memorandum that the proposal “cannot be interpreted as establishing an obligation or right to be vaccinated” seems disingenuous.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Ciarán McCollum is a Belfast-based Northern Irish barrister, advising on European law.
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).
***
Hope is for fools: a new study claims that people are having problems reintegrating into normal life due to compulsive anxiety over the virus. This is what ridiculous campaigns designed to make people overly fearful result in.
.
A small study claiming that “residual anxiety” over coronavirus may lead people to encounter difficulties reintegrating into society, even after the decline of the virus, has been widely reported this week. The authors, who surveyed 300 individuals in the UK, claim that people are increasingly experiencing what they call “Covid anxiety syndrome,” characterised by “compulsively” checking symptoms, avoiding public spaces, and obsessive cleaning, even as cases are declining in the UK.
Yet this ‘syndrome’ is a peculiar one, as it appears difficult to distinguish between these ‘symptoms’ and those behaviours and attributes that have been expressly promoted as desirable responses to the pandemic. Perhaps dimly aware of this possibility, the study’s authors offer a feeble attempt to distinguish between activities promoted by public health campaigners and those that are “maladaptive.” Anxiety about Covid is a problem, the authors claim, when people act in “overly safe ways.”
However, from the point of view of public health promotion, no amount of risk aversion is too great. Indeed, a level of fear so great that people cannot leave their houses was seen as a desirable outcome of public health policy during the pandemic. Even the pathologization of people continuing to act fearfully in spite of a decline in cases is difficult to sustain. Beliefs that things were getting better and that the virus was ‘under control’ have been widely pointed to as causing its resurgence around the world. Hope is for fools. Those who know, know we should never stop fearing.
Extreme though it is, this is not an entirely new development. For decades, we have seen the decline of explicitly moral exhortations to change behaviours in favour of encouraging and spreading fears about associated health risks. Thus, for example, we are no longer told to avoid alcohol because it is a vice, but rather because it is a risk to our health.
Indeed, a state of constant awareness of potential threats to one’s health, no matter how small, is positively encouraged as a desirable attribute of the modern citizen. It is no surprise then that many people would answer a survey indicating heightened anxiety and fear about coronavirus related phenomena. We are constantly told that this is how the good, responsible citizen should react.
Yet even a heightened level of fear for one’s personal safety is not enough for policymakers. Increasingly, this shift from moral to harm-based behavioural controls has slipped into harms to others. So, claims-makers move from “don’t drink because it harms your health” to “don’t drink because it harms your children’s mental health.” During the pandemic, we saw this emphasis on other directed harms in warnings to young people not to go out, lest they “kill granny.”
Doubtless, each one of us has at some point passed on a virus to another person who was ill as a result. But we lived with this as a normal part of life, partially buffered by our ignorance of this fact. Now, we are encouraged to become hyper aware of how even the act of breathing can be a murderous act, as a series of government ads showing the deadly effects of apparently everyday activities were designed to show.
Thus, risk aversion acquires a moral edge. The good, moral person is the one who shows the most awareness of risk. Indeed, even prior to coronavirus, whole celebrity-backed campaigns have grown up around simply ‘raising awareness’ of new and exotic risks. Risk awareness itself becomes a form of moral goodness.
None of this is encapsulated by making sense of fears about coronavirus through the trend of finding, naming and – potentially lucratively – treating new ‘syndromes’ and anxieties. Indeed, doing so only feeds into these broader trends. Naming new syndromes encourages people to be on the lookout for ever more symptoms. Watch out for a suspicious cough on the one hand, and ‘excessive’ anxiety about that cough on the other. In the end, citizens can’t win. But risk entrepreneurs win in droves.
We can’t find our way out of the never-ending sense of health in crisis by dreaming up new ways to be ill. Instead, we need to refuse to see ourselves as forever patients in waiting.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Ashley Frawley, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at Swansea University and the author of Semiotics of Happiness: Rhetorical Beginnings of a Public Problem. Follow her on Twitter @Ashleyafrawley
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
The existence of widespread poverty in the world’s mightiest military powers raises the question of what could have been done to alleviate or eliminate it, if during 2020 they had not poured nearly $1.1 trillion into preparations for war.
Last year was a terrible time for vast numbers of people around the globe, who experienced not only a terrible disease pandemic, accompanied by widespread sickness and death, but severe economic hardship.
Even so, the disasters of 2020 were not shocking enough to jolt the world’s most powerful nations out of their traditional preoccupation with enhancing their armed might, for once again they raised their military spending to new heights.
During 2020, world military expenditures increased to $1,981,000,000,000—or nearly $2 trillion—with the outlays of the three leading military powers playing a major part in the growth. The U.S. government increased its military spending from $732 billion in 2019 to $778 billion in 2020, thus retaining its top spot among the biggest funders of war preparations. Meanwhile, the Chinese government hiked its military spending to $252 billion, while the Russian government raised its military outlay to $61.7 billion.
As a result, the U.S. government remained by far the most lavish spender on the military in the world, accounting for 39 percent of the global total. Even so, the Chinese government continued its steady role in the worldwide military buildup, with its military disbursements rising for the 26th consecutive year. Indeed, China’s 76 percent increase in military spending between 2011 and 2020 was the largest among the world’s top 15 big spenders. When added together, the 2020 military expenditures of the United States, China, and Russia accounted for 55 percent of the global total.
This upward spiral in military spending coincided with a sharp rise in the number of the world’s people living in poverty, which soared by an estimated 131 million to 803 million by the end of the year.
In the United States, the richest nation in the world, 2020 produced the largest increase in poverty since the U.S. government began tracking it in 1960. By the end of the year, an estimated 50 million people were struggling with hunger, including 17 million children. Plunged into severe privation, vast numbers of Americans lined up, sometimes in caravans that stretched for miles, to obtain free food at private and public food pantries and other distribution centers. Ignoring the terrible human costs of the economic crisis plaguing the nation during his re-election campaign, President Donald Trump boasted instead of his administration’s “colossal” increase in military spending.
In Russia, where real incomes fell for five of the previous seven years, they dropped still further in 2020. In that year, the average Russian had 11 percent less to spend than in 2013. Indeed, during the first nine months of 2020, as poverty grew, an estimated 19.6 million Russians reportedly lived below the poverty line, equivalent to 13.3 percent of the population. According to a leading economist at Russia’s Institute of International Finance, the authorities “were so concerned about their external threats that they completely forgot about the domestic population.”
The situation was apparently quite different in China. Thanks to the government’s successful efforts to limit the spread of Covid-19, the Chinese economy had an easier time of it in 2020 than did the economies of other major nations. This factor, plus four decades of rapid economic growth and an ongoing campaign to improve the government’s popularity by reducing the country’s worst poverty, led to the Communist Party’s announcement that November that President Xi Jinping and the party had accomplished the miracle of eliminating severe poverty in China.
But all was not as it seemed. In 2020, China, despite its Communist pretensions, had one of the largest gaps between rich and poor throughout the world. By October, its number of billionaires had soared to 878, the highest total in any nation. In contrast, as a New York Times article reported that month, “millions of people on low incomes are working fewer hours at lower pay, depleting savings, and taking out loans to survive.” Moreover, claims as to the eradication of poverty in China were dubious, for the official poverty measuring line there was much lower than in nations with a similar level of economic development. A Brookings Institution economist pointed out that, if China used the same standard as other upper middle-income countries, between 80 and 90 percent of its population would be considered poor. “Even if you aren’t out of poverty, the country will say you’re out of poverty,” remarked a bitter Chinese farmer. “That’s the way it is.”
The existence of widespread poverty in the world’s mightiest military powers raises the question of what could have been done to alleviate or eliminate it if, during 2020, had they not poured nearly $1.1 trillion into preparations for war.
Also, of course, the vast resources used for the military buildup could have bankrolled other programs that would have substantially improved the lives of their citizens. In the United States, as the National Priorities Project noted, the military budget could have funded healthcare for 208 million adults, or 21 million scholarships for university students, or 84 million public housing units, or the employment of 9.2 million elementary school teachers, or 10 million clean energy jobs, or VA medical care for 72 million military veterans.
But, sadly, building the mightiest military forces in world history had greater appeal to the governments of the United States, China, and Russia. Perhaps, someday, people will ask whether increasing preparations for war by these nations—mostly designed to destroy one another—was the best these governments could do as their populations sank into widespread disease, death, and poverty.
From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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).
***
Vaccines can in some cases trigger more serious illness when exposed to an unrelated virus, via a process known as virus interference
Virus interference was found to be at play during the 2009 pandemic swine flu. The seasonal flu vaccine increased people’s risk of getting sick with pandemic H1N1 swine flu and resulted in more serious bouts of illness
Researchers have also found military servicemen vaccinated against influenza were more prone to unspecified coronavirus infection than unvaccinated counterparts
An October 2020 data analysis found a positive association between COVID-19 deaths and influenza vaccination rates in elderly people worldwide. Areas with the highest vaccination rates also had the highest COVID-19 death rates
Possible explanations include reduced immunity to SARS-CoV-2 by some unknown biological mechanism, and viral interference causing reduced nonspecific immunity
A question that has lingered since the 2009 mass vaccination campaign against pandemic H1N1 swine flu is whether seasonal influenza vaccination might make pandemic infections worse or more prevalent.1
Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Michael Murray, naturopath and author, confirmed what Judy Mikovits, Ph.D., told me in her second interview with me, namely that seasonal influenza vaccinations may have contributed to the dramatically elevated COVID-19 mortality seen in Italy. In a blog post, he pointed out that Italy had introduced a new, more potent type of flu vaccine, called VIQCC, in September 2019:2
“Most available influenza vaccines are produced in embryonated chicken eggs. VIQCC, however, is produced from cultured animal cells rather than eggs and has more of a ‘boost’ to the immune system as a result.
VIQCC also contains four types of viruses — 2 type A viruses (H1N1 and H3N2) and 2 type B viruses.3 It looks like this ‘super’ vaccine impacted the immune system in such a way to increase coronavirus infection through virus interference …”
Vaccines and Virus Interference
The kind of virus interference Murray was referring to had been shown to be at play during the 2009 pandemic swine flu. A 2010 review4,5 in PLOS Medicine, led by Dr. Danuta Skowronski, a Canadian influenza expert with the Centre for Disease Control in British Columbia, found the seasonal flu vaccine increased people’s risk of getting sick with pandemic H1N1 swine flu and resulted in more serious bouts of illness.
People who received the trivalent influenza vaccine during the 2008-2009 flu season were between 1.4 and 2.5 times more likely to get infected with pandemic H1N1 in the spring and summer of 2009 than those who did not get the seasonal flu vaccine.
To double-check the findings, Skowronski and other researchers conducted a follow-up study on ferrets. Their findings were presented at the 2012 Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. At the time, Skowronski commented on her team’s findings, telling MedPage Today:6
“There may be a direct vaccine effect in which the seasonal vaccine induced some cross-reactive antibodies that recognized pandemic H1N1 virus, but those antibodies were at low levels and were not effective at neutralizing the virus. Instead of killing the new virus it actually may facilitate its entry into the cells.”
In all, five observational studies conducted across several Canadian provinces found identical results. These findings also confirmed preliminary data from Canada and Hong Kong. As Australian infectious disease expert professor Peter Collignon told ABC News:7
“Some interesting data has become available which suggests that if you get immunized with the seasonal vaccine, you get less broad protection than if you get a natural infection …
We may be perversely setting ourselves up that if something really new and nasty comes along, that people who have been vaccinated may in fact be more susceptible compared to getting this natural infection.”
A study8,9 published in the January 10, 2020, issue of the journal Vaccine also found people were more likely to get some form of coronavirus infection if they had been vaccinated against influenza. As noted in this study, titled “Influenza Vaccination and Respiratory Virus Interference Among Department of Defense Personnel During the 2017-2018 Influenza Season:”
“Receiving influenza vaccination may increase the risk of other respiratory viruses, a phenomenon known as virus interference … This study aimed to investigate virus interference by comparing respiratory virus status among Department of Defense personnel based on their influenza vaccination status.”
While seasonal influenza vaccination did not raise the risk of all respiratory infections, it was in fact “significantly associated with unspecified coronavirus” (meaning it did not specifically mention SARS-CoV-2, which was still unknown at the time this study was conducted) and human metapneumovirus (hMPV10).
Remember, SARS-CoV-2 is one of seven different coronaviruses known to cause respiratory illness in humans.11 Four of them — 229E, NL63, OC43 and HKU1 — cause symptoms associated with the common cold.
OC43 and HKU112 are also known to cause bronchitis, acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia in all age groups.13 The other three human coronaviruses — which are capable of causing more serious respiratory illness — are SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2.
Service members who had received a seasonal flu shot during the 2017-2018 flu season were 36% more likely to contract coronavirus infection and 51% more likely to contract hMPV infection than unvaccinated individuals.14,15
Influenza Vaccination Linked to Higher COVID Death Rates
October 1, 2020, professor Christian Wehenkel, an academic editor for PeerJ, published a data analysis16 in that same journal, in which he reports finding a “positive association between COVID-19 deaths and influenza vaccination rates in elderly people worldwide.”
In other words, areas with the highest vaccination rates among elderly people also had the highest COVID-19 death rates. To be fair, the publisher’s note points out that correlation does not necessary equal causation:
“What does that mean? By way of example, in some cities increased ice cream sales correlate with increased murder rates. But that doesn’t mean that if more ice creams are sold, then murder rates will increase. There is some other factor at play — the weather temperature.
Similarly, this article should not be taken to suggest that receiving the influenza vaccination results in an increased risk of death for an individual with COVID-19 as there may be many confounding factors at play (including, for example, socioeconomic factors).”
That said, one of the reasons for the analysis was to double-check whether the data would support reports claiming that seasonal influenza vaccination was negatively correlated with COVID-19 mortality — including one that found regions in Italy with higher vaccination rates among elders had lower COVID-19 death rates.17 “A negative association was expected,” Wehenkel writes in PeerJ. But that’s not what he found:
“Contrary to expectations, the present worldwide analysis and European sub-analysis do not support the previously reported negative association between COVID-19 deaths (DPMI) [COVID-19 deaths per million inhabitants] and IVR [influenza vaccination rate] in elderly people, observed in studies in Brazil and Italy,” the author noted.18
“To determine the association between COVID-19 deaths and influenza vaccination, available data sets from countries with more than 0.5 million inhabitants were analyzed (in total 39 countries).
To accurately estimate the influence of IVR on COVID-19 deaths and mitigate effects of confounding variables, a sophisticated ranking of the importance of different variables was performed, including as predictor variables IVR and some potentially important geographical and socioeconomic variables as well as variables related to non-pharmaceutical intervention.
The associations were measured by non-parametric Spearman rank correlation coefficients and random forest functions.
The results showed a positive association between COVID-19 deaths and IVR of people ≥65 years-old. There is a significant increase in COVID-19 deaths from eastern to western regions in the world. Further exploration is needed to explain these findings, and additional work on this line of research may lead to prevention of deaths associated with COVID-19.”
What Might Account for Vaccination-Mortality Link?
In the discussion section of the paper, Wehenkel points out that previous explanations for how flu vaccination might reduce COVID-19 deaths are not supported by the data he collected.
For example, he cites research attributing the beneficial effect of flu vaccination to improved prevention of influenza and SARS-CoV-2 coinfections, and another that suggested the flu vaccine might improve SARS-CoV-2 clearance.
These arguments “cannot explain the positive, direct or indirect relationship between influenza vaccination rates and both COVID-19 deaths per million inhabitants and case fatality ratio found in this study, which was confirmed by an unbiased ranking variable importance using Random Forest models,” Wehenkel says.19 (Random Forest refers to a preferred classification algorithm used in data science to model predictions.20) Instead, he offers the following hypotheses:21
“The influenza vaccine may increase influenza immunity at the expense of reduced immunity to SARS-CoV-2 by some unknown biological mechanism, as suggested by Cowling et al. (2012)22 for non-influenza respiratory virus.
Alternatively, weaker temporary, non-specific immunity after influenza viral infection could cause this positive association due to stimulation of the innate immune response during and for a short time after infection.23,24
People who had received the influenza vaccination would have been protected against influenza but not against other viral infections, due to reduced non-specific immunity in the following weeks,25 probably caused by virus interference.26,27,28
Although existing human vaccine adjuvants have a high level of safety, specific adjuvants in influenza vaccines should also be tested for adverse reactions, such as additionally increased inflammation indicators29 in COVID-19 patients with already strongly increased inflammation.”30
The Flu Vaccine Paradox
Since Wehenkel’s analysis focuses on the flu vaccine’s impact on COVID-19 mortality among the elderly, it can be useful to take a look at information presented at a World Health Organization workshop in 2012. On page 6 of the workshop presentation31 in question, the presenter discusses “a paradox from trends studies” showing that “influenza-related mortality increased in U.S. elderly while vaccine coverage rose from 15% to 65%.”
On page 7, he further notes that while a decline in mortality of 35% would be expected with that increase in vaccine uptake, assuming the vaccine is 60% to 70% effective, the mortality rate has risen instead, although not exactly in tandem with vaccination coverage.
On page 10, another paradox is noted. While observational studies claim the flu vaccine reduces winter mortality risk from any cause by 50% among the elderly, and vaccine coverage among the elderly rose from 15% to 65%, no mortality decline has been seen among the elderly during winter months.32,33
Seeing how the elderly are the most likely to die due to influenza, and the flu accounts for 5% to 10% of all winter deaths, a “50% mortality savings [is] just not possible,” the presenter states. He then goes on to highlight studies showing evidence of bias in studies that estimate influenza vaccine effectiveness in the elderly. When that bias is adjusted for, vaccine effectiveness among seniors is discouraging.
Interestingly, the document points out that immunologists have long known that vaccine effectiveness in the elderly would be low, thanks to senescent immune response, i.e., the natural decline in immune function that occurs with age. This is why influenza “remains a significant problem in elderly despite widespread influenza vaccination programs,” the presenter notes.
Report All COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects
My belief is that current COVID-19 “vaccines,” which use mRNA gene therapy technology, are likely to do more harm than good in most people. There are many reports of elderly in nursing homes dying within hours or days of getting the vaccine. This is likely due to an overwhelming inflammatory response.
If you’re elderly and frail, or have a family member who is elderly and thinking of getting the vaccine, I would urge you to take a deeper dive into the available research, and to review the side effect statistics before making your decision.
Last but not least, if you or someone you love have received a COVID-19 vaccine and are experiencing side effects, be sure to report it:34
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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).
***
Considering the level of tension between the nuclear powers, the topic deserves far more attention that it receives.In the US it is a difficult topic to address.The President of Russia can call for better relations with the US without being demonized by the Russian media as an American agent, but when President Trump called for better relations with Russia, the US presstitutes denounced Trump as a Russian agent and launched the Russiagate hoax.Knowledgable American commentators who supported Trump’s call for better relations were labeled “Russian agents/dupes.”
The Russian Free Press (svpressa) interviewed me on the Topic of Avoiding Conflict Between the Russian Federation and the United States.
My concern is that Washington’s hegemonic attitude prevents US acceptance of Russian sovereignty and that Putin’s low-key responses to insults and provocations result in his warnings not being taken sufficiently seriously and encourages more insults and provocations. Washington could go too far and provoke a major confrontation that Putin cannot overlook.
The dangerous ingredient that could produce a conflict is Washington’s hegemonic arrogance.Conflict seems certain if Washington cannot escape from its unilateral attitude.The uni-polar era is over.Washington must accept this fact if war is to be avoided.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. 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).
***
Today 04.27.2021, Human Rights Watch published a report on the crimes of apartheid committed against Palestinians.
Probably no area of the world has changed as much as Arab lands of the Levant—Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Jordan. From the late 80s through the 90s, I was a correspondent there, documenting the tumultuous, insecure lives of their citizens.
Given the transformations since– the lost struggles, and the ongoing pursuit of justice–I am reprinting some of my articles for you. The first is my 1994 report on Palestinian prisoners; it reminds us of the vicissitudes of an ongoing struggle with thousands languishing in jail, lost land and homes, daily indignities. (The above image, by CSM artist, accompanied my article.)
*
Keeping Palestinian Prisoners in View. Originally published Feb 2, 1994 in The Christian Science Monitor.
By Barbara Nimri Aziz
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have yet to hear the news that most concerns them: the release of all their sons and brothers from Israeli prisons. When the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the accord with Israeli in September, virtually every Palestinian family expected that freeing political prisoners would be among the first steps Israel would take to show its goodwill. It would be easy to implement and an important symbolic move, they thought.
“The release of prisoners should have been a precondition to the signing,” says a West Bank man, a prisoner himself for five years. “After all,” notes another ex-prisoner, “most of us were arrested because we were suspected members of a PLO party; now Israel’s recognition of the PLO makes our detention invalid.”
This feeling runs deep. Arrests are so widespread under Israeli occupation that prison experience links the entire Palestinian population with a sense of common suffering and sacrifice. Almost every man over the age of 17 has been arrested and detained; hardly a household lacks an ex-prisoner in it. Many families have several members with prison experience. Thousands have been imprisoned more than once; and almost all detainees experience torture.
Thus, the current demand for amnesty is not simply about the 11,500 men and women still held. Palestinians say an amnesty would vindicate those hundreds of thousands arrested, interrogated, and tortured since 1967 and before that as well. One PLO source estimates that 200,000 Palestinians have direct prison experience. By the Israeli police’s own accounting, as of last October a total of 105,725 have been held since the intifada began in 1987.
In October 1993, after PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the accord, a mere 560 out of 13,000 political prisoners were released. The accord received international press attention but did not satisfy the Palestinian population which knew that most of those freed were within weeks of a scheduled release anyway; moreover the 560 (not 640 as announced by Israel) did not include special cases of old, sick and female prisoners. Palestinians felt further insulted when they saw PLO had merely negotiated release of member of Fatah, the PLO party that Mr. Arafat heads.
Arafat’s apparent inability to overcome personal and party biases and the PLO’s weak negotiating power confronts Palestinians with unhappy realities as the Declaration for Principles is put to the test of implementation.
The issue of political prisoners has long been a major concern to Palestinians because those arrested represent their relentless struggle for statehood. Prisoners are heroes to their families; and prison experience is central to the resistance movement. Many who felt they were unjustly held pr who suffered extreme hardship in prison became more committed to political resistance; some joined radical Islamic parties.
The heroism of the prisoners among Palestinians us heightened by the inhumane conditions in which the prisoners are held captive and the perceived false justice under which they are tried. Stories of detainees’ endurance circulate through the population. Families of members of Hamas and other parties who might have thrown their weight behind the PLO leadership are increasingly disinclined to support it. One funds that hose young rebels taking up arms against both Israel and their Palestinian partners are the brothers, sons and close friends of the unjustly imprisoned.
Prisoners’ rights groups inside Israel and among Palestinians are working tirelessly, although with little success, for the release of those unjustly arrested and for improved prison conditions. Reports by international human rights organizations repeatedly criticize the Israeli military for excessive use of force in interrogation and for subhuman conditions in the 21 prisons and detention centers where Palestinians are held. Israel has consistently flouted this censure and defied international conventions regarding prisoners’ rights.
The ineffectiveness of outside pressure groups led to a prison-wide hunger strike in 1992 by more than 14,000 Palestinians then held in Israeli jails and camps. Under immense pressure, Israeli authorities agreed to some of the demands and international attention waned.
But today, 17 months later, almost none of the terms agreed to have been met; moreover, rights activists report, conditions of Palestinian prisoners are worse than ever.
Ahmad Sayyad, director of the political prisoner’s rights group Mandela Institute, based in the West Bank town of Ramallah, notes the lack of progress with dismay. Especially troubling are health conditions of prisoners. He reports that several deaths in detention occurred in recent months; and men who received bullet wounds and injuries before arrest are regularly held without medical attention.
Mr. Sayyed worried that with international attention now focused on political talks, prisoners have less protection than before. “Outside concern for prisoners has fallen off since the accord; so have funds supporting human rights work inside the territories,” he says.
This situation has deeper political repercussions, fueling disillusionment about the peace process.
Palestinians note that members of the United States Congress speak out on behalf of missing Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and of Israel’s call for amnesty for 300 of their collaborators, while they see more delays regarding the Palestinian prisoners who, they charge, are now being held as political hostages.
If those political prisoners’ rights cannot be won in the early stages, what, Palestinians ask, are our chances for autonomy and democracy as the negotiations proceed?
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Barbara Nimri Aziz.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
The United States and its NATO allies have weaponised the issue of human rights; using it to attack their geopolitical opponents particularly Russia and China. Sadly, the mainstream media in the West fails to point out the glaring hypocrisy of this weaponisation of human rights.
In Mid February, the Biden regime indicated that it was carrying out an ‘inter agency’ review with a view to closing Guantánamo Bay by the end of the president’s term of office. Sounds eerily familiar. Barack Obama within days of taking office also promised to close the infamous prison which stills holds 40 people in detention.
The overwhelming majority of media outlets in the West carrying news of Biden’s promise fail their readers. They fail to remind their readers that the journalist, who exposed the violations of human rights committed by the US at Guantánamo Bay, is locked up in a British supermax prison.
Gitmo Files
Ten years ago WikiLeaks began its release of the infamous Gitmo files (Guantánamo Bay) for which Julian Assange faces a 40 year prison sentence if extradited to the United States.
The Gitmo files expose the systematic and routine violations of the Geneva Convention and the abuse and torture of nearly 800 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. They reveal that the United States government knowingly imprisoned 150 innocent men and boys without charge. These prisoners ranged from an 89 year old Afghan man with dementia to a 14 year old boy who had been kidnapped.
The Standard Operating Procedure manual of Camp Delta was revealed by WikiLeaks. It shows how the American military routinely engaged in practices that contravened the Geneva Conventions. These human rights violations included the routine use of both physical and psychological torture on prisoners. One particularly notorious technique employed by the American military was the torture technique that involved waterboarding i.e. the simulated drowning of prisoners in an attempt to obtain a confession.
Investigative Journalist Andy Worthington used the Gitmo Files to expose the repeated lies of the United States government that it was not detaining children at Guantánamo Bay. Worthington’s investigations revealed at least 22 children were held at Guantánamo Bay in direct contravention of international law. The Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict notes that, “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict,” and not to punish them by imprisoning them alongside adult prisoners.
“It remains disgraceful that so many juveniles were held at Guantánamo — and that three former child prisoners are still held — but it is just as disgusting that, under President Obama, one of these former child prisoners was obliged to accept that, in modern-day America, lawmakers and the executive branch, without a murmur of dissent from the judiciary, have arranged for opponents of the US military in wartime to be criminalized, their actions regarded incorrectly as war crimes, and their very existence declared illegal.’’
Julian Assange a victim of Psychological Torture
Here we are 10 years later and the man who helped expose these crimes now resides in a British supermax prison full of convicted murders and armed robbers.
Julian Assange is kept in solitary confinement amidst incredibly restrictive and harsh conditions. He has been denied visits from his family for over six months now. During this last winter he has been denied the warm clothing sent by his family and left to shiver in a cold prison cell against the background of a deadly global pandemic.
Julian Assange is suffering from a variety of physical and mental health conditions yet he is expected to prepare his defence against extradition to the United Sates from his prison cell. This outrageous state of affairs has led Professor Nils Meltzer, who is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, to call for the British government to release Julian Assange’s from prison.
On 17 April Prof Meltzer spoke at the International Symposium of Parliamentarians in the case of Julian Assange. Special rapporteur Meltzer visited Julian in Belmarsh prison in May 2019 accompanied by two experts in physical and psychological torture. They each examined the WikiLeaks editor separately. The evidence gathered from these separate assessments led Professor Melzer to state unequivocally that Julian Assange was a victim of psychological torture at the hands of four states working in tandem.
During his briefing Nils Melzer addressed parliamentarians from 40 countries and gave a damning indictment of how the US, UK, Sweden and Ecuador had come together to persecute a journalist for exposing evidence of war crimes.
“What is being done here is a prosecution that is not pursuing law and justice but is pursuing political purposes. And therefore it is a persecution it is not a prosecution. All of this hinges on the good faith of the prosecuting states and here I am talking not only about the United States, I’m also speaking of the United Kingdom. I’m speaking of Sweden. I’m speaking of Ecuador. In all of those four states in every single proceeding that happened against Julian Assange or involving his procedural rights, I can assert that as an international lawyer his procedural rights have been systematically violated in each stage of each proceeding in each jurisdiction.’’
Meltzer also told parliamentarians how he had written to all four states declaring that he had identified serious violations of human rights law in the case of Julian Assange. He further added that he had asked for those states to cooperate with his investigation. Melzer pointed out that all four states refused to engage in any kind of constructive dialogue with him.
The Future
It is possible that in May the High Court in London will begin to hear the appeal of the Biden regime against the January court decision not to extradite Julian Assange to the US.
Now more than ever it is vitally important that ordinary people across the world take actions to support a journalist who is threatened with 175 years in prison for exposing war crimes, torture and corruption.
The Labour Party leadership must end its shameful silence over this case and demand that the UK government comply with its obligations under international human rights law and release Assange from prison.
You can make a donation to the legal defence of Julian Assange by clicking on the link here.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
The following is the third in a series of interviews with a nurse who works in a hospital on the outskirts of Toronto, Ontario. She has provided sufficient evidence, and links to public records, to satisfy me that she is indeed a registered nurse working for over a decade in multiple Canadian hospitals, serving both in the emergency room and intensive care unit. To protect her identity, position and family, details about her and her place of work have been changed or omitted, without altering her message. In this interview, we focus on her frontline perspective of the current situation in her hospital during a supposed third wave of COVID-19 and related variants.
JOHN: How would you describe the current situation in the hospitals that you work in?
NURSE ANDREA: It seems like there might be an actual surge of COVID patients. Not a catastrophe, and we’ll be fine, but urban hospitals are seeing more of a “wave” of acute respiratory illness now compared to any time in the last year. This puts pressure on the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and creates a spillover effect of sick people into the other inpatient acute care units.
JOHN: So after a year of working far below capacity, we are finally seeing hospitals starting to get busy again?
NURSE ANDREA: The first wave was barely a ripple last spring. The second wave during fall and winter put some pressure on the ICUs, akin to typical flu season. The recent third wave has resulted in some ICUs getting maxed out with ventilated patients. Some non-ventilated patients who might typically require ICU are being managed on regular hospital wards.
JOHN: Do you think people are sick with the so-called “variants?”
NURSE ANDREA: They say it’s the mutant strains. Certain areas are seeing a wave of endemic illness and it fits with the pandemic narrative we’ve been talking about all year. My hospital has received some intubated patients from the hotspots in Toronto.
JOHN: Is it normal for you to see intubated patients being transferred to your hospital?
NURSE ANDREA: It is not typical to have critically ill, ventilated patients transferred to my hospital from higher-level centres. But it’s not unheard of. I’m not sure why it’s happening now — other than there is some truth to the official narrative that a novel viral infection is sweeping through populations, like in Toronto and Peel, where it’s most likely to be transmitted in settings like industrial warehouses and more densely packed urban and suburban dwellings.
JOHN: Are you seeing more younger patients with flu-like symptoms?
NURSE ANDREA: Anecdotally, my experience does correspond with the claims that younger people are presenting with respiratory trouble. Typically ethnic minority, late middle-aged men in their 50s and 60s. Usually, a whole family has gotten sick but the father is hit the worst. My observation is consistent with the macro data across the world as shared by the CDC.
JOHN: Why do you think people are suddenly getting sicker?
NURSE ANDREA: I ask these patients how they believe the virus entered their house to infect everyone, and most claim to have no idea. They claim they’ve been doing everything they were told to do by the health authorities, like masking and social distancing.
Anecdotally, a lot of descendants from Africa (blacks) and South Asians (from Pakistan and India) are getting very sick. This possibly relates to their special vulnerability to vitamin D deficiency living in northern climates and high rates of underlying disease like diabetes and high blood pressure.
My theory is these people have been made extra vulnerable because of the depression and forced sedentarism of lockdown. The forced humid microbial traps on their faces we call masks likely don’t help either.
JOHN: Is this surge all serious respiratory cases?
NURSE ANDREA: Not at all. For months, emergency was vastly underutilized but now I notice people come to the hospital for minor complaints. So this is adding pressure to the hospital system. In some cases, it seems like people are bored and looking for something to do, so they come to the hospital for a pulled muscle or stubbed toe. In many cases, their family doctor or nurse practitioner is only seeing people over a computer screen so they are forced into a crowded emergency room to get actual healthcare.
I’m not sure why so many family doctors are not seeing patients in real life and forcing their patients to go to the emergency room for minor complaints they would typically deal with in their office. I know this sounds harsh and judgemental, but I think it’s a combination of laziness, cowardice, and obsequious deference to public health authority telling them to deliver healthcare over a screen or telephone.
JOHN: How, exactly would you describe the ICU situation at the moment?
NURSE ANDREA: Busy. Lots of staffing demands. But ICU capacity is a lot more flexible than we think.
There are hard limits to capacity, such as the number of beds, ventilators, and trained staff. However, frontline clinicians are highly adaptable to crises, and not every clinician treats the same situation in the same way. Consider the decision to intubate a patient. Some doctors like to intubate early, while others will essentially wait until the patient is crashing. The doctor who delays intubation may discover that the patient didn’t need intubating after all. So in some cases, resource limitation might be a good thing.
JOHN: How would you explain such radically different approaches to the use of a life-threatening procedure?
NURSE ANDREA: One of the drivers of early intubation can be the anxiety level of the staff. But one thing we’ve learned with COVID is that many patients survive without being intubated. I’ve seen many patients that would have been guaranteed a bed in ICU —based on the same clinical parameters used in the past — nowadays do fine with a little patience from the staff and rapid deployment of other therapies that work.
As an aside, I think one of the reasons some patients deteriorate in hospital and require ICU is due to the lack of family support.
JOHN: How many of these ICU patients have genuine severe respiratory disorder?
NURSE ANDREA: In emergency, I am seeing people present with rapid breathing and low oxygen saturation. These symptoms correspond with X-rays showing diffuse inflammatory change in the lungs. The proverbial “ground glass” picture you’ve probably heard about in the media.
JOHN: So there is definitely a rise in cases of patients with COVID symptoms?
NURSE ANDREA: Yes, there’s definitely more pressure on the acute care hospital system. I haven’t seen this for the whole year. It’s interesting how this is happening now.
JOHN: Of course, according to a January 22, 2020 CBC News article, hospital gridlock — with beds in hallways and conference rooms — had become a routine reality in many of Ontario’s hospitals long before COVID-19.
NURSE ANDREA: Yes, we’ve had a year to meaningfully change the system so we wouldn’t have to resort to lockdown. But it’s like we’ve learned nothing. It’s an outrage, in my opinion. It’s almost like lockdown is the desired outcome, as fixing the so-called hospital capacity problem would make lockdown unnecessary. That’s assuming lockdowns work toward the purported end of mitigating viral illness, which they don’t, hence we are seeing this surge despite living in one of the most heavily locked down jurisdictions in the world.
JOHN: Do you think that these symptoms are being caused by a virus?
NURSE ANDREA: I have no other explanation for what’s causing these symptoms other than a virus. Granted, since the onset of COVID, I’ve become more open to alternative explanations about the nature of what we call “viral illness” because so much about what’s going on does not add up.
JOHN: What’s not adding up?
NURSE ANDREA: For example, I’ve spent the majority of my adult life immersed in illness in hospitals, presumably surrounded by viral pathogens. How is it possible then that I hardly ever get sick? In the last year I’ve been exposed to tons of people with a virus that is supposedly so transmissible we need to shut down society, but I have not gotten sick. Even under conditions where COVID is most highly transmissible, such as with aerosol-generating procedures like intubation and high-flow oxygen therapies, myself and all my colleagues doing the same are still standing, unscathed. PPE can’t be the only explanation because we know the virus passes right through and around it.
I spoke to one nurse who told me she secretly and deliberately goes into the rooms of highly infectious COVID patients, removes her mask and takes deep breaths in an attempt to develop her own immunity, and has never shown any symptoms. Personally, I wear the least PPE possible.
Up until this last year, I never wore a mask in the presence of patients with viral-induced acute respiratory illness; but I never acquired illness at a rate higher than people who are not exposed to viruses in the same way.
JOHN: Why do you think the big city hospitals are seeing an increase in patients, while rural communities are not?
NURSE ANDREA: It makes sense if you follow the logic of viral spread being greater among greater concentrations of people. You have more ethnic minorities and people at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder whom we know are more affected by COVID, as we discussed earlier.
JOHN: Would you say that all of the patients currently in ICU actually require ICU?
NURSE ANDREA: Currently, I would say yes, for the most part. But in normal times, ICU routinely has non-ICU patients. Sometimes this is due to a lack of beds to discharge the patients, too. Other times, this is because the ICU doctor doesn’t get paid as much if there are no patients in the ICU. There has always been structural incentives to keep the ICU near capacity.
For years, most hospitals run at 90-110% capacity. Look at the peak in the 2018 flu season. Look at January 2020. Way higher than anything during COVID, where the hospital has been sitting at 60-80% capacity throughout the last year.
JOHN: Can you talk more about how limited ICU capacity is in an Ontario hospital?
NURSE ANDREA: I think it’s important to emphasize that, at baseline, critical care capacity is always on the cusp of overwhelm. In my first interview, I mentioned how a ten-bed ICU could have nine patients, hence being at 90% capacity. Discharging two patients would bring it down to 70% capacity. Conversely, a marginal shift in demand of three patients could send an ICU from 70% capacity, essentially underwhelmed, to being completely overwhelmed in a matter of minutes.
Under normal circumstances, all it would take is two simultaneous code-blue events in a hospital, or a multiple casualty accident near the hospital to cause overwhelm.
Imagine a house near the hospital where multiple people overdose at the same time on opioids or alcohol, all needing to be rushed to the hospital for critical care services. All these scenarios, and more, represent a risk for hospital overwhelm. If they do happen, frontline clinicians rapidly adjust and adapt to accommodate these situations.
JOHN: Why is critical care capacity as low as it is considering the chronic risk of overwhelm?
NURSE ANDREA: The reason is that it is extremely expensive to maintain critical care capacity. The government deliberately limits the number of critical care beds as de facto rationing. The more you make critical care available, the more it gets used. While the supply of critically ill patients creates demand for critical care services, the supply of critical care services can also create the demand for critical care services. A healthcare administrator once told me that when it comes to hospitals, “if you build it, they will come.”
Ask any ICU nurse and they will tell you: the difference between an overwhelmed ICU and one that is under control can be determined by the particular doctor working that week. Some doctors will inherit a bunch of empty beds from the previous doctor and rapidly start filling up the ICU with non-ICU patients while the nurses scratch their heads saying, “Does this patient need to be in ICU? What if there’s a code blue and we need this bed for that patient?”
Nursing organizations are also to blame for their rent-seeking behaviour. The Ontario Nurse’s Association (our union) has lobbied hard to limit nurse-to-patient ratios in Ontario ICUs to among the lowest in North America. They argue it’s for patient safety, but it’s also a means of artificially limiting critical care labour capacity to leverage for more union-dues paying RNs[,] when there’s no reason an unlicensed caregiver can’t provide delegated help. The union and Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO) has lobbied to prohibit unregulated support workers from helping in the ICU.
JOHN: Are you seeing any correlation between the increase in hospitalization and adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine?
NURSE ANDREA: Yesterday, a patient came in by ambulance who lost consciousness five minutes after receiving the COVID-19 vaccination. The bloodwork showed a very low white blood cell count. I was working with that same doctor referenced in my last interview. The doc dismissed any relationship between the low blood count and the vax. He said: “Bah, it’s just incidental!”
JOHN: I would understand if it was five days later, claiming the vaccination was “incidental” — but to lose consciousness after only five minutes? How could a doctor exercise such cognitive dissonance?
NURSE ANDREA: Like I said in a previous interview, clinicians are biased toward the efficacy of our interventions. I would go further to say we are even blinded by lust over the supremacy and efficacy of our interventions.
The whole idea of forced vaccination, vaccine passports, and all this stuff is not new or unique. It’s deeply embedded in the medical tradition. In many ways, I think the institution of medicine as such, right down to the way many doctors practice, is fundamentally at war with the concept of individual autonomy.
JOHN: Thank you very much for providing this frontline perspective of the situation in the “epicentre” of Ontario’s supposed corona mutant variant pandemic.
NURSE ANDREA: I sincerely thank you again for giving me this platform to share my thoughts and perspective. The truth will win out in the end.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, naturopaths and chiropractors. Since March 2020, he has been writing articles that question and expose the contradictions in the COVID-19 narrative and control measures. He is also completing a novel, Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story. You can visit his website at MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca.
All images in this article are from Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
The reconstruction of a railway line from Belgrade to the border of North Macedonia, with the support of the EU, will assist in Serbia’s transformation into the Balkan’s main transportation and energy hub. Coupled with the anticipated Chinese-funded canal network from Thessaloniki to the Danube River close to Belgrade, Serbia is positioning itself as an indispensable part of the Belt and Road Initiative’s penetration into the Balkans and Central Europe, radically changing the geopolitics of the region.
With the expectation that the railway link will eventually extend beyond North Macedonia to reach Greece’s northern port city of Thessaloniki (considered the maritime gateway to the Balkans), the revitalization of a railway line would see Serbia become a true transportation (and energy) hub as it is the closest, fastest and natural route to the heart of Europe.
Immediately after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s conversation with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić on Monday, she wrote on her Twitter account, among other things, that they talked about a railway connection between Belgrade and North Macedonia – which the EU is ready to support. Thus, she removed doubts about one of the largest infrastructure projects that will change Serbia.
With the reconstruction of railway between Belgrade and the North Macedonian border, Serbia will inevitably become a transportation hub because the route from Thessaloniki to the heart of Europe will be shortened by 300 kilometres compared to the already existing railway lines. Although there is no specific information yet, it can be expected that the construction will not just be a revitalization of the existing disused railway line, but a new high-speed link akin to what is already being constructed on the Belgrade-Budapest stretch. It would then likely extend through North Macedonia to reach Thessaloniki.
After talks with EU officials, Vučić expressed his expectation that an agreement will be signed with officials from Brussels soon, according to which the EU grant will amount to €600-700 million, i.e. between 35-50% of the value of the railway investment. According to Vučić, Serbia will be transformed into a different country with the high-speed railway link, dubbed Corridor 10, because it will create new opportunities thanks to better transportation connections for those who travel to/from Munich, Vienna, Sofia, Istanbul, Skopje and Thessaloniki.
Railways are an ideal type of transportation when you need to move large quantities of goods and appears to be the most feasible option. It would also be of particular interest to the Chinese who are already exploring new methods to shorten transportation time from the Mediterranean to Central Europe.
China is considering an ambitious, but feasible, $17+ billion project that would connect the Danube River, Europe’s second longest river after the Volga, with Greece’s Aegean coastline via a new canal that would also utilize the Morava and Vardar/Axios river systems. Not only is Belgrade located on the Danube, but also the capitals of Austria (Vienna), Hungary (Budapest) and Slovakia (Bratislava), along with other major regional centers. Although Chinese cargo chips already reach the Danube via the Black Sea entrance in Romania or Rotterdam in the North Sea, a canal linking northern Greece to the Danube close to Belgrade will reduce shipping time to Central Europe by about three and a half days, thus saving China billions of dollars in shipping.
The canal project, along with a new railway link following the same vertical axis from northern Greece to Belgrade, would radically change transportation options in the wider region. Although Greece, North Macedonia and Serbia will greatly benefit from these two transportation projects, the biggest losers will be Turkey and Romania who in the coming years will no longer have millions of tons of cargo destined for Central Europe passing through the Dardanelle and Bosporus Straits and the Danube Delta. China’s drive to have as many transportation networks and options as possible ultimately benefits a region that has been mostly forgotten about in terms of development.
In this way, even if a railway connection between Thessaloniki and the Danube is constructed with EU funds, China benefits as it can access a new route to reduce transportation time to European markets by days. Although Turkey constitutes a major part of the Belt and Road Initiative’s land route, it does have determined plans to become a maritime power too. However, the eventual construction of a railway link and canal from Thessaloniki will be a major blow to this ambition as Turkey will be completely bypassed. Essentially, Turkey will remain a land-based power as it has traditionally and always been, while Greece, which already has the world’s largest commercial fleet measured in tonnage, will have more Asian cargo reaching its ports.
What is also for certain is that Serbia is consolidating itself as an indispensable part of Balkan developments and infrastructure projects. Although Kosovo remains volatile and unresolved, Serbia none-the-less will experience in the near future greater prosperity as it becomes more integrated into Balkan and European economic and transportation networks that link into China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
April 28th, 2021 by Alliance for Human Research Protection
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
The pandemic has exposed underlying, inhumane, Eugenics-driven public health policies. The shocking evidence is that those public health policies were implemented in the most developed, economically wealthy countries. Those with the highest standard of living denied medical treatment for elderly nursing home residents, essentially condemning them to death.[1]
Half of all European COVID-19-related deaths have occurred among residents in nursing homes: A report by the London School of Economics found that in Italy, France, Ireland, Spain and Belgium between 42 percent and 57 percent of deaths from the virus have taken place in nursing homes.[2] In Italy, people call it the “silent massacre.”[3]
In the UK, more than 20,000 residents of care homes died from Covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic. The decision to discharge thousands of hospital patients into care homes in the spring, in order to free up hospital beds and protect the National Health Service, was likely to blame. Some MPs accused the Government of throwing care homes ‘to the wolves’.[4]
In the US, 2.1 million people live in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. They constitute 0.6% of the population. Yet, more than 174,000 elderly residents and staff in nursing home facilities died as of March 2021.[5] Their deaths represent 34% of Covid-19 deaths. A report by the American Association of Retired People (AARP) found that many of those deaths could have been prevented.[6] Multiple factors contributed: the legal, financial, and bureaucratic structure of government-funded, nursing homes. Medicare pays for short-term rehabilitation, but not long-term care. The federal funding restriction makes nursing homes the only option for most people who are in need of long-term care.
Since 70% of nursing homes are for-profit, they are clearly profitable.
Understaffed and under equipped nursing homes were completely unprepared. In response to public furor about the mounting deaths, the federal government sent over $21 billion in federal relief funds, to nursing homes, according to CMS. But only $2.5 billion was specifically allotted for infection control.
More than $18.5 billion in taxpayer money was dispensed to nursing home owners – with no no strings, no accountability.
The Italians called it the “silent massacre”. Politico reported 34 Italian families joined forces and filed a lawsuit against a nursing home for attempted murder and mishandling the epidemic, after 150 residents were hospitalized and 66 died.[7]
A woman in Milan describes her mother’s final days:
“In the days before, they told us that they gave her oxygen, but then a person who worked inside the facility sent my sister a video of our mom in bed. In the video she didn’t have oxygen, she was without blankets, and her arms were blue…”
Five US governors – all of who are Democrats –issued executive orders that essentially condemned the elderly in nursing homes to death — some have called it the nursing home slaughter.
They are: Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Gretchen Whitman of Michigan, Cavin Newsom of California and Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania.[8]
Gov. Cuomo was the first to issue an Executive Order on March 25th in which he directed hospitals not treat elderly patients. He directed them to send infected and not-infected elderly patients to nursing homes, which were prohibited from refusing to accept Covid-infected elderly people. The crisis prompted President Trump to send the Navy’s “floating lifesaver” hospital ship, Norfolk, which was equipped with 80 ICU beds, 12 operating rooms, a blood bank, a medical laboratory, a pharmacy, an optometry lab and a CT scanner. It had a 1,000 bed capacity.[9] The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was directed to stablish a second large emergency hospital at the Javits Center. It also had a 1,000 bed capacity.[10]
Javits Center Emergency hospital
Both emergency hospitals: the Norfolk and Javits Center remained 90% empty — even after nursing home managers and eldercare center administrators pleaded with Gov. Cuomo to allow them to send coronavirus-infected patients to these emergency hospitals rather than admit them to facilities filled with elderly patients far more susceptible to contracting the disease.
An investigative report by ProPublica (June 2020) documented damning evidence that Governor Cuomo understood the threat Covid-19 posed for nursing home residents, which he described it as “Fire Through Dry Grass”.[11] Cuomo issued an executive order directing hospitals to transfer elderly patients into nursing homes that he knew were ill prepared to treat or to contain the spread of infection. ProPublica reported that he issued the order AFTER indemnifying hospitals and nursing homes from all liability, his largest campaign contributors. NYS Department of Health underreported the number of nursing home casualties.
Janice Dean, a Fox News meteorologist, whose parents-in-law died after being infected with the virus in a New York nursing home, wrote an essay for foxnews.com, stating:
“We lost them both to COVID last spring as the virus ravaged their long-term care facilities who put infected patients into the places where our most vulnerable resided.”
Andrew Cuomo’s callous disregard for the intrinsic value of human life encapsulates the essence of Eugenics.
More than 15,000 elderly New Yorkers died in nursing homes, constituting close to half of all Covid deaths in NYS.
The other NY Covid scandal involves hazardous, overcrowded conditions and sub-standard care at hospitals that serve racial and ethnic minorities. Case in point: Elmhurst Hospital
Dr. Ben McVane, Elmhurst’s emergency medicine specialist described the desperate living conditions of the people living in Elmhurst and Corona, in an OpEd in the New York Times:
“The people living around Elmhurst Hospital are … dependent on a public hospital system that is already overstretched and underfunded. I’m a doctor at the epicenter of the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.”
Elmhurst Hospital
Erin Olszewski, a nurse and Army veteran, described the chaos at Elmhurst in her book, as Worse Than A War Zone. She described how Covid positive patients were intermingled with undiagnosed patients; thereby spreading the infection within the hospital. At the same time, the emergency hospitals that had been set up on the battleship Comfort, and the Javits Center to treat Covid-infected patients – including nursing home residents remained relatively empty.[13]
Olszewski raised one of the most serious issues that the media has failed to investigate: Why was Hydroxychloroquine, an effective anti-malarial drug was banned from use against Covid-19?
“in New York, the doctors were not able to prescribe hydroxychloroquine. And, the main treatment in New York City in Elmhurst Hospital was to essentially put these patients on a vent[ilator]. And, For example, I’m from Florida. My hospital was successfully treating patients with the hydroxychloroquine and the zinc with a completely different number of deaths.”
In late March, Dr. Colleen Smith, an emergency doctor at Elmhurst, sounded the alarm in a video which exposed the conditions in the hospital. The facility was running low on personal protective equipment (PPE) for its staff, and running low on nurses, on doctors, on ventilators, and even on medication. Two nurses at the hospital, Elizabeth, critical care nurse, and Leyla described the extremely stressful conditions and exposure of both medical workers and patients to infection because of the lack of basic safeguards. Elizabeth talked about the stress:
“It’s very depressing, you take care of these patients all day long, and the next day you come in and they’re gone…The exposure of the medical workers to infection is also heightened by the lack of negative pressure rooms. “I’m sure a lot more of us are positive because we don’t have negative pressure rooms. You need negative pressure rooms for COVID-19 patients because this is an airborne disease. Negative pressure rooms make it a lot less likely that you get infected.”
Leyla described the fear:
“Once you enter the hospital, everything changes. It feels like a dangerous, frightening movie.
It’s fear, once we’re in the hospital we feel scared. So many of the nurses have kids, the kids are small and are looking for answers. They have the same look. And the cleaning people too, in everyone’s faces you can see fear. No one wants to work, but we feel that we have to.
Not that many people call out sick, and that’s the thing that I like. Everyone has that feeling that they’re needed. I spoke to PCA [Personal Care] nurses, they’re nurses that clean the patients, and they told me that yes they feel scared, and that they could die, but when they come to work at least they get the joy of knowing that they’re helping someone.”[12]
Cuomo’s response to the virus outbreak in early March was to request 30,000 ventilators. The use of those ventilators resulted in increasing, rather than decreasing the number of deaths. Olszewski raises the question:
“How would he know [in early March] that we would need 30,000 vents beats me. All I know is that was at the patients’ expense.”
Olszewski has called for a federal investigation alleging fraud, negligence, and greed as having led to preventable deaths at Elmhurst Hospital.[14]
An investigation by Letitia James, New York State Attorney General, confirmed the ProPublica report. The Jan 28th AG report conclusion was devastating.
Cuomo and his administration had lied and concealed 50% of the actual number of human beings that he so callously condemned to death.[15]
As of Jan. 19th at least 12,743 long-term care residents died of the virus — far greater than the official tally of 8,505 on that day. Melissa DeRosa, Gov. Cuomo’s top aide privately apologized to Democratic lawmakers for withholding the state’s nursing home death toll from COVID-19. She said “we froze” out of fear that the true numbers would “be used against us” by federal prosecutors.[17]
When his unconscionable actions were exposed, Cuomo invoked “toxic political environment… the void was created…was filled with skepticism, cynicism, and conspiracy theories which furthered confusion.”
The New York Timesrecently exposed Cuomo’s behind the scenes maneuvers to pitch a self-promoting book– while his senior staff was busy concealing the number of nursing home deaths by altering the number in a NYS Health Department Covid report.
Furthermore, the Times reports that Cuomo didn’t actually write the book for which he is reported to have negotiated a $4 million contract. The Times reports that Cuomo relied “on a cadre of trusted aides and junior staffers for everything from full-scale edits to minor clerical work [on the book], potentially running afoul of state laws prohibiting use of public resources for personal gain.” [18]
Throughout the pandemic, as the death toll rose as a result of his Executive Order, Andrew Cuomo disseminated propaganda in his daily televised performances, which were presented as Coronavirus “briefings”. His performance netted him the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which represents the global broadcasting industry, bestowed its annual International Emmy award on Cuomo “in recognition for his leadership and masterful use of TV to inform people around the world.”.
The Academy leadership and the global broadcasting industry demonstrated total disregard for the thousands of people that Andrew Cuomo’s Executive Order condemned to death.[19] The Academy bestowed an award that purportedly “recognizes an individual who crosses cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity.”
The Academy President and CEO, Bruce L. Paisner, a Harvard College alumnus, and former President of Hearst Communications, is a member of the power elite, including the Council on Foreign Relations. Like Cuomo, Paisner and the Academy displayed utter lack of moral values. Their award signifies an endorsement of the eugenics-precept that declares some human beings’ lives to be expendable…. As the Nazis put it, “lives unworthy of life”.
A follow-up report by ProPublica, dated Feb 12th, states:
“After months of requests from state lawmakers, subpoenas from Congress and a lawsuit by the Empire Center, the Cuomo administration in recent weeks had finally begun to concede that thousands more nursing home residents had died of COVID-19 than previously made public.” However, Cuomo is Still Underreporting the Total Count of Covid Nursing Home Deaths.
Bill Hammond, an analyst with the Empire Center, said that to date, recent state disclosures of all deaths of nursing home residents, whether they perished in their facilities or at local hospitals:
“failed to include more than 650 deaths of people presumed to have died of COVID-19 For instance, Hammond said the state has still not released the dates and facility names of close to 1,000 COVID-19 deaths involving residents of adult care facilities other than nursing homes. The numbers of those residents known to have died of COVID-19 jumped from 219 to close to 1,800 when the state released its data on hospital deaths.”
Members of Cuomo’s task force include NYS Health Commissioner Howard Zucker and Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa. The New York Post reported that DeRosa admitted, in an online meeting with NYS legislators and administration officials, that the governor’s team withheld data related to the number of COVID-19-related deaths at nursing homes out of concern it could be “used against us” in a federal probe.
“Basically, we froze, because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice or what we give to you guys, what we start saying was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.”
According to the U.S. Long-Term Care COVID Tracker, less than 1% of America’s population lives in long-term care facilities, but as of Feb 11th this tiny fraction of the country accounts for 36% of US COVID-19 deaths. According to AARP Nursing Home COVID-19 Dashboard, more than 174,000 residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities died.
“Facts About Covid-19”, an overview by Swiss Policy Research (February 2021) documents the death toll for elderly people in long-term care facilities in North America, Western Europe, Israel and Australia. The facts are based on data analyses by the Wall Street Journal and Johns Hopkins University.[21]
The extraordinary high mortality rate, for the elderly people in nursing homes, is the result of public health policies – not nature!
In Canada, 72% of Covid-19 deaths are the elderly in nursing homes, in Spain, 59% of Covid deaths are in nursing homes; in Belgium 57%; in the Netherlands 49%; in Sweden 47%; and in Australia, of the 908 Covid-19 deaths, 75% were nursing home residents.[22]
Colorado Nursing home residents protest “Rather die from Covid than loneliness”
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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).
***
There is war within Big Pharma.
Amply documented: all mRNA covid “vaccines” (including Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneka and J and J) have resulted in deaths and injuries.
From today’s WaPo:“Of Americans not yet vaccinated, fewer than 1 in 4 people said they would be willing to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found. Confidence in the other two vaccines remained high.”
Emergent Solutions, which has been beaten and bloodied by the Washington Post and NY Times over the past few weeks, and continues to fail FDA inspections, is the ONLY source of Johnson and Johnson Covid vaccine produced in the US.
It is also the only source of AstraZeneca Covid vaccine produced in the US. Only the uninformed would accept either product from Emergent BioSolutions’ stocks. What can be done about that?
Dump this unapproved, unauthorized and potentially contaminated vaccine on other countries, like India, of course.
The AstraZeneca vaccine, which is not yet authorized for use in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration, will be sent to other countries once it clears federal safety reviews, officials said…We do not need to use AstraZeneca in our fight against covid,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters…
The situation in India, where record global daily covid-19 cases have been set in recent days, is especially dire…
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
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).
***
Earlier this month, the U.S. Army hosted a Facebook live town hall on the topic of concerns about COVID-19 vaccines.
The virtual town hall followed this format:
Affirm soldiers who took the experimental vaccine or question soldiers who have not yet taken the vaccine.
Legitimize an Army doctor as a drug expert to counter risks or concerns without citing any references for the information provided.
Leverage the influence of the Sergeant Major of the Army, the highest ranking non-commissioned officer, to persuade soldiers to risk taking the experimental drug without providing factual informed consent.
This format was designed to not only promote maximum conversion of soldiers to take the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) drug, but also to convince them to persuade their friends and family to do the same.
The overall tone of the town hall was respectful and caring, but the false efficacy claims and risk omissions are indicators of dysfunctional groupthink at best, or cult mentality at worst.
The U.S. Army leadership is persuading soldiers to put blind faith in an EUA drug using miraculous claims even the manufacturers do not make about their products.
The six-person town hall panel consisted of Sergeant Major of the Army (SMA) Michael Grinston; Dr. Steven Cersovsky, science advisor to the U.S. Army Medical Command; three U.S. Army service members; and a moderator.
The one-hour session addressed three main concerns about the COVID vaccine among military members: infertility, variants of the virus and the speed with which the vaccines were developed.
Cersovsky began the town hall with an evangelistic sales pitch for the vaccine beginning with this statement:
“The good news is the vaccine is available, there is light at the end of the tunnel and taking the vaccine protects you, protects the community and protects our nation.”
Cersovsky went on to acknowledge concerns about the speed with which the vaccines were developed and the risks that may pose to public safety, but then said, the “only risk to public safety is not getting vaccinated.”
According to Cersovsky, viral salvation can be achieved only by getting the vaccine. He vaguely referred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and “data” without actually providing any data from the clinical trials or surveillance systems.
The medical ethics of informed consent requires doctors to tell patients the risk of the disease, the known benefits of the medical intervention, the known risks of the intervention and alternatives to the intervention. Cersovsky mentioned none of these.
In the case of the COVID vaccine, informed consent requires doctors inform soldiers of the following:
Risk of disease: Most people have a 99.9% survival rate for SARS-CoV2, with increased risk of severe disease in elderly populations with co-morbid health conditions. Per the CDC, the most frequent underlying medical conditions were obesity (35.1%), diabetes (8.4%) and pulmonary disease (7.8%).
Efficacy of Intervention: EUA COVID vaccines did not demonstrate prevention of infection or transmission of the virus in the clinical trials. Symptom prevention is the primary endpoint for the clinical trials. Consent to a COVID vaccine is equivalent to voluntary participation in an ongoing phase 3 clinical trial ending in 2022 or 2023.
Alternatives: There is a research-based meta-analysis of more than 562 studies of effective preventative alternatives including long-term established therapeutics of Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and vitamin D.
Fertility risks
In addressing concerns about infertility, Cersovsky definitively stated, “I can tell you for certain that’s not the case.” Although pregnant women were excluded in the original clinical trials, Cersovsky claimed that over the past several months after vaccine rollout there is a ”very robust data set that the CDC has and others … very safe vaccines for use in pregnancy.”
Cersovsky added that for pregnant women, “the safety profile has been excellent. No adverse events in that group, just as we have seen in the broader population.”
Yet Cersovsky did not mention that as of April 16, 462 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. The reports included 132 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.
The CDC is currently enrolling pregnant women in the v-safe COVID-19 Vaccine Pregnancy Registry, and has confirmed 4,478 pregnant women, but the CDC has yet to publish a report from the v-safe registry nor publish data from healthcare systems in the Vaccine Safety Datalink to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
It is manipulative and unethical for anyone to claim there is no risk in pregnancy, in the absence of evidence the drug is safe in pregnancy.
Cersovsky claimed there are benefits in pregnancy from the vaccine that are neither established by data nor research. He asserted:
“ … there are advantages, especially in pregnant women, in getting the vaccine. One, it protects them because they may be at higher risk from severe outcomes if they do get infected. Two, there’s the ability to pass on — what is called passive immunity — to pass on some of that immunity to the fetus, to the unborn child which will persist for many months after birth. So that gives the baby some protection too.”
Cersovsky refuted any possibility of the vaccine impacting the fertility of women, declaring,“there is no possible mechanism for that to happen.”
However, if there were no mechanism of reproductive risks, then why is the CDC dedicated to studying the unknown effects of the vaccine through the Vaccine Safety Datalink, which states: “Miscarriage and stillbirth that occurs among people who received COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy; Adverse outcomes in pregnancy following COVID-19 vaccination, including: Pregnancy complications, Birth outcomes, Infant outcomes for the first year of life (includes infant death, birth defects, and developmental disorders)?
Cersovsky is gaslighting women in uniform.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) assessment report of the Moderna mRNA-1273 COVID=19 vaccine reported in March the following for the developmental and reproductive toxicity in female rats: “The overall pregnancy index was numerically lower in mRNA-1273-vaccinated female rats (84.1%), compared to control animals (93.2%).”
The CDC declares pregnancy outcomes are unknown because the clinical trials did not scientifically study developmental and reproductive toxicity in female or male humans in the experimental design, and yet irresponsibly the CDC assumes no risk to pregnancy based on what “experts believe.”
According to the CDC statement on pregnancy and the COVID19 vaccine:
“Limited data are available about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines for people who are pregnant. Based on how these vaccines work in the body, experts believe they are unlikely to pose a specific risk for people who are pregnant. However, there are currently limited data on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant people. Clinical trials that look at the safety and how well the COVID-19 vaccines work in pregnant people are underway or planned. Vaccine manufacturers are also monitoring data from people in the clinical trials who received vaccine and became pregnant. Studies in animals receiving a Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, or Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen (J&J/Janssen) COVID-19 vaccine before or during pregnancy found no safety concerns. CDC and the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) have safety monitoring systems in place to gather information about vaccination during pregnancy and will closely monitor that information. Most of the pregnancies in these systems are ongoing, so we don’t yet have information on the outcomes of these pregnancies. We need to continue to follow pregnancies long-term to understand effects on pregnancy and infants.”
Vaccine effectiveness with COVID and variants
The U.S. Army has developed a dangerous groupthink strategy that the vaccine guarantees health protection and has no short-term or long-term risks for anyone. The Army leadership is obediently following the CDC guidance, like victims of a cult mentality, without scrutinizing industry motives.
Per the clinical trial data presented to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for EUA, the prevention of infection and transmission were not assessed nor were these criteria a part of the primary efficacy endpoints established in the clinical trials.
Yet not only did Cersovsky fully endow the vaccines with infection prevention, he also endowed the vaccine with the supernatural ability to block all future variants. Cersovsky preached a message of super-immunity: “The vaccines, in fact, are so good at causing an immune response in most people, that even if a variant finds a way to diminish some of our immune systems protection, we still have the ability to fight off infection from this virus.”
These claims have not been confirmed in published data or research.
Cersovsky sermonized the idea that vaccines can stop, block or suppress the natural mutation of viruses to become more transmissible: “The vaccine is our mechanism in which we can stop these variants” and “The way to block that is through vaccination.”
He alluded to variants becoming stronger, without acknowledging that viruses naturally become less virulent as they become more transmissible.
In his concluding remarks, Cersovsky contradicted himself, stating there is limited data on the ability of the vaccine to actually block infection after previously stating that the vaccine blocked infection for both the virus and variants.
He contradicted himself a second time when he stated the vaccine is preferred over natural immunity because it “locks in immunity” and even boosts immunity with a greater protection in the previously infected, after stating that it is also likely that booster doses will be needed annually.
Sergeant Major Grinston doubled down on the notion that the vaccine will stop variants and credited the vaccine’s unproven efficacy for removing the restricted movement (quarantine) requirement of soldiers stating, “If I get vaccinated, I can stop that variant spread.”
Grinston added that soldiers can “take some leave without spending all their leave on restricted movement” which has been recently revised as a virus-containment strategy only for the unvaccinated sect.
This containment strategy is based on the CDC’s unsubstantiated belief of asymptomatic transmission. A November 2020 Nature research study of 10 million people in China found “no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic positive persons to traced closed contacts.”
A December 2020 JAMA meta-analysis of 54 studies by the University of Florida research concluded “no asymptomatic or presymptomatic spread.”
Yet Army leadership is blindly following CDC pseudoscience without any scrutiny, just as it did with the anthrax vaccine program, actively facilitating a program that is potentially even more dangerous.
Grinston expressed his concern for the “readiness” of the Army, and yet seems oblivious to the inherent risk of a goal to inject an experimental drug into 100% of soldiers with no data on long-term effects.
Not one military leader mentioned the immunopathological complications documented in the research of SARS-CoV vaccines from the past 20 years of animal trials: antibody dependent enhancement (ADE). This adverse effect results in an increase in viral production and decrease in viral clearance.
The military has not prepared for the worst-case-scenario of an epidemic of ADE fatalities when the vaccinated are exposed to wild strains of the virus. It is noteworthy that the CDC omitted the long-term risk of ADE from the marketing campaign and the chain of command has not conducted its own risk assessment.
Behavioral health concerns
During the town hall, Grinston expressed valid concerns about the behavioral health and harmful impacts of wearing masks, social distancing, quarantines and social isolation. He then suggested that beneficial social interactions could resume with the vaccine.
It is disappointing to see a respected leader and mentor advocate that social well-being can be restored only by taking an experimental drug, when quarantines for healthy people were never justified in the first place.
Grinston defended the policies of Army gyms that require a COVID vaccine card, and dining facilities that allow seated meals only to soldiers with COVID19 vaccine cards. Grinston said, “There should be an advantage to this.” He added:
“If there is no advantage, if I still have to wear a mask, or stay apart and I can’t do this, I can’t do that, and I’ve been vaccinated, I’d be sitting here going, why get vaccinated, what’s the point?”
And with that statement, the Sergeant Major of the Army disqualified anyone with natural immunity from having the same access and privileges as the vaccinated, who now have preferential treatment despite not knowing how long natural immunity lasts and if the vaccine confers immunity at all.
There is no contingency plan for antibody testing those who question the risks of the fast-tracked mRNA drug, rather a presumed leper status for the unvaccinated.
In the implementation of these policies, the unvaccinated wear their scarlet letters of shame and are shunned from the righteous vaccinated.
The pregnant soldier who is risk averse is told to stand outside in line for a sack lunch, while her peers eat inside restaurant style.
The injured soldier who needs specialized fitness equipment at the gym to rehabilitate is told he must exercise outside.
Soldiers are told they are now non-deployable if they are unvaccinated and removed out of leadership positions. Basic training graduations will allow only vaccinated guests to attend.
One command sergeant major gave the vaccinated soldiers a three-day pass, and required all of the unvaccinated soldiers to stay and write a 1,500-page essay defending their choice. Only the vaccinated may attend military balls.
All of these unofficial Army policies will backfire on the purported social benefits of the vaccine. It is irreconcilable that a senior leader who can grasp the detrimental impact of long-term isolation then endorses a culture of exclusion for up to 30% of personnel.
While Grinston aims to protect the Army with a vaccine, he sacrifices the well-being of the unvaccinated with segregation policies.
“Currently, more evidence becomes available that the lockdowns may have more negative effects than positive effects. For instance, many measures taken in a lockdown aimed at protecting human life may compromise the immune system, and purpose in life, especially of vulnerable groups. This leads to the paradoxical situation of compromising the immune system and physical and mental health of many people, including the ones we aim to protect.”
How can anyone be expected to trust the lockdown proponents who claimed the lockdowns were protective, and are now also claiming the vaccine is protective? This breach of trust is why one-third of service members are declining this vaccine.
In response, the CDC has given the military orders to use “trusted leaders in the community” to persuade uptake, just as the CDC also requested church leaders persuade uptake in civilian communities.
Heaping sin upon sin
The omissions by Cersovsky and Grinston suggest they are promoting a belief in the vaccine and allegiance to the CDC that is disconnected from many red flags in the scientific community.
Neither seem to be aware the RT-PCR test cannot discriminate between the infectious virus and non-infectious viral fragments (live or dead nucleotide), and therefore the entire pandemic continues based on wide-scale false positives.
Neither leader mentioned that the entire world is challenging the PCR test as an unsuitable diagnostic tool as there is no Standard Operating Protocol that limits the cycle rate to detect only infectious SARS-CoV2 virus.
Neither raised the concern that the efficacy of the vaccine was calculated based on the flawed RT-PCR test.
Neither mentioned the hundreds of “breakthrough” cases of vaccinated people who are testing positive for SARS-CoV2. This is an indicator of lack of efficacy.
Neither addressed that the primary efficacy endpoint of the Pfizer and Moderna trials were symptom reduction, thus making vaccinated asymptomatic carriers. This necessitates an explanation on how vaccinated asymptomatic carriers are allegedly safe, but unvaccinated asymptomatic carriers are a risk. Symptom reduction does not equal immunity.
Neither discussed that a reported 94-95% efficacy in reducing symptoms or Relative Risk Reduction (RRR) is a deceitful way to sell a product with 1.1% Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) for Moderna and 0.7% Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) for Pfizer.
It appears that Cersovsky and Grinston were recruited as missionaries by Pharma to convert military members who commit the heresy of being skeptical of a deceptive marketing campaign for a lifetime commitment.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Pam Long is graduate of USMA at West Point and is an Army Veteran of the Medical Service Corps.
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
***
In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel “Brave New World,” people aren’t born from a mother’s womb. Instead, embryos are grown in artificial wombs until they are brought into the world, a process called ectogenesis. In the novel, technicians in charge of the hatcheries manipulate the nutrients they give the fetuses to make the newborns fit the desires of society. Two recent scientific developments suggest that Huxley’s imagined world of functionally manufactured people is no longer far-fetched.
On March 17, 2021, an Israeli team announced that it had grown mouse embryos for 11 days – about half of the gestation period – in artificial wombs that were essentially bottles. Until this experiment, no one had grown a mammal embryo outside a womb this far into pregnancy. Then, on April 15, 2021, a U.S. and Chinese team announced that it had successfully grown, for the first time, embryos that included both human and monkey cells in plates to a stage where organs began to form.
As both a philosopher and a biologist I cannot help but ask how far researchers should take this work. While creating chimeras – the name for creatures that are a mix of organisms – might seem like the more ethically fraught of these two advances, ethicists think the medical benefits far outweigh the ethical risks. However, ectogenesis could have far-reaching impacts on individuals and society, and the prospect of babies grown in a lab has not been put under nearly the same scrutiny as chimeras.
Mouse embryos were grown in an artificial womb for 11 days, and organs had begun to develop.
Growing in an artificial womb
When in vitro fertilization first emerged in the late 1970s, the press called IVF embryos “test-tube babies,” though they are nothing of the sort. These embryos are implanted into the uterus within a day or two after doctors fertilize an egg in a petri dish.
Before the Israeli experiment, researchers had not been able to grow mouse embryos outside the womb for more than four days – providing the embryos with enough oxygen had been too hard. The team spent seven years creating a system of slowly spinning glass bottles and controlled atmospheric pressure that simulates the placenta and provides oxygen.
This development is a major step toward ectogenesis, and scientists expect that it will be possible to extend mouse development further, possibly to full term outside the womb. This will likely require new techniques, but at this point it is a problem of scale – being able to accommodate a larger fetus. This appears to be a simpler challenge to overcome than figuring out something totally new like supporting organ formation.
The Israeli team plans to deploy its techniques on human embryos. Since mice and humans have similar developmental processes, it is likely that the team will succeed in growing human embryos in artificial wombs.
To do so, though, members of the team need permission from their ethics board.
CRISPR – a technology that can cut and paste genes – already allows scientists to manipulate an embryo’s genes after fertilization. Once fetuses can be grown outside the womb, as in Huxley’s world, researchers will also be able to modify their growing environments to further influence what physical and behavioral qualities these parentless babies exhibit. Science still has a way to go before fetus development and births outside of a uterus become a reality, but researchers are getting closer. The question now is how far humanity should go down this path.
Human-monkey hybrids
Human–monkey hybrids might seem to be a much scarier prospect than babies born from artificial wombs. But in fact, the recent research is more a step toward an important medical development than an ethical minefield.
If scientists can grow human cells in monkeys or other animals, it should be possible to grow human organs too. This would solve the problem of organ shortages around the world for people needing transplants.
But keeping human cells alive in the embryos of other animals for any length of time has proved to be extremely difficult. In the human-monkey chimera experiment, a team of researchers implanted 25 human stem cells into embryos of crab-eating macaques – a type of monkey. The researchers then grew these embryos for 20 days in petri dishes.
After 15 days, the human stem cells had disappeared from most of the embryos. But at the end of the 20-day experiment, three embryos still contained human cells that had grown as part of the region of the embryo where they were embedded. For scientists, the challenge now is to figure out how to maintain human cells in chimeric embryos for longer.
Regulating these technologies
Some ethicists have begun to worry that researchers are rushing into a future of chimeras without adequate preparation. Their main concern is the ethical status of chimeras that contain human and nonhuman cells – especially if the human cells integrate into sensitive regions such as a monkey’s brain. What rights would such creatures have?
However, there seems to be an emerging consensus that the potential medical benefits justify a step-by-step extension of this research. Many ethicists are urging public discussion of appropriate regulation to determine how close to viability these embryos should be grown. One proposed solution is to limit growth of these embryos to the first trimester of pregnancy. Given that researchers don’t plan to grow these embryos beyond the stage when they can harvest rudimentary organs, I don’t believe chimeras are ethically problematic compared with the true test–tube babies of Huxley’s world.
Few ethicists have broached the problems posed by the ability to use ectogenesis to engineer human beings to fit societal desires. Researchers have yet to conduct experiments on human ectogenesis, and for now, scientists lack the techniques to bring the embryos to full term. However, without regulation, I believe researchers are likely to try these techniques on human embryos – just as the now-infamous He Jiankui used CRISPR to edit human babies without properly assessing safety and desirability. Technologically, it is a matter of time before mammal embryos can be brought to term outside the body.
While people may be uncomfortable with ectogenesis today, this discomfort could pass into familiarity as happened with IVF. But scientists and regulators would do well to reflect on the wisdom of permitting a process that could allow someone to engineer human beings without parents. As critics have warned in the context of CRISPR-based genetic enhancement, pressure to change future generations to meet societal desires will be unavoidable and dangerous, regardless of whether that pressure comes from an authoritative state or cultural expectations. In Huxley’s imagination, hatcheries run by the state grew a large numbers of identical individuals as needed. That would be a very different world from today.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Sahotra Sarkar is Professor of Philosophy and Integrative Biology, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts.
Featured image: Researchers have grown mammal embryos later into development than ever before in an artificial womb. Vitalii Kyryk/WikimediaCommons, CC BY-SA
